The Alaunt

2012-02-06T14:35:00.000-08:00

The day you are born . . . if you are lucky . . . you are somebody's miracle.

They tell you that you are important and special.

As time goes on, you find out you are not so special and less important.

And finally, the day comes when you realize that you are not important, not necessary and you don't matter to anyone.

Wha?????

2012-02-02T10:16:00.000-08:00

Another Twilight reader reveals masterful, if not misplaced, descriptive skills in this partial book review on Amazon:

"Bella Swan and Edward Cullen are enmeshed in an intense, hungry love that leaves them both destroyed, yet passionately longing for more."

Destroyed . . . and yet longing for more.

A howler from Gail Collins

2012-02-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

"This should be a wake-up call to us all about the little-discussed national scandal of billionaire abuse. All around the nation, we are hearing stories about elderly billionaires being taken advantage of by grasping politicians. Here in New York we have just learned that Republican candidates for the State Senate wheedled $436,500 out of a 97-year-old billionaire over the last year. This sort of predatory attack on our billionaires must stop!"

-- From opinion piece, "The Revenge of Saul Alinsky", NY Times, 2/1/12

Google Easter Eggs in February

2012-02-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

Searching for "tilt" or "askew" makes the page to tilt to its right a bit.
"recursion" shows did u mean: recursion and allows the searcher to recursively search for recursion.
"do a barrel roll" or "z or r twice" results in 360 degree rotation of the page.

For more fun click here

2012-01-30T11:44:00.001-08:00

"May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view... where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you... beyond the next turning of the canyon walls."

-- Edward Abbey, Benediction

2012-01-25T16:59:00.000-08:00

Seen in comments in the New York Times, following globalization bitch Thomas Friedman's recent editorial lauding Chinese serfdom in service to Apple and the "disappearance" of the average worker:

"There was a quaint view after WW11 that people had a "right" to a job and that this system of capitalism would provide that better than any other system. It turns out that jobs are only a by-product of capitalism. The good times are over. Capitalism is now consuming itself for the sake of shareholders who are essentially using slave labor in China to ever greater profits. This doesn't require education but a new model."

Seen on a Stephen King thread . . .

2012-01-23T10:53:00.001-08:00

. . . regarding the inaccessibility of the recent stories except via eBook or audio book:

"I'm an old dog, and not only do I have to turn around in circles three times before I lay me down to sleep at night, I'm paper trained. I'll do whatever is needed to keep turning pages 'til they pry them out of my arthritic little sausages . . . "

The Real Best Places to Retire

2012-01-20T09:29:00.000-08:00

Finally . . . realistic suggestions that actually make sense!

"No matter where you end up in retirement, remember that relationships are more important than the weather. The warmest climate can be found amidst the safety and security of family and friends."

2012-01-12T11:05:00.001-08:00

Shutting your employees up and down is not good management.

Killing the messenger doesn't make the message go away.

2012-01-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

In a NY Times article 8/8/12, interviewing Art Oehlke, owner of the 530 antique shop in Lorain, OH (echoes of "Darling Lorain" by Paul Simon here):

Mr. Oehlke did not say how much the shop makes. But a clue, he said, is in the thermostat on the wall near the cash register, which showed 45 degrees. If the store were more profitable, he said, it would be warmer. But he preferred to see the bright side.

"It's got an advantage," he said. "If I have to go somewhere, I already have my coat on."

Never Grow Old

2012-01-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

"Do many men kill themselves, Daddy?"

"Not very many, Nick."...

"Is dying hard, Daddy?"

"No, I think it's pretty easy Nick. It all depends."

They were seated in the boat, Nick in the stern, his father rowing. The sun was coming up over the hills. A bass jumped, making a circle in the water. Nick trailed his hand in the water. It felt warm in the sharp chill of the morning.

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.

-- The Nick Adams Stories, Ernest Hemingway

2012-01-05T13:33:00.000-08:00

"America is a country where the rich all live together in exclusive towns (and the nicer parts of cities) - network only with each other and feed off each others contacts while everyone else is just a human resource to be thrown scraps and kept stupid and underemployed. The poor and under-siege members of the middle class need to understand this: that being an 'American' is a corporate logo identity and that it engenders exactly zero feelings of responsibility from the rich. So drive around with that flag on your pickup bumper. The rich don't do that. They care more about their international counterparts in rich suburbs of Paris and London and Tokyo than they do about their fellow 'Americans' in the old mill town across the river."

-- NY Times Opinion Letter, 1/5/12

Our new national poet laureate, Philip Levine, in an interview in the New York Times magazine, reacting to the question of whether he hated the rich, replied, "I don't, because I’ve met them now under silly circumstances, and they seem like hopeless jerks to me, for the most part."

2012-01-05T12:04:00.000-08:00

"It's called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."

-- George Carlin

America the Beautiful

2012-01-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

The New York Times recently included an interesting article about the genesis of the poem (and song), America the Beautiful.

Among the comments was this one:

"America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!"

Thank you; my favorite stanza of this poem, and a relevant one in our times, as it was in the times of Bates.

Wittingly or unwittingly, the lines touch upon a broad subject, one with which this nation still must come to terms: every freedom FROM something must become a freedom FOR something better. Freedom to act freely must be followed by learning the wisdom not to act wantonly; the "soul" that strives for self-betterment must control the temptation to trample upon others; the freedom to possess is not the right to beggar another. A people free from tyranny has, more than any, the great obligation to willingly build a just society, and accept the obligations and self-control that come with that.

We are adrift as a society. Let us hope that the price of finding our course will not be terribly high.

Mile 81

2012-01-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

I so didn't want my first post of the New Year to be a downer, but I was once again reminded that I will probably never be able to read Stephen King's latest effort, MILE 81, until I reconnect to the internet at home. The ONLY way to read this short story is to download it in an electronic format.

Thanks a lot, Stephen King. And I'm being sarcastic. I wish that, if you need to explore innovative and variant publication methods, you would remember that not all of your fans have eBook readers or computers. I'd pay a good price for that story as a small softcover or special edition book but I want, dammit it, to be able to buy it in a conventional format.

If you can do that for BLOCKADE BILLY, why not MILE 81?

There, I'm done.

Coda: Through the grace of the Multnomah County Library, I was able to reserve this story on CD, read by an uninspired narrator who can't do little kids' voices worth squat. Very disappointing story, so I'm glad I didn't buy it. On the bright side though is the bonus story on the CD -- The Dune -- read beautifully by Edward Hermann. It's ten times better than Mile 81 and worth the price of admission.

Mile 81: tired retread
The Dune: provocative and creepy

2011-12-01T15:34:00.000-08:00

For all those who have ever had to put a pet to sleep, I found this story today online:

Being a veterinarian, I had been called to examine a ten-year-old Irish wolfhound named Belker. The dog’s owners, Ron, his wife, Lisa, and their little boy, Shane, were all very attached to Belker, and they were hoping for a miracle.

I examined Belker and found he was dying of cancer. I told the family we couldn’t do anything for Belker, and offered to perform the euthanasia procedure for the old dog in their home.
As we made arrangements, Ron and Lisa told me they thought it would be good for six-year-old Shane to observe the procedure. They felt as though Shane might learn something from the experience.

The next day, I felt the familiar catch in my throat as Belker’s family surrounded him. Shane seemed so calm, petting the old dog for the last time, that I wondered if he understood what was going on. Within a few minutes, Belker slipped peacefully away.

The little boy seemed to accept Belker’s transition without any difficulty or confusion. We sat together for a while after Belker’s death, wondering aloud about the sad fact that animal lives are shorter than human lives.

Shane, who had been listening quietly, piped up, “I know why.”

Startled, we all turned to him. What came out of his mouth next stunned me. I’d never heard a more comforting explanation.

He said, “People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life – like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right?”

The six-year-old continued, “Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”

Two from Sherman Alexie

2011-11-26T15:33:00.000-08:00

Food Chain

This is my will:

Bury me
In an anthill.

After one week
Of this feast,

Set the ants on fire.
Make me a funeral pyre.

Let my smoke rise
Into the eyes

Of those crows
On the telephone wire.

Startle those birds
Into flight

With my last words:
I loved my life.

---

Ode to Mix Tapes

These days, it's too easy to make mix tapes.
CD burners, iPods, and Itunes
Have taken the place
Of vinyl and cassette. And, soon
Enough, clever introverts will create
Quicker point-and-click ways to declare
One's love, lust, friendship, and favor.
But I miss the labor
Of making old-school mix tapes -- the midair

Acrobatics of recording one song
At a time. It sometimes took days
To play, choose, pause,
Ponder, record, replay, erase,
And replace. But there was no magic wand.
It was blue-collar work. A great mix tape
Was sculpture designed to seduce
And let the hounds loose.
A great mix tape was three-chord parade

Led by the first song, something bold and brave,
A heat-seeker like Prince with "Cream,"
Or "Let's Get It On," by Marvin Gaye.
The next song was always Patsy Cline's "Sweet Dreams,"
or something by Hank. But O, the last track
Was the vessel that contained
The most devotion and pain
And made promises that you couldn't take back.

