Hall of Fame gag

    I wrote this joke, of which I am very fond and which I posted to practically universal lack of interest on Facebook this morning. I'll post it here in a minute with no doubt similar results. But the joke itself isn't the point. We are not going to talk about how long it took me to write this modest joke; instead we're going to blog about it.
    For months now, I've wanted to do a joke about the Passive-Aggressive Hall of Fame. The problem with me as a gag writer is that my mind is almost totally literal. It's a thing of amazement to me that I ever come out with anything funny at all. Usually the only way anything funny drops out is as a result of perpetual wordplay. I just keep messing with words until something makes me laugh. But the P-A H of F struck me as an inherently funny idea, and I really thought there was a joke in there. It was finding it that was the hard part.
    The literal part of my mind wanted to make a joke about an actual P-A H of F, as in a building. And there is no particular difficulty with coming up a joke about how such a building would be built already but for (insert your favorite p-a cliche here). The stumbling block was the setup; who in hell would be building a Passive-Aggressive Hall of Fame? I mean, "I was going to start a Procrastinators' Club, but I never got around to it" works, but the hall of fame is maybe a little too ambitious. Too much backstory needed or something.
    So after months, last night this popped into my head: "I'd already be in the Passive-Aggressive Hall of Fame if some people would just nominate me." The killer joke? No. Going to make me famous? Not likely. But I like it.

Hey, I don't wear an earring!

    Last night I dreamed I had an earring. A silver fang, dangling from my right ear. This wasn't the primary focus of the dream; just something I noticed in a dream about something else. I remembered I was surprised: I don't wear an earring! And the point to the anecdote, such as it is, is that as has happened before, hours later I realized that it was just a dream. In other words, for a while my waking mind believed my dreaming mind. In other other words, my brain suddenly went again: Hey, I don't wear an earring! Be a good look for me, though!
    I'm edging closer and closer to trying to repartition this hard drive, so if you never see me again, don't be overly surprised. Dang iPod!:)

Jeppidy

Here's the version from when it was fresh news: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x6540758 (I promise you won't get in trouble for viewing an obsolete version.)
    With the JEOPARDY! online test coming up in mere days (8, 9 & 10 January, says the email) I thought I'd get everybody fired up by telling you how much fun it is if you pass. The test is easy, assuming you have broadband and are good at the game. You only have to give replies; they do not have to be in the form of a question. This is fortunate as it's a timed test.
    I passed and was invited for a tryout in Atlanta. I'm always up for a trip to Atlanta, so I pulled on my funeral suit and my happ'nin' '80s tie and hit the road. Alice was very skilled with Travelocity so she got me a hotel room across the street from the tryout site. (Damn the luck, the computer I was using at that time dropped dead about then, so the Inbox on this one doesn't quite go back that far, or I could say exactly which hotels. It was at or near Five Points, though.)
    I've been more nervous once or twice, I guess, but the contestant co-ordinators were very friendly and put us at our ease. We had to fill out a resume, more or less, something I hadn't been prepared for, so if you do this, be sure to be prepared. It also asked for interesting anecdotes from your life that Alex could use to banter with you if you make the show. We also had to take a Polaroid; as I was still in my doughy gargoyle phase, I couldn't be said to be prepared for that, either.
    But after that, the fun started, or JEOPARDY! buff type fun anyway. We were led into a meeting room set up a lot like a classroom, where we took another timed test, this one on paper, also not requiring replies in the form of a question. Then while these were being marked, we were brought up on stage three at a time to play a bit of JEOPARDY! Of course Alex Trebek wasn't there, and Johnny Gilbert was only on tape, but it was very fun anyway. The contestant co-ordinator asked us about ourselves and what we would do with the money if we won. (They didn't use the banter anecdotes from the resume, at least as far as I can remember. I guess we were expected to come across with them ourselves.)
    I have the impression that I made the cut, but neither do I remember anyone being sent home as NOT making the cut. So maybe they just wanted us all to think we had passed. A few of us (mainly women) had a lot of panache and stage presence (not me); I watched the show with special attention over the next year and remember seeing several women form the Southeast who may have been from our group. We were told we would only hear from them if they were actually using us on a show, so it's impossible to say for sure whether I was ever even in the pool. However, the pool was very large; I wasn't much expecting to get the call to LA.
    That said, it was a stone blast, and I definitely recommend everybody giving it a try. It could not have been more fun, I met a lot of nice people, and hey, Atlanta is always fun. So give it a go!

High school news quiz

    In my high school days, I was on the debate team. As a side benefit, I was chosen to compete for Dreher High in the high school news quiz contest conducted by the University of South Carolina's Journalism school. As a freshman I was teamed with older students and we were quite well-behaved. But starting with sophomore year, childhood friends came from private school to Dreher and we made a much more rambunctious team. My now deceased friend Evans Elliott joined up as did another friend who will go by GCM since he is now a very prominent attorney in Texas.
    We weren't rock-star rowdy, but I don't imagine we were very popular with the J school. One time we wore our glasses upside down. Once we claimed to be members of the Dreher Moped Polo Team. Once we each introduced each other ("To my left is John Dantzler." "To MY left is Evans Elliott."...) My favorite was when we did a deal with Cardinal Newman High (including my next-door neighbor) where both teams would do dumb voices during the introductions and say about our school activities only that we were "a member of the high school news quiz team." We went first and we went through with it. Cardinal Newman though did their introductions perfectly straight, giving all their real activities, and they were smirking; boy did they get one over on us. We beat them, I think, 120-70.
    Strangely, I think the prank we did that had the biggest effect was the first one I mentioned above. A young lady on the Irmo High team (whom we also knew from the debate team and who went on to become a magistrate) just couldn't proceed she was laughing so hard. So if you're ever before a magistrate, try wearing your glasses upside down. Who knows? Might work!
    Apart from all the silliness, we were really good, but we never won the tournament. We never applied ourselves at all and figured that being really smart would be sufficient to carry us all the way. Unfortunately, other teams actually made an effort and, you know, studied. So we found ourselves eliminated before the playoffs every year. But man did we have a lot of fun first!

Jumping off point

    My car is boiling over again, so this recipe may be punctuated with random profanity. Or profane randomity as the case may be.
    Regardless, I decided the other day to invent amaranth peanut butter cookies. Immediately I received application to add chocolate chips to this, uh, culinary concept, an idea which I found had merit. For one thing, I had looked up oatmeal cookie recipes and saw how much freaking sugar they put in. I figured some chocolate chips couldn't hurt.
    I didn't put in that much sweetener, but I did put in more honey than I've put into anything so far. I made up about a cup of amaranth. Which is to say, I took 1/3 cup of amaranth and a cup of filtered water, a grind or two of sea salt and a splash of EV olive oil, brought it to a boil which takes 6 minutes around here, then lowered to a quick simmer (a bit under 2 on the electric range here) and let it cook for 25 minutes. I cooled it a bit by putting the whole pot in a sink of water, which is probably insane, but who are you talking to here?
    Preheat oven to 400. In a large mixing bowl, mix in roughly this order 1/4 cup of EV olive oil, 1/2 cup of honey (told ya!), a large egg (preferably broken then scrambled, but whatever works for you), 1/2 cup of natural peanut butter, 1 tsp of cocoa, 1 tsp of vanilla, 1 cup of brown rice flour, the amaranth and about 1/4 cup of Enjoy Life chocolate chips. (What I used was the rest of the bag, but it was about 1/4 cup.)
    When you've mixed this devil's porridge thoroughly, you will notice like I did that you do not have cookie dough. You have bread dough or cake batter. So I lined a rectangular pan (sheet cake pan, Google thinks they're called) with parchment paper and dumped the whole mess in there, making some effort to equalize the thickness.
    I cooked it for a half hour, which left it very slightly singed at the very edges and a bit soft on the insides. What I got were interesting amaranth/peanut butter/chocolate chip brownies. They aren't awe-inspiring, quite, but they're very very pleasant and no doubt frightfully healthy, as well as being as usual gluten-, casein- and soy-free. I suppose I could have made the amaranth with less water or cooked it longer or added more flour and I would have wound up with cookie dough. Clearly this is just a jumping-off point for any projected amaranth peanut butter cookie. But I think it's a good one, and I may just declare victory and call it good enough. Dammit.

Signage

    The Publix on Rosewood Drive is undergoing extensive renovations. Primarily, they are installing a pharmacy, which they never had before. They have made a great deal of progress and no doubt will be opening the pharmacy section (the store as a whole hasn't closed a bit except for normal closing hours and holidays) within a few weeks. The weird thing is that they put up new signs saying "Publix Food & Pharmacy"... and then blocked out the pharmacy part. This strikes me as conspicuously crazy. Why not just leave the old signs until the pharmacy is ready to open? Why not add "Coming soon!" instead of blacking it out. Seems a bit Stalinist: "Well, we had the new sign, so we might as well put it up." Not the most significant issue in the world at this time, I'll agree; just struck me as very odd. (Also, they moved the gluten-free ghetto even farther toward the back, so I guess I'm just crotchety about the whole deal.:))

Christmas songs

    A post on Facebook by Smithsonian Magazine (or, if you prefer, on their behalf) yesterday noted that before "White Christmas," there weren't any or anyway hardly any secular Christmas songs, and that nonstop Christmas music was absent from popular culture in Novembers and Decembers. I sort of felt that there was a suggestion that "White Christmas" somehow changed everything, clearing the way for all the other songs, but I guess that's silly. Listening to a Christmas song marathon on the radio today (Surprise!), I kind of picked up the mechanics of how it happened. Show biz generally and Hollywood specifically are very highly imitative.
    On the radio marathon, the DJ was detail-oriented enough to mention how many of those songs were originally from Hollywood movies. Not to get overly technical, the percentage was a high one. At least a couple of them seemed to be really thrown in just to get a Christmas song in there. ("Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," I was surprised to hear came from "Meet Me in St. Louis." So it wasn't just that Irving Berlin taught Tin Pan Alley that Christmas songs generate cash register jingle bells; it seems more likely that Hollywood took the same lesson with regard to boffo box office. I just hope I don't have to blame him for "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"!

