Wishing for better spam

Gmail kindly dumps all the junk mail I get into a folder that I occasionally surf for story/blog entry ideas. Mostly it is all crap, but because I have an unusual handle, it is bilingual crap.

So I can get plastic cards and credentials - or - tarjetas y credenciales plastica? Hooray.

My current favorite junk mail is the crowd flogging Rolex replicas. Here's one of the sites the spam hopes you'll visit. The replicas don't look like anything special to me, and they're not exactly free ($250 for a knockoff?)

As you might expect, the best part of the site is the "customer testimonials." Here's a for-instance:

"FANTASTIC WATCH. 100% AS DESCRIBED. MY JEWELER COULD NOT TELL IT WAS NOT A REAL ROLEX. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND DOING BUSINESS WITH THIS SELLER. A+++++"

Awww yeah. That person even has a jeweler on retainer! Wow, I've got to get a couple of watches. (I would have to get two, because I want my arms to weigh the same.)

Gardens of good and evil

You're running a country, and you don't want the people living in it to shoot heroin or smoke opium. Reasonable, right?

But you also want to make medicines out of the same materials that produce those illicit drugs.

Do you grow your own? If you are running India, Turkey, France, Hungary, Poland or Australia, the answer appears to be yes. If you are running the United States (which in July alone had an international deficit in goods and services of $68 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau), the answer is no.

Federal law allows the United States to import the raw materials for narcotics (opium and poppy plant material) from the above six countries (and maybe Spain, if a federal rule change is approved).

The rule-making documents suggest that the overall cost of buying these drug materials from overseas tops out at $117 million per year, not a lot in the grand scheme, I suppose.

Still, I wonder how many family farms could that money keep afloat?

Poachers

Last night's Anderson Cooper segment on mountain gorillas (broadcast on CNN) and today's local story about a horse shot to death in a nearby town remind me, yet again, that I abhor poachers.

Legal hunting of non-threatened species? Not a big deal to me, although I am not sure I'll ever understand the impulse to shoot certain species (bears, coyotes and moose come to mind).

But poaching? I would reserve a special neighborhood in hell for poachers, complete with novel tortures to keep the demons amused. I'm pretty sure summary execution is too kind a punishment, too.

I'll return to sunnier topics soon.

Desk nonsense, part II

That last post was popular!

So, here's what's in my top drawer:

• Four Sharpie ultra fine point markers - Columbia blue, fuschia, tangerine and lime (these are for my color-coded calendar)
• One Sharpie fine point marker - black (for graffiti!)
• One Pilot ultra fine point permanent type pen - red (and NO XYLENE, thank god)
• Seven paperclips (three red and one each of blue, yellow, green and white)
• Two little binder clips (the cute teeny ones good for "binding" about two pieces of paper
• Two blaze orange earplugs (let's go hunting!)
• One uncanceled stamp
• One latex-free generic Band-Aid
• An unused letter opener from the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council
• One notepad with nine remaining sheets of paper
• An A section from the Aug. 1 paper (to give to a freelancer who wrote the main story)
• An accuracy survey letter (which I need to pass on to another employee)

When I was in college, my friend Tom and I had a radio show, which we were kicked off of by the station manager in our second semester of senior year for "playing repetitious music and rambling." As you can see, old habits die hard.

What's on your desk?

Because our company's board of directors plans to visit soon, we've been encouraged to neaten our work areas. This does not usually take me very long because I don't keep much on my desk.

Besides my phone, CPU, monitor, monitor stand, keyboard, mouse and mousepad, I have:

• two empty soda cans (diet A&W root beer and diet Pepsi - OK, I'm still working on the Pepsi, but it is almost empty).
• my cell phone
• a piece of paper with notes for a brief for Monday's paper
• a red Bic "round stic fine USA" ballpoint pen
• a promotional toy from Quizno's, one of those little cars you pull back and let go of and it zooms away. This one looks like a rocket.
• a promotional card from the Popcorn Board. When opened, a little speaker plays the sound of popcorn popping. "Give your ears a little treat," the card urges.
• a promotional toy from Dairy Queen to flog their Moolatte frozen blended coffee. It is one of those old-fashioned canisters that you turn upside-down, then right-side up and it moos. Cute.
• an impressively feisty purple and green vinelike plant, which is in a yellow pot on top of my CPU (which is protected by folded-up newspaper under the pot). Besides the vine, which I love, the pot contains a small, white ceramic insulator and a pica pole (a type of ruler for unusual people).