--Sherman Alexie, War Dance, 2009

2011-11-11T12:20:00.000-08:00

This is about all the bad days in the world. I used to have some little bad days, and I kept them in a little box. And one day, I threw them out into the yard. “Oh, it’s just a couple little innocent bad days.” Well, we had a big rain. I don’t know what it was growing in but I think we used to put eggshells out there and coffee grounds, too. Don’t plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke ‘em down to nothin’. They’re your days. Choke ‘em!”

-- Tom Waits

The Laughing Heart

2011-11-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

-- Charles Bukowski

2011-11-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

The followed was written by Bill Cheney, CEO of the Credit Union National Association.

"Hear, hear," I say. The banks brought this all upon themselves.

Bank Transfer Day

The movement toward credit unions over the last several weeks has been nothing less than phenomenal. For us in the credit union movement, it is confirmation of our long-standing tenant that credit unions are "people helping people."

But it doesn't have to end this Saturday. As Kristen Christian -- the founder of Bank Transfer Day -- said: "November 5th is merely a deadline goal." (Facebook, Oct. 27)

As far as credit unions are concerned, any day is a good day for a consumer to become a credit union member. Nov. 5 is one good day to join, and we certainly encourage consumers to make the change.

Because when a consumer joins a credit union, he or she takes the first step for themselves, and their families, in moving toward financial freedom.

Consider this: Consumers who join a credit union can expect to save at least $70 in lower rates, higher return on savings and lower or no fees -- just as current credit union members did in the 12 months between June '10 and June '11.

And that's just on average; consumers who are loyal members of credit unions -- utilizing them extensively -- often receive financial benefits that are much greater than the average.

The best news for consumers, however, is that they truly seem to comprehend how they can benefit from credit union membership. The changes over the last several weeks -- since Sept. 29, when Bank of America announced its $5 debit card fee -- tell the story.

Our calculations at the Credit Union National Assn. (CUNA), based on a quick survey of our member credit unions from all across the nation, indicate that consumers have been moving by the tens of thousands -- and shifting their money by the hundreds of millions -- to credit unions over these past four weeks.

From what our member credit unions are telling us, the reason for the consumer swing is clear: Consumers are upset about bank fees; they've just had enough.

And, consumers have also been intrigued by "Bank Transfer Day," another reason our credit unions are telling us their new members are coming in the door.

These new credit union members have made the right choice, because they can now start saving.

In fact, if all of the people signed up to participate in "Bank Transfer Day" on Saturday do so, and remain credit union members over the year that follows, those consumers will save a combined $4.8 million. Combine that with the $5 per month that they WON'T be paying in debit card fees, and you're up to $5.1 million.

But that's just the start. Suppose all of those others who have been invited by their friends to join in "Bank Transfer Day" do, in fact, decide to join credit unions. As of this writing, that's more than 423,000 persons -- who, together, would stand to save $31.7 million in combined credit unions savings and no bank debit card fee.

That's money that goes right into the pockets of consumers -- not into the vaults of banks, or their shareholders' wallets.

However, to everyday working people -- struggling to do their level best in a lackluster economy -- that's real money that may be better spent on their families and their futures. Credit unions are proud to give them that opportunity.

This Saturday will no doubt be an historic day for consumers and credit unions alike. Consumers want to be free of high fees, and credit unions want to help free them.

It's one day for consumers to make a smarter choice. But it doesn't have to end there: Every day is a good day to join a credit union.

What's Playing in Hell?

2011-10-17T11:48:00.001-07:00

According to Chuck Palaniuk, in an interview with the magazine, Mother Jones, regarding his new book, Damned:

MJ: Okay, new subject: Of all the movies that could be playing on an endless loop in hell, why did you choose The English Patient?

CP: I wanted a kind of lofty movie that a prepubescent girl would not really understand or appreciate. The Piano is also playing in hell. And also because, to tell the truth, sitting through both those movies was kind of a living hell for me. I just didn't get [their acclaim]. So that part of Madison is definitely me.

Read the rest of the interview here:

Misplaced Emphasis on Higher Education

2011-10-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

I was going to write something along the lines of the following blog entry but realized that Becca had already done most of the work:

Higher Education

I had an interesting discussion with a new acquaintance from England the other day, and the conversation turned to children. She had two – a boy age 19, and a girl, age 17.

“Is your son away at school?” I asked, as most 19-year old’s are these days.

“No,” she replied in her lovely British accent. “He’s a musician and composer, and he’s trying to make a go of it. He had no interest in college – he just wanted to get out and do what he loved doing. But he’ll probably have to go back to England because he’s much more likely to have success there than he would do over here.”

I relayed my own son’s similar feelings about college, and how we had felt lucky to find a technical college dedicated to the field of study he was most interested in.

“It’s all so different over here,” she continued. “In England, it’s not expected that everyone will go off to University. It’s rather normal to get a proper job after you finish high school. Here, the kids seem pressured to go to college and all their friends are going so they want to go as well, even if they really don’t know what they want to study.”

I’ve had similar feelings about the push toward higher education ever since my son decided not to pursue the ubiquitous four-year degree. Those feelings have intensified in the past 10 years as I’ve seen several young people feel pressured to attend college, and then feel like a failure when they (a) find out they can’t make the grade or the payments; or (b) decide they’d rather pursue some other lifestyle path.

I was reminded of this tonight during rehearsal for the community theater group I’m working with. In the cast of the show we’re putting up, there are five young people between the ages of 22 and 30. Each of them has a four year degree from a top state university. Each of them was a better than average student in high school and in college.

None of them has a job.

Well, they have jobs, but they’re working in restaurants or retail clothing stores or driving trucks. A few of them are lucky enough to have part-time jobs in their fields (teaching, business, city planning) but nothing that will come close to paying the rent. They also have student loans which they can’t repay. So before they’re even established in life, they’re in big-time debt.

It made me feel even luckier that my son has been self-supporting since the age of 20, and was able to buy his first home at the age of 22. He’s been employed full time in his field since he finished his course of study, a program that was dedicated solely to his area of interest and focused entirely on that discipline. He was one of the lucky ones. He knew what he wanted to do, and he went after it. However, he had no assistance from anyone at his high school. The attitude of the counselors was “if you’re not interested in four year college, we’re not interested in helping you.”

I think we’re failing a lot of young people with that attitude. Not everyone needs to or is able pursue higher education in the form of a four year university. Students of all abilities should be encouraged to look for viable alternatives to the traditional university experience and there should be more focused educational avenues available for people who want to prepare for a specific career. Counselors should help young people discover their strengths and interests and guide them toward the proper educational experience, whether that’s a four year college, community college, technical school, or an apprenticeship.

Unfortunately many opportunities for trades and crafts persons have been “outsourced,” which has not only diminished the possibility for finding employment in those fields, but also devalued the work monetarily and in terms of status. The professional careers are supposedly “where the money’s at” these days, but there seem to be too many applicants for too few positions. It’s part and parcel of the polarization of our society – the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the haves and have-nots. The middle ground seems to be disappearing every day, and we all seem to be scrambling toward the high or low ends of society’s see-saw.

In the end, how valuable is a higher education if you can neither pay for it nor use it?

Click here to see original source

We Are Not Victims

2011-09-12T09:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was September 11^th . I will offer my own personal prayer to the families of those lost in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, whether employees, firefighters, or police but I do not think we are well served peeling this scab open each year or allowing politicians to co-opt the tragedy as those who screamed “Remember the Maine” did so many years ago. How many years will this go on?

It is appropriate to celebrate our Independence Day – commemoration of liberation and the birth of a nation. It is appropriate to honor our workers with Labor Day, and our veterans with Memorial Day. But if someone proposes a national holiday to honor the victims of 9/11, I will protest strenuously. Why should we continue to wail and bemoan our unfortunate experience as victim and target? What can it do but inspire hate and anger?

Some may say, “Well, we celebrate Memorial Day” to honor our fallen soldiers. It’s not the same thing. Soldiers go into service to fight for a cause and they know that, among other things they may be required to do, they may die. The victims of September 11^th did not go to work, assuming that one of the risks of their eight hours on the job would be death. They were VICTIMS.

Do we, as a nation, come together each year to commemorate the discovery of a vaccine for polio? To remember the fall of the Berlin Wall? Are we building a memorial to honor the dead of massive natural disasters or many thousands more than the victims of 9/11 who fell in Iraq or Afghanistan?

Certainly we should not forget tragedies such as the San Francisco Earthquake, the dropping of the bomb on Japan or the horrors of the concentration camps in Europe, but the point in remembering these things is to learn from them and move on in order to make the world a better place, not to bitterly dwell upon them and use the event to flog an enemy we have not yet brought to justice.

Memory of 9/11 belongs in context with other unfortunate events in our history and the history of the world. It does not deserve to be beaten to death or used for political fodder in an election year which is, you will notice, when it is most fervently unearthed and eulogized.

No Big Pictures

2011-08-12T11:51:00.000-07:00

In Vermont, it is illegal to paint landscapes in times of war.

2011-07-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

Tell all my mourners
To mourn in red --
Cause there ain't no sense
In my bein' dead.