Cocoa wrangling

    (This could just be an edit of the post from 3 days ago, but) Correction: As it turns out, adding cocoa powder to beverages seems to work every time if only you add the cocoa BEFORE you add the water. I can't make any sense out of this: same cocoa, same water; ought to dissolve about the same whether you add the water first or not, but it doesn't. I guess a lot of the cocoa winds up sticking to the sides of the blender if you add the water first, though I don't know why that would be the case either.
    Meanwhile the zinc lozenges seem to be making inroads into my cold, so hopefully I'll be back to writing in English again at some point soon. But I'll be sure to come up with a new excuse then.:)

Safety feature

    This is minor beyond belief, but then it appeared that my very experienced mechanic didn't know about it, so it may be of interest to somebody. Lately when it's cold, my brake warning light comes on. As it goes off again once the car warms up, I'm pretty sure I'm in no danger. The brakes seem to work as well as ever, and there's nothing spooky like the pedal going all the way to the floorboard. But what I notice is that any time the brake warning light comes on, the cruise control no longer works. The first time it happened, I thought the cruise control had gone on the fritz. However, when I added brake fluid and the light ceased coming on, the cruise control miraculously started working again. And that's when I figured it out. I think it's a pretty cool safety feature, but a little underpublicized. I don't think there's anything about it in the manual, for instance.
    I've got a touch of a cold and am hoping that zinc lozenges actually help at least a bit. I think I understand the genesis of the phrase "caught a cold." After all, when your lungs are congested, they aren't going to be able to put as much oxygen in your blood. Without as much oxygen in your blood, you're not going to be as warm, especially around the extremities. (Wait, we burn oxygen? I better go look this up.) So when you catch a cold, you do catch... cold. Of course, I've probably come to this conclusion every time I caught cold. Either that, or I'm just rationalizing why I'm such a reptile. Either works.

Joke birth

    What with the Mayan apocalypse and everything, I found myself a little prophecy-minded yesterday. I wound up with a bad case of Nostradamus on the brain. This caused me to play "The Best of Al Stewart: Songs from the Radio." (He had (still has, presumably) a delightful song called "Nostradamus.") And I kept working on this gag, something along the lines of "If YOUR name had been Mike OurLady, you probably would have gone all kookoo and prophetic, too."
    And I still kind of like the joke. But it reminded me strongly of what all the copywriters are doing these days with radio ads, which is having the announcer yell, "Weird!" in the place where a punchline should go as if that magically makes the ad funny. (Note to copywriters: it doesn't.) I just couldn't fix the joke, but another popped up in its place which I like even better: Edgar Cayce, Michel de Nostradame and John of Patmos walk into a bar. The bartender cheerfully calls out, "What's happening, fellas?" Boy was HE sorry!

Surprise!

    Well all right; it's probably only a surprise to me. (I always say that, don't I?) But in my continuing effort to put cocoa in everything, I added it to my breakfast drink. This is a small navel orange and half a banana with water thrown in a blender. I mentioned the other day that cocoa added to my lunch drink (avocado-cucumber-fruit smoothie) made it sublime, or sublimer, or something. But adding it to the orange-banana drink did practically nothing at all.
    Back when I lived without dietary restrictions, I was a huge fan of dark chocolate oranges. So there shouldn't have been any flavor incompatibility. I can only guess that there isn't enough fat to bring out the cocoa flavor. That's one thing avocados have over oranges. The cocoa itself has fat. According to the nutritional information, 10% of cocoa by weight is fat. But I guess it needs more. At least it didn't taste bad or anything; it just barely changed the taste at all.
    I would have expected that neither drink was sweet enough to permit mixing with unsweetened cocoa, but of the two I would have thought that orange-banana would have been sweeter and thus more compatible. So I am in fact surprised. Still awfully thrilled that the avocado thing works, though.
    Yeah yeah yeah, not earth-shattering. I'll let the Mayan Apocalypse take care of that.

Tootsie pop

    At Hallowe'en, a kid dropped a Tootsie pop in my yard near my mailbox. It took a while for the ants to realize that there was food value in there, but eventually they set to work. I guess they licked and licked and licked like the cartoon owl in the old TV commercial ("One! Two! Thuh-ree-EE! [crunch] Three.") For ages, the Tootsie pop looked largely unchanged, though there were definitely ants in there giving it their best try. Today I noticed that after almost two months, the orange coating is almost totally gone and a good deal of the chocolate center is gone, too. I'm sure Science would be deeply interested; all I need is an entomologist with a good grounding in Comparative Candies. No sweat!

See, it's like this

    Latest attempt at faking thin mint girl scout cookies goes as follows: Preheat oven to 400. Line a cookie sheet or something similar (I use a pizza pan) with parchment paper. Mix 2 T of EV olive oil, 4 T of honey, one large egg, 1 T of baking (unsweetened) cocoa, 1/2 tsp of peppermint extract, 1 cup of brown rice flour, 1/4 cup of chopped almonds and 1/4 cup of Enjoy Life (dairy-, nut- and soy-free) semi-sweet chocolate mini-chips. (The latter is found in health food stores, as is the brown rice flour.)
    I'll admit it; essentially, I've invented icing again. The stuff is so thick that it's fairly tricky getting the dough from mixing bowl to pan. Between a spatula and a fork, I eventually get the deed done. Somebody possessing eye-hand co-ordination will probably find it much easier. Or if you prefer, you could just spatula the whole thing into one gigantic cookie and cut it up later. Oughtta work, though I haven't tried it.
    Bake for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, the cookies seemed quite done, but with a raw egg in there I'm always a little nervous. (I ate a few at this point and I haven't died yet, so I'm reasonably confident that you can stop at this point if you like). I turned the oven off and let it and them cool for 5 minutes. Then I flipped the cookies and put them in the cooling oven for another 5 minutes. One person found the resulting cookies to be too dry; if you skip this step, maybe they would be moister. Or I/you could add a little almond milk. But personally, I love them just the way they are, you know, like Billy Joel. So I present the recipe as I did it. And there you have it: gluten-free casein-free soy-free girl scout cookies-- sort of. (I'm just trying for the flavor; there's no similarity in look or texture.) Hope you like them!

Anorexia

    My college career is a bit confusing. I started at the University of Pennsylvania, got fed up after a year and a half (or rather, three semesters) and went home, enrolled at the University of South Carolina studying primarily International Relations (or Studies, but that sounded redundant). I took a 500 level (meaning both undergrads and grad students can apply it to their degrees) class and did very well. The instructor also headed the exchange program with the University of Kent at Canterbury in England and asked if I would like to go. "Hell yeah!" I said, or the academic equivalent, and I spent my junior year abroad. Coming back, I found that I could graduate faster from Penn than from Carolina, so I did.
    Now the reason I was fed up with Penn was that I wanted to study International Relations, and in spite of all the green money Penn asked for, their program was terrible. So I studied the hell out of International Relations at USC and UKC and returned to Penn where I found... I had to study it all again, as I had to have a certain percentage of my credits in my major at Penn. Fortunately, they had improved the program, so at least the courses were mostly interesting. But since I had to cram them all into one semester, it was a bit harrowing. Also I was living in an apartment and cooking for myself all the time for the first time, which might not be expected to end well.
    One day, I was crossing the 38th St bridge, a pedestrian bridge with a bit of an arch to it, and found it difficult. Generally I was feeling a little rundown so I stopped in at Student Health. They found that I was anemic and hypoglycemic and weighed in at 128 lbs on my 5 feet 10 almost. The resident or intern told me that I was anorexic. I told her "Am not!" and she said fine, come back in a month weighing 138 lbs and I'll vacate the diagnosis. The way my eyes lit up should have tipped her off that of all the things in the world that I am, anorexic isn't one of them.
    In those days, there was a very nice ice cream parlor in West Philadelphia called Hillary's. I visited them a lot! And in general I ate more, and better, and richer. I don't actually recall hitting restaurants a lot more often, but I probably did. I may have moved up-market from boxed macaroni and cheese, too. Regardless, I came back after a month weighing 138 or more and the doctor agreed that she had been mistaken. However, now I wish bitterly that somebody had made a deeper investigation. Because if somebody had discovered the celiac disease then, well I would have missed out on a lot of delicious food, so that's a minus. But I probably would have never gotten as fat as I did in the '90s and the '00s, I never would have had the joy of lactose intolerance, and I wouldn't be as worried about intestinal cancer now. Not that I'm all that worried... but still.

Grammar

    I always wondered why I learned a lot more about grammar rules in French class than in English. I especially learned about verb tenses and moods (verbs have moods?) there and hardly at all in English. I think I've had an insight. In your native tongue, the teacher can give you examples of various tenses by pointing them out in sentences you have (or might have) said before. "I walked down the street" or "I have seen the newspaper." In a foreign language, you're totally at sea. Thus, the teacher has to explain what the various tenses and other forms actually mean, rather than just giving examples and then teaching by rote.
    Of course, it's always possible that my English teachers tried and tried to teach me all the rules and they just sailed over my head. However, I clearly remember when other subjects proved to be too hard for me; I don't see why English would be an exception. Still, it is true that at least back when I was in school, we started English much younger than we started foreign languages. It could be that my more grownup brain was better ready to handle difficult grammar concepts by the time I got to French. All I really remember from French is "Je ne sais pas," and at last it fits.

Time is crazy

    I've wanted to post for at least a year about how long a time a second is, but haven't because I feel like an idiot every time I think about doing so. But really, it is. I notice this every day when I'm cooking and watching the timer on the stove count down. A second is long enough to turn off two burners. It's a distinct, discrete period of time. Obviously, not a huge one, but long enough to do something; long enough to be noticed.
    On the other hand, 50 years, one hell of a lot of seconds, has not seemed like a long time. An hour must not be a very long time; I've certainly wasted enough of them. Minutes, hours, days, weeks; none of them seem long unless you're waiting. Or anyway unless I am. This is why I carry a book anywhere I'm likely to be made to wait. Patience is not one of my virtues.
    So there you have it: a second is a long time; a half a century isn't, unless you spend it waiting. Clearly, this is what Einstein was talking about.

