Confessions of the Addicted

A little while ago, I had a long chat with a good friend over a couple beers about... stuff. You know: Life and Whatnot. And one of the things discovered was (if I'm getting the interpretation right) the existence of the "Conceptual Hobby" - one of those things that, though you might not participate in the activity, or work in that field, or own that thing, it somehow always grabs your attention or interests you.

Me, I have an inexplicable love for: The Rust Belt, brownfields/decayed urban structures, and nuclear power generation (as the only practical solution for high-power-density electricity demands without using fossil fuels). But I digress... what this is really about is her hobby - the real nuts and bolts of addiction. And if I understand her correctly, it's not just the "__ substance binding to the ___ receptor" part of understanding addiction, but rather, the whole spectrum of addiction - from addictive chemicals (alcohol, heroin, etc.) to addictive behaviors (gambling, eating, sex, etc.) and the overall general malaise.

And so I come to you, gentle reader, with a confession: I am a TV addict. I do other things that might be considered to fall into the normal realm of addictive too. (I like beer a whole lot. I LOOOOVE coffee.) But really, I've integrated these into life successfully, and they aren't an impediment to life. It's the TV that's out of control. Once I turn it on I have a really hard time turning it off. Maybe that's because I live alone - there's no one else around to break the spell of the Entrancing Glowing Box, or I don't feel self-conscious because no one can see me wasting my life watching the thing...

In my own home, I am the perpetrator and victim at the same time, but I really object to the TVs in airport lounges and bars and such. A good observation:
"Try having a conversation with somebody in the same room as a broadcasting television set and try NOT to look at the screen. The flashing colors, quick movements and attractive people commonly portrayed on TV programs are irresistibly engaging."

And another observation:
"Television can teach and amuse; it can reach aesthetic heights; it can provide much needed distraction and escape. The difficulty arises when people strongly sense that they ought not to watch as much as they do and yet find themselves strangely unable to reduce their viewing."

So the next time you're waiting in line (for tickets, the doctor's office, boarding a plane, whatever) and a TV is on in the waiting area, watch how people's attention is just sucked in. Keep and eye out for it - and then tell me that it's not scary the way that all the heads swivel on necks to watch the flashing box.

rants

I was paying some bills the other day when for some reason I was surprised by the AT&T envelope... just something about it creeped me out.


There's something about in me that asks "and how would you know whether I deserve it or not?" Just for paying the bill that I owe money for?

Maybe I haven't done a damn thing to deserve a reward... and even if I do, what about the next person? Do they actually deserve it, or are we (American society) getting to accustomed to "Reward Entitlement"? Things like "I've had a hard day at the office, I deserve this ice cream cone..." How about just WANTING the ice cream, and taking ownership, pride, and responsbility - instead of depersonalising an external reward?

Yes, it's just an envelope, and yes, it's a tagline for a referral-reward program. But still... you know what I mean?
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And speaking of rants... a post on craigslist caught my eye, and put a good tagline on a perception I have been having over the years: "Zingerman's ("Good Food, Bad Service, Mercenary Prices")" as well as some other Ann Arbor things - like all the hullaballo over Google coming to Ann Arbor to set up an office for its AdWords department. Please tell me that it's not going to just be an office for selling advertising ('cause that doesn't count as "high tech")

GPS envy

OK, so I haven't been so good with the postings lately, but it just seems that when I'm having fun doing other things, it's the last thing on my mind. Speaking of which, I had an absolutely fun time in Minneapolis-St. Paul last week, and will definitely be going back there some time soon. I took a bunch of pictures, but haven't sorted them out, but will sort/post/whatever the good ones sometime soon...

