Diana took the idea from Avitable who grabbed it from Sheila WHO STARTED ALL THIS ROT ABOUT WHAT YOUR DESK LOOKS LIKE.
So here's mine. It isn't always this neat... but mostly it is. Unless I'm looking stuff up and then there's usually a pile of books and stuff on the sliding thing to my right. And once in a while it stays like that for a few days but then the Mrs will hear me say "I have just GOT to straighten up that damn office!"
So here's the desk, and then a bonus...
The next picture is what is on the other side of the room. It is two resin-cast ships (the Maine and the Olympia) that I painted and built from kits that were really expensive (too expensive). They are the kind of models curators use in museum displays and they're around to buy but they're not very common. I have one more to build but I've been lagging on it big time.
You will note that these were two ships from the era of the Spanish-American War, which is also the subject of the books and the photograph of TR. Yes ok... I'm a buff on that period. Ask me anything.
Pretty boring. But I couldn't LIVE in the squalor that I have seen in this round of photos. Oh my gawd no.
This is what an okapi looks like. This is my herd. In an effort to not do the usual shit I present you with a picture of the okapis on my dresser. Where else in the bloggerkleptometreachria will you find something as important as this? HUH!?
I can't remember why I like them but I know we adopted one at the zoo once and fed it for a year. But did it recognize me when we went to see it? IT DID NOT. Ingrate.
There used to be five in my herd but one was surrendered to the clutches of my granddaughter and is now somewhere at the bottom of a toybox. Oh yeah, that's why I have these - I have a granddaughter.
Stop laughing at my herd. You too will subject yourself to unmanly things when you have your own down-the-line progeny scooting around and getting peanut butter on all your stuff.
In the meantime I had a new box of cigars delivered yesterday. Happiness is a full humidor. This weekend we're getting a new HDTV. Football season is upon us, and that's a manly thing. Football and cigars. Football, cigars and okapi.
Every year Beloit College publishes what's called a "Mindset List" for the graduating class just entering their first year of college in the coming fall. In this case we are talking about the class of 2011. It usually finds its way among all those stupid bulk emails Aunt Sally sends off that nobody reads and - because of that - it doesn't get much play amongst the cool kids. But it remains a yearly thing and carries not a small bit of perspective. One of these days it'll say "people graduating in ____ have never lived in a time when there wasn't a Mindset List." That may be a lesson in a kind of self-fulfilling cultural manipulation that carries a lesson to us all.
Mostly the list has virtually no meaning to anyone born in the year in question, and only a passing interest for people born five or six years before the set birth date. The List only seems to have import when the reader becomes old enough to be a parent of someone just entering college or, at least, in high school.
What I'm saying is, you can mark the moment your personal decrepitude has begun at the very moment this list becomes interesting to you. And - on the other side of the coin - if the list has no value to you it either means you're too young to care or are too cool to notice. Take your pick.
Here are some highlights of the list that struck me as the list intends; a reminder that thee has entered thy dotage, friend. But anyway, for most of the students entering college this year...
The Berlin Wall only exists in books and video.
There hasn't been a way to "roll down" a car window.
Personal-sized bottled water has always been on the shelf.
Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
There was never a chance to find a prize in a Coca-Cola MagiCan.
The Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
Jack Nicholson came into their lives as The Joker.
Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
Fox has always been a major network.
Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
High definition television has always been available.
Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
MTV has never featured music videos.
Johnny Carson was never on the Tonite Show.
Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.
Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.
These are only a few of the seventy items on the list. To get the full effect of just how the inexorable pull of time is ripping you apart, go here.
I don't normally remember my dreams and unless I latch onto the memory of them early in the morning they are forgotten completely in minutes. This morning I kind of remember because it occurred to me upon waking that this woman keeps returning to my dreams.
You should know that, of the dreams I can recall, I am in very few of myself. Classically, if I "appear" in a dream it is as a viewpoint; meaning I never actually see myself in my dreams. Most of the time they are like feature films and I may as well have a bag of popcorn.
But - regardless - this morning I sort of remember my dream because once again Laura Dern was in it; and I remarked to myself in my head that she seems to be in a lot of my dreams. And it's true. Quirky inflections and all. She was in one last night and I can recall at least two others. Not so much what they were about, but the fact that Laura Dern was in them.