Where's the post office?

    There was a massacre of innocents in Connecticut yesterday. Doctors found a blood clot in my dad's leg, but are not going to do anything about it for the moment. So you'll forgive me if I don't have anything particularly deep, wise, or funny to contribute at the moment. I'll try to do better tomorrow.
    I was reminded of a something funny that happened many months ago. I was pumping gas and these young women in a car asked directions to the nearest post office. I was a little flustered because although the post offices in Columbia and West Columbia (where I was standing at that moment) are conveniently located, directions to them are far from simple, and these women did not seem to be from around here. (I guess you could infer that from the fact that they had to ask directions to the post office.) I was starting to tell them this when, looking up, I noticed that there was a contract post office right across the street from us. "Or you could go there," I said with a smile, pointing it out. Those were two embarrassed young women, though they shouldn't have been. I've been buying gas there for years and I hadn't noticed it before either.

About time one of these brilliant ideas worked

    As I've mentioned, every day at lunch I drink an avocado/cucumber smoothie with frozen fruit for flavor, either pineapple or mixed fruit and blueberries. They're both very tasty and good for my thyroid, but I think even the little bit of avocado in there is throwing me out of balance. Avocado is a vasoconstrictor while cucumber is a vasodilator; whenever I get overly crampy I start thinking that I'm overdoing the former or underdoing the latter.
    But there are other vasodilators, the most popular of them being chocolate. I thought, what if I threw some cocoa in there? I used to make avocado chocolate pudding with nothing but avocado, honey, cocoa and water. I really thought that this wouldn't be sweet enough. Boy was I wrong! It turned out crazy mad wonderful delicious, and is very simple.
    Take a quarter of an avocado; spoon chunks into a blender. Add half of a seedless cucumber. I cut out the area where the seeds would be because I still think that stuff causes reflux, but I may be being overly cautious (or crazy, as you prefer). Toss the cucumber chunks in as well. Continuing the theme, add pineapple chunks. I think I used about a half a cup. I use frozen, but if you happen to have a fresh pineapple around, I'm sure that would be even better. A teaspoon full of unsweetened cocoa and water to cover and there you are. Push the Pulse button and you'll have a delicious, nutritious drink. Will it fix my cramps? Well, we'll see.

Fun with cars

    Boiling over radiator car crisis boils down (ha ha) to a busted thermostat. The garage had to order the part, so I'm driving around in a car that wants to boil over again. It's behaving so far, fortunately. A person with common sense would have left it in the shop and let brother William take Dad to dialysis today, but I also needed it to go get groceries, so it made more sense to do that, take Dad today and bring him home, then leave it at the shop which, fortuitously, is quite near Margaret's place.
    Unfortunately, that leaves me unable to take Dad to his doctor's appointment tomorrow morning, but I'm sure William will fill in with aplomb. Also, as his car is newer it's likely that his heat works better, and it'll be the coldest day of this almost-winter so far. Also his radiator is much less likely to boil over. So there's that.
    Walking over to pick up the car yesterday afternoon, time was pressing and also it was raining, so I ran a very small part. MAYBE as much as two blocks. I was embarrassingly sore; you'd think I'd run a marathon. My excuse is that it's a bad idea to run in hiking boots, and I'm sticking to it.
    Yesterday was my 666th consecutive daily entry. I posted about it on Facebook and included a link, and immediately was embarrassed to see that people had followed it. I almost went back and posted, "That was just an FYI; I never said it was interesting!":)

Humidity stinks

    I mention every now and again with a certain pride what a complete dumb-dumb ninny I am, and this is another of those occasions. The other day I was at a thrift store across from a chicken slaughterhouse. It was overcast and I noticed much more how horrible it smelled in the parking lot than on previous visits. I thought it must be a temperature inversion or something. Today it's overcast and walking back from dropping the car off at the mechanic, I could smell a cigar from someone I never saw at all for ages. Later, I had a similar experience with mothballs.
    Back in the day, I always thought that Philadelphia smelled like tar, as in the tar that is spread on roofs to keep leaks out. (Or just to make a horrible smell, I don't know.) But now that I think about it, that overwhelming smell always hit me when it was overcast, too. I guess the volatile compounds that we find stinky must stick around better when it's wetter, literally. They must be sticking to the water molecules in the air. So when it's dryer, they blow away, or at least they blow away more easily. Maybe weather forecasts should add a Stinkiness Index.

Herzog Herzog Herzog Herzog...

    I'm a little distracted because my car has boiled over and I don't know how I'm going to get the radiator repaired or replaced AND pick up my dad from dialysis AND make it to Drinking Liberally AND make it to jazz. Hopefully, adding water will be sufficient to postpone the crisis until tomorrow. (Knock on wood.)
    So this is really more like a Facebook status update than a blog entry. Thing is, the only person who might be remotely interested isn't on Facebook and does sometimes read my blog. So there ya go. Last week, I was on my way to Margaret's to pick up my dad for dialysis. When I went under the trestle at Rosewood Drive, there was a freight train pulling only cars labeled Herzog. "Herzog Herzog Herzog Herzog..." the train read. It looked fairly silly. I thought, somewhere out there, there's a huge Saul Bellow fan. (My buddy Paul suggested that the film director Werner Herzog would also probably dig it.)
    On the way home, I encountered the same train (or another one EXACTLY like it) on a different set of tracks. "Herzog Herzog Herzog Herzog..." I sensed a theme developing. But I haven't seen the Herzogs since.
    Googling indicates that they're called ballast cars. Also that there are YouTube videos of them out there. Somebody tell Werner Herzog.

Autofill

    When I was little and only wrote by hand, I had a big problem with starting to write one word when I meant another. Then when I moved on to typing and keyboarding (so THAT'S what it's called!), I would do the exact same thing. There are untold numbers of examples, but alas they never come to mind unless they happen. The only one I always remember is the only one I ALWAYS do, which is typing "your" in place of the second word in "New York." (Not kidding. I just. did it. again!)
    What tickles me about this is that in the few situations in life where I haven't painfully murdered Autofill-- I'm sorry, in those situations where I take advantage of the technological marvel that is Autofill, it often suggests the same words that my brain has been auto-suggesting for all these years. I would guess that both phenomena have the same cause; one word is more common and thus more frequently typed than the other. But I still think it's funny. Also that Otto Phil Something would be a good penname.

My chief shortcoming

    My chief shortcoming as a human being is that I'm not one. My first priority is to turn a phrase nicely. My second is to get a laugh. In other words, first I'm a writer, second I'm a cutup. I'm a human being, oh, around 29th place or so. This comes up because I'm trying to put together a communique to a person who might read it as good news. The temptation is very high to spend days crafting a perfect missive, with allusions and puns and clever wordplay. And it occurs to me that if it's good news, it would be better to get it to her fast, and not cobble around with all that cleverness guff. If it isn't and just elicits a nastygram in return, well, it's probably better to get that over quicker, too. I'm sorry (sniff); I always cry a little bit when the little boy starts acting like a man. Even if he's 50.:)

Comforter

    I noted last year, or maybe this one, that when it gets colder I'm much happier if I throw the old comforter on the bed. (Hence the name perhaps.) The two bedspreads are adequate and the kitty camped out on my knees adds a lot of warmth and comfort. But the comforter gets an otherwise dank room all the way up to, well, comfortable. Moreover, the warmth carries over all day. When I'm cold at night, I feel chilly all day long. When I'm warm at night, I feel much less like running to knit cap and gloves at all hours.
    Of course, the way this cold season's going, it may never come up again. We're back to Chamber of Commerce weather, sunny with highs in the 70s. Much as I fear the long-term consequences of global warming, I must admit that as a reptile I'm enjoying some of the short-term ones. If it wants to be another pleasant, mild winter, I think I can live with it.
    The comforter was a gift from Alice long ago and as such is tangible proof that somebody once loved me. That's a comfort, too.

Mr. No Common Sense

    I'm allergic to my cat's fur. OK, her spittle, but I was trying to be delicate. I sleep with a sleep mask. I wear glasses all the rest of the time. I keep both mask and glasses on the floor when they aren't in use. In a shocker, each gets covered in, you guessed it, cat fur. Well, not covered, but each gets some cat hair on it. This is a headache. Literally. Until I find the cat hair on or near my eyes, I have unpleasant eyestrain-like headaches. Common sense would say to put the glasses/sleep mask in my eyeglass case, but it doesn't seal at all well; I don't think it's likely to keep kitty hair out. It seems at first pretty crazy to use a ziplock bag, but the more I think about it, the better an idea it sounds. (Oooh, that didn't sound very good, did it? Note to people just surfing in: I really am a native English speaker. Well, American anyway.) I think I'll try it. And common sense comes to Ohio Street!