- "Wake" by Langston Hughes

Terry Pratchett's Alzheimer's Speech

2011-06-03T11:17:00.000-07:00

Terry Pratchett's Alzheimer's Speech in Full

Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008

My name is Terry Pratchett, author of a series of inexplicably successful fantasy books and I have had Alzheimer's now for the past two years plus, in which time I managed to write a couple of bestsellers.

I have a rare variant. I don't understand very much about it, but apparently if you are going to have Alzheimer's it's a good one to have.

So, a stroke of luck there then!

Interestingly enough, when I was diagnosed last December by those nice people at Addenbrooke's, I started a very different journey through dementia.

This one had much better scenery, interesting and often very attractive inhabitants, wonderful wildlife and many opportunities for excitement and adventure.

Those of you who's last experience with computer games was looking at Lara Croft's buttocks might not be aware of how good they have become as audio and visual experiences, although I would concede that Lara's buttocks were a visual experience in their own right.

But in this case I was travelling through a country that was part of the huge computer game called Oblivion, which is so beautifully detailed that I have often ridden around it to enjoy the scenery and weather and have hardly bothered to kill anything at all.

At the same time as I began exploring the wonderful Kingdom of Dementia, which is next door to the Kingdom of Mania, I was also experiencing the slightly more realistic experience of being a 59 year old who finds they have early onset Alzheimer's.

Apparently I reacted to this situation in a reasonably typical way, with a sense of loss and abandonment with an incoherent, or perhaps I should say, violently coherent fury that made the Miltonic Lucifer's rage against Heaven seem a bit miffed by comparison. That fire still burns.

I want to go on writing! Admittedly, that means I have to stay alive.

You can't write books when you are dead, unless your name is L. Ron Hubbard.

And so now I'm a game for real. It's a nasty disease, surrounded by shadows and small, largely unseen tragedies.

People don't know what to say, unless they have had it in the family.

People ask me why I announced that I had Alzheimer's.

My response was: why shouldn't I?

I remember when people died "of a long illness" now we call cancer by its name, and as every wizard knows, once you have a thing's real name you have the first step to its taming.

We are at war with cancer, and we use that vocabulary.

We battle, we are brave, we survive. And we have a large armaments industry.

For those of us with early onset in particular, it's more of a series of skirmishes.

My GP is helpful and patient, but I don't have a specialist locally.

The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept because I'm too young to have Alzheimer's for free, a situation I'm okay with, in a want-to-kick-a-politician-in-the-teeth-kind of way.

But, on the whole, you try to be your own doctor.

The internet twangs night and day. I walk a lot and take more supplements than the Sunday papers. We talk to one another and compare regimes.

Part of me lives in a world of new age remedies and science, and some of the science is a little like voodoo.

But science was never an exact science, and personally I'd eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.

Fortunately, I have the Greek Chorus to calm me down

Soon after I told the world my website fell over and my PA had to spend the evening negotiating more bandwidth.

I had more than 60,000 messages within the first few hours.

Most of them were readers and well-wishers.

Some of them wanted to sell me snake oil and I'm not necessarily going to dismiss all of these, as I have never found a rusty snake.

But a large handful came from 'experienced' sufferers, successfully fighting a holding action, and various people in universities and research establishments who had, despite all expectations, risen to high places in their various professions even while being confirmed readers of my books.

And they said; can we help? They are the Greek Chorus. Only two of them are known to each other and they give me their advice on various options that I suggest.

They include a Wiccan, too. It's a good idea to cover all the angles.

It was interesting when I asked about having my dental amalgam fillings removed.

There was a chorus of ? hrumph, no scientific evidence, hrumph???., but if you can afford to have it done properly then it certainly won't do any harm and you never know.

And that is where I am, along with many others, scrabbling to stay ahead long enough to be there when the cure, which I suspect may be more like a regime, comes along.

Say it will be soon - there's nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with the disease will double within a generation.

And in most cases you will find alongside the sufferer you will find a spouse, suffering as much. It's a shock and a shame, then, to find out that funding for research is three per cent of that which goes to find cancer cures.

Perhaps that is why, for example, that I know three people who have successfully survived brain tumours but no-one who has beaten Alzheimer's???although among the Greek Chorus are some who are giving it a hard time.

I'd like a chance to die like my father did - of cancer, at 86.

Remember, I'm speaking as a man with Alzheimer's, which strips away your living self a bit at a time.

Before he went to spend his last two weeks in a hospice he was bustling around the house, fixing things.

He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing who we were and who he was.

Right now, I envy him. And there are thousands like me, except that they don't get heard.

So let's shout something loud enough to hear. We need you and you need money. I'm giving you a million dollars. Spend it wisely.

2011-05-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

"Here's what I love: when a great writer turns me into a Jew from Chicago, a lesbian out of South Carolina, or a black woman moving into a subway entrance in Harlem. Turn me into something else, writers of the world. Make me Muslim, heretic, hermaphrodite. Put me into a crusader's armor, a cardinal's vestments. Let me feel the pygmy's heartbeat, the queen's breast, the torturer's pleasure, the Nile's taste, or the nomad's thirst. Tell me everything I must know. Hold nothing back."

-- Pat Conroy, "My Reading Life", 2010

That's Auel, Folks

2011-04-11T11:08:00.001-07:00

The last volume in Jean Auel's "Earth's Children" series is here and apparently it is a dreary stinker. I'm judging by the hundreds of disappointed reviews by people who have already read the book and posted their feelings online.

I haven't read it yet and likely won't since I stopped at the third book and never cared for Jondalar.

This excerpt from a review by Tea With the Squash God:

"However, I also respect the contract with the readers, and if you’ve put the gun on the mantle in book three, you are required to fire it by book six. Saying, 'Hey, look, remember that gun from book three?' does not count as firing it. Visions and prophecies are not like remainders in long division — merely mentioning them does not count as resolving them."

Fed Up

2011-04-03T16:27:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting site which discusses the Federal Reserve.

Right off the bat, they make an observation that I've often pondered: Why don't our high schools teach 1) Fiscal responsibility and the history of things like the Federal Reserve and 2) Logical argument and the detection of fallacious types of argument?

Orientation

2011-03-31T16:17:00.001-07:00

I thought I'd been getting awfully negative as a result of work, my injury, the way I have no current creative direction (a killer for me).

I was sure when I had the following exchange with a phone customer today:

She: "Computers live in a world of their own."
Me: (waiting for the information to come up) "Yep, don't you wish there was a way to spank them?"
She: "Oh, no! I wish there was a way to reach them and communicate effectively!"

Oh my, I was ashamed.

I've seldom had such an obvious wake-up call.

2011-03-26T16:40:00.001-07:00

Just when I think I'm finished with Love, it smiles and buys me another drink.

-- Anonymous

2011-03-26T16:31:00.001-07:00

The Long Good Boys

2011-03-06T10:24:00.000-08:00

The Illusion of Companionship

2011-02-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

Here is an excerpt from a very illuminating FRONTLINE interview with Sherry Turkle:

When one talks to people who are enthusiasts for technology, they often will say, look, it's not one or the other. Having robots or text messages or cell phones to deal with all the things that we don't have time or the inclination to deal with ourselves gives us more time to have meaningful connections that we really want to have.

This is a very compelling argument until you hang out for five years with teenagers who theoretically are the ones who are supposed to be having their text messages and their long conversations, too.

What I'm seeing is a generation that says consistently, "I would rather text than make a telephone call." Why? It's less risky. I can just get the information out there. I don't have to get all involved; it's more efficient. I would rather text than see somebody face to face.

There's this sense that you can have the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. The real demands of friendship, of intimacy, are complicated. They're hard. They involve a lot of negotiation. They're all the things that are difficult about adolescence. And adolescence is the time when people are using technology to skip and to cut corners and to not have to do some of these very hard things.

So of course people try to use everything. But a generation really is growing up that, because it's given the option to not do some of the hardest things in adolescence, are growing up without some basic skills in many cases, and that's very concerning to me.

One of the things I've found with continual connectivity is there's an anxiety of disconnection; that these teens have a kind of panic. They say things like: "I lost my iPhone; it felt like somebody died, as though I'd lost my mind. If I don't have my iPhone with me, I continue to feel it vibrating. I think about it in my locker." The technology is already part of themselves.

And with the constant possibility of connectivity, one of the things that I see is ... a very subtle movement from "I have a feeling I want to make a call" to "I want to have a feeling I need to make a call" -- in other words, people almost feeling as if they can't feel their feeling unless they're connected.

I'm hearing this all over now, so it stops being pathological if it becomes a generational style. And I think we have to ask ourselves, well, what are some of the other implications of that? Because certainly our models of what adolescents go through in order to develop independent identities did not leave room for that kind of perpetual reaching out to other people in order to feel a sense of self. That was something you hopefully went through and then developed the kind of thing where: "I have a feeling. I want to tell somebody about it."

