"I'm not around that much, I'm near exhausted and lost...
... What if today I stayed in bed?
--from "Exhausted," Foo Fighters
Like "onomatopoeia" -- when a word sounds like what it means or describes -- there should be a word for songs whose musical elements sound very much like their title or theme. There probably already is.
But whatever it is, Foo Fighters' "Exhausted" would fit the word. It closes out "their" first album -- which was actually just Dave Grohl playing virtually all the parts in his post-Nirvana project.
Its slow intro; steady build; pausing middle; and droning, fading finish perfectly closes an album and captures the feeling of exhaustion -- with a subtextual hint at carrying on to find new energy somehow, some way. Amusingly, the rather minimal lyrics don't quite do that for me, but certain phrases do -- enough for me to remember the song as this perfect picture of exhaustion.
Exhausted isn't a fair self-description of me -- having no small children -- in recent months. But I've bordered on it enough to feel spoken to when the Foo Fighters song came on. Weeks of reading and research for IR class on top of other freely chosen musical, writing and social obligations had me feeling taxed. The holidays were fun but not very restful, as we hosted 20+ people twice, bounced around from family gathering to gathering, and mixed in an out-of-town funeral for good measure.
In accordance with the prophecies, 2008 greeted me jut seven hours in with the stomach flu -- the one that sends you retching and cursing to the vomitorium for hours on end. Long after you've given everything you have to give to the porcelain gods, still they want more. So you get up from your chills and sweats and again dry-heave sweet acrid nothings to them, finally tasting that frightening sensation of preferring death to Carrying on Like This.
The blog naturally suffered from the neglect.
But being filled with ennui by my first two prerequisite IR classes -- and discovering over Christmas how much other reading I've neglected -- I'm taking a term or so off from class. Time to cherry-pick only the course content and professors that sound best. And just maybe, to do some more non-research writing of my own.
In another thing on "the Internets" I'm sure I'm late to hear about -- or haven't heard in a while -- there's some acted-out videos on YouTube to the "MC Hawking" songs that turn science explanations into raps in a computerized voice like that of, yes, Stephen Hawking. There's a bunch of them -- naturally some good and some awful.
A lot are diatribes against the Creationists, or anti-evolutionists. But this one on "entropy" -- to the Naughty By Nature song -- made me laugh at my screen. The time and effort involved! And a good entropy/thermodynamics refresher to boot. See kids -- science is fun!
I'm told by those more in the know than I to not feel guilty, because it's all for science and allegedly Hawking can be a bit of a tool to people (to put it kindly). Of course if I was in his physical situation, I suppose I'd be a bit short with people, too!
And speaking of Creationists, the fine Ali-G work of genius where he has a panel on science and evolution with a fundamentalist and a "futurist," among others, is also on ze YouTube.
I've rarely shed more tears of laughter than the first time I saw this, what with him convincing everyone how stupid "youth" can be while simultaneously revealing the ignorant jackass colors of the Creationist himself. Bouncing from evolutionary biology to scatological humor and back -- how does he stay in character while this is unfolding in front of him?
The Islanders beat writer had a classic airline experience in Denver with United and posted the grisly details on his blog. Massively overbooked by United, he would have had to wait two days for another flight to his next stop if the final United screw-up hadn't actually worked in his favor.
We now present: flying in the 21st century!
I've had nothing that bad, but I've had a few near-misses dealing with other airlines through the remote-but-massive Denver airport.
My general rule for travel: if it's within 12 hours' drive, I'd rather drive than fly. The whole airline/security/airport/health side of the flying experience has just gotten too miserable -- particularly for a guy who is 6'2" with a wonky back and sinus issues.
I can't fit in the seats well anyway. The in-plane air and food (if you are so blessed) stinks. You can't carry on a beer or flask. The past-security airport food markup is criminal. You don't know if your flight will go. You don't know if your best-made plans for a weekend will vanish into a long, uncomfortable stay in an airport terminal.
The usual complaints, I know. But besides that, I enjoy a road trip. I love crossing "the amber waves of grain" and the small towns you can pass through if you briefly detour off the Federal Interstate and Inter-McDonald's Highway System.
With the price of gas -- and, my brother would sell me, the amortization of your vehicle's value -- it certainly doesn't always "save" you anything to drive. But a road trip through the landscape is infinitely more enjoyable to me than 2.5 hours breathing bad air among the population roulette of your seatmates, sandwiched between a couple hours of security check-in and airport transport.
With the energy crunch looming, I'd happily trade my daily drives for biking and mass transit if I could preserve my ability to afford road trips. I'd have to invent a hockey equipment cart, though.
I've tried to mostly disengage from baseball, but I confess to schadenfreude about the pride-fueled fall of a player who was incessantly hyped into a legend and always came off as an arse back in the days when baseball mattered to me.
"Genie let out of the bottle, It is now the witching hour."