This is NOT your SIM serial number

    So we quit re-upping Dad's Net10 cell phone and its phone number expired. The sibs felt that it needed to be revived, so they called Net10 Customer Support and asked what's the deal. The deal, it turned out, was that Net10 would send him a new SIM card, we would put it in, then go to the website or call Customer Support again. The task fell to me. Note: never call a Luddite to a 21st century technology situation. Nobody winds up happy.
    The SIM card came attached to a bit of plastic with a number on it ominously captioned, "This is NOT your SIM serial number." There was also another number which presumably WAS (and turned out to be) the serial number. But all this rigmarole was unnecessary anyway since once you get the SIM card in, the phone knows the serial number anyway.
    The directions were useless as they supposed that the card fitted behind a door that could be opened. It turned out that on this phone, nothing like that was the case. You slid out the old one; you slid in the new one. Simple!
    Then things stopped being simple. Or rather, I started being simple. All I had to do, as it turned out, was call up, read them the SIM serial number, read them the PIN from an Add Airtime card, and we would be done. But I just couldn't grasp this and made a total ass of myself. It did not help that the people I was talking to were very, very far away and did not speak English clearly at all. I think the whole deal would have worked better keyboard to keyboard in a Live Chat session. This is how Earthlink handles technical problems, and though I generally don't have great love for their customer service either, in this instance it worked well.
    Anyway, I came off 100% Ugly American, about which I am ashamed, but in the end we achieved a happy result. And now, after two straight technology-related posts, I hope I can go back to being a Luddite in peace.:)

FoxFi

    This is mainly a writing exercise to see if I can work through the syntax on explaining something I don't understand well. Sister Anne and brother Mal told me about an Android app called FoxFi. This would give me a WiFi hotspot for free, as against the app that's preloaded on the Droid (First challenge: how to capitalize Android and Droid) which gives you a hotspot but charges through the nose for it.
    This app is free-- sort of. After a while, it goes Boop and when you look at the phone it tells you that your usage limit has been reached and your hotspot has been turned off. The length of "a while" varies greatly, however. The first session was crazy long and I was able to update all the antimalware software on the computer. When I heard Boop and saw what it meant, I thought my usage limit was over forever. But just for a hoot, I tried again the next day, and it worked fine. Boop came much quicker, though. Generally, Boop comes after about 2M have been transferred, but yesterday I had a session that went more than 17M. Moreover, you don't have to wait; you just have to reconnect, which is only a very slight annoyance. Only hardship is that really big downloads aren't possible unless you start and stop many times, and that usually messes up the file that you're transferring. As mine usually involve computer security, that's a pretty big shortfall.
    The paid version is only $7, a trifle. I'm still slightly annoyed about the bait and switch aspect; if they had said in advance that it was a trial version with a usage limit, I'd have had no problem, but they didn't. However, reviews indicate that the paid version is very good and well worth the price, so no doubt I'll stop being annoyed and come across shortly. This would also make switching over to the new notebook a lot quicker and safer. OK, gotta run; Boop is coming!

Crazy

    Might be a parable. There could be a guy who is crazy about a girl. At the same time the girl is crazy about the guy. But somehow they're so scared of each other or of themselves or of them both that they totally fail to communicate, except to drive each other even crazier. It's like they each set a terrible hex on the other and now they each believe the other is so great that he or she can never be approached.
    Once this pattern is set, it can go on for years, until Jane Austen is spinning in her grave from trying to kick herself for not thinking of it first. Or maybe she did; I've read no Jane Austen. And there's no way to know and no one to ask because each thinks the other hates him or her. Like eternal seventh grade. It might be a fantasy. It might be a dream. It might be a parable.

I don't like comedy

    All right, that's not quite true. I like comedy fine; I don't like the word. This comes from decades of television watching, especially TV ad watching. The word just never goes away. The ads hammer and hammer you with it, always tying in one-liners that are never, ever funny. Laugh tracks don't help either, though those are usually left out of the ads, mercifully.
    I think it's all because comedy is based on surprise. If somebody tells you that this is the funniest movie you've ever saw, well, I think we've all had this experience. You sit stone-faced through the entire thing. Whereas if you had been told only that it's a fairly good movie, you might have laughed your ass off. The only sitcoms I've liked as an adult were ones that nobody told me about and that I happened to start watching without seeing ads first. As to movies, I think I was told that "The Princess Bride" was very good, but not that it was wildly funny (it was). I was surprised to like "Shrek" because its ads were so annoying, but at least those were more of a guerilla campaign; no claims of funniness or of anything at all, really. The campaign almost kept me away, but  it didn't raise any extreme expectations.
    I think when I get my sitcom and have to make my annoying promos for it, I'm going to tell people that they shouldn't worry, it won't be funny at all. We'll be doing Chekhov plays. In Russian!

Adventures

    This past Friday, me and Pop went out on adventures. It was none of our intention. He just wanted to get some home medical equipment. However, he's been out of circulation for a while and the world has changed a bit. I took him to Long's Drugs on Kilbourne Road where he used to get his supplies. Unfortunately, Long's Drugs no longer has salespeople for home medical equipment in their individual stores. Instead, they've centralized the operation out by the Interstate. The very nice young man gave us the phone number and address. I knew the general vicinity and called out a landmark that I thought would get me there and he said I was right.
    We went back to Margaret's house to try calling, since I have no common sense and completely forgot that there was a cell phone in my pocket. Unfortunately (that word comes up a lot in this story), the phone number he gave us didn't work, so we went out to try our luck in person. I went to the place where the landmark we agreed on was. There was a home medical supplies company there but it wasn't Long's Drugs. (On retrospect, I think the young man and I were both somewhat familiar with the area but not up-to-date. I believe Long's Drugs used to be in the complex, which originally had been home to a Circuit City. The landmark in question was If It's Paper, which is also gone. Tempus fugit.) The lady at Not Long's Drugs was reasonably friendly and helpful, but didn't actually have what Dad needed. However, she did send us on to Actual Long's Drugs, though like me she had a certain difficulty with left and right.
    When I sorted the directions out, I found Long's Drugs no problem. They DID have what Dad needed, but had to check if Medicare would pay for it and if they had it in stock. Somehow, this wound up taking over a half hour. Finally they came back with the only thing on Dad's list that they had in stock. Unfortunately (see?), it wasn't actually on his list. So the trip was a washout in the short term, though they will ship him his stuff by Tuesday. Also he got a business card with their correct phone numbers on it, and they have his current address and phone number. So everybody's caught up and we win. Yay!

Oh, the usual

    I once again have to note that this almost 2-year-long unbroken streak of daily (however briefly) blogging might come to an end at any moment, as the elderly computer is playing up a bit. Or at least Windows is unhappy with me; I can't download Windows Updates, and none of the solutions they offer work. I suspect the problem might be with AVG 2013 free antivirus, which is a pain in the butt generally (what with adding a toolbar I didn't want, didn't ask for and couldn't decline). So I'm returning to Avast. Hopefully, they haven't lost their minds as well. It couldn't have been all that great or I wouldn't have switched back to AVG. Though I suspect that AVG was a smaller download, a big deal in Dialuppia.
    So hopefully with Avast, Windows Updates will work again and all will be peachy. If not, well, I've had the new laptop for six months now. I've just been reluctant to put it into full swing because of all the passwords and whatnot I'd have to transfer, not to mention having to go through another massive antivirus download. Dunno how long it would take to get it up and running, but unless something really dreadful happens when I switch this one to Avast, I can still use this. So it's unlikely any days will be missed (and less likely anyone's up worrying about it) but what the hey, just thought I'd mention it.
    Speaking of the usual, I had further baroque dreams last night, this time again demonstrating that if John gets a little cold, he dreams of ice and snow. There was also some business where some guy had taken over part of my dad's house (which as usual had nothing in common with my dad's actual house) for some kind of medical facility and some other person had taken over the rest as a hotel or restaurant or both. I threw out the first guy and was worried when he didn't take his patients with him. I was relieved on the whole when he came back. It must have been the ice and snow.

A scene that's never going to play out, is it?

    (Looking at pictures) "You two were obviously very happy together. I see why you miss her."
    "I never had her. We had us. I miss us."

    Yeah it's short. I'll call myself a writer when I can do it without italics.

Baroque or rococo or something

    It was really cold last night, at least for here. Meaning it went below freezing. (Yeah, I know, cry me a river.) So I basically went to bed in footie pajamas, or more literally, in my clothes. This means that I was actually comfortable and between that and the white noise, I was actually able to sleep really well. And my brain really went to work.
    Yet again you get cut a break because I really don't recall any details. But the dream was a masterpiece of construction, baroque or rococo or something. It started out being a dream about my life or anyway about first person singular, not necessarily me per se but a male. Then it was about a female. My brain apparently decided that I didn't need a sex change so it shifted to a third person point of view. Her life was really complicated. I mean in terms of plot points and villains and whatnot, probably the result of listening to a lot of old-time radio yesterday as well as finishing Andrew Vachss' latest (which is very odd indeed in its turn).
    Then it became a video game with plug-ins. I mean literally; you would plug them in when a specific word came up in the dialogue and new plot turns would appear. Really literally; while there was a story going on, there was also this object like a giant snowflake Christmas tree ornament and you would plug red triangles into it.
    THEN it became a movie about a video game, and then fortunately I woke up before my brain produced any further removes from reality. Hey, I was just relieved that it wasn't a nightmare. First time I can recall not being able to go back to sleep due to sheer befuddlement.

Libel

    I committed a little libel on Facebook yesterday. For years, since quitting gluten and more especially since quitting dairy I have been vitally curious about a boxed macaroni and cheese like product called Road's End Organics Macaroni and Chreese. In the gluten-free world, convenience foods are few, far between, and expensive. Also, a rule of thumb about prepared foods or easy to prepare foods in the gluten-free world is that they almost invariably taste like ass. So although I always wanted to try this item, and bought it with a certain degree of excitement that maybe it could be my emergency food of choice, there was also an element of trepidation that it might not be as wonderful as the text on the box suggested.
    Unfortunately, it lived down to expectations. And I let the world know to the extent I am capable via Facebook. (Something about "it wasn't actually the road's end; the road-builders just gave up in despair." The box indicated that it contained two servings, so I ate about half and left the rest for today's lunch. I dreaded it. I must have put lunch off at least a half hour. Finally giving up on inspiration ever hitting, I just added chicken broth, salt, pepper, sunflower seeds, Crystal hot sauce and Pickapeppa sauce and turned on the heat. And ya know what? The awful crap turned out pretty good!
    So we learn a valuable lesson: the rules are the same for gluten-free soy-free casein-free as they ever were. If you add enough stuff that tastes good to something that tastes like ass, you'll probably wind up with something that tastes good. So yay, and my (limited) apologies to Road's End Organics; your product, though awful, is not irremediable. (Did somebody say "damning with faint praise"?)