I do not know Laura Dern. I think she's one of the better actresses but I don't think she's, like, an Earth-shaker. She's pleasing enough on the eye but she doesn't fall into my personal idea of famed beauty. I don't have a crush on her. She doesn't have any visceral effect on me one way or the other. I don't particularly care what she does with herself or her life and, in fact, I don't know one damn thing about her and don't really have a need to. She exists, but if she didn't exist I wouldn't be - you know - incomplete or something.
When she appears in my dreams there is nothing sexual about it. It is truly more like an actress in a movie speaking lines. I am always detached from what she's doing and am rarely if ever involved in the "story line".
It could be her professional connection to David Lynch's work. Talk about quirky. And his stuff is a guilty pleasure of mine. But that's as near as I can figure it. Because otherwise... I have no interest in Laura Dern whatsoever.
Unless she's stalking me.
Yeah. I've heard about this before. Something to do with voodoo and electronics and such. So who is Laura Dern and what does she want from me?
Labor Day is coming and that's usually when a lot of folks make their one last summer shindig, including cookouts. In my universe, it's ALL about the cookouts. And I don't know what the hell else people think they're doing besides cookouts. Yeah yeah you kids go throw a ball around... where's the food...?
Anyway here's my own little take on a baked potato from the grill that people who like FLAVOR can get their lips around, and HEY! it isn't even PIG so all my vegetarian pals can clomp on this one as well!
Here's your ingredients:
Baking Potatoes Sweet Vidalia Onions Black Peppercorn (ground)
Notice no salt. If you want to add that add it later, when you open to eat, but I learned to "trust pepper" from a Syrian cook (and even to this day I don't put salt on my fries because of him... it's pepper or get OUT!) and you can be sure mine won't have salt at any time.
The process is a simple one. Slice the onions. Cut the raw potato in half. Layer the onions on one half of the potato, grind your peppercorn on top of the onions, cover the onions with the other half of the potato and make like an onion-potato sammich.
Wrap in foil (you still need to poke fork vents in it). Cook as normal. Usually around 45-to-an-hour (depending) between 350-400 degrees. Whatever you normally do when you bake a potato in your location will be fine.
I always put the leftover onions in tin foil as well and throw them in for a half hour or something. Onions are ok just "tossed in" in a charcoal grill but for the gas grills they tend to get a little "gray" in "mature" ovens, so I either toss them right on the steak or wrap them in foil. But waste not / want not, I always say.
Have a wonderful Labor Day and now let's get ready for Christmas...
(click to enlarge) Dave, Jen and Kapgar in better times. Little did they know, in that happy time, what horrors awaited them on the streets of Chicago.
Ajooja, Steven and Kim. "I don't know," someone said. "I just followed Dave."
The Mrs and Gary lead the after-dinner pub crawl immediately into a construction site off limits to all but the pipefitters union, Local 724. Kapgar (following) is trying to get everyone's attention as a three ton steel girder is about to miss the group by six inches.
Jen says she knows where she's going even if all these other people are lost.
Well maybe not...
Dave saves the day by emitting an eerie sacred glow and, by the powers of his will alone, after seven days at sea, finally brings the group to harbor.
Arianna, Jen and Robin steal Dave's iPhone and zone in on young men in thongs. Life has returned to some sense of normalcy.
The group relives some of the more harrowing moments. "It wasn't all that bad, and this waitress served us our first drink an hour ago and has disappeared. Maybe we can just walk out...?"
The something-annual whatever that was a gathering of whosoever showed up somewhat occurred last night.
On top of the beer I had in the afternoon before we went, the wine I had with dinner, and the scotch there was afterwards, I'm quite sure something happened.
Allow me the time to sift through my pictures and try to remember so I can kind of post something for you on it later today or tomorrow or something.
A couple of days ago I wrote about a book that has just swept me away. I am always looking out for you, you know, and your old Uncle RW knows what is good for you. Trust me. I'll never steer you wrong.
The book is simply so well written I don't even know where the pages went. And once you know the story of Donald Crowhurst you are filled with dread, fear, and an unwillingness to watch what must - absolutely must - happen to him in the end.
The book covers the Golden Globe single-handed yacht race of 1968-69. It demands a non-stop journey, and you may not take on any supplies at any time. If you so much as accept a letter from a passing trawler - you are disqualified.
Only one man finished.
The thing of it is, when I wrote about the book, our buddy Avitable made a casual remark as if to say "I'll pay attention to what you're saying if somebody makes a movie (ha ha ha, no one ever will, sheesh)."