Wow. For a taste of the difficulty of the Czech language (and perhaps for other subversive motives), I give you a Czech punk song about, well, punk and punk image.
It's hard enough to pronounce words that begin with a consonant cocktail like "hmn" and "hl" in normal conversation, much less while you're singing punk ala "Znamka Punku."
[update] With all due confession of how easy it is to chuckle at what we don't understand, I recommend a glimpse at the related videos (and mullets) there -- one about "Tractors" and one about cigarettes, apparently.
In the interests of the homeland, I have no further comment.
For parenting, there's strange, and then there's criminal. I guess this "Wife Swap" show looks for the wackiest families and then throws them into the vicinity of reality? Another argument for the extreme tactic of introducing a Breeder's License.
"The quality of life fills us all with pride --How I love, how I love, (Amer-ica)."
No fossil fuel, no pollutants, and a new sexy space war target if anybody feels like a good fight.
In theory, you could also go camping and draw a little dose of power via mobile device, if'n'when ya need it. (Ooh! New gadgets to buy! Keep the economy strong and getting stronger!)
It's apparently an idea with real promise, but "the program 'has fallen through the cracks because no organization is responsible for both space programs and energy security.'" Naturally. Ah well, you go into energy crises with the government you have, not the government you want to have.
The funding both public and private needs a kick-start, and without a sport stadium or Middle East war or X-Prize to open our coffers, we'll need something -- crisis? gas crunch? -- to motivate us.
Not being a physicist, I can't guess the hurdles that remain, nor what the beams of power transport would do to the weather (idea: sacrifice Bikini Island first). Not being a politician, I can't fret that none of my well-funded lobbyists bother nagging me for investment in our long-term future.
But as Joe Average Citizen, I guess I can pout, "I pay taxes! We can put a man on the Moon, why can't we... "
Presidents say the darndest things. Methodist crusader, or thief? Intelligence estimate, or just one agency's opinion? This one's a funny write-up, though: From national security to cheesy office paintings (that's the "inspirational holy warrior or horse thief?" part), our man W. has a curious version of life to fit every moment to his self-image.
Facts don't fit what you want? Change them. Or send your VP to CIA headquarters to make them change 'em.
What a fascinating specimen we've had in the Oval Office this decade. In a sick way, I'm almost going to miss waking each day to find a new way in which he can blow my mind by bending reality to fit the contours of his armpit. I doubt any human will ever be able to stun me the way he has. (For shame that he never had a son.)
On that note, Maureen Dowd often fatigues me by turning every column into some sort of allegory or morality play, but today's hit home. It's hard for me to look at that surreal scene and not see a wild, thematic juxtaposition of the family-oil-fortune-funded Holy Warrior being showered with tacky gifts of gold by oppressive leaders whose vulgar wealth comes from the oil we buy, while their citizens wilt and turn desperately toward extremism. What a bunch of out-of-touch shitbags, the whole lot of them.
And how did those oil sheiks get there, and how do they have artificially drawn states to preside over? Naive resource-hungry Western leaders propped them there, naturally. I'm reading "A Shattered Peace" right now: a great read, great narrative style. The author looks back at the utterly botched Treaty of Versaille that "settled" WWI in 1919, and how it helped feed the bizarre conflicts we've seen everywhere from the Middle East to southeast Asia to the Eastern European states (nevermind that little WWII matter). They invited leaders from smaller nationalities to Paris to politely listen to them and promptly ignored everything they said, for the maps and spoils were predetermined.
I use and am pleased with Macs not for the aesthetic cool statement nor the pleasure of paying a price markup, but because mine generally work and do not get crippled by viruses or intra-computer software warfare. All the programs get along. The machine is quiet. It can be counted on to turn on and function when asked. No headaches.
It's not a passionate thing for me, but one of convenience. Other than pure self-interest, I have no dog in this fight. So it's funny to run into Mac fanatics (or is it Apple? I never know...) who are religious about it. We generally agree for the first two sentences ("Yeah, they're great"), and then they go off into the Mac dogma and preaching, and I have to pull out my old Chinese teacher's dictation: "END of discussion!"
According to their mythology, Apple's annual, much-hyped convention or show is expected to launch God's Gift to Technology each year -- even when God took the year off.
As shown in Apple's new TV spots, the new laptop slides effortlessly into a manila envelope. Its fat end is slimmer than the skinny end of Sony's thinnest Vaio notebook ... This is a major technical and aesthetic breakthrough, and a killer feature for those vexed by the fact that you can't send laptops via interoffice mail.
Cool. Not only is Radiohead coming back through town sometime this summer (throwing my travel plans up in the air), but they're doing a live concert online right now at Radiohead.tv.
Playing the new album in a small club. Nice sound. Looks like a bunch of small Webcam-like cameras. Tough to leave the office now.
Through little fault of my own, I have received the last two issues of Playboy delivered directly to my door.
