random notable stuff :
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Non-Thanksgiving food note: ever tried Peppadews? Next time you're in a grocery store, have a look and see if they have an olive bar/antipasto selection. Not hot at all - pickled and sweet. Almost like the gherkin of the pepper family - give 'em a try.
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Mobile PET/CT/MRI facilities? How cool is that? Take a gagillion dollar device based on anti-matter (you know, positrons) and put it on a trailer so that it can be taken to places that can't afford to have one installed.

Thanksgiving "did you know... ?"

The standard Thanksgiving turkey, the flagship product of Butterball - the "large-breasted white" is a turkey which, through breeding, has produced an animal which has such a large breast and such short legs that it is no longer able to reproduce naturally and must be artificially inseminated. The turkeys are too fat and pudgy to fuck.

Isn't that sad for the turkeys? (aside from the notion that they are born with the sole purpose of becoming a centerpiece of holiday gluttony) At least that means that if ever there's a genetically modified version getting loose, it won't be able to take over the world. Likewise, extreme disabling obesity among humans should prevent the propogation of that as a genetic trait if IVF ever disappears from our skill set... Then again, if we enter a Brave New World and are synthetically produced, that might be a problem for our own breed.

Everything I Really Need To Know I Learned In A Pool Hall

I've got a cue in my hands again these days, and as I get comfortable at the table, I always have to go through the range of old memories, thoughts and such to get back into the groove, the right mind-set. It's a periodic thing where the first few times reminds me of all the other times and I need to dispel, among other things: days of presumed arrogance, the ghosts of pool people I've known but who've disappeared from my life (Erin, Johnny, other random hauntings...), depressing losses at the table, and failures ignored by wasting time in a hall. And every time I come back to the table after taking time off, I have to dust off these old memories. Run through them one more time as I warm my mind up back into the roll of things. Before I can start to make progress again, I have to go through and remember where I've been before. Only after that am I able stop reminiscing so much and start making balls and winning games.

All this, just to bring you to one idea that I swear I'm going to actually do some day. Along the lines of the famous book, I will bring you Everything I Really Need To Know I Learned In A Pool Hall - microcosms representing real-life lessons. Concepts to be explored:

• You must be present in the moment
• There is no past or future, there is no escape - you must deal with what is here right in front of you
• You cannot deny the Reality of Things
• If the shot is not going to get past the corner of the side pocket, it's not going to go - wishing it won't make it happen, and ignoring reality leads to harsh reality-checks.
• Likewise, ignoring bad credit/obesity and spending like a moron/eating like a glutton, while wishing for a miracle fix won't improve your credit/waistline.
• Nothing matters, only Results
• "There is no second place, only the first loser"
• In a complex situation, context matters - who cares about the battle... Win the War.
• Everything matters, not just Results
• Complexity? Contradictions? Puzzles? Deception? Yes, there are, and the fool ignores them at their peril.
• Keep Your Eyes on the Prize
• Ignore your regard for your opponent's appearance. Whether they be suave high-roller or greasy redneck, you never know when someone might be putting on airs or laying low.
• Don't be lulled into a false sense of security. Do what you came to do.

One square foot at a time

Seen while riding out to Chicago Critical Mass this past Thanksgiving weekend - a fine way to make your neighborhood a little nicer, one square foot at a time. Wondering if the local constabulary haven't seen, don't care, or even might like such community embellishments. Heck, as vandalism goes, it's the nicest form I can think of.



... and as I sit here in a cafe in Evanston, coffeed to the gills, the random shuffle of music in the headphones turns to some Hüsker Dü, then some fast punk hardcore, and all of a sudden I'm transported back though to memories of high school days. Nostalgia - an indicator of stagnancy, or just a natural temporary condition? Hell, I'm not even that nostalgic - maybe just that it is a thing I can be certain knowing when life these days has so many undecideds, unknownables, unrevealeds, etc.

Of course, it could just be benign annual mid-holiday reminiscing, too.

just in time for the holidays

The seasons roll on, and the notions come 'round in a predictable cycle. A wonder it's taken this long to notice the pattern: the leaves fall, the goes cold, and not long before Thanskgiving... "The Lull". When a numb stillness falls around my head, nothing really seems interesting, let along exciting. Content in my sitting about, am I. But then like the proverbial fog lifting, right during Thanksgiving week, the stores of mental fat are released and everything in the world is new and fascinating again. I notice this mostly because ON Thanksgiving, it becomes most obvious - there's a million things I want to do, places to see, and nothing is open. My jonesing for art, beauty, billiards, academia, ... it returns all at once. But desire is greater than capacity, and can never be properly fulfilled. Days, weeks... time.. passes, and like the drunk swerving around the deer in the road, I find myself overcorrected and suddenly on the other side of the balance - disappointment about fulfilling desire - a sense of overcapacity with nowhere to spend it that energy. By then: schedules past, opportunity wasted, memories made, and the feedback loop damps the signal to it's setpoint - a stable point, but a quiet middling mediocre blah.

between a rock and a... verbose place

After buying groceries at Busch's, I stopped by the new toy store a couple doors down. A small place, packed with games of a learning nature and interactive electronic gaming stations (clearly a business started by child development professionals?). This'd be the same place where I happened to have a lovely time chatting with a really really cute saleswoman with the auburn hair and the blue eyes, and I can honestly say that I was really kind of hoping that I'd happen to run into her again. Alas, no love connection was made tonight, but that wasn't my mission. After getting soundly spanked playing Boggle the other week over at Laura & Pete's, I'm thinking some magnetic poetry might be just the right thing for my ailing brain.

So after I picked up some magnetic poetry, I remembered from summer one of those coolest damn things in garden accessories:
Poetry Stones. How cool is that? Now it CAN be written in stone. Get your deluxe starter kit for only $49.95 . I just wish I had a garden to put them in.

all roads lead to California

It seems like everywhere I turn, California is staring me in the face. I don't know what it is, and maybe this is just a question of "because you think about something, everything else reminds you of it", but it's like Cali is calling. Sure, part of that is weather. Who wants grey skies when there's blue? And sure, housing is expensive (stupid expensive), and there's taxes, and Cali traffic, and... but still - it's close to the Colorado/Kaibab Plateau which I've come to love so much this year, and it's green, and near an ocean, and warm, and all kinds of other cool stuff. I'm not packing to move just quite yet, but it sure looks pretty from here. Maybe a short trip to visit there first.