2011-02-04T16:48:00.001-08:00

"It's easier to empathize with the dog than with the flea."
-- Eric Greene, "The Importance of Being Cute" from Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog, 2010

2011-01-22T14:54:00.001-08:00

Twilight + Anne Rice + L.L. Bean + Photo shoot = "Outerwear With a Vampire"

2011-01-22T14:52:00.001-08:00

"Benedict and I have had difficult periods. And we always faced serious, scary problems. But I have a theory about courage. I don't think it's a moment of bravery when you have a rush of adrenaline. Courage is something level, a kind of force that sustains you. And that's what it takes to face difficult things, to make it through life successfully."

-- Nancy Freedman, co-author of the book Mrs. Mike

2011-01-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

"I've never said I was gay and I've never said that I wasn't. A Lot of people would say that I wasn't because I never do anything about it. What I'm trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else. Now people come up to you and say, 'I'm a press agent' or 'I'm a writer.' I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist."

-- Edward Gorey in an interview with Lisa Solod,
Boston Magazine, September 1980

2011-01-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

"I ate at The Broken Drum, a little place on Wilshire whose motto is -- You Can't Beat It. The pun is bad but the food is good."

-- Richard Matheson, "Someone Is Bleeding", Lion Books, 1953
Recently reissued together with two other early Noir titles
as NOIR: 3 Novels of Suspense, Forge, 1997

This sounds like SOP for many businesses, too

2010-12-28T14:16:00.000-08:00

The Six Phases of a Project

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the Guilty
5. Punishment of the Weak
6. Praise & Honors for the Nonparticipants

2010-12-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

There are many philosophies about what makes a person. You are what you think. You are the work you do. You are what you love. You are where you live. You are what you read, said Francois Mauriac, "but I'd know you better if you tell me what you reread."

-- The House at Royal Oak by Carol Eron Rizzoli, 2010

Secret Babies

2010-12-24T15:56:00.001-08:00

I recently became aware of a series of books published by Harlequin on the curious topic of "Secret Babies." I find peoples' apparent interest in these story lines hilarious. Sometimes Harlequin combines the Secret Baby theme with its other series topics like "Nascar" or "Sheiks" or "Millionaires" or "Mistresses."

Times have changed. The old Harlequin Romances used to be about meeting rich men at ski resorts, getting into the Candy Stripers to snag a doctor or having a falling out with the boy next door. Now the hot guys are into oil, hedge funds or some other sort of high finance.

Some favorite titles spotted:

Lock, Stock & Secret Baby
Secret Baby, Convenient Wife
Secret Sheikh, Secret Baby
The Mediterranean Millionaire's Secret Baby
Motive: Secret Baby
Triplet Secret Babies (!!!)
The Secret Baby Bargain
Innocent Wife, Baby of Shame

I swear, these are real Harlequin titles and you can actually buy them for very few buckerinos. One might ask, HOW can a baby be secret . . . especially triplet secret babies. And how can a wife be innocent and yet have a baby of shame? And do the Secret Sheikh and the Secret Baby know that each other exists?

I may have to actually read one of these things to find out what the attraction is.

And I still might not get it.

ALERT!

Harlequin has posted another blog entry on Secret Babies and the folks who looovvvve them.

Trail of Breadcrumbs

2010-12-13T09:52:00.000-08:00

This one made me laugh!

See more illustrations and creativity at:
http://lightnightrains.blogspot.com

Knit picker

2010-11-07T10:04:00.000-08:00

Like the strange little creature in Edward Gorey's illustrated book, THE DOUBTFUL GUEST, I now have a nice little scarf. It is handmade, blue and green, composed of lots of tiny knitted squares and I found it waiting on a metal railing as I walked to work this morning.

It was colder than I had expected (but not too cold). Just about right for putting the little handmade scarflet to work.

Since I have decided to no longer bring precycled and found items to work, or to spend my own money baking stuff for the same place it's nice to adopt something for myself. Particularly something unique that didn't cost anything, was not made in China (I assume) and, no doubt, has an interesting history.

Lines written in the days of growing darkness

2010-11-07T08:57:00.000-08:00

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing, as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

-- Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author, most recently, of "Swan: Poems and Prose Poems"

Shameful behavior

2010-11-01T15:16:00.000-07:00

My level of disgust at the election process has reached new highs this year. I've avoided most of the stupidity because I got rid of the television and don't answer the phone in the evening. I voted early after educating myself by reading and checking up on the candidates. Good thing I did, because the two candidates for Governor gave us only ONE public debate. There should be a law against it . . . or a law requiring candidates for major political office to hold yeah number of public debates so that people have something to base their balloting on other than a lot of slanted ads and name calling.

At any rate, Oregon Public Broadcasting finally gave up expecting the candidates to agree to even one more debate and put up a "Virtual Debate" on its website. It includes questions that should be asked and comments by both candidates that relate to these questions. Its truly sad when a public radio station has to go to that degree of trouble to present information that candidates are apparently afraid to give us face-to-face.

The link is:
http://news.opb.org/elections/questions-candidates/

In case you have not held your nose and voted.

Can't think of English words to express that certain feeling?

2010-11-01T14:52:00.000-07:00

L’esprit d’escalier: The feeling you get after leaving a conversation, when you think of all the things you should have said. Translated it means “the spirit of the staircase.” French

Waldeinsamkeit: The feeling of being alone in the woods. German

Meraki: Doing something with soul, creativity, or love. Greek

Forelsket: The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love. Norwegian

Gigil: The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute. Filipino

Pochemuchka: A person who asks a lot of questions. Russian

Pena ajena: The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation. Mexican Spanish

Cualacino: The mark left on a table by a cold glass. Italian

Ilunga: A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time. Tshiluba, Congo

2010-10-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Just waited half an hour at the library to get a computer which happened to be next to an extremely smelly street person reading a newspaper. I can't stand it. Will have to come back later . . .

Days have passed and I had to add that, a week ago, it happened again. But this time it was a guy with uncontrollable flatulence. He cleared the entire table within five minutes of the time he sat down. There must be something (other than him) in the air this month . . .

Dud Dud Dud

2010-10-09T14:34:00.000-07:00

The following blog posted on tabarnhart.net describes -- better than I can at the moment -- the biggest thing that bothers me about ex-Trailblazer-candidate-for-Governor, Chris Dudley (other than the fact that he has never run for - or served in - any public office at any time and his first shot is the governorship, his seeming aversion to any sort of public debate, and -- at the one debate he took part in -- the incredible statement that this was his "first election!" Not debate. Not race. Not campaign. No, apparently in his mind he has already been elected).

--

Dudley: Burning Down the House

in Willamette Week, Nigel “Pulitzerman” Jaquiss reports that Chris Dudley took a tax exemption on a house he let the Lake Oswego Fire Dept burn for a training exercise. The thought was nice — the Fire Dept needs the chance to practice skills under relatively controlled but realistic conditions — but the exemption was probably not legal. However, at the time, his accountant believed it was, so even if Duds is forced to repay the money, and he claimed over $140,000 for the $350,000 house, the issue isn’t whether he broke the law.

The issue is how much Chris Dudley puts his own wealth at the forefront of all he does. From moving to Camas to save a few bucks on taxes to working in the wealth industry to destroying an entire house for the tax savings, Dudley is about his vast and growing wealth. And as his comments on the minimum wage revealed so starkly, he not only has no idea what working- and middle-class Oregonians lives are like, he has no desire to gain that understanding. Remember: He did not speak up for minimum wage workers. He said it made no sense to earn a “high” minimum wage and get tips.

$17,000 a year, plus tips, makes no sense to Chris Dudley. Burning down a house to enhance his own wealth does.

Having lived in the Portland metropolitan area for most of my life, and having attended Marylhurst University, I came to appreciate the beauty of many of the old homes and grounds in Lake Oswego. It's become a common practice for home buyers to swoop into Lake O, snap up old property and promptly tear it down to erect a McMansion. Nothing, mind you, wrong with the old house. The house Dudley "generously" allowed the fire department to torch was simply not his cup of tea. That sort of perspective is so out of the realm of most struggling Oregonians today that the idea that a person who embraces it -- who cannot have the slightest idea of what it is like to make ends meet from day to day -- may be our governor, makes my blood run cold.

The Ghost Kitten

2010-09-16T13:14:00.001-07:00

It's only 1:14 pm and already this has been a very strange day in a high holidays, week-off, down-time away from the craziness at work period. Imagine that while you were listening to NPR, your hand strayed to the dial and you suddenly found yourself listening to something in a foreign language with a loud, screechy back beat.

The first person I saw on my way to St. Honore Bakery for life-affirming coffee and an almond croissant was the nameless yuppie albino guy with the buzz cut and the big butt. If I don't describe him in very flattering terms, it is because he's one of the few neighbors who won't speak to people who live in apartments east of NW 27th and throws paper and trash on the ground as he walks along babbling to his friends. To his credit, he doesn't seem to be a chronic cell phone or bluetooth abuser and I haven't seen him set foot on a Segway although it may only be a matter of time. This gentleman was walking along in front of me with an umbrella stuffed into the back of his pants. OK, if you don't want to carry your umbrella in your hand maybe you think stuffing it down the back of your pants solves the problem. But no, neighbor, it does not when it makes a large butt look even bigger, when you keep fiddling with it and when people behind you have a view that would mortify you if you were able to see it yourself.