Let me explain: I get National Geographic, which comes every other month, often in a plastic wrap with the glossy back-cover advertisement showing through one side and some anonymous white-sheet subscriber quiz or other ad sheet obscuring the cover on the other.
So last month, I open a magazine wrapped in black plastic wrap, thinking it's another issue. To my surprise, a naked lady on the cover -- and we're not talking National Geographic native naked, either -- stares at me.
Playboy!
"Why did I get this?" I wonder. Of course I first think of prankster friends, but a subscription doesn't seem to fit their style. They're more apt to the one-time big-bang effect, like leaving an "enlargement pump" in your house for you to discover when your father-in-law is visiting.
Then I think of how a recent tactic among publishers, I've noticed, is to send me unsolicited issues of their magazine (Newsweek, World Traveler, etc.) for several months, then drop a "DON'T LET YOUR SUBSCRIPTION EXPIRE!!" notice in the mail, as if I'll be suddenly hooked and gullible enough to start paying for something I never asked nor paid for in the first place.
Or maybe it's marketing to the stages of life, so the marketers decide when I'm right for Newsweek, when I'm right for Playboy, and when I'm right for Old Farts, Cigars and Retirement.
'Look at the Address, Stupid -- Do You Think She's Pretty?'
But after I leave the issue on the kitchen table to goad a reaction out of the missus, she uses her women's intuition to investigate, pulls the plastic wrap out of the trash and notes that it was intended for a Middle Eastern name at the same address number -- but on the next street over. Oops!
Truthfully, I haven't sincerely examined a Playboy since childhood, when there was an unspoken "gentlemen's agreement" among a loose network of neighborhood kids to leave the God-given stash of issues buried in the gravel underneath a local park playground (hint: it was a Steamboat-shaped playground, in case you are a bored 10-year-old). In a remarkable example of an unwritten social contract, it was understood that you checked out the issues there, and you left them there, and everybody benefited.
(In retrospect, there was probably an authoritative hammer in play: more than cooperation, kids were probably motivated by the practical fear of what would happen if actually caught possessing the contraband in their house.)
But anyway, exploring the issue, I found the old cliche excuse is true! You really could get it "just for the articles." The articles are actually heavily researched, well written and thought-provoking -- bearing no resemblance to the air-brushed, fake-injected, napalm-shaven women-borgs who populate the rest of the magazine. Articles on conomics, film, environment -- and no Cosmo-ish "73 Tricks to Drive Her Wild in the Bedroom" or "Lose 15 lbs. on Big Macs Alone!"
(Admittedly, my impression of the utter unsexiness of these fake, creepy, vacant-looking models is why I've never bothered to, uh, "examine" Playboy when offered since childhood. Mind you, I like a pretty woman -- naked or clothed -- as much as the next guy, but my tastes tend toward that found in nature rather than that found in the laboratory. A quick perusal and the Missus and I were in agreement: These babes have a surreal, doll-ish look that sort of dissociates them from the human species. What a strange relic this publication is.)
Alas, before discovering the wrong address, I actually read the articles enough to ruffle the pages a bit while it circulated among my piles of other half-read magazines. And uh, Playboy isn't exactly the type of publication you'd remove from the plastic wrap and then be eager to deliver to its intended recipient's mailbox one block away. In the event of a face-to-face encounter, that's a bit awkward. Particularly if you've messed the corners enough to make it visibly used:
"Here's your issue ... uh ... I accidentally unwrapped it, but I'm done with it now ... uh, you should really check out the article on diamond mining in Sierra Leone ... huh? Oh Trixy? Yeah, she's a looker alright ..." *flees scene, taking detour home*
The Post Office Strikes Twice
And while I feel for the guy who's missing his Playboy -- and this one looked like a big issue, what with the year-end review of each "Playmate of the Month" -- he's just gonna have to call the subscription center. I have to do it all the time for the damn Hockey News as it gets mangled or lost in the mail. Now it's his turn.
But wait, there's more: The Post Office delivered another issue to me this month! Wise to the black-wrapped ruse, this time I didn't open it. But now I'm beginning to wonder if my address number on the next street even exists, and whether the mailman (or woman) has made the marketer's life-stage decision for me. ("Who gets this dead-address Playboy?" -- "Try the weirdo on Hermit Lane, he could use it.") Else how did they screw up two months in a row?
Well, on the drive home today I confirmed that the address in question (if not the subscriber name) does indeed exist. So tomorrow I'll make the awkward walk to deliver porn to the mailbox of its intended recipient. Who, I'm betting, isn't Middle Eastern at all.
And if the Post Office should misdeliver an issue to me again next month, I'm reading it cover to cover, then slipping it under a friend's coffee table.
Since the Playboy incident was well-received -- as was the Playboy itself, come to think of it -- I thought I owed the cyber-ether an update: I chickened out.
