What if you crossed Pong with a marimba?

    It appears that there's no limit to how much I like hearing the marimba. This is a surprise to me, as I have never before betrayed any sign of marimba obsession. Returning to the iPad mad theme, one of the synthesizers that I mentioned is Soundrop. it is very simple. There is a circle on the screen; a dot drops out of it every second. You can draw a line to intersect the dots' fall. The dots bounce off, making a sound like a note on a marimba or chimes. You draw another line intersecting the new trajectory, and there's a new sound and another new trajectory. And so on and so on.
    I know, I know. It sounds less interesting than watching paint dry, but it's really fun. You also make some astounding sounds. Granted, everything sounds like "Discipline" by King Crimson, but what could be wrong with that? The app is free, though you can't save your work unless you pop for $2 for the full version. Thus, if you do something really brilliant, it's lost unless you leave the app open until the batteries run down. The full version also has other sounds besides marimba. But truth to tell, I kind of like the evanescence, and I really like the marimba. What a thing to find out at this advanced age!

Perspective

    Yesterday I went to Lowe's to get a new HVAC filter. They shelved them funny, so when I reached up from the second-best 14 X 25 filter to get the best one, I instead grabbed a 16 X 20. In another "Boy I'm dumb" moment, I didn't even look at it, just continued to checkout. And continued not looking at it until I had taken the plastic off and tried to install it. Not surprisingly, that didn't go too well, so I put the old one back.
    Not being quite a complete idiot, I had hung onto the receipt. Today I went back to get the right size. I had visions of the Returns person saying, "No way! You opened this!" but nothing of the sort happened. They credited my card and off I went to get my 14 X 25. And that's where perspective comes in. Because I've been buying this size for years and years. (Alice's central air took the same size filter.) And it looked just bizarre. Much too long and much too skinny. In my heart of hearts I was surprised when I got it home and it fit. Weird, huh?
    Again again with the cucumbers: on the fourth day, the fourth petite cucumber rotted. Not much, but still. So they're no good in the fridge and they're no good out. Oh well; hello English cucumber!

Again with the cucumbers

    I guess the big point I want to get across before I start blithering is one that no doubt everybody but me knew already: don't put cucumbers in the fridge. For all that "cool as a cucumber" stuff, it isn't a really good idea. It especially isn't a good idea for the petite cucumbers I've been obsessed with lately. They rot. And quickly, too. So I've been happier since I've been leaving them out.
    I did find out why they aren't marketed as being seedless. The latest batch do indeed have seeds, though they are very small. They haven't caused any reflux that I have noticed, though, which is all that's important to me.
    Publix sells these and the English (or Dutch) cucumber both from an outfit called Perro Family Farms. The petite cucumbers are from Holland; the English (or Dutch) ones are from Honduras. This caused me a quadruple take (a double each for Holland and Honduras). But really, I read correctly; the ones that are supposed to be from Holland are the ones that aren't. It also occurred to me that the Perros are one far-flung family. Gotta get around if you want to get ahead in the cucumber biz, I guess.

Fiascoville

    A few weeks ago, the dialysis facility changed Dad's chair time, making it fifteen minutes later. This would have been very, very welcome a few weeks earlier, when we were invariably having to wait. However, at the time they made the change it was insane since they had finally gotten their act together and eliminated his wait. Today, we were more than ten minutes early, and had to wait those ten, plus another thirty minutes. It doesn't help that his attendant, while very sweet, lies every time she opens her mouth, often contradicting the previous lie that came out of her mouth. But they got their act together once; presumably they can do it again. Color me unhappy, however.
    Also, Dad's left knee has been balky lately. Since Margaret got shingles, they haven't been going out, so he's walking around the house to get some exercise. Hopefully, it's just a minor strain that will clear up soon. Hopefully, so will Margaret's shingles. No fun at all.
    I could of course edit yesterday's post (still can, mind you) but that wasn't an autoharp, it was a sitar. I hadn't noticed the picture before, which is the only indication of the instrument you're playing apart from the sound. I did notice it didn't sound much like an autoharp, but it doesn't sound much like a sitar either. This isn't to say that it doesn't sound cool, though; it really does!