As much as we liked him, as well as he took the decision, and as obviously together he is just as a person, the proof is in the food, and Tre was at the helm and he blew it. Tonight's Top Chef finally ended the Restaurant Wars and - if you were a Tre fan and didn't want him to go - you can blame last week's failure to do the right thing and send TWO people home for this one.
In a larger sense, though, I kind of got a kick out of how the "left overs" of the contestants were the ones who pulled it together as a team here. If you remember, CJ won last week's Quickfire Challenge and his reward was to pick his whole team. He picked all the "cool kids". All the good-looking, obviously hoity-toity, "sane" ones were grabbed up like crazy and the remainders were people nobody got along with or had never distinguished themselves in any way previous. So they were instant underdogs - and the "left overs" kicked some major ass. Isn't that how the world works? Heh heh.
Like our own (Chicago's) Dale said at one point, "They were the Dream Team and we were like the Bad News Bears." Right on. The Cool Kids were so overconfident that they learned nothing from the previous week. The "remainders" won because they were hungry for the win, they took the advice that was given them, plus they had a little chip on their shoulder. That's a recipe for success in any field.
And I might add, as soon as Sara put her foot down (twice) to the two headcases on her team I knew then and there that if they won - she was going to get the prize. As Tre was the In-Charge on the losing team and got the boot, Sara (in the same role for the other team) was the reason they won. She took over and made the knot heads (Hung and Howie) bend to her will. Woo Sara!
That said, did you notice how CJ (who picked the Dream Team) went on autopilot and just stayed safe in the background. He deserves a check mark saying "we saw that" and I've put his name in my Book.
But - in the end - a restaurant is the ultimate responsibility of the Executive Chef. And so Tre goes home.
One of our favorites or not - the game's the game. And Tre was man enough to say so himself.
This Saturday some bloggers are going to have a little pizza meet-up with the world famous Dave Simmer. You know him, he's a megaultrashooting star of the bloggodexahydrasphere, beloved by all but a few folks who send him hate mail and well-known for his love of ice cream breakfasts and lime colas.
Mocha Momma will be there, and she's somebody both the Mrs and I love very much. I don't know if Jen will bring her rabbit head or not but... you know, who can tell? Then there'll also be the world famous Kapgar (whose butt I am going to KICK MERCILESSLY in fantasy football this year), and this will mark the second time I will be meeting Gary.
The Mrs and I are looking forward to enjoying this meet-up more than the last one (truth to tell, there was something a bit more pressing in the back of our minds and I don't think we let ourselves fly as much last year because of it), and there will be some other folks I haven't met yet there as well and that will be a lot of fun but... I have a problem.
In the first place, as has been well-documented, I will be the only guy there wearing grandpa pants. The lot of them are more technically proficient, have greater audiences and have hit upon a theme that scores big time with their loyal minions again and again. I stumble through my lack of geekiness, my audience is the coolest of all but they are very select and highly rarefied. Plus I struggle to keep my crayons inside the lines.
So how am I supposed to relate to these folks?
They were all kind and nice and well-behaved towards us last year and for that we are forever grateful. But I need your help.
I'm exceptionally intimidated! What on Earth am I supposed to talk to these people about???
I tried to watch that Madmen thing but it seems like everybody is an ambitious 1960's New York guy cheating on the wife and there are a lot of pauses between lines while people think about what they're trying to say and what the other person means when they say this or that and there's mysterious pasts and sleazy secretaries and did I say there was a lot of smoking? The cigarettes are actually refreshing but it seems to move a little slow for my tastes. Then again I haven't liked a TV show since 1966 so what do I know. The Mrs likes it so obviously it's a good series.
But as for me I want to tell you about some other kind of madmen. A while back I gave you some reads that go well with cigars and Madeira and it dawned on me I haven't been improving your mind anywhere near as much as I should be. If you've been following along (yeah right) we've gone in search of the fabled city of Timbuktu, went along on the race to the South Pole, got lost in the Southern Ocean, and all that good stuff.
So here's what I'm reading lately. The book is called A Voyage For Madmen and it's about 9 guys who set out to be the first to circumnavigate the globe nonstop by sail, alone ("single-handing"). The rules are no going into port, no getting resupplied by passing ships, and no other power but wind. The race took place in the late 60's before GPS and satellite imagery. It is a simple thing to say that these guys were tough, but it should also be noted that they were all exceptionally crazy.
