Scrapbook of Madness

Sign of aging

2009-05-22T21:13:00.002-05:00

My boss was upset with herself today. She went out to lunch yesterday and "was bad," in her words. Her plan then was not to eat the rest of the day, but she said that she would up getting, and eating too much, pizza.

I was thinking, after she told me this story, that it's a definite sign of aging when you wake up regretting, both physically and emotionally, the choices you made the night before --- and they're food choices.

Lots of us have had those "What was I thinking?" mornings after. In my younger days, when I had them, they would come out of a bottle. It's definitely a sign that those younger days are gone when the source of those mornings was delivered in a cardboard box with a domino on it.

Fear of Flying

2009-05-18T21:03:00.002-05:00

It was announced today that Tony Kornheiser is leaving the "Monday Night Football" broadcast, due to what Tony called a fear of flying.

Believe me, I can understand. I'd be fine if I never get in an airplane again. I'd much rather drive or take the train. I might have to travel for work in a couple months, about 800 miles away, and if I do go I'm going to inquire if I can drive rather than fly.

I don't like being in a plane. I don't like the take off, and I don't like the landing. You must understand, though, it's not a fear of flying --- it's a fear of crashing. The flying part is fine. It's what happens when the flying doesn't happen the way it should that I have a problem with.

The way I figure it, if I'm in a car moving about 70 mph on the ground, or in a train moving at a similar speed about 10 feet or so off the ground, and something happens, I have a chance. If I'm in a plane that has an issue a few thousand feet off the ground at hundreds of miles an hour... forget it. Game over, man.

I know the statistics. Flying is the safest method of travel, based on fatalities per hundred million miles travelled. My reply consists of two words: "what" and "so" (not necessarily in that order). It doesn't matter how long the odds are, how big the X in that 1-in-X ratio is... eventually the 1 is going to happen. (This is the same reason my wife and I spend a small amount on lottery tickets every week - we know how unlikely it is. But, eventually, somebody wins.) I'd rather not be involved when that 1 comes around, is all.

Of carts and horses

2009-05-14T21:22:00.002-05:00

It would be one thing if this had been an isolated incident. This kind of thing happens all the time, though.

At work, there's a database that my coworkers and I need to search from time to time. We access it by running a query in a program called Access. The business' IT team doesn't support Access anymore, so they're phasing out all of the Access-based tools and lookups. Makes sense so far. There are a lot of IT initiatives happening around my team right now, and among them is a program to convert all of our Access lookups to another program. Thus, yesterday afternoon they got rid of the query tool we used to search this particular database. Thing is, there's a slight problem with the replacement..... it doesn't exist. Or, at least, it hasn't been shared with us yet. Since about noon yesterday, we've had no Access, which means we've had no access. We need this database, pretty much every day (not all of us every day, but at least one of us). We can't do the pieces of our work that require it otherwise. Day and a half.

When we found out our tool was removed and not replaced, one of my coworkers said, "It's like putting the cart before the horse."

I replied, "It's more like putting the cart... where the hell's the horse?!? We have no horse. You see a horse, you let me know."

It's been a frustration of mine for as long as I've worked for this company (just over 5 years). Every single, solitary time they do an IT initiative like this, it's the same. The details change, of course, but the theme is the same. They're done at a management level. They're budgeted, designed, built, tested and implemented without nearly enough (sometimes not any at all) input from, or consideration of the actual needs of, the end users --- the day-to-day, hands-on-a-keyboard movements and tasks of those of us who have to operate these tools. Management wants X (in this case, no Access, and a new program), and IT delivers what is asked of them (the Access tool is gone, and it will most certainly be replaced by the new program). I'm sure from management's and IT's perspective's, this has all been wildly successful. Maybe I shouldn't put IT on an equal footing in that sentence. They're given a project to complete, in a particular manner, and they do it. The problem is with how they're told to do it. So I guess I should edit that to say I'm sure management will consider this wildly successful.

I'll have plenty of time to congratulate them, since I won't be losing all that time I previously spent doing my damn job.

You may say I'm a dreamer

2009-04-20T21:23:00.002-05:00

In December 2005, which was the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's murder, Newsweek ran an article about the occasion. In it, musician Dave Matthews was quoted as saying, "Even if he'd written only 'Imagine,' he would have been the greatest songwriter of all time." That's a bit hyperbolic, but it shows the admiration for the song that Dave has, which I don't think is at all out of place. I don't tend to use the word "art" to describe much of what is done by rock musicians, but this song is an exception. It is (and I contend that the following statement is in no way hyperbolic) an absolutley brilliantly constructed piece of artistry.

John Lennon wrote "Revolution" in 1968. There were, of course, a lot of protest songs, anti-war songs, anti-Establishment songs being written at the time. Various people had publicly called on The Beatles, and other popular groups, to lend their voice to the struggles by speaking out. John certainly championed the basic beliefs of these crowds, but seems to have disagreed with some of their tactics and actions. And, anyone familiar with John would probably guess that he wasn't about to let anyone tell him what to say and how to say it. In response, he came out with "Revolution," with lyrics such as, "but when you talk about destruction, don't you know that you can count me out... but if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is brother you have to wait... but if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow." This song isn't exactly related to "Imagine," but I think John did make it clear that when he was going to use his music to speak out, he was going to do so in his own way, and not simply join the crowd that was seeking changes.

The next year, he wrote "Give Peace a Chance." Not "Give Us Peace." Not "Live Peace." Not "End the War." Not "Stop All Wars." Give peace a chance. Again, John was going to use his music on his own terms. He wasn't saying, "This is how things should be," though he certainly thought so. He was just saying, "Give it a try." Look at it in a way you've never looked at it before, and see what you think. Certainly this was a departure from a lot of the anti-war songs of the era, which directly advocated the end of the war.

Two years after this, John hit what Dave Matthews and I consider his zenith with "Imagine." He had bigger things on his mind than just the war in Viet Nam, or the student protests and such that he'd been reacting to back in the old days of 1968. John had a much broader, much grander vision of a united, peaceful world. And again... and once again brilliantly... John doesn't tell us what he thinks we should do. He doesn't tell us this is how we should live. (This time, I'm not sure that even John thought that all of this was how we should live. He certainly seemed to enjoy his possessions, for one thing.) All he does is ask us to imagine it. What would it be like if all the things that we use to separate ourselves from each other didn't exist? What would it be like if the things that we used to justify our prejudices and hatreds didn't exist? What would it be like if the things that we used to categorize, judge, label, elevate or denigrate everyone else didn't exist? If all we had was ourselves, each other, and today.

Just as they never really will give peace a chance, I don't think most people ever really will imagine, not even necessarily John's vision in his song, but any way in which the world or their lives could be significantly different than they are today. Which will, of course, keep them from making any real change. The first step is to decide what change you want to make, and you can't do that until you consider the possibilities. If you start by picturing the farthest extent of where you can go, you can then work back towards today to come to where you actually want to go. Until you know where that is, you can't get there, right? I think that by setting the bar where he did, by asking us to consider an idealized, Utopian picture, John was reminding us of the first step to making changes in our lives. Not by telling anyone what they should do, but by inviting everyone to consider what we could do. Imagine.

R.I.P., Harry

2009-04-13T21:15:00.006-05:00

There is a fair chance that you don't know the name Harry Kalas. Even if that's the case, there is still a fair chance that you know his voice. You may have heard it in commercials, such as ones for Chunky soup or his beloved Coors Light, or as the voice of NFL Films, or as the voiceover for the highlights on HBO's "Inside the NFL," or as the voice of Animal Planet's annual "Puppy Bowl." For me, Harry Kalas always was, and always will be, the voice of Philadelphia Phillies baseball.

I grew up in the Philadelphia area, and am a lifelong Phillies fan. Harry did play-by-play for Phillies games on TV and radio for literally my whole life - he started as Phillies' broadcaster in 1971; I was born the next year. From youth, through adolescence, to adulthood, Harry's smooth, resonant voice has been a constant presence. Even since I moved to Minnesota, I've been able to watch some Phillies broadcasts on our cable package, and still have Harry around some.

Usually, when sports fans talk about our team, we talk about the players. But really, the broadcasters are a closer, if not bigger, part of the game for us. Players and coaches come and go, but Harry was always there.

There's a clear separation between the fans and players, in every sense. They're the spectacle, the ones on stage. I can't do what they do. And I certainly don't live in their multi-million dollar, fame-and-celebrity world. It's different, somehow, with the broadcasters - at least with the good ones. It's like they're watching the game with you. The broadcast is like a conversation. Though they very rarely answer my questions ;-). The players are very much on TV. But Harry was in my living room, my kitchen, my car. Just talking baseball with me.

Harry Kalas died today. It seems fitting that he died doing what he loved so much, getting ready to call a Phillies game. It was a couple hours before game time. He had made his regular visit to the Phillies' locker room, and was in the broadcast booth when he collapsed. He died at a local hospital about an hour later.

Most of my memories of Phillies baseball are as much about Harry's descriptions of what happened as they are about what actually happened. Not just the big moments, but thousands of little ones. A home run just wasn't the same without his trademark, "Outta here... home run!" call. A strikeout wasn't the same without his, "Swing and a miss. Struck... him... out!" As I said to the co-worker who first told me that Harry had died, "Harry WAS the soundtrack of Philles baseball for me."

It's hard to imagine that the next walk-off home run, the next no-hitter, the next World Series championship (if you're a Philly fan like me, you can't read - or type, trust me - that phrase without inserting a mental "if") will happen without the backdrop of Harry's words and voice. It was hard for me just to get my mind around the fact that today's game would have to go on without him.

When the Phillies won the World Series (and the series before it) last year, as excited as I was watching the celebrations, I couldn't wait till the national TV broadcasts played the clip of Harry's call of the last out on Philadelphia radio. (If I still lived around Philly, I'd have had the sound on my TV off, and my radio on.) I was excited that they won because, as a fan, I wanted them to win. Duh. But I was also glad that Harry got to call the World Series win. The only other time the Philles won the World Series was in 1980. Baseball's broadcast rules then didn't allow for any local broadcasts, so Harry didn't get to call that one. He very obviously loved the game and the team every bit as much as we fans do, and I know it was a proud moment for him to be part of the championship last year. I was happy for him to have the opportunity, and that the team came through for him. Because, I thought, he won't be around forever. Little did I know...

I'll miss Harry, talking to me about my Phillies. I never met him, but it feels like I've lost a friend - someone who was always around, and someone with whom I had at least one thing... one thing we both enjoyed very much... in common. It'll never be quite the same again without him.

I made...

2009-04-01T21:16:00.002-05:00

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...you look.

Happy April Fools Day!!! :-P

Punitive damages

2009-03-31T21:06:00.002-05:00

Here's an idea that I've had in the past, that I was thinking about today while reading a news story.

I've got no problem with compensatory damages. I don't think any reasonable person could. And I understand the idea of punitive damages - that the transgressor should be punished for egregious wrongdoings. Since we're talking about cases tried in civil, rather than criminal, court, prison is not a possibility. The way a civil court punishes is monetarily.

Let's say Person A is wronged by B, Inc., but is then made whole by compensatory damages, potentially including pain and suffering. The judge and/or jury further decide that B, Inc. must, beyond indemnifying Person A, be punished for its wrongs. Punitive damages are then awarded... but why should they go to the plaintiff? According to Douglas Laycock in Modern American Remedies, studies have shown that punitive damages are awarded in 2 percent of civil trials? Why should those 2 percent of plaintiffs get a lottery-like payday which is not offered to 98% of others?

The purpose of the civil court system is to indemnify, to make whole, those who have suffered due to another person's or company's violation of the law. Monetary losses are restored. Physical suffering is compensated (there are tables that have been created which show a decided-upon value of, for example, the loss of a finger, a hand, an arm to the elbow, etc.). Pain and suffering is compensated. This is all as it should be. However, as I see it, once the wronged person has been made whole, they should not be made "more whole" by reaping the benefits of someone's decision to punish the defendant.

I don't think we should do away with punitive damages. I think they should become fines. They should be paid to the government. Kind of like if I were speeding and hit your car. I... well, my insurance... would pay to fix your car. But my fine for speeding wouldn't go to you. It's a fine. It goes to the state. The same should happen with punitive damages in civil trials, as I see it.

Idiosyncrasies (tagged)

2009-03-30T20:57:00.003-05:00

I recently did a post with a list of random facts about me. I've gotten the idea since then to do a list of my idiosyncrasies. I'm thinking 10, rather than the 16 from the last list. As before, you're now tagged - if you blog, you should do a similar post on your blog, and feel free to leave a link to it in the comments here.

To the list, then:

1. I keep my money (bills, not coins) in a specific order. I arrange them with the biggest bills on top, so that when they're folded and put in my front pocket (I don't keep my cash in my wallet), the smallest bill is showing. Also, I make sure all the bills are facing the same way - face up, and right side up. I believe that hearkens back to my days of running a cash register at McDonald's, where we were required to keep the bills in the same orientation like that.

2. When I have my CD's arranged - I really haven't had them arranged since my wife and I moved into our house almost 3 years ago - I arrange them alphabetically by artist, then chronologically for each artist. I recall debating with myself whether my John Cougar Mellencamp & John Mellencamp CD's should be filed together under C, together under M, or separately. I went with M, since John never wanted the stage name Cougar.

3. There are seven applications that I have running at all times on my computer at work. I open them in order, so their icons are always in the same place on the task bar. If I have to close something early enough in the work day, I'll reboot so I can open them all fresh. I'm not going to go 6 hours with my Outlook way over on the right.

4. The station pre-set buttons on my car radio are programmed in order, to a certain extent. This is one I've changed a bit over time. There are 6 buttons, but I can toggle through 3 groups of pre-sets, so there are 18 stations I have programmed. Every car I've had before that had a toggling option, each group would be limited to either FM or AM stations. It was always 2 groups of FM and one of AM. Before, I always had my FM's entirely in order - e.g., with the stations I now have programmed, the first group would have been 92.5FM through 100.9FM, the second would have started with 102.9FM, and so on. The last group would have my AM stations in order. My current car's radio doesn't limit each group to AM or FM; they can be intermixed. Since I was intermixing the bands, I also decided to make a further change and arrange the groups so that the 6 stations I listen to most are in the first group, and so on through the second and third. But, within each group, they are still arranged in order, with FM's first (e.g., the first group is 92.5FM, 94.9FM, 104.1FM, 105.7FM, 107.9FM and 950AM - the second group starts at 93.7FM [which would have been {and was} in the first group previously] and goes in order through 4 FM's, finishing with 690 & 1130AM).

5. When I eat M&M's, Smarties or some other candy where you have several pieces of different colors, for each handful I will group them by color and eat all of one color before moving to the next, saving my "favorite" colors for last. This makes a little bit of sense (to me) with Smarties, since the different colors indicate different flavors. I want to save the best for last. There's really no way to justify doing this with, say, M&M's. But I still do it. With no real set pattern. Blue will often, but not always, be last. Brown and tan are likely to go first. But nothing is carved in stone. With Smarties, yellow are second-to-last, white are last, but the rest is just however I feel like going at the time. If there's no particular reason to choose one color before another, I'll usually go with the one with fewer candies first. No real reason, just what I do.

6. Similarly, when I'm eating a handful of chips, I'll often separate the broken ones from the whole ones, and eat the broken ones first. Again, it's a "saving the best for last" thing, I think, yet I could not tell you why whole ones are better than broken ones. If they're flavored chips, and there's one that seems to have more of the flavoring on it than others, that one will likely be kept for last.