Babel movie

Saw Babel last night (new movie - the Brad Pitt/KateWinslet movie about connections between people all over the world to a single bullet). Like some of the other work by director Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros), it definitely is an ambient film. There are characters, plot, setting, and all that, but were it succeeds is more by setting tones than any of the above. The transitions from heartbreaking anguish to moments of sublime tenderness are so smooth you don't even notice... until it goes back to grief. Something of an emotional marathon not unlike 21 Grams. Good visuals, too.

Brad Pitt was unremarkable, and Kate Winslet spent most of the movie half-conscious and bleeding incoherently on-screen, but the less-recognizable actors made up for the deficits. One regret - that there wasn't more resolution to Gael García Bernal's character. I don't know where this guy came from, but ever since Amores Perros and The Motorcycle Diaries,
it seems like he just doesn't ever disappoint. Along the lines of my thoughts on Arcadia Brewing Company and Tim Roth - they just always seem to do no wrong in their work.

more cheating on day 5

ok, I cheated. Here at Panera as I park and take up valuable lunchtime table space with laptop, I cheated and have had a cup of coffee. Not because I was jonesing... just because it's habit. For what it's worth, I'm ok with this, and don't think of it as a fundamental flaw in my character. Make me wonder then - why did I feel compelled to confess it? Ah, me.

coffeeless: day 4 (a little bit cheating, a little bit rock-n-roll)

I'd love to say something profound about this coffee experiment I'm doing on myself - either the agony of withdrawl or the ecstatic clarity of caffeine sobriety. The truth is far more mundane. I haven't noticed much. I still have chunks of time when I'm incredibly distractable from one thing to the next, and with no caffeine.

I'll admit to a little bit of cheating - a couple days ago I grew tired of herbal tea and had a single cup of Irish Breakfast, and I'm having one today too. If that's cheating, then I'll just have to bear the consequences. In the meantime, my coffee grinder is hopefully not getting lonely or bored as it gets a much needed rest this week.

circular shock

Ever have one of those moments - you're in a room by yourself, no one else around, something you see startles you so much you go "wahh!" and then look around to see if anyone saw you do that? (even though there's nobody around)

Today it was the circular connection... starting with a friend's post that lead to another, and then another and another until I'm out on the coast and reading DJMermaid who used to be poly and now isn't (why would that matter? relates to new nifty friends I'll tell you about some other time...) and then there's a cool add-on thingie called iLoupe which turns a digital camera into a portable field microscope, and how cool is that? And I just so happen to HAVE a Canon SD600, so where can I get the rest of the stuff? Oh, it's made by Aven, Inc. ... which just happens to be about 1-2 miles from... well from right here. I've ridden past there a dozen times and have totally meant to go in to check them out... and then here it is, a blog loop (a bloop?) that takes me out 2000 miles and back, right into my own backyard. For some reason it was incredibly shocking, thus... the outburst.

bunny of the moment

What kind of happy bunny are you? My first one was

you are the "I hate you so bad" happy bunny. You hate everyone and eveything and your not ashamed of it.

But that was before I noticed that you can check more than one box at a time... turns out that at the moment I'm a bunny more like:

you are the "you suck, and that's sad" happy bunny. your truthful, but can be a bit brutal.

coffeeless: day2

So far, so good. Monday was a coffee-free day that went without incident. While I was a little sleepy (more likely due to not sleeping well the night before) and did in fact nap at one point, I'd like to think I was more coherent. Really, I swear, this'll be a good thing for a week... right? I figure the worst thing that could happen on Day 8 is that the sudden infusion of the first cup of coffee will cause my brain to burst and my heart to explode, leaving quivering, jittery blobs of meat, skin, and hair all over the floor.

current lack of attention span

It's really starting to bug me, this lack of attention span I've got going on. It seems that I can't help be distracted by this, that, or the other thing so much that something requiring more than 10 minutes of concentration while sitting in one place is unlikely to happen. (hell, it just happened right there - mind wandering off to the "hmm... where to go hang out this afternoon?")
But you know, I think it has a simple source - the fact that I drink many cups of coffee each day. So in the tried-and-true technique of experimentation on one's self, I think I'll drop the morning pot-o'-coffee for a week. "How about switching to decaf?" nahhh, can't stand the taste. "Maybe reducing intake? Only one cup per day?" I'm not that fond of half-measures.

the guy must burn through a lot of shoes...

A guy who rides messenger(?) in San Francisco on a single-speed with no brakes. No, not a fixed-gear... a freewheel. Uses the Vans as a brake. Go figure.

new addition to the flock

I resolved my paint issues... I went to a local auto body paint joint, picked out a color, and had them do it up... They (Ideal Collision) did a pretty good job (a couple of dirt-type defects and a minor chip), but the $75 price was good and the 3-day turnaround was quick. Of course, I did give it to them stripped and masked, so it's not like it was that difficult to just spray and bake.

Anyway, I got it back from paint on Monday, took it to the local bike shop to have the headset pressed in and got it back on Tuesday. Built it up Tuesday night. Rode it around today and ran some errands just to get miles in the saddle, and I'm just stoked about having it all put together. It's a big/tall bike (standover height), even for me. It definitely rides different than its brothers in the family. I think because the bottom bracket height is almost an inch higher than my roadie bike, and I put a high-ish stem on - feels I'm not stretched out and a little top-heavy, but every bike is a little bit different, no?

It's a commuter, so the lights are going to stay on permanently, and even better - now I have a place for my extra-obnoxious dino-squeaky to warn people that I don't want to hit them when they blunder out into the road.



I'm not really sure about the state of the bullhorn bars right now... I like the hand positions, but integrating brake levers has been a little awkward based on where the bends land. I don't know if I totally like the way it is, and it does smack of the Pretentious Bullhorn Bar wanna-be messenger fixie vibe. But for the moment, it'll do.




The only outstanding thing is a name... I was thinking of an O-name when it was going to be orange (Oscar, Owen, etc.), but since the color turned out more brownish/goldish, "Brian" comes to mind, but other than the brown/brian commonality, I'm completely bored by those names. It's a T-Rex dino-squeaky, right? Maybe he'll just be Rex.

damn cool libraries

Places I wish I could teleport to just to see them. (the cost of the plane tickets is too much, just for the scenery)

[not] supporting the habit

You might recall that I have a problem with TV. Something I saw recently explains some of the more subconscious aspects of it, which make quite a bit of sense about how TV attracts ones attention.