And that is it, although near my desk is a filing cabinet that I use only as a place to put my planning calendar, which has color-coded information about stories that will appear in coming editions of the paper.

I don't know what my desk says about me, but there you have it.

A quick Indian meal

Oh, that's right, there's no such thing.

But because we have guests in town for a few days and home-cooked meals run counter to current events (10th college reunion for the butterfly lady and her homies), I whipped up:

• A North Indian Muslim dish of beef with dark almond sauce
• A vegetarian takeoff on that dish using acorn squash instead of Bessie
  
• Sookhe aloo (I think that's Hindi for "yummy potatoes")
• Rice with saffron, cardamom and cinnamon

I hurried, so the whole production took less than three hours. I should have enlisted help, I guess, but it was fun and the crowd liked the food.

I think the squash dish worked better than the beef version, though I think that next time, I'd use some tofu as well. And I would not make both dishes simultaneously, which although interesting was also hectic.

Making weight loss last

Until last year, my weight made steady progress in an upward direction since I graduated from high school, which is to say for many years.

I went through the customary denial (The dryer made my pants smaller! It's all muscle!) process until the point that the doctor showed me her chart, with my weight, in black and white, over the years I had seen her before leaving the area temporarily. So, I could see where I'd been, and I could certainly tell where I was. Plus, she showed me some other depressing numbers (cholesterol, blood pressure, blah blah blah).

I promptly lost 28 pounds (how? swim, don't drink much, swim, swim, don't drink much and swim), and although a few pounds have come back, I'm where she wants me to be (and wearing the pant size I had when I was in my best cross country running shape around 1989-91). The best part, I have to say, has been getting new clothes.

My motivation is a combination of wanting to live a long time, liking how I look (and how others look at me) now, that sort of thing. I don't ordinarily write about this sort of thing, but I thought I ought to put pen to paper (OK, fingertips to keys) to remind myself, if I ever look back through my blog, that life is better now than it was then.

Hey, how'd you find me?

Inspired by Lulu, I checked to see what my recent keyword activity looked like:

• the mysterious davy jones (oh, shocking)
• raven standard progression matrices (another thrill-seeker like me)
• easy notes on ghana (Here is a much better place to go)
• strep nose (it was staph - two varieties - not strep)
• mbna rejection instructions for apr increase
• evil mythical birds (I'd love to know a few!)

The staph, by the way, is in rout. But what a dumb thing to have: Staph Nose.

Changing times, changing fortunes

When I moved to Walla Walla the first time, in August 1990, some local folks worried the newly finished Blue Mountain Mall - the place to be for shopping and socializing - would drive the final nails into the coffin of the city's downtown.

In the old days, downtown had a Bon Marche department store (sort of old-fashioned in that you could buy frying pans, sheets and microwaves, not just clothes), a run-down drugstore, a couple of nicer drugstores, several sketchy restaurants (I've heard that two failed because of health complaints) and a few nicer eateries and stores.

Over the subsequent 16 years (yegods, time flies), downtown businesses rallied to revitalize the city center, and the mall was the salient. Many an imprecation uttered in those days included "the mall."

As it stands now, downtown shoppers may visit restaurants, boutiques, salons, a Macy's department store (sort of old-fashioned in that you can buy frying pans, sheets and microwaves, not just clothes), a wide variety of winery tasting rooms, art galleries, a toy store and the older businesses that stood the test of time, including a popular deli, an auto dealership, a candy store where they actually make many of the goodies, a music store and many other nice places.

Many storefronts remain boarded up or vacant and the second stories of many buildings are in disrepair or tenant-less. So there's still a long way to go, but times are most certainly changing for the better.

And how about that mall?

A recent visit by the butterfly lady and I (we have weird ways to pass the time here) found a sad scene.

Sears, Gottschalk's and Shopko are the mall's anchors - an Emporium closed and wasn't replaced. Besides those stores, the mall has the following businesses:

1. Claire's (hair clips, etc.)
2. GNC (I always think of Hans and Franz from SNL when I see a GNC - mmm, gainer fuel!)
3. Big Twist Pretzels
4. A nail shop
5. A Unicel dealership
6. Antonio's (a genuine local barbershop)
7. Fashion Bug (clothing)
8. Maurice's (clothing)
9. Foot Locker
10. Bath & Body Works
11. Teddy Bear Factory (open Friday-Sunday only)
12. Dim Sum Inn (a pretty good Asian restaurant)

And these quasi-businesses:

1. Cruisers Driving School (not open regularly)
   
2. Army recruiter
3. Air Force recruiter
4. Marine Corps recruiter
5. Navy recruiter
6. Walla Walla Police Department's crime prevention office
7. Two "community" rooms - vacant stores with some chairs inside.