This seems to happen a lot (not the chickening out part ... well yes, maybe that too), but I always walk mis-directed mail over to the next block over, or more often to the elder lady next door. It's a good occasion to check in on her if she's around. Maybe exchange remarks about the city's latest grass-length crackdown.
But another option didn't even occur to me until my southern Missus and her woman's intuition kicked in again: She reminded me that there was a time back in the day when one didn't take the buggy into town to the post office (or "postufus," as our grandpa pronounced it). And in those days you needn't fear your credit card payment being lifted from your urban dwelling mailbox for identity theft purposes.
So you just put out-going mail in your own mailbox and lifted the tin red flag or finely crafted turkey tail or whatever, and the kindly carrier did the rest.
Thus informed that "new shit has come to light," I chickened out: I stuck the black-cloaked Playboy back in my mailbox. It was presumably picked up by the carrier and either devoured on the spot or delivered to its intended recipient. I avoided the Great Porn Walk and any potential awkward encounter. Problem solved.
Except now, I sort of feel like I let myself down. Maybe missed out on another story, or at least a closer peek into the world of the man ("--or woman") who is missing his ("--or her") Playmates of the Month Year-End Review.
Oh yeah, baby. It will be 15 degrees outside tomorrow (Saturday) night, but it will be warm and rocking inside, because we're playing out again.
I don't think I posted this last month, but we had a "gig" over Christmas at the Hartford Coffee Company near Grand and Arsenal (it's actually at Hartford and Rogers, but those are such weenie street names compared to GRAND and ARSENAL).
We managed to fairly fill the place just with family and a few friends alone. People in town for the holidays to verify if the rumor about their in-laws was true. It was maybe 60 minutes of music, which we tried to stretch into two sets. There were at least eight other strangers we didn't chase away, too.
So, perhaps due to the deceptively alive following and the rather inoffensive sound, they asked us back. Saturday, 7 p.m., the band, and it's freaking cold outside. Suddenly I'm wanting someone good at playing "Roadie Hero" to handle my minimalist drum kit while I keep my precious brush-holding hands warm.
We've even added a song and restored a previously dropped cover, "Time after Time," to the set -- showing a persistent evolution in our growth as 21st-century, post-post-modernist artists who have something to say and don't mind saying it to people desperate enough for a cup of coffee on a sub-freezing night.
Further details will come out in the unauthorized, behind-the-scenes rockumentary.
Our band is so rock 'n roll, we have gigs canceled an hour before the show. That's how damn rock 'n roll we are. \m/
(That's the keyboard symbol for metal fingers \w/ or \m/ by the way, in case you aren't privy. Picture a rockin' out Beavis and Butthead with fore and pinkie fingers extended, middle fingers bent in like a fist. Yes, this is the dorkiest metal explanation ever.)
Anyway, the story is that a band, or loose group of regular open-mic'ers, plays at this cafe every third Saturday of the month. So much that they don't even bother to write them on the schedule anymore. And the manager who booked us has since left. Much confusion. When the other musicians showed up, we got a call saying we'd been double-booked. We passed on the make-up offer to play "20 minutes or so." The place was nice about it, and offered to pay us anyway -- no small gesture for a wee coffee shop, I reckon -- but it was still a pretty bad gaffe. Still, we'll be back next month -- March 22 I believe.
That night, I already had a car full of drums in the 10-degree night. I was kind of ready to play, anywhere, after running through half the songs in my head during the afternoon nap.
Kind of funny how amped up you get to perform in public, no matter how small the play or event. We had that nervous energy going, and no place to apply it. So we compared nervous/adrenaline-handling routines over dinner. How it's like a play, but different. There's a script, but it's a bit more malleable. No blocking on stage. No fear that your partner has completely forgotten their lines and is about to wig out on stage.
The comparison was made between performing and sex -- getting canceled an hour before show time was like thinking you're about to have sex and then ... not. A certain potential energy now needs an outlet. When I nodded and reminded my sister, "Yeah, you said you were gearing up for it all day," my better half then chimed in: "Must not be TOO much like sex, then."
In one corner, we have the ultra-conservative archbishop, the one who excommunicates like he's writing speeding tickets, who declines communion to politicians who don't toe the catechism line. The zealot brought in from the hills of Wisconsin to lay down the law of hard-line Catholicism to a traditional, self-doubting Catholic metro community. Who stepped down from a disease charity foundation board when they featured ~gasp!~ Sheryl Crow at their fundraiser. He's downright creeeeepy, and that's one of his strengths!
I half think the Church brought him in as one final stab at getting Catholic Metro America to choose religion over culture (even though NO community EVER adopts external religion without adapting it to their own culture). As if they said, "if we can't make St. Louis Catholics do exactly as we say, we can't do it anywhere in urban America."
The desire, of course, is to have all the flock take their direction on morals, politics, their interpretation of god, etc. from the Church without exceptions.