Clickers

    At the moment, there are car-counters all over town. Those double tubes that snake across the road, counting the vehicles that drive over. I assume that they are double so that somebody just stepping on one wouldn't count as a vehicle, but perhaps I'm way off the beam. I also don't know how they factor in 18 wheelers and other vehicles with extra wheels, but since they on average do a lot more damage to roads than cars do, I guess they're worth counting as extra cars.
    Seeing them reminded me of the days of full-service gas station, when such devices would ring a bell or bells and bring out whatever you were supposed to call a pump jockey back then. A service technician, maybe, though that sounds more 21st century. And what occurred to me is that very few people very much under 50 would even be able to remember such a thing as a full-service gas station. I mean, there are still a few around, but not enough that most of us have visited one in any recent decade. What I remember about the car-counter is that we, being wonderful well-behaved children, would jump on them to try to make the bell ring. Of course, maybe an adult stepping on one would make the bell ring easily, but a little kid jumping makes a lot of force. So I conclude that I don't know if a person stepping on a car-counter today would register or not. But if not, I REALLY can't make any sense out of there always being two of them. Once again, I could look it up, but once again, I sort of dig the mystery.

The electric kitty

    It's that time of the year again. For one glorious day (or so), the heat pump finally dries out my dank apartment and it's comfortable. Then we go right past comfortable to too dry. I've had a hygrometer (of sorts; it's from Kmart) for a year, so I know quantitatively, sort of, when to set up the humidifiers. But I don't really need it. Because when the kitty starts giving off shocks whenever I pet her, THAT'S the time to set up one or both humidifiers. I still think it would be better if humidifiers were built in, or failing that, if you could get a combined humidifier/dehumidifier. But I guess I'll cope.
    The hygrometer says that 40% humidity is Dry, but it still feels dank to me. But it's definitely getting towards Electric Kitty territory. So far, though, she is pettable without any associated shocks. (All info I've seen says the shocks don't hurt her, and they certainly don't seem to. She just jumps because I jump, as far as I can tell.)
    It has been suggested that I skip the humidifiers and instead turn out all the lights and watch the sparks come off the kitty. While I think this is a brilliant suggestion, it probably isn't workable. It just doesn't get that dark in here. Why do you think I sleep with a sleep mask?

Overly reliable narrator

    We've all heard of the unreliable narrator (or if we haven't, just fake it). But then there's the very, very, very reliable narrator. In the first Harry Potter book, Harry has a bad dream. Then when he wakes up, he can't remember having had a dream at all. So who told the narrator? Who has this narrator been talking to? (I suspect Snape.) I dunno, I almost think that there might be a limit to how omniscient I want my narrator to be. I mean, sure, it's a book about magic and everything, and I guess it's a good idea to break down my disbelief in order to help me suspend it better. But this stuff is just impossible.
    Yes, it's true. Now I'm posting about somebody else's fictitious nightmares. Hey, for once I don't have any of my own. Apparently, all I need to keep them away is for South Carolina to beat Clemson at football. I'm sure both schools would be happy to arrange the schedule such that they play daily in order to keep my bad dreams away. Right?

Jonny Quest, Private Eye

    It's just not the same anymore. Life used to be an endless adventure, outwitting supervillains, flying in a needlejet. No more. Nothing like that anymore.
    It started with Dad. Poor Dad. He never learned to specialize. He thought he could go on and on, the Great Scientist. But nobody wants to hire a professor of Science. You've gotta do Physics, or Chemistry, or Biology, or something. Dad just couldn't cope. He turned to the bottle and crawled in. When he couldn't pay Race anymore, we knew it was the beginning of the end. Without a white-haired judo expert bodyguarding him, he had no protection from his enemies. What a way to go! Torn apart by Komodo dragons. Dad really should have taken those judo lessons more seriously.
    Race is in a nursing home now. Talking and talking and talking about how he used to fly that jet. That and how he's going to kick those Komodo dragons' asses one day. And talks and talks and talks. I don't visit all that much.
    Bandit. Poor Bandit. He never could figure out that when we heard that slow building brass fanfare, that meant danger. Sweet little guy got eaten by an anaconda. I still miss him.
    Hadji went back to India to star in Bollywood musicals. I just saw his latest, "Sim Sim Salabim." I thought it dragged a bit.
    And me? All I inherited from Dad were two broken jetpacks and a couple gallons of rotgut. I sit at this desk and wait for the phone to ring. I'm trying to make a living as a private eye. It's going slow.

Killer joke

    Don't you hate it when you come up with the absolute perfect joke, but then forget it before you can write it down? Yeah, me too. That happened this morning; thus, you're stuck with this, poor things. I think it has been observed before that misery produces good literature, while happiness produces crappy literature. This has been a happy couple of days, so cut me a break. I got to meet my grandniece, who is a perfect little angel at four months old. And miraculously, the dialysis facility was able to get Dad in and out about three months early, so he was able to participate in Margaret's family's Thanksgiving celebration and meet his great-granddaughter, too. A good time was had by all, except for the losing football teams. So yay.
    Oddly, with all this happiness going on, I still generated one astonishing nightmare. For once it was even set in Columbia in my own car. But I did manage to move some streets around. And introduce a mountain suddenly appearing in the center of town. Which I, or rather my car, then hurtled down backwards. Did you know that putting the car in low gear backwards doesn't slow it down, but instead speeds it up? Of course not! It makes no sense at all! But it did in the dream, and boy was I ever alarmed. (For some reason, my feet wouldn't reach the brake.) I don't know if I was somehow saved or if I just woke up. Regardless, I'm sure the married friend I was driving with will be very relieved.

Tame

    I've been considering just how domesticated these domesticated animals are. Judging by the ferocious beast I live with, it might be simpler just to consider them tame, rather than domesticated. (OT, but I made a great typo, and Ferocious Beats might be the best band (or hip-hop collective) name ever!) She's sweet and everything and in most instances would probably be too timid to survive in the world outside, but on another level, the wildcat is still there and not far below the surface. There is no question that if I let her out, there would be fewer birds and squirrels outside. I kid about her ferocity, but it's really there.
    The same is true of dogs. They're friendly and nice and loyal to a fault, but that may be the fault. The wolf is never far away, and the tendency to want to defend the pack can lead to very unfortunate consequences. Granted if the wolf in question is a toy poodle, the consequences are not likely to be very bad, but a bigger dog can do a lot of damage, particularly to other dogs. Much as the cliche is about cats and dogs fighting, it seems like cats mainly fight other cats and dogs other dogs.
    I suppose we truly domesticate the animals that we want to eat. If we want to use the animal to protect us, either from criminals or from rodents, it behooves us to tame them rather than truly domesticate them. The Monkey would agree with me, but she is ferociously napping.

Jazz town

    So at the jazz sessions last night at Conundrum, I wasn't able to talk to Glynis, the bass player I blogged about last week regarding the stroke he just had at 53. But I was keeping a close eye on him and he appeared to be able to control both thumbs. So he seems to have already made a full recovery from his stroke. He also snuck "Master Blaster (Jammin')" by Stevie Wonder into an unrelated jazz number, showing a) that he hasn't lost his Detroit roots and b) that I was correct in asserting that he was BORN to sing Stevie. Jam on.
    The drummer's little sister came up to do "My Funny Valentine." Pure nepotism. She sounded like a blend of Flora Purim, Diana Ross and Christina Aguilera. You really should have been there!
    Lee Bailey demolished on keys. My friend Marty, more frequently seen at Bill's Pickin' Parlor, said to me, "You didn't know you were coming to church tonight, did you?"
    The reason I didn't get to talk to Glynis was because the band never really took a break. Anyway, the instruments didn't. A guy from the crowd took over the keys and another hit the mic, free-styling old school. Anyway, he mentioned the Last Poets. Lots of fun regardless.
    Before I pooped out, another keyboard player did a faithful but still jazzy version of "That's the Way of the World. Glynis and the drummer sang a bit, but the guy on keys was killing it so thoroughly I think they just wanted to let him at it. A great night, and I STILL don't know why these guys aren't famous.

Writing when the squirrels let me

(Editor's note: This is Amelia the cat's blog)
    Oh boy! The sun's up! I gotta go look out the window! There might be squirrels or birds or other kitties!
    Hey, it's cold. Big Stinky Man Thing isn't up yet. Maybe if I yell at him, he'll let me under the covers.
    Hey, it's dark in there! Gotta go look out the window again.
    Time to lick my tail.
    Hey, Big Stinky Man Thing's up! Maybe he'll give me new food!
    Hey, maybe if I claw his suitcase up Big Stinky Man Thing will come and brush me and give me scritches!
    OK, now I can eat.
    Time to lick my paws.
    Is that a squirrel?! Gotta get to the window and see! OMG OMG OMG! It is! I'm gonna get that squirrel! (Editor's note: Cats don't understand so well about windows.)
    Big Stinky Man Thing is walking to the front of the house. MAYBE WE CAN PLAY WITH THE BOOTLACE! Darn it, he just grabbed his book.
    Big Stinky Man Thing is in the little room with the flushy thing. He can't get away! I get scritches! Oh boy!
    Time to lick my ruff.
    Big Stinky Man Thing is putting his boots on! Bootlaces! I get to play with bootlaces! Big Stinky Man Thing loves it, too; that's why he keeps saying, "Straight back to the kitty store!"
    Time to take a nap.
    Oh boy, the bad kitty's outside! I gotta scare him off! That's right, run away!
    I'm gonna find a kittyball and kick it to Big Stinky Man Thing. He always loves to play Kittyball!
    Time to take a nap.

All good gifts

    When I was teeny, I went to Heathwood Hall Episcopal School. However, the elder siblings started at Duke and Yale and at the same time Heathwood started adding all these construction fund charges (having no doubt NOTHING to do with desegregation and white flight) so I started 3d grade in public school. This turns out to be a neat dividing line for the purposes of today's tune-related anecdote.
    Years later, I heard the musical "Godspell" for the first time when my high school girlfriend's Lutheran church put it on. I don't remember if "All Good Gifts" made an impression on me, but the rest of the music did. Eventually I bought a copy of the original Broadway cast recording, though this was probably a decade of more later. And that's when I noticed "All Good Gifts," and remembered that they used to sing it in chapel at Heathwood. Also a kid at Rosewood named David Krassky sang it in a school program.
    Turns out that it's a very very popular Anglican/Episcopalian hymn called, I think (I looked it up, but don't feel like doing it again) "We Plow the Fields and Scatter." (Well, "Plough." I looked it up anyway.) I only spent 3d grade, 1970-1 at Rosewood, and never saw David Krassky again. Turns out that "Godspell" didn't even open on Broadway until late 1971. All these years I thought retroactively that the Episcopalians and young David were being infinitely hip doing this Broadway tune. Turns out that Broadway was being hip swiping an excellent Episcopalian hymn. The things you learn... eventually!
    PS: Happy Thanksgiving!