Counting the community rooms, there are 32 vacancies, some ill-disguised by facades, some just left blank. Even the food court has only one occupant, having lost Sbarro, Orange Julius and Bob's Pizza.

I think it would be generous to say that the driving school, recruiters' offices, police office and even the Teddy Bear Factory are, strictly speaking, stores, so that would put the occupancy at less than 25 percent... not exactly the best of times.

Who says the TSA is unreasonable??

Having just bought and left behind some non-explosive toothpaste and similar items in Virginia (I don't check bags, regardless of how long I'll be on the road), I am happy to see that the Transportation Security Administration has eased its restrictions on what you are allowed to pack in your carry-on bag. The press release is here.

What it all boils down to is that you may now carry travel-size toiletries (three ounces or less each) in a quart-size Ziploc bag. You may also now take the soda you bought in the secure area onto the airplane, so you won't be at the mercy of the airline to keep you hydrated (or caffeinated, or liquored up)...

The fabulous photograph above is courtesy of TSA and shows the agency's idea of what you might carry. This rule change would be much funnier if the TSA would only allow you to carry those specific items. New slogan: "Unless you carry Scope, the terrorists truly win."

Choosy moms choose Jif?

Of all the slogans I could think of in the past couple of minutes, Jif's bothers me most. Choosy moms choose Jif. How exactly is that choosy?

When I whip up PB&J, I want to make sure the kids eat a few wholesome extras. Partially and fully hydrogenated oil, sugar, mono- and diglycerides are some of my favorite little downhome goodies, and I'm especially proud if I can get those into the each of the ingredients, too!

Now, I can see how the old-school Jif might still have all that crap, but the comparatively new brand, Simply Jif Creamy has this ingredient list:

Roasted peanuts, contains 2 percent or less of: partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean), fully hydrogenated vegetable oils (rapeseed and soybean), mono- and diglycerides, molasses, sugar and salt.

How's that simply? Of course, you can always get Adams peanut butter (made by the same people who make Jif) without the unwanted extras.

This reminds me of another conundrum: When a company makes good and bad products, should you buy nothing from them at all or just the good ones? I'm pretty sure it doesn't really matter, but I still feel reluctant to buy canola oil from Crisco...

Returned from traveling abroad

OK, so northern Virginia ins't exactly "abroad," but it is a far cry from Walla Walla. I spent the last week in Reston - mostly - at a seminar for city editors at the American Press Institute (self-subtitled The Leadership Place).

Besides bringing home ideas, I also found:

• The Reston Community Center has a decent pool. 85 degrees, but it was a good deal.
• Gas was 30 cents a gallon cheaper there than here.
• Jammin' Java, in Vienna, Va., is the best venue I've ever been to a show at.
• Charlotte Martin was better than I expected, but still just pretty good (In my notebook, I wrote "This is what Tori Amos would have sounded like if she'd started with a drummer and a fancy piano thing" but I also wrote "All these piano licks are familiar" and "Joe Purdy rocked. Charlotte Martin should have opened for him").
• Joe Purdy rocked. Plus, he's very funny.
  
• If you need a cab in the Reston/Dulles area, call Mohisin Choudhry - (571) 232-6801 anytime. He's on call and a good guy to ride around with.

I found out a lot of other stuff, too, including that easy access to a computer where I could post was not to be had (as the six of you now know...).

Oh, and it is good to be back :)

Too skinny for the runway??

The second headline on this morning's Guardian feed reads "Jowell condemns thin models."

The British culture secretary (fuckin' A, you want to talk about big government? A culture secretary?) is chiming in on a recent controversy in Spain, where models with a BMI below 18 have been prevented from strolling the catwalk.

In a stand that runs counter to my parenthetical above, the Guardian quotes Jowell as saying, "It's categorically not an issue for government regulation. It is, however, an issue of major concern for young girls who feel themselves inferior when compared to the stick-thin young women on the catwalk. They all want to look as beautiful as that and see beauty in those terms. And I think it's fair to say that when they wake up in the morning, the first thing most 15- and 16-year-old girls do is feel their tummies."