But what they don't realize is how utterly foreign he seems to most people in this city who still consider themselves some form of Catholic. Not that I'd expect more understanding from the organization that never saw what the big deal was about "reassigning" its pedophiles to other holy jobs around kids.
The Jesuit
In the other corner, you have the strong-willed, Jesuit president of the local "Catholic" university. The one whose university last year won a court battle for public funding by declaring it was controlled by no religion or creed. This guy always sounds more into reshaping his university and making a name for himself -- Church desires be damned -- and he has wildly succeeded on both counts, though the process has involved stomping on opponents in a most un-Jesus-like, Giuliani sort of way.
Both are regarded by objective-but-devout Catholics I know as Grade A Arseholes. They deserve each other.
The Big Coach
So this year the Jesuit university president decides to bring in a big-name coach for the previously underfunded basketball team in order to make it "big time," and that coach -- like all big-name coaches -- has baggage. And when a local TV reporter sees the coach at a Hillary Clinton rally, the reporter smells blood and asks him about abortion and stem cell research.
(Under the archbishop's rhetoric, holding political views that do not align with Church teaching essentially excludes you from the Church. No more "cafeteria Catholics" -- now you either repent or are unwelcome. Thus John Kerry could not receive communion, the archbishop said in 2004. But through a canonical loophole, molesting boys was only cause for reassignment so long as you had a white collar.)
Sure enough, the coach tells the reporter he's a Catholic who is pro-choice and in favor of stem cell research. Next the reporter contacts the ever-willing-to-condemn archbishop for comment, and he cryptically says the coach, as a representative of the university, should be disciplined. No word on how many lashings or rosaries that entails.
Though "representative" is a stretch -- the coach was brought out of retirement on a short-term contract as a pure mercenary to give the program some buzz and life before it moves into an expensive new arena. We eagerly await hearing whether the Jesuit president gives a damn about this latest advice from the guy in the funny hat. (Sounds like he doesn't.)
And the Roman club of followers gets ever smaller. Abuse the flock enough, and they stop drinking your brand of apostolic Kool-Aid.
I find it best for my constitution to admire birds' grace from afar and not think too much about how they actually live and function, and spread the occasional disease. Regurgitating meals for your young just doesn't sell well to my brain, so it flips the channel.
But this cool tropical bird, a normal resident of the equatorial Atlantic and Pacific around South and Central America, ended up emaciated and lost in San Francisco, way out of its range. No doubt he forgot to take the left at Albuquerque.
"The magnificent frigatebird, so named by sailors because of the way it sails majestically through the sky, is also known as a pirate bird because of its penchant for stealing food from other seabirds. South Seas sailors of a bygone era called it man-o'-war bird because of the expert way it would outmaneuver its rivals, silently sweeping down to the ocean and plucking up prey without getting wet and chasing and looting other birds with equal aplomb.
Its tactic is to chase other seabirds, forcing them to regurgitate their meals, which the frigatebird catches, more often than not, in midair."
As gross as it sounds, there's just something cool about chasing your rival into throwing up his food for you. And catching it in midair -- now, that's just showing off.
In this case, Ztohoven, a group of Czech artist-pranksters hacked into a TV weather report's countryside video feed to show a pretty clearly fake mushroom cloud (their URL on screen and the small size of the cloud are hints). Rather than panic, the morning stunt elicited a few queries from confused hikers -- hiking is very big there -- who were preparing for their day's recreation.
Some Czechs expressed outrage over Ztohoven’s action, naturally, but in general it drew a mild, tolerant, even amused public response, in contrast to how terrorism-related pranks, or what might seem like them, have been widely greeted elsewhere. The incident instead has highlighted an old Czech tradition of tomfoolery that is a particular matter of national cultural pride.
For the prank, the National Gallery in Prague gave the group a prize. But the offense landed them in court proceedings that even the victimized TV station regrets.
Now, terrorism and actual public panic aren't generally funny. So why the bemused response? One, as intended, it wasn't taken seriously. Two, Czechs as a nation seem to self-identify with humorous insignificance. It's like the prospect of someone setting off a nuke in the Kansas plains: It just wouldn't happen -- why would someone waste the effort? Except here, more people would be duped and call their congressman anyway. And the mid-day talking heads would go on in outrage for weeks.
The article delves further into this Czech sense of identity and humor:
Ztohoven’s work has a larger context, in other words. It belongs to a history of Czech literary and artistic mystification and sly, deadpan humor that is the expression of a small, underdog nation dominated for generations by outsiders, one after another...
... From Svejk’s example derived the fictional Jara da Cimrman, a kind of kitsch anti-Svejk, concocted by a group of writers and actors partly as a protest against authority during the communist era. In a country that claims no towering inventors or explorers, Cimrman became the quintessential Czech hero, a Zelig who trekked to the North Pole but missed it by several yards, who advised Chekhov, but failed to get credit. (“Two sisters?” he asked the Russian. “Isn’t that too few?”)