iPad mad

    My wonderful sister Anne gave or lent me (we haven't decided yet) her new iPad when she was down for Father's Day, and I have been going fairly kookoo downloading free apps for it. She started me out on this evil trail by pointing me to Tiny Piano. Since then, I downloaded a lot of games that I don't play anymore (including the text-based ones I've mentioned already and which were briefly an obsession), and one that I do. It's called 7 Little Words, and is nefarious. It's a simple word game, with a new one every day. Worse than crack.
    The other week, somebody was telling me the great future in store for us where everybody can work at home, due to the advent of the iPad. I said, "I just use mine to play Air Hockey." And indeed, one of my very best free apps is the Air Hockey one. It makes me crazy that a lot of these things seem to have disappeared from the App Store, particularly this one. But keep looking; maybe it'll be back.
    I also got a xylophone, a drum kit, congas, hand drums, a harmonium, an autoharp and marimba, a harp (Echo String) and Cat Piano Jr. which alas doesn't amuse or interest Amelia particularly. I also have numerous synthesizers. One, Synth!, allows you to record five second samples and use them on the keyboard. So far, creepy stuff like "Get out!" or "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" don't come off as very creepy. The creepiest is "To be or not to be." Go figure. My favorite, though, is "We can dance if we want to."
    Other synths include SoundPrism, minicomposer (by a guy from Kraftwerk), Mugician (which I recommend to EVERYbody), RGBSound and Soundrop. And I got a sound studio setup called Hokusai. Never have I felt more William Gibson!

Bachman and Turner need not apply

    I've owned this '94 Camry for at least 5 years, and drove it a lot for the previous 5 years when Alice owned it. So I was pretty surprised to find a button on the gearshift that I had never noticed before. This may have been partly because it was pushed in. When you push it again such that it pops out, an "O/D off" light comes on on the dashboard console. So I've found the overdrive button.
    Opinion on the Internet seems to agree (mostly) that it's best to leave overdrive on all the time. Apparently, it's just a matter of having fourth gear available for highway and near-highway speeds, a gas-saving feature. I just feel like an idiot for not noticing it in all this time. But though I ain't seen nothin' yet, I'll try try try to let it ride in order to keep takin' care of business. Every day!

Greenville

    Columbia is the largest city in South Carolina, but the third largest metropolitan area. Greenville and Spartanburg between them form the largest, and between them is a large and busy airport. For some reason, Greenville Spartanburg Airport (GSP) is running radio ads in Columbia at least, and presumably throughout the state, featuring what I could call ostensible African-Americans. That is, it sounds like white actors trying to sound like African-Americans. Greenville is very white, and very Republican; I don't know if this just reflects their attitude about the rest of the state or what.
    I guess the nicest reading that can be put on this bewildering string of ads is that at least it shows a welcoming attitude towards African-Americans. Of course, a welcoming attitude extending only as far as the fastest way to leave might be considered a dubious welcome, but at least they're mainly advertising themselves as a quick way to go on vacation. So you're also presumably welcome to come back. The spot that makes me crazy is the one where a black female college student says, "Catch you on the flip-flop." Sooo, a person born in the '90s is using '70s CB lingo. Uh-huh. If you're going to be this weird, GSP, at least tighten up the writing and the acting, huh?

Omega 3 would be a great name for a planet

    (or a rocketship.) Aldi has these brilliant gluten-free crackers, made from brown rice, corn, potatoes and millet, but with some flaxseed thrown in as well. They don't taste too electrifying, but they have a bit of a mood-elevating effect, which I'm guessing is again due to the Omega 3 in the flaxseed. (Or maybe I'm just a flaxseed junkie and never knew. That and the whole Mr. Hyde thing...) This being Aldi and them being in the special purchases section, I've been stocking up while I try to find the same item under its more usual wrapping. (Aldi special purchases stuff, then gets somebody, presumably the manufacturer, to put it in Aldi packaging. Alert shoppers can sometimes find the same item under its actual brand name; granted you pay at least 20% more, but Aldi special purchases never last longer than a week or so.)
    I'm thinking of just adding flaxseed to everything. Publix sells it and it's actually quite cheap. I guess I have to make sure to cook it, though; I wouldn't want a Chia digestive system! Then again, maybe that's the price of moving to Planet Omega 3.

