Grandiose Ruminations Rooted in Minutiae

Cattle Calls

2012-02-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

In my industry, it is a rare and cherished gift for a salesperson to find themselves sitting in front of a customer, alone, with no other competitors in the room. I had one of these last week and left at the end of the meeting feeling the way I always do under the circumstances... like I nailed it to the wall and then hit it with darts, lit it on fire and shot it to the moon.

But in most cases, my appointments are more like cattle calls, a bunch of us herded into a small space being treated like a commodity gets treated... which is to say with the barest of minimum respect.

And it's really worse for a lot of my colleagues who don't have it as cushy as I do... all I do is sales, which means I have few late nights before early mornings. Many of my colleague at these meetings were up all night the night before and had to be at an early appointment after getting the kids off to school and all that stuff, only to be treated like shit by a prospective customer.

The building services, Security, Janitorial, Light Maintenance, are actually called "lesser trades." There's an esteem builder.

I would like these contract administrators, purchasers, cube dwellers and snooty receptionists to go a few days without us picking up after them, wiping KFC grease off their desks, emptying the rotting food from their refrigerators, scrubbing their toilets (only to have them do the most wicked and unspeakable things... I can't... you don't... let's just drop it), keeping the entries safe from people who want to come in and cut people in half with an AK, or making sure the AC and heat works.

It is unfortunate how we are often looked down upon, even though it would be almost immediately apparent if we weren't there. Imagine a city with no garbage collection... actually, don't imagine it, go to Florence, Italy, which has been under the thumb of the trash collectors union for almost 3 years. Litter is in some places FEET THICK on the city streets. "You want garbage on that pizza?" Only a few years ago the city of Hamtramck (yes, that's the way it's spelled, it's a Polish enclave. Polaks don't like vowels.), near Detroit was broke and could no longer afford to haul the trash. So, for over a month of a hot summer, trash littered the entire town... which wasn't much to look at or smell before all that happened.

Bus drivers, cops, fire fighters, janitors, security guards, gardeners... what would the world be like without these critical and perennially low paid people? Chaos.

And for this bid this morning, they aren't happy with their current service. The current service was not present to re-bid. I bet I know why-Even if they had the opportunity to keep the business, they would be better off without it.

Did the client want proposals? Capabilities presentations? Interviews? Financial statements proving we'll be around next year? did they want anything that proved we could do the job better than the outgoing contractor? Nope.

"Just put the number at the bottom of the page. Don't burden us, we're busy." That is a formal quote... I wrote it in my notes.

"And what if you go low bid and the new contractor can't do it for what they quoted? Aren't you considering that?" asked one of my colleagues who drove all the way from Flint, (nearly 3 hours), to be treated like shit on the bottom of a shoe.

"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it and you'll all probably be back to bid it again, soon."

No wonder they're so busy. They don't take the time to do their job effectively in the first place and have to do it over and over and over, again; never learning from the previous failure.

Contractors will keep showing up, too, although the best thing we could do it just put up our middle fingers and tell them where they can sit and spin. If we want to pay a living wage to our employee, that's up to us, but if one of the 16 contractors there bids it at minimum wage, they will be chosen. That contractor may even put in an illegal worker who is not insured, not paying taxes and essentially has no recourse or rights as a worker. This person will likely remain disenfranchised, unable to get out of their situation, until they get hurt and dumped on the street or found by the cops and deported.

If this sounds a little maudlin, I assure you, it is the truth. It happens over and again like the tides. 18 months ago in my city, a building services contractor was busted. The owner was illegal, as was a majority of his workforce. The big embarrassment was that this guy, the owner, was on the city commission for Hispanic relations and his company cleaned many or most of the city/county buildings. And even after that debacle, there is no language in the city/county bid requests that requires proof of citizenship for a contractor's employees.

Translation? "We didn't see nothin'."

So, moo... You got me. Out of bed at 6 on a Monday to shower and shave and dress and preen, only to be led through a gated labrynth, over a sluice floor and eventually shot in the head and processed like so much meat.

And that's what life is like at the bottom of the food chain.

Sunday Stuff

2012-02-19T09:55:00.000-08:00

I was nice enough to try and start the Vette yesterday. I completed the taxes and so needed a little palette cleanser. It was dead... The battery, that is. After seeking out the date code on the battery, I found it was produced in June, 2000. Not a bad run for a car battery.

Now it's one more $100.00 chore to do before I can get rolling in spring. I also need to spend the money I committed to having the old steel wheels shot and powder coated. I already have new tires.

So, it will be a lot like me when I buy new shoes. The shoes sure look good, but it's the same old crap up top.

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This of course means I am starting to feel the first small pangs of Spring Fever. Which is O.K., considering I finally got over Saturday Night Fever. I have been inoculated against Disco Fever, Jungle Fever and Pac Man Fever, but I am susceptible to both the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.

Of these, Spring Fever is the least worrisome. In fact, I rather like it.

_____________________________________________________________

Bad hockey games are difficult to watch. Last night was no exception. It was the very first game I have ever attended or seen where neither team was penalized, though both deserved to be, and a goal was called a non-goal apparently just because.

Oh, we'll. The crowd was big, we had great seats, good companions and the beer was cold. All in all, not a total loss.

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Beware writing a blog post on the iPad, the typos are enough to make your wife bother you endlessly.

Why I Feel Badly About Burger King

2012-02-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

I worked at BK all through high school, achieving the lofty title of "Assistant Manager II" at my store. That title was bestowed upon me shortly after my 16th birthday, when in one of my teen angst-fueled rants I began to spout off about how much better things would run if I ruled the world.

Our store manager, a feisty chain-smoking petite named Jill unwisely called my bluff. I didn't know what I was doing, and she didn't care. I was essentially slave labor, and I didn't care. The sacrifices of working while others went to the beach were realized in college when the scholarship money I had earned, ($1.00 per hour for every hour I worked toward room and board or classes where I earned above a 'C' grade) kept me rolling in clover while my friends were broke. At least for three semesters, when the money ran out.

It served me well in that respect. Of course, like a large item you buy on credit, you pay for it for a long time after. For instance, my employment and therefore ready access to fast food happened right about the same time my fat cells woke up. That sucked. And, my blood pressure is still perennially high requiring I be under constant care of a doctor to make sure I don't die from it. That also sucks and I am sure my diet had something to do with that, too.

Over the years, BK has sort of fallen out of favor with me. I will only eat there if they have a wicked sale, or I get some coupons. It's like the "friend" you don't want to hang out with, but sometimes comes up with the best tickets to a game or concert. He calls you up and your desire to see that band overcomes your greater sensibilities and you acquiesce.

I mean, it could be worse for my old buddy, BK. He could be like Taco Bell, (whose name is Isabella, thank you very much). She gives all she can give, and yet I only call on her after a long night at the bar, soaked to the bone with booze, slurring sweet nothings into my soft taco supreme while my designated drivers tries not to kill me. Taco Bell was born to be objectified and abused. Sorry, Isabella ( I'll call you!). Of course, I always wish I hadn't called her the next day, as she typically exacts a particularly unfriendly revenge.

My friend, a fellow "fast foodie", (fat foodie?), and I were in Wendy's not too long ago, discussing the relative merits of McDonald's v. Burger King. More specifically we were dissecting why BK took such a precipitous dive over the last decade. The answer of course, is consistency, or lack of it.

Like that friend you used to hang out with all the time, you had a lot of laughs and good memories, but these days, that level of immaturity just doesn't cut it. In college, it's fine to start out at a bar down the street and end up in Tijuana... that's what great stories are made of. But now, you're older, you drive a nice car, you have a family... you just want to go out to a wine bar, have a couple laughs, and be home by 10.

It isn't funny to work hard and spend your money on crap food of bad quality. You want crap food of good quality! I can't remember the last time I got a bad meal at McDonald's... and by that I mean the last time I didn't get exactly what I expected. On the opposite side of the coin, I can't remember the last time I didn't hold my breath at the BK, wondering just how bad it was going to be.

I love the idea of BK. I love that I can order my burgers without ketchup, (or catsup), without bringing the entire drive-through system down to its knees, ruining it for everyone behind me. I like the meat. I like the menu.

Wendy's is amazing to me. Their big burgers are some of the very best at any price. I would rather eat at Wendy's for 7 bucks that at Red Robin for 15... in fact I would rather eat at Wendy's for 15! Don't tell her that. That little red-headed strumpet will go and gouge up the prices again. You can't trust a ginger kid with pig-tails! I've seen Children of the Corn! But you can't eat Wendy's on the road, and I have a closet full of shirts with dribbles of many and varied protein infused origin right down the middle to prove it!

I don't like McDonald's. But their food is easiest to eat while driving. Their bathrooms are, on balance the cleanest. Their drive thrus, (while poorly spelled), are brilliantly operated and you can't swing a dead mouse without hitting one. In short, they win.

And poor old BK, my buddy from all those years ago... We'll always have that day with the Quopper with Douquecheese (that's 4 patties of meat with 8 pieces of cheese), minus ketchup (and catsup), minus tomato, plus mustard, plus heavy mayo and pickle, a basket of fries and a 64 oz. Mellow Yellow.

Kinda makes me want to call him up once more, for old time's sake.

Just a Little Pin Prick

2012-02-14T10:39:00.000-08:00

My cat, Atticus has sharp claws-Principally because he is an indoor/outdoor cat and we want him to be able to defend himself. He gets in scuffles all the time. So far, I think he's undefeated. There have been occasional chunks of fur missing from the top of his head, but never from his hind quarters which leads me to believe he doesn't turn tail too often.

That's all well and good, but the real reason he has sharp claws is that he is a gigantic wuss. He cries and wriggles and generally acts like he's having a grand mal seizure every time we clip him. The noises he makes are actually really disconcerting. We have to wonder if we're hurting him. And then Juliette comes up, puts he paw in Emily's palm and sits there like she's at the spa.

With Atty, it really is a huge, dramatic thing. It doesn't have to be, of course, but he makes it so. And, we are therefore loath to do it and don't do it often. Until we have to.

We have to.

My right arm looks like I have a love affair with the needle. Atticus, like all good house cats, thinks he's people. And as such, when he decides he wants a spot somewhere, he just takes it, regardless of whether there is an actual spot there.

And so it has been the last couple nights, Atticus apparently reasoned that if we are sleeping on the bed, oriented like people are, than so should he be. Why curl up in a little ball at the feet of your master, when you can stretch out all the way down the center of the bed? Except that Emily and I have arms, of course, and those arms occupy the space that, in his head anyway, belongs to Atticus.

And so he fits as best as he can and then alternates bothering Emily and I to see which one will roll to their side, thus affording him the space he deserves for being such a productive member of the family. This bothering typically takes the form of kneading our arms with the aforementioned talons of terror. I sleep in short sleeves, always. I am not a fan of long sleeves, ever, but I put up with them by day. I have never been cold enough that I wished for long sleeves in bed. A couple times, back in the day when I wasn't sure who I was, I put on a long sleeved tee-shirt at bed time only to find myself changing shirts midway through the night.

Anyway, Atticus did a number on my right arm last night, just as he did a number on Emily's left arm. We look like Sid and Nancy Vicious. Well, I am way too fat to be a smack fiend, but if you look at the punctures and scrapes on my arms you could be forgiven for momentarily thinking otherwise.

Right now, it is the end of my work day, and Atticus is on one of the guest beds, curled up in a little ball the way a cat is supposed to sleep. But tonight, like every night, he will no doubt come crawling up again, using his claws to get what he wants. There is another reason to eagerly anticipate the coming of the warmer months... that stupid cat can sleep outside under the stars and I can sleep the way God intended it... being encroached upon by my wife instead of my cat.

Epitaphs

2012-02-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

While I wish not to hasten my demise, I do recognize that it is forthcoming and inevitable. In that regard, it is therefore useless to try and hide from it, or bide my remaining time, be it minutes or decades, being concerned about it.

I have a pretty strong set of beliefs that come with them a great calm and even a certain sense of longing for the end. This is no suicide note. I'm a happy camper. But some days I do think, "Dead people don't have to work..."

Beside all that, I love a good mystery, and as mysteries go, death is a good one. The closest we can come is the "near death" experience. These firsthand accounts seem to have a number of common elements, but I don't regard these with any real accuracy. These stories and their similarities can be too easily explained away in a number of ways from "common brain chemistry" to "birds (weirdos) of a feather". And who is to say "near death" is any more like actual death than a "near collision" of two airplanes is like two planes actually colliding. Right up to the end they're pretty similar, but then, they couldn't be more different. At most, near death experiences are a simple whetting of our collective appetites.

See? Mysterious. I love it. I have this great curiosity about things and try to have at least a rudimentary understanding of all I can. You never know when you will meet a vulcanologist at his mother's wake who needs to talk about anything other than his mom in the box up front, surrounded by flowers. That actually happened to me. So happy was he to talk to someone about his work, and I could actually hold a conversation.

Knowing stuff comes in handy.

Why am I getting into this? I don't know. Seriously, I sit down and let my fingers do the walking. The last week has been a lot of blank pages with a cursor blinking malevolently at me. Failed attempts to commit something to the page. Yesterday, I hit upon it accidentally. I said that I wanted my epitaph to read as follows:

In life, like a hotdog.
Adored by many.
Reviled by some.
A mystery to all.

Maybe in Latin it sounds classier:

In vitae a farcimen.
Adoraverunt multis.
Maledicimur aliqua.
A mysterium ad omnes.

I had to substitute hotdog for sausage, as I am reminded that hotdogs are more or less a 20th century invention. Thank you, Polish and German immigrants! My waistline, and indeed the waistline of all the world owes you a swift kick in the ass!

Of course, I've taken you around the block, (assuming you are still reading, I know I'm not, I gave up 3 paragraphs ago), for nothing, since my epitaph doesn't matter. I am gonna be cremated, so unless someone wants an urn filled with "ash of Bill" and this charming little phrase engraved into it, then you can be my guest. Do they sell urns at Things Remembered? Do really want to be in an urn? So dour. How about a genie lamp? That would be awesome. I'd probably get rubbed more in death than in life.

Zing!

So, what would be a good epitaph for you? What two or three lines would distill your essence for the ages? It isn't so easy to figure out; and in trying, you may find you don't like what you come up with.

...For Us All to CAPTCHA

2012-02-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

"Prove you're not a robot." Said Google to me while updating or signing up for something the other day. "Type the "word" in the field below." Well, Google... first, I don't like pith or ersatz wit coming from my computer, unless it is in the form of Siri getting snippy for asking her why the chicken crossed the road, and second... I don't have a second, I just really feel strongly about the first.

And so, I squint to see what the "word" is that is obfuscated by LSD trip induced font behind a field of different shades and textures and attempt to replicate it in the little box. All to prove to Google that I am not a robot.

"On April 19, 2001 at 8:11 pm, Skynet became self-aware..."

Three of you will find that funny, two more still will correct me for quoting it wrong and that leaves my mother, who has no idea what I am talking about.

Setting aside the fact that we have subrogated our natural intelligence to all things microchip, I find the words that aren't really words in those boxes to be filled with possibilities. Since I have nothing else about which to write and since I have the attention span of a sparrow on meth, here I shall take a few that I have chronicled and create for them, definitions.

Cralsist- (n) A mass formed in the buttocks region as a result of sitting for hours on the computer, perhaps cruising Craig's List

Dultne- (Pl. n) The formal term for candy factory workers; the plural of Dult

Flirc- (n) The tracks that are made in the median of divided roads or highways by cars who have slipped off the road

Glince- (n) The special effect used in many dental product commercials to accentuate the brilliance of teeth or smile.

Hoponihi- (n) The particular gate adopted by a Pacific Islander walking on still-hot lava.

Plicrom- (n) A word that is not well known outside of a specific region, but has at least one commonly understood application within its region of origin

Sonated- (Pt. v adj) To put a large group of people to sleep during a lecture or speech; Past-tense form of Sonate

Trapperb- Usually attributed to a woman in the act of catching a man in a lie regarding his whereabouts by singling out an incongruity in his excuse and repeating it three times in successively higher volume, (See also unnendou)

Unbachar- A member of an Anti-Baroque chamber music society which eschews lyrical elements commonly found in music, of the era, such as that by J.S. Bach

Vadite- A slang term given to managers who exercise power over their staff in a tyrannical way, like Darth Vader

Here is the fun part... I only made up one of those CAPTCHA codes (That's the what the actual codes are called). Care to guess which one? Also, the title of today's post follows a certain pattern. If you can tell me what the reference is, I'll give you a reward. Of my regular readers, I have only one in mind, (maybe two) who could possibly come up with the answer. If you have more fun CAPTCHA codes, send them to me and I will endeavor to come up with fun, or at least somewhat plausible definitions for them.

What's That Smell? -Or- "Honey, Why is the Coffee Pot in the Middle of the Driveway?

2012-01-30T12:45:00.000-08:00

This morning, while fixing Juliette's medicated breakfast, I smelled something. I had just gotten her fixed up and was in the middle of offering my normal morning affirmations of "who's a pretty kitty?" when I noticed it.

Over my right shoulder sat a coffee maker that looked normal, but for the fact the display had gone dark and it was rather alarmingly, smoldering. Well, something more than smoldering but less than belching smoke. I quickly came to the conclusion that something was wrong.

I had just made a pot of coffee and only had I drank half a cup, so my first order of business was to save the coffee! I reached in and pulled out the carafe and placed it on the stove safely away from the machine while I unplugged it from the wall.

Still smoking, I gave it a moment. The first extinguisher was less than an arm's reach away so I had that option. But if you've ever had to clean up that mess you'd know it's probably better just to let the house go and build a new one. I figured I wasn't in immediate danger, so I sort of just watched for a bit to see if it would abate.

Instead, the smoke was now accompanied by an alarming set of sounds. Snap, crackle and pop are noises that you expect from your cereal bowl, not your coffee maker. The smoke was not getting better, or worse, though there was a growing acrid component that my throat found unpleasant. It reminded me of December 26th of 2010 when my television, a Sony, suffered a similar death. I attributed that one to the Lions winning a fourth game in a row.

Being a man of action, I decided to make my move. I felt the machine to see if it was too hot to touch. Realizing it was not, I gallantly picked it up and held it out arms' full length from my body in case that bad boy went up. I guess to allow the shrapnel to gain more speed and kinetic energy so it could do its maximum damage to my body. That's not the way I thought about it at the time.

I took it to the center of the driveway and left it there. It eventually stopped smoking. I had saved the house, my wife and the cats. Perhaps most importantly, now that it was poured into my huge thermos, a present from Emily's parents that they thought was ridiculously large but I have used to great effect so often I can scarcely imagine life without it, I had saved the coffee.

The word "Hero" is overused these days, but I think it's appropriate to tell it like it is in this situation. without me, that coffee may not have made it. And I would now, deep into this Monday afternoon, be a corpse, slumped over my computer with a caved in skull for lack of caffeine.

"What a shame," said the medical examiner, zipping up the black body bag... "Caffeine headache. When will people learn to recognize the warning signs? This could have been prevented!"

As a postscript, I asked Emily to call Cuisinart and tell them about my trials, in case they wanted to send in the storm troopers and reverse engineer the only two-year-old unit to find out how such a thing could happen. Instead, the man on the phone didn't care so much. After he surrendered all of France to us (standard operating procedure I guess), he took our case number, made a sneering face, (I imagine), and hung up.

Tonight we are having dinner with our young friend, Abbie, with whom we went to Cedar Point this summer, so we'll stop and buy a new coffee maker using one of 70 dozen 20% off coupons from one of America's leading purveyors of small appliances and other goo-gaws for the home.

I don't remember my parents having to replace appliances so often when I was growing up. On our visit with them a couple weeks ago, I noticed they had a new clothes dryer. I also noticed it was not "high end" like my Dad usually buys. He told me it doesn't matter. spend a hundred, spend a thousand, everything these days is crap.

Well, he didn't say that, but that was the jist. This coffee pot that went sizzle-boom-pop was a direct replacement for the previous one. Except this one was much lighter, the case made of plastic instead of stainless steel. It had an overall cheaper feel. And that turned out to be true. This one cost $10.00 less than the first one, but lasted less than half as long. I'd gladly pay the sawbuck if it meant it wouldn't burn my house down.

Perhaps Messeur Cafe should be replaced with good old Mr. Coffee. Maybe a good old 'Merican coffee pot will fully explode and take us all with it instead of just throwing a pansy little hissy fit like this one did. Just like the French, eh?

Call the ASPCA

2012-01-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

We needed to take the cats in this afternoon for their vaccinations and checkups and such. Juliette has been quite sick and I rattled off a bunch of demands to the doc in my best Doug Ross low, fast, reassuring patter, before I left the room to take care of some work.

"She isn't breathing well, she's listless, has a discharge from her eyes and snores like a coal miner. We slowed way down on the amount of food we feed her and she's only lost .2 pounds in 2 years. I am concerned she is retaining fluid, so please take a pee test and listen closely to her heart and lungs. Excuse me, I have to go out here for a moment."

Well, my cat, (likely both cats), have Herpes. In my follow up reading it's quite a common problem and quite an oft-administered diagnosis. The manifestations of the disease are identical to Juliette's symptoms and so we were given a tube of stuff to feed her twice a day, every day until it's gone.

It's a big-ass tube, and fellow cat owners out there know that most cats don't pine too well to being force fed something from a tube. I have no idea how long it will take to get through the tube in calendar months, but I would say whatever length of time it is will be tantamount to 1,000 eternities in Hell.

The directions benignly tell us to put a little dab on kitty's nose to stimulate the taste desire and kitty will then, as if being fed some sort of beluga caviar and black truffle aphrodisiac, lap the stuff up willingly and cry, neigh, wail for more.

I think not. Not my cat anyway who is as famously fickle as she is fantastically fatuous. A female. Siamese. Cat. The female Siamese cat who, without any discouragement from her "owners", runs the place-The whole place and every aspect of the place.

Needless to say, Juliette did not leap rapturously at the goo we wiped on her runny nose. She almost figured out a way to eat around it when we stirred it into the soft food we gave her. But, she did eat it in the soft food.

I won't put it past her that she knew this was her ticket to soft food heaven. For those of you who doubt a cat can be smart and manipulative, I recommend you own one for a day. Soft food is but a treat in this house, because our cats drink plenty of water, (most of it right from my glass when I look away but for a moment), and because soft food makes for soft, fat, namby pamby cats.

And I'm cheap.

So until this industrial vat sized tube of L-Lysine, (yep-a common synthetic amino acid), is gone, each day, twice a day is either going to be a struggle, or will be silently lapped up in so much soft, expensive, highly caloric food. Our choice then, put another way, is to struggle or capitulate.

Hi, my name is Neville Chamberlain...

So much for the .2 drop. We'll get her immune system up where it needs to be and get her feeling better, but she will be indistinguishable from a hedgehog by that point, all round and fatty. Then we'll have to wean her off the soft stuff and put her back on her senior cat, sensitive stomach, hairball control, caffeine free, neurotic food, (seriously, this stuff has so many bullet point descriptors on the bag you can't even see the picture of the desperate looking single woman in her 40s trying so hard to please her cat), she had been eating for years and liking just fine, thank you very much.

Like I said, I don't know how long this medicine is going to last in actual calendar time, but one thing's for sure... it's gonna be a long tube.

A Week With the Fam

2012-01-16T13:33:00.001-08:00

Em and I got back from my parents' house in Las Vegas yesterday. Thank God for smooth, on-time flights and no hassles in either direction. In fact, everything about this trip was relaxed and went as planned.

We surprised my Mom for a momentous birthday. I won't say she's 70, because it's apparently not nice to say peoples' ages for all the world to hear. Back in October, my sister called me and told me she and my Dad had cooked up a scheme to surprise Mom for her big day.

It was touch and go there for a bit while I figured out work. Thankfully it did all work out and in three stages Mom was surprised- First by Emily and I, then by my sister, Peggy, (who looks nothing like the Peggy from the Capital One commercials) mid-week and then by my Aunt and Uncle on her birthday and for the rest of the weekend.

As a family, we aren't close... geographically. I often think that is a bit of a blessing because, let's face it, family like too much of any good thing can have its own set of challenges. But we are close in all other senses of the term and it was really nice to all be together without agendas or the need to rush. It was almost like an extended afternoon visit.

Which is to say, this was not an especially exciting vacation. It was a fulfilling, relaxing thoroughly enjoyable one with people I love dearly and whom I miss already. My family all looks good, is healthy and happy and faces no insurmountable tribulations at this time, so there was no stress or issues. They all let me be a smart-ass and more importantly let me win a cribbage and Scrabble so I wouldn't sulk; which is why being a sore loser is totally the way to go.

We ate too much good food, got some great views up on a nearby mountain that is among the highest peaks in Nevada and we shopped. And shopped. And shopped! I didn't lose any money at the tables, because I didn't gamble. My blackjack app on the way home reminded me why. Every hand is a potential loser. I didn't feel much like losing.

It is of course good to be home. Too bad about the snow, but it is inevitable. It has been so nice up to now I won't complain. Our excellent neighbors plowed the drive and took care of the cats and the mail. Still more excellent friends chauffeured us to, from, betwixt and between the airport. The cats were so happy to see us, even they cuddled up together and slept literally on top of me last night... and that's like Isreal and Palestine getting together and sipping out of a root beer float with two straws. That's kind of a nerd joke so if you don't get it, think of it like the president of the chess club and the head cheerleader hooking up. If you don't get that, you are an loser, a nerd and grossly uninformed. But you're reading this, so you can't be all bad. So, for you, it's like a Vulcan and a Romulan holding hands in the holodeck.

Back to work now as reality has roared back full force. I guess in the end it is rain that makes sun so sweet and work that makes play so necessary. Whatever lies in the future, this last week will truly be a blessing and a fondly enduring memory for us all.

Life's Lessons

2012-01-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

I like to think I learn something every day I am on earth in this body. One of my many -isms is that if you stop learning, or wanting to learn, there is no reason to be here... or anywhere. I typically pride myself on not having to be beaten about the head and neck with a lesson in order to "get it". I usually "get it" pretty quickly.

This morning, I found out an old friend from High School, Mike Mello, passed suddenly a few days ago. I don't know how, I will never know why, (it's not for me to know), but I know I missed an opportunity. And it's not the first time.

I looked Mike up on Facebook about a year ago. He flashed back into my memory for one reason or another. He was a tall guy with a broad smile. He exuded warmth. He was kind. He was a talented performer and as an upper-classman, he was a mentor to me. We were in Madrigal choir together for one year in 1991-1992. We were a true madrigal group, singing only renaissance music in the proper style, always with an eye on accuracy to the music and the times. We performed a lot during Christmas. We dressed in period costumes and looked ridiculous. Remind me to tell you the story of getting stuck in a ditch on my way to a winter concert in full regalia and the good ol' boys who stopped to help pull me out.

And we got laughed at. We were the Glee kids. It built character and it didn't hurt that we were good. We were very, very good. I wouldn't trade my time in that choir for any other time in my life. It was, one of very few bright spots in the four years of blight and darkness with which I regard my high school days.

When Mike graduated, he gave me his costume. He said he wanted me to have it. I still remember the moment in the robe room at the end of the year. It wasn't off-handed. He turned to me, got real close, (he was a about a foot taller than me, or so it seemed), and held it out to me. He wanted me to have it. He presented it to me, with that trademark wide smile. I remember that moment with such warmth, like I am being hugged. I gladly accepted and wore it with pride. I then bequeathed it on to someone upon my graduation. For all I know, it is still in use, today. The wearer may or may not know the great provenance that comes with that costume. If someone is wearing it, I hope that Mike's kindness and indefatigable spirit somehow comes through.

I had a dream about that moment in the middle of a mostly sleepless night and again filed it away in my box of mental resolutions that I would have to look Mike up. He lived at the time, according to his Facebook profile in Ferndale, MI. He was in a relationship with another man. Ferndale is where I essentially lived with my besties Greg and Dave for almost three years while commuting to the east side of the state. The gay community in Ferndale is pretty close. I never even asked Dave and Greg whether they knew mike. I put the information in my hat, and I decided I would get to it later.

After shoveling snow this morning, I came in to have my hot coffee and Facebook time. I saw some pictures of him, smiling. I didn't see that next to them said RIP Mikee. It was one of those moments where time ceases and consciousness struggles with reality. I was alone in the room and still verbally said, "Oh, no. No. Oh, no." I seldom speak unless there is someone there to hear me. This time, it didn't matter. I couldn't stop myself.

So, here it is later. And it turns out later is too late. I never even "friended" him on Facebook. I guess maybe I was afraid he wouldn't remember me. I have a complex about that. He was after all, Mike Mello! The Mike Mello. I was just,well, me. Why would he remember?

Another time in my life I missed an opportunity to connect with someone. We had a friend in New Jersey whose mother, I was told, I would simply love. I had to meet her, I was told. I had the chance one snowy night during Christmastime when we picked up our friend to go out to dinner. A barbecue place. Em encouraged me to come in and meet this woman who I was told I would just love. I was crusty that night. I remember being in a bad mood. Next time, I said. Next time.

She slipped in a pool on vacation in Mexico and died of massive swelling of the brain three months later. It was right before my 30th birthday. Em had solicited people to write me notes to put into a memory book for me to have. Her letter to me was in there. It read something like, can't wait to meet you. Of course that would not happen, as I had attended her funeral the day before. Hearing the stories about her, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss of someone I never even met. I surely would have been blessed to meet her. If even just the once.

So, I am feeling beaten, shaken and stirred. Mike was a genuinely good guy and I really am sorry I didn't take my valuable time to reach out. Even if he didn't remember me, we would have been friends again in adulthood.

Now, I am only a mourner. Along with dozens, and I am sure hundreds of other people privileged enough to have known Mike Mello. January 1973-December 2012. Goodbye, Mike. See you on the other side.

My Christmas Cheer

2011-12-30T05:50:00.000-08:00

Sung to the tune of “Oh Tannenbaum” (“Oh Christmas Tree”)

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Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, Oh how we do adore the.

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, Ignore what came before thee

We know with Suh and Vandenbosch, their Quarterbacks say, “Oh, my gosh!”

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, you know your fans adore thee

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Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, you’ve come to win the game

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, you wilst thou crush and maim

You’ll cross their T’s, you’ll dot their I’s, and when you win you’ll ostracize

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, we know you’ll win the game

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Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, I hope you'll beat the Packers

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, a bunch of cheese head slackers

Just let loose Johnson down the field and their defense is sure to yield

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, it's time to crush the Packers

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Oh, Lions team, Oh Lions team, you’re going to the playoffs

Oh Lions team, Oh Lions team, no time to take a day off

Match any team from anywhere, Stafford will kill them in the air

Oh, Lions team, Oh Lions team, it is about damn time!

-Bill Uebbing 12/30/2011 8:47am

16,338 Words

2011-12-27T12:44:00.000-08:00

A simple Google search revealed to me today that the average modern novel has, depending upon your definition of modern and upon which of myriad answers you choose to believe, 50,000-200,00 words.

Granted, that's a big ball park. War and Peace, The Fountainhead, The Stand, all have many, many more. The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Rosencrantz and Gilderstern are Dead have many, many less. The page count of a 50,000 word paperback is about 126-150. 70,000 words seems to be a magic number to get to 200 pages, which, let's face it, is hardly a long book. Now, 250 pages and you've got yourself something. It feels meaty in your hand, but it isn't too intimidating for most readers. The public will feel they are getting their money's worth and not be too afraid to pick the thing up.