Of course, being a nuisance, I had to check to find out what Tessa Jowell looks like. I found her picture here.

The war, the future, etc.

James Fallows was (and may still be, for all I know) in town last night to talk about Iraq, Iran, the U.S. attempt to deal with global terrorism and the way forward for the United States and the Islamic world. The talk lasted less than 90 minutes and was therefore overly broad for my taste.

I would have preferred he spend the hour-plus just talking about Iran, but I guess that wouldn't have been far-reaching enough for the fairly partisan crowd (I'll let you surmise which side of the fence the crowd that came to Whitman College on a school night fell on).

If you read The Atlantic regularly, you already know the bulk of the talk, which did include some pretty funny lines from Fallows.

The only real revelation of the evening came in the Q&A period, when a guy tried to draw an analogy between the war in Iraq and the grieving process. The analogy failed, but the guy said something interesting: that at the outset of the war, everyone supported the idea because of the prewar intelligence.

Until Thursday night, I don't think I'd heard any non-politician actually say that aloud. Politicians, sure: How else can they flipflop on the war without looking like they're only following public opinion? But regular people?

Hey, I've been fooled before, but never in hell did I believe for one moment that Iraq: a) had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in a meaningful manner; b) that Saddam Hussein was actively involved in nuclear weapons research and production (I'd easily believe, however, that his masturbatory dreamland included an A-bomb or two); or c) that any of the above posed a threat to anybody outside of Iraq.

On the flip side, Saddam Hussein is an asshole, but I'm not sure that's in the Reasons To Go To War playbook.

Look: The Intelligence Community couldn't predict the fall of communism (most of it, anyway) or whack Castro. Why should anyone take their word - handed down by the president - about anything else?

Villainous scented things

While reading Lulu's post on her department's new "meeting room" and its Renuzit Caribbean Cooler room freshener," I was reminded of the headaches I used to get from the smell of artificially augmented potpourri, as well as the horrifying stench that emanated from our neighbor's apartment in the Granite State.

Mighty Mouse, you see, had a small dog that whizzed indoors - nonstop as near as I could tell, and for every whiz, Mighty Mouse and her husband had a plug-in air "freshener." The smell was only noticeable if you were within a couple blocks of the apartment building, but even so...

So I was amused to read this quote from a local third-grader, on hand sanitizer her school has the kids use when they come in from recess, just before chow:

"It smells weird."

Damn right.

Luck of the draw

I'm soon to flee for Virginia, for a work thing, so I thought I'd troll for possible shows in the area while I'm there, to fill in a free evening or two. Lo and behold, Joe Purdy is opening for someone I've never heard of, on a night I have free, 10 miles from where I'm staying. What luck!

The aforementioned someone, Charlotte Martin, is also (so is Purdy) an L.A.-based artist. I've intentionally not listened to her since buying the ticket, so as to be surprised. I'm not optimistic. According to her Web site:

"Two years of virtually nonstop touring had effects. While on the road, Charlotte experienced the spectrum of human emotion: heartbreak, loss, guilt, and triumph. These years of intense transition and infinite potential found themselves in the words, notes, and production of Stromata."

My spider sense - which hasn't let me down on any musical outfit I've covered in the past - tingles when I read this kind of rubbishy solipsism. Here's to hoping I'm wrong!

So close and yet so far away

At this moment, five years ago, I was swimming at the University of New Hampshire pool, the last day I went swimming until I took it up again in September 2005. I recall thinking I'd better get in a swim before descending into news world for a few months. I was right.

Sept. 11, broadly defined, continues to depress me in the where's-our-country-going sense, though there are bright spots. My melancholy is summed up in part by the war-cost meter at Land-o-Lulu. Of course, there are the non-monetary costs, too...

But from a professional standpoint, Sept. 11 and the days and weeks after remain the zenith of my journalism life. Many good things came before, and many after, but nothing compares to Sept. 11, a time of focus, teamwork and relentless effort.

We who inhabit the Fourth Estate aren't government, but there are similarities, especially in this realm. We, too, can point to mistakes made before and after the attacks, triumphs and abyssmal failures that run parallel to those of the government.

I suppose the saving grace - for me, anyway - is that I have cultivated loneliness. My version doesn't take me to far-off lands to gather my own firsthand reports, but it does help to keep a distance between my professional and personal lives, and for that I am thankful.

