NYE

Our planet Earth has done it again – passed another orbital milestone. For approximately the 4.5 billionth time, it has completed a circle around its central star – our Sun. All over the world, people use this orbital completion as an excuse to party and celebrate. Sure and begorrah, I’ll drink to that. Par-tay!

The New Year has already arrived in some places. Its passage has been celebrated in Christmas Island and Samoa, in New Zealand and Australia, in China and Japan, in India and Sri Lanka, in Iran and Iraq, in Russia and western Europe. Now, it is hurtling west across the Atlantic at a thousand miles an hour. In a while it will touch Venezuela. It will hit the east coast of Canada and America. The New Year will finally arrive in my small burg. It will keep on going, headed west across mountains, prairies, and deserts. It will continue on to Mexico and California, past Alaska and Hawaii, past French Polynesia and Midway Atoll.

I went to bed at 12:30 AM this morning. I slept until 3 AM, at which point I got out of bed. I knew I wouldn’t sleep again. Two and a half hours of sleep – not a lot, but I’ll take what I can get.

Now it’s a half hour from midnight. I’ll still be up at midnight. Not because I have a reason to be up, but because – that’s just the way it is. I’ll be up to see the New Year arrive. I’m sure some locals with their primitive fireworks will make sure I hear the New Year arrive – they always do.

Through today’s near-miraculous electronics technology, it’s possible for me to watch the New Year’s Eve ball drop amongst revelers in Times Square from right here in my living room, should I choose to do that. I don’t know if I will, though. I’ll probably be watching an old episode of Perry Mason and forget about the ball dropping. Or maybe I’ll think about watching the ball drop, and then think, “Meh. This TV show is better.”

I mean, after all, it’s not something special. It’s just the New Year. It’s an arbitrary point in a planetary orbit about the Sun. It’s a jot on the calendar.

Thirty minutes to midnight. I’ll switch on the TV. That old Perry Mason is starting, and I don’t want to miss the beginning. When it ends, I’ll see if I can get another two and a half hours of sleep.

Happy New Year.

Trains In The Night

I am lying down. I don’t know the time, but it is dark outside. I hear the distant drone of train wheels on steel rails. I hear the moan of the train’s air horn. It whistles a warning at every road crossing the train encounters as it travels through my small city. Sometimes the engineer gives the air horn a short blast or two; sometimes a longer blast; sometimes a combination of short and long. Sometimes it sounds as though the engineer is sending Morse code. Then no more air horn, but I can still hear the rumble of steel wheels on steel track. The sound fades slowly, slowly, slowly. Then it is gone. There is silence.

Train engineers use the whistle not only as a warning to humans and animals to get off the track, but also for communication with railroad employees such as yard workers and employees on the train itself when voice communication is not available. Various blasts of the air horn have meaning. For example, the engineer will announce the train’s approach to a road crossing by sounding two long, one short, and one long whistle. One short whistle means applying air brakes while standing. Two long whistles mean releasing brakes and proceeding. And so on. If you’re curious, you can find a list of train whistle codes on Wikipedia.

I once lived in a “railroad town” – Roanoke, Virginia, where Norfolk Southern has maintenance shops. I lived near the rail yard, where every morning at 7AM a steam whistle announced the start of a new workday. However, I don’t recall ever hearing train air horns while I lived in Roanoke. At least, not routinely, as I do now.

Time passes and I hear another train coming through my city. I hear the rumble of the wheels. I hear short and long blasts of the whistle.

I don’t know why I like hearing trains come through town. Maybe it has something to do with the trains I rode when I was a kid, starting when I was a baby. Whatever the reason, a distant train whistle in the night is reassuringly familiar.

Below: part of the Norfolk Southern rail yard in Roanoke, Virginia. The Roanoke Roundtable is top, right. Tracks run east-west. North is to the right. 

It’s Unnatural

In the news:

Ten piglets born this year in a laboratory in China look like normal piglets when the lights are on, but in the dark, they glow florescent green thanks to a genetic alteration that incorporates a protein transferred from jellyfish DNA.

I see where this is going. We’ll soon have pork barbeque that glows green in the dark. There’s no reason scientists can’t also modify a wheat plant’s DNA to make flour glow red. Then we could have glowing green barbeque on a glowing red bun – a sandwich both tasty and Christmas-y.

More to the point, does anyone not think it’s just a matter of time before some researcher uses bird DNA to create pigs with wings? Then we won’t be able to say, “When pigs fly!” any more.

Scientists may use DNA swapping to create fish that taste like chicken or chicken that tastes like chateaubriand. And with sufficient research dollars, scientists may one day create a soybean-burger that tastes like food instead of cardboard. Just kidding – that last one will never happen. It’s too big a leap. But all that other stuff is possible.

The news article goes on to say:

Glowing animals have been developed in laboratories since the 1980s… In April of this year scientists in Uruguay created a flock of glow-in-the-dark sheep. Other experiments done around the world have produced glowing monkeys, puppies and kittens.

I’m just getting accustomed to compact fluorescent light bulbs. Please don’t tell Congress there are glow-in-the-dark monkeys. There’s no telling what those noodle-heads will make us light our homes with next.

Christmas 2013

It is Christmas Day, 2013. The time is 12:30 AM. It has been Christmas for half an hour in my house. I just finished watching an old Perry Mason episode on TV. I enjoy the old Perry Mason shows … the TV series that was filmed from 1957 through 1966. It’s like having a time machine to view late ‘50s American culture. The women “ladies” of the era wore hats, sometimes veils, and always white cotton gloves. At least, they did when they “dressed up.” Of course, fashions come and go, and while hats and veils and gloves are now quaint, there was nothing wrong with wearing them back in the day. But watching how women were generally portrayed on the show demonstrates how much our culture has changed since that time. I shake my head and think, “No wonder there was a feminist movement.”

I like the old cars on the show, too. Okay, old is a relative term. I think that somewhere around the mid- to late-50s, American-made automobiles began losing their personalities. By 1960 they were long and wide and heavy and on their way to becoming indistinctive.

I owned a ‘55 Chevy. It had a Blue Flame inline 6 that burned a ridiculous amount of motor oil. I always carried a couple of 2 gallon cans of oil in the trunk. It had a solid steel dashboard – none of your fancy cushioned stuff, thank you. It also lacked seat belts. It was a manly car. In an accident, your soft body would hit the steel dashboard and you’d be dead. Or you’d be skewered by the solid, non-telescoping steering shaft. And we liked it! Apparently, because we sure bought a lot of them. But what it lacked in safety it made up for by being distinctive. When you saw a ‘55 Chevy you knew what it was. You wouldn’t mistake another car for a ‘55 Chevy. Well, you might mistake a ‘56 Chevy for a ‘55, but not if you had owned either one. I don’t remember the model, whether it was a One-Fifty, a Two-Ten, or a Bel Air. But more Two-Tens were produced than the other models, so that’s probably what it was. If you want a ‘55 Chevy today, you can still get one. A collector will sell you one for around $40,000.

I traded the ‘55 Chevy for a ‘60 Plymouth. The Plymouth had giant tail fins and a pushbutton transmission – the buttons selected vacuum lines to the transmission. The transmission on my Plymouth had no Park position – you used the parking brake and hoped it held. The steering wheel wasn’t round; it was shaped like an ellipse. When you were driving straight down the road, the steering wheel was wider than it was tall. My particular Plymouth had manual steering; no power steering, except for muscle power.

I traded the ‘60 Plymouth for a ‘68 Dodge Charger. You may remember a TV show called “The Dukes of Hazzard.” The car the boys called “The General Lee” was a ‘69 Charger, one year newer than my Charger. I always liked the ‘68 better. I thought it was prettier. The power steering had almost no feedback. It felt almost like the steering wheel was connected to nothing. You could steer around a corner using one pinky finger. I don’t remember much about that car except that I wrecked it, and some yoyos who shouldn’t have been allowed within a mile of an automobile did the repair work, which they screwed up every way possible, plus several ways I had thought not possible. Live and learn.

So yeah, watching the old Perry Mason shows does take me back to that time, in certain ways. Early episodes captured a time before the turmoil started, before drugs, before the summer of love, before Haight-Ashbury, before the Beatles, before Vietnam, before civil rights, before the women’s movement, before race riots and police riots. It evokes an era when all was right with the world, or so it appeared if you didn’t look too closely, and we were sitting on top of that world. Tons of shit was about to hit the fan, but on the old Perry Mason shows women wear white cotton gloves and defer to men, cars are huge with big V8 engines, and the phrases “gas guzzler” and “Arab oil” are yet to come into our consciousness. Looking back, it seems a simpler time, a more innocent time. It was a different world.

The world is faster now, with smart phones, tablet computers, social networking, instant communication, and with our own government spying on us (because how do they know who is good and who is bad unless they spy – excuse me, I meant to say “collect metadata” – on all of us?). I wouldn’t necessarily want to live in Perry Mason’s world again – after all, I’ve been there and done that – but it’s nice to visit for an hour.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Eve

I got out of bed and instantly realized the house was too cold. I checked the thermostat. It was set at 68° but the temperature in the house was 64°. As Dorothy Parker famously asked when someone knocked on her door, “What fresh hell can this be?” (For the book title, her biographer, Marion Meade, changed it to “What fresh hell is this?”, and that was the version of the quote that found its way into the American vernacular.)