Last night/this morning I chugged/crammed a book (if the metaphor is appropriate) : "It's Not About The Bike" is a very readable book about a pretty shitty time in Lance Armstrong's life. Of course, it's old... since then he won Le Tour 5 more times, had some more kids, got divorced, hooked up with Sheryl Crow, got engaged, split up, etc. Of course, now that he's retired, for the rest of his life he will probably have to be fighting with French tabloids over doping allegations, but maybe a few well-placed lawsuits can put that to bed. Anyway... good story (auto-biography). A little bit light and fluffy, but engaging enough to cram the whole thing down in less than a day.

Yesterday, I splurged on myself. I bought a Garmin Edge 305 GPS/HRM cyclecomputer. It is crazy/stupid with features and I'm fidgeting with it and playing with routes and "Virtual Partner" and stuff (you can ride a race on a GPS-specified route against the computer... how cool/dorky is that?) I should actually get out of the house and go for a ride at some point... expect to start seeing stupid self-obsessed heart-rate/elevation plots when I figure out how to do that.

On the road(rail) again

Heading back to Chicago, then Ann Arbor tomorrow/today/wednesday (it's late) - had quite a fun visit with Fred and Mona and the munchkins.
Got to see the new house (ok, the new-to-them-100-year-old house),
Got to explore Minneapolis-St. Paul a little (yes, it is way niftier than I would have expected. Honestly, I didn't know what to think, and so had neutral expectations. It's definitely way better than that. I would put MSP on my "to do again" list, for sure. Maybe a couple times.)
Learned a little somethin' about J. J. Hill and his house.
Got to see one of the more beautiful state capitol buildings (the congressional chambers ain't much to look at, but the rest of the building is fantastic)
The sculpture garden outside the Walker Art Center is damn good too. Definitely worth a visit if you can appreciate sculpture and aren't a nose-snubber about public art.

Anyway, more later. gotta get some sleep so that I can get up at 6:15 to be at the train station by 7:00 for a 7:50 train that, right now is 50 minutes behind schedule as it's traveling through North Dakota (one thing Amtrak does, if it can't get the train to be on time, is to at least have a webpage where you can see what the on-time status of the train is.). So yeah, I'm excited about getting up early in or to get to the train station so I can wait around.

St. Paul Edition

Been in St. Paul for a few days, and golly, it be hot. It's supposed to be 100 degrees today.

Anyhoo, hanging out with Fred and Mona and the kids, exploring around town, helping out with the house renovation-ings (I was initially a little bent out of shape that they wouldn't give me more to do, but since there's more Grand Planning to be done... not much sense in busywork for its own sake). There some sort of Garlic Festival going on this Saturday at the community farm they are members of. As a garlic enthusiast, I'm pretty stoked about a Day of Garlic.

Have I mentioned it's really hot today?

on the road again...

Amtrak-ing my way up to St. Paul/Minneapolis to visit with Fred and Mona.

... while waiting in the boarding area in Chicago, it's a full waiting room, so I'm sitting on the floor reading, when a guy standing about one step away drops a piece of paper. For about half a second, I think to reach for it and hand it up to him, but then think twice and don't want to interfere in his personal space (or touch his things - he might be sensitive about it), and then think thrice and identify it as "one of those moments, lost".

What do I mean? It's one of those moments that can go one way or another - barely noticeable, but when considered all together they're the fabric, the Feel of a city, a place, a society. Every single person's daily split-second decisions affect the tone of how we all live with each other - vandalize a bus, or help the old lady up the stairs - there's always a choice. We can either become more isolated from another, driving around in our air-conditioned cars, shut up in our cubicles, going home to the cookie-cutter townhouses in the sprawled-out suburbs... or become more neighborly, maybe try walking around, meeting our neighbors, even... just simply handing a guy a piece of paper that he dropped.

... and DAMN if there ain't a whole lot of religious people that ride the train. As I walk out to the lounge car, there's everything from the menonnites (hutterites?) in their garb, to the "Baptized in the Levee" (whatever the magazine is that the woman across the way has), to the standard quietly-bible-browsing-types.