I'm not going to go and dump the TV, since I don't think that's a solution, for a couple of reasons:
- It's more likely to just replace one habit with an other. The actual behavior is somewhat independent of the object. It's more of a tendency to overindulge than the indulgence itself.
- And I think that it is important to be aware of popular culture (i.e. what's on TV). I don't endorse, or agree with, or engage in, lots of aspects of pop culture, but being aware of it is important to being informed citizens. I don't watch American Idol, but I know what it is. I don't care for baseball, but it'd be better to avoid downtown Detroit traffic when the Tigers were playing World Series games instead of blundering into a traffic jam and wondering "hmm, I wonder what's going on downtown?"

reading the fine print

How often do you read the fine print on something you sign? Always, sometimes, never? Well, ever since the first time I rented a car, I've had this thing about fine print. When there's a lot of it, there's all the more reason to read it and understand my liability, not just give in to the clerk behind the counter who is impatient to get back to the episode of Maury they were watching.

A couple months ago when I was at the oral surgeon (just a consult for a dental cyst, but thank you for being concerned), one of the stack of forms I filled out included a privacy statement. And normally, you'd think that it's something that protects the patient, right? One of the statements in it was worded "... with certain exceptions, the patient's complete medical records will be made available to the patient upon request." Hunh? Why on earth wouldn't I be able to see my own medical records?

You'd be surprised at the insult and indignity it caused among the office staff when I asked about it:
me - "Hi, I was reading this form, and it has this statement in it, and I was wondering what those exceptions would be".
clerk - "Well, I'm not a lawyer." [sneering]
me - "Yeah, but you handed me the form. Do you know what the form is, or what it's for?"
clerk - "Of course I know what it's for it says right at the top"
me - "Yes, I saw that. I'm asking about this part right here."
clerk - "look, everyone just signs that, and it's required before we provide any medical care, so why don't you just sign it."
me - [I wasn't initially angry about this, but by this point, I was pretty pissed off] "I don't really care what other people do or don't sign. I'd want to known what kind of exception would make my own medical records unavailable to me. If you don't know, find someone in this office who does." (important note: this is a large multi-surgeon office, with at least 5 nurses behind the counter, and 15 people in the waiting room. Not a mom-and-pop shop. At least someone that works there should know what's on the form.)

So after a while, the office manager and I go in to a room to chat about the privacy agreement. Though my curiosity was only barely sated concerning the medical record exception, what was more interesting was that she told me that, in the 6 years she had been there, this was only the second time anyone had asked about that or anything else on that form. Everyone else just signs it.

That's my own story of the month in the real world, but next time you install software on your computer, try actually reading the EULA. See if clicking the "I Agree" button means that you allow Microsoft to audit the contents of your computer, looking for things they don't think you should have. Looking for entertaining/scary examples of other EULAs? Try here and here.

It was all going so well... until it went bad.

This evening, I really and truly screwed the pooch on my latest little project. Pissed about it, yes I am. Only at myself, but combination raging/angry and sullen/depressed, all at the same time.

I picked up a decent road bike frame (in my size) a while back for super-cheap ($50, I think). An old Trek 620, no fork, a chain-suck gouge in the drive side chain stay, but otherwise sound. Couldn't really decide for the longest time what to do with it. It had "rideable art project" written all over it, but I didn't have much for inspiration. Maybe I could make gargoyles or figurines and braze them to the frame? Some sort of other metal embellishment? Well, after stripping the old boring grey metallic paint off it,

months of it sitting around waiting for me to be inspired, I finally decided to get off my ass. Decided it would become a touring/commuting (maybe cyclocross?) cantilever-braked road bike, with various handlebar options in the future. I got out the torch, filled in the gouge with silver solder, bought some cantilever studs, made a jig and torched them on. Added some seat-stay embellishment too, and primed it.

Since my new favorite color is orange, the overall theme became orange with details in black...


Black lugs, black Surly Cross-Check fork. I'll rebuild my old road wheels at some point and ultimately they'll be black-spoked too. Chris King headset in orange (ok, "mango"), black stem, orange bar tape, black Paul Motolite brakes with orange-red Kool-Stops, the whole deal.

I had primed and base-coated the orange, spent hours masking off the lugs and details, painted them black, and was ready to take it out to the LBS to have the head tube faced and reamed and headset pressed. The last thing to do before that? Clearcoat. This is where it all went wrong. Little did I know that the clear coat would swell and bubble the base coat, leaving it crackled and raised. Shitfuck.

Maybe the auto plant paint experience should have taught me that you lay down the base, let the solvents flash off, then the clear right after. Maybe letting the base dry overnight was a mistake. Maybe I just picked two different paints that weren't compatible. Either way, I fucked myself.

From having finished and rideable project tomorrow, I'm back to step 2, and multiple days away from it being rideable. Sure, the metalwork is done, but the paint needs to start all over. I'm torn between doing it myself again, spending money on spray gear, or dropping the $180+ for the "professional" paint from Assenmachers, or going half-way and finding a local auto body shop to do a single color for around $100.

Ain't shit happening tonight now. I'm pissed at myself about the whole fucking thing. It's time to drown my sorrows in some beers and more beers.

Fear of walking (no, white lady, I am not going to steal your purse)

A long time ago in a little town in central Illinois, one of my roommates went off to a summer internship. His girlfriend Beth, needing a place to stay during the summer, moved into his room for the summer and became a substitute roomie for a couple months. Now Beth and I had always been friends, but we hadn't had a lot of deep conversations - so it came as a surprise one evening as we're talking and something she said stuck out at me "... and so I had to leave the library to get home because the sun was setting, and ..." It turns out that Beth (and apparently other young women on campus as well) wouldn't walk anywhere on campus alone after dark.

This really surprised me. Being from Chicagoland and used to Big Cities, I'm well and truly accustomed to walking wherever and whenever, and never really paying attention to whether it was day or night, swank neighborhood or sketchy neighborhood. I realized in that conversation that one difference might be that I'm male, 6 ft tall and not exactly a "target of opportunity" for a would-be mugger, and that might be most of the difference... but honestly - Champaign-Urbana isn't exactly Cabrini Green. (for that matter, Cabrini-Green isn't Cabrini-Green any more) But that was the first time I realized that friends and neighbors might not feel as safe and secure in life as I do. Ok, it was eye-opening 13 years ago to a college-age youngester.