We are given a great background of how the idea for the race evolved and Nichols brings each participant alive unfailingly clear. We know each one of these guys before too long. But by far the best parts of this book are the descriptions of storms and swells and gales and the things that go through a person's mind when they are being pummeled by 100-foot waves in the Roaring Forties with not another soul around for hundreds and hundreds of miles.
Having established the characters Nichols puts them in their situations and the writing just crackles once at sea. You know... one of these guys had never sailed before entering the game?! And through various endings - only one actually finished the race (No not the guy who committed suicide). This is a great book that deserves a place in the line of all the books you intend on reading but never get around to. It's perfect for that! And since you'll never get around to it you could always just call me and ask me how it ends.
Peter Nichols published this book in 2001 and it went to the bestseller list so it isn't a "new read" (none of my Cigar and Madeira books are), but it remains a must-read as far as I'm concerned.
Fridays: There's a fresh fish shop by the Chicago River near Elston on Cortland. It's still there. My Dad and I would go down there on a Friday night when my Mother was having her regular card club thing, and get us a greasy bag of fried shrimp and a great, spicy sauce to dip them in. We'd get home just in time for the Friday Night Fights from Madison Square Garden. I still remember all the smells and tastes. I can tell you what the air felt like. I can still see the cars.
Timing Is Everything: Taken out of his context Bob Dylan is the worst act ever known. Observed and experienced in the context of his milieu, though, he was exactly quintessential. It was probably one of those "the man and the moment" things, because he was perfect at the time, but listening to most of that stuff now is just downright painful. Besides which, sentiment-and-opinion-wise, people are crazy and times are strange; I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range. I used to care but things have changed.
Language Changes: There are old recordings of people from ages past speaking that you will run into now and again. Notice how people who were born in the 19th century spoke their "R". "American" almost sounds like "Amedican" because they roll the R more. I read somewhere where somebody said that 500 years ago people pronounced "Queen" as "Quayn". How does that happen?
No One Gets Out Alive: Guess what? You're going to die. You know? One day the sun will come up and you won't be here. So what's the point of being an asshole to people? Go back to bed and shut up. Come back when you're ready to get it right.
Are you feeling down? You've had a life before this moment all the way back to your birth and the things you've seen and experienced and did are as valid and important as anybody else on the planet. So when somebody treats you shabby your good nature leads you to thinking everything that happened to you in your life before now and the sum total of all your parts aren't worth much. First of all screw the idiot who is making you feel that way and second of all snap out of it. You're just as valuable as the next person - and maybe your lack of an overblown ego makes you more valuable because everything isn't all about you. Ever think of that?
Speaking Of Being Out Of Place: Most of my extended family would rather eat at McDonald's, drink Lite beer, watch stereotypical situation comedies, read nothing beyond the sports page of a newspaper, vote Democratic because they always have, and have slobbery dogs they don't bother to properly train. They are also very happy. How is that even possible??
1. They had arrows in Europe, Asia and Africa before anyone had been to the other side of the Atlantic; where the people who lived in the Americas also had arrows. And they never knew anyone from Europe, Asia or Africa. So the question is... how does the exact same specific technology develop in two distinct and unconnected communities to such a remarkably similar degree?
2. And who the hell sat there and went, "I know, if we put this sharp point on a stick and tie feathers on the other end we can fling it through the air with this string tied to two ends of another stick and PRESTO - instant lunch a'comin'." Who the hell was that guy?
3. Can someone please explain to me how cities get buried and nobody knows it is happening? They keep uncovering ancient cities dozens of feet below the surface - and even old cities on top of even older cities - all the time. I look around and I don't see cities getting covered in strata anywhere. And how come nobody noticed their city was getting buried? Wouldn't you look out in the morning and see your house half buried in sand and go "Hey! Our city's gettin' buried here people!" Wasn't anybody paying attention? Were people just that stupid back then that they just shrug it off and go "Shit, guess we better MOVE..." I mean what the bloody hell?