So, the central heat wasn’t working. I trudged down the stairwell to the cellar where the boiler is located. I saw immediately that the red “breaker” button on the controller unit had popped up. I pushed the button down to reset the controller, and the blower motor turned on, but there was no ignition – the combustion chamber remained dark. In 40 seconds the controller, sensing no flame, would break the circuit again, but I didn’t wait. I went to the breaker box and switched off the boiler. Because if the fuel pump was working, running the system would result in more unburned oil accumulating inside the combustion chamber.

I ran through possibilities in my head. Bad ignition transformer. Bad fuel pump. Water in the fuel line. Debris in the fuel nozzle.

I phoned the oil company. The service manager told me there was one job ahead of me. Of course, that one job might take all day. Meanwhile, the outside temperature was 40° and the house was getting colder.

Three hours later the HVAC technician arrived. We went to the cellar and I flipped the breaker on. The blower motor ran and this time ignition occurred. There was fire in the combustion chamber. Sometimes it only takes the presence of a qualified technician to make the problem go away. Then, when the technician is gone, the problem returns. Intermittent problems are the worst. How many people have taken their cars to the auto shop, only to see the problem disappear. “I swear it was making a funny noise when I applied the brakes … really, it was.”

The HVAC technician replaced the filter-nozzle assembly, mainly because replacing it was easy, quick, and relatively cheap to do. It’s like looking under the street light on a dark night for the key you dropped – not because that’s where you dropped your key, but because that’s where the light is. But if the heat goes off again, at least we’ll know one thing that isn’t the problem.

Next, I went to the grocery store for victuals. How crowded was it? It was so crowded that I had to wait in a line just to get into the parking lot. I wasted no time rounding up what I wanted to buy. While I was at the self-checkout, I thought I saw Stephani Germanotta walk past me to the next checkout machine. She had blonde hair and was nicely dressed in a black skirt, dark stockings, and gray blazer. She was with some dude in a suit. I briefly wondered why Lady Gaga was shopping in my little central Virginia city. Perhaps she was passing through on the way to her next concert when she developed a sudden craving for an ‘apple – pepper jelly – cheddar’ grilled cheese sandwich. Discovering she was out of cheese, she ordered the driver of her tour bus to veer off the Interstate and locate the nearest Martin’s store. (Martin’s does have a great selection of cheeses. No wonder she shops here.) I admit I only saw her from behind, so there’s a slim possibility it wasn’t Lady Gaga. But I believe it was Gaga. Some things you just know. You don’t need evidence. You don’t need proof. You just know. You know?

It’s exciting times. And if the heat stays on tonight and I don’t die of hypothermia in my sleep, I may blog again tomorrow.

Festivus Day

It’s December 23rd. I guess you know what that means. It’s Festivus Day. Yes, Festivus – it’s a festival for the rest of us. And right now, I need a festival.

The day started with a short chat with my Skype amigo CyberDave. Then I saw the mailman walk through my yard, so I went out and brought in the mail. The mail was just one item: a medical bill. It said my account was “overdue.” I recognized the bill as one I had already paid. I really hate getting billed when I’ve already paid the bill. So I fired off an email to the billing company, letting them know I had already paid the bill and should have a zero balance. I asked them what they needed in the way of proof. There was no immediate auto-reply, so I didn’t know if they received the email. Time would tell.

It rained all night and into the morning, but now the rain had stopped. There was a prescription waiting for me at the Walmart pharmacy and I was debating whether the rain would hold off long enough to allow me to pick up the prescription without getting soaked. At that point, I received a phone invitation to have lunch in a restaurant an hour away with a group of people I mostly do not know. I haven’t been to that particular restaurant in so long I wasn’t sure I could still find the place. I thanked my caller and said I had some things to do. My caller muttered something about excuses.

I showered, shaved, dressed, and prepared to go to Walmart. The rain was still holding off as I drove to the pharmacy. The traffic was ridiculous, with long lines at every stop light. In other words, it was just what I expected two days before Christmas. Finally I got into the parking lot, where I circled round and round and up and down the lanes looking for a parking spot. I almost gave up and went home before I finally found a place to park. The store was so crowded that, even though I had other things I wanted to buy, I chose to bail. I had to get out of the store, away from the crowd.

I decided to drive to another store – a Martin’s grocery store in a small shopping center. Traffic was backed up in lines a half mile long at traffic lights. Even when the lights were green, I sometimes couldn’t move because the cars across the intersection from me were not moving.

I got to the grocery store, but again there was no place to park. No, I take that back. There was a parking spot, it just happened to be in the next county. Ordinarily, I don’t mind a long walk between car and store, but a mist of rain was in the air, and the clouds were ominously dark. The sky looked like it was ready to let go, so I swung my Jeep back onto the highway and motored on home. I’ll try again – after Christmas.

Back at home, I checked my email. I had a reply to the email I had sent to the billing company. They wanted a copy of the payment check, front and back. It was an e-banking check, and my bank doesn’t make copies of checks available online because sensitive information on the check could be intercepted and misused. I went to the bank’s online support page and had an e-chat with someone called Shari. Shari took a long time to respond to anything I typed, but assured me I should be patient because I was a valued customer. Ultimately, Shari gave me a phone number and said people at the number would help me.

I called the number and a computer voice asked me for my social security number. I punched it into the dial pad and the computer voice said, “That number doesn’t match our records” and asked me to enter the number again. For a second I was at a loss: all it knew about me was the social security number I had just entered, so how could it know the number wasn’t correct? Then I realized it was reading my phone number and comparing it to the number stored in my account, and I was using a different phone from that which the bank had on file. I got past that and into endless menus that never gave me what I wanted: an answer to the question, “How do I get a copy of a check?” In frustration I started tapping the “0” button. Shortly afterward, I made contact with a real human being.

I was interrogated: social security number, driver’s license number, date of birth, address, and so on. Finally the woman I was speaking with agreed that I was the real me, and she asked how she could help me. I told her I needed a copy of an e-banking check. She indicated that was beyond her pay grade, but if I was patient, someone in a another department would help me.

The new person was indeed helpful. He explained that the bank couldn’t email me a copy of the check, but they could fax me a copy. I don’t have a fax machine, so I asked them to mail it. I asked if they could also fax a copy to the company billing me, and they said yes. But first I had to verify with the billing company that their fax was secure. So I wrote down my case number and sent another email to the billing company. After a while I received a reply. My contact there said to send the fax.

I called the bank back. I went through the computer verification (“that number doesn’t match our records”) again, then got into the menus, hit “0” on the dial pad, got a human again, went through the interrogation again, and finally got to the “How can we help?” question. I explained I wanted to fax the check images to the billing company, which once again was beyond the person’s pay grade, so they had to get another department involved, and another person got on the line. I gave him the case number and my request to fax the check to the billing company, and he said he would handle it.

That’s a summary of the process; in real time it took two and a half hours to get the copy of the check sent out. Now I only have to wait and see if I get another “overdue” invoice next month. If I do, maybe I’ll just pay the invoice again.

Happy Festivus, indeed.

(Below) A Festivus pole. It is unadorned and unlit. Why?" you ask. Because, that’s just the way it is. I don’t make the rules.

Copyright: Matthew Keefe,
license: creative commons

Winter Solstice

It’s here: the day of the 2013 winter solstice. Officially, today is the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day and the longest night. For that reason, I prefer to think of today not as the first day of winter, but as “mid-winter.” From today forward, days will get longer. The sun will rise earlier and set later. Each passing day will bring more daylight and less darkness.

Ancient Celts called this time of the year “Yule” and placed it at the top of the Wheel of the Year. Opposite Yule, at the bottom of the Wheel, is Midsummer, what we modern people call the first day of summer. Yule is Midwinter.

At the moment, the temperature in my central Virginia city is 75° (24° C). That may set a record for the warmest temperature for the date. Tomorrow’s temperatures may set new records for both the warmest high temperature and the warmest low temperature. Last month was globally the warmest November since record-keeping began, although most of the US and Canada had average to below-average temperatures for the month. November, 2013, was the 345th consecutive month with a global temperature higher than the 20th century average, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

To be sure, cold weather will return. Even now, somewhere – far north of my little city – I imagine people drinking hot buttered rum or apple toddies, sitting in view of crackling log fires, enjoying the warmth, mesmerized by dancing flames. As for me, on this Yule day, or Midwinter, or first day of winter – take your pick – I have a window open and I’m enjoying the breeze.

The Alternate Routes

The Alternate Routes are a rock band formed in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 2002 by Tim Warren and Eric Donnelly. The old 8mm home movie footage in the video is of Tim’s sister Katie. This song, “Nothing More”, was played on the NCIS episode Homesick which aired Dec 17, 2013.

Links of interest:
    The Alternate Routes 
    Newtown Kindness

A Thought Experiment

Let’s do a thought experiment. In this experiment we’ll do to our education system what the Affordable Care Act has done to our health care system.