All this assumes people still buy physical books. I know they do, but in the three-and-a-half years since I worked at Barnes & Noble it is amazing to see the diminished inventory they have on hand. Right up front is the Nook stand where they will happily sell you one of many styles of their house brand readers. One can get the Amazon (whatever that is) version as well, if they are predisposed to just giving their money to terrorists. I have made use of my iPad to read and unsurprisingly, there is an app for both Nook and Kindle.

Point being, I shouldn't be so wrapped up in word count, or page count as it all seems to matter less and less since it all is the same size, weight and shape on an e-reading device.

But I am wrapped up in it. I bet you'd like to know why; and if you don't, you needn't have bothered to read this long, because it's all working up to this - I have been taking the little extra time I have had and started plugging away at my little work of fiction. As of today, I have an unpolished, sort of manic thing that is, by the storyboard in my head, about half done and Word says it is 16,338 words. My calculator says that is about 33% of a really small novel. But it's about 50% of what I think I have left to write. Double it and you get 32,676 words, which takes me on a bus straight past short storyville but drops me off short of novel country for wont of more fair.

Put another way, my less-than-brilliant, been done-to-death idea is too long to be a movie script, impossible to adapt for a stage play, and too short to be a novel. It's a novelette. Novelette is a term no one uses anymore. Because novelettes are stupid. My project is like caffeine free diet pop - a big fat glass of why bother.

Now, I suppose it could end up being longer. I haven't completely fleshed it all out yet. I am kind of banging it out, since I only have a vague idea of how it will end and I am sort of just letting it get there. Once I have a beginning and a middle and an end, maybe I will need some more supporting material or dialogue to bolster a storyline or scene. Maybe I have not included enough information to get from plot point to plot point and a reader who does not know how to read my mind might end up saying, "huh?".

Many authors talk about their intensive research and outlines that have back stories that never even make it in to the book, but they need them as inspiration to justify what the character does, and... huh? Why write a book, and then a book? If you are going to speak about your characters as literally alive, (can you turn a human character into an anthropomorphism? Discuss amongst yourselves), how can you so intensively predestine all that they will do and say?

I don't do it that way. My characters say what they say in the moment and that causes what is next to happen. What the hell do I know? I've never done this before!

This is a purely academic exercise, this fretting about the word count of my first attempt at long fiction. The only place it will ever be published on to a pdf on my thumb drive.

Someone who reads my blog, (and professes to like it), asked if I ever planned on packaging up some of the better posts (implying there are any at all), and making a book out of them. How am I going to find time to do that? I'm trying to write a book!

Some people just don't get it.

The Doors of Deception

2011-12-22T05:54:00.000-08:00

We live in an old house. We knowingly and willingly entered into the contract to own and be stewards for said house. It is said the only thing that works consistently in an old house is its owner. Truer words were never spoken. It definitely pays to be handy, or at least intrepid in an old home, especially when your pocketbook and your wife make gutting it and starting over an impossibility.

Emily, you see is a historic preservationist. She actually is a commissioner on the Grand Rapids Board of Historic Preservation. No vinyl windows for us! The fact that we have vinyl siding, (installed by a previous owner), is an infamnia! It was only the promise, written and notarized, that I would one day remove said siding and restore it to proper wood lapstrake siding that got her to sign the mortgage papers with me. Since we're married, it seemed proper to live together. I know that's a little old fashioned, but oh well.

I know I have written about our house before. It is only natural that something which takes up so much of my energy, money and motivation would be a frequent subject on my web log (since we're being old-timey). Among the idiosyncrasies in our particular old house, was the bathroom door Because of age, settlement, and some previously done ham-handed "improvements", it was difficult to close. It needed to be pushed inward to the jamb rather purposefully in order to hear the 'click' that indicated it was latched. Not doing so virtually assured that one of my cats, who by the by hate closed doors of any kind, would drop by and simply pop a paw under the door, reducing whatever modesty you had to nothing.

It has happened.

Once ensconsed properly and safely, a stranger would find getting back out of the room was difficult as the knob also required a trick... you see, you couldn't just turn it, it would just spin. You had to grab the escucheon piece behind the knob and turn it. It was best accomplished while pushing the door into the jamb, to avoid a somewhat alarming 'pop!' when the door sprung back open.

So, every time someone new came to the house, we had to explain the whole process. There was a powerpoint and a written placard, laminated for durability and a physical demonstration of the process. Of course, our guest would be doing the pee pee dance the entire time. I can't tell you how many people we sent home prematurely with wet pants. We started to get low on towels, since we would insist they put one down on their car seat before they drove away. It was the least we could do.

Over the last two years, we have been slowly but steadily removing our globbily painted trim upstairs, including the door frame of the bathroom. I took the door off, with designs on cleaning it up,repainting it and reinstalling it. But nothing is ever that simple.

For three weeks, we had no door on the bathroom. I stripped the many layers of paint from the door, which takes awhile. Especially the gummy layer(s?) lead and oil paints were slow going. One side of the door, the side facing the landing, (it isn't really a hallway, just a spot with doors everywhere you turn), had paint over top of finish. I got most of the finish off, but not all.
This turned out to be a mistake as even though I primed and prepped the door, paint would simply not take on the center panel where there was still finish that I didn't remove.

So I ended up removing the paint off that side of the door. Yes, the paint I just put on. Yes, even the primer.

I decided I liked the look of the center panel in finish with the stiles of the door painted. I figured it would break up the feeling of claustrophobia on the small 2nd floor landing. I like the look. Then I decided I didn't like the old brass hardware. We had already purchased bone white antique knobs to replace the mishmash of knobs we had. We have removed all the bright brass in our house and replaced it with finished like oil rubbed bronze, which we prefer.

And Em wanted a working lock on the bathroom door. So, I ended up having to adjust the mortise for the new works and once I got it put together I really hated the brass. So, some bronze backplates are on special order... for a dear price, I might add.

Long story short, it took us a couple hours to hang the door, (remember nothing is square) and get it to fit and open and close and lock and work. Three weeks of work and it isn't done, but it is up, working, and just waiting for the new "jewelery" to come in. Then I will touch up all the spots that got dinged up in the install and voila, 5 weeks start to finish.

What did we learn, (or learn again)?
1. Home improvement shows have crews of professionals doing the work behind the scenes.
2. Nothing gets done in 1/2 hour... or even 3 1/2 hours. It takes me that long to find stuff I
should have put away last time.
3. Next time, given the choice between hanging a door, or hanging myself, I'll gladly take the
noose and walk under my own power to the highest tree I can find.
4. After all that work, the door still looks like it is almost 90 years old in an almost 90 year old
house and doesn't fit well and upon close inspection looks pretty dodgy. And there is nothing,
shy of moving to a new house that will fix that.
5. Undoing someone else's mistake is worse than trying to undo your own, because you at least
know what mindset you were in when you made the mistake and can back-track. Trying to
undo a strangers work that was done long ago is much like slow torture. Each new step
reveals another layer of hell.
6. As discussed by the neighbors at our recent Christmas party, you can either pay $300,000 to
buy a perfect house, or $150,000 now and $150,000 more over the next 15 years to have a
house that is not perfect, but is close enough that you can take a year or two off before starting
all over again.

My need for symmetry and organization requires I go to 10 on the list, but I think that about covers it. One door to finish, three to go (six if you include closets). I'm shooting for 2020.

Did I mention I am restoring the storm windows over the winter, too? Oh, that's a whole 'nother story.

A Cross in the Road

2011-12-19T06:18:00.000-08:00

I don't know a better way to come out and say it, so I'll just say it. I cannot stand the memorials that people put up in the location of the death of someone along the road. They are proliferating at a rapid pace, even though traffic deaths are sharply down nationwide. This would lead one to believe that there is death-a-plenty on the nations roads when that is simply, patently false.

If you have been touched by someone you love dying in a car accident, I don't mean offense. I have not been immune to this either. In fact, I believe in the western world, it is rare to find someone who doesn't know someone, or have loved someone who has been seriously hurt or killed in a car accident or some other type of road accident.

But I fail to understand the roadside memorials. Cemeteries are often considered "Memorial Gardens". Battlefields are regarded as hallowed ground in deference to those who lost their lives on that spot. Occasionally, places that were the location of death for persons of distinction are regarded and identified as memorials to those who lost their lives. There are a number of examples of this ranging from Ford's Theater to the 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Center sites.

The roadside memorials of which I write started as improvised crosses or small trellises of flowers. I first remember seeing them about a decade ago. At the first, they came across as, well, makeshift and cheap. They have achieved ubiquity, all the while evolving to become more and more elaborate. The evolution of these memorials is still very much in progress. I imagine this is much like headstones evolved over time. One can see this in very old cemeteries which display simple white marble stones which are so old as to be eroded, to new markers that are as elaborate as the pocket books of the dead could make them. They are far more like statues in a park than grave markers.

On the way to my office in St. Jospeh from Grand Rapids, I pass no less than 7 memorials in Kent and Ottowa counties alone. The most recent to appear is also the most elaborate. It is along southbound I-196 near Hudsonville. There are three crosses and wreaths of flowers in a field that has been graded to a flat area off the shoulder of the road delineated by white painted railroad ties and red cypress mulch.

Whomever did the work took their time. It looks for all the world like a little cemetery right there at the side of the road. But it isn't. It is simply a memorial to people who perished, one could say tragically or at least unexpectedly near that spot. I don't know who they are. I imagine only a few people do, because it would be improper and extremely dangerous to simply stop on the shoulder of a 70 mph highway to pay homage to the deceased. And isn't the purpose for a memorial to stop and regard the lives of those lost?

In our part of the world, where winter is harsh and spring brings on the explosive growth of grass and wildflowers, these roadside memorials become obstacles for the municipal workers who are charged with maintaining the roads we all travel. Over time, it is inevitable that these memorials, not made of resilient stones and other hard-wearing materials, degrade and look tawdry and unkempt and does nothing to honor the memory of the person who passed.

These areas are owned and maintained by the municipalities in which they lie and paid for with taxpayer dollars at the federal, state and local levels. As such, these memorials should be immediately declared illegal and removed immediately upon being erected.

Again, I mean no disrespect to those who have passed away violently, tragically, unexpectedly, too young and full of promise and hope. I just don't feel their memory is served properly by these makeshift memorials. Nor do I feel they provide a cautionary reminder to drive courteously and safely, at least not based on what I perceive as an overwhelming lack of consideration and intelligence by most drivers on the roads today.

In spite of our lack of discipline behind the wheel our accident and death rates continue to decline. This even though the number of drivers and miles driven nationwide have steadily increased decade on decade. Yet, were someone from a foreign land to accompany me on my way to my office, they might be lead to believe our roads are a daily dealer of death and destruction and their very lives hang in the balance.

A proper memorial for people who die on the road would be an obituary that encourages people to donate funds in the name of the deceased to charities and organizations that help raise awareness of road dangers or enforcement of rules and limits on roads that are dangerous. Perhaps saving someone else from a similar death is the best memorial one could hope for under the circumstances.

On Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T06:14:00.000-08:00

I am not qualified to speak on the specific works of Mr. Hitchens, as I admit to never having read a thing he wrote. This is not because I chose to be ignorant, it is because I simply refuse to read anything about religion as I am not interested in what you believe or don't.
Such is the surity of my belief, which I incidentally have not simply acquired or inherited without great thought and repeated personal proof. I am not searching for anything and thus do not need a primer from anyone else.
I know who he was. I know what his theology was, (and it was, ironically a theology with dogma unto itself), and I did not agree.
Upon his death, I am simply filled with deep curiosity. What is death like, Mr. Hitchens?
If he was right, I could not ever, will not ever, know the answer, because my mind cannot contemplate complete nothingness; and if it could, my mind would cease to exist upon my death and there would be no me.
While Mr. Hitchens was clearly unafraid of death, I am too. It is amazing that the same fearlessness of leaving this mortal coil can be reached through such diametrically opposed beliefs.
Maybe the takeaway here should be that there is commonality to be found amongst us all.
What I fail to understand is why believers disregard disbelievers out of hand as evil and disbelievers regard believers as killers, war mongers in the name of a god that they have created for convenience and/or soft-headed cultists. None of this is true on the face or otherwise.
I don't believe Mr. Hitchens regarded believers with a great deal of respect. I feel this did not move the ball much in the great (greatest?) debate.
Rest In Peace, Mr. Hitchens. See you on the other side... I should like to have tea with you upon my arrival if you will have me. I think I would find you fascinating.

Bill Uebbing, Professional. Bad Ass. Zombie Killer.

2011-12-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

I actually had a protracted dream in full technicolor and Cinema Surround the other night that the zombie apocalypse had finally arrived. I was the only one in the group of Helens and Nancys who would, or even could save the day.

It started innocently enough, as the group of strangers I was with and I broke into a gun store and looted the place. Long guns, pistols... ammo, ammo, ammo. We took as much as we could carry.
For some reason, a nearby funeral home was deemed the most hardened place to hide out and defend. Not a bad idea, except for all the recently dead who were waking back up.

First we had to defend from the inside... Firing volleys on the undead and watching them explode with the awesome firepower of my shotgun. Then, after stacking the recently dead-cum zombie-cum really really dead, like cordwood, we began to defend the permiter.
Long story short, we won. We, (I), since the people I was with were entirely worthless killed all the zombies we could find.

Weird dream.

And unprecedented for me. I rarely have bad or violent dreams. This one, while it seems violent at first blush, was really more entertaining and campy. I knew I was dreaming the whole time and just never stopped it. I was having fun watching myself be Bill Uebbing. Professional. Bad Ass. Zombie Killer.
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Can't we get on with this whole Christmas thing? I just want a reliable and broadly accepted excuse to stop working and still get paid! I have been too busy, which is good. Some of the most productive weeks of the year so far, actually.

The owner of my company, (who is also a friend), said he loves the holidays, but hates how it is such a distraction and a detriment to productivity. Oh how I wish. I could use the break!
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I am a smart, stupid person. Going back and reading some recent post leads me to be shocked and appalled at the lack of quality and bush-league mistakes! The same that I mercilessly poke fun at others for. <---- Like ending sentences with prepositions.

While I do not purport this blog as a quality piece, (quite the contrary, actually), I shall do my best to watch the misuses, misspellings, etc. Thanks for not making fun of me to my face. Of course now that you know I am a Professional. Bad Ass. Zombie Killer. You are less apt to do so. At least I assume as much.

Dashing Through the Snow

2011-12-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Ahh, the first accumulated snow. It's a little late this year here in our part of "America's High Five", but the inevitable has finally happened. Of course the veritable dusting has lead to the equally inevitable and totally predictable carnage on the roads as people regain their "snow legs."

I think driving in the snow is the best example of modern day Darwinian theory with respect to natural selection. Only Darwin didn't know about 2 stage airbags, passive and active restraints and CATIA developed safety cages made with equal parts 'mathemagic' and high strength steel.

What does all that mean? Last year's idiots have survived to crash again this year. The herd is therefore not thinned, and a new Darwinian construct is allowed to flourish... "Reciprocal Idiocy."
Never heard of that one? Probably because I just made it up. So, for the benefit of those readers who might not immediately latch on to the concept, allow me to explain a bit further.

Reciprocal Idiocy is the phenomenon in which bad behavior is repeated due to lack of permanent consequence, (the most potent example being death), resulting from outside, (non-natural), forces that result in a preternatural, (read superhuman levels of), ability to survive the unsurvivable, (cheat death), thus allowing the perpetuation of the genes that are marked as predisposing the gene holders, (idiots), to repeat said behavior in the future, (hence, Reciprocal Idiocy), until the eventual intercession of the consequence, (death- but only after they perpetuate the legacy of Reciprocal Idiocy by parenting 9 kids).

This year's soccer mom, upside-down spinning like a top in the ditch of her new Honda Odyssey, cell phone plastered to her ear and bottle of Xanax spilled all over the headliner is the same soccer mom who ran last year's new Honda Odyssey off the road to ruin at the same place under the same circumstances. Hey, isn't that what insurance is for?

This year's contractor, feeling equal parts invincible and ignorant, who takes out 60 yards of shiny, freshly installed, tax payer funded guard rail is the same one who did the same thing in the same place last year... only his truck still bears the scars because the insurance company stopped covering him years ago.

The most egregious offenders are typically those with 4X4 stickers emblazoned on the flanks of their huge vehicles which are often additionally festooned with extra lights, knobby tires and are lifted to the point where one would need an elevator to make it ADA compliant. These people wouldn't understand coefficient of friction if you were on an ice rink. They cannot be convinced that 4 wheels spinning on ice isn't better than 2, or 6, or 100.

Not too far behind them are the aforementioned soccer moms in the mini-vans, (about which there is nothing mini, with the average one weighing in excess of 4,000 pounds), followed by anyone driving a commercial vehicle.

These folks all seem predisposed to driving as fast as possible, testing the limits of their capabilities and indeed the laws of physics. Often, they are single-handing it on the steering wheel, staring at the cell phone, trying to text with gloves on, or otherwise engaging in activities that lie in direct contradiction to the act of driving.

You can see them from a mile away, or you could if they ever turned on their headlights. Come to think of it, it seems as though most of these folks adopt a run-silent-run-deep philosophy, never bothering the even remove the accumulated snow from their vehicles, (including those unneeded and pesky brake lights), so they can achieve maximum stealth. There is nothing quite so awe inspiring as a huge snow drift passing you at 80 miles an hour in white out conditions. It's as if the ice berg passed the Titanic on the right, cut it off and slammed on the brakes.

On the other side of the coin are the shell-shocked Sheldons and Susans who are sitting so close to their steering wheels they would be blown into the next county in the event of an airbag deployment. They couldn't possibly negotiate a change of direction of their vehicle on account of the fact that they have left no room for their arms to manipulate the wheel more than a degree or two off-center.

Therefore, they drive at something just over the pace of the tectonic movement of whatever continent they're on, creating a rolling chicane that exposes all around them to danger tantamount having a mountain dropped directly in the path of a bullet train. Bad things always happen when one of these people are about.

I wrote a paper in college once that scientifically predicted the likelihood that these people would be first at each and every stoplight, causing spectacular near-collisions at each quarter-mile interval as people who are not idiots take drastic evasive action to avoid sure metal on metal contact. The likelihood, I surmised, was 100%. Perhaps there is a margin of error there, but anecdotally, it's at least 100% of the time. Probably more.

The final group of idiots are the "Crazy Ivans", so named after the maneuver practiced by many Soviet submarine skippers to check and see if anything is following them on their "six", directly behind them. This maneuver involves a rapid change of direction, (often a 360 turn) in the least possible space without provocation or warning.

Crazy Ivans don't use their signals, don't tap their brakes before slowing, don't offer any indication or warning at all of impending drastic vectoring. In fact, it seldom looks like Ivan and Ivana even know where they are going and even appear to be just as surprised as you are that they just pulled a left turn from the far right line right in front of you, lost traction (on account of the snow) and are now about to become your hood ornament.

I watched a Crazy Ivan driving a Ford Focus two winters ago down the center of the highway (which was fine, because we all were since conditions were really awful). He tapped his brakes. Why? Only Ivan knows, but he got a little squirrely. Ivan didn't simply let off the break and coast safely to a slower speed, he yanked the wheel to correct, which started a polar moment oscillation from which there would be no recovery, at least not with his demonstrable lack of skill.

Ivan then hit the built up snow with one tire, panicked, slammed on the brakes and pirouetted gracefully backward into the ditch. I could see his face as I passed him by and I am pretty sure he called his wife for a change of pants before calling AAA.

People, and I'm speaking to the non-idiots (if you are not sure into which group you fall, just stop reading now) - we have to watch out for the scourge of the reciprocal idiot. They aren't going anywhere. Imagine watching "Night of the Living Dead", only the zombies didn't die when you shoot them in the head. They just kept coming. The reciprocal idiot isn't out to get you, but like a large tuna net, they just sort of indiscriminately collect anything and everything in their path... Oh look, a shoe!

I encourage you, parents of the future leaders of the post-apocalyptic earth... be on guard. Don't get taken out! Live to keep the gene pool deep and chlorinated. You are the final hope of all civilization. Godspeed. Be careful out there, it's gonna be a long, long winter.

The Beginning of the End, or, A Lesson in Irrelevancy

2011-12-06T05:59:00.000-08:00

Part of growth is change. Change is inevitable. Yet, for one giant government entity, change seems to be coming all too slowly. I am speaking of course of the U.S. Post Office.

I am do not relish industry downsizing because if often means jobs lost and lives changed, (for the worse), at least in the short term. But the Postmaster General himself admits that the postal service knows the days of high volume first class mail delivery, long the bread-and-butter of the whole operation, are over.

So the recent $3Bn in cuts while massive, will be completely ineffective. Completely. The reasons for this opinion of mine are enumerated by any number of professional news outlets who can do a much better job of explaining them than I, but it comes down to this: Your user base continues to shrink, the post office keeps cutting services allowing private enterprise into the vacuum who will do it better, faster, cheaper, forcing the user base to shrink and you keep cutting services, etc.

See where this is going?

My solution is this. By the end of 2013, shutter the U.S. Postal Service... at least in its current form. From now on, all metered mail of all types will be taken care of by purely private industries, not the hybridized public/private enterprise that we have come to know doesn't work. Need I even reference FannieMae and FreddieMac? Well, too late, I just did.

The postal service will begin to liquidate to the highest private bidder who can demonstrate ability, expertise and financial fortitude, all its routes and assets. The current crop of postal workers, who make government mandated minimum salaries, (reference the Davis-Bacon wage act for more information), receive government level benefits and pensions and who have to apply through normal government employment channels, will have to apply for jobs at the private concerns. They will be actual private employees working for actual private employers. Their pay and longevity will then presumably be based upon performance and work ethic. Just as it should be. Anyone who disagrees with this broad statement is welcome to debate the relative merit, (singular for a reason), of the seniority system. I wouldn't bother.

UPS, FedEx, DHL, RPS, etc. will see explosive growth. They will first balance the books by making sure their workers get paid a wage in line with the skill it requires to perform the tasks at hand. They will raise the rates on bulk mail and circulars. I guarantee they will have the books balanced and offer an easy to understand, safe and reliable service within a shot period of time. Customers will be happier. Users will increase through a series of continual improvements which all the private package handlers have shown in spades... these people are innovators. What was the last innovation the postal service introduced? The forever stamp? Whoopie!

Congress, comprised of failed business persons and felons, will no longer be the board of directors for the postal service, (I needn't extol the bounteous virtures inherent in that development), and can focus more of their energy on ruining our country while sucking money like so many human Hoovers. I didn't use Dyson there because of alliteration and on account of the fact that unlike the Dyson, Congress is composed of bags who do appear to lose some of their suction with age. Compare Barney Frank now with what he was in the 1980s for a good example of this phenomenon. I digress.

Direct mail inserts, unsolicited credit offers and all other manner of bulk detritus will slow or cease altogether. Therefore, greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions will thus be reduced.

I see win win win win win win win, here. Except for the too highly paid, too secure in their jobs postal delivery people who for generations have exploited the relative apathy of the public it serves and underperformed to the extent they can get away with it.

Kelly Garland Brown, friend and sometimes commentator to this blog posted to Facebook:

""For the first time in 40 years, stamped letters will not get somewhere overnight." Where does that happen? We live in Chicago, where it can take up to 2 weeks for something to get to another place in Chicago! Lose Saturday delivery? Don't care! My mailman doesn't deliver on Saturdays anyway since it interferes with his loafing schedule. Who uses the mail for anything important anyway?"

I think she and many others of her ilk, (read intelligent, educated professionals) will agree... The time for talking is over. The long, slow decline of the postal service is inevitable. Let's all save a lot of time and money and just euthanize it now.

Disorder in the House

2011-12-02T07:56:00.000-08:00

Our church's sanctuary must be 10,000 square feet. It's a pretty big place. They manage to decorate for Christmas (Hang the Greens as they call it), in one Sunday afternoon with the help of many hands. I never volunteer to help with this as I consider decorating for Christmas a torture akin to the trail of tears or the Bataan death march. I can be happy and bouncing with energy until I even think of the process of pulling the 3700 pounds of Tuppermade and Rubberware containers out of the attic and shuffling my world around to unearth and place all the little pieces of flair and the lights and carefully unboxing, hooking and placing the ornaments on the tree. That energy is zapped from me like it was never there. And it feels like it will never come back.

At 36 years old, I literally feel like stomping my feet and throwing a Grand Mal tantrum at the very thought. I cannot deny my raw emotion. I could tell myself to grow up and play along, (which I really do try to do), but inside I am screaming like a mental patient in desperate need for 50cc of Haldol.

And Em just wants someone who will enjoy it with her. I find myself impotent to the challenge. Perhaps a large part of it is that our hanging of the greens takes a lot longer than a Sunday afternoon. Those aforementioned large plastic containers have been out and sitting since Saturday last; and will be there through Sunday this. After all is finally out and placed and dusted and lit and fussed over and ruminated upon, my chore will be to take those now empty but still giant containers back up to the attic... for like, three weeks until they need to come back down. And then go back up, laden once again with 3700 pounds of Christmas cheer, plus the accumulated weight of this year's spoils.

And there will be spoils.

After I get it all back up and out of the way on Sunday, my reward will be to... wait for it... Decorate the low income apartments for Christmas with the youth group! Hazzah! This is a really good thing for the kids to do, and I this will be the fourth year we are doing it. We recognize many of the faces and even are getting to know a lot of the names of the denizens of this place, a former hospital now turned into apartments for people with mental and physical disabilities.

Since it was not conceived as a government run HUD house, it is bereft of the drab indistinct clinical government building pallor. It is a well maintained and very pretty place. After we are done, it even represents something of a festive place.

But, I hate it. Because even though we are bringing joy to a a deserving population, I still can't manage to find happiness in the act of decorating for Christmas.

Maybe after a few more years away from retail I will be more in tune with Christmas and the wonder it represents. Perhaps I will be able to buy into the modern physical celebration that accompanies the faithful thoughtfulness of the season. For now, I just have to force myself to get it done without raining on the parades of all those people out there who are normal, and love this stuff.

The Final Frontier

2011-12-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

My Name is Bill, and I am a Trekker. I recently fell off the wagon after about 10 years of sobriety. I mean, sure I watched the occasional movie with friends, but it was always a social thing. I was in control of it. I would sit and make fun of the movies, even though I really liked them.

Earlier this year, I started really craving Star Trek. All of it, from Kirk to Janeway. I never much cared for Archer, he just wasn't my thing... but that T'pal... she's another matter altogether.

I started cruising the cable listings and recording all the Trek I could find and watching it when no one was home. One time, my wife came home and caught me. I was so embarrassed as I fumbled for an excuse.
"What are you doing?", she asked.
"I, um... well, Paul Winfield is in this episode. I was just flipping through the channels. I really like Paul Winfield."
"If you're flipping through the channels, how come it's on the DVR?"
"Uhhhhh."

About a week after that, I didn't realize she was over my shoulder while I was looking at the comprehensive guide to The United Federation of Planets "Ships of the Line" on the internet. I was so embarrassed, I said "Shaka, when the Walls fell!" I knew I was caught.

To make matters worse, BBC America televised 14 solid hours of Next Gen on Thanksgiving. I filled up the DVR and keep going back to watch them. I'm even finding Troi attractive. I looked her up on IMDB yesterday. She's almost 60 now. Yuck. But I can't stop.

It might be that instead of most sci-fi, which supposes a dystopian future, Star Trek shows us Humans and Vulcans and even Klingons, (Kinda) living peacefully (Kinda). Sure, there are enemies, but we don't hate Romulans and Cardassians (no, not Kardashians, but I'm sure if they ever got into space they would be hated, too) because they're Romulans and Caradassians - We hate them because they are evil. It's O.K. to hate the Borg, because, well, they're no longer truly sentient. The Alpha quadrant even puts up with the Ferengi! The Ferengi! I mean, what a wonderful universe it is when Ferengi are allowed to roam free, allowed to be their smarmy little selves.

So, all is not perfect, but the underlying message is what can be accomplished with the weight of entire species, an entire quadrant of the galaxy pushing in the same direction! And this isn't some galaxy far far away, this is our galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy!

Of course, you can drive trucks through holes in the plot points. I mean, for a ship lost in the Delta Quadrant, how is it that Voyager went through, like 8 shuttlecraft, each one of a different configuration, even though the shuttle bay is clearly only configured to accept 2 shuttlecraft?

Yes, it does seem a bit far fetched that in the future, on a planet as interconnected as Earth is portrayed to be that there would still be such distinct accents, but at the same time an utter lack of unique colloquial aphiorsms. And why are they always citing literature and history from the 16th through 20th centuries? I mean, did nothing of note happen after the year 2100 other than - "Oh, yeah, Zeprham Cochraine, who looks a lot like actor James Cromwell, discovered transwarp travel and the Vulcans stopped by to introduce themselves." Apparently the rest is history.

As for the technology, we are coming strikingly close to where Star Trek left off. CERN scientists can't explain why some nutrinos in their experiments are traveling just this much over the speed of light. Einstein hypothesized that this is simply not possible. Of course, Star Trek could not be if it weren't for trans-warp (faster than light) travel.

What else is possible if faster than light could be a reality? How about wormholes? Matter Transporters? Will my concealed pistol license allow me to carry a phaser? Who will install the first replicator in my house? Will Earl Gray tea, (hot, of course), taste the same having been synthesized from component atomic particles?

And the computers, which at the time of the shows airing were impossibly talented and capable are now becoming a pretty close reality, too. For instance, a typical command in the 24th century (That's 300 years from now, people), is "Computer, search all databases regarding the Centauri System." And voila all information would come back without a hitch. Now, I can do the same in my car and on my phone and if the information exists, they will find it. Perhaps the depth isn't there, but the concept is the same. And I am pretty sure my iPhone and iPad can do anything a tricorder does... and more! I just looked it up... there is a tricorder app. Of course there is!

So, my name is Bill... I am a Trekker. I am ready to admit that. I'm not ready to go to Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con, but I think I am comfortable with my level of addiction. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I can fit in an episode of Voyager before I have to leave for a marketing event.

iNeed to Vent

2011-11-30T10:41:00.000-08:00

I got a new iPhone 4S yesterday and immediately set about getting it all configured and set up the way I want it. This process included only the odd "wow" and "oooh" from me as I discovered the simplicity and seamlessness of its operation and integration. This is a far bit away from the normal words that issue forth from my heavily contorted visage as the beads of sweat like drops of tropical rain roll unabated down my bald head, only to steam off of my red enraged face.

Aside from being pretty, it is another cog that is necessary in my professional electronic organization nirvana. Or at least that what I told myself to justify my purchase. Truth be told, it isn't really my purchase... It is my company's. I am the only Apple devotee in a sea of people who think I am a mindless follower of the cult of Mac. But they none-the-less relented as I made the case my purchase was necessary and directly impacted my ability to juggle my job.

I have the thing. I love it. I literally and to an unnatural degree love my phone. I'll get over that, I guess, like you do after any purchase like this. After time, it loses its luster and becomes less special.

Or is that the case for Apple's products? Several months on I am still enamored by our iPad, bought for us as an anniversary gift by my parents. It is almost flawless. I say almost because for some reason I can't get Facetime to work. I am sure a small investment of time, (which I don't have as reasonable a need as that is), will lead me to the answer and all will be right with the world.