4. Am I the only person in America who doesn't know how the Post Office's "Forever Stamp" gets to be that way?
5. International Relations made easy: Tell people in the strange country you are visiting that their music is great and their food is marvelous and you have made friends for life who will go out of their way to show you a good time as long as you are in town. And even if they try to feed you Stinky Tofu, if you just keep smiling people will say good things about the place you come from after you go home and if everybody did that - voila - peace reigns forever and there is no more war. Since this is an eternal verity what the hell do we need a highly educated and insular diplomatic corps for, especially since none of them from anywhere really ever accomplished anything anybody can think of that was worthwhile in the last 6000 years?
6. There are mushrooms that are delicacies, mushrooms that make you high, and mushrooms that will kill you. Who figured it out and what led them to want to figure it out? "Here ya go George, eat this mushroom.... WOH George just croaked. Hey gang stay away from THAT one!"
7. Has anybody else noticed the picture on the right in the drawing that accompanies this post? And what the hell...?
Tonite's Top Chef split the remaining 8 contestants into two teams and had them set up competing restaurants. From the menu to the decor to the name and the style, each team started from scratch and - in this particular case - let the pressure get the best of them. Or the worst of them.
By the time it was time to pick a winner and a loser the judges were flummoxed. And maybe 5 of the 8 contestants are lucky to be alive at this point.
The heat of Miami, brought up numerous times by judges and "guests" of the restaurants during the show, and how it related to the menus should have been obvious. It was obvious to me and I would flunk Restaurant 101 unless it is to eat in one.
Heavy... nay... oppressive dishes were slung out like hash to the unwary victims. When people are saying things like "inedible", "I can't", and "the meat tasted like metal", you as chef must realize that the time has come to use one of those custom made knives of yours for sepuku. The only thing left to you is to offer yourself up as a piece of human sushi.
I couldn't put a restaurant together, let alone run one, to save my soul. But even I know that when I walk into a restaurant I want to smell FOOD, not vanilla scented candles... where there are black table cloths... in a place called "The Garage". Why doesn't a garage have bare brick walls and a French twist to the American burger LIKE THE QUICKFIRE CHALLENGE only embellished??
Why did no one think of Tapas? Make a dozen pots of little things and have people combine four or five of them. Why wasn't anyone thinking of a light duck salad, all pink and cool with a teaser glass of Shiraz? And I don't want watermelon on my oysters, for God's sake... but I'll have a watermelon ice desert after.
It was like they were cooking for the bus crowd in Jersey a week after Thanksgiving. What I don't get is - these are experienced people. I would have sent 5 home, easy. These would have been two restaurants I would never return to.
It's been almost a month now and I will say that the biggest difference is the pace. Moving from a wannabe-national company to a knows-we're-a-local-family company means you move a bit slower and the atmosphere is more informal. That doesn't mean anything goes, there's tons of work here for me. But it does mean if one of the guys out back starts singing Nessun Dorma in an exceptionally beautiful voice while running the circular saw - only to have the whole office go out the door to listen and then applaud when he's finished - that's just fine. In fact it happened today. That guy's voice blew.me.away. Incredible.
Right now I am solving their ongoing inventory riddle.
The riddle is; how do you have 27 of Part A on Friday evening, get a note that they took 14 of Part A to the job site Saturday, and then count 33 Part A in the bin Monday morning, after they tell you they just took 6 more? Yeah... you see what I mean.
"Business Development" is what it says on my card. Which means after I figure out what we have I review what we pay for it. Then I'll set some prices. Then we'll see about new clients. Then I don't know what.
One of the companies we buy from is... oh hello... the place I used to work for. And this past week we had a meeting with... oh lookee here... the guy I used to work for. I think it was a surprise to my old boss that I walked in when I did but he has a good poker face so I couldn't really tell. Anyway despite any sideline stuff that may have gone on - I'm doing business and the best supplier wins. I work for the interests of the people who sign my check... like I always have in my life.
When I dealt with my customers no question was out of line. If I could help them in any way beyond the product I had to sell I sat down with them and we figured it out. I did everything I could to build a relationship that involved a measure of trust and sometimes we talked about their concerns for their business and how some things were done and what should be their next move. I need two hands to count the number of guys who were teetering on the brink at one point and I can honestly say I helped a little. That was more than a product that is sold. That's building an alliance.
None of the people I have spoken with so far who want to be my supplier have given me that sense of willingness. One or two are being creative, but it should be said that it isn't my job to care about the fortunes of those who threw mine to the wind.
In a larger sense, though, I am still looking for 10-and-out. I'm on a mission to give up the working life before I get too creaky. If my two month vacation this year showed me anything it's that - if I am to be honest - I am the laziest sonofabitch that ever lived and am bound to have a highly successful retirement.