Slice of life

Running delightfully counter to the hoity-toity stereotype you might have of "wine country," Walla Walla has a basketful of special events throughout the year that are decidedly non-pretentious.

In the spring, the Walla Walla Balloon Stampede brings about three dozen balloons to the area - not a big festival, but very popular. Morning launches, lots of tourists - pretty laid-back.

Of course, there's also spring barrel tasting weekend, a much newer way to ring in the season around here.

In late August, there's also the county fair - demolition derby, rodeo, carnies, cows, the usual.

Today was the splasho day for Wheelin' Walla Walla Weekend, which was expected to draw about 300-350 cars (Corvettes, Mustangs, street rods, El Caminos, lots of vintage models) and a few thousand people to the area.

Right around the corner from the fancy-schmancy wine tasting room, the butterfly lady and I passed a clot of vintage auto owners (hyphen oh so appropriately omitted) talking cars, at just enough above the volume of everybody else to raise suspicion. Sure enough, clutched in their mitts, obscured by insulating can holders, were a few cans on Natural Light (maybe it was Milwaukee's Best?).

I know a lot of people in my city worry about what the place will look like in a few years (good ol' Wally World with more money, or Upscaley Resortville filled with wealthy, New York Times-believing outsiders?), but I guess I mark the changing of the times by subtler cues.

Maybe someday our city, and our downtown, will change to the point that people who don't mind fracturing the open-container laws won't feel comfortable. That would be incremental change for the worse, a mark of just a little too much civilization for me.

Strep nose

I'm not yet diagnosed, but I am highly suspicious that the dreaded strep nose has returned.

I came down with it in 2003 or 2004 and had fun teasing the medical establishment by calling the snout trouble "strep nose." They seemed more partial to a mumble-y nonsense name, like intranasal streptococcal inflammation incident.

But strep nose is what it was, and the physician's assistant threw the kitchen sink at it with some high-powered, high-cost antibiotics. I'm pretty sure it's back, and I'm pretty sure it still sucks.

So off I go to have another round of nonsense with the doctor. What a treat!

Postscript: I have a more useful post on this subject, here.

MTV sucks

So, the geniuses at (Sometimes We Play) Music Television got the Raconteurs to play at their award show, but the producers went to commercial in the middle of a ZZ Top cover and came back with about 10 seconds remaining in "Broken Boy Soldier," which if I'm not mistaken is the title cut of a kickass album...

Maybe they didn't have time to spare because of needing to put Jack Black on stage for his little fuckfuck comedy routine.

Or maybe MTV figured that with Al Gore due up, they couldn't get too far off the beaten path of mind candy for the viewing audience and headed off Jack White's crew at the pass.

blogger comment nonsense

Having switched to blogger's beta a while back, I had merrily continued to post comments elsewhere (on the now-dreaded non-beta blogs) using my old password. Alas, this morning blogger breaks the news to me that "that feature is coming soon" or some similar rubbish.

Drat. I don't like being isolated, even in silly ways.

Wild-cow milking

The fair is on here, so the butterfly lady, her father and I went to the rodeo last night, to watch the usual roping, wrestling and riding. Besides standard fare was some silliness - too much rodeo clown, lots of victory laps in the back of a pickup, choreographed horseback riding - and the hinted-at wild-cow milking.

I strongly suspect the cows were not in fact wild, but they also weren't wild about the event:

Teams of two, initially on horseback, attempt to rope, subdue, cajole and milk one of a small group of cows. I thought for sure that the announcement of "wild-cow milking time" was a joke or maybe a code for something else, but it wasn't. As it turned out, only one of the teams was able to pull off the feat.

The other cowbows spent a lot of time being dragged around the ring by the miffed cows. Pretty silly.

Incredibly, this event is widespread (google can back me up here - I guess I've been going to the wrong rodeos or skipping out at the wrong time) and wild-cow milking is taken seriously, but mostly I thought it was just weird.

Be your own personal chef

So, you're busy all week, with no time to cook a brand spankin' new dinner each night. Unlike some people, you don't have the cash to pay somebody to fill your fridge and freezer with a week's worth of meals.

What you do have is a few hours free one day a week, some empty casserole dishes and ingredients. What do I have? A plan that will give you five tasty, healthy and interesting dinners, all fixable in a few hours on one day.