We begin this experiment by imagining our country without a public education system for grades K - 12. Instead, all schools are privately owned and operated. Families pay a considerable amount of money to enroll their children in these private schools. People below a certain income level cannot afford to educate their children.

Other countries around the world have solved the problem of educating their citizens by creating public schools. In these public school systems, every child can attend school and their education is paid for by taxes. Everyone is taxed to help pay for the education system, including those who have no children and will never have children. Imposing an education tax on everyone regardless of whether they have children is supported by a belief that an educated populace benefits all people in society. Because the government pays for everyone’s education, this system is called a single-payer system.

But American conservatives criticize these public education programs in other countries as being socialist. Indeed, they are socialist, but they do provide the opportunity for all their citizens to receive at least a minimal level of education. In the U.S., tens of millions of children receive no education, while every year millions of American families incur crushing amounts of debt while trying to help their children escape a bleak future because they lack an education.

Responding to pleas to open up the education system so all children can get an education, a controversial American president offers a solution. He knows he can’t get support for public schools, because there are enough conservatives in both parties to block a single-payer system. But he manages to get through Congress a new law called the Affordable Education Act.

Under this new law, every family is required to send their children to a private school. All schools will offer five levels of education, with course material defined and regulated for each level of education. The levels, from most to least expensive, are Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Barely Literate. All families must participate in the AEA system or pay a tax penalty which grows larger with each passing year. Low income families receive a tax credit to help them pay for their children’s education.

Almost no one is satisfied with the new law. Conservatives bash it as socialist and an unwanted government intrusion into the education system. Progressives bash it because it doesn’t go far enough in helping the poorest families. Conservatives promise to repeal the new law and go back to the old system. Progressives point out that under the old system, 50 million children received no education, and say that even flawed as it is, the new law will allow many of those 50 million to receive at least a minimal education.

What do you think? Should we:

A. Return to a system of all private schools.

B. Keep the new law and see what happens.

C. Adopt the European system of public schools funded by taxes.

Aubrey

This is Aubrey Peters, age 16, of Noblesville, Indiana. You can tell she’s a happy person. Her high school principal described her as a “great student”, a “quality student”, who always has a smile on her face. One more thing: Aubrey is also a hero.

She’s a hero because on March 10, 2010, she helped rescue two small children who fell through the ice on a frozen pond. She didn’t see it happen but she heard them screaming and ran to help. The Red Cross recognized her heroism with a Hall of Fame Award.

This is Jacob McDaniel, a graduate of Noblesville High School. According to police, on December 9, 2013, Aubrey and two friends were visiting Jacob at his house. Jacob wanted to show Aubrey his gun. He wanted her to hold it, but she refused. Believing the gun was not loaded, Jacob pointed the gun at Aubrey and pulled the trigger. The gun fired a bullet into Aubrey’s chest. She died at a local hospital. Allegedly, Jacob told his friends to tell police the gun “fell off a table and went off.” Jacob is in jail and may spend years in prison. One day he’ll be out of prison, and then he’ll have a chance at a life – a chance Aubrey will never have.

Aubrey has plenty of company. From 2000 to 2010 75,944 children in the U.S. died from gun violence. If you pick 75,944 people at random, how many would be doctors and nurses? How many would be inventors? How many would be celebrities … singers, dancers, actors, athletes? How many would discover how to treat an incurable disease, design the tallest building, start a company? How many would write a best-seller, explore a new world, establish a charity? Because when we kill, or allow to be killed, 75,944 children, we’re also killing 75,944 adults – the adults those children never had a chance to become.

Be Here Now

You know what it is about people that annoys me? Okay, lots of things about people annoy me. Like, the fact they’re destroying the planet I happen to call home. But that’s more of a theoretical annoyance than an immediate, practical annoyance. The thing that annoys me right now is when people put their lives into my hands and depend upon my aging peepers and reflexes to keep them alive.

Case in point: I was at the grocery store tonight. The sun had set and the day had become dusky dark. I put my groceries in the car and started the engine. I shifted the transmission from Park to Reverse. I started backing out of my parking spot, unable to see very clearly because of the darkness and, let’s face it, backup lights really aren’t all that bright. I couldn’t back up far enough so I had to stop and pull forward while turning, and then stop and backup again. Suddenly out of nowhere I see silhouettes of people walking right behind my Jeep. I hit the brake. If I didn’t, I would have backed right over them. I wanted to say, “What is the matter with you people? Can’t you see I’m backing up here? Are you trying to get run over?” But I didn’t. I hit the brake and gave them the opportunity to do something dumb on another day.

Oh, but if I hadn’t seen them in time, there would be no end to the blaming, the finger-pointing, and the lawsuits. Why would someone walk directly behind a vehicle that is backing up, especially while they are wearing dark clothes in the twilight of evening? I guess it comes down to people not thinking and being in a hurry. Their minds are elsewhere. They are thinking of shopping, thinking of where they want to be, thinking of what they have to do before the holidays arrive. Their bodies are on autopilot while their brains are somewhere else. Good thing one of us was in the present moment.

If I could, I would say to those people, “Look, I know it’s hard, but you have to try to be here now. It’s a busy world and you have places to go and things to do, but be here now. Don’t be some place your body isn’t. Don’t be some time your body isn’t.  Don’t be in yesterday, don’t be in tomorrow or next week. Don’t assume the driver will see you, don’t assume the car will stop. Please stop making me save you from being hurt.

Teeth Checkup

I went to my dentist this morning to have my teeth inspected and my gums probed and prodded by sharp-pointed instruments of dental torture. The dentist had moved to a new location and today was only the fifth day that he and his staff had been in the new building. I had no trouble finding the building; his staff had mailed me a postcard advising me of the new address. However, they neglected to put the suite number on the postcard, and this building has many medical suites. I ended up pulling out my phone and calling them for directions. A minute later I was parking in front of their new office.

The old office had a cuspidor beside the dentist’s chair – also called a “spit bowl” by ordinary pilgrims such as myself. Apparently spit bowls are now considered curiosities more suitable for museum display than for use in a dentist’s office. The hygienist told me that when a substitute dental assistant came into the old office, she (the sub) would take a photo of the cuspidor to show the gals back at her office, many of whom had never seen such a thing. In lieu of “rinse and spit”, now the hygienist hoses down your teeth with a squirt of mouthwash and then has you wrap your lips around a suction pipe which sucks the liquid out of your mouth.

My first ten minutes in the dentist’s chair were spent listening to the hygienist and another gal grapple with data entry on a computer screen. All patient information is stored on a computer now, and judging from the amount of time they had to spend waiting for a response to each mouse click, they’re using a machine from the Dark Ages powered by a small rodent running inside an exercise wheel.

After entering data into the world’s slowest computer, the hygienist got down to business, and for 40 minutes she poked, probed, scraped, and polished. Then the dentist entered the room to conduct his own inspection of the ivories. He immediately asked if I had a “nice Thanksgiving.” I said, “No.” He took it in stride. It turns out that when people ask if you had a nice Thanksgiving, a nice Christmas, a nice Whatever, they don’t really care. Why maintain the pretense?

Finally, I paid the ransom they requested and was allowed to escape with my teeth for another six months. I always hate to eat after a dental cleaning. My teeth feel so clean and pristine, it seems wrong to get them “dirty” by chewing food. But I stopped by the food store and assembled a salad at the salad bar, and took it home, and used my newly polished choppers on it. Then I used them on leftover pizza. They don’t feel pristine now, but they do feel comfortably broken-in, so it’s all good.

Thanksgiving Day

Thanksgiving day is sunny and hits 45° before falling back. I’m at my computer when I become aware that I smell smoke. My thought is: smoke? I spin my chair around and look behind me: living room, dining room, and kitchen are filled with clouds of smoke. Holy crap! I have a fire! I jump up and run to the kitchen where the smoke is thickest.

I have a pot of vegetarian chili simmering on the stove, and I momentarily think I must have inadvertently set the burner to maximum heat and the pot has boiled over and the food is burning, but no; the temperature knob is set to simmer and nothing is boiling over. I turn the burner off anyway.

I am still in emergency mode. My house is on fire! But where the hell is the fire? Is it inside my kitchen wall? Was it started by electrical wiring? If it’s inside the wall, how is all this smoke getting through the wall and into the room? It’s a funny feeling to think your house is on fire and you’re powerless to do anything about it. Suddenly my brain clicks into gear and I know what is happening. You’ve probably already guessed.

Let’s back up to the day before Thanksgiving, a day that was cold and rainy. I had gone to the grocery store to pick up a half dozen items, and the store was slammed. It might have been the day before the Apocalypse. Or the day before a zombie invasion. It was so crowded it was difficult to move around. But everybody was in a good mood. I got stuck behind a lady who was gabbing and waving at other people she recognized instead of moving along. So I said to her, in a voice loud enough that she would know I was addressing her, “Are we moving forward?” And she half turned toward me and said, “We don’t know.” We both laughed. It was that kind of atmosphere in the store. Busy busy, but people were making allowances for the situation.