7. (Hmmm, lots of these are around food) This one I do not do anymore, but through my childhood and adolescence, when eating a meal, I would always eat all of one item before starting the next, and continue to do that with whatever starch, vegetable(s) and meat I had. The meat was always kept for last. By now, you ought to be able to guess why.

8. The second-t0-last thing I do before I go to bed is to go to the bathroom to floss, brush, whatever. Just before that, third-to-last, I check to make sure that all of the stove's burners are off. After the bathroom, the very last thing I do before I go to bed... I check to make sure that all of the stove's burners are off. Not sure who I think is going to turn one on while I'm in there, but there you have it. I have a real paranoia about that, tho I've never gone to bed and left a burner on. I did a similar thing when I smoked. I couldn't leave the house without checking twice that I hadn't left a cigarette burning in an ashtray. Once day, many moons ago, when I got to work I called home and asked my mother to check the ashtray to see if I'd left a cigarette burning. I hadn't. I never did. Always checked.

9. (Hmmmmm, lots of these are around food) When I eat a sandwich, the cheese has to be underneath the meat. I'll make sure that I pick up the sandwich and put it in my mouth so that the cheese is on bottom (save for a piece of bread, of course). On the rare occasion that I get a cheeseburger from the cafeteria at work, it's presented with the cheese on top. We add the condiments ourselves, and my first step in the process is always to flip my burger over so the cheese is on bottom.

10. Like #7, this is another one I don't do so much anymore. This may have led directly to item #7, in fact. I used to be really hard-core about this. It used to really bother me if different foods on my plate touched each other. Unless they were supposed to - you know, you're eating a stew, a hash, Chinese food, you're going to have different foods all over each other, which is no problem - or in various situation where I would arbitrarily suspend the rule - I had no problem, for example, with mixing corn and mashed potatoes. But for the most part, "no touching" was the rule. For the most part, no problem. But if there was a sauce or a gravy involved, well, that could pose a problem. It would require some attention. Beets were an issue. Hard to control beet juice, and with that bright red color, there wasn't any pretending that it hadn't touched something else on the plate. You may have noticed the qualifier in the first sentence - I don't do this one "so much" anymore. To this day, if I'm having beets, they'll be in a separate bowl. I just can not take beet juice on my other food.

I'm really not as crazy as this list makes me seem. I think.

Remember, you're tagged.

Turn me on, dead man

2009-03-25T21:47:00.006-05:00

On The Beatles' eponymous 1968 album (the one commonly called "The White Album") there is a track called "Revolution 9." It's not a song by any traditional description; perhaps "sound collage" comes closest to accurately describing it. At various points throughout, you hear British man repeatedly saying, "Number nine." If you play the "number nine" piece backwards, you might think it sounds like, "Turn me on, dead man." It's been kind of hard to play a sound recording backwards at regular speed since vinyl records went away, but I used to have this album on vinyl, and I did listen to that piece of "Revolution 9" backwards. I have to admit that it did sound like, "Turn me on, dead man," to me. The thing is, the reason I tried it was because I was told it would sound like that, so I was listening for it. No small detail, that, if you ask me.

So what's this all about? Why are people finding... or even looking for... such unusual statements backwards on a Beatles album? In late 1969, coinciding with the release of their Abbey Road album, a rumor started circulating that Paul McCartney had died, and that the other Beatles and their management had decided to keep it secret and replace him with the winner of Paul McCartney lookalike contest (a Mr. William Campbell of Canada, so the story went). Part of the legend was that the boys had decided to put some clues as to what had happened into the artwork, and within the lyrics of the songs, on their subsequent albums. "Turn me on, dead man," was alleged to be one such clue.

I don't imagine that there is anyone who believes this story these days. What amazes me is that anyone ever did. The most common version of the story was that Paul died in a car wreck. "He blew his mind out in a car," as John Lennon sang in "A Day in the Life." (John actually wrote that about Tara Browne, heir to the Guinness brewery fortune.) Obviously, a death by car accident is sudden and unexpected. The 3 remaining Beatles would have had to have met, with their management, proposed and agreed to the plan, communicated it to the police and media (they... all of them... were bought off to keep silent, don't you know), and gotten their acceptance --- all before word got out to anyone. Since then, of course, no one involved in the subterfuge ever broke with the plan. And, by sheer luck, the guy they found to be the replacement just happened to be every bit as talented as was Paul, given the success of his contributions to The Beatles remaining albums - "Penny Lane," "Back in the USSR," and "Let It Be," to name just a few - and his post-Beatles solo career.

Clearly, the holes in the story are big enough for Paul to have safely driven his car through that morning --- that morning being Wednesday, November 9, 1966, according to "evidence" presented in and on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album*, which makes the clues people found on singles and albums released before that date quite interesting, if you ask me.

I said before that it surprised me that anyone believed this story. After a little consideration, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I've long been interested in urban legends - interested that people will believe fantastical claims that, when you get right down to it, are based on little more than "Some guy told me." I'm a frequent visitor to snopes.com and enjoy reading some of the patently ridiculous stories that some people apparently believe.

What strikes me the most, I think, about so may of these legends (and the "Paul is dead" one in particular) is that many of them involve large, not realistically possible, conspiracies and pacts of silence. "Paul is dead" is an extreme... maybe the extreme... example. But it's a common theme. You've likely gotten an email, once or a thousand times, warning you that an attacker has injured/raped/killed one or more people in your local mall's parking lot, and that the mall authorities paid off the police and local media to make sure you didn't hear about it. Were there such an attacker, perhaps a mall's management would be interested in keeping the story quiet. But, that's not how the police work, and that sure as hell ain't how the media work. There are, as I see it, 3 basic principles the media live by (it'll be another blog post... eventually [I know]). One of them is, Being First Is More Important Than Being Right. There is no way you could get multiple news outlets to all agree to sit on a story. Somebody would run it, just to be the first to do so... just to be the one that scooped everyone else. I doubt it was much, if at all, different in 1966.

It shouldn't take more than about 5 seconds of consideration to come to the conclusion that both of these stories are not only untrue, but literally impossible. It's theoretically possible that either cover up could have been tried (save for the inconvenient** business of Mr. James Paul McCartney's continuing to live), but there is simply no way either conspiracy could have ever been put in place and agreed to, let alone last for anything more than 10 or 15 minutes before somebody blabbed. And yet, you'll find someone to believe any ridiculous piece of garbage that comes across their inbox. Why? That's the part I've never been able to understand. Why do so many people believe these stories that are so obviously made up? Somebody please explain it to me.

*The date comes from an alleged clue on the album's cover art. If you place a mirror horizontally across the words "LONELY HEARTS" so that you see the top halves of those letters, and the reflections of those top halves (who found these clues?!?), it looks like "1 ONE 1 X HE (a diamond) DIE" - or 11 IX... 11 9... November 9. Except that, to the British Beatles, that date is 9 November, not November 9. 11/9 would be September 11. I once posted a facetious post in an online forum claiming that The Beatles had in fact been predicting the 9/11 attacks. Makes about as much sense as the "Paul is dead" story.

** My suspicion is that Paul himself does not consider this inconvenient.

I'd like to see...

2009-02-18T21:49:00.002-06:00

Or, to be precise, I'd like not to see...

I wish the media would stop allowing themselves to be used as a forum for certain public figures to spread their spin, half-truths or outright lies, but who refuse to be interviewed or answer any questions about what they're saying.

I'll give you a few examples of what I'm talking about.

Since the recent economic stimulus package became law, there have been a handful of members of Congress putting out press releases to make sure that their constituents are well aware of the benefits coming to their home state or district. Press releases that invariably link the Congressperson's name with those benefits. The Congresspeople I'm referring to specifically are the ones who are doing this, despite the fact that they opposed, and voted against, the bill.

Baseball player Alex Rodriguez recently admitted that he has previously used steroids. In a February 17th press conference, Rodriguez claimed that the substance (acquired in the Dominican Republic and injected into him by his cousin) was one that his cousin believed would give him an "energy boost," and would have no ill effects. He had previously stated that he believed at the time that he was doing nothing wrong. A few questions I would have liked to have asked him are: Did you really believe you were doing nothing wrong in taking this substance that can not be acquired without a prescription in the US? Are you aware of any other "energy boost" products that are injected? And if you really believed this would just provide an "energy boost," and would have no ill effects - that you were doing nothing wrong - how many of your teammates did you encourage to use it? (Seems to me that it would be to the benefit of the team, no?) Of course, had I been at the press conference, I would not have had an opportunity. His team only allowed each reporter to ask one question, with no follow-ups. Of course he was evasive in answering all of the questions that were the least bit penetrating. Once the question was asked, the reporter had no opportunity to press him for a better answer.

I wish the various media outlets would stop giving these people a forum under these conditions. You want to put your message out there? Fine. Take questions. Give answers. Be held to account. Explain to us why you're taking credit for benefits in a bill you voted against. Tell us why you want us to believe you thought you were acting aboveboard, when everything you did was done in secrecy.

I know, I know. It'll never happen. But it would be nice.

Five of Spades

2009-02-16T20:14:00.003-06:00

There's a card trick/joke that I came up with when I was about 12. It's really not original, although at the time I thought of it, I hadn't seen it (or any of the variations of the same theme) before.

The way it goes is this: I start out with the well-known "pick a card, any card." While I'm obviously not looking, I have you select your card. Then, while I'm still not looking, I have you put your card back in the deck anywhere you like. I then take the deck. Depending on how much of a production I want to make of the trick, I may shuffle or cut the cards. I then take the deck in my left hand, and, while concentrating very intently on the feeling I'm getting from the cards, I move the thumb and middle finger of my right hand up and down the outside of the deck, trying to get a sense of the proper place to cut the deck to reveal your card. Again, depending on how much of a production I want to make of this, I can spend quite a bit of time doing this. When I'm ready, I cut the deck and reveal a card, asking, "Is this your card?" When the answer is revealed to be the obvious "No," (like I'm going to happen to cut the deck right at the card you picked?), I reply with a completely indifferent "So?" and move quickly to the next topic of conversation. Or, under the right circumstances, I'll toss toss the cards in the air, to spill about the table and floor. Or, sometimes, I'll reassemble the deck, and, with a bit of bend of the deck between my fingers, flip the cards in succession in the direction of my trick/joke stooge. I know, not terribly funny. Like I said, I was about 12 when I came up with it.

I tried the joke today with my wife. After she selected and replaced her card, I did my prestidigitation, and cut the deck to reveal the 5 of spades...

"Is this your card?"

"Yeah."

(pause)

"Really?"

"Yes."

(shorter pause)

"REALLY?"

"Yes."

dammit

Taxes

2009-02-10T21:06:00.002-06:00

I've been thinking about taxes lately, as have a lot of us, I'm sure. Nobody really likes taxes, everybody (it seems) complains about them, but nobody really does anything about them. (I know what some of you are thinking, "What can I possibly do?" Well, for starters, you can talk to your elected representatives, and use their responses [and their votes] in your decision as to whether you're going to vote for them the next time.)

I came up with 2 ideas. To be honest, I don't think either is a workable plan. But they are, maybe, a start - something I can communicate to my representatives as perhaps a starting point for a conversation about what we might do.

First idea - Get rid of the "pay as you go" system. Prior to 1942, income tax was not withheld from paychecks in the U.S. That meant that you were responsible to pay your total tax due by the filing deadline, but it also meant that you had and held (not spent, if you were smart) that money over the course of the year, and you earned interest on it. It wouldn't be that difficult to set aside 15%, 25%, 28%, whatever is necessary, of your income into an interest-bearing account, and then to cut Uncle Sam a check once a year. (Actually, due to deductions and the progressive nature of our tax structure, if you're in, for example, the 28% tax bracket, you wouldn't pay... and wouldn't have to set aside... 28% of your income, as your actual tax burden would be noticeably less than that, but that level of detail isn't necessary for this discussion.)

As strange as this sounds, I think a lot of people lose track of how much money they pay in income tax every year. It shows up on your paycheck stub every 2 weeks (or however often you get paid.) It's right there on your W-2, and you have to write it on the 1040. But it's somehow not "real" money. You never see it, and when you're dealing with it at tax time, they already have it. It almost looks good, because it means either that you have to pay less, or you're going to get some back. They're giving me money!!! (Yeah, whose money?) I think it would be a much different story if we had to take that money out of our figurative pockets and hand it over to the government. I think people would be more mindful of how much they actually pay. And maybe (pipe dream alert!), just maybe, they would be a bit more inclined to hold those in Washington to account for how much is taken from us, and how it's used.

For anyone who gets a refund, the government is basically getting an interest-free loan from you. They have use of, or earn interest on, money that is rightfully yours, and then return it to you. When we do that, it's called a loan, and we pay interest for the privilege. That leads me to my...

Second idea - Pay interest on all refunds. They could make the formula as simple or as complicated as they wanted. I came up with a pretty simple one for our purposes here. Let's say they pay a 6% annual (or, 0.5% per month) interest rate. Let's say you're getting a $2,400 refund, meaning the IRS over-withheld $200 per month. For January's $200, they had it the whole year, so you get the full 6% - $12. For February's $200, you'd get 5.5% interest - $11. It would continue like that - $200 at 5%, $200 at 4.5%, etc. Overall, you'd get $78 interest, so your $2,400 refund would turn into a payment of $2,478.

The end result I'm going for is for the IRS to be, and/or allow us to be, smarter and more precise about how much of our income is withheld. The ultimate goal would be for everyone to be as close as possible to even on their 1040's - nothing due to the IRS, no refund due to the taxpayer. When I lived in Pennsylvania, it always worked that way for my state income tax. There was a flat 2.8% (I think) tax rate, and I had no deductions. They withheld 2.8% of every paycheck, so when I filed my return it was always even. I never paid to or received from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania so much as $1 in conjunction with filing my tax return. What had been withheld always equalled my tax burden. I don't think it's possible to be quite that precise with our federal taxes, because there are so many variables, but I think... or maybe I just hope... it could be better than it is now.

Again, I'm not under any delusion that these ideas are usable in my simplistic form. But I think they could be the base upon which some workable ideas could be built.

Nasty sick

2009-01-26T21:26:00.002-06:00

We're all sick in the house. Started with my mother-in-law, I got it next, now my wife is working on coming down with the acute symptoms. Tho there ain't no way in hell "cute" out to be anywhere near a description of what happens when this thing takes hold. Picture the Mr. Creosote scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, and imagine the same type of thing happening along the Southern passage (if you catch my meaning). At the same time. By the way, if you're unfamiliar with Mr. Creosote, don't click the link if you tend towards queasiness. The Wikipedia page for Mr. Creosote states, "It has been suggested that the scene is one of the most repulsive in twentieth-century cinema." You've been warned.

Fortunately, the worst of it only seems to last for about a day. Not even a full day, in my case, and that was yesterday. I'm on the way to recovery, but by no means there yet. M-I-L came down with it 4 days ago, and still gets a little distressed by eating anything other than the softest solid foods.

It's been, and will continue to be, quite a fun few days.

Yoga

2009-01-22T21:39:00.002-06:00

My wife and I started a yoga class through our school district's Adult Community Ed program. (Actually, the class started last Thursday. The weather was bad, and the Community Ed hotline said all classes were cancelled. This class - which is not run at the Comm Ed building, but at a local gym which was open for business - was held as normal [except that several of us who are signed by through Ed, not through the gym, were not there]. But that, like the proposed-but-never-built 103rd floor of the Empire State Building, is another story.)