When I got my phone, all the "Apple People" congratulated me and greeted me warmly. Friends responded to my Facebook status and I got several Facetime calls from other iPhone users... just because they could. It was like going to heaven and seeing Grandma and your favorite dog waiting there for you, hands outstretched. I felt like I was immediately and without prejudice a member of this community of happy people.

And it isn't so much that I love my phone. I knew I would. Having not lived under a rock these past four years, I have used many iPhones. But I think I unlocked the secret of why people pay more to drink of the "Cupertino Kool-Aid" as I am now calling it. My iPhone has engendered within me an instantaneous and deep enmity for my old Blackberry.

Crashes, problems, limited capabilities... these are all well-known and long suffered traits of the Blackberry that users know all too well. Furthermore, I tried to remove the software from my computer and cannot because of some sort of registry error that lead me to the nerdernet, (the 1% of the internet not devoted to celebrity gossip, porn and other ill-conceived subject matters and actually containing useful information), to find out why.

Off to the command prompt and typing in all sorts of things to supposedly get it to fix itself and still no-go. I reinstalled, "fixed" and otherwise tried to restore the program, which never worked correctly in the first place, all in order to get it off my computer.

It's still there, in spite of an hour of work. And wouldn't you know, throwing the actual Blackberry had no discernible effect on the situation? If utter violence can't solve a problem than what of the world as I know it?

And now my love, sits proudly to my left, streaming Van Morrison, so beautifully playing the object of my affection, while on my right is the pile of parts that used to be my Blackberry as useful now in pieces as it was intact. Beauty and the Beast, indeed.

iRegardless

2011-11-23T06:18:00.000-08:00

A co-worker of mine belongs to an organization that is involved with multilevel marketing of a group of healthful products. He is involved in this primarily because he believes in the products and he perceives great value in the leadership and motivational support system that is built around the products themselves.

Fair enough.

My co-worker lent me a few CDs, because he knows I am always interested in listening to motivational speakers for a variety of reasons. The best ones always offer some sort of new perspective and find a way to connect with the listener. Under the right circumstances, these types of programs can help you over a hump, help you find your lost will, or just help you by teaching you something you didn't know before.

My first CD, which I started listening to was entitled, "The Churchill Factor." Anyone who knows me knows of my deep and abiding admiration and respect for that most pugnacious and brilliant Brittan and his ability to share his intellect by employing his unmatched and highly quotable wit. According to the CD, Churchill is "widely considered" the most important Brit of all time. I haven't heard that myself, and I feel that most broad statements of that sort are highly arguable, but I don't disagree.

So far, so good. Setting aside the deep Michigander accent of the speaker, (I am guilty of it myself being a Michigander), he started wavering off the original point. Churchill hadn't been mentioned now in several minutes. We were many thoughts off the topic now and I wondered if the man was using notes, or just sort of... talking.

And then it happened.

He used "irregardless". And as soon as I heard it, my ears began to bleed. I thought to myself I must have misheard this man, who now was talking about 'personal mastery.' Clearly a professional presenter who understands the importance of personal mastery did not just use a word that is not a word.

And he said it again with more feeling, using repetition to underscore his core point, which I have long since forgotten, since I was having a TIA while driving on account of his proud use and reuse of 'irregardless.'

He lost me there and never got me back. I donned my thick rimmed glasses complete with neck chain, zipped up my black silk robe, doffed my mortar board and set about mentally dissecting each and every phrase and argument as though the speaker was offering oral arguments in defense of his thesis.

He was losing. He could not win. He would never win.

After the 'I' word, (non-word), I noticed he had poor diction. he used the word recognize a lot, except it came out each time as reckonize. Before the dropping of the 'i-bomb' that likely wouldn't have bothered me.

Then it happened again.

"Risk adversion" was the next misbegotten Mondegreen. I am sure he meant 'risk aversion', but he bumbled boldly forward continuing on, again using repetition to drive home the point that he was an idiot.

My bile was whipped into a froth by now, and so to other drivers who were paying attention I was red-faced, full bore screaming at my center console to this man as though I was in his audience. I assure you, he is lucky I wasn't, for I surely would have taken umbrage with these unforgivable gaffes right there in front of God and everybody.

It isn't that you need to be a master of superfluous erudition or possess preternatural perspicacity in order to be a good speaker. In fact, the number one rule of public presenting is to know your audience and tailor your message to that audience.

In other words, if you are speaking to an audience of presumed wide-spread education and intelligence, then you must speak in a way that the least capable among the audience will understand. Patton called it 'Corporal Rule'... Only until your orders can be understood and carried out by the lowliest of grunts are they good enough to be disseminated to the leadership.

This man, who was now talking about personal mastery in public speaking had never learned a thing about public speaking. And my co-worker, known for using such chestnuts as 'sleep deprivized' and others I can't remember at this moment, only takes more bad habits away from this 'educational' series.

The punchline here is that he wants me to buy into the monthly series for $50.00 a month. I now face the indelicate task of explaining to someone, (who is my superior on the corporate chart, but with a dotted line), that I don't think I have much to learn from this particular program.

I don't have a point. I just needed to get it off my chest. And I don't appreciate that there are people out there who would tell me I am being a snob and that as long as I understood what he was trying to say, I should stuff my disdain for his mistake.

I disagree. If you place yourself in a position of expertise, you had best know exactly how to comport yourself and telegraph your message using proper syntax and grammar, period. If you aren't willing to do that, sit down and let someone else do the speaking, for that would be the best and most educational gesture for which you are capable.

Hoops: Some Jumping Through Required

2011-11-22T11:41:00.001-08:00

Today was the day. I had to be at the mall, so why not pop by the Apple store and pick up my new iPhone 4S? The store wasn't even busy. And they didn't have what I wanted. Which I knew they wouldn't because that's just how those things go.

So I went across the parking lot to the Verizon store. See, Verizon is through whom my work has phone service. I pay a small amount each month to have the privilege of using my phone for work and for personal. It's a good deal and keeps me from having to carry multiple devices.

But, they didn't have it, either. So, I tried to order one from Apple.com. Can't since they couldn't verify my account. They couldn't verify my account because they only do personal accounts. So, I had to call Verizon.

The very nice and knowledgeable customer service person explained I don't have an upgrade, but another number on the account does and I can just call the store, order it, and when I pick it up, tell them to do a "buddy upgrade" and voila! I would have a new iPhone.

So, I called. Nope. Can't order it on the phone, have to come in. Or, I could order it online, get it, then do the upgrade. Except I don't trust that, because I want a face and name attached to the "yes, of course we can do this upgrade for you." Otherwise, I can see everyone running for the hills and screaming they've never seen me before... and no, I can't return my phone.

Simple.

Why is it that no one wants to take my money? I mean, I know people are lining up like cattle at the fair to blindly give Apple their money for a new phone, but does that really mean they don't care about my moooooo-lah? Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I want the iPhone since I have an iPad and have found it indispensable for business, but It requires all sorts of additional input on my part with calendar items and contacts. I just want to put it in one thing and have it be in the other thing immediately and automatically.

Technical enough for you? And no, I am not going to pay for an exchange service.

So, there. Won't someone please take my money so I can have another China made piece of plastic that won't be any good in 18-24 months? I thought this was a consumer society after all!
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Latent Mail, Holiday Weeks, Thankfulness, Day 1

2011-11-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

Why is the mail late? Because there's money in there for me, that's why. It never fails. I have written about it before.

My friend Greg believes he and indeed his whole family is cursed. He swears that any time he likes something as soon as he latches on to it, buys in, becomes a devotee or whatever, it gets canceled, discontinued, changed for the worse, becomes more expensive or in one case, illegal. But we won't get into that.

My curse is that whenever there is money waiting for me in the mail, it's late. The mailman has been on vacation for two weeks. Last paycheck I was able to pick it up because I was at the office. The mail came at 10 am that day.

Two weeks later, I imagine our lazy worthless, good-for-nothing, chain-smoking, barely literate regular mailman is back. And we are back to the "maybe" delivery system. Perhaps he was not made to take the sleet, snow, dark of night oath. Perhaps he snickered while he did.

Before you are so helpful as to recommend direct deposit: I would that I could, but I can't so don't ask. Some things are the way they are. The mail is late because it owes me money. And that's just the way it is.
____________________________________________________________

Why are we even going through the pro-forma of "working" this three day week? No one is in the office. No calls are being picked up or returned. I just raced through my entire three day plan in 6 hours. I have one appointment tomorrow, but, were it not for that, I could probably turn off my phone and no one would notice.
___________________________________________________________

This week is Thanksgiving. Today, I am thankful for the fact I am American and as such have access to well more than I need to survive. My problems are but a trifle as they do not include scouting for a new well for water, stalking prey for food and fighting other men over limited shelter.
I am not being persecuted for my religion, color, gender, political affiliation. I have so much material wealth, I can afford to lavish some of it on pets that perform no useful function to my household.
In fact, my biggest problem is that the mail is late... because it owes me money.

Believe you me, I am ridiculously thankful for my ridiculously wonderful life.

Business Cards/Ringing in the Ears/Inter(mittent)net

2011-11-17T07:23:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, I think I have thrown more business cards away than I have given out in my professional lifetime. It's not my fault. The business card cannot be changed quickly and often to reflect how quickly and often reality changes.

For instance, when I stopped representing the disaster recovery company on the West side of the state, I threw away the 1,000 new cards they had just printed for me. It was a pain to shred them so they could be recycled, but that's what I did.

Then for the minority joint venture company, I got 500 brand new high quality cards. And our office address and phone changed. I never even gave one out. 500 more tossed to the winds. I am getting sick to my stomach just thinking of the waste. When I got new ones, I asked them to pay more per unit to get fewer cards, since that card is only passed seldom and under specific circumstances. I just don't want to waste more of them.

Most recently, I discovered my card for the janitorial company had the disaster recovery company phone number listed as the emergency phone number. So those, too had to go. about 300 of the original 500 down the tubes. I just picked up 1,000 new ones yesterday. That can only mean some sort of dramatic shift is right around the corner.

The business card seems so old-timey. Why we haven't switched to a universal virtual card, I don't know. In fact, smart phones should have a short-cut button that automatically transmits your card. There should be a standard format across platforms. Easy. No waste. Nothing to carry (or forget to carry).
__________________________________________________________

Add tinnitus to the ever-longer list of maladies from which I am suffering. This one is a special kind of hell. It is omnipresent and disturbing.

I have been reading a bit and there are a number of causes of tinnitus and a number of manifestations. It could be accompanied by hearing loss, trauma, high blood pressure, stress, aspirin use, blockage, or any other of a seemingly endless list.

What that means to me is that "they" basically don't have a clue as to the true nature of this disorder and are compensating by throwing the kitchen sink at it.

As usual, the internet is full of homeopathic remedies that supposedly work, though the sites that are mostly medical in nature hedge on the effectiveness of these. There is some promising research involving an iPod like device with an additional sensory output that attaches to the user's tongue. This attachment pulses along with the music (any music apparently will do) and somehow retrains the auditory cortex to recognize only actual signals instead of those that are elusive.

Some tinnitus can actually be physically heard by trained ENTs, (sorry, Otolaryngologists). I went to a website with sound clips of various types that have been heard and replicated. I have almost exactly what that site describes as "High Frequency Buzzing". It is uncanny how close, even in actual frequency my reality is to that sound clip. I doubt I could even hear it if it were any close.

On top of my normal issues with sleeping, this is now taking its toll. Wearing headphones and listening to music (quietly, I assure you) when I am working alleviates most of it. But that is only so much of my life.

I guess I'll talk to the doc and go see an ENT and see if there is a specific pathology involved with my case. If not, I'll start trying the herbal remedies that are out there and see if by some miracle they work on me.

I hold out little hope for success. It just reminds me that if I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken much better care of myself.
__________________________________________________________

Intermittent internet is plaguing my home. I have done all I can without spending money. Comcast says it isn't their fault. I believe them, since our TV is working fine. It's just the internet.

Likely it's my geriatric modem. I already shored up all the connections and reattached the grounds that were left unattached when the plumber came this past spring. But, the problems didn't start way back then, so I suppose that was wishful thinking.

The wire does go through a lot of tree limbs and it is windy today, but again, TV is fine. Just internet is affected. Add it to the list of stuff I don't have time or money to fix.

Apropos of Nothing

2011-11-15T09:36:00.001-08:00

Emily and I have decided that the phrase "apropos of nothing" would be the perfect epitaph for her tombstone. Don't get me wrong, I am not hastening her to the grave. In fact, my plan is to be long gone and recycled into soylent green by the time she even catches a cold.

And beside all that, we both want to be cremated, not buried. All this is beside the point, though. The point is that Emily has a personal style of communication that confuses and befuddles me sometimes. Hand on heart, it befuddles me all the time. Well, not all the time, but more than some of the time. Much of the time? Often times? See, even I'm confused now.

Here is an exchange from last night as close to verbatim as I can remember it:

Em "Did you get the e-mail your mom sent?"
Bill "No. Wait, when did she send it?"
Em (a little testy) "Bill, I had 62 e-mails, I don't know."
Bill (matching the testiness) "What was the e-mail about?"
Em "CHRISTMAS!" (she said as though I was privy to the conversation she was having with herself and just now let me in on.)
Bill "Oh. No. I didn't get it."

This is a typical exchange in our household. Em will ask me the vaguest of vague questions and it's my job to drill down to the actual answerable question that exists somewhere within the morass, like a needle in a haystack.

By the end, she feels I am being difficult and I feel like I'm stupid for not knowing the answer to her questions, like:
Em "Did I tell you what Jenny and I did on Friday?"
Bill "No."
Em "I thought I told you we went to Macy's and I got that deal on a dress for the Christmas party."
Bill "Oh, yeah, you did tell me that."
Em "So how come you just said I didn't?"
Bill "If you knew you told me, why did you just ask me again?"
Em "So I could tell you that..."

And then we get to the actual story.

Which for as vague as the question portion of the game is, lies in the starkest of stark contrast to the mind-numbingly excessive amount of minutiae that is to follow.

Em "While we were there, this girl was wearing this gingham shirt... Well, not really 'gingham', I guess, more of a sort of monochromatic plaid on twill. It was really nice, but it didn't fit her very well. She was kinda, pear shaped. She just got bigger the farther you went down.
"So, anyway, we were behind her on our way to look at the mens' store for you and we passed housewares. They have the blender I want on sale until Thanksgiving."
Bill "Uh, ok. Um, and what about the lady with the ginger swill?"
Em "What?"
Bill "The fat lady who you went in great detail of describing! You said you followed her to the housewares department."
Em "No, we were following her to the mens' store and stopped at housewares. Didn't you listen?"
Bill "Yes! What about the lady and the shirt?"
Em "Nothing. I just liked the shirt."

And scene.

I don't ask where to my hair went and where from the gray in my beard came. It's all right here in front of me.

She comes by it honestly. We all come by our foibles and idiosyncrasies honestly. In this case it is a direct DNA link to her father who obsesses over the smallest details of a story and never really gets anywhere. The one thing they have going for them is that they are both pretty entertaining and have good senses of humor, so there is a bit of a reward for your patience. And they both take my jesting with good humor when I point these things out.

I am one to talk. I will take a three minute story and turn it into a Homeric tale entirely out of scale with the reality of the situation. However, I do so in a calculated fashion that is meant to all tie together throughout. It's like a riff.

Maybe that's what it is supposed to be with Em. She is riffing with me; and I am just not in on the joke. Or maybe, since I tend to be pretty quiet around the house she forms her questions and stories this way in order to force my participation.

Maybe I will never know. But I have to go. Em just hollered from the other room that "the thing is blinking on the box again!" Only goodness knows what she's talking about this time.

By the way, I let Emily read this before I published it so she would know it's all in good fun. She laughed until her sides hurt. So don't go all Gloria Steinem, Gloria Allred, Glory-Glory-Hallelujah on me.

Moments of Clarity

2011-11-14T09:35:00.001-08:00

I have discovered that I am at the very most a few moments of wisdom and clarity punctuated by a whole lot of mediocrity. Like a blanket that is mostly monochromatic brown, but displays occasionally and without a warning, a shock of color randomly woven into the sea of nothingness. Sometimes there are some pretty big brown stretched with no color in sight.

I was reminded of this this morning when the owner of my company wanted me to refresh everyone on my vision at the end of my meeting by reading what I had written. As I had a seizure (because this was an unrehearsed ad lib and rare departure from our disciplined agenda), I had to admit, "I have no idea what you are talking about."

What he was talking about was something I wrote on an internal report about three weeks ago. I had forgotten. He read it for me to the group and I recognized it as being my own. I recognized it as sounding like it was written by someone who was not only able to simply and effectively convey the desired sentiment, but also do it with great eloquence. I am usually able to see past the relative goodness of whatever I do to focus on the zits and pocks; but this time I was caught off guard and my internal nay-sayer was off yelling at himself in a mirror somewhere.

It actually took me by surprise how good I thought it was. This little ditty was not spoken about at the time. It was an internal report after all. But here, the biggest of wigs is quoting... me.

I don't think I could write that today. At least not right now. Maybe if I ever shake loose the many cob webs that are still inhabiting my head on account of the weekend. I was basically in a gastronomically induced coma out of which I am trying to claw with approximately none of my might.

As of now, I am seeing a pretty unobstructed sea of brown. the problem with being able to forge chestnuts out of disparate thoughts is that people start to think you are pretty smart. And then the old adage about the more people talk the less intelligent they become kicks in and everyone realizes that while you might come out with one in the clutch every here and there, you are pretty much drooling on yourself the rest of the time.

Sometimes, the best things I say come without my intervention at all. I will hear it as I say it, just like the person I am talking to. I am often just as surprised as you are. Today I would be surprised and delighted to have a moment of clarity. Of course, I'm not sure I would recognize it if it hit me between the eyes.

Someone Had to be First

2011-11-11T09:47:00.000-08:00

I was first out of the poker tourney last night. I went all in on two pair and didn't see the flush of my opponent until it hit me smack in the head.

There is an old joke my neighbor told to me when I was growing up. It's a bit dated, but it will set the time and the place nicely.

You walk into a bathroom and there on the stools sit Dolly Parton and Princess Diana... which one should you bet on? The answer? Princess Diana because a Royal Flush always beats a great pair! Ha!

Ok, it's a terrible joke. Don't even bother to ask how I would get past all that security to get into a ladies restroom. The whole premise falls apart because Dolly Partons boobs haven't been nice in eons and Princess Di, did. But as odd as it may seem, the punchline of this joke came true last night.

The good part is I got to come home earlier than I thought. The better news is I dodged the deer and the dreadful drivers and made it home in tact and in good spirits.

Speaking of good spirits, that was the prize for being first out- a free drink, which I declined on account of my 120 mile drive home. I think that was smart thinking on my part.

In life as in sports someone has to win and that means someone has to lose. It's a platitude, but it is indeed the truth. This is why I get testy with people who are angry at the wealthy just because they are wealthy. We can't all be first, no matter what Ms. Smith taught you in second grade.
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I heard a couple platitudes over the last day:

People spend their entire lives either avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. I believe that is an oversimplification. And I believe it is indelicate. I don't like this particular piece of psychobabble. You can keep the nickle, but I am not taking the advice.

There are three kinds of people in this world. Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what the hell just happened. This is apparently the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, but I think it's a little kitschy for Nietzsche. And, I also think it is an oversimplification. I wouldn't argue with Herr Nietzsche on the topic because he scares me a little and because I don't think he lost too many arguments in his lifetime.

Figures never lie, but liars do the figuring. Go figure.

Measure twice, cut once. I personally like... I keep cutting it and it's still too short.

Better late than never... better never late.

Of all, that last one has informed my life most. Punctuality is next to godliness. Hey, is that a new platitude?
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Goodbye! Don't Forget Your Ears!

2011-11-10T07:54:00.001-08:00

I'll bang this out real quick as I have a date with the highway here in 20 minutes. I have a big prospect to see today for a follow-up meeting. Usually these are make or break type of meetings. I am going it alone, too, which is fine with me. My 'backup' usually screws things up.

I don't have a really big ego about most things. However, my ability to present is not one of those. I guess ego isn't even the right term, so much as well-earned confidence. I get told all the time presenting is my "gift". I don't disagree and I end up taking the point on these things anyway because I show up more prepared and more confident than my colleagues and I am also just better at extemporaneous presenting should the need arise.

So I am armed with all I need. Data, Concepts, Structures, Costs, Implementation Plans, etc.

The only thing I need is my ears.

Sometimes, I forget my ears.

It is an old axiom, probably as old as verbal communication itself that goes something like "You have two ears and one mouth... use them in that proportion."

There is a sign on the wall of our bathroom at the office that says "the quieter you are, the more you hear." Of course that seems to me a veiled threat in that particular room wherein all who dwell are presumably there for one of but three or four reasons, none of which are especially quiet. In this case, said room is about as sound proof as a drum. What exactly is that sign alluding to? Are people listening to me go to the bathroom? I am being as quiet as I can be? Is what I am hearing someone putting their ear to the door?

Back to the point. My charge-taking skills are well honed in relation to my shut-up and let the customer take you where they want to go, skills. I try to coach myself and work on it, but I find it hard to fight off the energy that I get naturally from these meetings.

I really like them. And I really like to do well. And I have control issues, (which by the way I come by honestly- and while it's not nice to point fingers, if I did, which I am not, they would be aimed squarely at my Mother, whom I love), which means in order to perceive myself as having done well, I need to control the meeting.

Only I don't. And I know this because it's true. But still, it doesn't make it any easier for me to shut up and let someone else drive.

I will fill you in after the meeting, but today is the day. I am going to sit placidly until the prospective customer speaks. And if they do not, my only question will be... "What would you like to talk about, today?"

Wish me luck. I have a 2 hour car trip to coach myself before go time.
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After my meeting, I will be playing poker. This will be the second time in as many weeks that I have played. I will be playing again next week.

Unlike the monthly friendly game I have inserted myself into, tonight's is a networking event. So, ostensibly, I am playing poker for work.

Hate the game, not the playa.

Falling

2011-11-03T11:08:00.000-07:00

Falling down is hard, falling back is awesome. I am no great fan of the time change. The sun comes up and goes down. Our manipulation of the clock is simply mans' micromanaging things well beyond his control. It is an antique of a bygone era and should be stopped immediately.

Not immediately. After this Saturday. I love to fall back. I celebrate falling back. I would like to have one more hoorah before sending the whole mess into obscurity, forever.

Falling back is the best kind of falling next to falling in love and I would even say its better because falling in love is messy, sometimes. Not so with falling back. Falling back is always awesome. For everyone.

Early to bed, early to rise? You get an extra hour of sleep.
Workaholic? You get an extra hour to work.
Bon Vivant? That's one more hour 'til last call my bumbling booze filled friend.

Emily and I shall celebrate with a bottle of spirits and some good movies. I believe a crackling fire is in order to set off the mood nicely. I see blankets with cats upon them and stocking feet sticking out the end to feel the warmth of the fire.

It is a rapturous thing, this extra hour. Like a bank error in my favor leading to an unexpected windfall (please don't sue me, Parker Brothers), we savor the wonder of the extra hour. I could go so far out on a limb as to say we should simply keep falling back once per year as a little reward for our year of toil. But, like all good things that leads to problems. The early to bed early to rise person within reminds me that we would all be up all night and sleeping all day. That's no good.

So, they give us this gift, but then in only 5 months they take it back! Why do they take it back? I realize we can't keep falling back, but springing forward is a bitch! And they can't agree on whether to take it back earlier or later in the Spring. The knock on effect of all this is that my fancy intelligent alarm clock, which is supposed to manage all this time stuff for me, doesn't know what to do and when! The government has literally intruded into my bedroom and plopped itself right atop my alarm clock which is right next to my head as I sleep. Creepy.

I don't want them to take it back. Leave it! Let me enjoy the afterglow of that one extra hour without the part where I have to pay it back. Falling back is like finding a $20.00 bill in the pocket of a winter jacket. It was lost and forgotten and is now found and loved. It would be wrong for your coat to come to you after winter and say, "Dude, where's my $20 bucks?"

What's the harm in leaving it? In the long days part of the year more people would be driving to and from work in sunshine leading to fewer accidents. We could turn on our lights later saving electricity and greenhouse emissions... are you listening Democrats? It won't cost a thing to implement and won't anger anyone worth paying attention to. Are you listening Republicans?

Furthermore, I could turn off the now worthless feature on my super smart alarm clock and just set the time and forever be done.

Fall Back Forever! Spring Forward Never! Occupy Big Ben! Say it with me now...

Dexter and the Lone Ranger Walk Into a Bar...

2011-10-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

Pages. Pages and pages. I am producing pages like a college student. Pages and pages and none of it anything I can be proud of. Not really anyway. Just a bunch of professional mumbo jumbo that isn't representative of my personality or ability. Ever feel like that? Gee, I did a great job and that is really good work. And yet, so what?

Well, it has made sitting and writing a blog post something I am loathe to do, as opposed to something I love to do. The work/life balance is not but hubris at this point. Let us hope it is a pendulum that will swing back through nirvana on its way to boredom rather than a permanent tipping point, as proposed by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't make enough money to be permanently tipped.

I am an all purpose player at this point in time with my company. Limited resources and a deep restructuring make it so. After all, I am the last man standing. I sort of feel like the guy who has been feeding the crocodile and finds himself out of food. Nice kitty.

For instance, I am not a marketer. I have not studied marketing. I am not a particularly creative person with respect to spotting trends, advertising, out of the box thinking, and such. What I am good at is presenting our business to potential clients, networking with groups and individuals to create business opportunities, making proposals and assisting with creating the business model for the project. These are all viable strength and as yet have not been completely replaced by computers. In fact, I have found a way to augment my skills using technology. Not a bad thing, I'd say.

Now I am all of a sudden the marketing person, too. News to me. I have a two company three state marketing plan to develop, submit and present. In less than a week. It will be fine, I'm just a little freaked out right now. I'll simply use my cunning intellect to get me through this while navigating the politics and morays of our complicated corporate culture.

I'm screwed.

I like reading the Dexter novels by Jeff Lindsay. For those of you not aware of the books, there is an eponymous show that is popular enough that I think even my mom has seen it. For those of you who don't know what eponymous means, it means selfsame. If you don't know that, I weep for you. Buy a dictionary. Doesn't need to be a fancy one. Just a paperback Websters will do.

Anyway, Dexter is a benevolent serial killer of sorts. He gets himself into all sorts of trouble. Many chapters end on cliff hangers like the old serials my dad told me about as a kid, featuring the Lone Ranger in an impossible situation and some sort of tag line beckoning you back next week to see if he would get out of this mess.

Dexter always uses his brains, his skill, and well the implausible level of good luck the universe throws his way. Good karma... serial killer; strange bedfellows indeed. The genius here, is that the people Dexter is up against are an order of magnitude worse than he is, so you, the reader have no choice but to back the antihero. At the end of the day, you feel good about it. Sure, people died. Bad people.

I feel that way sometimes committing professional murder when it suits me. I will have to commit professional murder next week, by magnifying the implausibility of using me as a utility player and giving this project to me on short notice. Because it's going to suck, and blame needs to be spread, lest I die for sins of another. The people I have set out to kill in the past, (we're still speaking in metaphor here friends, don't call the cops), deserved it. And I would only kill "up", meaning I wouldn't hang a colleague or a subordinate out to dry. Ever. But a boss? May as well have a target on his shirt.

But now, I don't work for a boss. I work for the boss. This is looking more and more like a murder-suicide.

Now, I am in a position where I am out of my expertise. I am on my back foot, trying to put a pass on the numbers of my double covered receiver in a collapsing pocket with the sun in my eyes. There isn't any time on the clock and the front office is itchy to make the playoffs.

Just like in the Lone Ranger and the Dexter books, it doesn't look good for the home team. Stay tuned for our next installment to see if our hero has what it takes to make it through.

On a positive note, I'm playing poker tomorrow. So that's cool.

Dear Blog

2011-10-25T07:24:00.001-07:00

Dear Blog,
I miss you, too. No, I haven't forgotten about you. In fact, I look forward to spending some time with you real soon.
-Love,
Me

Autumn Leaves Start to Fall

2011-10-19T10:54:00.001-07:00

Dave wrote on Facebook today:

"I love seeing the vacuum truck come by to suck up the leaves piled at the curb. Nice to know I'm getting value for my tax dollar here in Fabulous Ferndale!"

Long story short, one of his friends commented that it was socialism. To which Dave responded, "Not at all. The proper scope and role of local government is vastly different from that of the federal government. I'm perfectly fine with paying for these services on the local level. However, I would not be at all comfortable with federalizing leaf pickup."

To wit I chimed, "Especially because at the end of the Federal Leaf Removal/Autumn Amelioration and Remediation Act of 2011 is a rider for $3Tr in subsidies to clearcut/logging companies and tariffs imposed on all leaves fallen from any tree not deemed to be indigenous to North America. It would cost each taxpayer $66.00 per year, create a new division of government as an adjunct to the Department of the Interior so that it could communicate effectively with the Department of Agriculture. And even though a tariff on a leaf is uncollectable, it will be placed on the revenue line of all future budgets. Of course, much of that income will be spent beefing up audit, enforcement and collection of said tariffs, so we will never see any of that "new money". A new Labor Union, (no doubt with a clever acronym like LEAF), would arise to make sure the people operating the dangerous machinery out there in the wilds of suburban America would be compensated properly with wages, benefits and a virtual guarantee that they could not lose their jobs as a result of ineptitude. After all that, there would end up being more leaves in my lawn and even less likelihood that I will ever feel any kind of "Social Security.""
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Listen to Eva Cassidy sing the Nat King Cole classic, Autumn Leaves... a worthwhile 4:41 seconds of your life if ever there was one. RIP, Eva.

Real Problems

2011-10-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

I stayed up way too late to watch the Lions game and I am paying for it. Perhaps it was because I was drinking. A little at first to quell the anxiety of what I felt would be a tough game. Then during the game because of the 12 flags in a row the refs threw. And still more at the end as a celebratory gesture for another win and the new 5-0 Lions. After all, if they are going to work that hard out on the field, I should at least pay them back by celebrating their toils. It's only right.

The predictable outcome for a person of my age is that today, I have no aptitude. On top of the general haze due to lack of sleep and an abundance of the sweet nectar of Bourbon County, Kentucky, I am also having a bad allergy day. I was asking for that, since I had the audacity to mow my lawn yesterday without immediately taking a full body pressure wash and decontamination bath immediately after.

But that isn't even it. Today is the last of the really nice days. Probably for the proverbial "forever". Sunny, 70's. Calm. A wonderful swan song. I predict I will be burning wood in the fireplace within the next 10 days.

I just keep looking out the window. I have been going outside to check the mail every 45 seconds since 9:30 this morning. It actually came 2 hours ago. I keep going back to check. Maybe he missed something the first time.

Since I am snorking and horking because of the allergies, I am taking a day to do research and write some newsletters and press releases, rather than trying to talk to customers. That seems like a good activity. Too bad I put all the outdoor furniture away, or I would go outside and write. Oh well, better to do it in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt than in long johns and a spacesuit in the middle of a blizzard.

C'est la vie say the old folks... it goes to show you never can tell.