I bought my half dozen items including, for a new batch of experimental chili, a can of diced tomato with green chilies, a can of Mexican style stewed tomatoes with jalapeño, cumin, & red pepper, a can of red kidney beans, and a can of black beans. I had a white onion at home that I would dice and add to the pot, along with chili powder and my secret spices. I remembered I had some pimento cheese at home, so I bought some sandwich rounds, also called sandwich thins. I rarely eat bread, but I can pry apart a sandwich round and put pimento cheese on one half and get half the carbs of a slice of bread.

The next day, Thanksgiving Day, I make my chili and put it on the burner to simmer, and I decide to toast one half of a sandwich round for pimento cheese spread. I separate the halves and put one piece in the toaster, I seal the bag and put it back on the shelf, I clean a couple of utensils I used in making the chili, and I go merrily on my way to the computer. Meanwhile …

Yes indeed, I forgot about the bread in the toaster, and due to a mechanical issue, my toaster does not eject bread when it’s done. It sits there toasting away until I manually popup the bread. From seeing smoke and running to the kitchen, to remembering the bread in the toaster, probably no more than ten seconds passed, though it seemed longer.

I unplugged the toaster. The bread inside was almost completely converted to ash. A black fragment of toast still glowed like a fireplace ember. I opened a door and a window and went upstairs and switched on the whole house fan. It’s powerful draft cleared the air in about five minutes, though a faint whiff of burnt bread lingered in the air for a few more hours.

I hope your turkey day was enjoyable, with less charring than mine.

Three Songs

‘Tis the season, you know. So, let us have seasonal music. Though I’m not a fan of The Little Drummer Boy, this a cappella cover by Pentatonix is just so well done, with Kevin Olusola doing his beatboxing thing. Have a listen.

Now that the seasonal music is out of the way, here’s Radioactive (an Imagine Dragons cover), this time with Lindsey Stirling performing her violin magic and Kevin playing his cello. (Factoid: Kevin graduated from Yale and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.)

Speaking of Lindsey Stirling, I’m going to segue right into Spontaneous Me, because I like the music and I like the video.

Thanksgiving Week

This is Thanksgiving Day week in America – or as I call it, National Say-hello-to-the-weight-gain week. I don’t participate in the annual mass turkey slaughter; the novelty wore off long ago. I do, however, throw dietary restraint to the wind and over-indulge in various ways. At the store yesterday I bought a box of little chicken sandwiches (they’re small; two constitute a serving). Nuke ‘em and hose some ketchup on the chicken patty, and you’ve got a reasonably tasty treat, suitable for middle school kids and live-alone geezers. I bought fixin’s for chili, which I enjoy but rarely make. I kept feeling there was something else I needed to buy, but nothing came to mind. Then last night, as I prepared to watch TV, it came  suddenly to mind – I forgot to buy the beans. (Technically, chili doesn’t have beans, but that’s a whole other blog post; read it here.) I checked the time: 8 PM. The store was still open, so off I went to purchase beans. I bought pinto beans, dark red kidney beans, and black beans.

Today is cold and rainy, as will be tonight and tomorrow. It’s a good time to make (and eat) chili with beans. When I make chili I like to add, in addition to the chili powder and ground cumin seed, a wee bit of cinnamon and sugar. But only a wee bit – it’s easy to overdo. You don’t want cinnamon flavored chili; you want only a hint of the cinnamon. A little cinnamon goes a long way. And I buy diced tomatoes with “zesty” green chilies – zesty being a code word for “spicy-hot”. Chili should be hot. After all, it’s seasoned with chili peppers which are, by definition, hot. Heat-less chili is like fat-free mayonnaise or fat-free cheese. It’s like low-carb waffles. Which is to say, it’s not natural! You only live once, and when you die, you’re going to be dead a long, long time. Enjoy real food now!

Right now, I’m going to go and make some real food. It’s past noon and I haven’t eaten yet today. May your Thanksgiving be both tasty and fattening. Remember: if you don’t put on a few pounds, you’re doing it wrong.

<< Slow cooker loaded with chili fixin’s. It’s about to slow cook for 2 ~ 3 hours. It takes a long time to reach simmering temperature. When it starts to simmer, the veggies (onion, pepper, tomato) are cooked and it’s ready to come off the heat. Smells good, too!

 

And the proof is in the bowl. >>
Mmm … mmm … good!
Who needs turkey?

Great Spiral

When I was about four years old, my tonsils were removed. The doctor knocked me out with ether. At one time, ether was a common anesthetic, but when safer anesthetics were invented, ether was dropped because it is very toxic. Ether depresses breathing and can damage the liver and kidneys.

Unfortunately, ether overdoses were common. That’s because the LD50 of ether, the dose of ether that produces death in 50 percent of the population, is only slightly higher than the dose of ether required to reduce consciousness sufficiently for surgery.

That’s what happened to me. The doctor gave me an ether overdose.  On the outside, I was very peaceful – a little too peaceful, in fact. On the inside, it was quite another story.

I was unconscious, and perhaps my breathing had stopped, but I felt anything but unconscious. I could feel myself lying on the operating table in a dark room. Although I could not see them, I could sense around me the presence of others whom I took to be doctors and nurses. Above me in the blackness was a mighty, glowing spiral. It glowed with an intense white light as it slowly rotated. The spiral was unbelievably intense and seemed to burn its brilliance into my brain. I struggled to get off the operating table. The doctors and nurses fought to keep me on the table, but I lashed out at them with all my strength: kicking, flailing with my arms, thrashing, fighting. They held me down on the table while the burning white spiral spun slowly in space above me with an intensity beyond words.

When I awoke from surgery, I remembered how I fought to get off the operating table. I hoped that my struggle with the medical staff had happened only in my mind, but I couldn’t be sure; the struggle seemed so real. I knew the spiral had existed only in my mind, and therefore wasn’t “real”, but the memory was extremely vivid. For years afterward whenever I remembered that spiral I experienced its intensity all over again.

For a long time I wondered if, on some level of reality, it might have been real. Maybe something happened that my young mind tried to make sense of in the only way it could. With an overdose of ether in my brain, was I subconsciously fighting those who were administering it? Was my soul about to leave my body? The beings around me that I assumed were doctors and nurses ... perhaps they were guardian angels, or spirit guides and teachers, working to keep my soul in my body to prevent me from dying. I’d like to think that, but I have to believe that most likely – in fact, almost certainly – the experience was simply an intense, drug-induced dream and nothing more.

I don’t know why I saw the spiral, but the spiral shape is surely a fundamental part of the Cosmos. From the design of a seashell to the shape of our galaxy, from the design of the inner ear’s cochlea that allows us to hear, to the Spira mirabilis (marvelous spiral) in mathematics and the golden spiral in geometry, spirals – both real and abstract – are truly abundant. Now there is a clue to something important.

Kennedy

I was one of the first to read the news headline that proclaimed John Kennedy had been elected President. At the time, my job was delivering the morning newspaper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, so I read the election headline shortly after 4 AM.

I learned of Kennedy’s death in my high school classroom. News of Kennedy’s assassination came over the intercom system. Everything stopped. Teachers stopped talking. Students stopped talking. Some of the girls in class were really upset.

During the three years between Kennedy’s election and his death, a lot of history took place. The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis (newspapers showed anti-aircraft missile batteries on Florida’s beaches). The beginning of Project Apollo. The Berlin Wall was built (I remember American and Russian tanks facing each other across the border, guns pointed at each other). Freedom Riders rode into history. The March on Washington drew a quarter million people wanting jobs and freedom. Peter, Paul, and Mary began singing songs about freedom (and would soon also sing about war and peace). Military advisors went to Vietnam. It was a turbulent period in America.

Now it’s 50 years later and what surprises me most, next to still being around, is that all the people I know who remember those things like I do – they’re all old people. Unlike me.  Okay, so I’m on the wrong side of forty. But I’m not actually old. Not yet. So how come I seem to be the only not-old person who remembers all those things? Time is strange. Who would have thought a half century would seem so brief at the end, when it seemed so very long at the beginning.

In the News

I see in the news that a freshman U.S. Congressman from Florida got caught buying cocaine in Washington, D.C. Being new to Congress, he didn't know he was supposed to send a staffer to do that for him. That way, he could not only deny knowledge of the activity but he could put the onus on the staffer by telling police he always suspected that staffer of being a doper.

Congressman to cop: "He has a shifty look. I never trusted him. But I try to give everyone a chance, because that’s the kind of person I am."
Staffer: “Say what?!”
Cop to staffer: “You’re going down, dirt-bag!”

Although getting caught buying or using drugs may not hurt one’s political career, it’s still frowned upon in high places.

There’s a lot of stuff in the news that I really don’t want to hear about, but the news media just won’t let go of certain stories. Stuff I really don’t want to hear about includes:

• George Zimmerman’s latest brush with the law.
• Kanye West
• Kim Kardashian.
• Kanye and Kim having sex in a music video.
• Anyone who uses a single letter of the alphabet for their last name.
• Miley Cyrus’s latest publicity stunt.
• Twerking, whatever that is.
• Lady Gaga, no. But Stephanie Germanotta, maybe.

Ah well, it’s a long list. I’ll stop here.