It goes on. Good stuff. This is why -- more than out of ancestral pride or association -- I try to catch every Czech film that comes through our local film series. They're usually damned funny, in this way that isn't made in American films. (Speaking of which, they haven't shown one in a while, dammit.)
I have no idea if this has shaped my own sense of humor -- whether via genetics, subliminal nurture/exposure and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and so forth. or just plain reaction to life under the thumb of our own father. Maybe it's just coincidence. Either way, it's up my alley.
Wow, this is good: The Internet House Party, where eBay meets Facebook meets Digg meets Amazon meets ...
Performed by a young comedy troupe, they nailed it. And they remind me why I will be an old fogey hermit very soon (some would say already), because all these Internet social networks frighten me. It's hard enough to reach students through these different places -- how does one keep up with all of one's identities? Or does it stop once you leave the infinite time and energy of college, but the fountain of youngsters keeps feeding new members for the latest twitter-ing sites?
'We are the authority on the mind. We are the authority on getting people off drugs.'
Meanwhile, if you haven't seen the instantly infamous Tom Cru1se scient0l0gy video for his lifetime super-thete award, it is truly a wonder. I don't predict much in life, but I swear I always knew he was crazy way back in the Top Gun days. The video also confirms my suspicion that he's not acting in his films -- he's just being himself.
I woke up this a.m. and it smelled like a summer morning, minus the bloom and grass. The driveway was sweating. In a winter rarity, the dog worked up so much heat running around that she wanted to come in before I had to beg. Sunny, the temp was into theupper 60sa record 71(!) by lunch time. But within a few hours, it's supposed to drop about 30 degrees. It should be somewhere around 15 by late tonight with flurries. Back to hot tub weather.
From work, I took a stroll to the coffeeshop to get a look at this front in action, but it hadn't taken shape yet, dammit. I was hoping to get a feel for the armageddon conditions of this shift, with what's supposed to be 40+ mph winds and the change in pressure. But it's still brewing, so it's back to work without seeing the show.
At home, the dog will miss the show, too. Whenever the pressure changes or a big front is in the cards, she cowers into a corner as if she's anticipating the Big Quake. It's amazing the nooks this 70-lb. beast can burrow under our knees when properly motivated. Whenever we go outside to enjoy a big storm on the porch, she balls up behind us and pleads to be let back inside where it's "safe."
It's wild: With all her superhuman senses, and the smells and sounds and suspicious people she picks up from a hundred yards away, she often knows more about our surroundings than we do. But this is one bit of knowledge we have on her, one thing we can't alter for her. We can't override her instinct and let her know it's going to be OK.
Stupid humans, standing outside the cave in the middle of a storm.
In her religion, too, the gods "work in mysterious ways."
It's the thing you can ponder but never see: your wake; the world if you'd never been born; or today if so-and-so hadn't died so young. For the evolutionist, it's whether life would evolve in the same way if given the chance of a do-over. Or several do-overs.
So evolution scholars dream of an experiment with a thousand Earths launched at the same time to see how chance events alter life's path through them. But lucky them, they get mini-experiments from species that evolve in parallel isolation, miles or continents away from one another.
The point of the NYT blog post linked here is that they're finding the causes for parallel or duplicate evolution may be at the genetic level: As in, it's not that "Well, the fittest adapt the best way to survive," or that "Well, of course birds without predators, in different locations, lose their ability to fly -- they don't need it!" But rather the same genes in distant species (as distant as fish and mammals, for example) mutate or express themselves in strikingly similar ways. The setting empowers the gene expression.
The explanation gets a bit technical, with proteins and gene expression and such. So take joy in the end results:
Looking around the Earth, it’s striking how often similar traits evolve in similar environments. So: birds living on remote islands typically lose the power of flight. Males in species (be they chimpanzees or yellow dung flies) where females are promiscuous tend to evolve high sperm counts and large testes.
Animals that live in caves lose their eyes and their color: whether they live in Rwanda or Romania, they’re a pallid, blind lot, the troglodytes. Mammals that specialize on eating leaves — be they cows or langurs (that’s a monkey) — have evolved foreguts where bacteria break down the leaves, as well as special enzymes to help with digestion. Amazingly, the same phenomena are also seen in the hoatzin, a leaf-eating bird from South America. In short, evolution has a remarkable tendency to repeat itself.
Such a nasty business, this politics thing. Just when I'm tempted to be fascinated by the mix in these primaries where there's an actual race on both sides, the same old venom arises within them.
In 2000, I remember being stunned at the depths the Rove-steered Bush Machine sunk to after W's loss in New Hampshire. What I thought was an open race was anything but once the money and power had selected their candidate. How they were somehow able to tar the POW McCain as unpatriotic, and add race-baiting rumors of fathering bastard black children or some such LCD-appeal, all to turn the South Carolina primary around and salvage W's campaign.