Guess what? My body's not stretchy. This is a class for beginners. In theory, the other people have maybe one class' worth of experience more than me. Didn't seem like that tonight, tho. I felt about as poseable one of those little green Army men, in a room full of Stretch Armstrongs. I think (hope) that it didn't help that I worked out, as I normally do, after work - did 35 minutes plus cooldown on the stair machine - then went straight to yoga, trying to bend and balance on legs I had just put through a different exertion. I'll have to work out earlier on Thursdays while I'm in this class, I guess.

But I know it's not all that. Several of my muscles just are not well stretched. Yet. That, of course, is the whole purpose of the class. I think it might take more than 10 sessions, tho. I don't think the purpose of yoga is, for example, to have a different vertebra pop each time I go into the upward-facing dog pose. Ow.

Tagged

2009-01-20T21:09:00.003-06:00

Wow. Have I seriously not blogged for 2 whole months (plus)? I'd love to take this opportunity to provide a good reason, but I really don't have one. Just got lazy, then it snowballed.

Anyway, I got tagged on this blog, and thus am charged with providing you with 16 random facts about myself.

1. There was a time in my life when the one thing that really wanted to be when I grew up was the play-by-play broadcaster for the Philadelphia Flyers.

2. My mother considered naming me Emmett. I would have preferred if she had.

3. I once served 2 Filet-o-Fish sandwiches to a man who now has a baseball stadium named after him.

4. I did not sleep at all for the 26 or so hours it took my friend and me to drive straight-through from Wilmington, Delaware to Houston, Texas.

5. I attended the highest-scoring playoff game in National Football League history.

6. I have watched the sun come up over the Atlantic Ocean and set over the Pacific Ocean.

7. More than 10% of the songs in my mp3 player right now are by The Beatles, and that is not counting post-Beatles solo work.

8. I think I probably would have made a good detective.

9. At any point in time, I tend to have 3 or 4 books that I'm in the process of reading.

10. I once (unsuccessfully) tried to convince some of my Catholic school classmates that teachers who weren't priests or nuns were called "lay teachers" because they're allowed to have sex.

11. I don't know for sure, but I think it's likely that I have - over the whole course of my life - spent more time than do most people imagining what it would be like if I were confined to a wheelchair, or if I lost a limb.

12. As recently as, like, a year ago, I honestly would not have thought that the U.S. would elect a black President in my lifetime.

13. For reasons I really don't understand, I am very bad about keeping in touch with the people I care about.

14. Sometimes, I think the fictional character I most closely resemble is Walter Mitty - and I have more than 2 hours alone in the car every day I go to work.

15. I once dreamed that I met Lionel Ritchie.

16. I firmly believe that my humor is under appreciated.

If you blog, you're now tagged.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

2008-10-28T21:19:00.002-05:00

That seems to the be central message in American politics today.

Years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself." They're not using these words exactly, but politicians today seem to be telling us that fear itself is damn near the only thing we don't need to be afraid of.

There was a piece on "The Daily Show" last night. John Oliver went to Obama and McCain rallies, and interviewed some of the supporters at each. What they showed was person after person, from each side's rally, talking about how utterly terrified they are at the prospect of the other candidate becoming president. Granted, the only people they put in the piece were the ones whose answers were in line with the theme they were going for, but they did not appear to have any shortage of people to help them present their theme. Of course, it's not just these folks who got interviewed for a cable fake-news show. Read the Letters to the Editor in any US newspaper, or check out any online discussion of the election. You'll read the same thing.

I can't tell you how many times over the last several weeks I've read, about either candidate, and built up by any number of different topics, that if [either McCain or Obama] is elected, "this country as we know it is over."

I don't know what saddens me more: that the manipulative political operatives plant these ideas and stir the pot to get people so afraid, or that it works - that people are so utterly and apparently hopelessly ignorant of reality that they seem to truly believe that electing one man or the other is actually going to bring about these horrible doomsday scenarios they're being spoon-fed.

Fundamentally, there's no difference between this election and any other we've had since the first one in 1789. Different candidates have different views of what's best for the country. They have a base comprised of those who their policies and beliefs favor, and they try to convince those in the middle to come to their side. One will be successful, and get elected. Yes, some things are going to change. Depending on who gets elected (not only as President, but to Congress), taxes may go up or down, government programs will contract or expand, our military will do stuff, the economy will do stuff, foreign governments will or won't work with us.

Time, changes in our culture, changes in the media (particularly media technology) and such - the things that make our politics different today that it was in 1789, 1889 or 1989 - will slowly change the way the country and our politics operate. It'll look a little different when the incoming President leaves than it does today, just as it looks a little different today than it did 8 years ago when Bush came in.

But seriously, how fundamentally different is your life than it was in 2001? I mean based on things the government controls? (Granted, if you or a loved one was injured - or worse - in war, that's a might change. And one that happened to more US soldiers in 8 years under Clinton than in 8 years under Bush.) Compare that with the changes that you've made. Point is, I'm wagering most people will find that the big changes in their life... during any time span... are not based on what our government does. Because mostly what they do is keep the status quo going.

And mostly, it seems, the electorate fails to see this. Or, at least, they fall for the ridiculous fearmongering, truly believe the horrible predictions should X or Y person be elected, and keep electing the people who keep pulling the same crap.

Or, in the words of George Bernard Shaw, "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."

The good Lady Mondegreen

2008-10-08T21:50:00.004-05:00

A mondegreen is a misheard song lyric or line of poetry. The name comes from "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," an essay by Sylvia Wright, which appeared in the November 1954 issue of Harper's Magazine. The word, and the essay title, come from her own childhood experience mishearing the words of a poem titled "The Bonnie Earl O'Murray." The poem reads, "They hae slain the Earl O'Murray, and laid him on the green." Ms. Wright heard the poem to mention 2 victims, the Earl himself and, in her mind, "Lady Mondegreen." Apparently Sylvia and I aren't the only ones interested in misheard song lyrics. According to Wikipedia, newspaper columnists William Safire and Jon Carroll "have long been popularizers of the term and collectors of mondegreens," and I know of 2 books ('Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, and He's Got the Whole World in His Pants) of mondegreens compiled by Details magazine editor Gavin Edwards.

I've compiled a list of lyrics that I've personally misheard, or people that I know have. I'll present them in a format similar to how they are in the above-mentioned books, which is:

Misheard lyric

Artist

"Song"

Correct lyric

There are a few songs (Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It [And I Feel Fine]" come to mind) which could have contributed several entries to my list - and again, that's just from my own experience and that of people I personally know (and who have told me of their mondegreens), but I've given special dispensation for those songs. I don't know if there's any insight to be gained from how songs are sometimes heard, as opposed to how they're written and sung. If nothing else, sometimes the mondegreen comes out better than the original lyrics.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Our love is a lie

Suzi Quatro & Chris Norman

"Stumblin' In"

Our love is alive

---------------------------------------------------------------

You know it's kind of hard just to get a lot today

The Offspring

"Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"

...just to get along today

(A lot of what? I'm not sure. Don't know what I thought they were thinking)

---------------------------------------------------------------

He want to save you from the wrecking ball

Elton John

"Island Girl"

He want to take you from the racket boss

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, Chelsea

Gin Blossoms

"Hey Jealousy"

Hey jealousy

---------------------------------------------------------------

Where women blow and men thunder

Men At Work

"Down Under"

Where women glow and men plunder

---------------------------------------------------------------

Just like a one-winged dove

Stevie Nicks

"Edge Of Seventeen"

Just like a white-winged dove

---------------------------------------------------------------

Just you and me and Leslie, groovin'

The Young Rascals

"Groovin'"

Just you and me endlessly groovin'

---------------------------------------------------------------

I'll follow your horse downtown

Blondie

"One Way Or Another"

I'll follow your bus downtown

---------------------------------------------------------------

No Dukes of Hazzard in the classroom

Pink Floyd

"Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)"

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

---------------------------------------------------------------

Even downtown, voices carry

'Til Tuesday

"Voices Carry"

Keep it down now, voices carry

(It's not just a suburban issue, folks!)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Ain't that a shame? Chantilly lace

Fats Domino

"Ain't That A Shame"

Ain't that a shame? My tears fell like rain

(Apparently, the guy that came up with this one figured Fats was not a Big Bopper fan? Thought it was a shame that he had that hit song?)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Not bad, for a prejudiced white boy

Extreme

"Get the Funk Out"

Not bad, for a pasty-faced white boy

---------------------------------------------------------------

Asians can't be trusted

The Mamas & The Papas

"Creeque Alley"

Agents can't be trusted

---------------------------------------------------------------

...and Van Halen is overrated

Train

"Drops of Jupiter"

...and that heaven is overrated

---------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not talking 'bout Bolivia

England Dan and John Ford Coley

"I'd Really Love To See You Tonight"

I'm not talking 'bout moving in

---------------------------------------------------------------

Rockets in the ballroom, in the cold November rain

Guns N' Roses

"November Rain"

...or I'll just end up walking in the cold November rain

---------------------------------------------------------------

Stepped on a Pop-Tart

Jimmy Buffett

"Margaritaville"

Stepped on a pop top

---------------------------------------------------------------

Wrapped up like a douche

Manfred Mann's Earth Band

"Blinded By The Light"

Revved up like deuce

(A deuce is a deuce coupe, a nickname for the 1932 Model B Ford - the same car The Beach Boys sang about in "Little Deuce Coupe." This is a very common mondegreen, apparently due to a technical flaw in the recording. The lyric is much more understandable on Bruce Springsteen's original version of the song. Bruce sings "Cut loose like a deuce," if you're scoring at home. Or, if I may quote Keith Olbermann, if you're alone.)

---------------------------------------------------------------

You'd say anything to a butterfly

Huey Lewis and The News

"If This Is It"

You'll say anything to avoid a fight

---------------------------------------------------------------

Toonces on the tube, tender Asian boobs

Nirvana

"In Bloom"

Bruises on the fruit, tender age in bloom

(Toonces, if you're unfamiliar, was a recurring character on "Saturday Night Live" about 15 - 20 years ago. She was a cat who could drive. Each skit would end up with Toonces apparently saving the day by driving the car, only to crash it over the side of cliff. Every skit. Every time. Stopped being funny long before the stopped doing it. I doubt I need to explain to anyone what Asian boobs are. If need be, there are several websites that can help you, I'm quite sure.)

---------------------------------------------------------------

She called out to me, talking 'bout dead Japanese

Humble Pie

"30 Days In The Hole"

Chicago green, talking 'bout red Lebanese

(Given that those are drug references, probably strains of marijuana, I don't think it's such a bad thing that I didn't know what they were singing about.)

---------------------------------------------------------------

I like smoking lightning

Steppenwolf

"Born To Be Wild"

I like smoke and lightning

(Not sure how I thought one would accomplish the smoking of lightning. But I almost have all the right syllables, just screwed up the context.)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Losing weight without speed-eating sunflower seeds

Jimmy Buffett

"Cheeseburger In Paradise"

Losing weight without speed, eating sunflower seeds

(This time, I did have all the right syllables. But I really tanked it on the context.)

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hey now, hey now, the dream is over

Crowded House

"Don't Dream It's Over"

...don't dream it's over

(Kind of changes the meaning of the song, wouldn't you say?)

---------------------------------------------------------------

...wishing you were here by me, two in this misery

Del Shannon

"Runaway"

...wishing you were here by me, to end this misery

---------------------------------------------------------------

I can look at you until you don't love me no more

Bill Haley and His Comets

"Shake, Rattle And Roll"

I can look at you and tell you don't love me no more

---------------------------------------------------------------

I can't for the life of me remember a Saturday

Paul Simon

"Mother And Child Reunion"

I can't for the life of me remember a sadder day

---------------------------------------------------------------

Choco pudding everywhere

The Monkees

"Another Pleasant Valley Sunday"

Charcoal burning everywhere

---------------------------------------------------------------

What did you do when you got horny?

Derek and The Dominoes

"Layla"

What'll you do when you get lonely?

---------------------------------------------------------------

She loves to move, she loves to groove, she loves eleven things

Journey

"Any Way You Want It"

...she loves the lovin' things

(But no more than 11, dammit! Woe unto you, who suggests a twelfth thing for her to love. [Typing "twelfth" was weird. My fingers didn't want to do that "lfth" part. I think they thought it must have been wrong.])

---------------------------------------------------------------

And what I think is the best one any one that I know has ever thought they heard.....

Bubble money squash

The Scorpions

"Wind Of Change"

I follow the Moskva

(I don't imagine that my two friends who came up with that really thought those were the actual lyrics. But, they had no idea what the guy was singing, and that's the closest to real words that they could make it sound like, I guess. To be fair, this was in the days before the Internet (at least before we knew about it), so finding song lyrics wasn't as easy as it is today. And, before I read the lyrics to this song, I had never heard of the Moskva. And Klaus, the leas singer for The Scorpions, can be pretty hard to understand. Still, "bubble money squash" stands head and shoulders above all the others, as far as I'm concerned.)

Dream

2008-10-01T22:20:00.003-05:00

A few nights ago, 2 of my friends from high school were in my dream. I haven't seen either of them since we graduated, which was back in 1990. I only know what they looked like at age 18. And yet, in the dream, they were properly aged to look more or less the age we are now, which is 35 (in my case, either or both of them may be 36). One even looked to have gained a significant amount of weight.

Really, in a sense, the two people I dreamed about don't exist. There is a 2008 version of Jennifer, and a 2008 version of Tara, but I have no reason to believe that those people are anything like the 2 people in my dream. Of course, it's not uncommon for me to dream about people who don't exist. They're completely made up - fictional characters who have only ever existed in my sleeping mind. It's also not uncommon for me to dream about real people, either that I know or some celebrity/well-known person (in past dreams, for example, I once lived next door to Barry Manilow [he had a broken arm and so needed someone to play piano on his upcoming tour], and once shot heroin with Molly Ringwald*), but as far as I remember, it's always been the contemporary version of that person. As far as I know, this is the first time I've taken someone from the past and modernized them in my dream.

That's it. Not a big deal, just a little something that I'd never had happen before, and found interesting.

*True story. Those are both real dreams that I've had.

An open letter to grocery store patrons

2008-09-30T21:53:00.002-05:00

Understand, the complaints I have about folks at the grocery store are not fundamentally different than the complaints I have about people in general. Some of the specifics are unique to my weekly sojourn to the cramped aisles, but in general, there's nothing that happens here that doesn't happen anywhere else. The thing is, at least in my case, the annoyance I experience at the grocery store in the most consistent. It's every week. It's not uncommon for me to drive to or from work and not encounter some total jackass driver along my route. It's not uncommon for me to go through a work day without getting some question, request, whatever, that makes me shake my head and wonder if some people ever think. It's not uncommon for me to go through the day and not encounter some person displaying complete selfishness and a total disregard for how his/her own actions affect others. But I can not make my weekly trip to the grocery store without some of you exhibiting some of the stupidity I'm about to describe.

First of all, let me get to a parking spot. I understand that, in order for you to tote your South Beach Diet pizzas and fat free ranch dressing to your car, you need to walk in generally the same space in which I drive. Here's the thing, though - you don't need to walk down the middle of the path. Cars do not jump out and bite. I promise you, you will not find a single documented case of anyone being injured in such a manner. When you walk down the middle, I'm stuck driving at the speed you're moving. Or, more accurately, the speed of your slow-ass kid who, by this point, is invariably pouting and dragging because the register-side tantrum did not produce the candy bar (s)he was begging (...and crying... and screaming) for --- if I'm not having to dodge the little freakin' pinball, due to the sugar rush because you gave in and ponied up for a Zagnut. I know this is a tough concept for you all to grasp, but we are sharing this space. More on that later.