Say Hello to My Little Friend

Today the sky looked like the picture above, except the sun was brighter and the sky was bluer. Ten days from Thanksgiving, the afternoon temperature reached 75° F. A chill is on the way, though. Tonight’s low will be 36° and tomorrow’s high will be 53°. The Prophesies claim Monday’s high will be 43°. December is near. But there may be a few more comfortable days before Old Man Winter gets an icy grip on the land.

(Speaking of Old Man Winter, “Old Man” is a seasonal winter ale brewed by Southern Tier Brewing Company. It’s 7% ABV – alcohol by volume. That should give it some kick. I mean, for beer.)

At quarter past 5 I decided to go to the store and bring back a salad from their salad bar. So I did, and it was delicious. I think the garlic croutons and craisins put it over the top. Anyway, the day was dusky dark as I left the house, but the western sky still glowed orange above the horizon. As I walked to the garage I saw, at the far end of my back yard, a small black and white animal that I assumed was a cat. As I got closer it ran from me, and I saw it was a bunny rabbit, the kind kids have as pets. I went to the store, got my salad, and drove back home. As I steered into the alley that runs behind my house, I saw a gray rabbit – a wild, “country” rabbit. It hopped along the alley beside my Jeep, veered into my yard ahead of me, and hopped out of sight.

As I write this blog, the TV is on and a rerun of The Big Bang Theory is airing. In this episode, Howard comes home and sits on the sofa beside Bernadette and shows her the tiny model of himself that he made at work with his new 3D printer. He holds mini-Howard beside his head and utters the line, “Say hello to my little friend.” And I thought, “Where have I heard that line before?”

“Say hello to my little friend” is one of those lines that is too good to use just one time. It was the name of:

• a first season episode of “Wise Guys?”
• a third season episode of “Scandal.”
• a first season episode of “Awake.”
• a first season episode of “Hillbilly Handfishin’.”
• a fifth season episode of “Run’s House.”

It was also the line uttered by the Huge Goon (Stu ‘Large’ Riley) in the 2010 movie “Kick-Ass”, as he hefted his bazooka and aimed it at Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz).

And most famously, it was the line uttered by Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in the 1983 movie “Scarface”, just before he blew away the mobsters.

So now Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) is speaking that line in “The Big Bang Theory.” It’s that moment of recognition as well as the juxtaposition of context that gives the viewer the momentary realization, “I’ve heard that before,” followed by the momentary satisfaction of knowing where and of being “in” on the inside joke. Like on NCIS, when Agent Todd (Sasha Alexander, who incidentally is the real-life daughter-in-law of screen legend Sofia Loren) asks Gibbs (Mark Harmon), “What did Ducky look like when he was younger?” And Gibbs answers, "Illya Kuryakin.” (David McCallum was Illya in the 1960s and is Ducky now.)

Or like on the cult series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, a show filled with insider lines and pop culture references, when Xander (Nicholas Brendon) opened the illustration of the Mayor’s demon form and it unfolded like a renaissance triptych, and Xander says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” If you hadn’t seen “Jaws”, that line was wasted on you. Of course, Roy Scheider’s actual line in “Jaws” was, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” But close enough.

I notice lots of little things like that – insider jokes, pop culture references – in the best American TV shows. I wonder how many of those insider lines go right over my head. And I wonder if viewers in other countries could possibly recognize those references, especially when the dialog is spoken in another language. Because if they don’t get them, they’re missing a lot of the show they’re watching. Maybe the best way to think of those insider lines and pop culture references is that they’re Easter eggs. And that is another pop culture reference – from the 1975 movie "The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

See what I mean?

Prison Time

I saw on the TV news that a mobster received two life terms plus five years. And I thought, “Only five years? After two life terms, he only has to serve five more years? I bet he can’t believe his good luck.” Of course, I don’t know whether the two life terms have to be served concurrently or consecutively. But as the mobster is 84 years old, it’s probably moot.

There was another man in the news recently who received one life term plus a thousand years. And I thought, “Which is worse: two life terms plus five years, or one life term plus a thousand years?” After thinking about it, I decided that the latter sentence is worse. Because people always say, “Life is short.” But a thousand years: that’s a millennium. Of course, just because a judge sentences you to a thousand years, it doesn’t mean you must actually spend a thousand years behind bars. I bet they would let you out after eight hundred years, and maybe after six hundred with good behavior. That assumes a mobster can be good for six hundred years straight.

And then a court observer made this observation: the mobster with two life sentences will spend the rest of his life in prison only because he’s 84. If he were a younger man – say, 25 – they’d have to let him out some day. This tells me that in the justice system, words have very different meanings than the words people use on the “outside”. It reminds me of dog years. The judge says, “I sentence you to fourteen years behind bars.” And the prisoner serves two years and is released.

Of course, there is also the possibility that time flows faster inside prisons. Perhaps the prisoner really does spend fourteen years in his cell, but on the outside only two years pass. For further clarification of this possibility, I point you to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 3 episode 1, “Anne”. I’m sure the show is still running on one of the less prominent cable channels – Logo, maybe. (Or you might find it on one of those broadcast channels that has a number ending in something other than “.1” – like 6.3 or 12.2 or 101.404 – digital TV’s equivalent of the old UHF knob that had 80 channels and no click-stops; Kevin James once said that tuning in a UHF station was like cracking a safe. But I digress.)

Sorry, I have this stream-of-consciousness brain that just rambles on making connections and associations until it’s out of control and I no longer remember the topic I started with or why I wanted to write about it. I should probably be on some kind of medication. I’ll look into that.

Janelle Monáe

I decided it was time once more to post some music. So here is Janelle Monáe Robinson, known as Janelle Monáe. I think she’s pretty good, as you would expect from an android. You see, Janelle is an android from the year 2719 who happens to enjoy 21st century American R&B and soul music. You don’t have to take my word for her being an android, though. You can ask Janelle; she doesn’t deny it. Her android name is Cindi Mayweather. Janelle Monáe is actually Cindi Mayweather’s alter ego. She’s here in the 21st century because she’s hiding from the law back home. She broke the law by falling in love with a human named Anthony Greendown. But that’s another story.

This song, “TightRope”, is from her 2010 album The ArchAndroid. Note the dance moves – they’re a tipoff that you’re watching androids. Humans don’t move like that.

November Days

Sunday was sunny and breezy, and every breeze blew a shower of brown leaves off the willow oak standing in the yard of the house across the street. The tree rained its acorns a week earlier. I stood on my porch and listened as acorns thudded on the roof and dinged off the awnings of the house below the tree. The tree’s yard has a blanket of brown leaves, and every breeze helps spread those leaves across the street and into my and my neighbors’ yards.

The street’s gutters are full of crisp, brown and yellow leaves. Sometimes a strong breeze marches them in straight lines across my yard, and sometimes a small whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them in the afternoon sunbeams like a luminous dust devil – a devil made of leaves instead of dust. It’s a harbinger of cold weather which will be here soon and a reminder of things that come with cold weather: holiday rituals, fire in the fireplace, hot apple cider with cinnamon and nutmeg (and maybe a hint of rum), hot soup on cold days, starry skies on cold nights, snow falling silently over city and countryside.

I’ve  been watching the TV news reports about those poor people in the Philippines, and I was reminded how fortunate I am to be here in central Virginia, in a house with food and water, with a roof over my head, protection from the weather, a car that can travel open streets to stores stocked with food, clothing, and anything else I may need, and doctors and clinics ready to help me should I need help. Hundreds of thousands of Filipino people have none of those things now. They wander like lost souls, hungry, thirsty, wounded, owning only the clothes they wear. Many have lost their families and have nowhere to go. They meander amidst miles of death and destruction where once stood homes, shops, theaters, office buildings, parking garages. They’ve suffered a calamity so great that the agencies struggling to help them are overwhelmed. “Help us now,” they plead. And indeed, it is now, not tomorrow, when help is so urgently needed. But for many, help will arrive too late.

In America, Thanksgiving Day is 16 days away. Amidst the grumbling, bickering, blaming, and criticizing we read in news media and hear on TV, most Americans must know their problems are mere inconveniences compared to the real misfortunes that exist in the world. We need not wait for Thanksgiving Day to ponder, and be thankful for, the good things that Providence, or destiny, or chance, has provided us. It is unwise to take those things for granted.

Losing My Mind

I’m pretty sure that until Sunday, November 3, my home was operating on Daylight Saving Time. Which, incidentally, about half of all Americans incorrectly refer to as Daylight Savings Time.  It’s probably the same people who refer to a safe deposit box as a safety deposit box.

Daylight Saving Time ended Sunday at 2 AM. The local TV news advised everyone to set our clocks back an hour Saturday night. Alas, I was watching TV Saturday night and forgot all about setting my clocks back an hour. My computer and cell phone automatically adjust their time, but the other clocks in my house have to be manually set. One clock is on the front of an old VCR that sits on a shelf below my TV. The VCR no longer works, but I keep it because its clock still keeps time, and it’s in a convenient location. The VCR clock used to automatically adjust for the start and end of Daylight time. But I bought it prior to 2007, which was when the start and stop dates for Daylight time were altered by Congress. So I turned off the clock’s “auto-adjust” feature so it wouldn’t change its time on the wrong days. Now I manually change the VCR clock twice a year by using the remote control.
I adjust my bedroom clock radio twice a year, too. That involves holding down a button (Time Set) while pressing another button (Hours). It only goes forward in time, so to go back an hour, I have to go forward 23 hours (to get back to the correct AM/PM setting).