A mere block further along I was horrified to see a tiny kitten, perhaps five-weeks-old, bounce out into the middle of 25th. Cars were coming from both directions and I thought, "you are going to be a kitten pancake." Amazingly, the little waif, who was in mid-road, managed to avoid both cars while being buffeted by the turbulence produced and deposited under a car parked on the east side of the street.

I dashed over, knelt on the sidewalk and looked underneath. No kitten. Calling, "Kitty, kitty" and making mama cat noises, I checked the front and the back of the car and then the bushes on the other side of the walk for good measure. No kitten! This morsel was too small to leap up into the undercarriage of the car so where did he go? All the way to the corner, I kept looking back to see if he would put in an appearance and . . . no kitten.

Turning onto Thurman, I was treated to the sight of an otherwise seemingly normal 20-something eating a cookie and walking toward me wearing only the bottoms of blue plaid pajamas.

A block later, my purchase of a paper at Food Front was interrupted by a loud, crazy guy standing in the doorway yelling that the management needed to call the cops on the Equal Rights canvassers because they were Nazis and had put a swasika on the window. Curious eyes turned to the window which was completely blank. The guy railed for a minute or so and then left.

Which brings me to a story that I read in the Oregonian after finally sitting down to my coffee at St. Honore. This front page article titled, "Use of illegal drugs up 9 percent, study finds" notes that Ecstasy and meth use increased by double digits in 2009. Washington sez, "The rate of illegal drug use rose last year to the highest level in nearly a decade, fueled by a sharp increase in marijuana use . . ."

A clueless cog in the governmental bureaucracy machine, Gil Kerlikowske, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, seems primarily outraged by the rise in weed use which he blames on "eroding attitudes" and a growing number of states approving medicinal marijuana.

Apparently Mr. Kerlikowske hasn't considered that we're in a deep recession and that many people are severely depressed, broke and out of work. Maybe it hasn't entered his mind that the market for medical marijuana has grown since we live in an MS and Parkinson's belt, we have an large aging population of baby boomers with associated aches and pains plus a bumper crop of various injured and tramatized veterans of our country's various wars, preemptive attacks and occupations.

Perhaps Mr. Kerlikowske doesn't see what I see on the street. Some of it isn't as weirdly harmless as a ghost kitten or a guy with no fashion sense. Some of it makes you want to cry. People who once had enough to live on, who have no family, whose social and government support networks have evaporated. People who could steal but, instead, try to make it by picking bottles and precycling things out of dumpsters. A few days ago I watched a guy on a bike approach the smoking bench outside the building where I work. He deftly upended the butt pail into a newspaper, carefully folded it up, stuffed it into his pack and rode off on an old bike. I flashed on the stories of German aristocrats picking the butts of American GIs out of the gutters in postwar Berlin. If these people can scrape together enough to occasionally self-medicate because they can't afford a counselor of a pharmaceutical company's overpriced antidepressants who can blame them?

Apparently self-righteous people like Mr. Kerlikowske. These same people, it seems, agreed with Mr. Obama that poverty includes people who make a quarter of a million dollars.

It's all a matter of perspective and today, I ask these questions because I need to write them down.

Stoppard me if you've heard this one

2010-09-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

Playwrite Sir Tom Stoppard (73) recently told the president of the London Library: "I have a spasm of envy for the person that was killed by a falling bookcase, as long as it doesn't happen prematurely. [It] would be a good way to go. You go when you are in a good frame of mind and you are doing something pleasant and interesting. A lot of people would say, 'I would rather have a heart attack at the height of sexual passion.' On the whole, I would prefer to be killed by a bookcase."

I think you're sauceome

2010-08-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

Go right now and visit the wonderful, true, heartfelt, hardass world of Sarah Becan!

I think you're sauceome

Many more cartoons, recipes, etc. just click the buttons.

There's only one way we want to die . . .

2010-08-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

. . spontaneous combustion. The unexplained phenomenon of being so guilty and happy; so obsessed, so driven, and so fanatical that you just burst into flames for no apparent reason. On the street. At work. Hopefully, for me, in an airport. And if we work together, it could happen to us all at once when we're out somewhere causing trouble. It's a beautiful death, dramatic, scary, internally cleansing, and all you leave for the rest of the world to see is a really good pair of shoes. I have a lot of books on spontaneous combustion, or "fire from heaven" as it has been called, and all the pictures of the lucky dead are the same. Ashes. Shoes. Ashes. Shoes. So it all boils down to a religious lesson. Be prepared. Always wear stylish shoes. They won't be comfortable. They shouldn't be. It hurts to be this pure.

-- John Waters, Role Models, 2010

Long for this world

2010-08-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

A new and interesting book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Weiner explores the scientific battle against - and the nature of - aging.

From Abraham Verghese's New York Times book review (8/1/10):

"This is a good time to be mortal," Weiner writes, noting that life expectancy in the developed world is abouat 80 years, and improving. Yet evolution has equipped us with bodies and instincts designed only to get us to a reproductive age and not beyond. "We get old because our ancestors died young," Weiner writes. "We get old because old age had so little weight in the scales of evolution; because there were never enough Old Ones around to count for much in the scales." The first half of life is orderly, a miracle of "detailed harmonious unfolding" beginning with the embryo. What comes after our reproductive years is "more like the random crumpling of what had been neatly folded origami, or the erosion of stone. The withering of the roses in the bowl is as drunken and disorderly as their blossoming was regular and precise."

Which suggests, in what I persist in putting an optimistic slant on, that once we are not compelled or directed or driven by hormones or demands of one kind or another we may began to choose to travel whatever random path beckons, for whatever reason.

"Drunken and disorderly" . . . or whatever.

Why not drop by . . .

2010-07-31T16:35:00.000-07:00

. . . and see what the Friends of Irony are up to?

The one we feed

2010-07-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

One day an old Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson. He said:

“There are two wolves fighting inside all of us - the wolf of Fear and Hate, and the wolf of Love and Peace.”

The grandson listened, then looked up at his grandfather and asked, “Which one will win?”

The grandfather replied:

“The one we feed.”

2010-07-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

"Some men are a list of ingredients with no recipe."
-- from The Matter by Kim Addonizio

"Not every man is born with a boat to catch."
-- Carly Simon

Every reformation must have its victims.

2010-07-18T16:45:00.001-07:00

You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.

-- The Complete Works of Saki

500,000 people worldwide . . .

2010-07-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

. . . die each year in road accidents. Apparently this is an acceptable sacrifice for the freedom of the road.

"Two-thirds of these deaths involve pedestrians," says anti-car activist Jan Lundberg, "of which one-third are children. Just in the United States about forty-two thousand people die per year because of auto collisions, nearly as many as the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam. Everybody knows someone who has died or been seriously injured in a car crash, yet cars have insinuated themselves into our social life - and into our psyches - so thoroughly that we somehow accept these deaths as inevitable, or not shocking, as opposed to perceiving them for what they are: a direct and predictable result of choosing to base our economic and social systems on this particular piece of technology."

What's worse is that even more people die each year from respiratory illness stemming from auto-related toxins than die from traffic crashes.

"We have become slaves to these machines. If a group of aliens came to this planet and said they would bring us all sorts of goodies like jet skis, tomatoes in January, computers, and so on (or at least they would bring them to the richest of us), on the multiple conditions that we offer up to them a yearly sacrifice of a half-million human lives, change our planet's climate, individually spend increasing amounts of time serving them, and socially devote an ever-increasing amount of land and other resources to their service, we would rebel in a flash. Or at least I hope we would. But that's the reality we face."

-- For more . . . Jan Lundberg's website: Culture Change

2010-07-11T10:19:00.001-07:00

"I've known that there have existed people who were whole. I have known some. They went about almost naked, they did not have money, they were hunter/gatherers, gathering a lot more than hunting. They 'knew' things they could not possibly know. They slept in huddles, like cats do. They were nomads. They avoided confrontation and were appalled by (human) violence. Of course they were not civilized."

-- A man from Hawaii, in correspondence with Derrick Jensen

The way

2010-07-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

On certain days, powers converge and a theme emerges. A couple of days ago, something decided that it was going to be a day where people from out of town continually approached me for directions. First, two young Japanese ladies on W. Burnside asked about how to find the stop for the #56 bus. At Powell's an older gentleman in the coffee shop wanted to know how to get to OMSI. Then, on the streetcar, two greyhaired grandparents who were confused about where the shopping districts were were dissuaded from debarking at the Good Samaritan Hospital stop (where there are no shops) and instead exiting at NW 23rd & Marshall and walking south. If I hadn't gone home then there would probably have been more. I picture them wandering about downtown Portland looking for yet another person whose unofficial duty of the day is giving directions.