You never can tell what the next day, or week, or year will bring. The big stuff is evident. A baby misses its due date, a neighbor undergoes chemotherapy as a last ditch effort to stave off paralysis just that much longer, another re-shingles his roof only to find his chimney is being held up solely by the power of prayer, a couple college freshmen have a difficult transition away from home, A good friend flies across country to see a man about a job.

All of these and so many more are going on around us right now all over the backdrop of the incredible late season beauty.

So, I chose to put summer away in September not knowing the first half of October would be like June. Doesn't seem like a real problem after all, eh? We do the best we can with what we have and don't sweat it when we don't get it exactly right. This weekend, someone taught me a saying:

"It isn't how high you fly, or how far you fall, but how well you bounce."

Bounce with me, friends. I promise not to notice if you climb too high or fall spectacularly just so long as you promise to extend me the same courtesy. When we're done bouncing, I'll help you up, you can dust me off and we'll leap again not caring where we land.

America's Roller Coast

2011-10-10T08:52:00.000-07:00

Climbing quickly into the cold night, I thought to myself;
"I may be about to die, but at least I am sitting down." We had been waiting for two hours to ride Millenium Force. Check out the video, here... good stuff

Still higher we climbed and I glanced around and saw the lights of the bay and of the other amusements below. I could hear the shrieks of joy and terror, but could not make anything out, since my specs were in a locker 1/2 mile below me. At least, that's what it seemed like.

I made casual conversation with the girl next to me who was unknown to me. "Have you done this before?" That may have sounded like a pickup line out of context, but here it was perfectly normal. She smiled and shook her head in a sheepish no. "I'm scared as hell", came the reply.

That's when the train we were riding crested the top of the hill and we succumbed to gravity as we descended the first hill into the inky unknown, subsumed by the darkness and overwhelmed by the screams of joy and terror.

Funny thing about a roller coaster. the only thing you can think of is being on the roller coaster. There is no worry about bills, or pills, or where you parked. The minutiae of life is meaningless as your mind tries to make sense of what is happening to your body.

Unlike in the rather rosy picture, we rode this thing in the pitch dark. It was darker than dark, since there was fake smoke being made to set the mood for Cedar Point's Halloweekends. This ride capped a long day at the park for us, which was unfortunately crowded. The weather was perfect after all. Too bad about a million people had the same idea at the same time.

We were at Cedar Point with Abbie, who was a student we know from church and now attends Oberlin College, just a stone's throw away from the park. Emily and I love the park, and we're fond of Abbie, too, so it all seemed like a nice excuse for a weekend excursion.

We only got to ride four coasters. The lines were long. But we had a lot of fun talking and just hanging out. Pun totally intended. Millenium Force's drop is 300' at 90 degrees and a little more than 70 miles per hour. Good stuff. It is rated in the top 3 coasters in the world. I'd have to agree, it is my second favorite ride I have ever been on.

My sentimental favorite is Raptor.
Smooth and fast and relentless, it was our first ride of the day. I wished we could have stayed to ride it one more time in the dark. It is amazing in the dark. Hard to believe this ride was introduced in 1994. It is still thrilling today. This video of it is also worth watching.

I know the moves of this coaster like a race car driver knows his home track. I can close my eyes and "fly" this coaster any time I want to, such is my love for it.

Emily forgot how high it was, then forgot the entire last section of barrel rolls. She screamed bloody murder the entire time. Great fun.

There are certain pursuits that only a few can understand. While a lot of people ride roller coasters, it is still a small-ish number compared to the general population. I am proud to be in their numbers.

Next year, I WILL go on Top Thrill Dragster. It WILL be the first line I get into and there will be no more excuses...

Emily, Abbie... You in?

Indian Summer, Or: Traditional Post Equinox Temperate Weather Pattern Spanning a Finite Period of Days

2011-10-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

Indian Summer, a racially insensitive name for such a wonderful phenomenon. But, whatever you call it, it is here and it is wonderful. All too brief, Indian Summer is the much appreciated last gasp of summer before the cold dead breath of winter blows upon us for the next, oh, eternity.

We mid westerners make hay during Indian Summer... literally and figuratively. The outdoor furniture gets "put up" as we are fond of saying, the grill goes into the garage, closest to the door so that if we get one of those rare nice Thanksgivings, we can pull it out easily, the classic car gets put on blocks and covered, the hose gets purged and rolled away, storm windows replace screens and the cutesy little bric-a-brac thing your wife puts in the fire place gets replaced with real wood.

The changing of the seasons in the wild wild mid west heralds harshness. Cut your wood now, English, or you will be burning Great Ganny's credenza before the first snow fall. Even the lazy amongst us, (yes, I AM talking about me), realize it is now or never and are forced to move, however begrudgingly to get these things done.

It is a matter of some importance. Last year, for instance, I forgot to purge the water line to my outside spigot. In doing so, I knocked out the use of an entire bathroom all winter, flooded my basement a little and cost myself a hundy to have that valve replaced. Ahem... replaced... again.

This is no foolin' type of stuff. As we do this, the neighbors all laugh and talk and wave goodbye. Hopefully, we say, for the whole winter, for the only thing that brings us together in the winter is a big snow. Big snows bring the neighborhood together. Doors get knocked on to make sure people aren't starving, cold or dead. Gangs of people help shovel drives and get cars out of their heavy white ensconcements. Hasty potlucks are organized. If you do it right, the main course is booze and a card game. The food is incidental if you are properly focused. beside, if it's a late winter snow storm, a little starvation is usually just what the doctor ordered since we all look like bloated pasty dough oozing out of our sweaters by that time.

Indian Summer reminds me that again I did nothing to fix my drafty windows all summer. I was too busy keeping busy. I do all my living in the 8 months of the year that isn't snow covered. during the 4 months of doom I can be found in the corner rocking in the fetal position murmuring incantations to any god or demon who will hear me beseeching them. Would I sell my soul for a warm winter? A dozen times over, yes!

But, here, in Indian Summer, the 70 degrees and sun belie what is coming in the distance. The grass is deeply green, the fall colors are just beginning to pop and it is, in a word, perfect. In fact it's perfect to work on windows to make them more weather fast. Not gonna happen. I'm far too busy for that. But, if I weren't, now would be perfect.

In fact, we really should move Halloween to the first week of October, because historically, trick-or-treating is done with fat coats over costumes and umbrellas to deal with the cold rain that almost always falls here near Halloween. It's like a million little Gene Kellys wandering the streets with pillow cases. I am certain that no baby sized Butterfinger is worth hypothermia, but then again, I am not a kid.

Tonight after work, we are taking one last sojourn in the Corvette for ice cream and a little color tour. Not too long since we have to pack for a long, long weekend away from home. we have to clean the house before our house sitter gets here so she doesn't know we live the way we do. We're not close enough for full disclosure just yet.

I reckon Indian Summer is a little like the small rocky islands off Newfoundland that trickled slowly away as Charles Lindbergh gently climbed and made his way slowly east, ever closer to the middle of the frosty, unforgiving north Atlantic, where there were no rocks, no chance of survival at all if it all went tits up. Each island must have felt like a last chance for refuge. Each one an opportunity to feel safe one last time.

And so it is with the days of ever decreasing length. Each one a siren song begging to be visited upon forever. Each one passing by below, just out of reach, until finally, the last one passes by underneath. And you are on your own.

Sports and the Triumpful Spirit

2011-10-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to bang this out for the grim specter of things to do looms large over me like a buzzard looms large over a stranded motorist in the desert. How's that for simile??

I just want to take a moment to talk about sports, which is pretty boring. I really am getting more into sports the older I am. I don't see a likely reversal of trend on this, either as sports, like a soap opera, finds a way to keep its audiences.

This is the first time in my "sports memory" the Lions have been 4-0. They have been very exciting to watch, almost like the Colts of a few years ago. They are proving to be a second half team, not really doing anything until the third quarter and then doing it all. It used to be the Lions could only put together half a game... the losing half. Now they are still only playing half a game, it's just the winning half.

Ws are Ws, no matter how ugly. The last two have been ugly, but oh so satisfying and very entertaining. I am not insinuating that the NFL is fixed, but if it is, kudos to the writers and the actors, you have me rapt.

The Tigers are playing the hated Yankees and that series is tied after an auspicious beginning. I am not a baseball fan, since loving baseball requires a level of attention and devotion I don't possess... for it or any sport. But the Tigers, again have garnered my attention for their late-season rally and hard work to capture their division.

The Yankees. Well, I don't hate the Yankees because they ever did anything to me. I mean, again, I am not a baseball fan as such. But I tend to root for the underdog and the Yankees are not, nor can I conceive of a time in their storied franchise will they ever be, considered an underdog.

So, for you Yankees fans, I will not trash talk. I will not woot and holler with a Tiger victory, nor cry with defeat. I simply can't do so with any kind of authenticity. But I will say this; may the best team win. I hope my team is the best team.
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So, what? Sports. Big deal. But this is Detroit, my adopted second home, holder of a piece of my heart, big sister to my beloved Grand Rapids. Troubled, down, besieged and hurting. Sports is a metaphor of life to be sure, but here it is more real. The city herself and the people who love her toil and strive to make the phoenix rise from the ashes of the once proud ruins and decay.

Victory, in any form, is welcome and I believe more affective here than almost anywhere. I liken it to the New Orleans Saints playing after Katrina and the whole country rooted for them. Detroit needs this. Detroit needs the positive attention, the national exposure and the shot in the arm that comes with successful sports franchises.

Detroit fights to win, because Detroit is fighting to stay alive. Detroit wants it more. I pray they go get it!

One Dead Metaphor, Please!

2011-09-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

A great man once said, "Holy shit!" And I echo those sentiments today. Quite a strong way to start off, I know, and forgive the lack of couth and tact, but my head is unable to express my emotions any more appropriately.

There is a lot going on, both personally and professionally. It's nearly all really, really good, but it sure puts a punctuation on recent times that have leaned toward the boring and mundane. Now we're in the sheer terror portion of the year with crashing deadlines and increasing responsibilities intermingling with the promise of good things to come and the anxiety of losing some or all of your battles.

In short, life is happening. It's just life concentrated, like lemonade in the frozen can. It is so much of a good thing, you almost wish it was just a little less.

Sooner or later, my lemonade of life, (because I just can't stop beating a bad metaphor, that's why- deal with it), will be watered down again and I will be seeking some of that extra sour pucker (yes, twice in one thought- you're not doing well dealing with it).

A pendulum spends so little time in the happy medium on its way to its extreme, yes? Yes. And like a pendulum, I tend to get a little queasy with repetitive motions. Back and forth... back and puke.

I don't know how I used to swing so much. Not that kind of swing, silly. On the swing set. As a kid. Jeez. You're sick. I like you.

My summer days as a child we often spent swinging. Sometimes for hours. My mom would even get tired of me and put me out of the house, (daily). She knew I wouldn't go far, the swing set was right there. I would swing, and sing. Because I wanted people to think I was a girl? I don't know. I was five. I hadn't savored the lemonade of li... oh, forget it.

I don't want to go back to being five, swings or no. I like where I am and what I am doing. And if you're gonna have to drink lemonade, (put your fist down, I'm almost done), it's nice when you like the flavor and it's not that pink lemonade mango chutney, guava, passion fruit shit they serve at fast food restaurants.

I like my lemonade to burn a little.

The Evansville Chroincles Pt. 2

2011-09-24T05:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Nissan,

How much extra would it have cost per car to put an armrest in the Versa?
Sincerely,
My Right Arm
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What a terrible little shitbox the Nissan Versa is. Although it does have a strong parking brake, so lurid slides are totally doable and very fun.

It has surprising acceleration off the line, but the harder you push the pedal the acceleration slows and all the energy goes into making noise.

There is a flap on the dashboard that opens to expose a storage compartment that's isn't big enough to get my hand into. So if I did store something in it, I could never get it out. Brilliant. These are the people building cars that are beating ours? Ours must be really really bad. Maybe the government will be able to do better.

The gauges are small and cramped with illegible markings. The radio is incomprehensibly difficult to discern and use sitting still, let alone while driving. I hate this car with the passion of a thousand hot suns.

The mirror control, (power mirrors but no arm rest?), is way up by my left knee below the steering wheel, requiring me to lean way forward just to reach it. Which means that when I sit back in the position I actually drive in all I can see is the rear door handle out the left side and up my right nostril out the other.

No matter, this thing is so slow there is nothing behind me.

I am trying hard to destroy this car. I am pulling the gear shifter into low gear at highway speeds to see what happens. I am braking way at the last minute. The throttle is either 100% open or 100% closed. Sometimes, for no reason, I will just pump the pedal like I am playing an old pump organ.

This car hates me, too.

There is a lesson here, kids. Don't buy cars that used to be rentals. This car is essentially destroyed after 7,000 miles. There are a lot of people like me in the world. Rental cars get abused like red headed step children.

Having breakfast at a diner themed Denny's, (no, sadly the food is terrible, just like you'd expect), I realized the same people who were in Dowagiac were sitting here in Denny's. Only this time, I was the only one not speaking with an accent. Being this close to Kentucky I at least understand why.

On to my meeting.

The Evansville Chronicles Pt. 3

2011-09-24T05:29:00.000-07:00

Why am I stuck in Evansville, Indiana until 6:00 when there is a 1:20 flight out? The 1:20 didn't show up when I booked the flight. And why, since the 6:00 is clearly overbooked, (no seat assignment when I checked in and coy answers on the telly), will they not let me on the earlier flight without a $50.00 fee? It would help me out, help them out, we would all be happy.

It's because I bragged, even though it was in private, that I didn't have to pay any fees. They heard me, or saw me... Not cool.

It is Noon and I went to the airport, hoping to look sad and bedraggled enough to talk my way on to the earlier flight. I forgot I was dealing with airline employees who had their souls removed during orientation. The lady behind the counter with the unfortunately pervasive psoriasis was professionally dismissive in her tone despite my well-practiced hang-dog expression.

I thought maybe I should have lied. "My wife is leaving the country through Detroit and she's ovulating and we're really trying to have a baby to save our marriage and there's this little out of the way restroom where we can meet..."

I thought better of it.

To the bar!

Ok, that lasted for two drinks and a sandwich that cost me $36.00. Wow. Evansville. At least you have free wifi. So, I will buy some earbuds and listen to the radio and watch videos. That should hold me over for the rest of the time.
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I really should have driven. This is ridiculous. In the time I psent in the Evansville airport, I literally could have driven home. My humor is truly beginning to fail. Truly.

It should be about 45 minutes until we board. If I have problems, I may go to jail, because my capacity to deal with bullshit is very diminished right now.

Wish me luck.
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11 hours after entering the Airport in Evansville, I have landed in Grand Rapids. Praise be. Had I driven, I would have been home nearly 4 hours prior. There is a lesson in there, kids, but I'm too damn tired to spell it out. Figure it out yourselves.

The Evansville Chronicles Pt. 1

2011-09-22T18:42:00.001-07:00

This quick business trip is a test to see whether I can live with the iPad on a day to day basis, typing and what not. I did not bring my computer. It is amazing how even a small laptop seems like an amazing encumbrance compared to this little wonder. I don't care if it's an iPad or some other well done tablet... these things are the future.

So far, it isn't terrible, but there is very little haptic feedback on the keyboard. But I typed this, (most of this) on the iPad, so I guess I have my answer on liveability. Since I never learned how to type properly, I am nearly equally as fast on this keyboard as I am on any tactile keyboard, so that bodes well. Is it time for an iPhone?

So, while I sit here at the airport in and amongst the old people, I thought it might be nice to jot a note or two.

I don't know why every person on this flight except for me is old. I wonder if there is a cruise or something... Maybe Obama promised them a free trip and they're all on their way to certain and completely surprising death. Obama care, from the cradle to the grave... we choose both.

Neat thought.

I just had a little iPad moment with a lady who needed some help getting online. I don't know if she was successful or not.

It looks like it could be a bumpy flight out to Detroit. There are a lot of low clouds and that typically means bumps. That doesn't bother me, especially. I am starting to wonder whether it was a good idea to watch the Air Disaster show yesterday about the small commuter plane that lost it taking off and killed a slew of people.

I am not as tough as I think I am. I also am not used to traveling alone using air travel. I have to admit, here, privately, (to my blog which people from 11 different countries read on a fairly regular basis), that I don't like to fly alone. I never have. It gives me agita.

The plane is late, and my 37 minute layover in Detroit is evaporating. I am not a happy man.

After much wringing of hands, Delta's little brother ComAir got me to Evansville, wherever that is. It seems to be nothing more than a loose conglomeration of factories and low rise warehouses. What the warehouses are housing and why they are housing it here is beyond me.

We landed after the longest descent and approach in the history of commercial aviation. Why, since we were the ONLY plane in the place we needed to do that, I don't know.

At least this plane had A/C. The first leg was flown without it. Of course on this leg the man sitting next to me had monstrously bad breath. But then the man next to me on the first flight who jammed down his Quiznos didn't have any better air coming out of him. And he snored.

Hard to tell which leg was worse, given I have eaten sausages larger than these airplanes. It was a Canadair Rinky-Poo 2000. I don't know what the 2000 stands for, but I am pretty sure there were that many people in my row alone.

Do you know, the cheap-ass airlines only serve you that ridiculous Dixie cup of pop and then throw the rest away? How is this saving money? No wonder there is a bag tax.

I took a very small bag. Just the one. You should have seen the disappointed looks on behalf of the staff; who, I believe get a perverse pleasure out of screwing passengers in the wallet.

The Internet, rather the credit card reward site through which I booked my rental car did not tell me the rental place was off-airport. No matter, the manager gave me a ride and was happy to talk. And talk. And talk.

She seemed very nice. I predict within a year she'll be smoking through a stoma, but she was kind.

My Nissan Versa is shockingly tired for its 7,000 miles. It creeks and groans like my knees. I shall have fun trying my best to destroy it. I like to induce oversteer in a car with 13" tires it's just so easy.

I only got lost once on the way to the hotel. My key didn't work upon check-in, which is only funny because I have a bit of a history with hotel keys. I could do a 20 minute bit on hotel key stories. I did a blog back in June. You can read it, here.

The hotel I blessedly non-smoking, smoking, so I have a fighting chance of living through the night.

Hunger pervades me, so I am off to forage in this strange land. I will talk more later about a store name Schnuck's which where I come from is not a nice thing to call someone.

The Last Minute

2011-09-22T04:25:00.000-07:00

Among the things I dislike, and there are a lot of things I dislike I want you to know, is waiting to the last minute, or things that come up in the last minute. The last minute always puckers my ass a little. You know what I like to be doing at the last minute? Watching other people who waited until the last minute, smug in my refinement, knowing I am better than they are. Not just better at something, better than them.

This is not my finest quality. But this blog is a window to my greasy black soul, so you get to see all of it. It's my gift to you.

Back to the last minute. I learned late on Tuesday that I needed to be in Evansville, Indiana on Friday at 9:00 am. No sweat, I'll just look into my mind's eye and its commanding knowledge of mid western geography and take a look for Evansville.

Hmmm, not by South Bend, Gary, Ft. Wayne, or even Indy. To the map!

First of all, when you type in Evansville, Indiana, it brings up a dialogue box that asks if your sure. Then another. Then finally it says something to the effect of why go there... there's nothing to see... etc.

Holy cow, it's an eight and a half hour drive. Multiplying that by two in my supercharged and highly tuned brain, that is 17 hours of driving for a two hour appointment.

My highly tuned supercharged brain over-revved a little at that moment. That's a waste. I shall have to do the unthinkable.

I shall fly.

When you wait until the last minute, things get thrown together fast and often with little care about accuracy. Not to mention it is expensive to buy a commuter ticket with 48 hours notice. Something like a thousand bucks.

Now, I have not gone to visit my parents because it would cost me a thousand bucks. And now I'm about to go to Evansville? To the phone! Susan at the office, (Susan who is used to the last minute, who is forced to make great things happen in the last minute, who can stretch time and space to make the last minute a miraculously long period of time), hits a key, some frequent flier miles change hands and voila, tickets were sent to my phone with no money coming out of my pocket.

Susan arranged a nice hotel, equidistant from the site and the airport for my convenience. I was on my own for the car, which better be clean for the $100.00 for one day I am paying. What a rip. If it's a Chevy, I may just walk.

So it all worked out. Why should I be worried about the last minute stuff?

Well, because my layover in Detroit this morning is 37 minutes, which is about how much time it takes me to type the sentence, "I'm sorry sir, your plane left without you." And on the way back, when I really want to be moving, I don't leave until 7 hours after my appointment and have a two hour layover in Detroit.

Flying there will save me time, flying home will cost me time. Ain't that the way? Of course, that's the kind of thing that happens when you wait until the last minute. You pay more, you get less and you have less fun doing it.

Among the many things I dislike, intrepid reader, is the last minute. Right now, it's moved to the top of that very long list.

Tata for now! I'll send a post card from Indiana. It will probably have corn on it.

The Most Grandiose of Ruminations

2011-09-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

What a whirlwind it has been, dear reader, this last few weeks. There seems to be no end in sight as things just keep getting more hectic. It's a good kind of hectic, so in this there is no complaint. Just simply conveying the reason I haven't found the time to check in and say, "hello."

Herein however are some ruminations I have plucked out of the air in the interval; and since I have not the time to formulate anything truly worthwhile to write about, I shall simply go with these.
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There is nothing so ferocious as a "soccer mom"

We went to go see a former student play college soccer for Kalamazoo College over the weekend. What an exciting game! I had a hard time enjoying myself for some of it, as the two moms sitting behind and to my left were the Statler and Waldorf of the collegiate soccer world. Statler and Waldorf for those of you who don't remember, are the two smart-ass Muppets from the eponymous show. My favorite Muppets by far.

But I wasn't watching The Muppet Show, I was watching soccer... or trying to anyway. All that is ugly in men, (the shouting and carrying on from the sidelines), is even uglier coming from the fairer sex. It was, in a word, annoying and not a little off-putting.

Nobody could do anything right. "I'm sick of coming to these games just to watch them lose," said one to the other.

"We have a coaching problem," said the other back to the one.

And off they went making assumptions regarding the coach's ability to play the game at all, let alone coach it.

They, of course had only but one recourse, which was to coach from the stands themselves, because that is always the right tack. I am sure the girls whose mothers these were are very proud. I know I would be.

Meanwhile, we were sitting with the father of the girl who we went to see. He sat quietly and made good observations and explained some things to me about how the team is coalescing and such. He was an AYSO coach for many years. Clearly, if anyone had the right to yell, it would be him.

Instead he chose comportment. A lesson for us all.
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The Knowing Nod

I have identified the knowing nod. This is a phenomenon when in public, you and a stranger, exchange some sort of meaningful glance and give a little mutual nod as if to say, I feel you, buddy. Sometimes, if there is someone being loud or difficult, the knowing nod could be the knowing eye roll, or what have you.

Yesterday, the gas station was extremely busy in the morning. All the pumps at the big station were being used. I got out of my car as did the man next to me. Both in shirts and ties, both with little notebooks logging our mileage and the gallons of gas going into the tank. It was clear he, as I was going on a little road trip for the company.

We exchanged the knowing nod. Much was said and much camaraderie shared in that nod.
It was the nod that said, "Man, I hope people aren't idiots on the road today," or, "I have to go Eau Clare... My mother would be so proud."
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Eau No!

Speaking of Eau Clare, Michigan. Oofda. Not a pretty place. I presently sit in the burgh of Dowagiac, just outside the village of Eau Clare, which has a problem with branding. "The Village of Eau Clare" sounds so inviting, so picturesque.

No. No, it's not. A more apt moniker would be "Shitbox Speedbump", or "Don't Make Eye Contact," Michigan.

I thought it might be nice to take in a quick lunch at "The Village Inn", or "O'leary's". Some of the best meals I have eaten have been in quiet little places in quiet little towns. But something about "The Village Inn" made me think it looked like you had better be from the village if you dared step foot in there, and O'Leary's was O'closed. Not, closed for the day, or closed on Wednesday. Closed, closed. Brown paper in the windows closed.

So, McDonalds of Dowagiac it is. They have free wifi, to say noting of the local color, (which is white if you were wondering). I am sitting here in near hysterics. As I sit here looking busy, I am dividing my attention between you and the local "farm report," which consists of three old men holding court and talking to everyone who comes in. It's like a rural version of a talk show.

They are so sweet and nice to everyone and as soon as they leave, the old rumor mill cranks up.

"I hear she's been cavertn' wit ol' Hal..."

"'S'plains why my mail sometimes doesn't come 'til after dark and other days it comes at 1:30."

"D,ya hear about that accident over on 140?"

"Naw, I live off 51."

"Right. Lots of blacks over there by 51."

"Yep."

This week I have therefore seen women carry on like men at a sporting event, and old men clucking like hens at McDonald's. Call Rod Serling, I am living in an episode of his television show.

And why do people from this part of Michigan sound like they rolled here straight from the top of a hill in Tennessee yesterday? Like they were at the ol' homestead, slipped on a rock and this is where they stopped. They just picked up, dusted themselves off and started right in as though they'd always been here.

I would be concerned about one of them reading over my shoulder and seeing my writing about them, but based on my assessment of their literacy, that is as likely as a cat learning to cut hair.

No kidding, "Junior" just left. His name was Junior. He has to be a gazillion years old. I'd hate to see "Senior".

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Full Moon Fever

Full Moon Fever is the name of a great Tom Petty album, but for the purposes of this Grandiose Rumination, it is the moniker for people acting crazy and/or stupid during the full phase of the moon.

This most recent full moon being the harvest moon, it was a mean of 5000 Km closer to earth than normal. I don't know if this is the "fullest" of the full moons, but it is surely a "big" full moon. And it seemed to affect people even more than normal.

Driving has been especially dicey. As you all are well aware, (through my unceasing belly-aching), I drive a lot. I drive more than you and you and you combined. Not you, Todd. But everyone else.

I will blame it on the moon, for the only other place to put the blame would be on the failure of humanity itself, but people have been really and truly dangerously bad and inattentive drivers over the last few weeks.

I have seen it all and while I could sit and suss out specific circumstances for you in a humorous and fun way, I have not the time nor the energy to relive some of the trauma I have endured over the last few trips.

I therefore salute your passing, Waxing Gibbous moon, and welcome the Waning Gibbous and its friend the Waning Crescent moons. I hope this sets things back to normal. Whatever that is.

Signal to Noise

2011-09-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia uses this alternate definition of signal to noise:
Signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant data in a conversation or exchange. For example, in online discussion forums and other online communities, off topic posts and spam are regarded as "noise" that interferes with the "signal" of appropriate discussion.
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Multiple media outlets are the most effective way to get your message out, from what I am told. If you want something to be heard through the "noise", you need to hit all angles. The problem is, that creates more noise and more need for virtual shouting. After all, one man's signal is another's noise.

The cycle continues. Think of a high school cafeteria. One table has a loud conversation and the others need to elevate the volume of theirs just to be heard. Finally, even the normally quiet chess club is screaming like a bunch of banshees about their allergies to milk and peanuts and wondering if Bobby Fisher ever kissed a girl.

And we all lay claim to the importance and necessity of our specific message. Who is to say the chess club has less right to carry on than the cheerleaders or football team? What's more, our capacity for this method of communicating seems to be increasing. Day by day we spend more engery filtering the noise and wading through minutiae just to get to the message.

I personally feel a little overwhelmed by the situation I have put myself into. I have this blog, the occasional "Blah Blah Blog"" posts, Facebook, and now Twitter, (because apparently I feel as though the world should pay attention to what I am thinking right NOW... and NOW...). None of these outlets are employed to hawk my professional wares. For that I have Linked In and a couple others I don't even remember their names.

This all adds up to a great deal of my time spent "maintaining" these aspects of my life that didn't exist when I was younger. Hell, they didn't really exist for me prior to 2007.

Now my car has total integration of phone and text and social networking and media connection and god only knows what else. I can't hide. There is not aspect of my life that is not "connected" somehow to the noise.

And I'm an amateur. I have friends that are infinitely more savvy and connected than I. They revel in it. They will be the ones who at 60 will still be relevant. If I am still alive, I likely won't be relevant. I can see my elder self as a disenfranchised archetypal Vonnegut character, being both central to my own life and story and totally unnecessary to it at the same time.

Scary.

As I write this, the reggae song "Message to Rudy" is playing in my headphones. "Stop your messing around... better think of your future..." it implores of Rudy. Maybe Rudy was just sick and tired of it all! Perhaps we should all be messing around a little more.

I have seriously contemplated the purchase, (or time share of some sort), of a little place out of the way so I can get away. Maybe all I need to do is toss all my electronic obligations and take a nap. It's a lot cheaper, that's for sure.

I'll start tomorrow. Right now I have to post this to Facebook. And Twitter.

A Thank You to My Teachers

2011-09-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

My lands but haven't I been a busy beaver! I sit at my desk, head spinning, (actually spinning!), after crunching numbers and building spreadsheets and doing all sorts of comparative analysisesiss for a project I am working on. They don't give you much time to pull all this stuff together. They also don't give you a lot of information, either.

Interesting equation, that. Not much info + Not much time = X. In this case, X surely can't be an accurate and well-reasoned result. Except that it indeed, X is where the answer is and it is my X on the line if X isn't pretty much "the spot". As in X marks the... Am I being clear?

I can see smile on the face of the long suffering Mr. Hanson, my middle school math teacher as I lay all this out. Bill Uebbing and a spreadsheet that is fully 15 pages, cross-referenced, self-checking and all sorts of other things. The mathematically inept Bill Uebbing who had to be painfully guided through each and every principal of numbers no matter how basic.

I had really good teachers. Mr. Hanson was as patient and kind as they came. While I went on to learn statistics and chemistry in my later education, I owe it all to Mr. Hanson of the ALPS program at Crestwood Middle School who taught me that no matter what, I could not give up.

I am no genius, but today, I am also no dummy.

I reminisced a little about my educators this morning during a conversation I had. I realized, (as I have realized countless times before), that I had wonderful educators all throughout my school years. I remember fondly all my elementary teachers and their nurturing. I remember the great, inspiring college professors who forged my compulsory involvement in class into a love of learning. And I think of all those good and patient teachers in the puberty years.

God bless you all, especially. There is a special teachers' lounge in heaven for you, filled with bottomless coffee and all the tater tots you could ever want.

I don't really have a point other than to say in a public way, I thank all my teachers for never giving up or labeling me as stupid or not worth your time, even when I was both of those things. And if you did label me as stupid or not worth your time, thank you for having the courtesy to never let me in on the secret.

Have you thanked a teacher today? Why not?
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Next in my series of unappreciated professionals, The Janitor... No, he's not leering at you because he wants to kidnap you and wear your skin, it's because you're a slob and he has to clean up after you!

Monday Moring Miscellani

2011-09-12T06:02:00.001-07:00

Black Marks

I managed to stay away from the computer yesterday, September 11th, 2011. I had a lot running through my mind, especially in the morning and I thought I would give it awhile to maturate a little before committing anything to the blog.

Then, church, breakfast, football, youth group and a race later on the DVR and before I knew it it was past bed time. So, no touching tribute or moving thoughts on September 11th from my blog and me.

Which I think, is fine. People much more talented and intelligent than me have weighed in ad nauseum and I don't wish to pile on. Needless to say it was an emotional day filled with though and introspection and not a few moments of misty eyes.

All of this was punctuated quite effectively by sports! God bless sports! Now, well into my 30's I can see why men and women really get into sports. It is so much better than focusing on the hand basket the world is riding straight to hell.