The living room wall clock is analog; I have to carefully wind the minute hand backward one complete revolution. There’s a clock on my microwave oven and a clock on my electric stove. There’s even a clock on my cordless phone – a small LCD window that displays date, time, and other info such as caller ID and phonebook. (That phone plugs into a gadget that plugs into my Internet router.)

You get the picture. Setting all these clocks back an hour takes a little effort and it isn’t something that, after you’ve done it, you aren’t really sure if you did it. It’s easy to be unsure whether you took your nightly pill two hours ago. It’s virtually impossible to be unsure whether you set all the clocks in your house back an hour.

And yet.

Sunday came, I remembered that Daylight time had ended and I needed to adjust all my clocks accordingly. I went to my computer and looked at the time. I looked at the VCR clock and saw that it agreed with my computer. I got up and looked at the clocks on the microwave oven and the kitchen stove; they, too, agreed with my computer. I looked at my analog wall clock. All my clocks agreed with my computer. I knew I hadn’t adjusted the clocks, so I concluded that for reasons unknown, my computer didn’t adjust itself to the end of Daylight time. To verify that, I grabbed my cell phone and clicked the power button. The screen lit up with the date and time. It, too, agreed with my computer. WTF is going on?

If all my clocks are still on Daylight time, I reasoned, then my computer and cell phone must be displaying incorrect time. I typed “time” into Google’s search box and instantly Google presented me with the local time: it was the same time that my computer and cell phone – and all my clocks - were showing. It was the same time that my cordless phone was showing.

My Jeep has two clocks on its dashboard and I don’t bother changing them to Daylight time – they stay on Eastern Standard Time year round. Before Sunday, those two clocks were one hour slower than my other clocks. If all my clocks had been somehow set back an hour, then they should now agree with the clocks in the Jeep. So I went to the garage and checked the clocks in my Jeep. They displayed the same time as the clocks in my house. So my clocks were set back an hour between Saturday night and Sunday morning. But how?

Let’s be clear: I did not set all those clocks back an hour on Saturday night. On Saturday night, I watched TV and I went to bed. I live in this house alone, and if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done. And I didn’t set those clocks back an hour on Saturday night. But on Sunday, all my clocks had been set back an hour.

Here are the possibilities:

1. Space aliens adjusted my clocks remotely from their mother-ship.

2. Friendly gremlins live upstairs.

3. I set all the clocks while I was asleep.

We’ve all heard stories of people sleepwalking, and even doing somewhat complex tasks while asleep, such as fixing food in the kitchen or driving a car. The reason these things can happen in our sleep is because it is possible for a part of our brain to awaken while the rest of our brain is asleep. When that happens, we may be able to do certain things like walking, driving, making a meal, but we are not conscious of having done anything because the conscious part of our brain is fast asleep.

Until Sunday, the clock on my VCR had been a minute fast. But Sunday, when I compared the VCR’s clock to my computer’s time, I noticed the VCR clock was two minutes slow. So it definitely had been tampered with. Those two minutes were the time my sleeping self needed to:

Turn on the TV and use its remote to set the input to the VCR.

Turn on the VCR and punch up the menu screen.

Navigate the menu to the Clock settings.

Set month. Set day. Set hours back.

Exit VCR setup menu.

Maybe it is the Ambien I took a little while ago so I can sleep tonight. It is doing something to me. It took several long days to type that last word. I’m in Ambien land and it is very F*CKED. In this world of Ambien land, I see people trying to help me. I see them with my peripheral vision. If I look directly at them, they disappear.

I dream reality now, and reality dreams me. It’s one great mandala, slowly rotating through time and space and reality and dreams and wishful thinking which all blends: the real, the imaginary, the symbolic. It’s over my head. It’s out of my hands.

Thank you, my sleeping half, or you thoughtful gremlins who I know only want to help me, for your efforts to keep all my clocks running on time. It looks like you did a thorough job. But let’s try to leave it at that.  Let’s not sell the house to strangers while I think I’m in bed sleeping. Let’s not move to southern California while I think I’m asleep. These are Big Things. For now, let’s practice on Small Things while I learn to control this new power.

Tiny Thoughts

Sunday was one of those days: 72°, lots of sunshine, and an azure sky without a hint of cloud. I hate days like that. Okay, I’m kidding. Mostly. But not entirely.

Today started off cloudy, which sometimes makes me feel better than sunshine does. I like for the day to match my internal feelings. Some may say the day is the external  projection of our internal feelings. To that, I say, “Meh.”

Soon the day turned sunny, and the temperature steadied at 72°, and the sky was once again without hint of cloud. It was a carbon copy of Sunday. (I wonder if today’s kids know what a carbon copy actually is, despite every email program having a “cc” button. And do they know what a second sheet is?)

I know I should get up and walk about the ‘hood for exercise, but it gets old after a decade. The cracked sidewalks and aged streets I've walked hundreds of times: you get to a point where you just d’wanna see the same old same old.

Last night I made a decision to not turn my cell phone on unless I am driving somewhere. I’ll keep it just for emergencies, like when my car breaks down (though it hasn’t done that in a while). “But what about contact with the outside world?” you ask. Yes, what about it?

As I lay in bed this morning, priming myself to get up and throw myself at a new day, I thought about the Afterlife and I wondered if it might possibly be like the "hunting" dreams I sometimes have. “Hunting” in the sense of searching – searching for something but never finding it. Searching, and searching, and more searching. One thing about an Afterlife: you can’t wake up from being dead. People should consider that when they hope for an Afterlife.

The midday local news is on my television. The talking heads are talking about changing the name of the Washington Redskins football team. The news people talk about that a lot these days. It’s a big, ongoing kerfuffle in Redskins land. Some people have way too much time on their hands.

I went to the grocery store around noon. I am increasingly dismayed to see food containers looking just the right size for me but bearing labels proclaiming them to be “Family size.” And why must deli-made potato salad carry a nutrition label listing servings, calories, and so on, while deli-made coleslaw does not? Why must a salmon fillet from the store’s seafood department carry a nutrition label when crab-stuffed mushrooms do not? It seems inconsistent.

As I type these words, I have a window open beside me. Outside air drifts through; it smells fresh and feels pleasant. I hear intermittent sounds: a car, a motorcycle, a snippet of conversation, squeals of children at play, a dog barking. My front door is open and sunlight streams in and gleams off the oak floor. Sound and light are my connection to the outside world, the real world. Cell phones, marvelous as they are, can’t connect you to that world.

Winter Approaches

Night time lows have been in the 30s of late but have stayed above freezing. Last night the temperature fell into the 20s, so I gave in and turned on the oil heat. This morning, as the sun lit up the eastern sky I looked out and saw that the world outside was covered in frost. Well, my small piece of the world, anyway. Warm weather isn’t gone for good – next Wednesday will be about 70°, they say – but winter is announcing itself. It’s around the corner. For some reason, I am reminded of a conversation from  the movie Groundhog Day. In the movie, Phil, a TV weatherman (Bill Murray), is leaving his room at an inn when he encounters a man (Ken Hudson Campbell) in the hallway.

Phil: “Buon giorno, signore.”
Man: “Think it’s going to be an early spring?”
Phil: “Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on his smiling face a dream of spring. Ciao!”

That’s all we can do when winter arrives: hibernate, and dream of spring. If you’re wealthy, you can jet to your villa in Provence and enjoy the breezes off the Mediterranean. If you’re semi-wealthy, you can hop a plane to New Providence Island and enjoy the trade winds while you cavort in one of the pools at the Atlantis. (Yes, I’m aware that the Atlantis resort is on Paradise Island, not New Providence, but there’s no airport on Paradise Island so you have to fly to Nassau and take the bridge over to … oh, heck, you’ll figure it out when you get there.)

I haven’t posted a blog for a week now, but it’s not because I haven’t been writing. In fact, I have been writing. I’ve been writing a new piece of software, and I find that writing code is a good outlet for my creativity. I enjoy coding. I start with nothing and soon I have a program, and it does things – or, more accurately, it allows you to do certain things more easily because it exists. And then I think of a feature that would be useful, and I add it. Then another feature, then another. I have to guard against the lure of rampant featuritis. It’s easy to get sucked into that.

There is a strange time distortion when I’m writing code. I’ll sit at my computer and it’s the middle of the day. After what seems like a few minutes, I’ll notice it’s dark outside. That’s when I realize hours have gone by. When I’m in deep concentration, I’m in a zone, and time passes much faster outside the zone than inside. It’s the opposite of smoking weed, where you put a frozen dinner in the oven and then go listen to music or watch TV or chat with friends, and after what seems like an hour you suddenly remember the dinner and you think, “Oh my god, that dinner is burnt up by now,” and you run to the kitchen and yank open the oven door, only to find that the dinner is still frozen – because it has only been five minutes since you put it in the oven. (Not that I know anything about weed.) It's like the Indonesian phrase made famous by Harlan Ellison: Djam Karet – “the hour that stretches.” (Not to be confused with Djam Karet, the progressive rock band.)