White noise

    I can't decide whether white noise is good for sleeping or not. Last night I slept straight though until 6, but then couldn't get back to sleep. Of course, this may have been more because yesterday's Ethiopian food disagreed with me than because of the noise. One difference that blog readers will appreciate is that though I have vivid dreams under white noise conditions, I can't remember them at all when I wake up. I don't mind either, but I feel a lot less rested than I do on mornings when I've in fact slept a lot less. So I'll keep experimenting and see how I feel about it after a few more days.
    One thing I'll say is that the second Droid app I downloaded, Relax & Sleep, is vastly better than the first one (White Noise). It is creepy that it seems to run 24 hours a day, even when the smart phone is sleeping. But I don't think it's anything dangerous. (Knock on wood.)
    One thing I'll say about the drive on US 21 yesterday that wasn't fun: we got stuck behind a truck that was loaded with wood chips. I say "was"; most of them seemed to fly off and hit me in the windshield. I think there was supposed to be a net over the top, but I guess that would have been too hard. Paul took a picture, but I don't know how it turned out. Memo to Joel & Ethan Coen: woodchippers aren't all that fun even when they're used for their intended purpose. Fortunately, the road widened to four lanes after what only seemed like 100 miles, and we left the truck behind. As this was the only bad part of the whole cool day and even it was funny, I'll still call it a win.

Highway ironing

    Night before last I noticed that I sleep a LOT better when the heat is running as much of the night as is possible. Or to put it another way, that white noise puts me out. After a brief, exhausting bout of thinking, it occurred to me that I might be able to find free white noise apps for the Droid. And I did! The one I tried first didn't have a lot of choices and few were good. I tried Airplane Ride, but it was too loud, and Crickets. The latter I could sleep with, but wound up having odd (but strangely, non-outdoor) dreams. I've found another app with vastly more choices. I'll try it out tonight.
    When I was a lad, a theme park opened near Charlotte called Carowinds. At the time, I-77 didn't run from Columbia to Charlotte, so we had to take US 21 to visit. I remember a wonderfully rolling highway, almost as fun as the roller coasters we were on our way to ride. Today, just for a hoot (and to avoid getting locked in in Olympia for the last USC home game of the season), I went up to Charlotte, bringing Paul and taking US 21. Those weasels ironed it out! It was hardly rolling at all. The part that's still fun was the stretch between Ridgeway and Great Falls, but the rest was no more fun than the interstate.
    On the other hand, it was an absolutely perfect autumn day and the colors were glorious almost the entire way, so it was a whole lot prettier than the interstate. And traffic on I-77 is a lot more rugged than it used to be, so it sure was a lot more restful than the interstate. But for roller coaster fun, I guess I'll have to shell out for Carowinds. Since my neck got better, that'll be a lot more worthwhile place to visit than the last time I went.
    In Charlotte, we ate wonderful Eritrean food at Meskerem, bought CDs we aren't going to admit to at adjacent CD Warehouse (OK, I got Best of Al Stewart, John Mellencamp's eponymous, Robert Earl Keen #2 Live Dinner, Life's Rich Pageant and a Jimmie Lunceford compilation. All for $10.) And hit the Giocometti exhibit at the Bechtler, free for both of us because they honored their reciprocal agreement and Paul's Cola. Museum of Art membership. It was awesome, too. So a brilliant day, and still a show to go to tonight. The Monkey will eat me alive!

Madurodam

    What this town needs is a cheap, compact tourist attraction. Something like the Corn Palace, except we don't have much corn. Something, say like Madurodam. Madurodam is an ultra-cool little attraction at The Hague, The Netherlands (the country with all the definite articles). It's a miniature version of the entire country, or rather, it's a miniature version of the most popular attractions in the country. Well, not the hookers and not the reefer, but of the attractions likely to get put on a picture postcard. Cathedrals and towers and such like.
    Admittedly, South Carolina isn't overflowing with scenic attractions (Rainbow Row, Table Rock mountain, an aircraft carrier) but hell, neither is The Netherlands. What we are overflowing with is artistic talent. All we would need is a little space and adjacent parking. It ought to be cheap, fun, and finally something that'll bring people to Columbia besides Tunnel Vision and the Zoo. I can sure see it!
    (Amusingly, Google reviews for Madurodam are fairly grim. All I can say is it was really cool 25 years ago. I can't actually see the reviews; Google just sends me to Google Maps. They say that 17/30 = Good to very good, so maybe it isn't as tough a crowd as I was thinking.)

Why are tennis balls fuzzy?

    Dreams have been odd lately, as usual, but you're lucky that I don't remember much about them. In fact I've been sleeping really well lately. The big sleep issue was night before last when I woke up with pins and needles in my arm ('cause it's silly to say my arm was asleep when my whole body was asleep) and it took ages to get it to abate. I think I hit a nerve, something not unlike the funny bone, except not funny. But I got back to sleep no problem, which is a nice change.
    The tennis ball dream featured a gas station except that once you got inside the convenience store part it was more like the checkout area of a Walmart in that there were untold numbers of kiosks each with a checker and a cash register. And above the cash register at each kiosk there was a locker, or maybe more like an overhead compartment on an airplane. And nobody was bothered that I went and checked them all out. And inside all of them were giant fuzzy tennis balls. But what bothered me, and continued to when I woke up, was why are tennis balls fuzzy? Were they always fuzzy? When the kings and queens of France played jeu de paumes, did they play with fuzzy balls, and if so where did they get them? Did they knit them from fleece?
    I could look it up of course, but I'm much more enjoying being bewildered by it, and prefer to leave it as a rhetorical question. That and the related one: why aren't all balls fuzzy? If you can serve a fuzzy tennis ball 130 miles per hour, maybe fuzzy is best. Or the other related question: how fast would serves go if tennis balls WEREN'T fuzzy? Makes ya wonder, don't it?

A hero

    Last night at Conundrum Jazz Sessions, we were chatting with Glynis the bass player and, like you do, asked how he's been. And he said he had just had a stroke and was in fact just out of the hospital. We sympathized and marveled that he seemed to be doing so well and asked him to tell the story. He said he was driving and he just passed out. His 8-year-old son reached his foot across and hit the brake to stop the car, then got Glynis' cell phone out and called 9-1-1. I gotta say, that kid is my absolute hero. And Glynis', too, no doubt.
    Glynis is only 53. He had spent the last decade or so in Japan and only came back because they were burning radioactive waste in Tokyo and handing out dosimeters. He's from Detroit but his wife is from here. He had thankfully little lasting effects from the stroke, though at the moment his right thumb is dead. But it's early days yet; hopefully function will return fully. But if he hadn't told us, we never would have guessed or noticed. It didn't affect his playing an iota. Best wishes to Glynis, and I hope to meet the 8-year-old hero one day.

Humidifier

    No doubt I complained about the exact same thing in the exact same words a year ago, but you would think that houses would have built-in humidifiers and dehumidifiers. (I mean BESIDES windows. Smart alecks.) The heat invariably dries the indoor air out, and one can't seem to drink enough water to keep up no matter how tolerant one is to running off to the bathroom every few minutes. It isn't any problem for me. Whenever I start getting shocked when trying to pet the kitty, I figure it's time to start running the humidifier and do so.
    However, for older folks, especially if their mobility is compromised, this can get to be a serious problem. Moreover, they tend to feel the cold more and so keep the thermostat set higher, thus making the air dry out even faster. Margaret just went to the emergency room the other day due to vertigo which cleared up when she received IV fluids. I don't know anything else you could call this but dehydration. Now I can get her a humidifier and then go over a few minutes early when I'm picking up Dad for dialysis and fill it up for her, and that would help. But it just seems that it would be so much more sensible to have automatic systems for this. Of course, one might risk Legionella, and maybe that's the reason why not. Still, it seems a shame.

Virtual page-turner

    A buddy sent me his novel to read with the idea that I might give him an enthusiastic review on Amazon. This won't be a problem; it's really good. Only fly in the ointment is that I want to call it a page-turner, but I'm reading a PDF file. Does that make it a virtual pageturner? An electronic pageturner? (A turner of electronic pages?) I'm stumped. Tried to google but google doesn't believe in synonyms (or possibly portmanteau words) but my memory came through: "compelling"! There's a good word. ("The narrative pull pulls" probably would not be adequate, but I like that one, too.)
    Speaking of novels, I wonder how far I could go with one where a Southern family speaks in murmurs and whispers about one family member, and a visitor, suspecting madness or perversion, finally asks what's wrong with the black sheep. "He's RATIONAL!" one old lady confides. Probably not very far.