OK, it's later. I'm inside the store now, and though you were outside filling up durn near 15% of the cargo space in your Expedition in the last paragraph, you're now magically inside the store with me. I know you can't comprehend such a thing. Don't forget, I'm the one who pointed out that you don't grasp the much simpler concept of sharing space just a handful of sentences ago. (And yes, I know that you already forgot.) Notice how, when you're walking down the aisle, there's stuff on both the right and the left that's pretty close to you? That's because the aisles are not extremely wide. So, when you park your cart right smack dab in the middle, you're not leaving room for anyone to get past you. There are other people here, you know. (Do you?) And some of us would like to go about our task without having to work around the meeting of your family's Permanent Sub-Committee on Rotelle vs. Farfalle. And if, by some miracle, some other shopper does manage to stop a cart over to one side of the aisle, do you think you could manage to stop your cart somewhere other than right freaking next to it?!? I realize that may require something along the lines of 5 extra steps to stop your cart, a like number to return to the product of your choice, then 5 extra yet again to return to your cart. You can count it as a workout. It's really not a very difficult concept that I'm trying to put across here. Leave room for people to move.

Here's the other thing (and again, it's not like this only happens at the grocery store, but I find it to be a particular annoyance there): your children are idiots. That, in and of itself, is not your fault. It's standard. All children are idiots. I was, you were, even Stephen Hawking was for at least the first decade (of his life, not the first ten years after the Big Bang). What is your fault is when you don't take that fact into account and act appropriately. Or, to put it more simply, pay some goddamn attention to your kids. In fact, not only should you pay some attention, you should exert some control. I realize this is a completely foreign concept to many of you, but I have done some extensive research on the subject, and I am able, from an authoritative standing, to assure you that throughout history and across cultures, it has not been out of the ordinary for parents to set and maintain appropriate boundaries for their children's behavior. Some folks have been blessed with such parental dexterity, they have managed multiple sets of boundaries - a more liberal one instituted amongst family and close friends, and a stricter one in place when one is in public. I can also speak from a standpoint of knowledge when I tell you that, left to their own devices, your idiot kids will be a complete nuisance: getting in the way of people's carts, getting in the way of people trying to get items off the shelves, running, yelling, dropping (or throwing) things, and for crying out glaven, I don't even want to think about what happens when they get around the free sample display unattended. We're not at a playground, and we're not at your house. We are out in public at a place of business, and it is not at all appropriate for you to let your little howler monkeys and screech owls behave as if they were in one of the aforementioned locations.

I realize that this is a lost cause. I almost said that I'm fighting a losing battle, but I'm not really fighting. It's pointless. The vast majority of you are too far gone. I've said my piece, and gotten it off my chest, which is all I really wanted. And you know what? I feel a little better for having done so.

Until Saturday.

Forget "Am I my brother's keeper?"

2008-09-10T22:23:00.002-05:00

How 'bout, "Am I my brother?" The good folks at Experian seemed to think so.

I got my free copy of my credit report from each of the 3 bureaus, like I do every year. I should have known right away there'd be trouble. When you request them online, for each bureau, one of the security features - to ensure you're who you say you are and are requesting your own report - is to ask you to correctly provide the monthly payment from one of the items on your report. The item Experian asked me about was a mortgage from some bank or other, opened in 2003, I think it was. It was not my mortgage bank. I didn't have a mortgage till 2006. Not good. If you don't give the right answers online, they make you request a paper report, which I got some time later.

It listed all of my information. It also listed what appeared to be all of my brother's information. Our first names are similar. I can kind of, sort of see what happened. Sort of. Every item on the report has a name and an address attached to it. You would think... at least I would think... that their information system would be able to recognize that there could be a definite line of demarcation, on one side of which would be a group of items with all of his name variations, all of his address history and his SSN, and on the other side of which would be a group of items with all of my name variations, all of my address history and my SSN. It took me just a couple of minutes to figure out manually, having to flip through 14 or so pages of their report.

I would have hoped that an organization that can have so much influence over our lives, dictating what credit is available to us and at what price, would have an information system that would allow them to be a little more careful than that. I told them as much, not in those exact words, in my letter to them in which I disputed the items on the report that were not mine. I also advised my brother that he should pull his report and dispute any items that weren't his (I was assuming all of my information would be on his report as well). I figured if there were 2 disputes - mine saying all of his stuff was wrong, and his saying all of my stuff was wrong - maybe they'd get the hint.

Fortunately, with or without his input, they figured it out in short order. They deleted all of his items from my report. I'll be interested to see what shows up next year.

I'm also quite disturbed by the whole thing. These bureaus have quite a bit of control over our lives. I fortunately had no difficulty in fixing my problem, but what if they hadn't done it so quickly or easily? We bought a car recently, with a loan. Fortunately, the lending bank pulled a report that didn't have all the errors (tho another bank shortly afterward sent us a letter saying they couldn't extend us a car loan because I have too much outstanding credit). I can't help but wonder how many people don't look at all 3 reports every year, and what errors might be on some of their reports. How many are denied credit, or pay more in interest than the otherwise would, because of those errors?

Beyond the Palin

2008-09-02T21:55:00.002-05:00

I don't quite get it.

As best as I can figure, I can come up with 3 scenarios that would lead to John McCain picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, and none of the really make sense.

I've thought for a long time that he would pick a woman. Pretty much as soon as it was clear that Barack Obama would be the Democratic nominee, I figured McCain would pick a woman. While a lot of people were caught up in the notion that Obama might pick Hillary as his running mate, I knew that wouldn't happen. Despite that fact that her more vocal supports contended (for some other reason that I can't fathom) that the rules that have governed primary campaigns since there have been primary campaigns, and that - despite losing the contest - she had somehow earned and deserved to be named the VP nominee, I was well aware that she would not be the pick. And those vocal supporters went out of their way to make sure we'd all know that they weren't happy about it. Clearly they were ready to be wooed away from voting for Obama. It wasn't like I was particularly psychic in guessing he would pick a woman to that precise end. Here's where it breaks down. Is Sarah Palin the woman you pick to woo disaffected Hillary voters? Did he really think these people would flock to vote for a ticket with an unqualified, untested, anti-choice, anti-equal-pay, pro-drill-every-damn-where candidate who was touted as someone who would appease the social conservatives who are leery of McCain? Is his campaign really that inept? One must admit that quite possibly the answer is a resounding yes. Let's not forget that, on the same day that Barack Obama gave a speech in front of 200,000 cheering, American-flag-waving (and when's the last time we saw that overseas... I mean, without said flags being on fire) people in a public square in Berlin, John McCain held a campaign event in front of what may well have been dozens of people at a sausage restaurant in the German neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. (I am not kidding.)

I suppose it's possible that he thinks she's the best choice for the role. From what I've heard, it appears that he only ever met with her a couple of times before offering her the position last Thursday. She or he apparently said that, at first meeting, they were "soulmates." (That was the word that the radio people kept using today, it seemed like it was a direct quote.) Anyone else have memories of Dubya telling us he looked into Vlad Putin's eyes and saw his soul, saw that he was a good man? Anyone else concerned about having another President who, from all appearances, makes important decisions without the employment of any sort of thought process?

Lastly, I think it might well be the case that he was told by the G.O.P.owers That Be that they know he's not going to win the election, and they didn't want him to "waste" a strong candidate on a losing campaign. The line they're using is that her brief experience as a governor is better preparation than either Obama's or Biden's strictly legislative experience. (If that's true, then she's more qualified than her running mate, though I haven't yet heard a Republican mouthpiece mention that yet.) Now, if that's true, then some of the other people we were hearing about as possible running mates - Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty for example - are much better-qualified than the one-time Miss Alaska Runner-Up. I think it would make sense, if the party powers want to protect either or both for 2012, that they would not want them to be part of what they might be seeing as the inevitable debacle. One thing that would seem to go against that is the fact that, in all the polls I'm hearing about, the race is very close - usually right around 5 percentage points. It doesn't seem like a situation where the Republicans would be throwing in the towel.

So I'm back to where I started. It doesn't make any sense to me. He can't think this is going to help him win.

Can he?

Cost of living

2008-08-25T21:35:00.002-05:00

The joke has several slight variations in different tellings, but the essence is the same. I'll tell it this way - I'm hoping to have my money and my life run out at the same time. If I can just die before lunchtime on Thursday, I'll be set.

There was a letter to the editor in today's Wilmington (Del.) News Journal from a newly-divorced, 60-something (I'm assuming - she mentions 40 years of marriage), disabled woman who had been a stay-at-home mom, who now finds herself unable to get health care. I posted a comment on the website, replying to the majority of posters who are opposed to a dime of their money helping anyone else get health care (or anything else, for that matter). It got me to thinking, really about the whole of our economy. Forty years ago, she was able to make that choice.

Right around that same time, my mother more or less made the same choice. She worked part time, 4 days a week and only a few hours a day, till her youngest child (your humble correspondent) graduated high school, because she wanted to be home when we came home from school. My dad never made a lot of money. He was, and is, a blue-collar worker. Literally - his work shirts are, in fact, dark blue. They raised 4 kids who didn't have to come home to an empty house on working-man's wages. You used to be able to do that.

Can you imagine that happening today? My wife and I have 2 salaries, no kids, and most months it seems like we're barely above water. From what I can see of the people around me, our situation seems much more to be the standard than the exception. Most of the people around me seem to be just barely keeping ahead.

When, why, did life get to be so unaffordable? Why are so many of us teetering on the edge of a precipice, needing only one serious, unexpected expenditure to push us over the brink? Home foreclosures are skyrocketing, millions have no health coverage, people are working more and more hours, and real wages (compared with cost of living) have gone down over the past few decades. What the hell is going on here?

I'd like to think that the choices we make on Election Day this November could help to turn things around, but the cynic in me says that the real power is far removed from Washington and St. Paul.

1:45 A.M.

2008-08-04T15:09:00.002-05:00

I was up late Saturday night, watching a movie. It wasn't over till about 1:30 A.M. or so. I got myself ready for bed, and was just heading down the hall towards the bedroom when I heard what sounded like some sort of rushing water coming from downstairs. It sounded similar to the time that one of the cats turned on the downstairs tub - the faucet handles are up on the edge of the tub, so they're cat accessible. Largely due to that event, we keep that door closed, tho I thought that maybe I'd left it open and the same thing had happened. Or maybe the utility sink in the laundry room got turned on in a similar fashion. As I headed downstairs, one of the cats was racing upstairs in a panic, so I further thought that might be the case.

Except that I quickly found that the bathroom door was, in fact closed. I stopped in front of it to listen for a moment, and it quickly became clear that the water noise was coming from inside the bathroom, not from the laundry room. Not good. I opened the door, turned out the light, and...

I wish I could have seen the look on my face. It was the tub again. It was the cold water again. You'll recall that the room was inaccessible to the cats, so it's not like the faucet had been turned on. No, n -, what had happened here was that the faucet handle had completely disengaged from the plumbing assembly. The threaded copper pipe that connected the handle to the pipeline had simply broken. A little piece of it, I found later, was still threaded into the pipe. The majority of it was still threaded into the handle, which now sat on its side, useless and completely out of place, on the tub edge a few inches from where it had previously been, and where it had previously stopped the flow of high-pressure water. Believe me, it was doing nothing of the sort any longer. It looked like the centerpiece of a fountain. Water was shooting straight up, all the way to the ceiling. A lot of it.

Let me give you a little background here. This tub was installed by the previous owners of the house. And by that, I'm pretty sure I don't mean that they acquired the tub and hired someone to do the installation. It's pretty clear that they... we usually blame the husband... actually installed the tub. It's a jetted tub, so not only are there the basic incoming water and drain connections, but there's a separate set-up of piping coming out of the tub, through a pump and heater, and back to the tub through various jets. You don't that yourself unless you're an experienced plumber, and this guy quite clearly was not. First off, he put the pump and heater in a pit under the tub, so they're totally inaccessible for service. Not a big deal, we never use it as a jet tub. Largely due to the fact that the tub is way too big for the water heater the home has. By the time you fill the tub, there's so much cold water in there that it takes about 20 minutes for the tub heater to get the water to comfortable temperature. Then there's the fact that the shut-off valve in the cold water plumbing line is... here's that word again... inaccessible behind one of the pieces of wood in the structure he built around the tub, on which the marble tile is installed.

The shut-off valve issue certainly came in to play here. It would have made the issue much less severe if I could have simply shut off the flow of water before it got to where the faucet was. There still would have been some on the floor to mop up, but not that much. But no, Mr. Genius Boy had assured that wasn't possible. Not only could I not get a decent grip on it, but the piece of wood that blocked access also was in the way of the handle turning to the fully closed position. We turned off the pump, the main water supply to the house, and waiting till all the water that had been in the tank, or at least enough so that the pressure was low enough to stop the flow, had come out through our faucet pipe.

It took about 45 minutes to mop up all the water. We did some searching for plumber, figuring we would have to have one over on Sunday to address the issue. It was about 3 A.M. by the time I got to bed, which didn't make any difference because I didn't sleep. Since I got out of bed at 5:30, I had plenty of time to try to close off the shut-off valve. Hey, here's one good thing - now that the faucet wasn't holding the plumbing line firmly in place, I was able to move it away from the wood far enough that, once I could get around the wood structure adequately, I was able to close off the valve. Since I had the valve closed, and we were able to turn the water back on, we didn't need to pay to have a plumber out on Sunday. He came out today, but it turns out we have to have the right kind of faucet, and it's not one that you can just go in and buy in the stores we have around here. So, he's got to track that down, and we'll go from there.

Story time

2008-07-30T21:54:00.002-05:00

You may be wondering about the picture of me that appears on my front page (no, I'm not a seahorse --- I mean the other picture). It was taken on Christmas morning, 1976, less than 2 months after my 4th birthday.

I really don't know what the Groucho get-up was about. I don't recall seeing it in any pictures other than from that day. The toy I'm playing with was called Putt-Putt Speedway, and I absolutely LOVED it. You don't see it in the picture, but there was a little TV camera that went on the bridge. The camera had a little sticker with the number 12 on the side. In and around Wilmington, Delaware - which is where I lived at the time - Channel 12 is the local PBS channel. In the days before any of the seemingly dozens of Nickelodeon channels (not that we had cable, mind you), PBS was pretty much it for kids' shows in the morning. I was a "Sesame Street" kid through and through, so I was quite familiar with Channel 12. I recall thinking that this TV camera with a 12 on the side must be connected to the Channel 12 which I watched every morning. Perhaps my races were being broadcast!

But the real story here, of course, is the cast on my leg. Some weeks before, I had broken my tibia. I went with my mother to pick my brother and sister up from school. I was laying down in the front seat, and back then we never wore seat belts (the last time I was discussing the event with my mother, she insisted that I was wearing my belt, but I am certain she's mistaken - we never wore them back then - I never wore a belt till I took Driver's Ed and had to). I didn't always go with her to pick my siblings up, and since I was laying down and my sister couldn't see me, she figured I wasn't there and started to open the front door before she saw me. She closed the door... sort of, as it turned out... they both got in the back, and we were on our way.