The politicians are going to ruin the place anyway, why not enjoy the ride blissfully drowning in beer and peanuts with our elbows sticking to a mysterious goo at the bar watching sports? The Tigers are in first place and on a tear and the Lions don't suck. These are headlines!
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Mama, I'm Coming Home

We call it Homecoming... the first Sunday after "Summer", the vacation, (not Summer, the season), is officially over. Labor Day is the marker we use as the official end to the unofficial end of summer. Not at all confusing.

The kids are back in school, church resumes it normal schedule and classes and education begin again. This means Youth Group has begun anew. Lots of fresh faces and lots of returning faces all still sporting healthy brown tans and shorts and flip-flops.

Too soon, we will all be pasty-faced, baggy-eyed, dough boys and girls in so many layers of clothes it will be well nigh impossible to tell the two apart.

Youth group and football combine to make the death of summer, (that season Hallmark calls Autumn to mask its true purpose to reign cold death upon us), bearable. We had a great time and played games and ate nachos and shared stories of summer trips and travails.

Welcome back, FUMC youth! Here's to a great new year!
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Travelin' Man

I am traveling more again. Nothing more to say about that. It beats working for a living.
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And Finally

I have opened a Twitter account. I so far haven't had anything worth Tweeting, but it is there in case you are interested. My handle is @Bald_ego.... get it? Come check it out when you get a minute. If you are on Twitter, I would be interested in following you, as well. Let's get together, eh?

Thursday Travelog and Miscelaneous Ramblings

2011-09-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

It is nice when I come to the east side of the state to be received so warmly by my many coworkers, especially since we rarely see each other. Perhaps, on the other hand, this is why I am so warmly received. Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder. At least to a point.

Through rain soaked highways filled with distracted drivers who are unwittingly trying to kill you through apathy toward the very thing they are supposed to be doing, (namely driving), I find myself in my adopted home town for the remainder of today and all day tomorrow. The occasion? A gold outing.

Mon Dieu! you correctly exclaim. I do not golf. No, I won't be doing anything that exciting. I will be instead, working a hole. As a sponsor. For my company. Can I get a woot?

No, you are right dear astute reader. It is not woot worthy and so no woot shall be issued. I predict no woot eliciting moments tomorrow, either. The woot is moot as it were.

But I got some cool tchatchkies all golf themed with logos and such (tees, divot fixer and ball markers). I hope those go over well with the golfers cum prospective customers. Tracy, with whom I will be working asked what we do if we run out. I told her plan B is to show some leg. She said she didn't have nice legs. I told her we should hope for a high hole, since the higher the hole the less it matters. Beside that, I was talking about me.

I stopped at a place called "Giant Jersey Subs" for lunch. It is attached to a gas station. Seldom have I walked away from a meal that has been purchased from or eaten at a venue attached to a gas station feeling like it was good decision making that led me to that moment. The one exception is Fowlerville Farms, a family restaurant right off the interstate that makes honest to god fried chicken. You have to wait for it. It's worth the wait.

Unfortunately, Giant Jersey Subs has left a weight right on my chest that feels a lot like New Jersey itself is lying across me. Not good. The sub was good going in, it is just being difficult now that it's there.

What else happened? Not much. nothing, really. Just a drive across the state to work do a non-woot worthy task and a drive back. Such is the banality of existence.
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Em continues to paint. It is going well, but taking a lot more materials than originally conceived. We both want to be done. This weekend we will make a big push. Let's hope Saturday is a good productive day.
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Yes, I am ready for some football. Thank you for asking.
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A Letter From the Prophet Thornton Mellon

2011-09-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

After my school years were past me, I would, without fail have a dream round about the beginning of a semester that I was supposed to be in school. I had mislaid my schedule, I hadn't any books and I didn't know what buildings I had to be in or when. Somewhere around mid semester, I would have a similar dream, studying for midterms and realizing there was a whole class I hadn't been attending all semester long!

Even now, 15 full years since I matriculated, (a word I only know because I matriculated), the dreams haunt me. They do not fail to visit upon me a few moments of unease as I shake the cobwebs of sleep from my head in the morning and attempt to discern the vividness of reality from my very high definition deams. Then, my knees snap as I get out of bed and I get dizzy from stretching and have to fumble for my spectacles because I can't even turn off my alarm without them and I remember just how old I am.

I look back at my college years with a great deal of fondness. It isn't probably a fully deserved fondness. In fact, if I take a minute to reflect, there were a lot of dreadful things that I went through and would never want to go through again, given the choice. But time is like an oaken barrel aging clear spirits into mellow complexity. The very passage of time has allowed me to appreciate all those difficulties. After all, they are what makes me, me. One must endure much in the course of a life.

I am sure a week or two into college, some of my former high school students are realizing that all those movies they watched where regular attendance class is but a tertiary aspect of the characters' lives, mentioned only when absolutely necessary to move the plot, (whatever plot there may be). I found myself indignant when I went to college and received syllabi festooned with attendance policies. The nerve! Don't I pay your salary? I should dictate classroom policy to you, Professor!

In reality, those attendance policies kept me honest. They were there when I needed them as a young student working it all out while I went along. And they disappeared for the most part as I moved onward through my educational journey. It turns out, those English professors know more than English. They know you need their class to graduate and know you don't want to be there. Hence the policy. Although for me that's a bad example. I loved Freshman English. There was a girl named Alice...

But I digress. No, wait, I don't. The T/A was pretty, um, nice, too. I think we actually could have had something there. There was a glimmer.

Now I digress.

It's so easy in college to blow off a class. In some cases, (I imagine a very few), it is possible to only show up to take tests and hand in papers and pass with flying colors. But that really isn't the point, now, is it?

While it is true, we go to college to do more than learn from fancy books and professors whose jackets are rumpled with a pattern mysteriously matching the pleats on the seatbacks of their 12 year old Honda Civics and smelling a little too much like patchouli, a young student finds themselves in early peril if they don't respect the fact they are in school to learn. Not just go to class. Not just get an A. Not just make friends and party. Learn. I think learning requires all those things in a certain balance.

Perhaps this is why I still am haunted by the dreams. Maybe if I look closely, I have the dreams of being a derilict college bum when things are a little overwhelming in my life. Perhaps it is because I have recently blown off some projects or chores to relax or to just not do anything at all. It is the wakeup call, appealing to the conscientious student that lives within the world-weary man.

God, I can't even call myself a young man anymore, can I? I can't believe I am not 19 anymore. It hits me like a ton of bricks every time. Maybe that is the real reason my subconscious frames this particular message the way it does. It is really affective.

To "my" students who are now dipping their toes into the pool for the first time, I leave you with this- You don't have time to read this blog. You have 30 chapters in 4 classes due in a week and 6 papers about stuff that you only knew existed 10 days ago. All this math equals get to work.

Now, get to work. I promise you will not miss anything. I will do really boring blentries until Thanksgiving. You won't be tempted to check in, because it will be terribly disappointing.

Hang up now.

Good, they're gone. I have some really awesome stuff coming up in the next few weeks, now that those college kids won't be here. Stay tuned!

To My Health, An Elegy

2011-09-06T07:04:00.000-07:00

I can scarcely remember a time in any recency that I have not suffered from a sinus problem. I am unwell this morning. So unwell, I have had to resort to the drastic measure of switching to the lotion tissue, (which gives me zits), and using chap stick, (one specifically for and not to be used as anything else), on the tip of my nose. Only these two things quiet the burning.

I have gone through more tissue than... well, never mind than what because the only references that come to mind are wholly inappropriate for this or any audience. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of tissue in the trash bins in the various rooms of my house. It looks as if later I will again be coloring my world with a lysol wipe to fend off the germs I am spreading around like... like... Oh, never mind like what.

My left eye is half closed and watering, my left nostril is plugged and my right one is making up for its deficiency with all it's available volume. I have the shakes from sneezing so hard and so often. My body is exhausted. It isn't even 10:30.

To mete my disenchantment in a very loquatious way, I have decided to compose a little ditty:

To My Health, An Elegy

I wonder where you are, I wonder where you've gone
I wonder if you left from spite or something I did wrong
I wonder when in bed at night
If I will live to see the light

I shout through hoarse throat with inflection
Please be gone with this sinus infection
I cannot speak on the business phone
When my voice is but a squeaky moan

Allergies, Sinuses, Colds and Shivers
My body it aches, my body it quivers
I'll cash in my chips and lose my mind
If I sneeze just one more time

I wonder where you are right now
I wonder where you live
My head pound just like a drum
My nose leaks like a sieve

I have but a modest request
So simple at my own behest
The flowing nose is the issue
It hurts to wipe it with the tissue

The tip is red and growing rotten
It looks like a pulsating gin blossom
I fear it will soon wipe clean away
Leaving me no nasal pathway

Come back health wherever you've gone
Find your way through the hoary throng
Come quickly to me and stay long, too
For it is clear I can no longer live without you

The One With the Cow

2011-09-01T04:22:00.000-07:00

I asked Em this morning while catching up on her blog if she saw the one about the Far Side. Yes, she said and offered without hesitation, "I like the one with the cow."

Now, Em came to the marriage with at least as many Far Side books as I had and they were at least as well used and well read as mine. In fact, the scan I did of my favorite panel came out of Emily's book.

She is no stranger to the Far Side comic and has been a lifelong devotee. Her ability to recall minutiae about things that have no importance is famous. She knows as do most humans in the western world that many Far Sides have cows. It's like saying the one with the caveman or the one with the pithy caption.

I won't dwell on this as the brain power and storage I have devoted to remembering such things is actually beyond human comprehension. It is a magnificent waste. Em has to spend time thinking about things that would drive me to drink... erm, more.

She has to remember how to fold the towels. I have to reverse engineer an already folded towel in order to remember how to fold the towels in the proper Schrumpfian way. It has been handed down through the years as though God himself bestowed the knowledge onto the first woman in the lineage.

To reverse engineer a towel, you unfold it slowly, fold by fold and then try to duplicate what you just learned. Except the first fold you learn is actually the last fold you make. So you also have to perform a complicated reversal in your head. It's all too much for me. Now I'm staring at two unfolded towels. I am starting to panic a little.

Em does the money. While I am quoting Simpsons lines that no one gets and spouting off trivial facts about what Robert Shaw was drinking the night they filmed the famous "U.S.S. Indianapolis" scene of Jaws, she is remembering the quarterly water bill will be coming in the mail. Better remember to save a couple hundred bucks just to be sure.

I routinely have to call her if I am out. "Hi, do we have money?" My friends find this to be an atrocity of manhood, but she has a system and that system includes me not balancing the check book, so I go with it.

I suggested once to make things easier and more open to both of us, we switch to a Quicken type system, because if you put it on a computer, it is suddenly a game to me and I do it. I am virtually organized and realistically a ticking time bomb. She distracted me by playing the "let's see if you know where this dish goes", game. I still don't know where the dish goes and until now, forgot all about my suggestion.

I can take a hint. The dish must belong to Dave and Greg.

Let's not start on the laundry, eh? I am not to touch the laundry unless there has been an accident or emergency and Emily is more than 60 minutes away. I can't conceive of a day in which I would soil every single pair of underpants I own, but whatever alternate universe Bill is doing to have that much fun, I say go with it. Party like a rock star, dude.

When Emily is gone, I do my laundry the same way I did my laundry in college. I pretend that each load is costing me a gallon of gas or a pack of cigarettes or part of cover charge to get into the bar and I cram the clothes into the thing and bungy cord the lid down. Last time I put some spare pavers on there just for good measure.

When the clothes are done, they are compressed like a form in the shape of the wash drum, dimples and all. The bonus is they are totally dry! Score! I just saved a buck fiddy on drying!

I don't understand her problem with my method. It's efficient and energy conservation minded. Sometimes I don't even use soap! And fabric softener? Fabric softener? That is a myth brought down to us by a money hungry production conglomerate foisting upon a weary consumer an expensive liquid that does nothing! Fabric softener indeed. I have never tried on a tee shirt and said... "Hmm, I like it, but it's just a little stiff... maybe it needs some fabric softener."

I have gotten on a little tangent there; as I am wont to do from time to time. Meanwhile, Em, who just sung my praises for being so helpful to her this week is vacuuming upstairs while I sit here and do nothing. I suppose I should go rectify that. I at least need to get a cup of coffee and go point out spots I think she could have done better. After all, chores are everyone's responsibility.

The Far Side of the Moon

2011-08-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

My but haven't we all felt like this a time or two? This has always been my favorite Far Side comic. I had it hanging in many of my offices throughout the years. At one time, it was re-captioned "Uh-oh, Bill's in one of his moods again."

I identify with the man in this frame. I think I have felt like him fairly often in my life. In still life as imagined by Gary Larson, its author and illustrator, here before the reader is the epitome of the utter frustration one feels when things are so clear in one's head, yet reality simply isn't bearing out the clarity.

We are left to wonder what led up to this character's psychotic break, but based on the expressions on the dog and cat, I can only assume it was animal shenanigans that made this man to feel he had to assert, in the simplest and most overt terms possible, the order of things.

Among the items labeled, all seem to be "less than" the man doing the labeling. Without him, no labeling would be possible. Without him, the labeling would be unnecessary.

So, I've managed to ruin the fun behind the joke by deconstructing it to the point where it makes you think rather than just accept the basic premise as it is presented. But Mr. Larson knows, like many other creative people in this world, it is the joke behind the joke that is really funny.

Was Mr. Larson having a bad day when he drew this? Did he ask for a latte and his assistant brought a mocha instead? Was his agent or artistic consultant giving him flack, or worse, suggestions that were not appreciated and certainly not requested?

I will never know. But this single frame is so instantaneously and utterly relateable to me that it has endured as one of my very favorite pieces of humor of all time. This is only one of many many Far Side panels that resonate with me. Larson is a master of making sure there is more going on that meets the eye. In crude drawings and simple set-ups, he creates entire universes. Some authors need reams and reams of paper and entire series of books what Larson does in a simply drawn panel.

The humor challenges the reader to be on their toes. When you are on your toes and you get the joke, you feel smart and witty. When you don't get the joke, you probably don't even know it, so no harm done.

I don't have a point, other than to express my thanks to Mr. Larson and his twisted Id for expressing so much with so little for so long. My hat is off to you sir.

Monday Miscellani

2011-08-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

A Slow Boat From China

Our new iPad is on a slow boat from China. I hate like hell that all this American innovation is made in China, but such is such. I wish we could learn (re-learn) how to make the goods here that we are so good at creating and innovating. Talk about solving a lot of problems. I know prices would be high but people would be working.
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Blow Gabriel, Blow

Glad to know our Jersey peeps were by-and-large left without too much damage from Irene. Irene is a good name for a Hurricane. I think other good names would be Matilda, Lorraine, Gertrude, Florence... you know, all good old fashioned lady names. they remind me of the old ladies that used to piss and moan about me riding across their lawn to deliver their newspapers and then not tip me at Christmas. Old ladies filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing.

What happens when they stop using classical names for hurricanes to get with the times? Can you imagine a hurricane Trevor, Cody, Skylar, Dylan, Trey or Shaquanda?

Me either.

Hurricane Trevor... what, it would only target Ralph Lauren outlets? Hurricane Cody would leave behind unspeakable damage at every BMW dealership up and down the east coast.
I wrote a joke about Hurricane Shaquanda, but the ACLU airdropped Al Sharpton through my window to yell at me for being insensitive and made me buy his DVD entitled "There is nothing funny about anything."
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Cruisin' on a Saturday Afternoon

Saturday we popped in my Sam and Dave cassette and cruised up and down 28th street seeing and being seen. It was great. Perfect weather, fun cars, lots of smiles. Tons of cops. Holy cow. I somehow don't think that was what cruising was like "back in the day", but it is all we have. And it was a great deal of fun. I suppose I will keep the Corvette just to do that once a year.
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See You In September

Many of "My" kids are headed back to school this week, or going for the first time. This is a huge moment in their lives. I remember being so petrified. These kids are either much more confident than I was or they are brilliant actors. Some of them are pretty good actors, but I think they are just better prepared for this than I was.

Someone said at church Sunday to one girl, "Don't do anything you'll regret in 10 years." To which I quipped, "10 years is an eternity away, don't do anything you'll regret tomorrow morning."

Pearls of wisdom from one who had to sit on a lot of grains of sand in his day.

11 Years

2011-08-26T08:06:00.001-07:00

Today marks the completion of eleven years of marriage for Em and me. Depending on the day, eleven years has either passed by like the proverbial warm summer day of song or it has been a long rocky road fraught with pitfalls and traps that lead to not a little discomfort.

No one said it would be easy. In fact, her parents and my parents have been married a combined 97 years if my calculations are correct. Good examples of what can be accomplished with love, respect, trust and patience.

At 25 years, my parents renewed their vows in our home. The priest came, there was a small group of attendees. The priest asked my mother "What is one word that describes your marital success?"

"Perseverance," was the response. There was no delay. It was if she had an answer for that question before it was asked. Nay, before it was conceived.

"Perseverance" is a mantra I chant under my breath. "This too shall pass."

The point is, I think our ability to look at each other, shake our heads and let it go is a key to our longevity. A woman I used to work with defined love as, "Knowing exactly which buttons to push, and then not pushing them." Neither of us are especially easy people and we're awfully similar to each other. We are both German, hot tempered (well, I thought I was hot tempered until I met the likes of my dear wife), loud, magnanimous and like to be the center of attention.

It's a recipe for disaster. Or at least that was the popular prediction among our friends at the beginning. I admit, (a little embarrassingly), to a certain amount of schadenfreude that many of those who predicted our demise have since had irreverseable meltdowns of their own institutions. I know it's not nice, and I feel dirty, but it is what it is.

The hardest thing I have ever done was to offer forgiveness when I have been really honked-off. Emily really knows how to honk me off. And I her. Not only am I not good at saying I'm sorry, I'm not good at accepting an apology. Whoever said love means never having to say you're sorry was full of shit. Love means saying it and meaning it.

I am also not good at saying "you're welcome." I am quick with a thank-you, but I have a hard time accepting a compliment. That of course eliminates the compulsion to give compliments. Emily still does. Proving that perseverance is a key to success.

We are both completely and totally rock steady during a crisis. neither of us is prone to panic. There would be no screaming or running around in a storm or in a fire - we would just do what needed to be done. On the opposite side of that, we will snipe and gripe about the smallest insignificant things. In fact, I know there have been times I have actually hated, but for some reason, (and it isn't because I'm all googly and romantic because it's my anniversary - I'm actually in kind of a mood), I can't remember many of them. There are a couple doozies, but they have turned in to fun stories after the fact.

despite all these facts, we're a pretty good match in that neither of us are really capable of living with anyone else. But that sounds like resignation, and that's not right, either. I have grown comfortable with the fact that I cannot understand all that happens in life. I don't understand how we surpassed impossible odds to get and stay together. But when I try to imagine life differently, I can't. Maybe love means never having to say "I wish."

So here's to the last eleven, the next eleven and all the elevens we can manage to squeeze in after that. They won't all be good, they won't all be fun, but I can't wait to see what happens!

I love you, Em. Now, where do you want to go for dinner?

Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show

2011-08-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

We went camping this weekend in Pentwater at Lake Michigan Camp, one of many hundreds of thousands of camps the United Methodist Church in West Michigan alone. The Methodists have more camps than the Catholics have cathedrals and alcoholics. Combined.

The town of Ocean Grove where we lived in New Jersey for awhile was a camp meeting town... a place to get away from the city and breath some ocean air while singing music. Just bring a dish to pass and you are in. Seems Methodism was founded upon the tenets of sleeping in tents, (and since "we" tend toward the upper end of the socioeconomic scale, RVs), singing hymns and eating casseroles. It's really a pretty good religion. Hang out on the beach and watch the sunset before spending the dusk and early dark in front of a campfire eating s'mores.

This was my first time camping as a Methodist. I used to camp as a young adult. There were more intoxicants and bigger fires, but essentially it is all the same. That doesn't count unless you camp at a Methodist as a Methodist. I was initiated as a Methodist years ago, but you can't really be a Methodist until and unless you camp. It's somewhere in the red hymnal.

The church's official motto is "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors", which pretty much means come as you are. And I have seen this in practice so it's more than just a slogan. Regardless, people have regarded me with suspicion upon finding out I have never camped. That's all fixed. I Methodist camped, and liked it in a Methodist manner. I plan to go again Methodistly. It was a valuable trip, too since I learned a lot about how things go in the church which I will now share.

Methodists are the kindest people in the world. It's actually borderline annoying. We already explored the official slogan, but the unofficial slogan is "No, you first."

Pursuant to the real slogan, anyone can hold any position in the church. Women, minorities, gay people - Bishops and leaders and preachers, all. But, only men cook breakfast. Do not even enter the kitchen if you have a second X chromosome. The open doors thing is suspended when it comes to breakfast.

Once in the kitchen, the conversation turns to how many years you have been coming to camp. Not any camp, this camp. This is a subtle way of reminding everyone of the pecking order. It's almost like if in the wild, alpha males established dominance by playing chess in the park over tea. There is no weeping or gnashing of teeth, just a sense of resignation and understanding that it is what it is. In this case, being that worst kind of bottom feeding critter on earth, (a newbie), I was the melon cutter, the table mover, the chair setter-upper and the butter plate putter-outer. I will be 50 before I touch the grill.

The Methodists are brilliant at cooking for 100 people. There is something about quantity that brings out the best in Methodists. It's all about numbers and amounts. If your pants aren't tighter by the end of a meal, someone failed. There is no "No, thank you, I'm not hungry" to the Methodists. Read the earlier statement about me eating a s'more. I don't care for them especially. I ate it anyway.

Topics of conversation at meal time run the gamut all the way from "Kids these days...", to "when I was a kid". Occasionally there is a "You would never catch me wearing that..." which is more an indictment on the parents of the subject of the scorn... even if he or she is in their 30's.

Methodists don't take a public political stand, mostly because they are all over the map. It is an "agree to disagree, agreeably" situation. I heard one man guffaw at a joke deriding one side of the political spectrum, and the next day laugh equally as heartily at a joke filled with consternation about the other. Now it's possible that both were worthy of his laughter, but at least one of those jokes made him a little uncomfortable. He didn't show it.

It's O.K. to talk about "adult subjects", it's just not O.K. to do them. For instance, several of us there were avowed fans of brown liquors and classy, expensive cigars. Fine that we spoke of these things around the camp fire, however were any or all of us to tipple and smoke in the real we could face excommunication; which to the Methodists means you would be treated rudely by your wife and demoted to dish duty after breakfast.

It is also O.K. to speak in entendre. "Nice mellons," I said to Gene as he carried the mellons. "Nice Jugs," I said to Brent as he carried the milk and OJ to the dining hall. Laughs all around (probably polite since they are both essentially the same joke and not especially funny). However, bring that into the real world and openly admire the shape of a woman and you will do dishes. For years.

So there you have it. Methodists love to camp, are kind to a fault, generous, social, love to eat, have no opinions, laugh at everything and pay for sins by washing dishes. Well, that's not true exactly, but if you were an alien come to earth to research culture and you were dropped in the middle of Methodist camp you might think it was.

A word to the wise for that alien. Make sure your shorts hit the knee... you wouldn't want us talking quietly about what not to wear over dinner while looking furtively in your direction.

Vacations With a Capitol P

2011-08-19T03:26:00.000-07:00

Everyone is bitching about the President going on vacation during a time of crisis in our country. I say, lay off. This is the perfect time to take vacation. Our problems will still be here for him to be not able to fix when he gets back. Except they'll be even bigger. They were going to get bigger anyway, so why not take a couple weeks at the end of summer to decompress for the busy season ahead?

I am talking of course about campaign season. Believe you me, this is a great time to have a crisis. Everyone in Washington wants to be the one to point fingers as to the cause of our national crisis-es, then explain how they have the right plan to fix our national crisis... But they can't tell us what it is until we elect them.

Besides, when has our country not been in crisis? I am a member of the instant factoid, info-tainment, Fox News generation so I don't check facts; but if I did I think I would see that every sitting president has presided over some sort of crisis and none have canceled their vacations. The news only used to report when Bill Clinton was at the White House. That man got around, (the world that is) and no one seemed to complain about that!

They take the whole shooting match with them anyway, people. This would be the worst vacation you could conceive of. Imagine you were the president of a major corporation and to take vacation you had to bring the entire board of directors and your executive management team with you and meet with them for hours every day. Later, if it didn't rain, you could catch a round of golf with an old school buddy of yours that you flew in just to see you, except now he's only a manager and you are the big kahuna and you find it is awkward and you have almost nothing to talk about. On top of this, all your shareholders are there, surrounding you everywhere you go taking pictures and wanting to talk about share price!

Miserable!

Which is exactly the vacation any Washington politicians deserve right now. A miserable one.

I want Stenny Hoyer's Winnebago to pop a flat on Pike's Peak and Barney Frank's hot air balloon to ascend to great heights because he can't stop talking (hot air, get it?).

I want them all to get sunburned - a mere preview of what is in store for many of them should they not change their ways.

I want the mistresses and the wives to be having tea when Mr. Big Shot walks into the drawing room.

I hope Carl Levin loses the Benjamin Franklin look-alike contest he has been practicing for for years.

And as for you, Dutch Ruppersberger, (O.K. I admit I looked that one up), I hope you get a toothpick under your fingernail after eating crab and getting all that crap under your fingernails and trying to clean it out with a toothpick, even though your wife tells you she has the fingernail cleaner thing in her purse but you use the toothpick anyway and poke yourself. Then it starts to bleed a little and hurt really bad and even though you are smiling while eating the ice cream cone all you can think of is "damn, this really hurts" and then realize it's going to leave a big black blood clot under the nail and it's the hand you shake with and people will be grossed out by you for weeks.

Ron Paul - I like you. Dial back the crazy just a notch and you have earned another devotee in me. You have a nice week off. Take some time and scribble some errant thoughts on the back of a cocktail napkin and call it a stump speech. Have your family make some crude signs with esoteric slogans that only 10 people in America get and only 4 of them appreciate. Read Pat Paulsen's Autobiography. Read it again. Repeat.

I say, go ahead, lawmakers. Take all the vacation you want. Disappear for all we care. You got us into this, maybe it is time we start getting us out of it. Go f*ck up your golf game for awhile. Leave my country alone.

The Goodbye Grandma and Hello Maxi

2011-08-18T04:34:00.000-07:00

The eagle has landed and Maximilian J. Cooper has entered the fleet.
2011 Kona Blue Ford Flex SEL.

The genesis of the name Maximilan J. Cooper is simple. This is a big car that has similar styling language of the current Mini Cooper, so badged for the eponymous John Cooper, principal of the John Cooper Motor Works. Maxi Cooper... get it? The 'J' is for John as a tribute to Mr. Cooper and his pen.

Note the supple Corinthian... uh, cloth, since leather was not in the budget. But the cloth has a nice hounds tooth pattern and looks like it will wear well. The seats are still heated, which at the end of the day is very important to me.
The stereo is only acceptable, (again the good one was out of budget), but it still has SYNC, (which Ford has done a brilliant job marketing since it is so highly desired but barely works). Overall, there are many good features. Certainly it is no beer can or stripper.

The first car I remember in my youth was my mom's '76 LTD station wagon; banana yellow and as big as the whole outdoors. She must have looked funny with the tweed bench seat cranked all the way up to the dash, clinging to the large diameter but still pencil thin steering wheel. My job was to sit in the "way back" and intercept any cigarette butts that flew back in through the open tailgate window before they burned the whole works down.
I appreciated that car in retrospect. Later she had a mini van and some of the best things that ever happened to me happened in that van (we'll just leave it at that, shall we?). Now I have this cross between the two. I think it is clean, cohesive, fresh and funky. It sure is comfortable, quiet and utile.

Welcome to the family, Maxi. May your 24 months with us be happy! Ha! I'm kidding, that was for my wife who shook her fist at me and said... "That car better still be in the driveway in 4 years!"

Let's be honest, that's a bit of a stretch, but I can almost see it happening.

Squeeky Wheels

2011-08-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

I guess I kinda let loose a little on the phone with my parents the other day. I was ranting about how jealous I was they had an iPad and I had, well, not an iPad. They also have an iPhone and something called a Kindle from some fly-by-night internet place called Amazon... whatever that is. Since Barnes and Noble paid my mortgage (well, most of it), for five years, I don't choose to recognize that off-branded stuff.

"I'm too broke! I am tired of being broke! I want, I want, I want!" That's exactly what I said to my parents in my animated man squeal over the phone. Two days later, my Mother called and said they would like to buy us an iPad for our forthcoming anniversary. Well, OK then, finally someone gave the baby his bottle!

And I say; it's about time.

There is a lesson to be learned here, children. That lesson is, if you don't get what you want, complain to someone who can give it to you and keep complaining until you get it. I heard of a study that recently came out that came to the conclusion that men make 18% more money on average when they are a jerk at work. For women the differential is 5%. That's some pretty good cabbage, people and it's all there waiting for you to collect.

We are going camping this weekend with a number of people from church. The "men" according to the information sheet, are making Sunday breakfast. It goes on to list the"men", Steve... Brent... Gene... No Bill. Well, there is a Bill, and he is a strapping bald man with movie star good looks, just like your author. But alas, he is not your author.

I did all I could do. I went about getting results. I complained. When I was told I could help, I said, "Oh, no... I'm going to sleep in, and I will be first in line for breakfast and I am going to complain about everything!" To which another bystander retorted "So it will be just like normal, then."

Touche.

I complained enough to get Emily to acquiesce to letting me get a new car. I put a deposit in today and will pick it up and close the deal tomorrow! Being bitchy works for me!

People, the world is out there waiting to be taken by you! Don't let it pass you by simply by being patient and friendly. Don't be satisfied with your perfectly acceptable lives, go get more! Make people suffer for their insolence if they don't fall at your knees and give you all you demand!

It works for me, it can work for you!
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Ps. Tongue out of cheek, we are really appreciative of your generosity, Mom and Dad. We can't wait to get our iPad!

That Went Well...(Yes, Another Post About Cars... Sheesh!)

2011-08-13T14:50:00.001-07:00

I am a basically inept mechanic. Couple this fact with the traits of being curious and essentially fearless and you have a recipe for disaster. But I like to tinker and I can figure most things out, even if it takes some time, some knuckle blood and enough effbombs to make Rahm Emanuel grasp his rosary cross himself.

Today all my parts came in from e-bay and NAPA to fix my car' s many maladies. You will no doubt recall the driver door window stopped working halfway between hither and yon, the driver door lock hasn't worked in over a year, (with the a brief exception when I affected a temporary redneck fix), and the automatic climate control has only blown out of the defrost for two years making the car uncomfortable to drive in any season.

In a recent post, I told you I ordered e-bay parts and a NAPA part for something less than $200.00 including shipping. They arrived today as described, except for the window switches which were in pretty rough shape. Some elbow grease and a super-secret, (and very likely carcinogenic), homemade chemical compound of my own design restored them to like-new. I went ahead and installed the parts.

It went well. Quick. Painless. No swearing, no blood, no spare parts. Everything worked the first time and has continued to work several hours on, in spite of the fact I have rigorously tested, (i.e. tried to break), the parts and systems. I even got it done before the rain and thunder overtook us.