Narrative pull

    Rereading "The Lord of the Rings" after cheating with Harry Potter for a few years, I'm led to wonder again about the wonders of narrative pull. I always thought that Tolkien was a master, but compared to Rowling, he just doesn't stand up at all. Of course, it's hardly fair to expect a book you've read a few dozen times to exert the same pull it did the first time. But I'm not sure it was ever narrative pull. Tolkien mastered creating characters you want to know, lines you want to repeat and speeches you want to recite. (The songs, not so much.)
    It's as if he knew what he was good at and more or less phoned in the exposition to fill in spaces to get you to the good parts, and the good parts are so good that readers put up with the rest. Rowling is killer at exposition, maybe second only to Andrew Vachss among people I've read. Douglas Adams was very good, AND you laughed your ass off. Dashiell Hammett, John Le Carre and John Grisham always made me turn the page. People say nice things about Stephen King (he won a poll I ran on this topic on Democratic Underground some years ago) but I just don't see it. Obviously, I read the wrong books. Or maybe I just hate suspense.
    Regardless, I love "The Lord of the Rings" the same as always. It's just taking longer. Rather than blame Professor Tolkien, as with most things I blame the kitty.

Burpless

    Now and then I've mentioned my weirdo crazy luncheon beverage, a smoothie composed of avocado, cucumber, and either pineapple or some other fruit, usually strawberries and blueberries. A long time ago, I found out that this makes me a lot happier if I cut the seeds out of the cucumbers. Otherwise I get the most astonishing acid reflux.
    Recently, Dad's sweetheart Margaret introduced me to these seedless cucumbers Publix sells. The weird thing is that they are nowhere called seedless; they are marketed as gourmet mini cucumbers. They are something of a chore to peel, but whatever they're called, I have yet to see a seed. Nor have I had any reflux. So they seem to be a winner. (Also, one goes well in my smoothie, whereas I usually have to cut a regular cucumber in half, reserving the other for the next day.)
    Researching this, I found that the English cucumber (those very long, skinny things) is in fact advertised as being both seedless and burpless. (Apropos of nothing, but I think in England they're called Dutch cucumbers. But maybe I'm just romancing.) I seem to recall them tasting particularly bitter, though, or anyway not particularly good. But maybe I'll try one the next time I'm out of cucumbers. Publix only sells the mini cucumbers in packs of four to six, which is a too few many cucumbers anyway. So a gigantic one instead wouldn't be much of a stretch. Although if they're as nasty as I remember, it might be much too much.:)

Life and death

    My sister Anne's son James and his wife Cristina yesterday welcomed their new daughter Mia Cristina to the world, at 6 lb, 2 oz. All are well, and happy, and Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
    On the other hand, there's that excrescence in Aurora CO. It's fatuous to say that this is one massacre too many; any massacre is one massacre too many. But I'm not sure I can stand any more. I don't have any brilliant solutions, but one thought keeps recurring: it would be really nice if the news would not refer to these mass killers by name, ever. "The 7/20 Aurora CO Non-Entity" would cover matters sufficiently. Not blaming the media, but these zeebs who do these monstrous things to get on TV or see their names in the paper should not be rewarded. And all the guys in Denver and San Diego named James Holmes could probably use a break, too.
    In dreamland, Alice and I were visiting a highly ethnic restaurant (Eritrean maybe, or maybe unspecified) and we had a magic spell that would take us home immediately. Then it devolved to just calling a cab, damn it. Then we went driving someplace, but in separate cars. I think one of us, possibly coincidentally, was really driving a cab. I was in the lead car and driving in my sleep. It was a really long bridge. In real life, she and I drove the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, 'though in one car. It wasn't that long, however. If this is what Robert means by sending me dreams, no thanks!