We turned a corner leaving the parking lot, the door swung open and I started to slide out. I would have gone all the way out, except that right foot caught under the dashboard. When I was hanging out the door, my body twisted but my foot was held firmly in place. Something had to give, and that something was the tibia in my right leg. It split in a corkscrew pattern, something like when you pop open a tube of biscuits. I don't have a clear memory of this happening, but I do seem to remember seeing under the car as my head bounced on the street a couple of times (that explains a few things, don't it?).

Here's what I think is the best part of this story. I hope it happened. Picture someone walking their kid(s) home from school. You're walking along, just like any other day, "How was school?", "Blah, blah, math, spelling" whatever... and here comes this big green boat station wagon rolling by, door wide open, with a kid hanging out, arms flailing (I would imagine), head bouncing off the street. How freaking hilarious would that be?!? I mean, that person still has to be telling that story today. That guy's grandkids know about me by now.

Since when do you have to be hungry to eat a doughnut? It doesn't taste any better.

2008-07-22T21:45:00.002-05:00

I would not be surprised if you are not familiar with the movie Other People's Money, from which the above is taken. I don't believe it was an extremely popular movie. It's not bad by any stretch --- as far as I'm concerned, anything with Danny DeVito and Gregory Peck is worth 103 minutes out of my life at least once. DeVito plays "Larry the Liquidator" Garfield, a corporate raider attempting a hostile takeover and dismantle of a family-run business, run by Peck as Andrew Jorgensen.

The climactic scene of the movie is when the shareholders vote to either retain the current leadership, or install Larry and his team. The company's president, of course, wanted to keep things on their current course - "One day when the yen is weaker, the dollar is stronger, or when we finally begin to rebuild our roads, our bridges, the infrastructure of our country, demand will skyrocket." In his speech to the stockholders, Larry's reply was that the company, New England Wire and Cable, would be unable to recover from its bad economic state because the emergence of fiber optics (the movie came out in 1991) would render it obsolete - "You know, at one time there must've been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw."

I read the letters to the editor from newspapers in 3 cities daily. Two of them have, in their online versions, recently allowed comments about the letters to be posted online, which I also read. I'm not a news junkie, but I do pay some attention to what's going on. Obviously, there's been a lot of discussion lately about the price of gas, and about fuel and energy overall. And whether it's politicians or the public, the only thing you hear from folks on the right is, DRILL. Drill here, drill now. They want to drill in ANWR. They want to drill off-shore. They want to drill, drill, drill. That's their only answer. Gas prices too high? We need to drill. We're too dependent on foreign oil? We need to drill. Heartbreak of psoriasis? We need to drill.

I can't help but wonder how many buggy whips they'll find down there.

There are plenty of opportunities out there - wind, solar, biofuels, to name a few. And, to quote an old David Letterman Top Ten List item... How 'bout Superman getting off his ass? I'm not going to pretend to have the answers as to what the best solution is. I don't personally know.

Here's what I do know. Whatever the source is, energy will be produced. The organizations that control the sources will then sell the energy to those of us who want it to power things. (It's almost kinda sorta close to the way things work now.)

Politicians, especially Republican politicians, love to boast about the ingenuity of Americans, especially American businesses. So why are the energy companies not working on this? They should be in serious competition to be the first to develop the new technologies, so they can, at least for a time, corner those markets.

Obviously, it will take an enormous expenditure to research and develop the needed technology. Our current government has given huge tax breaks to the big energy companies. Wouldn't it be a good idea, instead of just giving a tax break of $X, to mandate the company spend that money researching and developing alternative fuel? Had we done that even in just this decade (we should have done something long ago to spur on the development of other sources of energy, but that's another story), just imagine how far along we'd be, if there had been a serious investment of money and effort --- of that hallowed American ingenuity. The same companies would be supplying and selling the energy, so they'd still be making money. Once the infrastructure to deliver the power was in place, I would think their costs would reduce significantly. It can't cost as much to draw power from the sun, the wind or water as it does to pump it out from under hundreds of feet of desert, ocean or tundra, can it? Seems to me their profits would still be through the roof. They wouldn't have even really lost anything in the development, since the money would have come out of what legitimately should have been taxes paid. We, in the form of our government, wouldn't have lost anything since "we" so graciously declined to accept those taxes in the first place. It's wins all the way around, isn't it? Am I missing something, some way where this doesn't work?

I'm just one guy in little Elk River, Minnesota coming up with this. I don't understand why the brightest minds in business and our government... well, in business... couldn't have come up with this, or something better. I don't understand why they're still making their goddamn buggy whips.

Little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly...

2008-07-15T21:23:00.002-05:00

...and asked me if I needed a ride.

How much of the way we think (not what we think, the way we think) is by choice, and how much is hard-wired? I don't know, but I was thinking about it this evening.

When I'm doing cardio at the gym, I listen to my MP3 player. I set it to "Shuffle Once" mode, which means that, if it were not turned off, it would play every song I have on it one time, in some order that has nothing to do with the way I have the files arranged and organized, without repeating any song. I believe it would stop after playing each song, but I'll never know - I have more than 30 hours of music loaded in there, and I don't think I've got a battery that could play the whole player all the way through. For the record, the way that I have them arranged and organized is that (with two exceptions that have no bearing on this discussion) every artist for whom I have more than one song loaded has a folder (e.g., my Beatles song are in a folder called "The Beatles"), with a folder called "One Songers" which holds the songs which are the only one by a given artist that I have on there.

Tonight, I heard Bruce Springsteen's original version of "Blinded by the Light," (which I prefer, by the by) immediately followed by the (probably) better-known cover version by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. (Guess what song the lyrics that form the title of this post, and its continuation, are from!) My immediate thought when I heard the 2nd version start was, "Huh. What are the odds?" I followed that thought, through no conscious effort on my part mind you, by answering myself (not in these exact words), that the odds are precisely x-to-1, where x = y-z; where y = the number of songs I have on the player, and z = the number of songs that had played since I turned it on this evening, including the original version of "Blinded by the Light."

I don't dispute the content of the thought. It's correct (unless I screwed up my thinking somewhere) - each of the songs that had been played was ineligible to follow "Blinded." Each of the songs that had not yet been played had an equal (from my perspective - I don't know if there's some formula or system that determines the order of play in the shuffle modes, or if it's truly random) chance of being the next song. The fact that it was Manfred's version of "Blinded" was no more or less likely than if the next song had been "Heartbreak Hotel," "Hurts So Good," or "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues." (See what I did there? Heartbreak, hurts, blues?) It could just as easily have been "Never Been to Spain," "Mexicali Blues," or "Back in the U.S.S.R." There was an equal chance of the next song being any one of a number of silly love songs, or "Silly Love Songs." I could go on. In fact, I did. For quite a while. Erased it. It ended with the conclusion that, if I were going to be buried instead of cremated, a fitting epitaph for my gravestone might be, "I couldn't resist the terrible pun." You're probably better off not knowing the details. Besides, I've already digressed too far from where I'm trying to be.

So... I don't dispute the thought itself. What I do question is... WHY? My internal conversation very easily could have, and I believe for most people would have, ended at "What are the odds?" Why in the world would I go on to consider the actual math (in hypothetical form, since I don't know how many songs I have on my player and was not aware of how many had already played) involved in those odds?

Obviously, in this situation, it's not a big deal. But this logical, analytical M.O. is how I tend to operate overall, and it seems to me that most of the people I encounter to not have this tendency. Most of the people around me tend to have more of a sense of wonder, uncertainty, mystery (whatever you want to call it) than I do. Things are unexplainable, unknowable. It seems to me that most people tend to take most things at face value - it is what it is, and if they don't get it... well, it's just one of those things. I've never been much of a tinkerer, but I seem to with thoughts what they do with things - take them apart to see what they're made of, then put them back together to be sure I know how they work. Or something like that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, or a problem of any kind. I mean, my little Springsteen math problem was a perfectly logical thought. But where do I get this tendency to, without conscious thought or effort, immediately analyze this way, to deconstruct and reconstruct so that the reassembly turns my "Hmmm" into an "Ahhhh"?

I don't recall ever making a conscious choice to think this way. It is, as far as I know, just something that I naturally do. As far as I know. Did I choose, consciously or not, to think this way? Or did it come about naturally?

And why is it that the basic way I use my brain is markedly different from the way most of the people I know seem to?

I don't have any answers to those questions. I've been thinking about it all night. The only thing I can come up with is, in our society, we're not really encouraged to be analytical. We're not taught or encouraged to be critical thinkers. (Overall, that is. Some individuals are so encouraged by a parent, teacher, or some such source. I'm speaking in general terms here, however.) Of course, that opens a whole host of lines of thought about why that would be the case, and why so many people seem to be so willing to comply, and why I'm not. (Put another way --- Mama always told me not to look into the sights of the sun. Oh, but mama, that's where the fun is[more song lyrics]). That's not the topic of this post, tho.

All of this from a Bruce Springsteen song. Who knew?

Doubleplusungood

2008-07-09T21:47:00.002-05:00

"This bill will help our intelligence professionals learn who the terrorists are talking to, what they're saying and what they're planning." That is what President Bush said about today's passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008, HR 6304. Like a crap container that's full, he's full of crap. What it will actually do is allow people and companies who broke the law, violated our rights and our liberties, to face no repercussions for doing so.

We've had a law covering the surveillance of foreign intelligence since 1978. Over time, as technology changes, as the types and sources of intelligence change, such an act would naturally need to be amended. Or, if you're President Bush, you simply completely circumnavigate the existing law and, by executive order, allow the National Security Agency monitor, without warrants, any and all communications (if they so desire) that involve a party the NSA believes to be outside the US. Don't matter if the other party is in the US, it's not domestic surveillance, lies the Bush administration. It's a legitimate power of the executive branch to do this, lies the Bush administration. Besides, they assure us, we're surveilling on terrorists, enemy combatants and other all-around evildoers. I don't believe them. I believe they used the program with the intention of spying on American citizens who they considered opponents. There would have been no need to go around the existing law otherwise. There would have been no need to create a new, secret (because everyone was always yakking about FISA before this broke) program that violated U.S. law.

Make no mistake - that's what they did. They broke the law. They engaged telecommunications companies to break the law in assisting the program. Of course they deny this. And some people believe them We call those people "idiots." Were their actions consistent with the law, one might wonder why the administration insisted on an amendment to the 1978 law that, among other provisions, retroactively grants immunity to those telecom companies. As their actions clearly violated the law, there is no need to wonder. They want to protect and benefit their business buddies. It's what they do. It's what they've done day in, day out since 1/20/01. It's the basis for damn near every policy and action of this administration.

Bush insisted that the new law was absolutely necessary to protect Americans from terrorists. ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. And yet, he was adamant that he would sign no such bill unless it provided said immunity. That's how much he truly cares about our safety and security. Again, there are those who believe him. They're the same ones we call "idiots," and for this we call them "morons." His only interest is the interest of businesses and corporations. (If one can call violating the law and facing no repercussions an "interest.") If the Bush administration was actually concerned with the safety of Americans, and truly believed that the provisions of this bill that... oh, I don't know - ACTUALLY DEAL WITH INTELLIGENCE GATHERING - are necessary to said safety and security, then President Bush would have gladly and proudly signed the bill regardless of whether it provides immunity to businesses that broke the law.

High-minded rhetoric extolling the public good which mask actions to the public detriment and the benefit of a select group is nothing new. In fact, one might say this administration's actions hearken all the way back to 1984. This kind of stuff, in one form or another, has always been the case, and I imagine always will. But these guys seem to take it to a new level. They're so far over the line, and so blatant about it, and have the balls to deny it. They'll walk up to you, knock you down, take a dump on you, steal your wallet, take the cash and give it to a CEO buddy, then look you in the face and say, "Wasn't me."

AND THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE THEM!!!!!

One of my state's Senators voted against the bill today. I emailed her and thanked her for the effort. The other voted for it. I'm familiar with his record, so I can't say I'm surprised. I wrote to him and told him that I think he should be ashamed. (I expect his reply to request an explanation of that concept.)

I'm disgusted.

Simple pleasures

2008-07-07T21:54:00.003-05:00

I guess I'm easily impressed.

I got a new car over the weekend. It's nothing special - a 2007 Chevy Cobalt. I got tired of thinking - twice a day, to and from work - "This'll probably get me there." I got tired of unexpected, multi-hundred-dollar repairs. I got tired of wondering, "What's that noise now?"

So, we wanted to get something that was going to be reliable - so, newer - and get better gas mileage. And we did. We actually made a list of about 2 dozen wants and have-to-haves that would describe a car that we'd buy. We found one with all of the have-to-haves and most of the wants. I would have liked a sunroof (mostly for ventilation purposes when parked outside) and that it not have previously been a rental, but you can't get everything you want.

I've never been a big car guy. I don't care about the alleged status of having a particular style or make of vehicle. Mostly, I want my car to be a car. I want it to get me where I'm going. Like I said, the 2 main concerns I had were that it be reliable and be a gas-mileage improvement. I don't much care about a lot of features and gadgets and doo-dads. The car I traded in didn't have a CD or tape deck or anything like that. AM/FM, that's it.

So, in looking for the new car, I wasn't much concerned about the features it might have. I wanted cruise control, as it helps conserve fuel. I would have liked a sunroof, but it wasn't a reason to not look at a car. I've been fine for 2 years with just a radio, I would have been fine continuing that way.

That said, I think a couple of the features my new car does have are really cool. They're probably nothing to impress a real car guy, but I like them. The radio (which does have a CD player) can be set to automatically increase and decrease its volume based on the speed I'm driving, so as to counteract the additional noise of driving at higher speeds. Also, it's got 6 preset channel buttons. I can set it to have anywhere from 1 to 6 "pages" of presets (i.e., 1 page = 6 preset channels, 6 pages = 36 preset channels). The cool thing, different from any other car I've had before, is that I don't necessarily have toggle between AM and FM presets. One any one page, I can have any combination of AM, FM (and XM, were my vehicle so equipped, which it is not) channels. Neither of these are huge deals, but I like not having to raise and lower the volume so I can hear at 55 but not force others to share my music at red lights, and I like not having to switch between AM and FM to cover my 6 most-listened-to stations.

Another thing I like is that it's got a "Driver Information Center." Where it typically displays the odometer (and outside temperature - I admit it, this is why I bought the car, I absolutely refuse to driver a machine that does not tell me the outside temperature), I can scroll through 2 trip odometers (don't know that I'll use either, let alone 2), an estimate of how far the current tank of gas will take me based on my driving conditions, what percentage of the oil's life is left, the coolant temperature, and - this is the one I really like - an MPG calculator. It counts from the last time it was reset (which was this morning before I left for work), and tells you from that point your overall mileage per gallon. Of course I have only today's trip to and from work to calculate so far. I got 39.3 mpg, according to my car. (In my last car, I was lucky to get 29). If today's mileage holds, I'll save about 3 gallons each week. Not bad.

Back in the saddle

2008-06-29T21:09:00.002-05:00

Some time back, I wrote about some pain I was having in my back. My primary doctor sent me for an MRI, which I was unable to complete, and wanted me to see a back specialist.

Instead, I went to the chiropractor that my wife and her mother see. I had my 4th session with him yesterday. There won't be 5th. It's not needed. I haven't felt the pain in more than a week. I've been doing the stretches he advised me to do. I'm going to make a weekly appointment to see the massage therapist who comes to the fitness center at work once a week. There was some tightness in my neck and back that went along with the alignment issue - Dr. K said you'll pretty much never see the spine out of alignment without the surrounding muscles being affected, and so in his opinion it doesn't make much sense to only treat one.