But back to winter. This is the time of year when fall foliage colors are near their peak in the mountains of Virginia. When I lived in the mountains, I lived on a tree-lined street that, for a couple of weeks every fall, would be arched over by limbs of ancient trees holding leaves of flaming reds and yellows. The leaves fell to the road below and made it a Technicolor road. I still see it in my mind’s eye. I probably took a photo of it, a photo in which the colors never appear as brilliant and alive as they do in real life. If I did take a picture, that picture is now as lost as the other hundreds of photos I’ve taken along the timeline of my life. I still see them in my head. Your brain is the ultimate archive for images; it saves the best ones and it saves them in living colors – colors that are likely better than reality ever was.

The day is warming up fast. It looks like the temperature will hit today’s prediction of 61°. I may have to take a walk, maybe drive to a park and see if I can find something photo-worthy. ‘Til next time.

Thoughts

There’s a saying in central Virginia (which could apply to many places in the world, but I don’t live in those places, I live here in Virginia), and the saying goes: “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait a minute and it will change.”

About 10:30 this morning I was Skyping with a friend who lives 180 miles west of me. I remarked about the weather here, saying, “It’s bright and sunny today, but that’s going to change soon.” And sure enough, as was foretold in the Prophecies, two hours later, at half past noon, I looked outside and saw that not only had the sky become cloudy, but rain was falling.

As yard work was now off the schedule, I decided to make a big bowl of Mexican rice for consumption later today (and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that – and furthermore, it might be called Spanish rice. Latino rice? Hispanic rice? ¿Arroz español?) Whatever it is, when I make it I make enough for 4 servings. Usually Mexican rice is a side dish, but for me a serving is a full plate, a meal (and yet only about 310 calories – I did the math). As I mixed the ingredients, I reflected on how containers at the grocery store are shrinking. A 16 ounce can of diced tomato now holds 14.5 ounces. An 8 ounce bag of shredded cheese used to be standard; the bag I purchased holds 7 ounces.  Meanwhile, restaurant meals get ever larger, with big plates and heaps of food: all you can eat buffets … never-ending this or that … decadent desserts … free refills … ultimate deep-fried whatchacallits with extra dipping sauce, and so on. If you go to the restaurant’s website and look at the nutrition section, you’ll be amazed at how many calories are packed into those meals.

I used to eat a lot of lunches at Applebee’s. One of my favorite menu items was the Oriental Chicken Salad. A peek at their nutrition info told me that this innocent sounding meal was 1390 calories, with 1600 milligrams of sodium. The Oriental Grilled Chicken Salad, which sounds healthier, has 1290 calories and a whopping 2190 milligrams of sodium. (The American Heart Association recommends limiting your sodium intake to less than 2,000 milligrams per day.) To be fair, Applebee’s does offer “heart-healthy” menu items – or did when I last ate there. But there seems to be a balance between healthy and tasty, and the more you have of one, the less you get of the other.

The oven timer beeped and I took the arroz a la mexicana out of the oven. It will have to sit atop the stove and cool for a while before it can go into the fridge.

By happenstance, I found out that today, October 17, is Spirit Day. Everyone is supposed to wear purple to show they refuse to tolerate bullying or harassment of LGBT kids, who are frequent targets of bullies. Spirit Day is a fine idea. But there was already a Purple Day (March 26) to promote epilepsy awareness. Couldn’t Spirit Day have picked another color? Breast cancer uses pink, and St. Patrick’s Day uses green, but I think orange is pretty open. I mean, I haven’t observed crowds of people dressed in orange. Football fans, sure, but not regular people.

I’d better go check on that Mexican rice. ‘Til next time, adiós.

Columbus Day

The rain stopped today. For the past week rain fell day and night. At times, rain fell hard enough to soak a person in seconds. At other times, the rain slowed enough to allow a person a quick walk from house to garage or from parking lot to store without too much damp inconvenience. The weather brought its own mood to my home and summoned to my mind a stanza from Fountains of Wayne’s Valley Winter Song.

“And late December
Can drag a man down
You feel it deep in your gut
Short days and afternoons spent pottering around
In a dark house with the windows painted shut”

Though it’s not late December, the thick cloud cover makes the daylight shorter than it should be for mid-October. It’s December-ish. My house is dark. Most of the windows are painted shut. And who wants to go outside when it’s cold and raining out there? I stayed inside and pottered around.

(The rainy week also brought to mind Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Long Rain, but that’s a lot more drama than I want to get into now.)

Over in Richmond, they held their annual Folk Festival on the riverfront this past weekend. Last year over 200,000 people attended. This year’s attendance was down, but over 100,000 fans showed up despite the non-stop drizzle. I was not one of them.

There is something else special about today. It’s Columbus Day. Christopher Columbus used to be a hero. Americans, especially Italian-Americans, loved Columbus. Then, Native Americans pointed out the inconvenient fact that Columbus’s discovery of the New World opened the door to brutality, enslavement, and near-annihilation for them.

Columbus is a hero to some people and a villain to some people. So parts of the country have renamed the holiday. Berkeley, California, calls it Indigenous Peoples Day; South Dakota calls it Native American Day; Alabama calls it American Indian Heritage Day; and Hawaii calls it Discovery Day.

I don’t blame Columbus for all the negative consequences of his discovery. The guy was just looking for a shortcut to the East Indies. He even thought he had found it. Hence: Indians, his name for the people he found living here. It didn’t take long for people to figure out that Columbus had not found a new way to reach the East Indies, but the name stuck. Indians.

Columbus once said, “Riches don't make a man rich, they only make him busier.” He should know, because in his lifetime he endured poverty and prosperity.

Creepy-Crawly

I went outside to do some yard work and saw this little beastie crawling up the wall of my garage. His coloring would have hidden him nicely on certain plants, but he stood out like a bird treat on the gray cement block. I went back inside, got my point-and-shoot, and snapped this photo. This caterpillar is a Papilio polyxenes, the larval form of the Black Swallowtail butterfly.

Morning Brain

For some reason, when I awaken, my worst fears are on my mind. Maybe it’s because, having just been sleeping, I don’t yet have my mental defenses up, and so any fleeting bad thought is allowed access to my consciousness. At any rate, this morning my thought process went like this:

“I’ve been forgetting things lately. I bet I have Alzheimer’s. Maybe I should test myself. If I do have Alzheimer’s I wouldn’t be able to remember the presidents. So who is the president? Barack Obama. Okay, who was the president before Obama? George W. Bush. Who was president before Bush? Bill Clinton. And before Clinton? George H. W. Bush. And before him? Ronald Reagan. And before Reagan? Jimmy Carter. And before Carter? Gerald Ford. And before Ford? Richard Nixon. And before Nixon? Lyndon Johnson. And before Johnson? John F. Kennedy. And before Kennedy? Dwight Eisenhower. And before Eisenhower? Harry Truman. And before Truman? Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And before Roosevelt? Herbert Hoover. And before Hoover? Before Hoover? Hello…? Crap, I can’t remember. I am getting Alzheimer’s.”

And then, for a while, I pondered whether I should kill myself while I can still remember where I put my gun.

Welcome to my brain.

Meal Plan

I write this to point out how ridiculously easy it is to prepare healthy, nutritious meals, even if you know nothing about cooking or “meal-planning.”

My morning begins today when I notice I am down to my last roll of T.P. “Better go to the store and buy more,” I think. My next thought is, “What else do I need? Food, perhaps? I should make a list.”

I open the freezer to see if I have an adequate supply of frozen victuals. Lessee, a half dozen bags of frozen peas and four frost-covered boxes containing, presumably, entrées – kind unknown. I don’t feel like taking them out of the freezer and knocking the ice off the boxes to see what they are. Guess I’m okay there. Frozen foods: check.

Pantry: a bag of rice and two cans of stew. I’m ok there, too. Pantry: check.

I end up with a short list – dish soap, sponges, paper towels, tissues. And, of course, T.P.  While I’m at the store I can look around and see what else I might want to buy.

I get my Jeep out of the garage and I drive to my local Walmart. As I walk through the store I see one goodie after another that makes me go, “Ooh, I need that.” Deli salads, yogurt, eggs, peanut butter – I put all of them, and more, into my cart. Finally, I pay the cashier and drive home.

So what did I not buy at the store? Dish soap. Sponges. Paper towels. Tissues. And, of course, T.P. Forgot ‘em all.

Why didn’t I take the list with me? I did. I just forgot to take it out of my pocket and look at it.

When I get home it is noon. I eat my first meal of the day: a store-bought “wrap” sandwich. And Greek yogurt. Followed a  few hours later by lunch: a store-bought salad. And another yogurt.