Just silly

    This evil cat is lucky she's cute. My apartment is a result of a flipping job carried out poorly by people I've never met. They sold the house to my present landlords after turning it into two apartments. My front door is one of the changes they made, and they did it (Surprise!) really badly. The doorsill has a gap of nearly an inch that's just air, all the way across the width of the door. I stuffed in insulation, but it isn't really adequate. I also had to put another strip of insulation between the wall-almost-to-wall carpeting and the doorsill.
    Amelia hates this insulation. Whenever her life and station do not meet with her perfect satisfaction, she tears it out. I holler at her and threaten to take her back to the kitty store. She does not appear to be impressed. I think the problem is that she is actually a billionaire, and is used to a much larger staff. I will have to rely on volunteer helpers. Hell, she's cute enough!
    Dream last night was odd. I was going into a small room with an elderly retired male judge for some kind of job interview. As the interview wore on, there were more and more people there, and the room grew larger accordingly. Also, the judge turned into Nancy Pelosi at some point. Also there was a soundtrack, which would make sense if I had tunes playing all night, but I didn't. As I say, odd; just silly really.

The mail

    When Dad was in those nursing homes rehabbing, I forwarded his mail to my house so I would know when his bills were due. I should have been tipped off that there might be future trouble when some of the mail for my brothers got forwarded to me, too. When Dad moved in with Margaret, I forwarded his mail again, this time to Margaret of course. Unfortunately, my mail just went away. One item got forwarded to Margaret, but everything else except for carrier-presort (i.e., junk mail) just vanished.
    I have no idea how to proceed. I know when my bills are due, and can just pay them at the appropriate time, but it's more than a slight pain in the butt remembering all this. I assume that if I call the Postal Service and sit on hold for an hour or two, I can eventually find somebody to talk to and who might eventually resolve the issue. Or so I hope. I haven't yet felt like I have an hour or two to spare thus far. If anyone out there has any brilliant suggestions, I'm definitely all ears. I keep wanting to put a note in my mailbox addressed to Postmaster, Columbia SC [my zip code] saying, "I'm still here!" It probably wouldn't help, but it would feel good.

What time is it?

    Rereading "The Lord of the Rings" and playing text-based games set in pre-industrial times, I'm noticing something puzzling, though it may just be a measure of my ignorance. What I want to know is this: If Aragorn sets a watch during the night and tells Frodo to wake him in three hours, how does Frodo know how three hours have passed? Does he have a watch with a luminous dial? Does he count off "A thousand and one, a thousand and two,... a thousand and ten-thousand-eight-hundred. OK, wake up Aragorn!"
    In the text-based game, a witch newly brought into a coven (during the American Revolution) is told to punch a broomstick into the ground at a specific spot on the shore of a lake at midnight. How did he know it was midnight? Did "midnight" even mean "12:00 AM" in 1776? I mean, that isn't really the middle of the night, is it? Or is it? (Maybe I'm being misled by daylight savings time.:))
    Important stuff, I know. Here's more: The recent dream weirdness was that my brain came up with two new area codes for the state of South Carolina. Or maybe I should look it up; perhaps it wasn't just a dream...

Too punctual

    There might be such a thing as being too punctual. Today, going to pick up my dad to take him to dialysis, I was blocked by a freight train. I don't mind this if the freight train is moving, but I get more than a little annoyed if it pulls across the road, then stops dead. That's what happened this time. When I finally got fed up and turned around to seek an alternative route, of course it started moving again, but I was already out of line, and the line had become considerable. So I went the other way around.
    Before I was even ten minutes late, I got a call on the cell from Margaret. I just said "Freight train," and she understood. But it's funny to have become so reliable that even being eight minutes late is enough to excite concern. I hope people don't start setting clocks by me!