It's amazing what can happen when you and your medical provider address the problem, and not the symptoms, eh?

Short and sweet post tonight. There really isn't much else to say about it. I went to the right person, and what we did has worked.

I pledge allegience

2008-06-23T22:01:00.002-05:00

The "promotion ceremony" this year for departing 5th graders at Capitol Hill Elementary School in Portland, Oregon did not include the Pledge of Allegiance, as the ceremony has in previous years. Instead, the students sang the Preamble to the Constitution.

Naturally, some people were upset. I heard some discussion about this issue on a radio talk show last week. And of course, this discussion led into a rehash of the case Michael Newdow brought to a court in California, claiming that recitation of the Pledge in public schools, including the phrase "under God," in an un-Constitutional endorsement of religion. People get very touchy about the Pledge. About the flag. There are a lot of people who will state, who wholeheartedly believe, that anyone who does not honor and pledge allegiance to the flag is un-American, anti-American, and any other (negative)-American you can come up with.

Here's the thing. And here's why I like what the school in Portland did. I have no allegiance to the flag. None. Not to the flag. I know all the arguments. It's a symbol of what this country stands for...our brave young men and women have died defending the flag...et cetera, et cetera. I disagree that our troops have died defending the flag. Because, as was stated, it's a SYMBOL. To quote the late, great George Carlin, "I leave symbols to the symbol-minded." What our troops have defended, and what I do offer my allegiance to, are the principles that we as a nation and a people stand for, that we strive for. That is why I think the Preamble is a good, if not perfect, replacement for the Pledge. I think it says a lot more about who we are than pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth. I mean, if our flag was changed tomorrow, if it was decided that instead of stars and stripes, our flag would be fifty rainbows inside a circle in the lower right corner, of a solid yellow rectangle, or an iceberg carved into Mt. Rushmore with 2 bespectacled hippopotami dancing the Jitterbug atop Teddy Roosevelt's head, it would not change my feelings about my country, or my life in any way. Because my allegiance is not to the flag! The flag only matters because the flag means USA. If we decide that something else means USA, that other something will matter, but again only to that extent. It's like when a sports team changes their logo. The fans don't stop rooting. Conversely, if we decided tomorrow that the principles we stand for are suddenly different --- say, for example, that the far-out wing nuts on fringe of the Christian Right were able to succeed in officially and completely making us a Bible-based theocracy, I would have to reconsider my allegiance. (And my address. But that is another story.)

There was no such thing as this pledge of allegiance to our flag until 1892. Before then, we were able to break our ties from Britain, defeat them in a war and establish this nation; we survived a 2nd war with Britain and our own Civil War, where roughly half of the nation seceded and were repatriated; we had at least one Presidential election that was not decided by the Electoral College and had to go to the House of Representatives, and one where the winner of the electoral vote, and the Presidency, did not win the popular vote; we survived the first death of a President, and the first assassination of a President; we welcomed 31 new states into the nation. All of this was done without anyone pledging allegiance to the flag. It was done by holding fast and true to the Constitution (more or less, in some of the above examples), and to the principles upon which we were founded - or at least the ones under which we operate, which I admit sometimes differ from the former.

I think what gets me most is that, in a way, the recitation of the Pledge is what seems to me to be somewhat un-American. At least it's un-what-"American"-should-be. It's very much what the current crop of right-wing, mostly Christian, Republicans publicly consider to be "American." It just seems a little bit off to me. Through 12th grade, I, along with my schoolmates, recited the Pledge at the start of every school day. I never really thought about it. It was just something that we did. I looked up at the flag, put my hand over my... well, most people will say they're putting their hand over their heart, but more often than not it's put roughly over the aorta... and recited the words, roughly in unison with the others in my homeroom. Now that I think about it, in adulthood, such a rote, daily recitation of a pledge of allegiance to a nation's flag seems to me to be the kind of thing that we would chide our enemies for making their nations' school children do. Think about it. If we didn't have daily Pledge recitation in our schools, don't you think that's the kind of thing we'd claim was done (true or not) in Nazi Germany, in Cold War Era Soviet Union, in modern Islamic nations maybe, as a way of brainwashing, indoctrinating, maybe even programming their young? Can't you picture the grainy, black-and-white film footage of German kids, about 8 or 9 years old, standing rigid in their rows next to their desks, right arms thrust outward pointing slightly upward, eyes fixed on the swastika at the center of the flag in the front of their class, under the approving yet sternly watchful gaze of the schoolmaster... and, from the portrait just to the right of the flag, der Führer.

Is that the way things are supposed to work in this country?

Side effects may include...

2008-06-19T22:23:00.002-05:00

One of the ways in which my wife and I amuse ourselves is, in various ways, finding the "real" message in TV commercials - be it the fine print, reading between the lines, or paying attention to the "our lawyers make us say this" parts.

One that caught my attention and made me laugh to myself is in the commercials for Cialis. First of all, is anyone else completely unsurprised that a number of real, debilitating medical conditions go unresolved, but pretty much as soon as the Baby Boom generation (by far the most self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-important, self-deluded and flat-out selfish group of people this planet has seen) started looking middle age squarely in the face, we started seeing hard-on pills flooding the market? But, I digress. In listing the potential side effects of Cialis, the commercial mentions "delayed back pain."

Maybe it's just me, but here's the train of thought I come up with. An old, decrepit man takes Cialis. Now, I realize that not only old men take Cialis, but then, not everyone gets every side effect. So, old man pops (grandpops?) his pill, has sex - which obviously his body is trying to tell him he can't handle any more, then, some time later, decides his back hurts. Maybe it ain't the pill that's doing that. Maybe, just maybe, Old Man McGill just got a more strenuous workout in his lower back than he's had in some time, eh?

I amuse myself with the idea that this "delayed back pain" is not an actual symptom of the pill, but of the intended effect of the pill. (That's not really the case, of course. Other varieties of muscle ache and pain are possible side effects of tadalafil, the active ingredient in Cialis. But I think my version's better than their stupid commercial.) I think it's the "delayed." Is that delay just enough time for you to get all pumped up, as it were, on your pill and go out there and hurt yourself?

Then again, there's always the chance that the back pain comes from sitting for hours in a porcelain bathtub outside somewhere, which they always seem to be doing for reasons I've never understood. "Hey, this pill will allow us to have sex! Time to get into separate, side-by-side bathtubs!!!" I really don't get that. See, I told you my version is better than their stupid commercial.

Tonight we're gonna party

2008-06-16T20:19:00.003-05:00

On November 6, 1982, I turned 10 years old. Less than 2 weeks prior to that, Prince released his fifth album, titled 1999. This was, of course, the album that featured the song of the same name. So there I was, 10 years old and regularly hearing a song that referenced the year 1999. Back then, it seemed sooooooooooooooooooo far away. Sixteen years (more or less) seemed like forever. It was my whole life over again, plus another half... plus a little bit more, even.

Today, we have not only traversed that sixteen-year span that got us to 1999, but we've also done another half... plus a little bit more, even. (Put another way, we're more than halfway to being longer since 1999 than it was from the song to 1999.) And now, at 35, a 16-year span does not seem quite so long as it did in '82. I tell stories from 16 years ago like they happened yesterday. There's been no change (that I'm aware of) in how long 16 years last. What has changed, obviously, is my experience. When I first heard the song, I hadn't quite done two-thirds of 16 years. Now, I've done 16 years, and 16 years over again, and I'm a bit into the 3rd 16.

There's nothing real profound here - just an observation about how one's perception of a piece of time is affected by how that length of time relates to one's sum total of experience.

When I was in 3rd grade, 8 years old, some of the kids in my class decided, for whatever reason, that they wanted to know how old our teacher was. They asked and asked, and she finally decided that she would tell us on the last day of school. She did, and I can remember our collective "Oooooooooooooo!" at her revelation. She was OLD!!! She was TWENTY-FOUR!!! Today, I have a co-worker who's roughly that age (a couple years older), and sometimes that's just head-shakingly young. Anything that happened, or was on TV, or a new movie or song, when I was in high school --- she was like 6! What the hell happened to 24?!? When did it go from old to young? Must've been while 1999 was going from never-gonna-get-here to oh-yeah-we-used-to-think-that-was-a-long-way-away.

I've been everywhere, man

2008-06-12T22:02:00.003-05:00

I started writing a post last night that would be only tangentially related to this post. I started making about about the number of experiences I've had over the past 16 years. (Why 16? You'll see when I get around to completing that post.) I got so far afield, and took so long doing so - it got to be 11:30 PM, and I get up at 6 -- that I had to give up and go to bed. I got to thinking today that the experience group should stand on its own. If you'd asked me last week, without my thinking about it, I probably would have said I haven't done all that much during my life. Well, you tell me...

I've earned a bachelor's degree, the first and so far only person in my family to do so. I've worked for 14 different employers, not to mention movement from position to position within some of those companies. I've seen 36 states and 2 provinces of Canada.

I've shaken hands with the then-Governor of Delaware, and a candidate for President; I've also served 2 Filet-o-Fish sandwiches to the then-mayor of Wilmington, DE.

I've been held on streetcorner by the Secret Service (a whole group of us were), and questioned by a cop on horseback (that was just 2 of us).

I've been licensed to operate a radio station by the FCC, to sell insurance and financial products by the State of Minnesota, and to serve liquor by the State of Delaware. For one semester, I wrote a weekly column in my college newspaper . I was on the broadcast team for 2 seasons of Susquehanna University football games, and 5 Elkton (MD) High School baseball games (I got $25/game, and so technically fulfilled my childhood ambition of being a professional sportscaster). I've covered presidential, gubernatorial and mayoral campaign events, and served as a media witness to an execution.

Among major and minor league hockey, football and baseball, I've been to games in Philadelphia, Wilmington (at a stadium named for the late mayor who I served the fish sandwiches to), Baltimore, Boston, Ottawa, Washington DC, Greensboro (NC), Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale (more or less), San Jose, Albany, Glens Falls (NY), New Haven (CT), Milwaukee, Auburn Hills (MI), Minneapolis and St. Paul. The game in Auburn Hills was of the International Hockey League, which no longer exists. I was in attendance when the Philadelphia Phantoms won the American Hockey League's 1998 Calder Cup championship, and later that summer got my picture taken hold the Cup aloft. At the same time, I met and got a picture with team captain John Stevens, who is now the coach of the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers.

I've watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and set over the Pacific (not on the same day). I've seen dolphins and pelicans off the coast Delaware (and Maryland and Virginia), seals sunning themselves on rocks in San Francisco Bay, alligators in Florida, and Sharks in San Jose. I've taken pictures from the top of the Washington Monument, the 86th-floor observation deck at the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge.

When I was about a year and a half old, I yelled at a nurse for mispronouncing my name (according to my mother). Right around my fourth birthday, I broke my leg when I fell out of our (moving) family car.

I've my picture taken on the ski jump medal stand from the Olympic site in Lake Placid, with the Stanley Cup (twice - once in Toronto and once in Tampa), on the front steps of Elvis Presley's house, and in a cell at Alcatraz. I've seen Niagara Falls, New Orleans' French Quarter, and what was then the tallest free-standing structure in the world (CN Tower in Toronto).

I've won intramural floor hockey championships in 4th and 5th grades; scored from second on an infield hit in the bottom of the last inning to win a Little League game; and have bowled a 229 game. I've held an actual Olympic gold medal.

I once wandered lost in a corn field, with a deflated raft around my shirtless shoulders as a guard (an ineffective one, at that) against the sun.

I've spent nearly 24 hours in a car driving straight through from Wilmington, DE to Houston, TX; about 12 straight hours at what is now called the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia watching 2 live hockey games which sandwiched watching a playoff football game on the TV screens on the concourse (the Philly teams won all 3 games, I might add); and damn near 200 consecutive seconds in an MRI tube.

I've volunteered at the Special Olympics, and helped build a house for Habitat for Humanity.

Among the bands I've seen in concert (since I'm sure I'm missing some): Iron Maiden, Frehley's Comet, Skid Row, Cheap Trick, Spin Doctors, Soul Asylum, Matchbox 20, Train, Five For Fighting, Kiss (in full makeup), Lenny Kravitz, The Black Crows, Oasis, Journey, Foreigner, Rush, The Steve Miller Band, John Mellencamp, The Jeff Healey Band, Bon Jovi, Eric Clapton, America, Three Dog Night, Billy Joel, Elton John, The Cure, The Badlees, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and The Glenn Miller Orchestra. I've also seen live performances by George Carlin, Kevin Nealon, Kevin Meaney and Louie Anderson.

I've moved 4 times, including out-of-state twice; have quit smoking 3 times; have bought 8 cars and a house.

I have 3 degrees of separation (which means that you have 4) with Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space.

I got married by a guy wearing a referee jersey.

That's what I came up with off the top of my head, and notes I scrawled on one Post-It note at work today. I guess I haven't done all that much, huh?

M R I

2008-06-08T21:22:00.004-05:00

While you might think that is a redneck rendition of the "I am he, as you are he, as you are me..." lyrics from The Beatles' "I Am the Walrus," I am actually referring to magnetic resonance imaging.

I've been having pain in my back for a little more than 2 weeks now. It's not like any that I've ever experienced before. First of all, any pain I've had before has lasted for like 2 days, tops. Rest, heat or ice, take it easy for a bit and I was fine again. Not this. Secondly, any time I've had back pain before, it's been something in a muscle. This felt like it was right in my spine, 'round about the 5th thoracic vertebra.

When it didn't go away after a couple of days of rest and trying not to aggravate it, I made an appointment to see my doctor. I'm really not all that fond of the medical system that we have. I think they're often too quick to fill us up with chemicals, and that they more often treat the symptoms rather than the problem. But, our doctors can be good at dealing with some of the problems we encounter, and they've got some good diagnostic tools. And to get anything done through the system, you have to dance the dance, you know?

So I went to see my doctor. He saw me for what probably approached 5 minutes (about a third of the time that I sat waiting for him in the exam room), felt one spot on my back, and sent me off for some x-rays. The x-rays didn't show anything. We had talked about sending me to see a back specialist in that case, but since the specialist would most likely want to see an MRI first, we set an appointment for me to get that done.

The MRI was scheduled for last Wednesday afternoon. When I got there, the technician told me it should take about 20 minutes. They put me on the table and loaded me into the tube. I'm guessing about 3 minutes went by before I instructed the staff that they could remove me from the tube at that time. I'd never experienced claustrophobia before, but I'd also never been that enclosed before.

So, first thing Thursday morning I call my doctor's office and leave a message advising that we did not complete the MRI and I'd need to talk to the doctor about what the next steps might be. I didn't hear back from the doctor's office all day Thursday, or through Friday morning. I called again, didn't get through to a person again, and left a message again, advising that we did not complete the MRI and I'd need to talk to the doctor about what the next steps might be again. I finally got a call back Friday afternoon, a couple of hours after my 2nd message, and spoke with a nurse. She informed me that they couldn't tell me anything yet, because they hadn't gotten the results from the MRI.

Wow.