Here are my caveats:

• I assume that you, a busy person, have already figured out how to keep breakfast easy but interesting (granola, plain yogurt and English muffins are my staples, and all three can take a surprising variety of condiments).
• I assume you have either thrown in the towel and eat lunch at a local shop or simply pack a sandwich and some carrot sticks.
• I also assume that you can fend for yourself on Saturday night and will probably nibble and snack your way through a dinner's equivalent while you whip up your five forthcoming meals...
  

And here are my tricks:

• If you like to play grownup and have meals that consist of more than one food item, buy a bag of salad and a baguette every two or three days, one on cooking day, the other during the week - say on Wednesday - on your way home from work. Then you'll have fresh-enough bread and greens to go with your main courses.
• If you hate that kind of salad, buy bell peppers, carrots, celery, cauliflower, cut them into bite-size pieces (crudite, I suppose) and keep them in a bowl of water in the fridge. Then you can pull a handful out and dress them to go with dinner.
• If you can swing it, indulge in some nice cheese and olives. You can cut up some of the cheese and have it with the O's as an appetizer.
• Some condiments, such as hummus and black-bean dip, can be made with ease while you are making other food. As long as you have a free burner to simmer the beans, you won't have to worry about dips needing your undivided attention on cooking day.
• As you probably guessed from the above, I like to make my multi-course meals the easy way, by having other little goodies to go with them, not by going through the rigamarole of cooking three different dishes on any given night.

Coming soon, the first installment of recipes...

Allahu akbar

Although my job (newspapers) and avocation (handwoven scarves) are both visual arts of sorts, and I love! to cook, three of the deepest impressions I carry with me from travels are aural:

• Calls to prayer in Tunisia.
• Howler monkeys roaring in the forests around Tikal, Guatemala.
• The sounds of singers rehearsing for a performance of "Tristan and Isolde," heard from the window of a hotel in Chur, Switzerland.

I suppose this means I'll have to find my way back to all these places!

More on XFTA receivers

A post I made earlier on "XFTA enabled receivers" to allegedly help you get satellite programming - apparently for free - has turned out to be a very popular route to this blog. I'm guessing a lot of other people receive the same piece of spam I did, but I wouldn't think anybody would take that crap seriously.

Or maybe I'm missing out on fabulous free TV!!!!!!!

I guess that's why they call it beta

So, I thought I'd be all clever, switching to the beta version of blogger. But all I've done is ensure that I can embarass myself by leaving comments more than once hither and yon.

Drat.

Squash

I like squash: the word, the food item and probably the beverage. I'm not so sure about the game, which seems hoity-toity but is probably fun. It never looks fun in the movies when the rich guys are playing it, but lots of stuff rich people do looks un-fun.

Having had surplus zucchini and summer squash on hand over the past week or two, I fixed a couple of gratins, zucchini pancakes and pan-fried zucchini spears. The latter two worked fine but really aren't dishes I'd make again. I'd rather have latkes than z-cakes, and the spears were pretty boring. The gratins, of course, were very tasty!

Gratin A

• 1 medium yellow onion, halved and sliced into thin rings (you don't have to halve it, but it is a lot easier to slice thinly that way. I'll have to get around to shooting a time-saving onion-slicing technique)
• zucchini or summer squash, sliced into 3/8-inch-thick slices (enough to do one layer of whatever casserole you're using)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup cream (depends on the size of the casserole. I used about a half-cup in a 12-by-12 dish)
  
• 1/4 cup Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated

In a bit of oil, saute the onion until noodle-y but not carmelized. Dump the onions into the casserole and spread them out to cover the bottom of the dish.
Sear the squash slices on both sides, seasoning with salt and pepper. Here again, just to cook them, not to seriously brown or blacken.
Arrange the slices on top of the onions, then pour the cream over the lot.
Sprinkle with the cheese (you can get a good P-R at Safeway - they sell the real, imported McCoy under their Primo Taglio label in the cheese island at the deli, even at Ghetto Safeway, as one of our stores is so fondly called).
Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, maybe a half-hour, until everything is bubbly and the cheese starts to brown.