But of late, I've noticed even more fear, and if you'll permit me a cycling segue: Riding along Fuller/Gallup Park path, one would assume that standard Rules of the Road should apply - walk/jog/ride on the right, pass on the left. But over and over again, there are these people, iPods firmly emplanted, blithely walking/jogging/riding slow on the left hand side of the path, ignorant of everyone around them and thinking that they are the only ones on the path. It's fairly unavoidable that I'm going to blast past them, but they can't hear me give them the "passing on your left" shout because of their iPods, and it's dodgy to blast by on the right (they might get freaked out, confused, jump the wrong way... and then we're a-crashin'). It was after a few times that I realized that this happens mostly in certain spots where there's vegetation on the right side of the trail, and I got to thinking "is this some sort of 'avoid the mugger who might jump out of the bushes' kind of thing?" Since all these walking-in-the-passing-lane people were women by themselves, that's the best explanation I can come up with. (either that or they're ignorant of their surroundings and selfish about sharing the road) And the thing that's remarkable about that is that it's Ann Arbor... in the middle of a Saturday afternoon. Sure, we have crime here, but it's not like it's Detroit or D.C. crime rates.

More about just walking: when I'm walking by myself, what do I have to do to to put other people at ease?

All I'm doing is walking. I'm not going to murder anyone. I'm a clean-shaven, clean-clothed, suburban cracker going for a walk, relaxed and non-twitchy. When I make eye-contact with fellow pedestrians, they get skittish. When I don't make eye-contact, they swing wide on the sidewalk as if I'm about to draw a six-shooter on them. And forget about smiling or saying hello to people in passing - that only gets the "ugh, that's creepy... what kind of sick weirdo is this guy that he doesn't have a cell phone jammed into his ear whenever he's walking down the street?" look in return. I'd like to think that maybe it's just my social skills that are the problem, but what I'm really worried about is: maybe people constantly fear the world that they live in. That would be a pretty shitty life, for sure.

if only there was something...

I'm camped out in the library figuring out the hoosies and the what-sits of the photo gallery application on the web space that I'm playing with, and it's getting on in the evening. Not late, but getting to the dinner hour. So I'm thinking... "hmm, Jerusalem Gardens is always a tasty meal, and less than a block away". I do the mental pre-standing-up-from-the-chair inventory of whether I have everything I want to take with me... and realize "damn, I didn't bring my book to read while waiting for food, I guess I'll just entertain myself otherwise".

It only took about 3 seconds for it to dawn on me that I was sitting in a frickin' library. Surrounded by books. What a moron.

Fear. (prologue)

Something that's been on my mind for some time... Fear. Not my fear of the unknown, or anxiety at high altitude... societal fear.

How people don't seem to make eye contact with each other as they walk down the street. How they don't even walk down the street any more. How a bloke going for a walk in park gets dirty looks from parents who have seen too many episodes of "FOX News at Eleven: To Catch A Predator". How there are all these ridiculous "gated" communities to give a perceived sense of security, when there is no exceptional need for security ("This is reflected in an increasing fear of crime that is unrelated to actual crime trends or locations") and, most amusingly, when they don't even have functional gates (photo coming soon...)

How everyone seems to be afraid of their neighbors and whether they are ex-cons or not. How there's a registry for this and a registry for that. How all of this only serves to isolate one from another in little huts at night while being captive to American Idol and 24-hour re-runs of Law and Order.

And it's not just how we isolate ourselves from each other but every other way we live in the world. How we drive around in metal boxes with the windows up tight and the air conditioning on with our mocha-chinos in one hand, raging at the injustices on talk radio as we road-rage our way back and forth between the office and the subdivision. How we're somehow able to give up on personal freedoms in exchange for a color-coded Threat Level. How we play both roles - as Predator and as Prey, aggressor and victim... depending on the mood of the mob at the moment. Afraid that gas prices will go up. Afraid that the interest rate on the home equity loan will go up. Afraid that Johnny will fall off his skateboard. Afraid that Suzy will get picked last for the cheerleading team. Afraid that the appraised value of the house will fall.

It seems that so much of what we do is controlled by fear. Trying to keep away the things we have been taught to fear instead of drawing near the things we cherish. 150 Suggestions for Giving a Shit About Your Neighborhood ... #54, #61, #85 and #118 seem like pretty easy ways to start.

Mead, I tell you, mead

At the local upscale liquor/deli/lotto, I stumbled on some mead from Redstone Meadery. Never having had it, I thought I'd give it a try. Very, very tasty and drinkable. I'm kind of feeling like a viking right now and wish I had a horn to drink it out of. Go and try some sometime soon... of course, assuming you don't hate honey (who hates honey?).

other people's good stuff...

Nifty art by Thomas Keeley.

the pink collar

My neighbor appears to have moved out, so there's people rustling around there, sounds like they're painting... which gets me to thinking again about the notion of Pink Collar jobs (mentioned briefly in this previous post). What are the odds that the painter is a woman? Painting isn't a job that requires testicles or any other male anatomy... right? Then why aren't there more female house painters? Is it because of oppression in industry? The painting industry? I thought the interior painting service industry was dominated by the labor of students and part-timers... surely there's no institutionalized sexism there, right? So I'm wondering - why aren't there more women with jobs as painters? My only workable theory is that of self-selection and de facto gender segregation - the same concept that results in the categorization of pink collar jobs.

I got in trouble recently at Book Club when the topic came up. It's hard to say something meaningful in 30 seconds about gender equality in mixed company when it's part of pre-discussion chit-chat. Especially when one can be perceived as a chauvinist pig for not automatically echoing PC dogma. How can we have real and meaningful conversations about equality of the genders (or sexes, whichever you prefer - looking for a definition I can I can finally agree with? Try here) when we're limited by a Least Offensive Vocabulary? Me, I say fuck it. Say what you mean and mean what you say, and let's get on with it.

sucks to be...

... any lettuce or spinach farmer/processor/packager living in any state OTHER than California. They must just be hating the Californians who let the E. Coli get into the spinach.

... hating them so much that the bags of leafy greens I saw in the grocery department had to have stickers hastily put on them "grown in Colorado" just so that they would sell.