So, after some explanation, we hung up, she talked to the doctor and called me back. They want me to see the back specialist to see if (s)he can figure anything out without the MRI. But the nurse left open the possibility that the specialist might want me to get that done after all, in which case, she said, the specialist might be able to prescribe me "some Valium or something" to calm me down. I didn't bother discussing it with her, as she wouldn't be involved with such a conversation, but there's no way in hell that I'm ever getting back in that tube awake. To tell you the truth, I don't think I like the idea of getting in there while sedated.

I don't think it'll be an issue, tho. At least, I hope not. I went to see a chiropractor on Saturday. I had that on the list, but I was planning to see the back specialist first. I wasn't sure what a chiropractor could do if we didn't have any idea what the problem was. But the pain was getting worse, and I was losing the little confidence I'd previously had in my medical doctor, so I went to see him first. I figured if there was any chance that he could help, I might as well go see him without waiting any longer. He thinks it's due to misalignment in my neck vertebrae, which is irritating a nerve and transferring pain to where I'm feeling it lower than my neck. (Incidentally, this is exactly what my wife Jill postulated several days before we saw the chiro.) We did one treatment on Saturday, and I have 2 more scheduled for this week. He doesn't think it'll take many more treatments after that (assuming his diagnosis is correct). So far, I can report that the pain has changed, which seems to be in line with his prediction. He'd said that my body will basically try to get back to the misaligned position it's been in and is used to, which for the time being can result in more irritation of the nerve.

That's what I know so far. I'll post more when I know more.

What would you rather do, or go fishing?

2008-06-05T21:20:00.004-05:00

I've been thinking about my maternal grandfather quite a bit the last couple of days.

Alexander Francis Luberecki was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania in 1913. At 15, to get away from an abusive father, he took the birth certificate of a brother who had been stillborn 3 years before him and joined the US Army, at which time he became officially known as Frank Jacob Luberecki. (I remember visiting some of his family in Shamokin when I was about 5 or 6 year old. I knew his name as Frank Luberecki, I guess from mail that he'd get or whatever. And I knew that my grandmother and my father called him "Lu," short for Luberecki. So I was confused when his siblings would talk to "Al." I remember asking my mother who Al was. I doubt I sounded quite as exasperated as Jimmy Dugan [Tom Hanks] in "A League of Their Own" when he shouted, "WHO'S LOU?!?" But I think I felt that way.) After the Army, he married Rose Panarese. They had 3 children, the youngest of whom is my mother. He died in 1987, when I was 14, the first grandparent I lost.

Luberecki, as you may have noticed, is a Polish name. I believe my grandfather's generation was the first of his family to be born in the US. I read, always including (often only) the Letters to the Editor from several newspapers from the places I have lived. Yesterday, there was a letter to the Wilmington, DE News Journal decrying a recent editorial cartoon that the writer saw as degrading and demeaning to Polish people. The News Journal's website allows comments about the letters to be posted, which I sometimes do. Most of the replies to this letter were of the "lighten up" variety. One poster indicated that (s)he had not met a Polish person who did not love a good Polish joke. This is what caused me to think of my grandfather, and to reply to that post telling how I'm sure I heard more "Polock" jokes from him than from all other sources combined. To this day, any time I have occasion to use a flashlight, I think of it as the solar-powered one of Polish invention, and smile at a memory of my grandfather. He loved all kinds of jokes. The title of this post was one of his favorites.

Here's the thing, tho. Other than the short bio, and the jokes, I don't have a lot of knowledge or memory of my grandfather. I know from their stories that my siblings all do, pretty much commensurate with how much older than me they are. When I was born, my family lived next door to my grandparents. We moved to Delaware - about 50 miles away without a straight shot of Interstate highway until several years later - when I was about 3-1/2. We visited, they visited, but not all that often. And I don't know how it is in your family, but when I was a kid of single-digit age, you didn't get that much time with the adults during a family visit. About 4 years after we moved, they moved to Florida. We visited twice, they visited quite a few times, but of course it's not the same as being a young kid and having great and loving grandparents (which they were) right next door.

One thing that was a consistent theme in my upbringing is that, tho I am not separated in age from my siblings by a great deal (they are 2, 3 and 5 years older than me), time after time after time it seemed that all 3 of them had a very similar experience, which I did not share. Growing up, their circles of neighborhood friends seemed to overlap and intertwine quite a bit (till each of them got a good piece into the teen years - I personally don't think that fact and the increased mobility that comes with that age are coincidental), while mine was separate. Movies, music, TV shows - there are countless examples of ones that 2 or all 3 of them would consider "theirs," that I was either not much enthralled with, or not even familiar with.

Those are just a few examples. I don't know that I could ever fully explain the experience, or the feeling. I don't believe that it's anything that anyone intentionally did, but in some very fundamental ways, I've long felt that the life I lived growing up was separated from the others in my family. I can't help but wonder if the fact that I was so young when we moved away didn't play a part. When we were in Pennsylvania, not only did we live right next door to my grandparents, but my mother's sister - and 2 cousins - lived in the same neighborhood, and my mother's brother - and 2 more cousins, including the only one who was very close in age to me - were just a few minutes away. When we lived there, the families did things together. Often. But given my age compared with theirs, I was either not yet born or not involved (I can't tell you how many pictures my mother has with my siblings out and about - doing, seeing, having fun - things I never did and places I never was), or I there but so young that I have no memory. After we moved, other than visiting extended family, there was very little my family did as a family. I've often wondered what it would have been like if my family hadn't moved. Obviously I'll never know, but I suspect that I would have felt more included, would have been more included, as I would have been involved in more things that were done as a family - the big group.

Including, as I've been reminded recently, having more time with, and better memory of, our grandparents.

Nobody's fault. Not fair or unfair. Just life.

Maynard G. Muskievote be damned

2008-05-29T21:57:00.004-05:00

(After some re-reading, particularly of the bottom portion of this post - from the bullet points on - and all of the previous post, I've come to the realization that it's probably best not to try to write after taking Tylenol PM, or the generic equivalent.)

Recently, there was a letter to the editor in my local paper imploring people to drive on highways no faster than 55 miles per hour in order to conserve fuel.

In terms of simple physics (if such a thing exists) and simple economics, there is no arguement. It takes less fuel to move a vehicle one mile at 55 miles per hour than it does to move that same vehicle one mile at 60, 65, 70, or more, miles per hour. If one is using less fuel per mile travelled, one will travel more miles using the fuel in one tank of gas, one will less frequently need to refill said tank, and will over any course of time, spend less money buying fuel. Also, this just in - the sun rises in the east, the ocean is moist, Friday will follow Thursday during the third week of next April, and 2+2=4. You get the picture. We know all of that. There's no questioning that. And yet, when I read the letter, my immediate reaction was not, "She's right," or, "Good point," or anything like that. My immediate thought was, "If I tried that, I'd get killed."

My daily commute home from work includes more than 25 miles on Interstate highways. (I take a different route in the morning to avoid the highways and their traffic at that time.) For pretty much all of my driving life, I would go the speed of the prevailing flow of traffic, which tends to be about 5 - 10 mph over the posted limit. I considered that to be the safest way to go, and figured my chances of getting a speeding ticket would be pretty minimal if my speed didn't stand out among the other vehicles. And in fact, I have not had a speeding ticket in more than 10 years, and that was a case where there really wasn't any other traffic. It was very late on a Sunday night in a rural part of West Virginia. Not a lot of folks around.

It's kind of funny, really. It was coming home from a road trip - my sister, her 2 kids and I drove from Wilmington, DE to around Memphis, TN to visit my brother who was doing his post-bootcamp Navy school in Millington, TN. I drove most of the way there (seriously, it was like a 20-hour drive, and I drove the first 19 hours), and it was a long weekend where sleep was not the top priority. I then drove the whole way home without stopping other than for gas, snacks and bathroom. Nearing pitch-black midnight on a near-empty stretch of rural West Virginia highway, I have to confess that I was not at my sharpest mentally. I recall thinking it odd that the headlights in my rearview mirror did not seem to be either advancing or receding, tho they had been at that same distance behind me for quite a while. It did not occur to me that doing so would be an accurate way for someone to determine the speed at which I was travelling. It further did not occur to me to concern myself with the speed at which I was travelling. I did wonder why he put his highbeams on behind me for what I could only assume was no reason. And what's with the colored flashi..... aw, crap. But, I digress.

After reading the letter, I reconsidered my driving M.O., and determined that it would be a better course of action to drive at the speed limit on the highways - using my cruise control to maintain that speed, and further conserve fuel, when the weather and traffic permit - which they typically do this time of year, and at the time I drive home. I've done this for about a week.

For those of you who are not fans of "The Simpsons," first of all, what the hell is wrong with you? That show has produced some of the best comedy writing, and specifically some of the best satire, in the whole history of American television. I realized that doing so is, to quote Dennis Miller, "like being the valedictorian of summer school," but it must also be realized that those responsible for "The Simpsons" are not responsible for the other content of their genre. Secondly, for those of you who are not familiar, one of the characters on the show is Mr. Burns. He is the 104-year-old multibillionaire owner of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. In one episode, an oil field is found underneath the grounds of the local elementary school. Mr. Burns plans to get access to the oil for himself, stating that he could not bear to see such a valuable resource be left in the hands of "Betsy Bleedingheart and Maynard G. Muskievote." Mr. Burns favors the unbridled consumption of energy-producing resources, particularly when said consumption produces profit for Mr. Burns. As he is 104 years old, there is much humor around his being hilariously decrepit. In another episode, he joins a bowling league team. In one scene, he sends his ball down the lane so slowly that each of the 4 memebers of the other team bowls a strike (with the pins of course having to be reset between each one) before his ball reaches the end of the lane, falling into the gutter before it hits any pins. It's funnier in animation than in text.

This past week, with my cruise control set on 60, and briefly on 70, I have felt like Mr. Burns' bowling ball, making my way along in the right-hand lane, while SUV after pickup after sports car after 18-wheeler zips by me. I'm on I-94 for 9.1 miles (according to Mapquest). One day I counted, just in that stretch, 28 vehicles passing me. It's not that only those types of vehicles are on the road. There are sedans, coupes and more-efficient vehicles. But they seem to be the minority. I see a LOT of SUV's, pickups, sports cars and big rigs. The majority of the vehicles I see, or at least the ones I notice whipping by me, are less-efficient vehicles to begin with, and are driving at inefficient speeds. Screw you, Maynard. Here, Mr. Burns, take more of my money. Add it to the pile that's already too big to count.

Now, I realize that this may come off a little haughty seeing as how I earlier admitted to, until recently, driving at less-efficient, higher speeds on the highways myself. I have a couple of responses to that:

First, my car gets better gas mileage than a lot of the other vehicles to begin with. I'm not "wasting vehicle," as I see a lot of people doing - driving a pickup with an empty bed, an SUV with no passengers and no (visible) cargo, or a sporty convertible that, despite the driver's hope and wish, does not have any real effect on his penis size.
Second, wasting gas involves more than just highway speed. Getting up to speed slowly from a stop; decelerating coming up to a red light or stop sign rather than jamming on your brakes 2 feet from where you want to stop; avoiding congested roads - these are things I've done for years, and things I see a lot of people not doing, which save gas.
Third, the whole point of my post is that behavior is modifiable. At least, it is in theory. There's the whole "recognize that there are other ways to behave than what I already do / think and evalulate / conscioiusly choose to engage in behaviors that are different than things I have done in the past" thing that waaaaaaaaaaay too many Americans seem incapable of. Too many people seem too willing to shell out increasing amounts of money for their tank of gas without giving any real consideration to taking actions that would alleviate the situation. On the other hand, I did all those things inside the quotes in the bullet.

I wonder how high gas prices will have to go before a noticeable number of people start taking real action. There was a time in my life when I thought that line of demarcation was about $2/gallon. We're nearing the point where that figure is doubled, and signs of change are few and far between. The Friday before Memorial Day, I saw on the news that whoever puts out such studies put out this year's study, and all the doomsayers on the news were jumping all over it. For the first time since 2002, said the study-putter-outers, the number of Americans travelling 50 or more miles from home for Memorial Day would be dropping. Then they put up the graphic that showed that the projected drop was all of 0.9%. Is this trip really necessary, indeed.

I got nothin'

2008-05-28T22:00:00.002-05:00

I sat in front of the computer for about an hour this morning. Nothing.

Well, I typed. Several words, in fact. About one-fourth of them constituted the equivalent of the letter C. The next fourth, an R. These were followed by a P and an A, though not necessarily in that order.

I actually came up with a pretty good start to a post yesterday at work. I typed it up in a Word document (I keep the doc on my desktop so I don't lose blog ideas that come to me at work), emailed it to my non-work address so I could access it from home. What I didn't take into account was that the word program I have on my home computer is not compatible with the program we use at work, and I sent it as an attachment rather than embedded in the email, so I couldn't access it. I didn't go to work today, so I haven't been able to re-send it yet. That one'll have to wait.

For whatever reason, the word Adidas was introduced into my consciousness last night on my drive home from work. It reminded of the time about 10 years ago that my brother's then-girlfriend bought her nephew an Adidas t-shirt for some occasion or other where gift giving is a non-optional social convention. He informed her that he wouldn't... couldn't... wear said shirt to school or about town (well, technically, about nondescript, cookie-cutter suburb, but who's splitting those hairs?), because everyone had been wearing Adidas - the logo on shirts and such, I don't believe this had anything to do with anyone's shoes - the previous year, and some other shoe company's logo was then-currently "in." I tried this morning to turn that into a full post about what I see as the ridiculousness of following trends in fashion. But really, what else needs to be said? I find it ridiculous. That's kind of the end of the story. I thought I could throw in a bit about how, when I was about the age that her nephew was at the time of the gift-giving, there were some kids in my neighborhood who really, truly believed that Adidas is an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sex. The company is actually named for its founder, Adolf (nickname: ADI) DASsler. But that train of thought loses its interestingness before the end of this paragraph.

The All Day I Dream... thing did put me in mind of something I've been kicking around my head about urban legends, and a tie-in with religiosity in this country. I mean, both are cases of people believing fantastical claims on the basis of completely unreliable "evidence." And that will be a post here some day. It'll be titled, "Turn Me On, Dead Man." But not today. By the time I got to that point, I just didn't have it in me. My thoughts are all over the place (as if you couldn't tell). And so here I am, rambling to you about all the internal rambling that never manifested itself in any kind of a cohesive post.

As long as I'm just rambling --- I've got a pain in my back. It's been there for several days. It feels like it's in the spine itself, not a sore or overexerted muscle. It might be in the tendon that connects the trapezius to the spine, I suppose. The problem is, I don't know yet. I saw my doctor today, but there really isn't much he can do. He felt the area, but it's not a case where I have a vertebra that has moved 2 or 3 inches, so he wasn't going to find anything there. He had me X-rayed, and it won't be till Friday probably that he gets the results from the radiologist. If the X-rays don't show anything, I'll probably go for an MRI to see if it's a soft-tissue issue. Maybe to a back specialist. I can only imagine the fun that awaits.

I guess that's about it for tonight. I hope to be back to not posting like a housefly with ADD on cocaine tomorrow.

Just how cool is a moose?

2008-05-26T22:02:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite teachers in in high school was Mr. Ristow, who taught U.S. History and Government. I was never a very good student. I got bored and distracted easily. Mr. Ristow was able to hold my interest, partly because he was funny, with a sense of humor that matched mine pretty well. He'd often underscore a point by giving an aside in the form of a conversation between some hypothetical student and himself. If he thought (likely from experience - my senior year was his 33rd at that school) that we might not be getting why something was important, it would be, "'So?' Sew buttons on a watermelon - so this:..." and explain the point. If the first part of point was extremely obvious, he'd say, "Yes, and there's no bones in ice cream." My favorite - when something seemed great at first, but had something hidden, the segue between the two was, "Cool as a moose, and twice as hairy."