The Culture of Make Believe

2010-07-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, David Edwards, the author of Burning All Illusions, said to me, "If the first rule of a dysfunctional system is 'Don't talk about it,' then our primary goal should be to tell the truth, to be as honest as we can manage to be. When I read something truthful, something real, I breathe a deep sigh and say, 'Fantastic - I wasn't mad or alone in thinking that, after all!' So often we are left to our own devices, struggling in the dark with this external and internal propaganda system. At that point, for someone to tell us the truth is a gift. In a world where people all around us are lying and confusing us, to be honest is a great kindness."

The primary point is this: I now understand that the dissonance I felt for so long is a natural step in rejecting one's socialization - a less refined term would be brainwashing. It is not possible - at least in my own case - to move from one way of perceiving the world to another without a transition of confusion, loss, even hopelessness. Had I known this earlier - had I an understanding of how transitions occur - my period of questioning my sanity may have been shorter, my desperation less deep. This may have been a good thing. Or it may not have been a good thing: My search for a community of like hearts and minds (in books and in person) may then have been less intense, less immediate.

I don't suppose that at this point it much matters. That particular transition is over for me, and so far as the other transitions and transformations that take place now, more or less routinely, I have come to accept dissonance - confusion, contradictory impulses, fear - as something not to be feared in and of itself, but in a sense to be welcomed and entered into as a necessary doorway to new understanding.

-- from The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen

2010-07-10T13:31:00.000-07:00

"If I were permitted to write all the ballads I need not care who makes the laws of the nation."

-- Andrew Fletcher

Two recent Oregonian headlines . . .

2010-07-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

. . . that might be (but aren't) related:

"Seaside man arrested in I-205 hit-and-run"
and
"Woman who hit dead horse wins $2.7 million"

Seen on Tri-Met Tales

2010-07-05T14:56:00.001-07:00

"An elderly fellow once sat next to me. He smelled like a box of crayons and it was quite pleasant."

2010-07-04T12:22:00.001-07:00

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. You can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

– Sproul Hall Steps, December 2, 1964
Mario Savio, "Bodies Upon the Gears" speech

The Absurdity of Debt

2010-07-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

"When a person with spare money helps an entrepreneur start a business, it should be seen as a risky investment, not as a loan. Entrepreneurs should be financed by investors who stand to lose their money if the business fails — it should not be seen as a repayable loan. No debt! This approach will massively reduce malinvestments because it will encourage high levels of due diligence. Moral hazards are eliminated when people have skin in the game. A reduced incidence of malinvestments will in turn make the inevitable recessions mild and brief, as opposed to the economic meltdown we are currently living through (and which has barely begun). For the situations in which borrowing money is inevitable, the borrower should resort to peer-to-peer lending and let the lenders compete on interest rates. Additionally, debt should be seen as a temporary measure, not as a permanent feature of life."

For more on "The Absurdity of Debt" click here

5-second Star Trek quiz

2010-06-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one isn't coming back?

2010-06-25T09:14:00.000-07:00

"Don't you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work."

- Gallagher

The Precycling Imperative

2010-06-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

The city's new recycling bins frustrate me. From what I read in blogs, they frustrate homeowners as well, although for different reasons. Joe or Jayne Homeowner doesn't like them because they don't stack and fit easily next to the back door or just inside the garage; they are intrusive. They take up room that isn't really available. They are in the way.

I dislike them because, while they encourage recycling, they discourage precycling. Precyling allows magazines which have already been read but are still current or interesting to go on to be read by others. It enables brown paper grocery bag reuse. I've read derogatory online comments regarding the rescue and reuse of magazines and other paper materials in collection bins on the basis that it is cheating the city or the recycling company. I doubt that that's true. City workers are not going to sort through paper trash to pull out usable magazines or other material to sell and if they are selling the paper by weight or volume the small amount of magazines or paper bags removed by precycling wouldn't noticeably impact the weight or volume of material received.

The new bins are huge and they have lids, both of which discourage precycling. Material is not visible or even within reach in some cases. The act of opening a bin in front of a residence feels a little too much like invasion while pulling magazines and bags from an open yellow bin never did.

Fortunately, since the City of Portland has become increasingly anal about trash, the various colored bins cannot hold just any material and so stuff that is not organic, paper, glass or composed of certain types of plastic cannot be put into them. Clothing, mechanical devices, furniture, etc. still find their way to the curb where they can be claimed and gently ushered into a future that may involve cleaning, repair and rehoming.

In New York City, city lots sprout small flea markets and trading and repurposing fairs on the weekend. I'm not sure why this really hasn't taken off in Portland.

Meanwhile, I'm overcoming some of my reluctance to open the new bins and delve for treasures.

Behold: a link to a New York Times Q/A exchange in its column, The Ethicist, titled, "The Recycling Thief." Author Randy Cohen is "pro-foraging." Yea!

Encyclopedia geriatrica

2010-06-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

"Stop trying so hard. He doesn't like you. Jesus, don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you."

"Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that."

Just two of many from Sh*t My Dad Says

2010-06-06T09:35:00.001-07:00

"No one has breakfast at Tiffany's."
-- Carrie Bradshaw

You Say L'Engle I Say LeGuin

2010-06-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

As an answer to the New Yorker magazine's, "20 Under 40" book list, Ward Six posted a new list of chosen proven authors, "10 Over 80: Writers to Go Back and Read."

Visitors to the site make comments and add names. At one point, the original poster responds with a mea culpa:

"I forgot Ursula LeGuin because I temporarily confused her with Madeleine L'Engle and thought she was dead."

I have difficulty distinguishing them as well. Ditto for Merle Streep and Glenn Close and I still don't know if Abe Vigoda is dead or alive.

2010-06-04T14:48:00.000-07:00

“You know, I’d like my life back.”

We know how you feel, Mr. Hayward, because we'd like our Gulf back. But I suspect you'll be getting your wish long before we get ours.

From Pete Lit
http://www.petelit.com/

Can my toddler visit your chickens?

2010-05-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

Weird request spotted on Craig's List:

"My 2.5 yr old daughter is currently obsessed with chickens after watching a Netflix movie about chickens. Is anyone with a small brood of chickens willing to let my family visit them this weekend? We have been to the Oregon Zoos petting area but we aren't really up for a hectic trip to the zoo on a holiday weekend. We would make sure she is aware of rules such as being quiet and gentle. Please email if ya' got some chicks that are up for being on display & thanks!"

No expanation necessary

2010-05-29T10:51:00.001-07:00

For more Perry Bible Fellowship:
http://pbfcomics.com/

2010-05-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

-- Bertrand Russell

Irony & Absurdity

2010-05-28T15:51:00.000-07:00

Found on Craig's List . . .

Under NW apartment rentals:

"For your comfort pets, smoking are not allowed. "

and

Under Books:

"I have very old books. Please make an offer. All are from the mid 1950's. I have two boxes."

Concepts of "comfort" and "old" are relative.

Dear Author

2010-05-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Mrs. Lessep,

Thanks for letting us read, once again, "The Mistletoe's Little Shoes." After careful consideration, we have concluded that this work still does not meet our needs. I am sorry you were misled by the phrase "does not meet our needs at this time" into thinking you should submit it again. In the publishing world "at this time" really means "forever."

A. Whittaker,
Editor at Soup

-- From The Cry of the Sloth: A Complete Account by Sam Savage, 2009

Someday: LOST - Back in the Day

2010-05-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

This coming Sunday (tomorrow) LOST will come to a conclusion . . . or if not a conclusion, at least the end of the final episode. LOST is the sole reason I still have a television and continue to tweak the rabbit ears in a vain attempt to maintain digital reception. I'll miss it. Clever non-cable (read: you don't have to pay more to receive it) programs are getting rarer and rarer.

I'm not on Twitter but the tweeting about LOST is interesting to read. I like this one:

"Thanks to LOST, my husband's wedding vows included the sentence, 'I want to be your constant,' and half the guests got it."

Twenty or thirty years into the future, that line's gonna date you.

Food Fight

2010-05-10T11:30:00.000-07:00

If such a thing as a "Freedom Fry" can exist, then is it much of a stretch to imagine that there might be "Traitor Tots" out there? "Chicken Plot Pie?"

I think not.

Sitting on the Gutenberg Bible

2010-05-10T10:53:00.001-07:00

There's very likely a house somewhere where illiterate people are using a Gutenberg bible as a baby booster seat.

"I reckon it's a holy book," they might say, scratching their heads, "But it's just the size to get that baby right up to the table. Ain't no good for anything else. It's kinda old, though, and we'd probably toss it iffen we could find a good-sized encyclopedia instead."

I stop at a paper sale and rummage half-heartedly through the boxes of old recipes and greeting cards with Cocker Spaniels. Suddenly, here are original hand-drawn Christmas cards by Marc Davis, one of the original nine old men of Walt Disney Studio. The creator of Malificent, Tinkerbell and Cruella DeVil once sent holiday greetings to a friend in Oregon and nobody in the Odd Fellows lodge had a clue.

The Operator Also Makes Ice

2010-05-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

Discovered on a thread related to answering machine messages:

"Hello, this is the refrigerator speaking. The answering machine is on vacation but if you'll leave your name and telephone number, I'll write it on a piece of paper and stick it to myself with one of these little magnets."

2010-05-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Two from Bukowski

2010-04-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

"You've been to college, haven't you?"