Feelin' a little Retro...

I don't recall from where I heard of it, but there's an open source (and free) application out there called Audacity which is a really, really handy utility for audio track manipulation. Sure, there's GarageBand for Mac, but what is there for Windows without having to steal software or pay money? Audacity is the way to go.

And who would really care about crap like this? Well, for sad schmucks like me who have been taking a stroll down Memory Lane via their cassette or LP collections, how else do you get them onto your MP3 player and take them with you in the car or wherever? Take that stereo output, plug it into the Line In jack on the computer, adjust levels, start recording, and then hit Play. Sure... you have to chop them up later and convert them to MP3 using either Audacity and the LameLib MP3 encoder or iTunes (or whatever), but still... how else could I listen to those old tapes of Minor Threat, The Smiths, The Replacements, and my new/old/new again fav-o-rite home-town heroes: Naked Raygun. (which, as I check out the link... appears they're going to be in Chicago Nov 5th for a reunion tour! How cool is that! ...just gotta get me some tickets now.)

Just like smells trigger specific memory, music I haven't heard in a while reminds me of everything that happened the year that I first heard it. So lately I've been walkin' my way through high school and college, one cassette at a time. Welcome back... to 1991.

what happened to Bird Flu?

I was tidying up at home and came across a free bi-monthly rag that I picked up in Moab. The general topic for that issue is the looming fact that this nation's population will reach 300 Million this month. That's a lot of people, especially when you consider than the last 100M were added in the past 35 years. The organization formerly known as Zero Population Growth is now known as "Population Connection" and has some interesting/surprising facts here. True, the USA doesn't have as high a population growth as developing nations, and some western european nations actually have negative growth. But the situation... well, it ain't good, folks. Developing nations, some of them gripped by famine, civil war, insufficient infrastructure and lack of clean water, are just churning out children like crazy.

Some would say that this might all be because we haven't had any population-adjusting catastrophes (i.e. Mathusian Catastrophe) which otherwise would act normally on the population. So was bird flu the potential bubonic plague of the 21st Century? And what the hell happened to the Grand Pandemic? Could it be that some other Fear Politicking took the stage? Yeah, I guess so.

Examples of population excess closer to home: (ok, it's just animals, but anyway) transmission of bovine TB to wild deer, and how diseased Michigan's deer population is. Did you know? The population of does is more or less ballooning, for two reasons: 1) Many hunters want trophy racks (does ain't got antlers, don't ya know) and so few hunters even go after does, and 2) Suburban sprawl produces an excessive amount of "edge habitat" which is where deer live, and where residents like to bait deer to attract them to their backyard. That bait brings deer closer to each other than they normally are in the wild, increasing disease transmission. My suggestion to you? Either go out and get a doe permit and control the herd, or STOP BAITING DEER, you fucking morons [sheesh].

Michigan is a cold, cold place.

Yes, I know. Master Of The Obvious, that's me. But I was so not ready for it to be cold. Got back from Utah, well... about two weeks ago. From beautiful red sandstone against achingly blue skies



and stunning views,



to gridlock and billboard-mania, just in time for the weather to start sucking. Depressing grey days.

Shitfuck.

back to UT

... been off the grid for a while, literally. Backpacking in SW Utah, where just finding water is something to spend time thinking about, and cell phone coverage and internet access are nowhere close. That, and I've been using cash, so if the FBI was looking for me, they probably would've had a harder time than usual. Not that I'm hiding from anything. In a Freudian sense we probably all are, but let's not go there quite yet.

Anyway, I've found plenty of reasons to delay and delay my return, hang around in Utah (who'd've thunk it?) for a while longer. Damn but if it ain't pretty out here.

argh.

I was so in the groove, and now I'm not. Traveling along, making my way to pick up fellow backpacker Richard in Denver on Friday morning, then overnight at somewhere with fascinating and/or stunning terrain/views, to arrive in Escalante with plenty of time to spare. But stupid-assed me totally forgot the text message exchange where he's not coming in until Saturday morning. So I was camping in the Denver area at Golden Gate Canyon State Park (their website doesn't do it justice - camped overnight at 9000 ft, had to drive up 19% grade roads to get there, etc. etc.) and got up at 6:30 am to be in Denver for the 7:30 am train arrival. Running late, I called Richard at 8:30 - left a message, and when he called me back, reminded me that we changed the pickup to Saturday. Shitfuck.

So now I have a day to waste in Denver. It's hazy and dreary (associated with smoke from wildfires in Montana, I hear), I'm tired because I didn't sleep well (stupid herd of Elk started bugling at 3am), not showered, and generally without purpose or plan for the day. I feel like a homeless person, not trying to attract attention and hoping I don't smell too badly as I sit in a Panera hogging the free wireless.

Fuck it. I'm going to go see a movie, then I'll find a new campsite this afternoon. Drove all the way to Denver to see a movie - go figure.
----------
And in the intervening 30+ minutes, struck up a conversation with a fellow Panera customer who was just fun to talk to - though the various topics included: overinflated real estate prices in Boulder/Ann Arbor, the Cold War, Israel/Palestine, etc.

A little animated conversation did me right to snap me out of the "it's a depressing grey day" funk. I'm still going to see The Illusionist though.

dude... I am, like... SO high right now

I'm sitting in my hotel room in Boulder (Colorado) with a stupid-assed grin on my face. Just got into town, it was getting late, so the first thing I do is find a bike shop to ask where to go riding. The guy draws me a little map, and on the way to the start point, I find a hotel, drop my shit, put the bike together, and off I go. It's about 7:00pm, so I'm hurrying to beat the sunset. Turns out it gets cold in the mountains, but it was a short ride.

I'm so enthralled with my little GPS thingy that I immediately got back, plugged it in, and here's the track...


Let's not focus on the fact that on the climb there are spots where I was sucking wind at 5 mph, and two clip-out-and-stop-for-a-second-before-my-heart-pops-out-of-my-chest spots. Let's focus on the ass-puckering 47mph downhill. We ain't got none o' dat in Michigan.

I kid you not, the thought "OhHolyShitDidILockDownMyStemAndSkewersTightEnough" went through my head more than once. And brother, I am not ashamed to say that I was on the brakes more than my manly ego would like me to admit to. I had no idea where this road went or if it suddenly became potholed, oh yeah, and I have approximately ZERO descending skills. So yeah, it took a while to un-pucker from those spots.