Born to laugh at tornadoes

    A long time ago, nearly 30 years, Was (Not Was) put out a record called "Born To Laugh at Tornadoes." It passed neatly under my radar. I had their first record (which was eponymous), because I had found it for 50 cents or so in a discount store. (I passed over a Gang of Four record, and am still kicking myself. As a sort of punishment, I've still never heard them. Crazy, no?) I really liked that one, and when I eventually found BTLAT, I liked it even better.
    Thus I was very surprised to learn in those pre-Internet days that it had been just lambasted by critics. Reviled. Body slammed. I didn't understand it then and I still don't understand it now. The first record had been hook-heavy, Motown-like and highly commercial, only with weird quirky lyrics. The second one was exactly the same, only with guest artists. Most of them had heavy Detroit connections (Mitch Ryder, Doug Fieger) or might as well have (Mel Torme, Ozzie Osbourne). Apparently, having Mel Torme croon about a guy choking to death = selling out. I just can't see it.
    To me, it was all a big joke, a parody of a concept album. It was called "Born To Laugh at Tornadoes," FFS. (Still my favorite album title ever, by the way.) I still think it's a delightful record, if dark around the lyrics. If you can find it, get it. If not, look it up and find the songs on YouTube; most are there.
    Ironically, on their next record, they really did sell out, and very successfully. I don't know how the critics felt about that, but I know which way I'm betting. But on that one, the fellows came up with "Somewhere in America (There's a Street Named After My Dad)" by which they expiated all their sins in my book. Rather like Bob Dylan with "Hurricane."
    I appreciate that I sound like a guy writing jazz liner notes in the '60s and I should erect some categories for Was (Not Was), like Neo-Motown or Sardonic Funk. (Sardonic Funk would be a great band name, but wouldn't everything?) But the source of "fan" is still "fanatic"; if I sound like a fanatic, I guess I can live with that. (Also, it's a lot of fun having "Born to laugh at tornadoes" as a subject line.)

Don't bogart that smart phone

    On election night, we got together in a bar to bite our nails and watch returns. Some of the fellows were standing together around a smart phone, or maybe a tablet, checking no doubt on Nate Silver's last second projections. And I couldn't help but notice that they looked a lot like kids in the schoolyard back in the bad old days standing together surreptitiously sharing a cigarette. Or like fans at a rock show sharing a joint. We decided that smart phones are 21st century cigarettes. It's a gateway technology, isn't it? Or is that the iPod?

A bit alarmed

    Dad's sweetheart Margaret (who is also 91) has been sick lately and today was very sick. Her daughter has taken her to the hospital and Dad is on his own. I brought him breakfast from a restaurant, forgetting only the coffee (dang my lazy brain) and am on call otherwise. Hopefully everything resolves itself quickly, easily and happily, but between us William and I can keep an eye on him or at least an ear out for him. I need to contact some nursing homes just in case, but (there's that word again) hopefully nothing of the sort will be necessary.
    Haven't had any update as to Margaret's condition. Going on past experience, she may still be waiting to see a doctor. Anyway, hoping for the best, and we certainly accept all good wishes, warm thoughts, prayers, white light, or whatever you've got, really. People who know me can call, email or check Facebook for updates.

Most delighted update: Dad called to say that she just had vertigo, and it responded immediately to an IV. One assumes that she, like me, doesn't respond too well to electric heat. Anyway, she's on her way home or will be soon. Call it a win!

Vegetarianer

    I find as I get vegetarianer that I have considerably more energy and verve. I wish I could say that this is because of eating less meat, but I have the strong sense that it has more to do with taking my B vitamins, which I do whenever I'm having a vegan meal. Since I'm eating less meat the rest of the time, too, my B vitamin levels might easily be a little down. Since B & C are water-soluble, you can't overdose, so the more the merrier I figure.
    What I particularly notice is waking up before the alarm with a certain "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'" ebullience. Granted, brain function is not at its best, but eventually the mind wakes up, too. So this might be a B vitamin thing. Or maybe this is how I REALLY feel about the switch from Daylight Savings to Standard time!

Average

    Obverse of yesterday's excuse, as exuberance and giddiness are impinging on my brain function instead of stress and anticipation. Apologies if again I've got nuthin'.
    One thing I noticed while waiting to vote I have noticed often before: if I am of average height, or a little under, how come I'm taller than practically everybody? Is this just a really short state? Do I only pay attention when I happen to be among people shorter than me? Could it be a pandemic of bad posture? Or am I levitating again?
    See? Nuthin'. I'll try harder tomorrow. Hell, I'll try harder today. A frustrating thing in my life right now is that I'm the host for a drinking and discussion group, and somehow in a metropolitan area supposedly composed of 600,000 people there just doesn't seem to be a single quiet restaurant with decent drinks and safe, convenient, free parking. Particularly you would think this in a college town. You would be mistaken.
    Of course, I may well have posted both these points already. After almost two years of this, I'm probably repeating myself a lot. Sometimes you feel like going back and checking the files and sometimes you don't.

Another approach

    Hey, it's Election Day and I'm more than a little frazzed owing mostly to anticipation and partly to getting up at 6 to go vote. So don't expect a lot. I've mentioned now and again about adding EV olive oil and honey to my assorted muffins or cookies. For some reason, I always seem to use two tablespoons of the former and four of the latter, and to avoid having to wait a week for the @#$#@ honey to vacate the measuring spoon, I added one T of olive oil followed by two of honey, then repeated.
    Today, I decided to vacate this approach and instead add approximately 1/2 a tablespoon of olive oil, one of honey, and repeat four times. It's embarrassing yet again to admit what an idiot I am. MAN did that work better! Granted, my approximating skills are pretty iffy, but then if I were going to get worried about precise amounts I probably would have started a long time ago. The honey drops right out of the spoon all four times, whereas before this usually only worked on the tablespoonful right after the one of oil. Sure makes cooking more fun!
    Last night's dreams again left little memory, you lucky ducks, but the memory I have is very funny. Seems I was running with mobsters. However, this was only online. Apparently, instead of having cool nicknames like Joe Bananas and Vincent the Chin they all had Twitter handles instead. Which leads me to wonder: do they? And do I really want to join Twitter just to find out?

Daylight saving

    My buddy Paul was most peeved about the end of Daylight Savings Time. He (and I, to a lesser extent) is/are annoyed about having the sun rise before it's time to get up. Nobody we know is going out to plow the north 40 at 6 a.m. and it seems an open question whether we really need dawn's early light quite so early. He remarked that it's actually more pleasant getting up in the morning when it's still dark and I noted that that might be because the sun isn't waking you up earlier than you had intended getting up. I recommended getting a sleep mask, though even mine is imperfect defense against a determined sunrise.
    We also hate it getting dark at 5. It was what made me crazy in England back in the day, though that was more like 4. I dunno, but the more I think about it, even though most studies I see suggest that Daylight Savings doesn't really save much or any energy, I still wouldn't mind too much if it were just converted to year-round. We could just call noon "noonish."
    And another thing! I'm fed up with the months with the names meaning Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth actually being the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth, dangit! Let's ship July and August to the end of the year. I'm pretty sure Caesar and Augustus won't mind. (More essential issues of the day.:P)

Crazy people on the Internet

    I've made assorted gags over the years about getting all my nutritional information from Crazy People on the Internet. Given my dietary restrictions, I don't think anyone has any reason not to believe me. However, lately I've been supplementing this information with material from less crazy people on the Internet, specifically the celiac researchers at the University of Chicago. They indicate that a litttle gluten now and then is unlikely to harm a celiac, that the only danger is constant or at least steady ingestion. They also note that cancer is only a rare outcome of celiac disease. I am starting to believe them, and starting to relax and breathe a little bit. Who wants to go out for pizza?
    Last night's dreams were odd, elaborate and an hour longer due to the end of daylight savings time. I don't recall details except that I was on a long train trip around the peninsula of America (either America was Florida-shaped or Chicago and San Francisco had moved to Florida; take your pick). I had to abandon the trip because I had left my smart phone at home and this was the part I liked: my smart phone was the size of a stick of gum! I can't wait for the day when this one comes true.
    The previous night's dream were more vivid and I still remember elements now. In this one, my dad's house, always large in my dreams, was truly colossal. Truly. There was a shopping mall on the second floor. I'm sure Dr. Freud would have a field day somehow, but I thought it was pretty cool.

Sugar Bear

    When I was teeny, Sugar Bear was a character on a Saturday morning cartoon show. The way I remember it is that this came first, then he became spokes-cartoon (OK, mascot) for a breakfast cereal. However, Wikipedia says that the characters on the cartoon show were all, or nearly all, mascots for various brands of Post cereals. Wiki doesn't mention it, but I'm pretty the FCC came down on the network and forbid having cartoon characters do both Saturday morning TV shows and commercials. Anyway, Sugar Bear (whom I had liked a LOT as a character on the show) was exiled to commercials only for a cereal that changed its name every couple of years (Sugar Crisp, Super Golden Crisp, etc.)
    If, like me, you cut back your TV watching during the '80s and '90s, you should probably read the Wiki entry. There was some pretty weird stuff going on on those commercials. I never knew that Sugar Bear had a sworn enemy. (Should have been Vinegar Weasel, but wasn't. You really should go look it up.)
    What got me, though, was a realization 45 years late that Sugar Bear was supposed to be Bing Crosby. That was in fact what sent me to Wiki in the first place. Only to see that he was supposed to be Dean Martin. I I I just couldn't believe it! The very idea! Nah, seriously, I can see it. Then again... maybe Dean Martin was trying to be Bing Crosby! Ever think of that Wikipedia?!

These third-person dreams

    I've been having a crop of extra-vivid dreams these last two nights which, you'll be relieved to hear, I don't remember particularly well. However, I do recall that at least one featured a complete absence of me, or rather didn't feature me. I've had those before, and mentioned it, but it's still odd and confusing. It's especially odd since I hardly ever watch movies or TV anymore, so it's a bit peculiar to have a dream that's like a movie. I wish I could remember it; maybe I was Batman!
    (Now I've gone and done it to myself. The subject line has stuck "New York, New York" in my head, ineradicably it seems. At least it's a good one.)

Height maybe?

    A long time ago, I was talking to my friend Lee about a study we'd heard about regarding female self-esteem. To give an idea how long ago this was, he had too toddler daughters then; now they are lovely young women, one starting college, the other finishing high school. The study indicated that girls scored similarly to boys on measures of self-esteem until about the age of 11, then their scores plummeted. The authors appeared to be mystified as to what might occur around that age that might be causing this. We more wondered what planet the authors might be from and felt that puberty was the obvious answer.
    However, it occurs to me that height might explain it equally well. Girls hit their adult height younger than boys do. Thus, there are a few years when most girls are taller than most boys of the same age. Maybe girls lose self-esteem by feeling gawky during the years when they are relatively tall, then the low self-esteem is reinforced when they are suddenly left behind by the fast-growing boys. I've seen other studies indicating that taller men are more successful and better paid than shorter men; perhaps this needs to be generalized to everybody. Just a thought.