Gratin B

• Four slices good-quality bacon
• 4 ounces grated Gruyere (hey, any hard cheese will probably do - it's just what I had on hand)
• zucchini or summer squash, sliced into 3/8-inch-thick slices (enough to do one layer of whatever casserole you're using)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup milk (depends on the size of the casserole. I used about a half-cup in a 12-by-12 dish)

Cook the bacon over medium heat until near-crisp, then remove. Cut into pieces and set aside.
In some of the bacon grease, saute the onion until noodle-y but not carmelized. Dump the onions into the casserole and spread them out to cover the bottom of the dish.
In a bit more of the bacon grease, sear the squash slices on both sides, seasoning with salt and pepper (you won't need as much salt in this dish on account of the bacon). Here again, sear just to cook the squash, not to seriously brown or blacken it.
Sprinkle half the cheese on top of the onions, then arrange the squash slices on top.
Pour the milk over the lot, then sprinkle with the rest of the cheese.
Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, maybe a half-hour, until everything is bubbly and the cheese starts to brown.

bee stings and blackberries

The butterfly lady and I took Bigg Dogg (her elder, the curmudgeonly spaniel, kicked back at the dog spa for the weekend) down to the Willamette Valley for a visit with my mother, sister (pregnant and due in October), her boyfriend (who passed inspection with flying colors, a definite keeper) and assorted others.

Katy behaved nicely, and has all the earmarks of a country dog - plays in the dust, eats plums off the ground, stays nearby on expeditions (OK, she still can't go too far, so expedition just means 20-minute walk).

Plums, grapes, blackberries and pears were all pretty much ripe, some on the vine, some on the ground and all delicious. Barefoot and munching blackberries, I stepped on a honeybee. Damn! My irrational fear of bees seems to have some rational roots. But that's what ice and antihistamines are for, I suppose.

The biggest cash-in of the weekend was a trip to Crabtree & Evelyn, where we used a substantial Discover Card rebate to stock up on all sorts of frivolity. Discover lets you double your rebate if you choose gift cards from certain companies, but most of the choices are rubbish - too many conditions, crappy companies, whatever. Crabtree & Eveyln offers a double with the only condition being that you have to shop in one of their stores, not online or at a licensed retailer. But no big deal.

We rolled back into the valley where we live Sunday evening, greeted by the smoke from a 100-square-mile wildfire. Ahh, summer.

food & drink

Lulu's recent musings on gin and bacon got me to thinking, happily, on those and a few other necessities:

Food

• Bacon - I like to buy local, so I prefer Hill Meat Co. bacon, from Pendleton, Ore. Added bonus: delicious! I'm pretty fond of sausage, too.
  
• Chocolate - the darker, the better. I like many (mostly premium) brands, and prefer bars that are 72 percent chocolate or higher.
• Olives - fancy green ones suit me just fine. I like the ones that are unpitted, just to have something to do. They're tasty in Tunisian sandwiches, too.
• Cheese - I'm picky here, too. I am a big fan of Parmigiano Reggiano and Grafton Village cheddar, among many others.
• Peanut butter - Make mine Adams Natural Peanut Butter. I like the crunchy variety, and I see Smuckers (the parent company) has a devlishly clever mixer to reincorporate the oil with.
• Cashews - It is hard to believe that something that takes so much damn work to get from farm to market can wind up costing $5.22 a pound at the local grocery. Oh, and they're yummy, too.
• Tomatoes - In a perfect world, heirloom tomatoes, right off the vine on a hot day. Indeed, I ate one of mine just the other day: perfect.

Drink

• Gin - Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire are hard to beat, but I prefer Hendrick's. I prefer martinis, as opposed to having my gin neat or with tonic, mostly because of my fondness for olives. Give me five in a big glass of icy gin and color me happy.
• Scotch - I'll drink other whisky if I must, but if you're with me, you're drinking Laphroaig.
• Bourbon - I think "bourbon" is just American for "Scotch" and if you think about who populates Appalachia, I think you might agree. Lately, Maker's Mark, Booker's, Elijah Craig, Evan Williams and the like have taken center stage, but my favorite bourbon memory was glasses of Jim Beam at dinner just down the trail from South Twin Mountain in New Hampshire.
• Coffee - Black, brewed in a stovetop espresso pot. Or a hot can of Georgia-Old from Family Mart.

That's a start, anyway.

Mythical birds

Setting aside Fawkes, the bird with the roll-your-eyes name in the Harry Potter books, I think phoenixes are pretty neat. An apparent analog in Japan is the ho-oo or hojo (the name differs from source to source). Here's one:

Albert Pujols-Babe Ruth connection

Hey, besides the paycheck and interesting job, Albert Pujols also gets access to fun diversions, including a battery of tests once used on George Herman Ruth.