"Yes, but college can never make a man intelligent. It can only educate him."

***

"To the accusers I say, go ahead and accuse; the praisers I say, go ahead and praise; to the woman who loves me, I say go ahead and love me; to Marina I say, go ahead and become a wonderful woman; to my car I say, go ahead and keep running so I won't have to buy another one; and to my typewriter I say, go ahead and tell me more things, more and more things, different things; go ahead, go ahead, go ahead . . ."

-- From his newest: ABSENCE OF THE HERO: Uncollected Stories and Essays Vol. 2 1946-1992, April 2010

2010-03-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

"Hey, if a burning bush started talking to me, I would fucking listen, dude. If that happened to me, I would listen as carefully as I could."

-- Robert Crumb in an interview with Vanity Fair re. his graphic novel, The Book of Genesis

2010-03-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

"Don't cry because it's over,
Smile because it happened."

-- Dr. Seuss

What aren't you doing?

2010-03-10T18:19:00.001-08:00

The following, while rather long, is a column I've saved in my files for 25 years because it speaks to me. It was written by Mark Seymour, a columnist for Graphics Journal. It was published in February of 1985 and I read it first while working as a typesetter for a Portland printing company:

I made a wrong turn somewhere along the way. It had a lot to do with not recognizing the kind of work I do in my head, as opposed to the kind I do in the world.

Most of us, I think, make assumptions about what we're going to be when we grow up. Those of us who grew up in the Fifties and Sixties had to consider the assumption we weren't going to grow up at all, that squat, black mushroom clouds would decide our future for us. But many of our ideas were based on what we thought we should be doing. For white, suburban middleclass kids like me, the future was college, and then a nice white collar job pushing papers around.

That construct, of the office job, got ground in pretty deep in my case. Both my father and his father had management jobs in engineering industries. So that vision was, perforce, the way a man made his living. My mother's father, on the other hand, was a self-employed cabinetmaker; it was never stated that this was an occupation somehow beneath me, but the message was delivered none the less. My memories of his shop, of the smells of the planed lumber, and the sounds of nails and pegs being driven home, are some of the best of my childhood. [Even more pungent, there was an actual, working icehouse next door to his shop. To find out that you had to make ice, not just pop it out of the refrigerator, was fascinating.]

So, what the hell does a cabinet shop and an icehouse have to do with graphic design? Not much. What they are, and I think each of us has some memories like them lurking in the back of our heads, are indicators to what I really am. And that tites into a lot of the things I've been complaining about in this column: the loss of tradecraft, and the evolution of printing into an electronic experience.

The situation is, unfortunately, that I'm a dirty hands guy in a clean hands job. And it's only going to get worse from here.

I was having lunch the other day with Janaia Donaldson, who teaches design for the UC Santa Cruz extension program. We were discussing the latest attempts at computer graphics, and fantasizing about the wonders of a mouse- or graphics tablet-driven machine similar to the Scitex, where you have the capability to zoom in on a single dot and modify its density and color. What a notion: dot by dot drawing at 300 lines to the inch.

But at the same time, what a loss. I've talked before about a generation of designers coming along who'll never know what rubber cement thinner smells like. Now, what about an entire generation who won't know what paint smells like. Or know how to handle a brush, or pencils, or even a felt pen. Just crank up the cursor, put the dots where you want them, and print it.

Somehow, that sensory deprivation, losing that sensual part of the process, is what we're faced with. Rapidly I'd resigned to it, but I don't have to like it.

What should I have done? What turn did I miss? Probably several, along the way. Most of us perform sort of an amoeboid dance with life; lurching along from one stimulus to another, seeking the path of least resistance. The driving force is usually that terrible insistance that I have to have a job. Which really means you have to have money. Now, I'm certainly in favor of having money. As much as possible. I've always said that I'd like nothing better than to have them back up the armored car and dump the sacks of hundreds on the porch. But, somehow, they never seem to get around to it.

So, that nasty requirement for things like the rent, and food, and some new books occasionally, keeps us moving when, perhaps, a little reflection might send us in an entirely different direction. I had a moment like that, fifteen years ago, and I missed it. What did I want to do? Print books. Not publishing, like I do now, but actually print them. By hand. Lead type, handset, handmade paper, hand binding. The works. A nice, dirty hands, sixteenth century job. I always was slower than the other children.

What happened? I got scared, like we all do. I would have had to find one of the handful of men in the country, in the world, who actually make their living doing it. I would have had to commit four, five, ten years to learning the craft. And, even then, who knew whether I would ever be able to earn my living that way.

I chickened out. I went to design school, got a job in an advertising agency, became a freelance designer, worked for various publishing companies, and now force you to read diatribeslike this. Was that a better course? Maybe. I ate pretty regularly, the last fifteen years. I did some interesting work, even one or two things I'm rather proud of. But was it really better?

The point of all this is to rattle your assumptions a little bit. I know too many people who are doing things they think they have to do, rather than what they want to do. Typesetters who should be painters, circulation chiefs who should be sailing the Caribbean, designers who should be trapping beaver in the 1800s, and illustrators who should be living in a Zen monastery.

What aren't you doing?

Amusements

2010-03-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

Two recently reads combined to tickle my funnybone and elevate my spirits with facts and observations that are a little out of the ordinary.

From The Book Of Useless Information (an official publication of The Useless Information Society) by Noel Botham:

* No President has been an only child
* Lee Harvey Oswald's body tag was auctioned off for $6,600
* On a trip to the South Sea Islands, French painter Paul Gauguin stopped of briefly in Central America, where he worked as a laborer on the Panama Canal.
* Tom Cruise's real name is Thomas Mapother.
* During his entire lifetime, Herman Melville's classic of the sea, Moby Dick, only sold 50 copies.
* Dr. Seuss coined the word, "nerd", in his 1950 book, If I Ran The Zoo.
* Spat-out food is called chanking.
* The word "samba" means to rub navels together.
* "Karaoke" means "empty orchestra" in Japanese.
* In 1946, the first TV toy commercial aired. It was for Mr. Potato Head.
* In Idaho, a citizen is forbidden by law to give another citizen a box of candy that weighs more than fifty pounds.
* If you yelled for eight years, seven months, and six days, you would have produced enough sound energy to heat one cup of coffee.

Moving on, the following observations are taken from Amy Hempel's short story, In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried:

"They say the smart dog obeys, but the smarter dog knows when to disobey."

"I enrolled in a 'Fear of Flying' class. 'What is your worst fear?' the instructor asked, and I answered, 'That I will finish this course and still be afraid.'"

"I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me."

"I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have been thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign to her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug. Baby, come hug, fluent now in the language of grief."

You Really Got Me

2010-03-10T17:28:00.000-08:00

Some of my recent blogs have been sort of depressing since that's how I tend to feel whenever I watch or listen to national news lately. In order to counteract the blues, I wanted to include some lighter stuff.

When NPR aired a bit about Ray Davies of the Kinks, there was apparently a lot of complaints about how the host mispronounced his name. Fact is, they didn't. I've always thought that Davies was pronounced "DAY-VEES" but here's the final word from an earlier interview broadcast on NPR:

MELISSA BLOCK: Can you say your name for me? Pronounce your name for me.

Mr. RAY DAVIES (Musician): Ray.

BLOCK: And how about the last name?

Mr. DAVIES: Oh, well, that. That's Davis. I think over here the tendency is to say Davies. Davis is not quite right. So, think of it with a zed at the end, Z.

BLOCK: Daviz.

Mr. DAVIES: Daviz, yeah. But keep it kind of muted.

BLOCK: Ah, okay. Daviz.

Mr. DAVIES: And two, three, four...

BLOCK: Daviz.

Mr. DAVIES: I'd say you got it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

NORRIS: Well, there you have it from the horse's mouth: Daviz it is.

---

We learn something new every day - sometimes big, sometimes small and what we always thought we knew for a fact . . . isn't, always.

Too Small To Survive

2010-02-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

Today's world presents a surreal mixture of the way things are on the ground - in our neighborhoods and cities - and the way the world seems to our legislators. I'll admit I've always had an overdeveloped sensitivity to fairness and this isn't even remotely fair by anybody's definition.

While Congress frets and worries about saving huge multi-national corporations that are perceived as, "too big to fail," nobody gives any serious attention to the rank and file American who is, "too small to survive," let alone too insignificant to bother with.

The perception that continually propping up and kissing up to big business and Wall Street - the piranhas who have played fast and loose over the past 20 years - will somehow insure more jobs and better prices for Joe and Jane American is fatally flawed. Even if it were possible, making these kinds of concessions (hiring American workers or lowering prices) is not in line with the primary goals of big business: to make as much money as possible, pay as little taxes as possible, make their stockholders happy and charge as much as the market will bear. And, enabled by the government, businesses naturally choose to offshore production where it is cheaper and target the most upscale and wealthy customer when it comes to housing, entertainment and personal services.