Truly, this is a sign of the end of days. It never works like this for me. I always run into some sort of situation and need to consult a professional who invariably says things like, "Never seen this before..." and "How on earth did you manage that?" I don't like to be there when this happens, so I always drop the car off the night before and steal away like a thief in the night, furtive look and all. But I know it has happened, because I have to eventually pick the car up and pay. When I do, people come out of their little hidy-holes to look and snicker.

This time, I wasn't going anywhere I hadn't gone before. No new frontiers were established, just fixing the old broken frontiers. Fine with me.

I saved about $1,000.00 over what would have been charged to me if I had the dealer do this work. I wish I could turn the clock back and do the air compressor I had the dealer change at the cost of $600.00 plus dollars when I could have e-bought the part and done it myself for less than $200.00.

Such is life.

Now that everything, (literally everything!), works again as it should on the car, I have put it up on Craig's List. This is nothing new for me. I spent much money and shed much blood sorting out Emily's first car, a Grand Am named Bo. Bo was in sorry shape and very unreliable.

I fixed it all, said I never wanted to see the car again and sold it to friends. This is usually a no-no, but I replaced every damn piece on that car, so what could go wrong? Beside, they knew of the hassle it had given us.

They paid me more than a fair price for it and guess what... still running and they are still friends. The car is serving someone in their extended family. That was 2001. I figure all the time and effort I have put into maintaining this one, someone is going to get a stout car that will last forever and never cost them one red cent outside of gas.

Good for them.

I drove a new car today that I have decided is perfect for me. I don't need the leather and the filigree and the foof-de-do that I thought I did. It is still just this much more than I wanted to pay, even with $100.00 over invoice pricing with $4,000.00 cash back. But that's just what cars cost these days. It is equivalent to what a year or two old examples with 30,000 miles or more are trading for. It is, in short, a good deal.

It's really a shame I am on the top side of this equation rather than the recipient of people like me who take good care of their things and pass them along for reasonable money to people who can use them for many more years. But, that's the way it is. I provide a service to the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum (where I actually live, despite my best efforts to prove otherwise), although mostly to my own financial peril. I figure we walk (or drive) on this earth for a pretty short time. We should at least like our car.

Wish me luck on the sale! And if you know of anyone who wants a 2006 Mercury Grand Marquis with 100% new parts, send them my way. It's a pretty, comfortable, and safe car. And nothing else could possibly go wrong with it.

Angry Birds

2011-08-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

Hitchcock was ahead of his time. We all know this. This is not a revelation. But, why I have come to this conclusion as of late is disturbing to me. I have a confession to make. I don't like birds. They, sort of creep me out. This is why Hitchcock's classic "The Birds" resonated with me.

I had a roommate in college who had a cockatiel. It was O.K. By the end of its life we had learned to get along O.K. He died as a result of our house fire. I had pulled my roommate out of said fire and he went rushing back in to get said bird. Smoke inhalation was the cause.

I have another friend from college who had another cockatiel who lived something like 33 years. He was cranky and bat-shit crazy by the time he passed, but he was an entertaining bird. The bird just died not too long ago. It was clearly a good run.

Ornamental birds aren't so much an issue as wild birds. I don't trust them. They seem smart and wily. I don't like smart animals, except for dolphins. If you don't go in the water, dolphins can't get you. But birds are dangerous.

Lately, I have noticed a polar shift in bird behavior. During my normal travels, I have seen a lot of crazy and aggressive behavior out of birds. They have been swooping closer, waiting longer to take off when being approached. I have discerned long, menacing glances coming from those beady dead eyes. Even their once pretty songs seem more like Klingon Opera lately. In fact, I read a new research study that indicates bird song is not communication so much as it is trash-talk. It's like males hurling yo-mammas at each other to make females love them.

I don't think the aggression is contained within the bird community. Case in point, I have seen several birds dive and swoop toward cars which are at speed. I have seen three in recent weeks not win this battle resulting in a scene reminiscent of stock dog fighting footage where like a plane with its wing shot off - the bird suddenly goes flinging off out of control in what is clearly a death spiral.

Yesterday it happened to me. I was cruising along Highway 51 (which is exactly 10 highways less cool than Dylan's Highway 61) when a starling took off and was well out of my way when for no reason at all, it stopped climbing, took a left and descended right into my windshield in the spot immediately in front of my face.

It hit with a terrific thunk. Actually, it didn't. It was a starling. It weighed less than a fart. I added the thunk in my head because it seemed appropriate.

I had the sunroof open and watched the now dying bird flinging over the roof of the car. Then I watched it in the rear view mirror as it landed, on the pavement behind and to the left of the car.
If it wasn't dead when it landed, it sure wasn't going to be able to move and it was in the middle of the lane, so it wouldn't be long before it was.

I believe this was a calculated attempt at my life. I believe the birds are gathering intelligence. They are trying to figure out windows. They might almost have it. And they are willing to sacrifice and accept the dreadful results of their intelligence gathering. They are putting the stupid ugly birds out there to die for the sake of research - leaving behind only the smart, clipboard carrying research birds bent on the destruction of mankind.

All I know is if a woman who looks like Tippy Hedren comes into the diner where you are eating lunch talking about birds who tried to pick her off on the drive in, you had better listen.

They're coming. And they are coming for us.

Thurday Quickshots

2011-08-11T04:18:00.000-07:00

I have potential business crawling out of the woodwork all medium to big. Nice problem to have! Of course, time for blogging is among the first time to go when work is taking up more of my time. I know you understand.
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None of my repair parts have arrived, so GrandMa Marjorie Rubenstein, AKA Large Marge the Barge is still sitting moribund in my driveway, sagging a little by the stern. Perhaps this weekend I will get her rolling again.
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A lady at a credit union can get me 2.88% on a used car loan for 5 years? Sign me up. Now I just need to find the car.
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Be sure to look for an upcoming Blab Blah Blog about our new concept for Emily's cooking show. It will be Giada Di Laurentiis meets the terminator. Look out, Bitchin' Kitchen, there's a new badass in town.
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Woe is me. My life is so hard. We sponsor a client's drag racing team and Em and I will get to hang out for a bit on Saturday. All in the name of work. Tough stuff. Powerboat races, Drag races, lunches, events where the word 'drinks' is in the title. I should have gotten into sales a long time ago.
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Mowing the lawn yesterday, I saw a mother and her toddler son walk up the walk and stop a respectful distance away. Thinking perhaps the toddler was afraid of the mower, I cut it off and invited them to pass.
The mother than said, "He just wanted to watch you." O.K. I laughed and said I hoped he enjoyed watching as much as I enjoyed laboring away. Except I am afraid I was a bad influence because I was mowing at first in flip-flops, then realizing how stupid and dangerous that was, I ditched them and went au natural. So, hopefully the kid won't remember the man down the street who mowed in bare feet (hey that rhymes) and stumble into the deck of his mower on day only to have to hop away (hey!).

My Accidental Trip to the Post Office

2011-08-09T10:26:00.000-07:00

I admit to being sort of (which is man-speak for completely, or utterly) ignorant to the ways of the post office. I would rather grocery shop than go to the post office and for those of you who have read my previous diatribe on men and grocery shopping, that will give you a pretty good idea of where on the great spectrum of chores going to the post office lies for me.

I had to go to the post office yesterday to ship off the controller for my HVAC in the car for repair. Imagine my surprise when it was on my porch today, looking just like it did when it left my hand (along with $11.20 of my money) one day hence.

This blog post is not about the post office, or about me being an idiot. Essentially, this is all expository and so if you want to get to the point you can read the essence down lower. For those of you who have time for more than the Cliff's notes, carry on.

Yesterday, I apparently exercised my inner idiot by placing the to and from labels in an odd arrangement. This was met with kindness by the post office lady who moved the labels around and assured me all would be well.

Well... you already know the punchline to that joke. Today, I expected a fight and instead another very nice person set me all up and we resent the package with nothing more than a 5 minute investment in my time. No money changed hands. I even got an apology, for something that my wife tells me was my fault to begin with. Maybe the post office isn't so bad after all!

Except you know if I am writing about it, there is something that went awry or jumped down my body cavity and died there.

And that would be the old man, shirt and hair flying almost comically in the stiff warm breeze who made a bee-line for me as I parked. I knew what was coming. I had been engaged. there was no turning back. I tensed and puckered waiting for the bum's rush as it were.

A little background before we continue. I hate being panhandled. It puts me in the unfair position of having, at least on the face of it, no compassion for my fellow man. And that is just not true. A goodly amount of our household income is devoted to buying groceries for the food bank, donating money to same, and providing fully prepared and rounded out meals to those less fortunate through a program at our church.

But you can't explain all that to the disenfranchised man whose circle of influence is conveniently located between two liquor stores.

Here he was approaching me, moving against the wind with remarkable alacrity all things considered.

"Hey, buddy, you got a couple bucks you can spare?"

A couple bucks! What happened to spare change? This guy wasn't exactly working the most prominent and well-to-do corner in the world. I mean, this is a neighborhood where certain sex acts probably only cost a couple spare bucks.

"I got nothing for you, sorry," I said as I blew past him with my box blocking between us in my weak hand in case I had to swing with my strong one.

He had the audacity to make some sort of comment, but luckily for us both, it was lost on the wind and he turned around dejected and headed back for the corner.

It really is sad that anyone in the wealthiest nation on our planet lives like that. But in Grand Rapids we have places for people to go. They can get help. Our church offers day labor at regular intervals where people can make some cash for four hours of work. The only thing not offered are drugs and alcohol. Nobody needs to be on a corner begging in this town. You choose to be on the corner begging for money; and my compassion ends at that line.

And I still feel terrible; for not knowing how to act, for not holding the man to my bosom and praying to the spirit of Mother Theresa to wash over me and to cure this man of his ills. But that isn't me. Instead I am made to suffer in my WASPy guilt for hours after the fact.

Which makes it even worse as I go back and re-read my rant. I have made this all about how bad it was for me when I got in my new car and drove back the quiet streets of my nice neighborhood and reentered my house and resumed my life.

He is still out there on the corner. Looking for something that once he finds it, won't do anything to help him be better tomorrow.

This is the world we live in. I am going to do my part. From this day forward, I am making a proclamation. Never again will I go the the post office. That ought to do it.

The Pithiness Which Doth Accompany Good Rest

2011-08-09T04:17:00.000-07:00

Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast,--
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2

I know this blog is entitled "Grandiose Ruminations Rooted in Minutiae" which means it should be a periodical reckoning on par with Ken Kesey or Hunter Thompson. But pretend for a moment that this blog is ironically titled. Pretend, if you will, the blog is actually called Mundane Thoughts Anchored in Banality.

There you go. This works because today's topic is sleep; or, more specifically, I slept last night. For the first time in a long, long time. All through the night. No interruptions, (save for a pit stop complete with cat rotation), no hours in the middle of the night staring at the clock, no being too hot or too cold, no snoring, no feeling like crap when the time came to wake up.

Many factors are at play here. We are back to normal in our schedule so we took a walk yesterday. We had a modestly sized meal at a normal time. We had time to rest and relax before bed. We went to bed at a reasonable hour. We put in ear plugs because the new young neighbors next door were having a "mixer", (is that what the kids call it these days?).

And... this is a great and. For the first time since April of 2008, with the exception of being on vacation, (and usually not even then), I turned off my phone and I turned off the part of my brain that is responsible for late night cell phone reaction. It's called the verizonal cortex. I should know. I studied neuroscience for four years in a non-accredited program at a midwestern university best known for being Playboy Magazine's "Party School of the Year" my junior year.

Why this luxury? With the removal of the responsibility to sell emergency services and therefore respond to emergencies, I no longer am beholden the late night thoughts of disasters. I no longer have to stare at my phone waiting for it to ring. Dreading the mere fact it may ring. Not ringing was ringing in and of itself. Existential enough for you? Maybe today's aren't so mundane after all.

In my job before, I could be (and often was) needed any time 24/7. I have essentially been on call for over three years. That really burns a guy (or gal I suppose) out. But not anymore. I have more or less banker's hours now, except for some early meetings and breakfasts and the occasional event after hours or on Saturday. But these things tend toward the relaxed and fun spectrum, not to the "c'mon get that hose over here move move move", spectrum.

I don't know if this will be a cure for my insomnia, but it sure feels like a good start. And that is indeed a Grandiose Rumination.
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I have begun assembling the parts to keep GrandMa Marjorie Rubenstein, (AKA Ruby/Large Marge the Barge), on the road for just that much longer. Ebay is my friend as I have cruised the online world looking for bargains.

The first bargain was a rebuild service for my long moribund "automatic" climate control which gave up functioning altogether two years ago. The dealer wanted $700.00 to fix it. I found a guy who rebuilds them with a lifetime warranty for $75.00. Since my window is stuck in the down position and I will NOT under any circumstance drive a car with plastic taped to the door with blue painter's tape, now was a good time to excise that piece and send it in for repair. I hope to have it back by Saturday. But more likely it will be Monday.

Then I saw a master switch block including escutcheon in the color I need and everything for $99.00. I made an offer for $65.00 and it was turned down. Later, I found another listed for $49.99, made and offer for $39.99 and it was accepted. I sent my auction win to the first guy and told him to check himself.

I am now looking at buying a new lock actuator and mounting, which I will likely do from the dealer because I need to see it and visualize if before I buy it.

Then I will bite the bullet and buy a new trim piece to replace the one that Mr. or Mrs. Crackhead marred while breaking in to my car. They want $120.00 new! I am trying to find a used one, but that search has proved more difficult.

Then I'm going to take her up to Cole at Autobody Experts/Carstar in Holland and get a full detail inside and out.

Then I'm going to sell or trade her in. Values are higher than I thought, if the various websites are to be believed. I want a "new" car. I deserve it.

The end.

Saturday Headlines

2011-08-06T06:01:00.000-07:00

My Car Sucks
Grandma has failed me again. Ever since the person or persons in Cleveland decided they needed my stuff more than I did and broke into my car to get it, she hasn't been the same. Yesterday in the driveway, car loaded for Cicero, the window switch failed. After taping the plastic to the opening, we switched cars and were off.

I am now looking at all the costs involved with fixing everything that is wrong in that door. The hinges torque and make noise, the power lock doesn't work, the trim molding is marred from where Mr. or Mrs. Crackhead pried their way into the car and now the window switch block is dead.

Basically, I am shopping for a complete new door, with all subassemblies, since all the pieces parts separately will cost more than a whole new door. All-in we're looking at another grand down the tube into this gigantic rolling piece of shit car.
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Back To Normal
Our week with Skylar has come to an end. She is a good kid. We love having her and we hope she had fun. Work and other schedules meant she sometimes had to fend for herself, but I think we managed to keep her entertained for the most part. We certainly kept her well fed.
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Changes at Work
I have been dropped by the one restoration company since they realized the level of investment that would be required on their part to actually perform the work in my geographic area. I will now focus all my time on business development for Great Lakes Cleaning and its Parent, New Image Building Services. No sweat. I like that better.
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Sick and Tired
I haven't been sleeping due to allergies and such. When I am awake I feel like hell because of overuse of meds and lack of sleep. I love the summer so much, it is ironic that it makes me so miserable. I have been sick now since the 20th of June. It is starting to be a real drag.
One of my students swears allergy shots are the way to go. I may have to relent. Something's gotta give.
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Careening Coaster Costs Kidney
Shivering Timbers at Michigan's Adventure is terrifying. I knew I wouldn't like it because it is a lot like the Mean Streak at Cedar Point. Which I hate as well.

But, Uncle Bill is a good sport, so Uncle Bill waited in the hour-long line and rode that nasty terrifying, shaky wooden roller coaster for all it was worth. The pain in my cervical spine and shoulders (already victims of advanced arthritis) would have been alarming were it not for the fact that I noticed a kidney (I think it was the left one) on the seat as I was disembarking the car. I would have gone back for it, but people were already loading back on. I checked the lost and found before we left. There were several kidneys there, but none looked like mine.

I will ride almost any thrill ride there is, but the big woodies just beat the crap out of me. Add Shivering Timbers to the list of things I have done once and will never do again.

Allergies, Nightmare Sharks and Nieces

2011-08-04T04:12:00.001-07:00

It is a head banging morning here in Michigan with allergens on a relentless march to destroy joy and happiness in our region. I can't remember a year since I first was beset by allergies during college that they have been this pervasive. Even in Savannah. That is saying something.

The last couple weeks I have been either unable to fall asleep or awakened in the night having been 'triggered' by something. I am double dosing the allergy pills and taking my allergy drops and even considering a chiropractor who swears he can help me with my allergies.

I would normally dismiss this a bunk, but I know this guy and bravado is not his strong suit. And I 'got' my allergies only after having my wisdom teeth taken out, so it stands to reason that there is an acute physiological reason for my suffering.

Well, not suffering, actually. If I had the choice to have allergies or diabetes, I would keep the allergies. Between allergies and cancer, achoo and achoo for me. Between allergies and being lonely or homeless? Pass the tissue.

It's all about perspective. This morning is just really acute. Burning eyes, banging head, congestion. It feels like a flu, but localized in my sinuses. It doesn't help that Skylar was having nightmares because of watching Jaws and kept waking us up to comfort her. There was not a lot of sleeping going on.

I actually got up three times with her trying to allow Em to sleep. I thought for this I should receive the good egg of the year award. But this morning she told me she was awake anyway. Which begs the question, why didn't she get out of bed? Hmmm. Oh well, I will let that one go.

Skylar, (our 12 year old niece), is visiting us this week. We usually have her for a week or two a year which is just about right. Enough to have fun and keep a good relationship but not so much I have to perform any actual parenting. She is a wonderful kid. Smart, funny, easy to be around. I hope it stays that way, for 13 is just around the corner. We all know what 7-10 year calamity that can reign upon a previously normal child.

If we do go through a 7 year drought, we will be happy to be waiting on the other side. She already said she wants a light blue Mustang with dark blue interior (except for silver seats because blue ones get so hot). OK, I can live with this choice. Her mother's first car, and my first car were Mustangs, so there is precedent for this.

She also likes Mini Coopers, Thunderbirds and all other manner of perfectly acceptable, (in my sight), cars. I like this girl. She also eats anything you can manage to get near her mouth and is laid back and likes to have fun. All-in-all, since her mother did all the hard work, we could take it from here.

On second thought, let's give it another 10 years just to be sure.

What a Pile of...

2011-08-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

Em and I sort of half energetically started composting. We did it before in New Jersey with a similar amount of devil may care lackadaisical indifference then, too. But we got compost so in the end, nature overcame our ham-handedness and created from our scraps of organic waste, dirt.

Not dirt, I am told. Dirt lives under your fingernails. We were cultivating soil. Soil, it turns out is essentially the "leavins" of organisms feeding on your organic scraps. Molds, fungi, flies, worms, and the occasional leprechaun all conspire to poop out soil.

It is the circle of life and death, playing out in back yards all across America and indeed, the world. And while we discussed at our "green lunch" all sorts of methods and strategies of turning your crap into, well, different crap, the end result was that nature is doing this all around us. Without our help.

My garage is a perfect example of a structure being slowly composted back to the earth which provided the materials to make it in the first place. How hard can it be to turn some twigs and grass and eggshells and fruits and vegetables into dirt? Sorry. Soil.

Our main concern is space, since it is not the final frontier at all in our yard, it's the non-existent frontier. Also smell. There was a great debate about whether it was acceptable to put meat and fat and manure in your pile. It makes for great soil, but also could make for peeved neighbors when those tradewinds start blowing in their kitchen windows. Also, raccoons and biting flies and mosquitoes have a tendency to hang around piles such as these.

It's kinda like the seedy dive that serves great burgers. You have to decide whether your surroundings are worth the payoff.

A lot to think about. One thing is for sure, I still do not count myself among the hippie tree-huggers, nor am I a chicken little who thinks the sky is falling. But I am fascinated by the natural sciences and I don't care for waste. If I can have a beneficial ongoing biological reactor in my back yard that produces a benefit while reducing the amount of stuff I throw in landfills, I say it is impractical to not take advantage of it.

I have a pretty high carbon footprint as it is. I suppose this is a fun and cheap way of helping give back a little. With all apologies to Martha Stewart, s*it happens; and that's a very good thing.

...But it Looks so Gray, and Sad

2011-08-02T04:02:00.000-07:00

It isn't the weather that looks gray and sad, it's my coffee. Because for the second time in a row, my half and half has, um, 'gone off' before its due date. My first cup of gourmet "at home" coffee in three days and it is besmirched by milk. Not even whole mile. Skim.

I love the color of coffee with cream. In New Jersey, I endeavored to paint an entire room, ceiling and all that color with a contrasting off-white trim. I liked it. A little monochromatic, perhaps, but attractive. It was the only room I ever had where all the furniture matched the carpets and the paint and the window treatments and the stuff on the walls.

I love to color of coffee with cream. It is so warm and happy to me. We learn through conditioned response (ala Ivan Pavlov) to love the things that bring us comfort and happiness. Coffee with cream is my first taste of happiness (and sometimes my last) of the day.

And now, the much anticipated, (and very much needed and deserved I may add), cup sits in front of me. Gray. Sad. Like the pallor of a patient losing his fight with his disease. Like a funeral scene in a movie. Gray. Sad.

At least the coffee is good. And I do like black coffee, so it isn't like I use cream to cover up a distaste for the base liquid. So, it tastes fine, I guess. But I was going for magnificent. And fine is a long way from there.
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The last few days have had me on the road, again. I haven't traveled in a bit. I almost forgot how. It was but 12 months ago that I kept a ready bag in my trunk at all times since I lived at DEFCON 3 and may have to go at any time. I was fleet. Prepared. Savvy.

This trip, I had 72 hours notice (an eternity). It took me almost that entire time to stand dumbly in front of my closet, then the apothecary to choose my toiletries, then in the hot attic for which suitcase, then at my shoes, then ties, then files and so on until about the minute it was time to go.

I felt like Jake LaMotta at the end of Raging Bull. A big fat slow charicature of myself.

The trip went off without incident. Literally, which is too bad because I don't have any money in my pocket to show for the expense, but being in sales is like being a detective. You follow the leads.
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I sold a job I am subcontracting to... myself. Em and I are going to remove wallpaper (which was poorly affixed and pretty much jumping off the walls already) and paint a bank branch. I sold this job in December last, but only now did they just approve it.

I figured I could make maybe $50.00 if I hired a sub, or I could take what I estimate is about 15 hours of my time and make about a grand. Tough choice in these tough times. I'll take the grand, thank you. Lord knows we can paint.
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I lost the battle with my lawn again. Sometime around mid-July I caught a creeping weed that is pervasively impacting much of my grass. I killed it with a mixture of chemicals and pulling. I think the weed itself is under control, but at the expense of some large patches of grass which are the shade of brown I imagine every time I read "The Grapes of Wrath". (Editor's note: That has been exactly one time. And that was enough.)

It is way too hot to seed and we have far too much sun beaming on the lawn all day. When we moved in, the city had just planted a sapling in our yard, so unlike our neighbors with large maples for shade, we have nothing. 5 years on, the sapling keeps reaching for the sky, so in only 15 years or so we will have the shade we desire!

Instead, I will have to wait for that magical week here in Michigan where it is temperate, sunny during the day; but not too sunny, has no frost overnight and rains a quarter of an inch at least once per day. Yeah. Right.

I guess if the beginning of this post is called ...But it looks so gray and sad, the end could just as easily be ...But it looks so brown, and sad.

Such is life.

Friday Morning Miscellani

2011-07-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I was invited for dinner at Amy and Adam's. Amy made a great salad and a chicken and rice dish out of the church cookbook that was the very definition of comfort food. And as importantly, I didn't have to cook it, or clean up after it for the first time since Sunday morning. Fending for myself when I have become accustomed to Emily doing a lot of the cooking gets old soon. Especially when I am only cooking for myself. Em and I are great audiences for each others' cooking and without the adulatory conversation, a good meal just seems like a good meal.
Long story short, Em comes home today. She will want me to cook since she has been on the road all week and will want "home cookin'". I want to get in the Vette and enjoy what promises to be a wonderful hot and sunny evening and go grab a burger and some ice cream. I'll let you know how it turns out.

(Edit: This plan has been approved as presented and so the motion carries! Take that, Congress! That's how we get it done in our house.)
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As I mentioned, Em is coming home today. I need to clean this crap-shack up. Well, not really. I kept up on the dishes, but I need to make the bed. I left laundry in the drier, so that's back on in a vain attempt at removing wrinkles.

I like to come home to a clean house. I could spend all day cleaning and Em wouldn't notice if it was clean or dirty. So, I guess I won't put a lot of effort into it. It is a work day, after all.
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Skylar, our Niece is coming for the week tomorrow. Em and I were planning on taking her to Michigan's adventure on Sunday, but I have to go to the powerboat races sponsored by my company and be a salesman this weekend.

So, since I am working the weekend, I won't feel too bad about taking Wednesday off to go to the amusement park.
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Warren Zevon themed Facebook status week comes to an end today with the ubiquitous "Werewolves of London".

You can be forgiven if you don't know anything of his songs except for 'Werewolves', but if you know who Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan are, then you know many more of his songs than you think you do.

Zevon died in September of 2003 from Mesothelioma after years of hard living and avoiding doctors. Doctors were a great fear of his and a consistent theme in his songs throughout his career. He was 53 years young when he succumbed. Like Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse you really couldn't imagine Zevon living to ripe old age. He said to David Letterman (a long-time promoter and 'friend' of Zevon's music), that he lived like Jim Morrison (of the Doors) but for 30 years longer. It seems like while the rest of us mourn only having Warren Zevon for such a short time, he was pretty impressed he made it that long.

As a song writer, Zevon was odd and unconventional. He studied with Igor Stravinsky as a youth and so his songs often have a modern discordant feel to them, much like Stravinsky's groundbreaking work; which, like Zevon's could not be considered approachable by any measure. Warren Zevon was an amazing pianist. Some of his songs never became hits because of their complexities, length and feel that they were more like symphonettes. His odd lyrics and subject matter didn't help any as far as mass appeal is concerned.

Even the lyrics to 'Werewolves' have a hidden sardonic meaning. The werewolves of London being the finely dressed young men he encountered while living in Spain who were always on the prowl for older wealthy women to suckle off. That dark meaning behind the obtuse lyric is belied by the good natured music over top.

This most 'poppy' song of his was helped along by Mick Fleetwood and John MacVie of supergroup Fleetwood Mac, adding the pumping bass line and barely controlled drum line underneath Zevon's bouncy piano vamp. It is said that the song was flat and simply not working in the studio with session musicians when Zevon heard his friends from Fleetwood Mac were recording across town. They were summoned and stepped into the breach. The result is the infectious pop groove that is still fresh 35 years on.

So, why Zevon week? It isn't the anniversary of his death or anything. I just sometimes get in a mood. This was my mood this week. And while Warren Zevon was not a great man by my definition of greatness, he certainly was a great talent and a fascinating enigma.

Warren's last track on his last album, recorded while he was in the final stages of his disease beseeches us to "Keep me in your heart for awhile..."

You don't have to worry about that, Warren. You've got a permanent spot in mine.

The Culinary Exploits of a Temporary Bachelor Day Two Continued

2011-07-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I can't spell. But that's fine because I have a number of other very marketable skills. I can cook and clean and do the wash. I can fix a car. I can do some carpentry and electrical. So, you are all either too nice to point out I have been misspelling bachelor, or you are all quietly sniggering away at my expense.

Regardless, today is a study in contrast. I have gotten so much done the morning has been a flury of activity. Almost a week's worth in one short morning. I am feeling much more positive about life in general since I have cleared up some things with a friend and colleague and the weather is so nice I opened the windows. I can hear the birds and the breeze and the kids and the sirens and the cars between the fits of sneezing and blowing of my nose.

I guess you take the good with the bad.

With all this contrast from yesterday, I felt from a culinary standpoint, I should do the same. Here is lunch:
I Admit, it is the same lunch I have had now three days in a row, so my basic premise of this being a contrast simply doesn't hold water. Let's call it poetic license and pretend for the sake of my angle that I have been eating bacon and mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch.

Classic Grilled Chicken Salad:
Fresh Romain Lettuce
Favorite Cheese(s)
Fresh Tomato (roma is best)
Fresh Onion (red is best)
Grilled chicken breast
Homemade croutons
Favorite dressing

Simple. Elegant. Delicious. Filling.

For this one, I did not have a roma tomato or red onion, so a beefsteak and a Vidalia substituted. Therefore I used three cheeses just to keep things healthy. I cubed a mild and a sharp cheddar and a mozzarella.

Since I don't like white onions and cheddar cheese with vinaigrette, I used ranch; because I wanted to keep it healthy and low calorie.

I grilled the Chicken on Saturday and have been using it daily in the salads. Emily makes the croutons. simply cube french bread and drizzle with olive oil and bake until about 1/2 way a crouton in an oven. Let's say at 350 because I don't really know. Put them in a sealed container to keep out moisture. Before using, simply pop in the toaster oven or oven oven and finish the croutonization process. Voila! Now, I admit, I can't not season things, so if I were making the croutons, I would sprinkle my favorite herbs on before the initial croutonization process, then the oil and herbs would soak in flavoring the bread during the final croutonization. Can you tell I am just looking for excuses to egregiously use the word croutonization?

For once, I used all the lettuce before throwing it all away. None too soon as I have lunch engagements for the rest of the week. I left just enough for tonight's gourmet burger redux! Mmmmmm, burger redux...

Bon Appetite!

The Culinary Exploits of a Temporary Bachelor Day Two

2011-07-26T04:31:00.000-07:00

For dinner, I decided to head to Meijer after work. It was about 5:30. I parked the Vette out in the back forty as careless and lazy people always congregate at the front of the lot leaving us conscientious entrepreneurial go-getters at the back. At least that's the theory. In practice, the store was very busy and therefore the normal delineation was not there.

Apparently the cart boys were on strike. Or they were being derelict in their duties. I did smell the faint wafting of marijuana smoke from somewhere off in the distance. Perhaps they were having a meeting at the back of the building.
I did my duty and grabbed five carts, nested them and brought them to the store. I saw 600-1000 people pass by errant carts in the lot only to grab one at the front of the store. As if those had been refurbished or washed or were otherwise better in some way than the carts they just passed.

I went about my shopping with the smug security that I was a far better person than any of them. It's good to like yourself.

Ground beef, fancy buns, Pickles, bottle of scotch. This is how a man shops. Too bad the automotive section was all the way on the other side of the store otherwise some sort of chassis grease and a pine tree air freshener may have been involved, too.

I chose the wrong line. I always do. But there was a lady behind me in her power chair so I unloaded her basket onto the belt for her while we chatted. I wondered if all the people around me appreciated the order of magnitude I was better than they. I smiled to myself.

Editor's note: If you haven't figured out I am being incredibly sarcastic and facetious about being superior, you don't know me at all.

Home after, (no kidding), waiting in line for 32 minutes. My ground beef was already brown and my cheap scotch now fine, rare and aged. Time to get to work.

Homemade Honest-to-goodness best Cheesburger, Ever:
With 80/20 ground beef mix the following to taste:
1/4 Stick Melted Butter
Worcestershire Sauce
Salt
Pepper
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Paprika
Dill
Chipotle Chile Powder
Mustard Powder
Grated Parmesian Cheese

Make patties the size you want (1/2 to 1/3 pound for me). Stick patties thoroughly with a coffee stirrer to help them cook evenly and not get all rounded and bunched up. this is key with a bigger patty so it isn't burned at the end and raw in the middle.