... and why do I keep finding these little notes I made for myself while in Nashua/Boston/D.C.? It's like when you shake all the sand out of your shoes, and then find a little more sand, and never quite get it all out. Anyway, more residual notes to myself, D.C. and otherwise:
- Nighttime rides around Ann Arbor (in after-hours-high-speed-urban-exploration mode) and I find myself at the top of a parking garage near sunset. It seems there's plenty of other people who are fond of rooftops - Roof People, as it were. Not groups, but a handful of individuals or couples that made their way to the top of the parking garage too, maybe just to see that particular sunset, or maybe they were on a date, or whatever, but they definitely weren't there to pick up their cars. I mean, what else would 8 separate people be doing on the top of a parking garage without a single car in sight?
- In the National Gallery: again I'm reminded of my bigotry towards 2-dimension art. Paintings suck. Sculpture rocks. That's all, I just wanted to make sure I made myself clear on that at some point in my life.
- And on the balcony, I look over and wonder again - am I a little bit afraid of heights? I have never thought of myself as afraid of heights, but I get that little hitch in the bottom of my throat (or at the top of my chest) whenever I stand over a long drop (balcony, for example). Now, that might be only in cases where there's a really low railing or none at all... would I feel the same height-anxiety if there were a chest-high railing?

... Everything is exotic and mundane, all at the same time. As I sit on this train, a new (new-ish) experience to be absorbed and savored for its newness, both the environment within the train and the route/terrain we pass through, the conductor walks by and stops to talk with another passenger. To me, this is new. To him, it's something he does every day, and probably holds no great surprise.

whoops... (stupid Amtrak)

All this time, I was planning to take the train to Minneapolis, and bring the bike along... it turns out that the station in Ann Arbor doesn't even allow checked baggage?? 2 bags, carried on, that's all. How stupid is that? Now I'm wondering about my endorsement of train travel...

Not only that, but now the question becomes - drive the 4 hours to Chicago and train to Minneapolis, leaving my car with the family, or drive down to Toledo (1 hour) and leave my car there while I'm away.

D.C. and the random thoughts...

Taking the Metro... light rail is totally the way to go. I realize there are many subway commuters who think this is no meaningful revelation, but they don't know how good they've got it (compared to sad bastards like me with no meaningful commuter rail service). Railroads mean:
- No traffic jams, EVER.
- Definite (deterministic) travel times - the train is on a dedicated highway, and runs on schedule.
- Bulk purchasing (with a monthly pass).
- Get some reading done along the way.
- Probably some environmental benefits in there too...
- Meet your neighbors. ... I have driven in my car for 1500 miles over the past week. In contrast to the train and walking, the automobile is isolating and sterile. It keeps us isolated from each other and depersonalizes the human condition all around us. People become the car they are driving. No wonder there's road rage.

Trains: The benefits are legion...
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Overheard on the radio, a discussion of Pink Collar Jobs.

I'd never heard of such a thing codified before, but it puts a name on what has bothered me about whether or not such a thing as gender equality can be realized... not because of law or culture or society, but because of self-selection. There are many women who go into career paths traditionally occupied by women: Teacher, Secretary, Nurse, etc., and regardless of equal opportunities, there remain differences. The day I see a woman on a highway road crew (ok, more than just a token individual) with a jackhammer or a mound of steaming asphalt in hand (instead of working in Flagger position), I will then believe in unbounded equality. Until then, I'm afraid I'm a pragmatist. Ideas and Notions are great, but show me the reality of it.
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Seeing the Vietnam Memorial is hard to describe in words. As I was walking along the wall, I couldn't even begin to imagine, while there by the names etched in granite, being able to speak - for any reason.

There's just... so many. So many that died for this notion of "Stopping the Advance of Communism".

And then Iron Curtain fell in 1989, and it seemed to have fallen all by itself, and Communism was no longer a threat, so one begins to wonder how big the threat really was? Or was it just that it's so easy to judge in hindsight?