One thing I recall Mr. Ristow saying, when we learned in Government that you have to be 35 years old to be President, was that he realized at our age that 35 must seem like having "one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel." I don't recall exactly what I felt back then about being 35. Today, at 35, it does not feel that way. In fact, it doesn't really connect in my mind that I've aged in the almost 2 decades since then.

I don't quite know how that's possible. Logically, I know that the time has passed. I graduated from high school 18 years ago. More time has passed since then than passed between my birth and then. I've done, seen, and been 18 years' worth since then. More than six thousand, five hundred days have come and gone in their endless, trudging regularity; the sun has circled the sun 18 times. I've watched younger relatives grow up, I've watched my hair start to go gray and most of my friends' hair simply go, I've watched 3 Austin Powers movies (this sort of thing is my bag, baby). Yet, no way I know to mark the passage of time, and the recognition of my passage through it, results in the realization that each of these passage has left me older.

I don't seem to be alone in this. I read somewhere recently that, in a poll of baby boomers, the average age at which they consider old age to start is 79. (The oldest baby boomers are 62.) Apparently, I'm not the only one that find getting old to be something that only happens to the other guy. Still, I don't take much comfort in that. I prefer to be rational. In this regard, tho, I am completely irrational . I just wish I knew what to do about it.

When one chef is too many

2008-05-22T22:26:00.003-05:00

Doing this is a lot easier than when I first started doing anything that might be called creative writing. Of course, that was more than 20 years ago. Back then, I did not conceive of having my own computer, and had never heard of "word processing," let alone something called the Internet. However, Sen. Ted Stevens would no doubt that be glad to know that, due to the existence of pneumatic mail deliver systems in large office buildings, I was familiar with "a series of tubes," which he taught us the Internet is.

Back then, when I wrote, it was in pen on paper. Corrections were more cumbersome and sloppy. I recall whole paragraphs crossed out and replaced by very tiny writing crammed into the margins. I'd think a little more before writing than I do know, and I definitely did less editing.

Of course, it's much easier to edit now. A Backspace here, a little click and drag there. It's like it never happened. And that's a good thing - up to a point. I'm finding it's easy to overdo... overthink... overcorrect... overperfect. I worked for more than half an hour on last night's post. I'm happy with the way it came out, but part of it lost some of the flavor of the initial draft. I over-cheffed some of it. Not because all of the changes were improvements, but because they were easy to do before really thinking it through.

I like Reno 911!, Whose Line..., This is Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest's movies. They're improvisational. The actors have a general idea of where the scene is supposed to go, and they'll do several takes and use the best material, but they come out more natural, more real, than written and re-written and edited and re-re-written scripted fare. My ink-and-paper writing was more closer to the improv stuff. Writing like this comes closer to Ethnic Mis-Match Comedy # 618.

Look at me, Rex Banner. I have a new hat.

2008-05-21T22:10:00.002-05:00

If you're a fan of George Carlin at all, you'll realize over time reading my posts (or, you would have realized if I wasn't right now in the act of telling you - now you'll already know at the time that you otherwise have realized it) that the fun I have playing with the intricacies and oddities of our language, our use of language, is very much inspired by George.

Such as --- Why is it that you never hear anything referred to as "new hat," except for... a new hat? I mean, how come you'll hear someone say something like, "Oh yeah, I've done this plenty of times before. This'll be old hat," but you never hear something like, "Nope, never done that before. It's going to be new hat for me?"

There's a whole slew of words and phrases which we only use when we negate them. The original positives exist, I suppose, but you never hear them in conversation. At one job, I had a Post-It* note on the side of my computer monitor that read, "When gruntled, I only speak in chalant sequiturs." This stemmed from a conversation in which I made this very point, and used disgruntled, non-chalant and non-sequitur as my examples. If we have disgruntlement, non-chalance and non-sequiturs, does it not follow that there must be gruntlement, chalance and sequiturs? (Actually, I suppose it would have to precede that we have those, not follow.) Where are they, in our every day parlance?

And why is it that one thing will be old-fashioned, but its opposite is new-fangled. Why isn't it new-fashioned? There's no old-fangled. There's not even fangled, as far as I can tell. What is fangled, anyway? Sounds like there's something wrong with it. "Damn thing's all fangled." "I know. And it's still new!" For my money, if it's new and it's already fangled, we probably should have stuck with the old-fashioned kind.

To quote Mr. Carlin directly, "These are the kind of thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools."

*Invented in Minnesota

Felidae Robertus

2008-05-20T21:03:00.002-05:00

Hey, here's a good idea.

Last night, I was at the gym. I work out right after work, so it's early evening. The quadriceps machine is against the wall, right by a window. I set my towel and water bottle on the ledge when I use the machine, and typically will take a look out the window to see what there is to see. There's a field in the distance that they let run wild with prairie grasses and such, and a bit of a wooded area off to one side, and with Spring being pretty fully sprung (it took a while this year), it's a nice view. Last night's view was made nicer by the presence of big ol' fat raccoon waddling around on the lawn right outside the building. I watched him for a while before continuing with my workout.

A few minutes and machines later, a couple of guys came in and were excitedly talking to the woman who was working there. I couldn't hear the much of the conversation, but I heard her say "I'll go out with you," just before the 3 of them went outside. I figured maybe they were going to check out Mr. Rocky Raccoon (Beatles reference, if you're scoring at home). We have a good number of people from India at work (did I mention that the gym is right at work, right in the same building?), and the one guy sounded like he's from there. In fact, the other guy sounded to be of some kind of Middle Eastern descent. I don't know how long these guys have been in the States, or how widespread raccoons are, so I thought maybe one or both of them had never seen one before. In my mind, that seemed a reasonable justification for the excitement. I know how excited I get when I get to see a new animal for the first time in the flesh. When I got to the cramp inducer... er, hamstring machine, which is right next to the quad machine, my peek out the window showed our party of 3 coming around the corner of the building, right in the same area where I'd last seen Rocky.

So I finished my workout, and I had a couple of questions to ask the woman who was working in the gym. The first quesion I had was, "Did you and those guys go outside to check out the raccoon that was out there?" No, she told me. That was not the purpose of their excursion. They went out investigating, she told me, because those two gentleman "thought they saw a bobcat." It's one thing when you're young, stupid and a guy - you're often doing dumb things, or your friends are, but you're young and stupid. It's something else entirely to be 35, be in discussion with someone who is more or less your contemporary in age (not to mention the other 2, who are probably both older than her, and one seemed to be older than me), and think, "Hmmm. That's a decision that could have led directly to the sudden and unplanned movement of a large quantity of blood from the inside to the outside of your corpus." Or words to that effect. I can't claim that precise wording for the original rough draft of my thought, which was more along the lines of, "Dumbass!" For the record, I don't think they saw a bobcat. But THEY thought so.

Maybe I'm the crazy one. I recognize that. That said, here's how I look at it. If I'm inside, and I think there's a bobcat outside, I don't go outside. I do not make an effort to eliminate the presence of barriers between me and the bobcat, and I damn sure don't endeavor to get myself closer to it. I'd love to see a live bobcat, under the right circumstances. I don't want to be in a position to have contact with the bobcat, tho, because of the very very small chance that I will be the one to dictate the details of said contact. My hand scratching a neck is great, and in that case, unlikely. I think I would much less enjoy fangs ripping through my corotid artery. Just a guess.

I did, however, say to wife when I told her this story that there is one circumstance under which I would be part of a group of 3 going to look for a bobcat. That is if I were absoultely, 100%, dead certain that I could run faster than at least one of my compatriots. I don't have to outrun the cat. I just need to outrun him.

Separately, this is weird. When I saw the raccoon, I not only thought of the name Rocky, from the song, but I thought of the name of a guy I knew in college. We often referred to him as The Raccoon because of the very dark coloring around his eyes. Maybe we should have called him The Bobcat, because I was certainly not interested in having any contact with him, if I could at all avoid it. Not my kind of guy. With that being the case, I have not seen him, and have had very rare occasion to recall his name, since college ended in the mid-90's. Yesterday, due to the random presence of a raccoon, his name made an unexpected mental appearance. This morning, I'm driving to work and listening to the radio. One of the shows I listen to in the morning will often read odd, interesting or ridiculous news stories from all over the country and world. One of this morning's stories, out of New Jersey, is of the parents of a 12-year-old boy who are suing the manufacturer and the retailer of an aluminium baseball bat, and Little League Baseball because a ball that was hit with the bat injured their son. (My question for the parents would be, if it's so obvious that the bat is dangerous for children to use, why did you let your son on the field while it was being used? But that, like the 2nd floor above my 1st-floor workspace, is another story.) Where it's weird is, they read this sentence out of the news story: It claims the defendants knew, or should have known, that the bat was dangerous for children to use, according to the family's attorney, (this jagdorf's name). What the hell is that? A name from the past that has been part of my consciousness for better than a decade, and here he is, 2 days in a row. I mean, I can't be sure that the lawyer guy is the jackass I knew, but the name in uncommon enough that it's likely. What the hell? Go away and leave me alone, you raccoon-looking freak.

What is a DelPennSotan, anyway?

2008-05-19T21:17:00.002-05:00

(This was supposed to be my first post on this blog. If you read the post before it, you'll know that this one was temporarily "lost," in that I didn't know at the time where to find it.)

How do you decide what to use as a screen name? When I first started going to chat rooms and message boards online, I was pretty much only going to hockey-related sites. I'm a Philadelphia Flyers fan. I started out picking names that noted my favorite player. OttoFan29 was the first name I used (Joel Otto wore #29 for the Flyers at the time). He soon retired, and I became ForbesFan12 (for Colin Forbes). He got traded. I think all of this was within one calendar year. I got the hint.

What I needed, I figured, was something that simply designated me as a Flyers fan. I wanted to be a bit more inventive than just using some variation of "Flyers Fan." I also decided that, if I was going to identify with the team and not one player, it was important to me to choose a name that would indicate that I had been a fan prior to the new wave of fans who came along in the early 1990's when Eric Lindros showed up (it's a long story - maybe a later post). Broad Street Bully seemed perfect. The team had been known as the Broad Street Bullies in the mid- to late-1970's (their arena is on Broad Street in Philadelphia, and they were known then for a very agressive, rough style of play).

Right now you may be asking, "What in the world does all of this has to do with something called a DelPennSotan?" I'm getting there.

The problem with Broad Street Bully, I found out, was that it was generally taken. After some consideration, I went even more obscure, and settled on Walk Together Forever. When the Flyers won the Stanley Cup (the championship of the National Hockey League) in 1974, before the last game, their coach, Fred Shero, told them, "Win together today, and we will walk together forever." They did, and they have (and boy, are their legs tired!). That name brought a few problems of its own. First of all, almost nobody got it. The population on the Internets skews towards a generation that is not familiar with references from 1974. This seemed to be more true 8-10 years ago, when this was happening. Second, my name would typically be shortened by other posters to WTF, which often got misunderstood by third-party posters not involved in a particular conversation. Something like "WTF, I don't understand what you're talking about..." would lead other people to think I was getting attacked when that wasn't the case. Thirdly, some folks misinterpreted the name to be a refernce to a wife, or some sort of significant other, when no such person existed at the time. (Well, she existed, I just didn't know her. And anyone that knows us knows there ain't gonna be no Walk in any I'd name I'd have for the 2 of us. Sit On Our Fat Asses Together Forever, maybe. [But you can just call us SOOFATF.]) Some of the people who thought I was married or otherwise involved didn't take to kindly to the shameless flirting I would commonly do back then.

By this time, I had branched out and was posting and chatting in non-hockey-related places. At first, I would pick a name that had some connection to the place or central topic where I was posting. That got to be way too much to keep on top of. One universal name, where useable, was the way to go. I decided to go with whatever version of Broad Street Bully was available on a given site. But, the more time I spent on places where people didn't know or care about hockey, the more I found myself having to tediously explain my moniker over and over. And, outside of the context for which I first started using it, having Bully in a screen name can lead some people to incorrect assumptions that it's hard for a fella to live down.

So, once again, time for a change. Time to drop the hockey references. I don't do much hockey chatting any more. It's very hard anymore to find a rational conversation. A lot of people pick a name that's based on the one overriding passion in their life, but I've never had something that is "my thing," that people who know me immediately identify with me, and immediately think of me when that "thing" comes up in coversation or whatever. So I didn't have anything to go with in that regard. When all of this started, I lived in Delaware, which is where I grew up. After a time, I moved to Pennsylvania, which is actually where I was born and lived the first few years of my life. Later, I moved to Minnesota, where I've been for the past 4+ years. I had the thought to pick a name that would encompass my having been a DELawarean, a PENNsylvanian and a MinnesSOTAN. Hence, DelPennSotan. Despite what one of my friends thought, the "sotan" does not mean "so tan," though I do tend to darken up nicely in the summer if I'm out in the sun. My coloring seems to come from the Greek portion of my heritage, and when you put that under the sunshine, there's a very noticeable effect. Now that I think about it, maybe instead of where I've lived, I should have based my name on where my ancestors came from. ItalPolGreGland has a bit of a ring to it, doesn't it?

On the outside, this probably seems like a meaningless recitation of a progression of online identities that I have used. But on the inside, I can see that there is a bit more to this story. It's been about 10 years since I was OttoFan29. DelPennSotan is not OttoFan29, and in some significant ways, I am not the same person I was then, either. I see a lot of difference. I didn't even ID myself as me at first. I used another person. When that changed, I was very careful about the piece of myself that I identified, and what others were "supposed" to take from it. (As I said, it was VERY IMPORTANT to me with that first Flyers name that people know that I am a very particular type - or age, if you will - of Flyers fan.) Over time, when I was chatting with folks who are not hockey fans, the need to constantly explain my name led me to the realization that people who connect with me are not necessarily interested in only the pieces of me that I might have chosen to make available to them. Which brings us to this last name. It's all of me, my whole life, in a manner of speaking. None of these screen name decisions was a conscious attempt to do the things I've been talking about in this paragraph. But as I was thinking about it (my weekday commute is anywere from 45 to 90 minutes each way - I have a LOT of time alone with all manner of random thoughts), I came to the conclusion that they were probably not accidental, either. Each one seems to accurately have represented who I was ready to let people see me be at the time.

Thus, here I stand before you today - DelPennSotan. Again, it's all of me, my whole life, in a manner of speaking. Also not consciously but I believe not accidentally, it speaks only to where I've been and where I am. It says nothing about about where I am going. I'll have to find that out as I go along.

Live and learn

2008-05-18T22:57:00.003-05:00

I had this whole long (very long) post all typed out about the meaning behind the screen names I've used over time. There's a great realization I came to a couple weeks back, and I labored for the better part of a half hour share it with you. Then I previewed. As this is my first post, you may make the correct assumption that I'm not familar with the nuts-and-bolts workings of this site. I wanted to make a change, and didn't see any option that seemed to take me to where I could edit the post. I figured I'd try the back button. It didn't keep what I'd typed and I hadn't copied. It's gone. I'll have to try to recreate it, but not tonight. It's already 11 PM. I suppose there's a larger lesson in here about miscommunication, and maybe I'll post on that too, when I have some time to think about it. For now, my bed is calling.