Preheat grill to high temp (I shoot for 500 degrees F). Dust one side of patty with garlic powder, salt and Parmesian cheese. Put that side down on the hot grill. Allow to cook for 6-7 minutes top up with high heat on.
Look at sides of meet to determine level of done-ness. Once the patty is about 70% of the way cooked through, dust the remaining side of the patty and flip. THIS IS YOUR ONLY FLIP! You can test for if they are ready by checking if they slide easily on the grill grate, or if there is resistance. Resistance means the crust on the outside of the burger is not fully formed. Leave it for another minute. If your burger is done and doesn't have a crust, you didn't trust me on the hot grill and you must now pay for your mistake. The 500 degrees is key to the finish you desire.
Cook on the second side for 1-5 minutes depending on how you want the burger (medium rare - well). I like a medium well burger which puts it at 160-165 degrees in the center.

Drizzle small amount of melted butter on bun and grill to liking. Add whatever condiments you want (if you're so inclined to ruin your food with catsup) and enjoy. I used whatever cheese I am in the mood for or have (in this case American 'Cheese'), Mayo, Lettuce, Tomato, Onion and Yellow Mustard.

I also grilled zucchini and squash with salt pepper and olive oil and had the aforementioned pickle.

For a more European flare, Try melting goat cheese or whole milk mozzarella over the patty on the grill and serve with sliced Black Olives, Radicchio, Red Onion and Tomato.

To you, it is just a burger, or if you are terminally uncool or British a 'Hamburger Sandwhich'. To me, it is the singularly most versatile food on the planet, each one an opportunity for artistry and invention.

Bon Appetite!

The Culinary Exploits of a Temporary Bachelor Day One

2011-07-25T05:40:00.000-07:00

Art was a grandfather figure of mine growing up. His kind, intelligent and long-suffering wife, Donna was on the fore of all that was healthy and sustainable. I believe she was celebrating the first Earth Day and celebrated every one since.

Art was therefore a healthy eater by proxy. Soy this, Tofu that. I learned the word 'organic' eating a meal around their dinner table. I told you in a past blentry of my explosive exploits with Donna's homemade bran muffins.

The minute he could get free, though, it was all cheeseburgers and ice cream for Art. I was often his excuse for these forays into illicit eating; and I couldn't have been happier.

I am a lot like Art. Pleasingly plump and a healthy eater, so long as anyone is watching. A popular post of mine in the past entitled "On Being a Fat Ass" introduces that I don't so much slip off the health wagon when Em is out of town and I jump off and launch a rocket propelled grenade at it and watch the rubble burn.

This week, I am a bachelor. So, since I have nothing else to write about, I will recount the finer points of my culinary inequities of the week.

Day 1

It started off well. After pulling weeds and mowing the lawn in the high heat and humidity, I didn't want anything heavy. Lunch was a large salad of a bed of romaine, organic tomato, grilled chicken breast, mozzarella and homemade croutons all drizzled with homemade vinaigrette.
Not a thing wrong with that. It was divine. Truly I was pleased to be eating it.

Regrettably, the regression began almost immediately thereafter with dinner.

I didn't want to go back outside, having showered, since it is so humid. I pulled out the Foreman Grill and plopped on 3 Italian smoked sausages. Into the toaster with the buns while I grated the sharp cheddar and chopped the fresh white onion. All topped off with deli dark mustard it did not suck. They were gone so fast, even I couldn't believe it. Em would not approve.

I also watched it in my chair, in front of the TV which was playing Family Guy which is forbidden in this house. Mmmmmmmm, forbidden meal!

This morning, the dawning of day two has not been better. I took a potato and hashed it and browned it with some onion and another smoked sausage. Then I scrambled some eggs and threw it all in an oversize bowl and topped it with cheese. Well, not cheese, American cheese slices.

It was, in a word, inedible. Simply awful in its greasy saltiness and caloric density. And a fresh hot cup of coffee was not the perfect compliment to it at all. The mess I left behind in the frying pan resembles an industrial disaster on a grand scale. The house smells of diner. The fork is now stuck to the bowl out of which I ate the splendidly amalgamated goo.

Now that I look back, (all of five minutes), it wasn't bad at all. In fact, it was amazing. I think I'll have it again for lunch!

No! Must fight the dark powers within. Must eat green salad! Actually, that sounds good, too. and if I have a salad for lunch, I can make burgers for dinner and not feel bad! Maybe I'll even walk to the store to get my burger fixins!

Who am I kidding? I don't want to carry back two pounds of ground beef and a six pack of beer all that way. It will get all warm and heavy. I know! To make up for a lack of a walk, I will grill up some squash and zucchini and have a summer version of veggie fries! Yum!

Wow, two servings of veggies in one day. Maybe I'm not a lost cause after all.

Bon Apetite!

Grandiose Ruminations Accepts Post as Ambassador to the World!

2011-07-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

Latvia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Ukraine, Russia, Australia, Germany, Holland, Norway, Iran - These are some of the countries listed in my stats of people who read this blog. This means that sadly, people in many foreign countries may be looking to this blog as a representation of the life of an average American.

Perhaps it is even being used in classroom instruction. I imagine that class would be called "How Not to Write English." That's apt.

I humbly attempt here to set the record straight. I am not an average American. I am far more intelligent than most Americans. I do not subscribe to fringe thinking and I try very hard not to use the words 'always' and 'never' in casual conversation.

In short, unlike most Americans I am palpably aware of my practical perfection and I am happy to boast about it. For too long, America has been a taciturn country filled with modest introverts afraid to show their patriotism! I am out to say I love me, and the USA... in that order. Hey, USA, don't feel too bad. Second place is pretty good. I mean, you take the silver medal. That will get you a picture on a Wheaties box!

I wonder if the stats are junk. Why in the world, when there is so much worthwhile content out there on the interwebs would someone get off the train at my little whistlestop? What could I possibly be writing of any kind of interest to people in such exotic places as Latvia and and Malaysia? Am I somehow linked to a porn site? Apparently, there is more than one thing people do on the internet. Truly though, I am a hundred kinds of curious about how you found this space.

If the stats are not junk and there really have been two check ins from Australia and Ukraine and one from Russia in the last 24 hours, I would love to know a little more about you. I understand that I am the one on display, here and anonymity is one of the great rights of participation on the world wide web; so if you decline, that is acceptable.

But I am curious. Do you have a blog? What is it? Can I link to it? My readers are very intelligent, (clearly... they're my readers!) and may really enjoy your perspective. Not all Americans are xenophobic fat NASCAR fans who live in tin shacks and drive pickup trucks. Maybe we can create a bridge that can foster peace and understanding across cultures!

For all I know, my blog is being read by students in a jihad training camp and my words are fueling the fire of hatred. Gosh, I hope not. This global ambassadorship is a lot of responsibility.

I checked a little more deeply, (drilled down as we like to say in the male dominated corporate world), into the stats in an attempt to draw some conclusions.

The most looked at post I have posted in the history of the blog was my rumination on the death of Osama bin Laden and the way in which my country men and women handled it - in a word, poorly. This may be where I picked up some of the Eastern countries if somehow my little blog came up in a search. If so, I hope I made it clear that we are not all death crazed adrenalin junkies here in the states.

I have gone to great pains to avoid politics in general on this blog, so I find it a little ironic that the one post I can remember that was specifically about a current event in the news is my most read post.

After that, as if to prove my theory that the whole world is manic-depressive, my post on the first Harry Potter Part 7 is the next most popular post. No doubt due to perverts googling Emma Watson and coming across my treatise. This proves that people can read with one hand.

Another "famous" post is that of my hyperbolic phone conversation with a telemarketer. A conversation that existed completely in my head, but was just enough surreal for people to take to.

Whomever you are, wherever you are from, I am glad you stop by. Come back anytime. Friend me on Facebook, or send me some cash. You know, whatever. Some days are funnier than others. Some insights more insightful. Some ruminations particularly grandiose. But the fact you read at all makes me very, very happy.

Meijering

2011-07-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

Meijering. For those of you who aren't from Michigan or one of the other adjacent Great Lakes states, you can't know what all that word means. Meijer is a store- the inventors of the superstore concept, actually. We here in the great hot north have turned the name of the store itself into a verb... 'let's go Meijering'. So at Meijer, we go Meijering. Anything can be found there; and anything usually will be found there whether you wanted to find it or not.

I went to refill my script. Easy in, easy out. Keep your head down, don't look, don't shop, don't get sidetracked by the sea of humanity or the loud shelf talkers beckoning you to spend money for new, improved, more, closeout or other single word exhortation to spend.

I was a line of one at the pharmacy. the fat man shuffled in my general direction with all the signs of a real go-getter. Sneer? Check. Averted eye contact? Check. This guy was a pro. It takes one to know one.

"Name", was all he said and I immediately gave him points for combining the greeting, salutation, small-talk and request for the necessary information in one simple word. I liked this guy. He was also fat and bald and looked to be mostly of ill-temper. Perhaps one of my long-lost twins. At least a reasonable doppelganger. Maybe he felt since we were in all the same clubs he could dispense with the niceties.

Knowing this guy was gonna be cheesed off in a second because my scripts are always on the bottom batten of the rack, forcing him to bend at the waste or maybe possibly even the knees, I smiled to him behind his back as he did the shuffle step so often associated with the elderly and ambulatory mentally ill. I switched my attention to the ratty woman in the ratty truck at the drive-up window. Even through the thick bullet-proof glass I could hear the rattle and smell the exhaust of her well worn mule of a green Chevy.

Another pharmacy worker hit the microphone and said, "Sorry for the wait, the methadone is what's taking so long, we'll be done soon."

That explained a lot. And it also made me formulate a philosophical question in my now swimming head. How long will she wait for the methadone? Too long. Get it? Nah, I didn't think so. I hope she waited to dose up until she got home, or back to the home as it were.

I violated my rule by stopping by lawn and garden to succumb to the siren song of products advertising miraculous lawns without the need to bend over, pull weeds, water all the time, or do anything else that resembles actual lawn maintenance. I have this creeping broad leaf weed that I kill and it just keeps popping up somewhere else. It needs to die.

But, no purchases today, having not fully absorbed the shock of buying Em's contacts and my 90 day prescription of happy pills. Expensive day. And here I was feeling good about things. Maybe I'll take an extra pill. Siezure smiezure.

Out to the parking lot the skinny mother of approximately 2,000 kids, (all of whom were darting in the parking lot like they were popcorn kernels exploding in all different directions), was shouting orders in Spanglish. To the eldest, "Mira, ves ayer y grab him, eh?!" At which the eldest ran at full force and tackled his younger brother to the ground in the middle of the parking lot driving aisle. It was wet and greasy. Tantrums ensued as the tackler grabbed the tackled by the wrist and began dragging his quarry toward the car.

The mother reacted a little slowly, I thought, as I shook my head and let out an involuntary and audible 'Jesus Christ', which may have sounded like a blaspheme, but was actually meant to be a quick prayer. For whom, I wasn't sure. Might have been for me.

I made it home to hear Donovan's 'Atlantis' on the radio. Here is a brilliant guy. A song that is some weird talking and then one repetitive chorus that goes on for 8 minutes. Of course I waited in the car burning precious gas and running the a/c to listen. It's how I do.

Meijering. To those of you who have experienced Wal*Mart, you may think you understand. But you don't. It is a world unto itself that bills itself as the place to find anything; the problem is, you usually do.

Who's Playing?

2011-07-21T04:21:00.000-07:00

The baseball game networking event was fun and fortuitous, or at least potentially so. It was set up as a true mixer with a good ratio of people trying to sell and needing to be sold. I got to talk to people I needed to, or at least talk to people who can get me to the people I need to get to.
Sometimes it's like pealing back the layers of an onion to get what you want. What you want isn't always forthcoming, either. It can be a slow and tedious process. Last night, was neither.

It was also hot. There was nowhere to go to escape the heat. I and my enclave went up to the upper deck and stood under the giant cantilevered canopy they have up there. That caught the breeze and worked out nicely. Until they fired up the grills. I felt badly for the staff, a couple of whom really looked like they were on the verge of stroking out. All these fair haired dutchies baking in the sun... it isn't natural.

at least the food was good, the beer flowed and we got there early enough to beat the parking people, so it was even free to park. I spent zero dollars. Well, not true. 3 Beers, 3 dollars in tips. Still, that's only three more than zero.

My friend and fellow youth leader Kim Hamilton facebooked me letting me know she was working first aid at the game, so I got to see her and hang out for a bit in the air conditioning. Kim is a customer of our company, so it was reasonable at a work event to go thank an existing customer. And it was the first time we had seen each other in months! Too long, we decided so lunch is forthcoming.

It could have been the Whitecaps against the Packers for all I knew as I did not watch one pitch of the game. There was so much humanity there I found far more interesting, like the rotund woman in vintage hippie tie die whose face was so red she looked like a firework flitting about on the porch. Not a lot of people talked to her. Not surprising when you dress like an explosion.

Then there was the contingency from a local private school engineering staff that must not get out much, for after only a couple beers they went from quiet Dutch people to sunburned F-bomb dropping lady-leering sports fans. It was a palpable regression and very fun to watch them go from Amish to asshole in 2 beers.

All in all, it was the most fun I have had at an event in a long while and I am glad I braved the heat. It reaffirmed my great and abiding love for the game of baseball. Wait, that's not right at all. I still hate it with the passion of a thousand hot suns and think it should be avoided by all people always. Yes, that's it. That feels right. But, I admit to liking the park atmosphere and I can see why people would want to go there.

It's too bad all those people sweating bullets on the field didn't realize they'd be far better off sitting down with us and having a beer and a brat and some clever conversation. That's where the party is and I doubt that most of us would have realized the game had stopped. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure I realized it began in the first place.

A Big Post

2011-07-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a presentation for my networking group for a month or so now. It hasn't consumed my time by any means, but these are all entrepreneurial people who are all pretty sharp, so I knew my normal 'go in and wing it' strategy wouldn't cut it.

So, I had the obligatory power point, but it was just general. I wanted to get the point across that more than anything else, if these folks sent business my way, or gave me their business, they would be satisfied.

It was peppered with humor like almost everything I do. I think the reaction was good and I hope I made the impression that I intended to make. It was a good beginning to a long day and a nice palate cleanser to a pretty rough night.

I was really rattled by something and had to work extra hard to keep it together for the presentation, (which by the way has the potential to lead to some considerable lucre).

We begin Tuesday night-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, aside from having perhaps the worst title of any movie, ever, was amazingly good. It was a fitting finish to a movie series that got steadily better with age, much like the books upon which they were based. We saw it in IMAX in 3D. I can go without the 3D part, honestly. I don't know how to watch a 3D movie... my eyes don't know where to go.

There was one part where Chandra and I admitted we couldn't watch because of motion sickness. She is 8 months pregnant. I have no excuse. Overall though, the performances, story telling, and everything were top notch. What an amazing mind Ms. Rolling has. My hat off to you, Madam. I am in awe as are millions of others in all languages. You created and archetype and we love you for it.

It was after the movie when I got a rebuke from someone about yesterday's blog that I can't get past. And I have tried to get past it. The more I try, the less I am able to. I am miffed beyond belief. It lead to me redacting a portion of my post yesterday at the request of a certain individual on the grounds they disagreed with me and didn't like what they read.

I was compelled to remove that section, because I was also made to feel that something very dear to me would be taken away if I did not comply.

Well, friends and dear readers, my own mother, who is 69 years old, raised in the old south, strictly Catholic and very traditional has never even daned to ask me to remove or reword a blog post. And I know for a fact that some of the things I have written have made her die a little inside. But she has supported me for who I am, as has my ever loving wife and my true friends.

For the sake of respect, I shall not go into detail about a private matter in a public forum such as this. I have said too much already. I will, however reestablish the rules of this blog, which are mine to make and edit and follow or break since this space is mine and mine alone. I have no sponsors, I make no money and I have no one to please and no particular audience in mind when I write what I write. Often I write what I write without knowing what I write until it comes out of my head and on to the page in front of me. In short, believe it or not, I am often as surprised as you at what I learn about myself in the process.

The Rules

I am glad you are here, but I want to remind you with all genuine enthusiasm that there is a little X on the upper right of your screen, (windows users) and a little red dot on the upper left, (for those of you with a positively skewed world view and the discretionary income for a Mac). That is the "get me outta here" button. And if at any time you don't like what you see, hit the button. Nothing bad will happen. My feelings will not be hurt and you don't ever have to come back.

If you are reading something here you don't understand, I encourage you to look it up. If you want brain cheese and are looking for some sort of bumper sticker wisdom from a happy-go-lucky fat fun guy like you have seen in every John Hughes movie, you may not get it. Sometimes I am serious, but even when I am funny, I am always honest. If you don't like it, hit the button.

If you read something you don't like- whether it is my premise, or my opinion, the way I say it or the words I use to describe it, I encourage you to use the button.

If you are too young or immature or too old fashioned or too anything to enjoy or identify with what you are reading here, (and I believe thoroughly you are the best judge of that), button.

It's really simple... really! There are many facets to people. I don't know why I have found it therapeutic to put my inner-most self out here for anyone to read. It is antithetical, really. It is a really horrible thought and if I spend a lot of time thinking about it, it makes me gag a little that my life is sort of out there.

But, it keeps me honest. Because otherwise, it is too easy for me to fake my way through each interaction in my life. And for a long time I lived exactly that way. Each situation carefully crafted and managed for benefit of never having to reveal a me that I couldn't live with.

And I had no faith, did not make a place for God in my life, wasn't a good husband a good friend or the person that I or God (as I understand it now), wanted me to be. So, by putting myself "all in" for anyone to see, I am forced to be authentic. That includes all I am... including the parts that may be other people would choose to hide.

Thank you for reading. If I know you personally, thank you for investing your time in me as a person; a person who may fail you sometimes, but will never stop trying. Thank you for your friendship, support, love and comments positive or otherwise. Thank you for agreeing, or disagreeing and challenging me or supporting me.

However, if you come here expecting to be able to witness the carnage of a train wreck, or come here to judge me, then hit the button. I need this space. I need these words. I need this expression. I don't need you to add to my already considerable level of insecurity. Your participation is not now, nor has it ever been perfunctory. Enjoy your life. Leave mine alone.

Tuesday Afternoon Miscellani

2011-07-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

Never Was a Cornflake...

Right now, Tori Amos is crooning "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into my headphones and I am suddenly depressed. If there is anyone who can take an angsty diatribe like "Teen Spirit" and make it more depressing, it's Amos.

Don't get me wrong, I like her. I saw her in concert. We dubbed her drummer "The hardest working band member in all of music." It was a good show.

My friend, Dave has a great line which is funny in a awful sort of way (which is the best kind of way), "We get it, you were raped...." he says of her songs. He, too, is a fan. I like my chanteuses very much, but it is amazing how she just made me want to take a nap from being pretty cheery in two minutes-thirty seconds.
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What is Your Superpower?

Mine is the ability to grow ear hair long enough for braids in mere seconds. I have the biggest, baldest head in the western hemisphere, but can't keep my ears exfoliated for the life of me. This is how I know God has a sense of humor. what the hell can you do with super ear hair?
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Embarrassing Behavior

Edited for Content
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Palate Cleanser

We just saved $600.00 a year or so by switching over insurance. I have been looking for a long time. A family friend works for our current provider, thus insuring awesome service and a friendly relationship.

Over the years, I have gotten a lot of quotes, but none were cheaper or better. And none had Pam.

However, by dint of the fact my parents both served our country, I am eligible for USAA, which is like Geico was before it went totally open. Geico, incidentally is Government Employees Insurance Company for those of you not aware of that. IT used to be just for them, until a decade or so ago when it became clear they needed to go broad or die. Geico never could save me that nebulous 15%, (15% of what, a ham sandwich?), but USAA sure did and for better coverage. I saved a lot on the insurance for the Corvette, which now clocks in at less than $200. For the year. Let that soak in parents of teens.

So, to you, Pam. I still think you are the best. I am glad you said we could still be friends. Thanks for your five years of great service!

Monday Morning Miscellani

2011-07-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

There is not a time in life where people will not cause you to have to wait for them. Regardless of your station, wealth or otherwise, someone will always be in a position to make you wait.

I hate waiting. If I had to wait 24 hours in line for a guaranteed million bucks in cash, I would pass. No, my time is not worth that much money. I just hate waiting.
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I got so many things I want to write about but can't on the grounds they either betray a trust or will be read by the people they are about. I am cursed by the very thing I wanted all along; an audience.

I always wondered what it was like for a stand-up to lampoon his family if his family was in the audience. There was a case a few years back where a mother-in-law sued her daughter-in-law, a comedienne, for being mean.

Most of the things I would write you would recognize as hyperbole. Hopefully, you would also realize that I was intentionally over blowing that balloon in order to create a "pop". But, sometimes if it hits a little too close to home, that pop hurts.

Now, well into my 30's, I have started to care. Curses. I am getting soft.
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This promises to be a busy week. Today meetings and appointments then dinner with friends. Tomorrow work and then Harry Potter with friends. Wednesday I am giving a presentation at my networking group. I can't wait. I have been working on it for awhile. It will get some good laughs.

I pause here a moment... it is more important to me the presentation gets good laughs than it is to say, get me more business. What does that tell you? Hmmmmmm.

Back to it. After the Wednesday morning presentation is an afternoon baseball game/networking event. I hate baseball and I don't much care for networking.

I pause here a moment... aren't I a saleman? And I don't like networking? What should that tell me? Hmmmmmmmm.

Actually, I think it will be fun and there are a lot of people I need to know who are going to be there. So, I go into this with open eyes, open ears, an outstretched hand and the biggest phony smile you have ever seen!

Thursday and Friday are as yet unwritten, but if recent history is any indication they will end up being my busiest days. Then Em leaves for her work camp. I'll be a bachelor.
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I have been eschewing responsibility for the sake of having fun, lately. It has been wonderful, but the house ain't gonna keep itself standing upright if I neglect it. So, while Em is gone, I was thinking about slipping the keys to the 'Vette and my credit and debit card into her purse so I couldn't do any damage while she is gone. Then I would have to focus on things around the house.

My parents are so responsible and so fastidious and all I wanna do is blow stuff off and go party. Where did that come from?

Thank God we don't have kids, we'd be in the papers.
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Dinner with "new" friends tonight. Not new friends, actually, but friends we haven't really seen socially outside of our big group. Can't wait. New friends at a new restaurant with a 1/2 off coupon! It tickles all the ribs at once.
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Potter Potter everywhere- Goodbye, Harry and friends. You had me at Hagrid and never let go. I shall miss you, like so many others. But the good news is, we are going to see you on Imax in 3D with children! I loved Christmas as a kid. Getting presents was almost more than I could take. But, I realize as an adult, the real fun is watching the kids have fun. Tomorrow at Potter will be like watching kids at Christmas.
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That's all, folks!

Beat to Quarters...

2011-07-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

I couldn't catch a decent night sleep these days if I was equipped with a decent night sleep catcher in a town full of sleep. Up early, down late. My least favorite combination. It leaves not enough "me" time.

This morning, it is my fault that I am up at 6:00 and not 7:00 because after all it is I who is responsible to check the time on the alarm rather than just turn it on. I needed to be up by 6:00 yesterday.

I set my alarm as a worst case scenario, because I don't usually sleep all the way to the alarm. I put it in my head what time I want to get up and then I get up. Today was a surprise. There is no going back for me once the alarm goes off. I was up.

Atticus had been pestering me for a couple hours anyhow, wanting me to put him out. As soon as he hears the first bird chirp, he wants to go. Since it was cool last night for the first time in awhile, we slept with the windows open rather than having the air on. The knock on effect was Atticus could hear the birds that much earlier.

He becomes rather relentless. Even after being pushed off the bed, he just pops right back up. It's like a game to him. Felix was the same way, bless his dead heart. In his case, though it was because he wanted food. Now. Always. Food. He could have lived in a bird house at the zoo and never once even looked up. He would have starved to death before he thought to eat a bird.

Atticus plucks them out of the sky with regularity. I have thought about trying to discourage or correct this behavior, but then I remembered he's a cat. It's what he does. I tried to come up with a punchy little memorable piece of front porch wisdom on that, but I just this second had my first sip of coffee, so I'm not all here.

In fact, I just remember this blentry is about sleep, or lack thereof, not cats and dead birds or dead cats and birds or whatever it is I just wrote. Sorry for wasting your time being off-topic. I shall immediately commence wasting your time back on topic.

Summer is hard for me to sleep because it is light up until 10 o'clock and early at 5. Maybe I have farmer's blood, I just am typically tied to the sun, whatever the sun is doing. Don't get me wrong, I am not pining for the days to recede in autumn's pernicious grasp that leads to dreaded winter. I do truly wish I could live in endless summer but I love my wife and my wife loves "seasons", so it is a fact of life for me.

As I sip my coffee and go over my day in the background while I spill my guts out onto the blog, I remember we have dentist appointments this morning at a new dentist. Yeah! And then I get to go back down to the Southwest corner of the state for the nth time in a few days. I have gotten out of the habit of driving 300 miles a day. It is an easy habit to break.

So, I am glad I had this extra hour. I could write a nonsensical blog post, drink a sip of coffee, listen to Atticus scratch to get back in (because he thinks every time he leaves and comes back the food fairy visited which only happens twice a day in reality, but if I remember my Pavlov that's enough to reinforce the behavior) only so I can show him the food bowl is empty so he can immediately scratch to get back out.

What is that they say? Dogs have masters and cats have staff? Oh, and... check your alarm, dummy.

The Deep End of Shallow Communication

2011-07-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who shall remain nameless who does not like to talk on the phone. I am OK with this, as I don't love it either and we both get plenty enough of it during the commission of our jobs. Lately, my friend has needed a listening ear which is also fine as I make it known to one and all that it is of lasting importance to me that my friends are well-supported in their endeavors. Therefore I must do my part.

With my friend, it seems as though texting is the default method of communication these days. Texting is fine, but you don't propose, break up with, share important news like births and deaths over text. At least I don't put so much weight on text. Perhaps I am a little behind the times. But to me, texting is perfect for "Romaine on sale... 2?"

But our conversations have been significantly more heady that that. I find myself trying to condense my responses, which are always thoughtful and never just throw-aways, down to 160 characters.

I admit, (and you will no doubt have no problem believing me), that sometimes only 2 or 3 rapid fire texts will do. When I was in high school, we sometimes had to form 500 word essays in class and that seemed like slow hell. Now I find myself daily whipping out thousands of words in service to various different personal and professional pursuits; 500 words seems like a luxury.

I already feel inadequate to the task of my end of the conversations my friend and I have been having, because the topic tends toward the emotional and spiritual realm, which is difficult enough to discuss, let alone with limited space.

And then there is my spelling, which is poor. My friend is of far superior intelligence to me and I find myself obsessing over the technical quality of the message rather than being heartfelt and sincere. I mean, I am heartfelt and sincere, just maybe not in my normally loquacious way. No, I did not spell loquacious correctly the first time, in case you were wondering.

Perhaps I should take the challenge. I mean, better to have a long conversation over 1000 texts than to have no conversation at all. I am humbled to be in a position to advise and assist a person of such great intelligence and ability. I am further humbled that the format in which we have chosen to communicate is forcing me to think carefully about everything I say to craft the essential message with the greatest possible efficiency.

Dale Carnegie said something to the effect of 'speak only enough to ensure people leave you wanting more'. Shakespeare was more poetic when he said, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

So to my good friend, if you are reading, here are 156 characters for you:

I love you. He loves you. No matter where you go and what you try, you are not alone. Seek what you want to find and be thankful for all you have been given.

The All Wandering Eye

2011-07-12T04:20:00.000-07:00

Guys have a wandering eye. There is no doubt about that. I think women do, too - it usually has to do with shoes. Women tend to only notice other guys when they're in a group of women. For some reason, that seems to make it acceptable. A group of ladies going into the ahem, ladies club is cute and fun.

Guys, wanderers by nature, are pretty bad individually. Put a group of them together and the whole world is an, ahem, gentlemens club. If ogling was a crime, the jailers would all have to be women, because all the men would be in jail. Forever. I will allow for a brief pause here since I know of at least a couple regular readers who would like to savor that thought.

I have a wandering eye. I can't not look at a dog. I love looking at dogs; sometimes the people walking the dogs aren't too bad to look at, either. I have a wandering eye for food, having a hard time hiding my epicurean lust when passing a windowed restaurant or worse, an outdoor cafe. I wonder if you get a refund when a random stranger drools on your entree?

Mostly though, I have a wandering eye for cars. Summer is really hard for me because even though Bruce, my Corvette has been in my life for 21 years, I still wonder what it would be like to be with other cars that I see. Poor, long suffering Bruce sits in my dank garage getting less attention than she deserves and I am out looking at the delights of the business-like but classy Porsches and dainty little British numbers like MGs and Triumphs with their smaller engines and subtle curves the equivalent of the girl next door wearing a sundress. Of course, the cars are more likely to drop their tops.

Meanwhile my mean motored curvy love sits waiting quietly in the garage bathed in her petroleum perfume; looking for all the world like a world weary cougar just a little past her prime, but still formidable. I should have called her Maggy May, like the Rod Stewart song where he tries to wrest himself from the grips of his older lover.

Some cars you own, other cars you lust after. A hot Latin number would be the thing, but I don't think I am man enough to keep a Ferrari or Alpha Romeo happy for too long. Well, maybe a Spyder Veloce or Giulietta, the cute younger sisters in Alpha's lineup. But then I wouldn't really be happy, would I? I would just be one step closer to the hot big sister. The thought of trying to tame a snarling Lamborgini actually puts fear into my heart. Like sleeping with a woman because you are afraid of what she would do if you tried to deny her. A Lambo is not owned, it owns you.

Life for a guy with a wandering eye is so difficult. I will look at anything, even if it lower quality than what I already have at home. So help me I even found myself looking at Opel GTs online the other day. Probably because I had a brief fling with one as a teen and I have fond innocent memories of that car. But forsaking a Corvette for an Opel GT would be a lot like forsaking your rich well-connected wife to take up with the maid... and that is just stupid.

The good news is I can't be unfaithful to old Bruce. I don't have the money. But that doesn't really bode well for a relationship, does it? Who looks at their significant other and says to themselves "You're fine for now, but watch out if I win the lotto!"

Would it be so bad if I didn't get rid of Bruce and just brought home another girl... I mean car? Wow! All the bad behavior I am prone to with automobiles I deplore in people! "Oh, Bruce, I drive her hard but it's you I really love!"

I'm a slime. There is really no other way to solve this problem. I must drive Bruce today to rekindle that romance and remember her nuances and why I fell in love in the first place. Maybe we'll have a nice meal together and cruise the country roads for a bit. I will park her back in the deep, dark garage and glance furtively back over my shoulder to appreciate her curves one more time in the dying light where her flaws are hidden - allowing for her once resplendent beauty to come to the fore. Then to feel my heart beat as I realize that I could love no one, I mean no car, more than she.

Yes, I saw Bigfoot

2011-07-11T09:24:00.000-07:00

While today my mind is as open as a Nebraska field, I was once a very black and white person. It was on/off, yes/no, good/bad all the way. Why bother with minutiae or evidence? The world is an easy place when you just make snap judgments and move on. It's how the Republican party became so popular.