So yeah, I'm riding high on some endorphins right now, for sure.

And get this - on the hairy-assed descent back to the hotel, this motorist in a burgundy Ford Expedition passes me really closely right before a tight turn (yes, I was out in the middle of the lane, but I'm sure I was going at or above the speed limit). So I'm thinking "what an asshole" and then I see him stopped 300 feet ahead, blocking the lane. Asshole, right? Turns out there were 3 deer crossing the road. Around a couple more hairy curves and he's stopped again - but he's even with (splitting the group) of three more - the two on the left shoulder and one on the right. And as I come up on him, it seems like he was totally stopped and started going when I caught up. He could have driven on, but it seemed like he waited for me to make sure that I saw the deer.

How cool is that? I felt like he was escorting me a little bit. It might have just been coincidence that he was trying to not hit the deer, but the optimist in me would like to think it's people looking out for other people. Thanks, Mr./Mrs. Burgundy Expedition Driver.

So yeah, am I going riding tomorrow morning? You bet your ass. And am I coming back here after the Utah backpacking? Looking that way - I just might make a side trip out to here on the way home.

On the road again...

I just can't help but chuckle - the rest stops in Iowa have free WiFi internet access. I don't have any particularly pressing e-business to take care of, but I just gotta try it out. Seems to work, but why at a rest stop? To entertain the kids in the car? An oppurtunity for advertising? Or is it just the modern-day equivalent of having a pay phone?

In other news - I'm stoked about the fact that there's a Strategic Air Command Museum in Omaha, and I'm about to be there in a few hours. Gonna go see me some missiles, fer shure.

does it seem like a strange pairing of requirements?

I started browsing some pages of Department of Energy technology transfer, and somehow as I was browsing randomly, I ended up flipping through the job postings at National Securities Technology, LLC. (a.k.a. Bechtel Nevada).

Explain to me how is it that they list as job qualifications for one position:
- "Professional experience in event investigation highly desireable..." (where "event" refers to one involving radiation exposure)
- "working knowledge of ... 10CFR835" (which is Code of Federal Regulations, Article 10, Part 835) ...
- "Computer Skills with software applications such as MS Office"

Which of these seems like you shouldn't have to list it? If you are in the government business of dealing with radioactive substances (whether it be medical sources, energy creating, or weaponry making), I would think that you are savvy enough person that MS Office doesn't pose much of a challenge.

Or should I be worried? Are there people out there in the Department of Energy, or contractors, or on site at production/processing facilities who investigate "events", but who... have difficulty with MS Office? That would be a little bit scary.

so much for dental success

36 hours after a long, yet seemingly successful root canal, I was awakened (again, at 3:30 am) with pain. This time, in the tooth next to the dead one. Somewhat different pain, but just as intense as the pain from a week ago, which had abated, or so it seemed.

Definitely bummed out by this - I thought it was over, but now it seems like it's going to drag on and on. [crossing fingers and hoping that it's not going to need surgery of the slicin' and choppin' kind]

The Ditziest of the Animal Kingdom

I can't figure it out - are squirrels dumb as rocks, fatal procrastinators, or just plain suicidal?

Surely you've had encounters just like this: a squirrel on the edge of the road, or maybe even in the middle of the lane, sits frozen. You drive/ride/walk unperturbed since the creature sitting on side of the road, is safe from your wheels/boots. At the last instant it darts out, gets to the halfway point between it's former resting place and future certain death, does a double-pump-fake stop/start, and with just barely perfect timing, scoots under the bumper right in front of the wheel of a car going 45 mph, probably brushing tail against the rubber of the tire. Of all the places and times to be on that stretch of road, they pick exactly that time and place. The threat of a crushing death only exists at that spot for 100 milliseconds, but somehow they wait for and find that point exactly.

Yesterday it went a step further - riding the bike up and down the hilly spots on Huron Parkway (on the wide path), a squirrel 100 feet ahead of me runs across the path, and perches on the brickwork ledge between the path and the 4-lane road - about to cross the road. But not until I'm right up even with it does it turn back, right across the path and into me. Too quick to react physically, the flash through my mind is of seeing my first ever bike roadkill with the front wheel rolling over and breaking either neck or back of the creature. Well, in Typical Squirrel Fashion, he/she managed to hit the gap behind the front wheel and back wheel, but didn't count on the rotating uphill Pedal of Death. So for a nails-on-blackboard, sudden-wave-of-nausea flinch-worthy moment, I feel something on top of my right foot as I make half a pedal revolution. The rough part of this: the squirrel was moving left-to-right across the path, which means that unless he jumped THROUGH the frame to land on my foot, he got around the front of the sharp chainring, was on my foot starting when the pedal was at about 3 o'clock, and either got forced off by the returning chain at 7 o'clock, or had incredible reflexes to recognize and avoid the impending doom.

I clipped out and pulled both feet off the pedals to let him out as quick as I could, but I swear, for half a second I could have sworn that I had snapped the back of the little guy/girl. And like that [poof] it was gone. I turned back to look for the wreckage, tufts of fur, blood, or body parts, and found none. Not on the trail, not beside the trail, and nothing formerly squirrel stuck to me or the bike. That squirrel, while apparently having amazing reflexes and/or flexibility, and/or luck, sure is going to have a good story to tell at dinner tonight.

MegaChurches - cults in the making

Having been a creeped out by MegaChurches for a while, this article just pushes it over onto full-blown heebee-geebees. As they grow and grow and encompass more and more of their parishoner's lives - how is it indistinguishable from a cult? I understand that people may want to live a religious life, but how exactly do some of these things in Table 3 make any sense mixing with a church, unless it's the need to influence or control every minutia of parishoner's lives? Auto repair clinic? (let's say a prayer so that Jesus will bless this carburetor rebuild) kickboxing class? (Who Would Jesus Roundhouse Kick?)

The closing of the article says it well:
"The megachurch phenomenon is, above all, an awesome tool. I fear the day when its wielders decide just what they mean to use it for."

Panama Canal opening anniversary

As feats of engineering and logisitics go, the Panama Canal is a pretty good one. It also turns out that today is the anniversary of the first day it opened to traffic - courtesy of Wikipedia's "On This Day" section. Interesting thing - I had no idea that that canal had so much competition out there. I would have thought it posessed a fairly unique purpose and position in the world. Goes to show - there is no such thing as job security, even for geographic features.

as if taking your shoes off wasn't knee-jerk enough...