NonSequiturBook

    Wow, got completely thrown off track by a rotten apple. One of my Granny Smiths from Aldi had one small bruise on it, but when I bit into it, it proved to be brown under the skin even away from the bruise. I cut it up and it was brown throughout. So if one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch of girls, I have to hope that it doesn't spoil the whole bunch of apples either. Instead I ate a golden delicious that Margaret had given me which I had had in the kitchen window failing to ripen. I decided I'd rather have a green apple that's supposed to be yellow than a brown apple that's supposed to be green. It was not great, but better than the rotten one.
    As I say, off track, but probably appropriate for a piece called NonSequiturBook. I think it would be fun to start an absurdist social networking site called NonSequiturBook. Requirements would be simple; nothing anybody says can make any sense. It would be an interactive Beckett play. No? Well, I thought it was funny. (That'll be the real name of my NPR show.)
    About dreams, and I swear I won't be detailed or specific: I woke in the night in despair, not because of anything in my life that I know of. As far as I can tell, it was just dehydration. After I drank a mouthful of water, I had some difficulty getting back to sleep. When I did though, all my dreams were pleasant, to the point where I had even less desire than usual to get up in the morning. The subconscious is a good doctor, I guess. Or maybe water is.

Shortcut

    I got nothing. One thing that bewilders me is when joggers take shortcuts. On the Cayce Riverwalk, there is a short scenic dogleg to look out on the river and the trestles spanning it. There is also a dirt shortcut to bypass it, made by the police officers on their ATVs, since the extreme curve on the dogleg would likely be hard to negotiate. Sometimes, like today, a jogger will take the shortcut, too. It just makes no sense to me. You're out for the exercise, and you've probably run some miles already; why cut off a hundred feet or so? Granted, dirt probably feels better under foot than concrete, but if that were the concern, it seems like you would run some place else in the first place. No big deal; I just wonder. See? I got nothing.
    I got less than nothing. In dreamland, Rolf Benirschke was hosting a new version of Password. Dale Evans was a celebrity guest. There was something weird about the non-celebrity player, too, but I forget what that was. (Probably, though, he was at least alive, unlike Dale.) I just found it odd that my sleeping brain was able to come up with Ross Benirschke.

Choice of Games

    There's an outfit making (mostly) free games for smart phones called Choice of Games. They make games that are almost entirely text-based, so the story is the thing that sells (or recommends, since it's free) the game. I've been obsessively playing one of their offerings, Choice of the Vampire. You might infer from that that it's really really good, but this would not be a totally valid inference.
    The story is really really good, but the game is silly. You're playing as a vampire on the Mississippi in the nineteenth century. You can play as any number of characters, including a well-to-do Creole, a German soldier, a Cajun planter, a slave, a Southern aristocrat, a Yankee trader, an Irish immigrant, a Scotch-Irish hillbilly, a priest, and a Spanish artisan. This would be great and awesome, if choosing a different character made any difference in the game. However, it doesn't, or doesn't hardly, and it makes me crazy. It's still a fun game, mind you, but it could be so much better.
    I mention all this because Choice of Games provides the software to let you make your own game for them. Fairly obviously, you're rather constrained by the channels the software sets up for you. One problem with the vampire game is that whatever you do, when the chapter is over, you have to move on. In one case, this means torches and pitchforks no matter how much you bend over backwards to make your neighbors happy.
    So it's a writing challenge. A matter of making the torches and pitchforks make sense whatever choices you make. Not that I (or they) would want to do vampires again. But I had a couple of ideas that excite me: Choice of the Spaceman ("It's a cookbook!") and Choice of Godzilla. I think they could be a lot of fun. Anyway, this is how I want to waste my time in the coming weeks. Whether Fate will give me the choice, I don't know.

Unstressed

    I forget the particulars, but night before last I had the grand slam stress dream. It had it all! I was going back to college, but I forgot all about it, and it was in England, and they were sending me a bill, and I was in a waiting area for something, and I was trying to find my paperwork, so I took all my clothes off (Hey; doesn't everybody?), and there was a young woman there, and we were just chatting and laughing and watching TV. I wasn't stressed about the bill; I wasn't stressed about being naked. There wasn't anything remotely sexual about it; it was just funny. So the grand slam stress dream without any stress; how about that? Couple that with my no longer painful spine and these are, as Carly said, the good old days. What a concept!
    Meanwhile, in stressful real life, Margaret's problem turned out to be shingles, unfortunately. It was a small outbreak; hopefully it will clear up soon and never return. You bastard, herpes zoster.