D.C. as metaphor

Washington DC feels a lot like a college campus... the biggest damn campus in the world.
There's a Quad (also known as the National Mall). There's campus buildings (Federal Building, Department of the Interior, Federal Reserve, etc.) but the only things that are likely to happen there are the undergraduate classes on the classics. Sure, the Department of the Interior has offices on Constitution Ave., but that's just because they have to be somewhere. The real business of the DoI is out in the rest of the nation. Or at least, it had better be...

If something is going on in DC, the REALLY cutting-edge stuff happens on the fringes of campus, in the multi-disciplinary research - something like the Beckman Institute at UIUC or if you're a Republican in DC coming up with innovations in politics, maybe the K-Street Project

all the photos already taken...

As I wander about The Capitol, one of the things I wonder about as I take this photo or that is that I, with 1-2 minutes of thought about how to frame a shot and having only my pocket-carryable digital camera, cannot possibly take better photos than have been taken before - by others with more time, inspiration, talent, and equipment. So the only thing my photos have to say for themselves is that they were taken at a particular moment in time... possibly of a thing that might never happen again (for example, the combination of Andy, New England, and July of 2006). That being said...

Gary made some small talk with the main course, and then got to business of putting Mr. Lobster out to pasture...

Andy needed a little help from a local (thanks, Barbara!), but learned himself good how to eat a lobster.
Hey, check it out... it's the Jefferson Memorial. I like what the man had to say about the evolution of law. If you can't read it in the photo, it reads:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions,
but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of
the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened
as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and
opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must
advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a
man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized
society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
As I see it, this is not an argument for some sort of vague notion of arbitrary moral relativism, but an acknowledgement of the complexity of the world, and humility about our ability to foretell the future of human society.And then, there's the Giant Phallus of Washington... er... the "Washington Monument" I mean...

I was walking by the north side of the White House, when a bunch of cyclists were oncoming... having a notion, I asked "hey, are you Critical Mass DC? I thought y'all were on the last Friday of the month..."

"no, we're on the first of the month..."

so here they are - the Massers of DC:

son... of... a... bitch... (foiled by a blinky light)

So I'm here in Washington D.C., wandering around the capitol on a Friday evening, when after a number of miles on foot I realize that seeing the monuments by foot takes time and energy, and the sun is going down. However, taking pictures at night would be cool, and the town is VERY bikeable, and you can even take bike on the the Metro (subway). The thing is, I have my bike in my car back at the hotel in Bethesda (7-8 miles away), so I hop back on the Metro, scoot up to the hotel, and get my stuff. All ready to go, and I can't find my damn blinking red rear don't-hit-me-light (found the white front one though). It's 10:00pm, and it wouldn't be very smart to go out with a light. Tear through the car, the trunk, the bag of bike stuff, the bag of clothes up in the room, back out to the car, completely empty the trunk, call Gary to see if I left it at his place back in Nashua (not like that would help me ride, but it would help my state of mind).

Can't find the damn thing anywhere. Totally screwed up my ride. I LOVE riding around cities at night. Especially with all the goofy streets and monuments, the DC workers gone home for the weekend, most of the tourists tucked safe in bed. The more I thought about it, the more I was looking forward to it. I was so wound up about it, and to get screwed by a missing blinky light.... I better have left it in Ann Arbor (though I doubt it - I brought the front one, right?). I swear, when I find it, that fucking thing better have a good goddamn excuse why it's missing.

So no nighttime photos, unless I do some creative hanging around tomorrow night... but that might screw up my driving-home schedule.

ask your doctor...

about Panexa.
... or if you're in need of counseling, try the mental health hotline.
... or maybe you can fake your own death to avoid a prison sentence (dying right before having to start a prison sentence that could last the rest of you life? coincidence? I think not).

something old, something new, something to do on a Monday in Nashua

Some old thoughts from my "Traffic Jam Wednesday" that I made little notes about... On Wednesday (day, night and into Thursday), I was driving from Buffalo, NY to Nashua, NH. Should have been about a 6 hour drive. Still was 6 hours of driving. But if you count all the sitting in traffic with the engine turned off, it was more like 12 hours.