You think the stock market would co-operate more. Well... ssshhhhh... actually it is. There sure are a lot of stocks on sale out there! I'm buying.
Not fair. Whenever anybody ELSE has nothing to say they just put up a meme or run something from You Tube and everybody acts like they're a freakin GENIUS.
Yeah OK so I hit a guy from behind. It was just one of those things. So the guy gets out and, of all things, he's a dwarf. He looked at his rear bumper and he goes "I'm not happy."
You may think you know me but sometimes when I hear myself described back to myself I hardly recognize myself, strained through your filter like that. If you had had a lengthy opportunity to get to know me and that passed away without you knowing me enough to know me the only reason you didn't know me is because you never knew me. You can tell this has happened when you think I'm going to do something but it never happened because I never intended to do it in the first place but because you had the wrong idea about me from the start the plain truth is that you had no idea what I intended to do. The chances are pretty good that if you had made the effort to get to know me you would have had a different idea of who I am and the wrong idea about me would have never entered your head. A person's inability to communicate, or to have whatever communication skills they do have messed up by some stupid veneer of a few considerations based on that inability to communicate, are not a good foundation to formulate an opinion about someone just because you couldn't get over yourself long enough to make the effort to go outside your self and get to know someone else. So any wrong idea about what I'm like or what I can or can't do is strictly the problem of the person who - having had the opportunity to observe at great length - either couldn't or wouldn't be objective enough to get the idea in the first place. So, to sum it all up, if you claimed you knew me but are still surprised that means you never knew me.
You can't fool me, I know you have quirks. Everybody does. If you don't, or don't think you have, the chances are pretty good you're not actually human. You may be a droid.
Even famous people have quirks. Heck, Sean Penn (who otherwise is probably the best actor in America today), has a thing for dictators propped up by the sales of oil that is contributing to global warming. Why Sean Penn has decided to support people whose wealth and power is based on the sales of a product that adds to the greenhouse effect and who keep themselves in power by rigging elections is beyond me. I thought he was a Florida vote counting tree hugger. Live and learn.
I have my problems as well, though, so it isn't really my place to complain.
My personal fantasy has always been to be the el Presidente for life of a small Central American country. I seem to have this fantasy every August, come to think of it.
I've got to figure out how to make it happen, then maybe I can get Jane Fonda to come on down and take my gun for a spin...
I think it's about 145 degrees with 647% humidity. I think my backyard stinks because I just shot some anti-squirrel/raccoon/whatever/critter repellent all around my God Damned tomatoes whatever it is likes so much. I think this extra long maduro cigar makes me look like even more of an idiot than I already am. And I think some people are just so full of shit they make an asshole out of themselves every time they open their mouths. And that's why I love summer so much. Have a nice day.
I wanted to see Paris once before I died, but when I Googled "Paris" to look for images, half the pictures were of some American skank from California.
Ever get in a frame of mind where you just aren't buying it anymore?
We all laughed about bottled water being right out of a tap and sold back to us for a premium, and joked about it for years. But when it turns out to be true why are we so surprised?
People are all up in arms about this particular Congress being deadlocked or gridlocked or brainlocked or whatever it is they are - and the vocal partisans are all over the airwaves blaming each other. One side says the other side is blocking everything and the other side says the first side couldn't organize a trip to a urinal. And because of this no laws are being made and nothing is being enacted or addressed. But why not be happy about the fact that their gridlock is a chance for us not to have to worry about them screwing things up further?
I truly love both classical and modern-symphonic music, but when it comes to opera I have had a rough time of it. There always seems to be a fat lady with a big mouth wearing a horned helmet, or some irritating vocal gymnastics popping up out of no where ruining the music. Once in a while I'll hear something very nice and say to myself, maybe I need to give it another try. And the very next thing that happens is Brunhilda shows up in a damn helmet singing Uhoh UHUH HOOOOO hmmmm BIPbapbee Hoo Woo HooooooOOOOOOOooooooOOO.
The stock market is going down and people sell their low stocks at a loss because they're afraid of losing further. The stock market goes up and they buy something at a high premium - that they'll sell to escape from, at a loss, next time the market goes down. No one has a gun to anyone's head telling them this perfect stupidity is the way they're supposed to be acting. But people do it anyway with complete robotic regularity and then cry and moan how the game is rigged.