Worrying

    Margaret (my 91-year-old dad's also 91-year-old girlfriend, with whom he lives, in case you aren't keeping up) is at the doctor. She apparently has a red patch on her forehead that was painful enough to keep her awake all night. Hopefully it is something very minor that will resolve easily, but it brings across a rather obvious point: when you're largely an invalid, it isn't a real good idea to rely on a caregiver who is also largely an invalid. Because if anything happens to the latter, and you don't have any backup plan (and they don't) you are very suddenly up a creek without a paddle. Hopefully, nothing of the sort happens today. And maybe through a long string of miracles it never happens. But it's definitely something they need to think about.

Cat irony

    Playing with string with a cat, you get an idea of just how ferocious they really are. I'm not going to put the string in my mouth to test, but I'm pretty sure that at best it doesn't have much flavor at all and at worst it tastes pretty awful. But she really, really, really, really wants to catch that string and get it in her mouth and bite it and chew it and kill it. She gets pretty agitated about it. And it's the height of anomaly to have this ferocious hunter have a kitten face and a baby's voice and a very sweet disposition, most of the time. The birds and rodents have no idea how grateful they are to me that I never let her outside.

Cars are cars

    I read somewhere relatively recently that cars are now being fitted with cameras and monitors such that the driver would have a more nearly 360 (well, 180) degree view of what's behind the car, in hopes of preventing having people, especially children, accidentally run down. This might be a good idea or it might be just an added distraction; I would have to see the monitors.
    But a situation that comes up arguably more often is when you come up to an intersection and you can't see if there is traffic coming because there is shrubbery or other vegetation (or signs, or whatever) occluding the view. Of course a person with common sense would just put the window down. But who among us has common sense? Instead, we just nose out into the street, giving its drivers occlusions of their own. A good use of this tiny camera and monitor technology might be to put a camera on either side of the front of the car, so the driver wouldn't have to nose out as far. Dontchathink?
    Meanwhile, it is a continuing bewilderment to me that car manufacturers aren't making more vehicles targeted to the very old. Or for that matter, the not very old, but mildly handicapped. I would have bought a new car by now to drive my dad and Margaret around, but there doesn't seem to be anything particularly better fitted out there. He needs something with sliding doors (or gull-wings, say) rather than swinging doors. For that, you'd have to get a minivan, but then he would have to step up to get in and then hit his head.
    The baby boomers are all getting old at the same time, and they and their elders have all the money. You would think that automakers would take this into consideration. Just think: the new 2013 Lincoln I Don't Get Around Town Like I Used To Car. It'll be great!

And then the nightmares stopped being scary

    I had a dream last night where I was driving my mother around. Anyway, it was supposed to be my mother. She was stout and elderly, but otherwise had nothing in common with my mother; a fictitious representation I suppose. On a residential street I was driving too fast. Going steeply uphill I hit a sudden curve and lost control. I of course closed my eyes, spun the wheel and hoped for the best. (You know, just like in real life.) Somehow we came through OK and I wound up on level ground, still motoring along. Though my eyes were still closed, somehow I knew I was right alongside the curb (kerb? Whatever!) even though I thought the risk of hitting possible parked cars made this a bad idea. So I stopped. (Also, somehow it had become daylight, though when I hit the curve it was night.)
    I was in an extremely toney neighborhood. My fictitious mother, not surprisingly, was a bit unnerved, so I tried a door to see if I could find a doctor. I did, and the people in the doctor's toney house took care of my fictitious mother and all turned out well.
    Point is that it was very exciting and all, but I was never scared nor gritting my teeth or anything like that. I was sort of along for the ride, which is a different reaction to nightmares than I used to have. Maybe now I'm ready to confront real life.