I preface this blentry this way because I am about to admit that I saw Bigfoot... or something. Whatever I saw wasn't anything I had ever seen - for real or on TV. The year was 1992 and I was in love with a girl named Bridget Casey. This becomes important later in the story so file that for now. I was a manager at Burger King, because, you know, I didn't apparently want friends or a social life. It was 4 something in the morning. I was on my way to work. I was driving fast. When recounting the story later, I would say I was driving fast because I was running late. This is not entirely true; I just drove really fast in those days. in fact, I was a greasy haired, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, sports car driving teenage boy. Mothers, lock up your daughters.

Back to it. I am a bit bleary eyed driving somewhere between 60 and 100 miles-per-hour and that is when I saw "it". Bigfoot, or what I am calling Bigfoot for lack of more appropriate taxonomy was running next to my car on his two hind legs. He was silvery colored in the glow of my headlights. His fur was long and covered his body. He was no unlike Chubakka, the Wookie.

Did I mention I was driving at some speed? And has it sunken in yet that he or it was running next to my car? As in keeping up with my car. At some speed.

Good, glad we are on the same page here. Bigfoot then somersaulted onto the hood of my car. He was on the passenger side when I saw him initially, running on the right shoulder of the road. He vaulted over the hood to the driver side and disappeared as soon as he appeared.

Not only did I see Bigfoot, but I watched him do his T.J. Hooker impression at 4 something in the morning near 52nd and Breton in Kentwood, Michigan.

Go back and read the first paragraph where I foreshadowed my own indignant disbelief. You won't miss anything. I'll wait to finish until you get back.

You didn't do it, did you? No, you didn't because that would have been silly. But not nearly as silly as seeing Bigfoot, or Chubakka or whatever it was I saw. While the years have eroded the immense rush of emotions I felt at the time, I remember the unbridled abandon with which I happily told everyone I came across at work what had just happened.

Me at the drive-through speaker: "Thanks for choosing Burger King, I saw Bigfoot, pull to the second window and I'll tell you all about it..."

People thought I was crazy already. I was, after all, the greasy haired, foul-mouthed, chain-smoking, sports car driving young buck who was not without energy and a way with words. I am sure the energy that I have crafted over the years to work in my advantage was at that point simply energy. I don't recall being especially fun to be around.

And now, to add to being unpleasant, I was certifiable. Great combo. I had a lot going for me.

Work couldn't get by fast enough and when 3:30 came, I was off like a prom dress, retracing my route. I guess I was hoping to Bigfoot would come back for an encore. No such luck, of course.

Now, Bridget Casey and I were never boyfriend and girlfriend. She had a boyfriend and I had no shortage of girlfriends at any given time. This because I had a job, a car and money to spend on dating. I was a good choice by default but I was not "choice".

Bridget and I went to camp together a few weeks hence and pined for each other. I called her the second I got home from work.

Me: "I have something very important to tell you. I need you to listen to me, because I feel kinda weird about it and I need you to tell me you believe me."

BC: "I have to talk to you but I think you are going to think I am crazy."

Me: "Fine, yes, but me first. This is big, I promise."

BC: "It isn't as big as what I have to say- Unless you saw Bigfoot last night..."

Utter. Silence.

Me: "Dammit, Bridge... you aren't going to believe me now. That's what I was going to tell you!"

We began to recount our stories in full confessional form. No detail was spared. It was cathartic. And comforting, since she was not any crazier than you would expect a girl who would have me as a friend to be. And I didn't feel so crazy, either.

She and her sister MaryBeth were out kinda stalking a guy that MaryBeth liked. they lived out in the country and they were on a rural road. It was dark, approaching midnight when Bigfoot simply ambled out in front of MaryBeth's maroon Pontiac Grad Prix. It regarded them, and just kept ambling.

The girls were scared and high-tailed it out of there. I would have, too. In fact I did just a few hours and about 10 miles away. Now, 10 miles is a lot of distance to walk in four hours, but if you go back and re-read up top somewhere, I told you this thing could run like, 60 MPH.

Bridget's physical description of Bigfoot was identical to mine. She went first, remember so she had no knowledge of what my experience had been.

I know what you're thinking. I was being lampooned. But Bridget was unknown to anyone I talked to that day up to that point. We were "super-secret" friends if you catch my drift. Since her parents didn't like me so much, (I was after all a greasy haired, foul mouthed, chain-smoking, sports car driving maniac- I wouldn't have liked me much, either), and she had a boyfriend. There were only a few people who knew of her existence... people who went to camp with us a few weeks earlier. I had not seen or told any of them.

So, that's the implausible but utterly true story of how I, the greasy haired, foul mouthed, chain-smoking, sports car driving maniac saw Bigfoot the same night as Bridget and MaryBeth Casey; two church-going girls of unstained pedigree and utmost honesty, I assure you.

I didn't see Bridget again. Almost ever, until the next summer we were on the same bus trip to Denver. She saw me and gave me a great big hug. She told me she loved me and we did not speak the rest of the trip, nor ever again. I guess when you've been through something like that, you've go nowhere to go. I have never seen Bigfoot since, either, but I no longer scoff at those who say they have.

Theme Songs

2011-07-11T09:17:00.000-07:00

I thought for sure I had blogged about theme songs before. I went back to look over previous blentries only to find most of them so laughably bad that I couldn't go on. Why you people read this crap I'll never know. Why I write it is a whole other round of therapy.

Theme songs, as in personal theme songs. My life is set to the soundtrack of the music in my head. There is always music in my head. If you were here talking to me right now in an otherwise silent room, you would hear your voice and I would hear your voice set to music.

If you are saying something that is profound, maybe it is a big classical piece or deep cut track from some prog rock stadium band. If you are being funny, maybe it's a little funk or some good old Rock and Roll. Warren Zevon goes well with funny. If you are being stupid, I hear "Baby Elephant Walk" or the march of the elephants. When I am determined, Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" or Wagner's "Ride of the Valkeries" are two good ones. Sometimes, Bill Cosby's take on the "Green Hornet" theme sneaks it. That always makes me laugh. When I am walking really fast and in a hurry, I hear the "fast" music from Mario Brothers. That usually makes me laugh, too.

And so it goes.

But personal theme songs are different. They are what you hear when you think of yourself. I have had many over the years. "Africa" by Toto was the first; not because it was apropos of anything. I just liked the song.

Then it was "New Life" by Everclear because it was almost like it was written about my situation at the time. I don't go around talking about personal theme songs, because people are already sure I am weird enough. Many years after the fact that song came on when Greg and I were in the car and it hit him like a ton of bricks... "Oh my God!", he said "That was you!"

After that it was "Time" by Pink Floyd. With a lyric like "wasting away, the moments that make up the dog days; fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way; kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown; waiting for someone or something to show you the way".

It was my theme song because it represented how I felt about life, if not being quite accurate in reality.

I don't have a theme song currently. Maybe if I were going literal as I have done with prior theme songs, Kenny Loggins "I'm Alright" or Billy Joel's "My Life" would be good choices. "The Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machine is a good choice, too. I wrote about that song in a previous blentry.

There's a sweet little ditty called "Ooogum Boogum" that I have always liked. Please follow the link if you don't know it. It isn't a theme song contender as such, but it makes me happy.

I also like this song. It also makes me happy. It is called "Sydney(I'll Come Runnin')" It is what a good pop song should be. Maybe it's not what a theme song should be, but I like it none-the-less.

I guess it's easier to have a theme song when things aren't going so well. It is really the times that we are in pain that seem to bring out the tortured artist in us all. I know when I am in a funk I can't stop writing. I imagine it's the same for song writers. The opposite is often true when life is humming along.

Oddly, maybe we don't need theme songs when life is good. I don't know. I don't know why it is easier for me to put down thoughts on paper when I am angry or discontented. I guess maybe it's because I developed my humor as a defense mechanism against that adversity. No adversity, no humor.

I think there are innumerable examples of this in professional entertainment. Can you imagine Jimmi Hendrix all dried out and singing folk songs? Nope. How about Mamma Cass on TV hawking packaged dinners for Jenny Craig. Perish the thought.

I don't put myself in the pantheon of these genius savants, I use them only as an example. What would the raven hath quoted if Poe was happy-go-lucky? I am sorry for the tortured souls, but I appreciate the sharing of the great things that come out of that adversity.

And now, back to theme songs. Adversity or not, what is yours?

Please Direct Your Attention To Mr. Ebert

2011-07-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

For today, please direct your attention to Mr. Roger Ebert's excellent blog.

There is nothing more to say.

A Window to My Thoughts

2011-07-05T09:45:00.000-07:00

Things On My Mind

I have always had a fantasy that at any given moment, there are groups of people hanging out together in secret locations to discuss their similarities and differences and to pat each other on the back or boast about their prowess.

I always envisioned a dark house where all the burglers and thieves went to at the end of the stealing day to play show and tell about the things they took. "Wow, look over here, Vance... Charlie hit the mother lode!"

Similarly, I figure famous people have a super-secret mutual admiration society where they get together. The Church of Scientology and the Friar's Club notwithstanding, I wonder what this mystical place would be like. It has to be different from the not-so-secret gathering spots where we are allowed to see glimpses of the celebs in the wild, like some sort of zoo. So, I am not talking about the Playboy mansions, or the night clubs or the awards parties. I wanna know where they all go to talk shop and light cigars with the hair of the virgin Haitian boys and girls who serve them,.

I want to know if Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello ever host an obtuse poetry slam attended by David Byrne and Brian Eno. I want to know if Jewel and Alannis Morisette have ever had a kick boxing matched refereed by Sarah McLaughlin.

I wanna know if the Proclaimers are openly hostile to Mumford and Sons for basically stealing their act and doing it so, so much better. Do actors and actresses try to out-act one another? Does Elizabeth Hurley still get sweaty palms when Dame Helen Mirren walks in the room? Do they have numbers based on fame, wealth, status or simply in the order they got there? Can you be kicked out of the club one you are in? I can't imagine Todd Bridges is still allowed, though certainly he was, once. How does it stay secret? After all, these people are second only to politicians at the bottom of the "I can keep a secret" pile.

Now, you wonder why I can't sleep at night.
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Speaking of Politicians

Mitt Romney's mouth got him into more trouble this past weekend when he made a self-contradictory statement about Obama and the economy. What's more, the statement also contradicted previous statements he has made on the same topic.

I am not a fan of Romney for this very reason. He is the epitome of the political double-talker who has made himself a career candidate by shopping various messages around to various events and audiences hoping to resonate with everone, (except of course those damn dirty democrats).

At the end of the day, he comes out saying nothing. It is the main reason for his wash out during the last election cycle. I for one am tired of being lied to. Here is the absolute truth. One person, one party, one administration does not have the ability to put us into, or get us out of a situation like the one we are in right now. The makeup of the government assures it.

In fact, (by which I mean 'in my opinion' which is fact if I say so), the deadly combination of low-level plebian administrators colluding with crooked CEOs has a much more direct and immediate effect over the economy than any presidential administration does. Read here if you are interested on how I have come to that conclusion.

But the politicians, (not just Romney if that makes you feel better or worse), all want you to believe that their opponent is the cause of all ill and that only they have the one brilliant idea that will save the world from disaster. Why we didn't buy Romney's message before I don't know. Perhaps Obama was a better liar. I do believe he is also at present a victim of his own inflated hubris. That isn't because he is a democrat, or a black man or from the cracked Illinois political machine. It is because the higher the rhetoric got, the more enthusiastic the audience got. And now that audience who allowed itself to get so pumped up with "Yes We Can!" has a hangover upon the realization that St. Barack is but a man like the rest of us.

The same would have been true for a President Romney, and for all of them, with the possible exception of Ron Paul who is also a crackpot. But he's my kind of crackpot.

So the stump speech is nothing more or less than political Mad Libs:

I, (Candidate's Name), have what it takes to (fix/eliminate/legislate/transfigure) the whole of the entire world! I believe the (federal government/state government/local constabulitary) should have (more/less/all/no) power and you as citizens of (name the place where you are now) (have the responsibility to/have the right to) a better more prosperous world!

We have to fix the problems (caused by/made worse by) my (opponent/the other party)! Only if we stand united as (republicans/democrats) can we reverse the scourge of the (overreaching/tyrranical) opposition. Only we can (shrink government to make it more effective/increase the role and oversight of the government) to make this happen!

We all have one goal! That is (eliminate the debt/balance the budget/make sacrifies/allow gay people to marry/press forward for equality/eliminate taxes/tax the hell out of rich bitches/tax poor people/eliminate services/increase services/fight for prayer in school/eliminate God from the vocabulary/mandate weekly rainbows for the treatment of depression/raise the debt ceiling/bail out the corporations and banks/allow people to fail/buy back bad motgages/increase interest rates to slow inflation/lower interest ragtes to spur growth/bring back Gummy Bears-Smurfs hour)! It is just that simple!

The country is (broke/broken). Now, more than ever, we need to make (the tough choices/a stand) (for/against) (well meaning/poorly executed/wrong headed/necessary) government regulations, brought on by (years of my opponent's mismanagement/my predecessor/republicans/democrats/wacky libertarians).

Thank you, (God/Allah/Buddha/Other) (bless you/offer you shalom/give you peace/bestow wisdom upon you/grant you three wishes) and may (he/she/it/they) bless the United States of America!

Pop Goes the World

2011-07-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Jamming all we could into the back of the Corvette, we were off on a sunny July 3rd to South Haven to go see the best fireworks show in west Michigan according to a website that for all we know was written by the same people who produce the show.

Whatever, that wasn't important. I mapped a leisurely route avoiding freeways so we could enjoy the increasingly rural scenery as we wended west and south toward our destination without undue stress on the 32 year old car. We took the GPS, but I had written the detailed instructions to Em could guide us turn by turn. This would require interaction and communication rather than simply following the machine.

We made it without incident, a bit sun baked on the outboard sides of our bodies. We were hungry when we rolled into the mass bit of chaos that defines the many lake shore communities of our fair state. There were as many Illinois license plates as Michigan, South Haven being a haven for the residents of Chicago. I won't at this point launch too far into a diatribe on my hatred for Illinois drivers... let's just say they could screw up a traffic jam. There was one incident in particular that I will not get into that reinforced my viewpoint to the extreme.

So, while in traffic, we had plenty of time to look at the 98% of people who should never wear bikinis. Too skinny or too fat, we decided it is a small population indeed that should be allowed to wear so little. If the internet has taught us anything it is that just because you are willing to walk around without clothes on doesn't mean you should.

We ate at a place called The Thirsty Perch. It was very good. Dessert was unnecessary but we did it anyway.

We trundled off in the direction of the masses who were shuffling like so many zombies who were all strangely equipped for the beach. We had no idea where we were going, but managed to make it there anyhow. We staked our claim and began to settle in when two men indicated there were going to be many kids there in a moment.

He seemed to indicate that he had claim to the acre of property surrounding him. Given his size, if the rest of his family were anything like him, he would need all that acre. My response was, well, we are only two people, so we'll be right here... and we love kids.

The time was 7:38 pm. It was 2 hours 52 minutes to show. And 2 hours 52 minutes of reinforcement of all my prejudices and stereotypes and hatred of people in general. Emily and I had eschewed both chairs, (which we left in the car because we didn't want to carry them), and entertainment such as magazines. She brought mad-libs, but left the pen in the car. We were left to ourselves in the neutral ground between the two fattest and most annoying families in all of Michigan.

We did not know we would be judging a competition of which was worse between two overweight, under smart and ironically seemingly well-moneyed families. It was hell.

The family in back, the ones who warned us of their impending descent on the grounds staged a farting contest. There was also a 20 minute non-stop run of "yo-mamma" jokes, all of which were wholly inappropriate for the age of the children in tow; and a seemingly never-ending round of "would you rather" questions, each dumber than the last. They dropped seemingly thousands of dollars on glowing plastic gew-gaws and never, ever did shut up, even during the show.

The fat family in front of us never stopped eating. The one girl was so under dressed that I saw more of her than I ever needed to. Since moving was not one of her talents, it wasn't just a flash, it was a freeze frame. Like a train wreck, I couldn't help but watch. This family had the audacity to make fun of other people for their looks and actions, to the point of taking pictures of them and openly mocking them, which prompted Em to ask me if I thought they knew what they looked like.

We were supremely annoyed. It was a long three hours. Two families bellied up to either side of us. at one point we caught eyes with one who were clearly over it, too. I just said "Three hours!" They told us we were hard core and being South Haven residents seemed apologetic. They were very nice and for the first time in hours, we felt like humanity wasn't doomed.

That's when the other family who was to the right of us all lit up their cigarettes. All of them. All at once. I got shitty at this point, because I am still struggling with my sinus event and smoke is not on the list of treatments. I found it rude and annoying and so outdated. Who smokes anymore?

The show started right on time and it was awesome. The last three hours of strain had melted away as we saw elements that were new to both Em and me. It was a half hour long, which for me is plenty. It ebbed and crested throughout, staying interesting. There were some volleys that were quite simply breathtaking. It was a great show.

We made it back to the car and out of South Haven without incident. We took the expressways home and made it in an hour. Half the time it took to get there. The car ran flawlessly.

I had a night cap and went to bed and slept soundly.

All in all, aside from the worrisome condition of decorum in American culture, it was a very nice day in the very nice city of South Haven. Have a happy Independence day, everyone! God Bless!

You Want Me to Sleep, Where?

2011-06-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Our adventure really began and ended with the hotel choice in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Before heading down to Tennessee for work camp, we stopped for a couple days in Kentucky so the kids could take part in Ichthus, which is a Christian music festival put on by Asbury Theological Seminary, which in itself is a part of Asbury University. The festival is held on a farm owned by the organization in the middle of the amazing green hills of Kentucky. There are livestock grazing on three sides and natural amphitheater shape to the area directly surrounding the main stage.

Aside from the total reliance on portable facilities, it is as comfortable and beautiful place to see a concert outdoors as any. The "Porta Kleen" toilet company apparently skirts any laws regarding truth in advertising by intentionally misspelling "kleen", since actual cleanliness was nowhere to be found. This is a brilliant ploy that has been used for years by advertisers. We really need to stop falling for it.

The last thing I will say about Ichthus is this... I hate it. But, we don't go there for me. One of the sacrifices a 36 year old man makes to go on a trip like this is that he must bend his will to the average 14-18 year old girls and boys who are the real important reasons for the trip. We must therefore remind ourselves that we are not on vacation as such and that we are not doing this for ourselves, necessarily. I imagine this is what parenting feels like. I wouldn't know, having chosen to sit that right of passage out.

The reason I don't like the festival is because I don't like the music, I don't like the tents that distribute material that indicates all of humanity is bound for hell, (a parade for which I am apparently the grand marshal based on one or two things I read), and I don't like some of the sanctimony. Yeah, dude... I smell the weed emanating from your tent. You're high and your girlfriend had JBF hair... praise Jesus!

At least the food was good this year. Really, really good. I would go back for the gyros alone. It was impressively good and only modestly overpriced. Kudos to the food vendors.

Let's take I275 back to the topic, shall we? The hotel we stayed in was a Howard Johnson's. Howard hasn't been there in awhile to inspect, I presume. Or perhaps his lifeless body was the source of the foul odor in the west stairwell. I am so glad it didn't have a pool, because I am pretty sure it wouldn't have looked or smelled to good if it did. It's hard to keep a bunch of teenagers out of a pool. God bless them they seem to look right past all the botulism and bird corpses and only see fun.

It was taking a long time to check in, so after a little while, I decided to go in and see how things were going. Our youth leader is sometimes a little too Christian and I have a tendency fulfill the strong arm of the group role. I walked in and almost died at the smell of cigarette smoke. My allergies immediately flared. In fact, I wondered aloud how it is that I ever smoked.

Sami, our leader smiled in a way that let me know everything was fine and I didn't need to pull out the Sergeant Slaughter routine. I smiled back indicating I would be the judge of that.
I heard the tail end of the conversation of Carmen, the manager...

"I can give you another room, but the lock stopped working and you have to lock it from the inside when you leave. You can leave the window unlocked though, and get in that way. That's what the last people did."

Sure, let's put our minors in there... the ones that I am indemnified to take care of.

"Gee, Carmen... that's swell, but we'll stick to the rooms with working locks" I said, a little testy.

"I just wish he didn't give out all your rooms earlier... I told him you was coming," she finished with her raspy smoke riddled voice; her laugh pushed out amid the rowels in her lungs.

"What does that mean?", I asked now, looking at Sami whose all-okay smile was starting to seem disingenuous.

"It's all set, Bill, I'll explain when we get to the parking lot," said Sami in her voice that she only uses for me and only then as a warning that she will kill me if I keep pursuing this behavior. She's a good mom, even if she is younger than I am.

Long story short, many of the rooms had fewer beds than they were supposed to, but we got an extra room for free to compensate; and of course there was always the window room without a working lock should the straits become dire.

Fine. We have rules that disallow a chaperone and a student from being alone together for extended lengths, regardless of gender. I was going to say regardless of sex there, but that could have been taken wrong. Since we had an odd amount of male leaders, all the boys were to be in their own rooms and the leaders in our own room. Clearly the system, while all well-intentioned, does not take into account the horror that could be three rooms of unsupervised boys in a very scary HoJo in a strange town in Kentucky.

So, off we trudged to our room. Josh slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. About nine inches. Before the safety bar caught and stopped the door from opening further.

"There must be someone in there," I said now, jumping to the fore and pushing and peering.

After a couple half-baked attempts to fix the situation, I got Carmen who in addition to being the manager, is also a housekeeper.

"Carmen," I said wiggling my way past the maid cart parked in the middle of the hall, "the safety bar in our room is somehow engaged and we can't get in."

"Again?!", came the reply. My first thought was, what the hell do you mean, again? In didn't think it was possible the first time, let along multiple times. It must be like, a trillion to one. She should be playing the lotto, not cleaning rooms.

"Well, I hope there's no one in there!" she said. Me too, thought I, though somehow I managed to catch the word before they issued forth from my face. "I'll go get my doohickey", Carmen finished, a little put out I thought, considering I was the one who drove 8 hours to be in this place right now.

The doohickey turned out to be a don't-hickey since it did nothing. The man next door came out of his room. He was a tattooed shaved-headed guy with almost enough teeth to count on one hand. I thought, great, we have disturbed this man's porno shoot and he will want us to pay for the ruined film.

Instead, he was the hotel maintenance man. He and his family lived there. His wife was the "head housekeeper". Apparently you can't be the manager and the head housekeeper. turns out Carmen and her husband (you guessed it, the Night Manager) live there, too. I wonder what staff meetings are like... "your place or mine?"

Anyway, he had no luck with the doohickey either. Meanwhile, my frayed nerves were beginning to cross and short-circuit.

"I have a van full of tools," I declared, remembering that I drove a van full of tools and it was in the parking lot as we were living through this ordeal, "I am going to get into this room within the next two minutes whether I have to break this door down or not. So, y'all (I was in the south after all), keep playing with your little toy. I am going to get some tools."

I came back with a chisel, a hammer and channel locks. I got permission by waving my hammer in Carmen's face in a vaguely (or not) threatening way. I noticed that Mr. Meth Mouth had exited stage left.

"Do whatcha gotta do," said Carmen.

In less than one second, I was swinging the door open, the offending safety bar lodged in my channel locks. I never even got to use the hammer. Bummer.

And into my room, replete with... one bed. This was starting to feel like a Mexican soap opera, or a bad knock-off of those road trip adventure movies. At least it had a hot tub. We couldn't use it because "The people downstairs be awful upset if you did." No further explanation was requested or offered.

Josh set up his cot, since he was the junior man and Steve and I staked out sides of the bed. It was a king, so sharing wasn't a big deal.

Sure, the comforter was no comfort unless you find stains and cigarette burns of comfort; and for a non-smoking room, it sure did smell like smoke. We figured Mr. Meth Mouth Maintenance Man was chaining in the room next door. It was palpable.

This is the shortest version of the story. There is still the story of the denizens of this ship of the damned as I began to refer to it. There is the story of the girls who awoke to much explosive vomiting outside their window at three a.m. and the old man who claimed to be an author of many books and told each and every person in the place the only joke he apparently knew.

But that is all for another day when I haven't already written for 45 minutes. I have to go... someone needs to pay the bills around here.

Don't Eat the Paint!

2011-06-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

Among the many items that took me by surprise this year at work camp was the addition of lead paint training. I should have known this was coming, as I am aware that the federal government has been on the lead paint warpath.

Now, the danger exists primarily for kids under 6 and even then only if the paint chips themselves are ingested directly. There were no kids on our site while we were working and we were working outside, so even any minute amounts of lead dust were pretty much rendered harmless.

We had to watch a terrible video that not only was mostly inaudible, but poorly demonstrated the actual correct techniques for keeping yourself safe. In essence, we wasted 20 minutes watching the mandatory video and 20 more unlearning what we learned. All this in the name of safety.

Furthermore, it cost the organization through which we were working additional thousands of dollars in materials, training, oversight and permitting because of these new requirements. And the protocols would be strictly enforced since there was federal grant money issued to help defray the costs.

Yep, you read it right. The federal government issued a non-profit organization money to cover the costs of additional fees levied on behalf of... wait for it... the federal government! Makes the golden rule a bit harder to follow than the old timey basic "do unto others..." since the government is involved the golden rule is more like; "do unto others that which you have express or implied consent to do based on the tenets herein as listed in part B subsections vii-ivcm..."

"Hello, Christian brother and sister, we want to help fix your home to keep it warm and safe and dry just as Christ taught us to love our neighbor as ourselves... sign here, here, initial here, put a spot of blood or feces here. Oh, him? That's Morrie, our lawyer... he's Jewish but said as long as the check clears he doesn't care."

I could have taught the training in fine fashion in 2 seconds. "Don't Eat The Paint!" This is good, practical information for everyone to follow, whether the paint is lead or not.

One of the students in my crew asked, "If we're not supposed to eat paint chips, why do they call them chips? It makes them sound nummy! They should call them paint flakes... no one eats flakes."

To which I rattled off Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes, Potato Flakes. She rolled her eyes as if to dismiss me, but I thought she had a good point. So for the rest of the week, we called them "paint don't-eats."

The governing body came by to check our containment work. We had followed all protocols, but I defy you to keep a paint don't-eat from going wherever the hell it wants to go; especially when launched by a scraper at full... um, scrape. My "containment area" was apparently inadequate because some of the paint don't-eats got out. Now, whether the were launched, or whether they escaped I don't know. I hear these things are a real menace. they will kill you just as soon as look at you. I guess we didn't treat them with enough respect.

So, the governing body told us to clean up better. I therefore had 6 high school students on their hands and knees in the brush and overgrown grass around the porch picking up paint don't-eats with their fingers. This is what they gave up a week of Playstation and pool time for. We finally ended up taking a shovel and simply turning the paint don't-eats into the ground.

I wonder if they will begin to grow and take out the whole of the community, or if the myriad slugs and cave crickets will feast on them and morph into a new giant menace that tramples all under foot, at least until Godzilla gets on the scene to save the town.

I would worry about the water supply, but you'll find that in most established (read older) communities pipe the water to your home in... wait for it... lead pipes. I don't recall signing a waiver to drink a cup of water.

As I write this, I am getting hungry and I realize that it is because paint don't-eats sounds a little too much like paint donuts, which sound utterly agreeable. I guess it is back to the drawing board for an appropriate moniker for this menace to society. I am so glad the federal government is on the case for this one... the last thing I want it a lead paint chip sliding slowly down a spider web laughing evilly as it jumps into my gaping maw while I sleep; unaware the danger that threatens me.

Whoa*Mart, Fast Food and Sanctimony

2011-06-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

Do you get as many of those "People of Wal*Mart" e-mails as I do? These are the ones that you hate laugh at, because it is not nice or proper to be judgmental of others, but you can't help it becuase of the bombast?

Last year for work camp, we went to West Virginia. This year, Tennessee. So in two years, I have been in three Wal*Marts... Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. Based on what the internet tells me, these visits should have been absolute comic gold at its best.

And yet, reality is not so funny. I don't shop at Wal*Mart because I don't like the general consumer decline of the U.S. and I think large companies have a responsibility to help out the country they are based in. In this case, the profits that Wal*Mart makes, keeps, hides and withholds from its employees all while forcing more manufacturing and jobs to other parts of the world and foresaking quality for the sake of a few cents per unit make it in my book a nearly criminal enterprise. But that is another rant for another time.

We go to Wal*Mart on these trips because the trips are predominately in the south and that is where Wal*Mart is king. I can say with all seriousness that the three stores I have been to in two years in the deep south have been the nicest, cleanest, most well stocked, genteel locations of the retail behemoth I have ever been to. And they were all sadly lacking in people dressed as chickens or women who were way too big for their clothes or the men who wished they were women who were too big for their clothes.

There have been no shoeless hick families, no crying babies, nobody all that different from me at all. In fact, I have seen black and white shopping and talking together. I have been asked if I need help ample times. I even found a John Denver CD for $5.00 last year... the one time in 10 years I actually spent even a dollar at the evil empire, Wal*Mart.

I think I smell a rat with the People of Wal*Mart e-mails. In short, it is sort of like faking a bigfoot photo... you do it for attention. I saw bigfoot once, (for real... it's a great story I'll share sometime), but I have never seen a chicken man or a trans-gender cowgirl in a pink tutu at Wal*Mart.

Oh well, there's always next year.
____________________________________________________________

For the first time in my whole life since I can remember, I did not one time eat at a McDonald's restaurant on my five state trek to work camp and back. I thought this was, until last week, a statistical impossibility.

I did get two cups of coffee from the clown prince of fast food, but never did I eat.

So, good for me, right? Well, maybe not so quick. I did have Burger King twice (both times only chicken tenders), once at Taco Bell, (where I have to remember to ask them not to put half of my order in the bag since I can't seem to remember I can't eat that much anymore) and Wendy's once as a treat for my work crew.

I talked to a student who indicated to me he won't eat at McDonald's becuase he saw Supersize Me and it ruined it for him. I questioned his logic and he admitted that even though he knew discretion and moderation were keys to so much in life, he said it just doesn't taste good to him anymore.

Fair enough, but I wanted to trap him. What of the other fast food giants. Burger King he also eschews, but he is O.k. with Wendy's and Taco Bell... we ate together at Culvers on the first day and he seemed good enough with that to have a burger, fries a drink and a frozen custard... hardly a low calorie health meal.

Why? Because Wendy's markets that they have made improvements to their menu to make it healthier. These marketing techniques include the fresh "sea salt" fries and some alternatives for the kids. But Wendy's still sells the ridiculous yet beguiling "Triple", a 3/4 pound feast of cholesterol, sodium and juicy death on a bun. This also fails to mention BK has apple fries now and a lot of chicken on their menu. Plus, you can readily cut any high fat condiment off because of their "have it your way" mentality. This has escaped the notice of my otherwise observant pupil.

Taco Bell, he reasoned, at least disclosed what was in their food, even if that disclosure admits that the beef is 80% beef and 20% "other". But, McDonald's has not overtly followed suit and so he held a deep (though I believe unfounded) belief that McDonald's did not use much beef at all and that it was mostly soy fillers in the clown's burgers.

So basically, this poor kid has been boondoggled into thinking that McDonald's and Burger King are evil, but that Taco Bell and Wendy's are perfectly fine. Taken empirically, McDonald's has more lower calorie offerings than any of the other makers, but Supersze Me was so affective that they can't seem to get that point across. Marketing departments around the U.S. take note... yes, people are buying the shit you are shoveling.