Most people, as kids, are taught that fighting never solves anything. But the kids who bought into that were always usually the ones getting pounded on and pushed aside. I remember once in grade school a guy a grade ahead of me was pushing a girl in my class around in the schoolyard during recess. He knocked her books down and kept kicking them when she reached to get them and she was crying and scared and hurt. I went over without so much as a warning and gave him an stiff upper-cut right to the chin that snapped his head back and almost made him fall over. I think I was in third grade and he was in fourth. Anyway he started crying, ran to the nuns, and I got my ass in a world of trouble with them and my parents and, sheesh what a mess - while he walked. If I was a country I'd be saving the world for democracy. As a kid on a schoolyard I'm a criminal.
And every war in the modern era there ever was - no matter how bad one side lost or the other side got creamed - always ends up with some kind of conference, and a lot of times 40 years later the people who were killing one another with great abandon end up business partners or allies or something. Every time in the last 400 years or so. So how come we never figured out that's how it ends and just cut to the conference table right now instead of getting a lot of people killed for what everybody knows is going to go away one day anyhow??
It's like we have this wisdom, but we keep having to relearn it generation after generation.
My back hurts when I get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes when I get up from sitting for a long while it takes a second to get my knees to steady. This afternoon I caught my reflection in the patio doors as I sat on the deck smoking a cigar; I seem to have grown a few more inches around my gut, and it is nothing to sit out there in the sun doing absolutely nothing for 45 minutes with my feet up. I doze watching TV after dinner. I dread heavy traffic and always try to think up anything to not have to go out in it. I get excited about going somewhere when we first talk about it, then wish I could figure out a way to just stay home instead. I have a little glass of something or other every night before going to bed. I no longer feel like flipping somebody the finger when they cut me off in traffic, and just shake my head and roll my eyes to myself instead. Though I haven't used it to full effect, Caller ID is starting to look like a great way to not have to deal with stuff. Portion Control is a sick, lost dream. I can't run anymore. I'm not interested in competing with younger guys or caring how I appear in the eyes of young women. I am really starting to get bugged by people who aren't my age. I'm starting to not mention things I have learned from experience and to really enjoy watching someone crash and burn for my not warning them... really enjoy. I can tell when people are lying with remarkable clarity. I am bored to the point of annoyance with love scenes in movies or on TV ("Yeah yeah yeah, here's our hero driving, here's our hero solving problems, here's our hero helping a child, here's our hero having second thoughts, here's our hero fucking. Wait a minute... I don't care that he's fucking. So he fucks. So? So what's that got to do with anything? Where's my clicker?"). I'm reading more now than I ever have before. I have no patience with people who demand others to behave in ways they never require of themselves. I find it harder and harder to listen to someone's overlong explanation, but even more difficult is turning them off because I don't want to hurt their feelings. I sit there and gape at times. Probably because the person talking to me just doesn't know when to shut up. I get excited when it's a day that a show my wife and I like is on. I don't have to do anything. I watch stuff. I notice a lot. And I like it this way.
Now that I'm no longer working 9 hour days - or for that matter 24 hour days if you consider being on the road - I have had a lot of time to think about things.
I think I've come up with a new vodka and frozen fruit juice drink.
But, more importantly, I have also had a chance to reflect on the nature of the universe and the way of the world and human nature. I probably should have been a monk, but I'm not sure they let you wear boat shoes into the cathedral.
Still and all, and all and still, this free time I have has brought me to ponder the meaning of life and the scope of the physical universe.
All my life I have been told that the universe is always moving. That those galaxies farthest away from us can be measurably seen as moving faster away than those galaxies closest to us. On and on, at an astonishing rate, the universe as we know it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. They call it the "expanding universe." Space itself expands at a constant rate.
And I just have a couple questions here.
What is the universe expanding into? What is "space" replacing? If space and the universe keep getting bigger, what used to be in the location space just expanded into?
Eh? Ever think of that?
And you thought I was just a shallow foodie who drank too much. Sheh...
and it's about 9 guys who set out to be the first to circumnavigate the globe nonstop by sail, alone ("single-handing"). The rules are no going into port, no getting resupplied by passing ships, and no other power but wind. The race took place in the late 60's before GPS and satellite imagery. It is a simple thing to say that these guys were tough, but it should also be noted that they were all exceptionally crazy. 