Imaginary friend

    Amelia the cat is, as I've mentioned, very vocal indeed. However, this stops immediately on the (admittedly rare) occasion that there is a visitor to the apartment. She goes off to hide for a while. Then if the visitor sits down and is relatively quiet and non-threatening she comes out for scritches and/or to smell their feet. (Visitor is usually Paul who wears flip-flops all the time.) But as far as I can remember, she never vocalizes at all in front of anyone else, so nobody ever believes me about how chatty she is. "I cannot talk," she pantomimes; "What the hell has he been telling you?!"
    It's getting to be a long time, but I don't think she even talked in front of Alice, though Alice could hear Amelia from the next room sometimes. So there is a witness! My imaginary friend does really talk! Now, does she say anything interesting? Well, no, not that I can understand at least. But it's awful darned cute.

Ooh, ooh, I need you love

    So there's a Led Zep song in which the above line gets repeated a lot. I heard it on the radio the other week and was trying to remember or guess which album it came from. The synths were so heavy that I figured it had to be from "In Through the Out Door," but I had that record and listened to it often and just couldn't remember the number. Turned out that was because it was one of the songs I never played; the song was "In the Evening," indeed from that LP. Yeah, I know, not much of an anecdote, but you'll admit that it allowed me to use the title "Ooh, ooh, I need you love." (Yeah, I also know he must say "your," but it sounds like "you.") And maybe now having shared it I'll be able to purge the earworm that it has become.
    Speaking of Led Zep and what it sounds like, brother Mal and I were trying to come up with a more useful spelling of "D'yer Mak'er," which I'd like to think that everybody knows by now is a pun on "Did you make her?" and "Jamaica." I go with "Jer Make 'Er?" Your mileage may vary.

Spacebook

    When it started, Facebook was, by all reports, the next MySpace. And now that it has started winding down, it looks even more like the next MySpace. Pretty soon, there will be nobody there except Zuckerberg and me, furiously ignoring each other. All the cool kids have left for Twitter, except for the voluble ones, who presumably left for Google+. I don't know why Facebook kept feeling the need to make changes that nobody wanted and that nobody liked. There used to be a proverb about what you do (or don't do) when something isn't broken.
    Granted, Zuckerberg is a few odd billion ahead of me in net worth, so he probably feels that he did a pretty good job. Even if it all goes away, I expect he'll get to keep the money. But I miss the feeling of community, the sense that I had actual friends on Facebook. On the other hand, a new social network called Spacebook would be funny as hell. I wonder if I could sell ads...

Apps that hopefully aren't killer

    I mentioned a while ago to my brother Mal that there ought to be an app to tell you when the speed limit has changed. It seems like Google could manage it with all their vehicles going around for Google Maps. Or some other mapping outfit could. I guess the hard part would be getting the driver to pay attention. After all, there are road signs for this purpose already, yet somehow we seem to manage to fail to notice them perhaps oftener than not. I'm thinking the app would have to repeat aloud the new speed limit until countermanded. The driver would have to say, "I heard you," or something similar to get the phone to stop. (Or maybe "stop": it would need to be pretty simple, because it would be dangerous to put the driver in a situation where s/he would have to handle the phone to get it to stop.)
    The other app idea is probably impossible, or at least of limited utility, but it's a situation that comes up where I live. This would tell you where to park for maximum shade. Phone could take a picture (or several), figure out the time of day and direction you're facing and tell you where to park. I guess your car would have to be in the picture and maybe there would be a shadow image nearby showing you the ideal point to move to. (To which to move? Even I'm not that pretentious!) This comes up because there are a lot of shade trees at this apartment where I live, yet I always manage to park in the wrong place. Hey, it'll be killer!

You can't fire me; I started the band!

    This is a topic with which I've been obsessed for years. I've seen no evidence that anyone else shares my obsession, though. Let's see, there's Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, to start with the big ones. I think Denny Laine of the Moody Blues might qualify. The one time I ran a poll about this on Democratic Underground, the only person to get votes was Peter Gabriel, so I guess he must qualify. There's always Roy Wood for ELO and Billy Zoom for X. I'm not sure about Bernie Leadon and the Eagles, (Wikipedia says he joined late) but he was at least one of the leaders. I don't know if all these guys got fired. (Leadon at least wasn't; he poured a beer on Glenn Frey.) Who else? Stu Sutcliffe? Eric Burdon from War? No in Eric's case it was, "You can't fire me! I took over and renamed the band!" Close, though.
    Did I miss anybody? Let me know!