I'm sure you've been hearing about all the heightened security at airports and on planes lately in light of the foiled terrorist plot in Britain. But with all the heightened security, have you seen the list of new items that are now prohibited in carry-on baggage? Even rougher is the British list of allowed items (and my favorite quote "nothing may be carried in pockets"). Note that books and children's toys will not be allowed. There are going to be some REALLY cranky airline passengers in the air over the next few days. Imagine the screaming infant that just can't be soothed/distracted from crying it's head off - all the way across the Atlantic.

It's like the whole taking-shoes-off-at-security-checkpoint thing. After Richard Reed (shoe-bomber) did his thing, now we've got thousands of people taking their shoes off at X-ray checkpoints - but if shoes are such a threat, where was the TSA in thinking of that threat beforehand? It's a response to something, not actual prediction/prevention.

Now that you can't bring toothpaste on the plane, and you probably can't brush your teeth with baking soda ('cause they'll probably think it's cocaine or anthrax)... there's gonna be a bunch of people on long international flights that are going to arrive at their destination with some fuzzy teeth and stinky breath. Of course, maybe this is an opportunity for a new product - toothpaste in dissovable tablet form. And the prohibition against gel shoe-inserts? Bummer for Dr. Scholl's... "you gellin'?" "nope."

Funny consequence - among those who travel as part of their job, one trick is to pack luggage/clothing so that everything fits into carry-on-able luggage to avoid having to check baggage. Now, the simple toothpaste prohibition means that everyone traveling overnight has checked baggage. Stupid Conspiracy: it's all a plot by the baggage handler's union and cosmetics/toiletries industries to either make jobs for the bag throwers, or sell more travel-sized toiletries when arriving at one's destination. Gotta wonder - will the increase in checked baggage mean that the amount of luggage that gets lost will increase, or decrease? hmm....

planets and such...

I've been feeling a little out of contact with the daily news, so I dug in today to see what's going on... it appears that the planet Pluto might be getting the boot from the solar system (as a planet, that is...). There was the discovery of Sedna a few years ago, and though I initially thought the 12th Planet theorists would jump on it as proof (yes, some of the people I used to work with were... well... 12th Planet "enthusiasts" would be the nicest word I can come up with), it appears the 12,000 year orbit might not be the right one. Ah well, I guess the pseudoastronomers will just have to keep on searching. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see what happens with Pluto - if the newly discovered 2003 UB313 is accepted as a planet (or Pluto gets dropped), there sure will be a lot of textbooks and solar system models needing updates.

my 300-mile week

OK, maybe it's no octo-century or anything, but I managed to stack on 301 miles as of this morning, and since it's probably a first time for me, I'm feeling good about myself...

So yeah, that includes a little mountain-biking on Tuesday, the gonzo-apeshit AAVC ride on Thursday (when it gets to be 28mph I can only hang on for a few miles, which might be exacerbating my bad case of the gettin-dropped-sies), and... oh yeah, falling off the back today too. At some point I'm going to get it through my head that I need to not be afraid to hurt myself some more while trying to close the gap... 'cause if the gap stretches out you're pretty much done, and the ride home is lonely.

dental update

No meaningful news tooth-wise - still on the anti-biotics, still off the pain meds, still waiting for the actual surgery (root canal). At least it's scheduled for Tuesday. Until then, I'm just hangin' out with my dead tooth.

Perry Bible Fellowship

Funny comic strip... (and another one from PBF)

I hate Thule

So I've been doing some mountain-biking lately up at the Pinckney Rec. Area (aka "The Poto")... enough times that I've gotten aggravated with taking my bike apart to fit it in the trunk, so I went shopping for a bike rack for my car.

I didn't think I wanted the permanent-ish roof rack, since, with gas prices what they are, who wants decreased fuel economy? And Acura tells me that they don't sell a hitch for my TSX, and for the 2004, recommend NOT installing a hitch of any kind. Looking under the bac of my car, I understand what they mean - I can't figure out where one would mount anything. So I resigned myself to a trunk rack. Goofy, clunky, and potentially paint-damaging, but it seemed the only option. At local shops, there was Thule, and Saris. Saris supposedly doesn't fit the TSX, so I went with the Thule #978 "Easy Rider".

What a piece of shit.

If it's not the goofy assemblage of aluminum tubes and nylon straps that pissed my off, it's the shitty hooks that are supposed to grip the edge of decklid to stabilize the rack, or it's the retarded little rubber-strap bike-hold-downs that I can't believe will last very long. What's even worse is that it holds the bike so high and so far away from the car that it flaps in the breeze somethin' fierce. If I try to strap the wheels together to hold the front wheel straight, the bike becomes a sail and the bottom tips out in the wind like crazy. If I leave the rear wheel loose to tie the frame/front wheel down so it doesn't flap, the rear wheel spins alarmingly fast in the breeze (when I got home, the mounts had shifted so the bike was now at an angle). And that was driving really peacefully (under the speed limit) for only 30 minutes. There's no fucking way I would drive this rack cross-country with my gear on it.

I mean really... doesn't anyone at Thule product-test these before selling them? For example, get a focus group of 20 off-the-street Joe Schmoes (or, since they're Swedish, Josef Schmøë), hand them prototypes, and see what they say. What they would have told them is that these racks are... well, they're shïté.

Luckily, I only paid $80 for it, so I'm not completely depressed about the purchase. And realistically if I drive out to a trail with others, it's the only way I can transport more than one bike in my car anyway. But seriously, if you are looking for a rack and plan to use it often, just go with the full-on roof rack (i.e. good ole Yakima), spend the money ($400-ish), and be done with it. You'll be glad you did.

slow day, dentistry-wise

Not much happened today - no root canal, no oral surgery, but no pain, either. Been taking antibiotics for the past 4-5 days and it seems like they've kicked in. They fight the bacteria that produce the fluid, which builds up, which produces pressure, and thus pain, in my jawbone. Fewer bacteria, less pain. So I called the doc, and communicating via passing messages through the receptionist, was told to "keep on the antibiotics, call back tomorrow, and when we see how things are tomorrow, we'll schedule the root canal then." Okeedoke, then. Until tomorrow.

My trip down Dental Ave.