Awful falafel waffles

    I call them this because I'm a fool for rhymes and not good at marketing, though more accurate would be almond chocolate chip shortbread cookies. They turned out fairly brilliant even though I forgot the vanilla. If I remember it next time, they'll be even better. You should try them!
    OK, this time there's no way around it: you're going to have to go to a health food store. Or at least an Indian/Asian foods store. Because this one requires gram (garbanzo bean/ chick pea) flour and brown rice flour, as well as cocoa butter. On the other hand, beans and rice combined make a complete protein. I don't know if the associated flours do, too (processing often destroys a lot of nutritional value), but it's at least possible.
    You might want to start by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. I've learned enough about cooking to mix the wet ingredients first. Then again, since I use honey in everything, it's an open question whether it's liquid or solid. I call it liquid and run with it.
    Ditto the cocoa butter. Cocoa butter is a pain in the butt to find. I could only find it in the health and beauty section of the health food store. (They do assure me it's food grade, and in fact snack on it.) Unfortunately, the packages aren't always the same size, as the cocoa butter comes in chunks. It's always about 3 oz., though; I just use the whole package. Cocoa butter melts at body temperature, but it's surprisingly reluctant to melt. I stick it in a saucepan and put it on medium heat for five minutes or so.
    I do the usual thing with two tablespoons of EV olive oil and four of honey. (That is, one of oil, two of honey, one of oil, two of honey, this to minimize honey sticking to the spoon.) Add half cup of almond milk. Then add the melted cocoa butter. Scramble a large egg and add it. Unlike me, add a teaspoon of vanilla. Mix the heck out of it all.
    Add a cup of garbanzo bean flower and a cup of brown rice flour. Stir until just before your arm falls off. Add a cup of chopped almonds and a quarter cup of chocolate chips. (In gluten-free casein-free soy-free world, this means Enjoy Life brand, but obviously not everybody has the restricted diet I do.) At this point, you have cookie dough, so mix as best you can, but don't worry about it too much.
    Cookie dough is a lot more fun in stories about Grandma's house than in real life, but between a fork and a spatula I was able to transfer the muck to parchment paper. I use parchment paper on a pizza pan or a regular pan since I don't actually have a cookie sheet. I bake the cookies for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. I find them a bit undercooked at this point. I tend to turn the oven off, flip the cookies and put them back in for another 5 minutes.
    Turns out addictive and excellent, like pecan sandies without the pecans. If you just can't find the cocoa butter, I guess you could substitute another quarter cup of chocolate chips. But make sure you have a mountain handy to climb right up; you're likely to have that much energy!

Nightmare because it said so

    Last night I dreamt the least scary nightmare ever. Except that it announced that it was scary, so it was. It even had suspense. I couldn't find my car key. In real life, this would be very bad indeed since there's only the one. (Obvious dream interpretation: my brain telling myself to go get copies made, stupid.) The suspense was that I searched my key chain but the key was not there. Then I looked more carefully and found that it was there but it had split in half with the part that goes into the ignition separating from the part that you grip between thumb and finger to turn the key.
    Even in the dream I thought, no problem, I just call a locksmith. But dammit, it wanted to be a nightmare, so I got scared. Realizing in my sleep that it wasn't a scary situation, I got scared anyway. As ever, the suspicion was and is that it was all a plot to get me up to go to the bathroom. And when I woke, I found I needed to. WHY can't my brain just introduce a character as in Total Recall to show and tell me I ought to get up and go wee? I know, it didn't end that well in Total Recall. But still!

Getting less crazy

    Nobody who knows me would believe it, but this is actually me being less crazy. The gluten-free, casein-free, soy-free experiment has generally been a success. I used to be in a panic whenever I had to drive in any kind of traffic at all; that's all gone away. Though I'm still no social butterfly, I'm much more easygoing in social situations than ever before. Agoraphobia has gone away except in really really big crowds.
    The problem is that greater comfort in interpersonal relations means that there are more frequent interpersonal relations, and unfortunately I suck spectacularly at these in their every form. I'm like a free radical in the body social, doing a lot of damage without trying. I desperately need to rein in my poisonous tendencies and try to spread only sweetness and light, or anyway minimize the darkness. Or maybe the Trappists would be glad to welcome me.

Why disappointed?

    I just noticed how weird this word is. Admittedly I could look it up, but efforts to do so just led to a lot of popups. All I can guess about it is that the words appointed and disappointed must have diverged a pretty fur piece somewhere along the line over the centuries. All I got out of the etymology search apart from popups was that the root word appoint comes from Middle French, but not what it meant.
    I guess the best I can get out of it is that the appointment part has to do with expectations and so disappointment means disillusion in failed expectations. But it seems like an amazing stretch. Doesn't it?

Southbound

    I think it's odd that the glare I was complaining about the other day when out driving is much the worst when I'm going southwards. This doesn't make a lot of sense since in the Northern hemisphere, the one place I know the sun isn't going to be is north of me. It seems like the bigger problem should be when I'm northbound, but it isn't. I don't even need my sunglasses when I'm going that way, but I always do when heading south. This isn't the glare directly from the sun (which is only killing when it's late afternoon and I'm heading west, of course) but the reflection off of other cars, usually rear windshields and trunks. Color me puzzled.

Gold

    There was a lot of talk some years ago (and a movie) about blood diamonds, but events in South Africa are making me think about blood gold. When miners are shot down by security people (I forget whether they were official police or working for the company; betting on the latter) and other miners are arrested for it, it might be time to start thinking about how society can celebrate marriage, say, without supporting repulsive and immoral corporate behavior.
    The value of gold is such that going into the vintage jewelry business would be cost prohibitive. Judging by radio ads, there are a lot of folks in the business of buying old jewelry to melt it down and a lot who are interested in selling it for that purpose. I guess it would be necessary to educate Americans further about how much pain goes into making their pretty jewelry so that people would value recycled gold more than newly mined gold.
    I am also reminded of those pictures of silver mines in South America, where the workers look like ants crawling all over one another. I guess what I'm asking is where would one find ethical jewelry if gold, silver and diamonds are out? It's not like I'm ever at this point likely to need a wedding ring myself. But it seems like there are a lot of people out there who would rather consecrate their love with something that won't make them feel guilty every time they look at it. Or maybe I think too much.

Donating

    I need to donate my body to science. The hard part is being allowed to keep using it. The reason I think science needs me is that I'm firmly convinced that I am celiac. However, my immediate family is equally convinced that none of them are. Howeverever, at least one of them should be, statistically (not, you know, morally) speaking. So the question is if I'm celiac, how did I get that way?
    I always thought that celiacs are born that way, but my more recent reading indicates that it's a condition that you are born with a tendency towards but that you develop it some time in your life. I certainly always had digestive problems, but the first solid indication that there was something wrong was creeping pins and needles sensations that hit in my 30s. Later the lactose intolerance that got me in my 40s was another indication. A better one was when both went away when I quit gluten.
    I eat a very restrictive diet now, but just because I didn't do so before is not to say that I was ever what you would call normal. I used to go quite the other way regarding gluten. I ate (wheat) bran flakes every morning for a decade or more. I pretty much lived at Cici's Pizza for a similar stretch of time. And I used to snack on four slices of whole wheat bread pretty frequently in the evening. What I'm wondering, I guess, is if I could have triggered an autoimmune response to gluten simply by overdosing on the stuff. What do you say Science? Interested?

Dr. Scholl's

    An oddity, and a very poor advertisement. Something less than ten years ago, I was trying to get started on a second edition of our hiking book. (This wound up being done by somebody else entirely, because first I and then John never quite got around to it. Sic transit gloria mundi.) I had trouble proceeding mostly because my car in those days was unbelievably unreliable.
    But there was an odd smaller problem. Any time I went as far as a mile, I would get a small but significant pain in my hips. Unfortunately, on a hiking book you have to go as far as a mile many times over. Anyway, as I say, it was mainly car troubles (and, OK, laziness) that caused me to abandon the effort, and eventually I found that I could again hike more than a mile with no hip soreness.
    In the last couple of weeks, the hip thing came back. One difference between now and hiking book days is that I use Dr. Scholl's orthotics in my shoes and boots. Specifically, I use the one that's supposed to help lower back pain. The ones in my boots through this week had been there a long time, much longer than the recommended three-four monthes. So I got a new set, and the hip soreness after short hikes went away again. So why do I call it a poor advertisement? Lower back still hurts. Paging Dr. Scholl!

WHEN I'm President...

    Another political one, but mainly a usage nitpick. At last night's debate (and probably at the other ones), Governor Romney said several times, "When I'm elected President..." The first time, he undercut it badly by starting with, "If I'm elected President," and then correcting himself to "WHEN." I think the Governor might have benefited from further coaching in English usage before leaving his home planet. The preferred approach would be, "As President, I would..." That way, you convey exactly the same concept without looking like a douchebag. Of course, if you are in fact a douchebag (or a space alien), you may have to practice a lot in order to learn how to talk like an actual human being. That is not for me to say. Do you think Ann will talk after the election?

The plural of A

    A while ago I was blithering about the baseball team The A's and the band The A's, to the effect that I was glad that this was actually a contraction with the apostrophe taking the place of "thletic" (and with the idea that the band was/were named after the team) because I get mad (as in kookoo) when plurals are formed using apostrophe s. (Of course, now I have to go look up how one should write "apostrophe s.":))
    Then I thought back to those glorious days when they stopped marking penmanship and I therefore started getting straight-- uh, whatever the plural of A is. Because, though I believe that this should be As, I am aware that there is already such a word. Of course, you could go with "Ays," but most people would read that as if it were "aye" and think you were doing a pirate impression. (Straight Arrrrrrrrrs.)
    So I think I'll just say that I made straight the plural of A, and conclude that I have found the source of the problem. The problem is English. It's all fouled up. Isn't that right, Fonzie? "Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" (I used that gag already, didn't I? OK, so sue me.)