My ambition

    My ambition, at this moment, is not too hard to fulfill. If I had any common sense, it would be even easier. All I need is a cell phone with a camera, but for whatever reason I'm reluctant to take that step. (Of course, I could always enlist Paul, who has one.)
    My ambition is to take a picture of the rear end of a Lexus IS 300 (as that's where the make and model names are displayed) and caption it, "Is NOT!" I'm so mature, aren't I? Also, Ford in their not noticeably infinite wisdom sells a vehicle called the Ford Edge, which is pretty funny per se considering how many millions the company was hemorrhaging at the time they started selling it. But they have a specific model called the Edge SEL. Young readers might not know that there once was a car called the Ford Edsel which more or less entered the English language as a synonym for "lemon." (By most accounts, it was ahead of its time, but sales were dismal and by that you are judged.) So, I want a picture of a rear end marked Ford Edge SEL so I can caption it: "The Edsel is back!"
    Paltry ambitions, you say? Well, yeah, but they make me smile.

Burning bridges

Those who burn down bridges need to know
Bridges only disappear when they seem to go
They aren't really gone, only hard to see
At least that's how it is with those that lead to me

Keanu cookies

    Kitchen adventures continue. In the quest to make quinoa (which my brain has inexplicably decided is pronounced Keanu instead of keen-wah) cookies, there has been a victory. It was just a matter of making the batter thick enough to be cookie dough.
    First you need your quinoa. Apparently, a quarter cup of quinoa plumbed with a half cup of water yields a cup of cooked quinoa. I'll wait while you do the math. Yes, that's right; in spite of everything taught by physics, 3/4 cup becomes one cup. Regardless, you take the resultant quantity of quinoa, be it a cup or otherwise (I didn't trouble to measure) and you're ready for your cookies.
VERY IMPORTANT: Be sure to get prewashed quinoa, or wash it very, very, very thoroughly. Or you'll get to try out saponin poisoning. I don't think it'll kill you, but I'm pretty sure you won't like it. (It's basically soap.)
    Preheat oven to 350. Mix a tablespoon of (extra virgin) olive oil, two of honey, an egg, your quinoa, a half cup of peanut butter, and a quarter cup of chocolate chips. I use natural (ie, ingredients: peanuts and salt) crunchy peanut butter and Enjoy Life soy-free chocolate chips but, ya know, whatever floats your boat. Stir, mix, mingle, agitate, do what you gotta do.
    I've just discovered parchment paper, but haven't used it yet. I suspect that this will be a good application, though, especially as some of my friends are vegetarian but my pans are not. Regardless, cook on one side for about 12 minutes, then flip and cook on the other for 8. (In the real world, I tried 15 and 5 and the side that was down the longer time got scorched.)
    The results are pretty darned good. They aren't the dessertiest cookies in the history of the world. For that, I could add more chocolate chips, more honey, or maybe just a teaspoon of vanilla. But they're very tasty. Maybe a little burpy, but awful darn nice.
     Update: on the second iteration, I added the teaspoon of vanilla, and used parchment paper. Both went well. One problem is that some of the quinoa comes out hard as birdseed. I suspect that the best idea is to ignore package instructions and try cooking the quinoa for 15 minutes at low heat, then another 5 or 10 at medium low (1.5 clicks on this electric range) until all water is absorbed or evaporated. And be extra careful that all quinoa seeds are in the water.
    Meanwhile, in the dream world (this is brief, I swear!), my Dad and I were driving around and my car air conditioning wasn't working very well. (This during the hottest hot spell EVER in real life.) It turned out that there's a lint trap in my car's A/C (who knew?) right where the CD player is in real life, only wide as the glove compartment. Once we cleaned that out, everything was fine. Gotta hate those linty air conditioners!