Shame on Rove and friends for the tactic. Shame on Bush for letting it happen (ha, as if the Reagan-lover was aware). And shame on those stupid, gullible primary voters for allowing that to actually influence their vote. Seriously, who the hell is swayed by campaign ads and rumors?! You can pretty much identify their policy proposals, investigate whether they're likely to stick with them, and then take the rest of the campaign/mudfest season off.
This time around, McCain appeared ready to defend the same style of smearing. He's just scaring me with talk that "this election is about who can keep us safe." Hello?! Are we really still in this mode? I don't need a daddy to keep me warm at night, thanks. Leave "safety" to the bureaucrats you select to run your military and intelligence. Pray you don't ignore their terror threat memos. Maybe use the pulpit to get people thinking about the next 20 years instead of just tomorrow.
Tigers Eating their Young
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton always seemed effective because he could navigate the dirty politics game while furthering his policies. But to see him now stoop to dirt and race against his own party on behalf of his wife's and his own ambitions, and to see her play silly charades in the name of turning the tide -- wow, it's disgusting to my tastes.
Part of my last dwindling sinew of Proud American Patriot wants to believe Obama and followers really can change the tone of this foul game and actually redirect politics toward attaining common goals. But the cold, analytic part of me fears it will all be the same, and even if Obama wins the nomination, the game will get dirty and comically irrelevant as his opponent's strategists desperately respond to the latest poll numbers. So maybe let the dirty experts play it out on the dirty stage? But I can't stomach any more of the Newt-Monica-Rush-Billy anything-but-issues, with-us-or-against-us scene.
In the classic Joseph Conrad- or "Lord of the Rings"- style assessment of whether human nature is inherently good or evil, I've always generally believed in the human capacity for good. Good makes us happy. But even if we're all on average good, it only takes a few who seek power over others or are motivated by greed to drag out the evil in all of us. Your abode is cool until someone tries to f*ck with it -- often out of pure envy. Then suddenly the pacifist must throw down. This aggression will not stand, man.
So it seems with politics in this country. You can try a debate on actual policy and mutual interests, sure. But as soon as someone's quest for power is threatened, that's when they get dirty. That's when they count on the gullibility of a populace that has mouths to feed and bills to pay and their own drama to digest before comprehending the latest spin game. That's when you change the course of history by calling a POW a treasonous betrayer of his country, and voters actually believe it.
But man, what if the tone really did improve?! Ack, I can dream.
As I tell it, the story goes like this: My wife, when she was just Girlfriend-Level IV, engineered her promotion to Fiance-First Class by getting "us" a dog. I'll tell it this way to my grave.
The Plan
It wasn't a present; it was more of a maneuver. Back in the day, my family went through something like 17 dogs before mercifully stopping when I was still quite young. I knew I'd get a dog again one day -- hopefully one that did not die suddenly, hang itself on its leash, impale itself on the fence, or get stolen, as so many predecessors had -- but I wasn't going to get one until I was ready and on my feet. At the time, I was working strange hours and holding down a house that was too big and too expensive for my ducats. Can't.Have.A-dog-yet, I said.
But she's such a romantic about dogs that she literally asked her parents for one at each birthday, even when she was away at college. We often quip -- and it's only half-joking -- that if she could give birth to dogs, the question of to have or not to have offspring would've been settled long ago. Yeah, that's the level we're talking about here.
Lo and behold, the right puppy litter is born to the right friend at the wrong time, and I cannot turn that romantic canine-loving face down. "Fine, it can live at my house. But you have to seriously help with care and training. I mean seriously."
I was leaving for work at 2 a.m. those days. Napping at weird hours. Playing hockey at others. My father was coming in for Christmas, with all his maladies and surprises. I needed the help.
The Attack
"Help" changed to staying overnight a lot, for this grad student/first-year teacher who was nominally living with her parents to save cash. It started to sound a lot like living together. Which made her Catholic parents, though liberal, a tad uncomfortable.
The practical-but-veiled message: "We could probably 'live together' with their full blessing if we were at least engaged."
Two months after the dog arrived, she had her ring.
We were engaged. Official cohabitants. And I was demoted to #3 in the household (minority whip?). An anthropologist looking back at things would say the marriage was a nice bonus, but the dog was the driving incentive here.
That's how I'll always tell it, anyway.
The Physics and the Fence: An innocent moment of dorkdom But truthfully, we were a nice match, and I knew it. I actually had the ring before the dog arrived, but I delayed because it's nice to "have hand." We built a fence outside for the dog in 38-degree cold, and we were told by the wise: "Wow, if you guys can build a fence together without killing each other, you guys are right for one another."
Well, there was one moment with the fence. Using a socket wrench with the ease of a power tool, she tightened one of the bolts ... and tightened and tightened and tightened until ~SNAP~ the bolt snapped under the torque and went flying across the yard. She expressed such shock at the result. "I was just tightening, like you said."