Then I think, “I’d better drive to another store and, at least, buy more T.P.” So I drive to Martin’s Foods. While there I pick up a few more items I hadn’t planned to purchase. I  buy kefir – the store has a new brand I have never tasted called Evolve. I almost buy a bottle of GT’s Kombucha. The label states, “Organic, raw Kombucha.” It is icy cold and inviting, but then I realize I don’t have any idea what Kombucha is or how it tastes. I know that I should know what it is – after all, it’s sold in an ordinary grocery store, not in some kind of exotic health-food store – though I’m sure it’s sold in those, too. I look at the list of ingredients, but no help there – the only ingredient listed is “organic, raw kombucha.”

Later, back at home, the dinner hour rolls around and I eat my third meal of the day. This meal is an Atkins meal. At least, that’s what I like to call it. You might call it a box of Cashew Nut Chew Bars. I eat all five. They are chocolate-covered and delicious. And being an Atkins product, I’m sure they are healthy and nutritious.

There you have it: a day of healthy, nutritious meals. I think you’ll agree, “meal planning” is highly over-rated.

POETS Day

That’s what workers in the UK and Australia call Friday. It stands for Piss Off Early Tomorrow's Saturday. Today is Friday. What did you do today?

What’s that? What did I do today? Nothing of importance. I’m too old to know or do anything useful to society. You don’t have to be very old to be too old, as many ex-workers younger than I am will testify.

But lessee. I slept fitfully last night and consequently awakened late – around 9:30. I say “late” but in truth I have no reason to be up at any particular hour, nor do I have anyone to admonish me for sleeping too long.

I got up and ate, then Skyped with an amigo in Roanoke for a while. Around 10:30 I realized the sun was getting high in the sky and I still had to mow my back yard (did the front yesterday). So I hastened out to do that before the sun got too hot. Okay, technically the sun is always hot, but you know what I mean.

Back inside, I watched cable news, surfed the Web, watched a little television. Then, on some unfathomable impulse that apparently wafted in on a stray breeze coming through my window, I decided I would fire up my VB Express IDE (integrated development environment) and write a GUI (graphical user interface) for Microsoft’s FCIV (File Checksum Integrity Verifier). FCIV is a tool for generating MD5 and SHA-1 hash values from files, but it’s a command-line tool and so not very easy to use. Ah, something to fix!

So I created a Windows project and coded the app, and a few hours later I had it working. But then the thought occurred, “Why make a GUI for another app when I can code an app that does it all?”

So I created a new project (named Integrifier, for Integrity Verifier) and soon I had the new app working. Initially, it supports the MD5 and SHA-1 cryptographic hash functions, which are the two most commonly used file integrity algorithms.

I’ll put the app in my online Library so others can use it. Before I do that I want to add features to it, such as the ability to hash multiple files with one click, and hash all files inside a specified folder, and create reports, and maybe I’ll add a toolbar with pretty icons. That’s enough work to keep me out of trouble for another few days.

And don’t tell me it’s been done and maybe done better. Would you tell an artist not to draw a picture of a beach or a mountain because they’ve already been drawn?

Diet Deviation

I’ve been good about observing my diet the last few weeks, so I decided to “reward” myself with a rare, fast-food meal at McDonald’s. Those one-dollar hamburgers and hot, salty fries are so tasty! So I went there and walked up to the counter and placed my order. “Two hamburgers, small fries, small diet, for here.”

The counter girl punched in the order and took my payment. Then she meandered over to a stainless steel bin and picked up one cheeseburger. She meandered back to the counter and placed the cheeseburger on my food tray. The reason I knew it was a cheeseburger is because printed on the wrapper in one-inch high, cheese-yellow letters was the word “CHEESEBURGER”.

“I asked for two hamburgers,” I reminded the counter girl.

“Oh yeah,” she replied, and returned to the food bin, picked up another cheeseburger, and placed it on my tray beside the first cheeseburger.

“Aren’t those cheeseburgers?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

The counter girl looked down, dumbfounded, at the cheeseburgers on my tray. An older employee working nearby said to her, “Those are cheeseburgers. Hamburgers are in the brown wrappers.” Then she turned to me and said in a confidential tone, “She’s new.”

I stepped away from the counter to make way for other customers to place their orders. Directly in front of me, behind the counter, was a machine called a McFlurry maker. I know this because there was a large label on the front it of that said “McFlurry.”

Now, I don’t actually know what a McFlurry is but, as the machine looked very similar to a milk-shake machine, I assume a McFlurry is some kind of semi-frozen dessert made from ice cream or perhaps (using industry parlance) made from an “ice-cream-style product.” Inside the machine was a small sign which had printed on it in large, bold letters a strict warning against putting any objects inside the machine. “DO NOT PUT ANY OBJECTS IN THE MCFLURRY MAKER BELOW THE EXTRUDER,” it said. I guess doing this must have previously caused some kind of bad karma. Also inside the machine below the extruder were two tall plastic cups filled with spoons and little plastic cups similar to coffee creamer singles. I don’t know, but it seems putting crap directly in front of a sign that says, basically, “Do Not Put Crap Here” might be asking for bad karma.

I got my two hamburgers and fries, and I sat, and I enjoyed them. What the hell, I’m not actually losing weight anyway. Yes I’m dieting, and yes I’m consuming a lot fewer calories than two months ago, and yet after losing a few pounds my body put the brakes on and said, “Oh no, you’re not!” Using nutrition information from Mickey D’s website, I computed my fast-food diet deviation to be 730 calories. Add that to my breakfast and I’ve only consumed 930 calories today, and it’s already after 5 PM. For what it’s worth, my diet is still golden. Or, at the least, gold-plated.

VERBAGE Responds

The staff here at the VirtualWayne Establishment for Recreational Blogging And  Generic Essays (VERBAGE) would like to respond to a recent reader comment that stated, perhaps sarcastically, that this blog produces, on occasion, writing that has entertainment value (i.e., “this drivel is so brilliant, you *must* keep writing”).

All comments are welcome. However, commenters are advised to keep the following guidelines in mind while composing their comments.

• Positive comments will be printed, framed, and displayed on a wall inside the VERBAGE World Headquarters (photo). Negative comments will be printed and fed to the goats we keep behind our building, whereupon said comments will quickly be turned into – you know – goat poo.
• Sarcastic comments should be accompanied by a smiley face so as to indicate sarcasm, which might possibly be too brilliantly composed to be recognized as such. Example:

Let me drop everything and work on your problem.

Finally, the reader should realize that the reason for writing this blog is not to entertain but, rather, to allow us to exercise our fingers while waiting for the start of regular season NFL games on network television. Go RG3!

Have a nice day,
- The Staff

Lughnasad

Today is Lughnasad. Need I say more?

Really? Okay, I’ll explain.

The Celts (or Kelts) were an Iron Age people who lived in medieval Europe. They divided the year into 4 quarters defined by the solstices and the equinoxes. The solstices and equinoxes are actually moments in time, but the word also means the day on which that moment occurs.

In case you’ve forgotten your Astronomy 101, a solstice occurs twice a year when the sun reaches its highest (Summer Solstice) or lowest (Winter Solstice) altitude above the horizon at local solar noon (high noon). The Summer Solstice occurs in late June (in the northern hemisphere) and is the first day of summer. The Winter Solstice occurs in late December and is the first day of winter.

An equinox occurs twice a year when the Earth’s axis is not tilted toward or away from the Sun. All points on the Earth’s surface then have the same length day and night. The Vernal Equinox happens in late March and is the first day of spring. The Autumnal Equinox occurs in late September and is the first day of autumn.

The Celts divided the year into four quarters based on these astronomical events, and then they divided each quarter-year in half. There was a good reason for this. Astronomical events like solstices and equinoxes were causes for celebration. If you make twice as many special days, you can have twice as many celebrations. The Celts were big partiers. “Hey, it’s Lughnasad day, somebody build a bonfire! Par-TAY!!!” (Just kidding, Celt fans. Don’t put a spell on me.)

The Celts had names for each of these eight events. For example, their name for the Winter Solstice was Yule. Yule is the only Celtic name that is still commonly used (though now it refers to the Christmas season, which is celebrated at the same time of year that Yule was once celebrated).

Getting to the title of this blog post, today is Lughnasad, the halfway point between Summer Solstice and Autumnal Equinox. For us, summer is half over. We are halfway to autumn. The days will grow shorter ever faster.

Note that the Celts did not consider Summer Solstice to be the first day of summer. Their name for Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year – translates to “midsummer’s day.” Midsummer’s day marked their halfway point of summer. That makes a lot of sense. Hot weather has already been here a while by the time Summer Solstice arrives. Likewise, the Celts considered Winter Solstice – the shortest day of the year – to mark the halfway point of winter, not the beginning of winter.

The Celts are gone, but in a way they’re still around, they just don’t call themselves Celts any longer, and most of them don’t speak a Celtish language. But some of their festivals are still celebrated. Yule is Christmas. Imboic is the feast day of St Brighid. Beltain, the beginning of the Celt’s summer, is May Day. Samhaim, the first day of winter for the Celts, is Halloween. And have you ever wondered why Easter’s symbols are colored eggs and chocolate bunnies? The Celt fertility goddess Ostara was celebrated on the day of the spring equinox with a festival that welcomed the coming of spring and new growth. The symbols for Ostara were an egg and a hare. Because in spring, birds build nests and lay eggs, and rabbits do what rabbits do best.