In case you hadn't heard, there was a bit of a problem with the highway between Syracuse and Schenectady... it got a little bit flooded. So the state police close it off and divert all the traffic south to highway 20. From a 2-3 lanes each way, to 1 lane each way. And then someone gets into an accident. I'm just glad I had a book with me... turn off the car, just sit behind other people. No one got out the hacky sack and had a drum circle, but there would have been plenty of time for it if they had. After passing the accident site, I cleared the odometer to see how far traffic was backed up... guess how many miles? 15. And that's only in one direction.

Since I had plenty of time while sitting in traffic, and then plenty of time all by myself on the Massachusetts Turnpike ("Mass Pike") at 1am, I had plenty of time for random thoughts:
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You know for sure, without a doubt, absolutely, that you live in a small town when half the town turns out to watch the line of stopped cars on the way through town. Like a parade, but not moving. And no floats or clowns or Shriners. Not much else going on in town tonight, eh?
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"Thanks, Ike" - The federal interstate system had it's 50th anniversary on Thursday. I figured it was an appropriate way to celebrate was by driving on part of it, but then, I was driving on it anyway.

Something I've been thinking about lately: Amtrak. As a form of ground transportation, there's libertarian fiscal arguments against the company because of the fact that Amtrak is heavily subsidized by the US Govt. The fact is, there isn't a single form of transportation that ISN'T heavily subsidized. The highway system subsidizes the auto/truck industry. Counties and states build airports, which subsidize the airlines. (yes, they pay fees, but the construction of the airport itself is attracted with tax breaks) Anyway, I'm planning to go the Minneapolis/St. Paul via Amtrak... I'll see how the company is keeping up the quality of the business.
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For some reason, the Mass Pike, at 2am, going east, seems to be all downhill. I realize that I couldn't see the horizon, and was exhausted, and had few visual references, but it SEEMED downhill. That, and the cruise control felt like it was restrainig the car instead of urging it on (like when climbing a hill). I'll consult a map, but either it's all downhill, or I had a 2-hour hallucination.
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During the day, through the Syracuse area, on the back road of Route 20, there are some killer hills. I brought my bike out this way, and thought "oh, man... I should stop the car, get my bike out, and ride these hills..." You see, some of them I actually had concern driving them (when you come over the top and can't see the road and you're thinking "ok now, the road should be visible any moment now... any moment now... ok, damn, where's the road?" ... that's a steep hill).

I brought the bike and have gone for a few rides here in NH, and you know what I have learned? Michigan is FLAT. Not as flat as Illinois, but flat. There's some local hills that just kicked my ass - at the top, the stats were: 42x21, out of the saddle, heaving for air, cadence of 40, 8 mph. Yes, I am not in hill-climbing-shape. I know that now. But it sure is fun going down them... how else do you find out that the bike handles a little bit twitchy at 40 mph? And how often do you think of sunglasses as a safety device? Having forgotten to bring them today, on one of the downhills, I found myself thinking "oh, shit. No glasses. I hope I don't get a bumblebee in the eye or anything while moving fast."
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Went to Boston on Sunday with Gary. Didn't really have much in mind other than to wander. Went to the MIT campus, and well, there wasn't much to see. Buildings closed, students gone.
We did go to see the goofy looking Media Lab building, and take pictures, foot included. Since Rob and Tina are not in NYC right now, we don't have a place to go/place to crash, so the NYC part of the trip is off. Some other time, perhaps. Instead, we hung out, had some good pool playing, etc. Going back to Boston today to see more sights and watch the "practice" fireworks/music show, which I hear are pretty good, even as a rehearsal. Off we go...