I'm by no means handy, but I like learning how things work. So recalling again my awesome physics class -- one of my favorites -- and knowing she never took physics, I tried explaining why the bolt snapped even when she felt no resistance. Levers and distance and work and such. Socket wrenches are like that -- they take away so much of the work, it's easy to lose track of how tight you've gotten something until it's shooting across the room, piecemeal.
And that's how the Story of the Fence became "I mean he sits there and tries to give me a PHYSICS LESSON and it's FREEZING outside and the fence is only HALFWAY UP!"
Honestly, I wasn't lecturing. I just had a fascination with physics that I -- at the time -- assumed others shared. I blame my brother, who always got me to see the intrigue in things, be they physics, history or flatulence. And having once been a boy who went through "the change" to discover the new strengths Nature affords a 6'2" male, I also was familiar with the sensation of using newfound strength or tools only to find the extra force can burn you, or at least crush what you're working on. I thought I understood the feeling.
Again: no lecture intended, just a cool little observation on the physical world, I thought. My last defense was a plea that physics really is interesting -- no really! -- and we should explore it together sometime. Being in love, she agreed. We could check out physics sometime. Later.
"I know you didn't ask for it," she said. "But you always pleaded about physics. I thought we could check it out together."
Awww. Now that's love. It's a good book, too. Well done. Most of the lessons I remember from way back when, but it's a nice refresher. Frankly, these concepts kick ass. They make my surroundings so much more understandable and fun to inhabit. Can't wait to discuss them with m'lady.
The other day I tried for the umpteenth time to point something out from the book to her, but it wasn't a good time.
The consolation for abandoning principles and joining the shady world of PR/marketing was getting constant laughter and constant peeks into how things really work.
The chance to see the exorbitant expense account the CEO uses on his way to telling investors that 3,000 layoffs will restore shareholder value. To understand why on Earth my local TV station heard about -- and decided to cover -- the Febreze Van's visit to a hockey locker room. To learn that a nonprofit's capital campaign only "launches" after 50-75% of the goal has already been reached through quiet private donors, thus assuring public success. To observe how much businessmen, politicians and lobbyists stroke each other in a watered-down version of the old Eastern Bloc game of How Things Get Done.
In a world where Fate has the last roll, it's fun to connect A to B when I can.
Parking: Through Rain, Snow, or Sleet ...
But sometimes it's a much more mundane peek, such as the political machinations and envy that determine who gets what office, or who gets to park in what garage, lol.
Take the Parking Control Supplies Buyer's Guide. I mean, sure, if you were arsed to think about it, you'd figure that such a thing exists. But why would your neurons bother? (Unless you're me, sitting in a doctor's waiting room wondering who supplied the product brochure calendars.)
We recently received this full-color brochure, in all of its 130 pages of parking-related glory. The hope is to influence our next parking tag design decision. Or maybe get us to buy some ticket books, some striping paint, or -- and this is extravagant -- some parking boots and directional signs. "As long as I'm placing an order, I suppose I could pick up a PARKING LOT FULL and a DO NOT ENTER ..."
It came to the wrong department, but I know someone, somewhere, is thinking long and hard about the next parking tag shape.
"Hmmm... do I go with straight-up NO DUMPING, or do I get specific with DUMPSTER FOR TENANTS USE [sic] ONLY. Or is FOR RESIDENTS USE [sic] ONLY more on the mark?"
And don't forget ADA-compliant handicap signs, which vary by state. (Don't buy a Minnesota handicapper if you plan to display it in Florida.) There are no PARKING FOR ITALIANS ONLY signs, but there are ones for CLERGY or PASTOR or VP (naturally).
My favorite product, though, is the customizable stop sign. An otherwise standard red octagonal STOP sign, there is space underneath "STOP" for [YOUR WORDING HERE].
1) Is that allowed?! 2) What for?!
So of course I want to replace the street sign outside our house with FALL OF BECAUSE PL., and I'd like to change the stop sign underneath it to:
As you may have noticed, the site has changed. Sampa, the free-site host, did a version 2 of some sort.
Despite an FAQ that made it sound like allowing one's site to go through v.2 surgery would be okay, there were several flexibilities that surprisingly disappeared with the click of a button. (e.g. I cannot believe sidebars like this one are even narrower than before.)
And I'm told -- miraculously! -- that the conversion cannot be undone. Truth be told, I'm actually quite pissed. But free is free. Sampa has otherwise been good to me.
So I need to sort through site "features" to see how I can make do. Except that I don't have the time at the moment, in the middle of graduate classes and Lighthousehockey.com. (btw, I've removed that Lighthouse RSS feed so that you're not clogged with random Islanders hockey gibberish).
But I promise to touch up the accessories when I get a chance, and return to irregularly scheduled blogging.
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. It closes out "their" first album -- which was actually just Dave Grohl playing virtually all the parts in his post-Nirvana project.
December, 2007