No root canal today (but for sure, some time soon there's a root canal in my future). More importantly, what I do have is a dental cyst - a big one apparently. This would be a hole (bubble) in the bone of my lower jaw, which apparently has become infected due to the dead nerve tissue in the tooth above it, which explains the pain in my jaw. A good thing, for sure - knowing why something is, and not just blaming it on demons or spirits or living a sinful life. A bad thing for my dental health.

Luckily I didn't find out the hard way: "Some people only find out they have a dental cyst when their jaw breaks after trauma (because the jaw is weakened by the cyst). " Thanks, Addenbrooke's, for that little bit of oh-shit-ness

Either the dead nerve cause the cyst, or maybe the other way around. Anyway, the doc said it might also be a granuloma, but it's difficult to tell from the X-ray (he actually called it a radiograph, and I don't know whether that's because he's an academic, or whether he was trying to impress me with his doctoring). The Wikipedia entry for granuloma sounds a little scary, especially when they have the context of Crohn's disease and syphilis. But I really prefer the explanation on the UCLA denstistry page: "A granuloma is a highly vascularized tissue containing a profuse infiltrate of immunological competent cells i.e., lymphocytes, macrophages, plasma cells, etc." I love the idea of immunonlogically competent. It's like they're cells that have a special trade-craft. Or a certification of competency, where the rest of the cells are immunologically incompetent.

So... for me it's more antibiotics and wait a few days... the best case is a simple root canal. The worst case is oral surgery (cutting my gum open) to remove the cyst/granuloma. Stay tuned, kids - it's looking like an eventful week.

Aztec pyramid alarm clock

Gotta love that Red Meat. Makes me chuckle just about every time.

Frank Gehry can kiss my ass

"Sketches of Frank Gehry" was playing at the Michigan Theater today, so I thought I would go see it. What a piece of crap. And not just the movie.

Don't get me wrong, I like architecture, and I like sculpture, and Gehry does a decent job of bridging the two, producing Architectural-Works-of-Art. And some of his buildings are truly beautiful. But so often they are just wrong. Bad and wrong. But few will say so, with the notable exception of Hal Foster, who makes a damn good point in his criticism, that there is a cult of adoration and few are willing to speak a disparaging word.

One of the most famous of his buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain is a beautiful and majestic thing. But it fails as an art museum. An art museum should not want to BE the art. It's not the purpose of the museum. Buildings must be functional on some level, and even if it's a beautiful work of art, it should enable the purpose of the building, not distract from that purpose. Otherwise, they should have just built the building and put nothing in it and let the building be the art.

One of the artists interviewed made a point of "if it distracts from the art, then maybe the art isn't good enough, eh?" Well, interviewed in his bathrobe with a snifter of cognac, wearing sunglasses, slouched in an antique chair, and filmed from below, all I can say is: when he doesn't have to pose for the camera, I'll consider his opinion to have documentary credibility. Until then, he's just a poseur.

The whole movie was essentially a Gehry love-in. A gushing sycophantic masturbatory affair. Go ahead and skip it, you'll be better off.

trepanning?

Who knew? Apparently trepanning is alive and well in this decade...

Who... me? Root Canal? awww, you shouldn't have...

Over the past few days I've been having some tooth/jaw discomfort that, after waking me up at 3am a couple nights in a row, led me to a dentist's office. I haven't exactly been too good with dentist upkeep (haven't been in for a cleaning/maintenence in 10 years or so - yeah, I know, I know...), and it's something I've been meaning to get to. Now is as good a time as any, eh?

So basically, I have this pain in one of my lower front teeth, as well as sensitivity on the bottom of my chin (hurts when I press on my chin)... I get a next-day appointment, go in, do the description of everything, and he pokes around. He's a little unsure exactly what's causing it, but after taking an X-ray, suspects a dead or dying nerve, which probably explains the pressure/itch I feel in the bone and the weird face pain. Er... weird facial pain? "weird face pain" sounds like a pain that you get from making a weird face ("If you keep that up, your face is going to stick like that...")

So quicker than you can say "though they probably aren't related, this is what you get for waiting 10 years to see a dentist", I'm on my way to consult with an endodontist for a root canal. And I thought it was supposed to be a big deal - like something you build up to and plan ahead for. They just toss it around like they do them all the time. Oh wait, they DO do them all the time. So that's the way my Monday is shaping up. Root Canal Day.
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Let's see, add to this my "recall" trip to the Allergy Clinic (I had an allergy screening about 2 years ago after that weird hive thing, then got a letter in the mail last year "There may have been false negative results due to the use of allergens past their expiration date, so come back for a complimentary re-screening") and the check-up/physical about a week or two ago and it's just been a doctor-filled month for me. Of course, after not having seen any for 10 years, I guess I'm due. Just wait another ten years and then I can start to wonder about whether my prostate is in good health or not. Golly gee whiz, I'm starting to feel old. I better go get some more fiber in my diet.

Zingermans out of control

I rarely go to Zingerman's these days, mostly because of what I'm about to bitch and complain about, but I decided to stop by... they've got free Wi-Fi, and instead of sitting around the house, I can sit around at a public place. So anyway, they (Zingerman's) have lost their friggin' minds. Sandwiches now averaging $12, coffee gone up to $2.50, and I swear, if that sandwich shows up and the sliced meat is all balled up in the center, I'm going to have a Furious Embollism. The only good explanations I can come up with are that either they have become a tourist trap (like the baseball field charging you $7.00 for a hot dog), or one of the owners has an expensive drug habit and is using the sandwich business to fund it. Best quote to describe the ZingPrice phenomenon...
"Zingermans: good food, bad service, mercenary prices"

emo

funny tag line I saw on a post today:
"I wish my lawn was emo,
so it would cut itself."

Kansas Board of Ed. - no flying spaghetti monster?

It appears that there's been a shift in the new makeup of the Kansas State Board of Education - AWAY from the teaching of so-called "intelligent design" (hooray!). While this gives me great joy simply in the hearing of it and the apparent success of reasonable people (see also the voting-out of the Dover School board after the I.D. controversy), the only problem is then... since the I.D. people were pushing the all-possible-theories-for-life-on-this-planet should be taught (to leave room for religion), what about the teaching of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism? It was through the Kansas Board of Ed. that FSM could have been taught... but now what's a Pastafarian to do?

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...