There's never much accountability. Nobody asks these people to sign a meaningful contract before taking money, building, speculating, bilking. Nobody says, "Hold on a minute, if we give you this money or these concessions, then you must guarantee that you will hire yeah many people at living wages and keep your business within the continental United States or pay a penalty." So, of course, they don't. And they laugh all the way to the bank as they pay big bonuses, award golden parachutes and drizzle money down upon the stockholders.

This must be why we see programs like Cash for Clunkers in which auto manufacturers are the chief beneficiaries. And the "no public option" health care plan where the health care industry makes no changes other than grudgingly agreeing to cover some surgeries that they had denied in the past (at prices, no doubt, that many would still not be able to afford). And why our own City of Portland lavished incentives and offset property taxes for sports stadiums and more and more luxury condominiums that continue to stand empty while paying nothing more than lip service to sustaining or bolstering affordable or low income housing. In the few instances when buildings offering "affordable" or "low income" housing are heralded, the prices are not even remotely affordable or within the reach of the low income, illustrating that those involved in promoting these programs do not have the faintest idea of what it is like to try to live on one or two minimum-wage-to-$10/hr jobs.

It explains why Congress dithered a year on health care reform without even bothering to address, in any meaningful way, Americans' chief concern which is about price, first, and accessibility, second. Congress did not even suggest that a system be considered that would offer a fair deal to consumers and a reasonable profit to pharma and the medical industry . . . one that would at least allow consumers who lose their jobs to continue to maintain insurance coverage into which they had paid thousands, and at a reasonable rate, rather than lose every bit of their investment.

The people I know in tough economic straits (including myself) are not looking for a free ride. We'd just like the playing field to be a little leveler and for those who are making policy decisions to see our struggle for what it is and to understand that propping up the comfortable, wealthy and corporate and giving them more power and rights doesn't help us. They don't care about us, except to the extent that they can coax money from our pockets. And a healthy country needs a healthy citizenship.

Some See Haitian Disaster As An Opportunity

2010-01-24T18:30:00.000-08:00

Haiti needs help. There's no question about it. However Haiti has needed help for years and the US, among others, has been sending money and empty promises - effectively pouring money into a pot with a big hole in its bottom.

Now, among the hoopla of how we are "rescuing" Haitians, comes the looting of a country of its children. The following blog expresses my feelings on the matter in a way that requires no further comment. I'm not saying that these people don't have good intentions, but it's obvious that "their" pain is more important than that of citizens of Haiti and their own considerable losses:

Click here

Unexplicable: the media's focus on well-to-do white couples hysterically snapping up Haitian orphans in a veritable baby fever as though they are entitled to them, waxing weepy and indignant that "their" children are being withheld because of the difficulties presented by dealing with a national disaster. Ugh.

I'm a Jack Russell Terrier

2009-12-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

Who knows how accurate these things are but . . .

Depressing Quote of the Day

2009-12-20T09:10:00.000-08:00

From Section A-1, p. 26 New York Times, Sunday, December 20th in regards to the new gelded health care bill. Just in time for Christmas:

CORPORATE GLEE

"The insurance companies were probably among the merriest of industries last week. Because the legislation mandates that everyone buy insurance, those companies stand to gain 30 million new customers - and there will be no government plan to compete with.

"But the drug companies were certainly joyful, too. So far, they have kept intact a deal with the White House to bar the importation of cheaper drugs from Canada and elsewhere. In exchange, they agreed to give up $80 billion over 10 years through discounts and rebates."

Unlike Congress, I am speechless, simply speechless.

Bin Laden . . . the New "Snowball?"

2009-12-07T13:17:00.000-08:00

George Orwell, wherever he is now residing, has probably noticed a resemblance between the ANIMAL FARM character "Snowball" in exile and Osama Bin Laden. And he may be laughing.

Today's "Oregonian" ran an Associated Press article that says, in part:

"Osama bin Laden may be slipping back and forth from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Or the U.S. might not have a clue, more than eight years after the al-Quaida leader masterminded the terrorist attacks on America."

Recall that "Snowball" the pig was one of two faction leaders in the book ANIMAL FARM after the farm animals declared their independence and became self-governing; the other was the boar, "Napoleon." "Napoleon" staged a coup and drove "Snowball" out of the barnyard and the Animal Farm boundaries. Nothing was seen of "Snowball" after his narrow escape from "Napoleon's" attack dogs but thereafter he was conjured up to explain every mishap, theft or problem to occur on the farm. Because he was such a useful bogeyman and scapegoat, no serious attempt was ever made to hunt him down or to capture him.

We're far beyond 1984, but we find ourselves in a future drearily reminiscent of a literary past we should have learned from.

2009-12-01T17:50:00.000-08:00

Seen this evening on Twitter:

"Switching from Afghanistan talk to the Knicks game. At least with the Knicks there is a small chance it will end well."

More On Health Care

2009-11-24T18:15:00.000-08:00

Steve Adcock, writing on the website, Small Government Times, recently brought up an interesting point regarding the idea of mandatory health coverage:

Is mandatory health insurance Constitutional?

Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, was asked by the CNSNews.com web site to cite the Constitutional authority for the government to require the American people to buy health insurance. Apparently, Reed will have to get back with us on that one.

"Specifically where in the Constitution does Congress get its authority to mandate that individuals purchase health insurance?" CNSNews.com asked Reed.

"I would have to check the specific sections, so I’ll have to get back to you on the specific section," Reed said. "But it is not unusual that the Congress has required individuals to do things, like sign up for the draft and do many other things too, which I don't think are explicitly contained [in the Constitution]."

Unbelievable. We have a sitting politician in Washington D.C. who admits Congress has used the government to require mandates of the American people without explicit authorization from the very document that provides the government with their just authority.

"It gives Congress a right to raise an army, but it doesn't say you can take people and draft them. But since that was something necessary for the functioning of the government over the past several years, the practice on the books, it's been recognized, the authority to do that."

It gives Congress a right to raise an Army and a Navy, Senator. Read Article I, Section VIII of the Constitution for more on what you, and your fellow colleagues, can legitimately do with the power that our election process has provided you.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government has never required the American people to purchase a good or service, and doing so would be an "unprecedented form of federal action".

---

The only other exception I could think of where mandated purchase of a product is involved is car insurance, but people can choose whether to buy a car or not. Not everybody is forced to purchase car insurance. And the thing that necessitates car insurance - an accident that might impinge upon the property and person of someone else - doesn't exist in a situation where one's own health is the only consideration.

I don't think this argument is going to fly but it deserves attention. What kind of a world do we live in where nobody has the guarantee of safety, a job or a roof over their head but they could be forced to pay into a system where money they can't afford to spend goes down the toilet year after year against their will? That's the way the American insurance system is set up and it doesn't appear that that is going to change.

I guess, in another way, we are forced to pay for a service that we'll probably never see . . . social security. But again, only if we're working. Nobody makes us pay into social security . . . or even pay taxes . . . if we are unemployed. And a good thing, since so many of us are.

The Fundamental Unfairness of American Health Care

2009-11-22T19:11:00.001-08:00

Re. the health care debate, my primary question is: Why must people be legally compelled to buy health insurance? If they can do so because the insurance available is affordable and gives them the protection they need, they'll do so. If not, why punish them?

There are two important facets of any useful universal health care plan: the first is availability . . . to be able to be insured regardless of preexisting conditions. The second is affordability. I don't see that the second aspect is being adequately addressed.

And the single most aggravating thing about insurance of any kind is that it doesn't carry over. I pay thousands of dollars every year for health insurance and homeowner's insurance (and did, for car insurance, before I sold my car) and at the end of every year, everything rolled back to zero and started over again with the inevitable deductable. It's like dropping money into a hole. And if one changes jobs, it's not possible to carry the insurance over without extra expense and even if allowed, it doesn't last for long. The odds are stacked in favor of the insurance companies.

Why not just call it a legalized "protection" racket, which is what it is.

Doctors and dentists have begun to fight back by insisting that customers pay the complete bill for visits the day of the appointment and then make them go after reimbursement from the insurance company. This is the single reason I have not had any dental checkups or work for 8 years. I can't afford to pay $200-$300 or more and then wait a couple of months to be reimbursed. I don't HAVE that sort of discretionary income. And so what happens is that I have a yearly checkup for which I pay a deductible and the rest of the money I pay into health insurance goes directly into the coffers of the insurance company.

I suppose that later, when I become elderly and my health fails I might be able to take proper advantage of my health insurance but by then I probably won't be working for the place that has subscribed to a plan I'm paying thousands into.

It reminds me of the company birthday lunches I used to attend where I'd get a salad, watch co-workers throw back drinks and have steaks and then get the entire thing split up equally among everybody present. It's not fair but nobody seems to be paying any attention to what's happening.

It sucks.

2009-11-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

Most amusing sign seen recently near work:

DANGER! HOT MOLTEN ZINC!

Which makes me wonder if there's any such thing as Cold Molten Zinc. And if there is, should we be afraid of it, too?

2009-11-20T15:06:00.000-08:00

"One feels so damn sorry for writers, the poor posers. People like Hemingway and Yeats spend their whole lives trying to make good a pose because they despise themselves. They put infinite time and energy into trying to make themselves come true, when they know that it's all a damn lie, anyway."

-- James Dickey