Among the tests Prince Albert is reported as taking are hand-eye coordination and cognitive assessments. No big surprise: Pujols scored out of sight on hand-eye coordination and showed an unusual (anecdotally, anyway) and apparently baseball-useful way of processing visual information.

Details offered in the wire stories are sparse, but it sounds like he got to have some fun. Naturally, one version of the story had to quote a researcher as saying that the individual skills weren't as impressive as the total package, which is no doubt true but also echoes what another test taker - with whom I am intimately familiar - was told after scoring well on some assessments.

"The scores aren't what's important. It's what you do with those abilities."

No kidding. But if the scores aren't important, why did you ask me to take the tests?

A dream job other than my own

I love my job. When people ask what a city editor does, I just say "read, write and talk." That pretty much sums it up, but like the recipe for Sprite, there's more to it than that. *

Supposing I had to do something else, something that isn't journalism or journalism-related, I'd like to try being a noxious-weed killer (that's a much funnier title if you leave out the hyphen).

I'm sure there's bullshit involved, inevitably. But what job doesn't have some measure of silliness and nonsense? Around here, as is true pretty much anywhere these days, noxious weeds and invasive species are Problem No. 1, or a damn close second. I like to work in the yard and garden, but I have to admit my preference is for demo work ("kid, tear the ivy out of the oak grove" is much more music to my ears than "kid, grow some potatoes").

I suppose the most fruitful work would be done out on the prairies, but this town has more than its share of villainous plants. The problem is so severe that local beekeepers even flog their yellow star thistle honey at the farmers' market.

In a truly absurd twist, one honey tout claimed that pollination of yellow star thistles "really doesn't help them spread." That seemed like rubbish. To wit:

It reproduces exclusively by seed, estimated to be as high as 29,000 seeds per square meter with about 95 percent viability. - U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Laboratory.

Anyway, there's plenty of star thistle to be stamped out, along with a host of other invasive species. I'm sure the work wouldn't always be pleasant, but it would be fun!

* They say the recipe for Sprite is lemon and lime. I tried to make it at home. ... There's more to it than that.
"Want some more homemade Sprite?"
"Not 'til you figure out what the fuck else is in it!"
- Mitch Hedberg

On yet another damn difficult book hunt

After my fairly easy success in finding "The Promotion" by James Tate, I was hoping to have similar success tracking down a book (really, any one of a series of books). The lead character is female, and the books seem to be oceangoing adventures involving her. I think she is based, or grew up, or whatever, on the Northeast coast. And she's got an unusual name, something like Twyla.

I've only read part of one book, but it had promise.

Damn. Last time this happened, figuring out the answer took years of on-and-off searching and a very sharp employee at Powell's to produce The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet.

Well, here's to hoping for a lucky strike.

comment-free zone

Having recently switched to blogger.com's beta upgrade, I'm wondering what the deal is with comments. I have to use an old login to comment elsewhere, and I see that leaving comments here isn't necessarily possible. Grrrr.

Hurry up, google people!

The risk of trying to do too much

Oftentimes, a story seems just too good to leave out any details in the lead:

DREXEL, Mo. (AP) - A Missouri man who police say confessed to killing, dismembering and burning the bodies of seven men in his bedroom fireplace was charged Sunday with one count of murder.

That's one spacious fireplace! And how do you kill the bodies of seven men?

Ah well. The man in question confessed to the killings when he was hauled in on an unrelated charge, so I think I would have recast the lead to either include that unusual detail or to just pare back what the writer was trying to pull off, which was to put the whole story in one sentence. But here's an easy fix that doesn't surrender much detail:

DREXEL, Mo. (AP) - A Missouri man who police say confessed to killing and dismembering seven men and burning their bodies in his bedroom fireplace was charged Sunday with murder.

or

DREXEL, Mo. (AP) - A man who police say confessed to killing seven men was charged Sunday with one count of murder.

The seven men being, you know, dead, seems to me to be of greater significance than what happened to their remains. Unless killing seven people is so run-of-the-mill in the Kansas City area that the added information is needed to differentiate between one set of deaths and the others.

One small step for recyclers

I owe it to an article in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and I suppose I could have found another recycler, but one portion of my recycling quest is complete, and my employer has now donated about 15 nonfunctional and extremely dated cell phones, along with a junk pile of chargers, cigarette-lighter plug-ins and whatnot to recyclemycellphone.org.

Now, there's this matter of monitors...

Smokers' rights

After reading for the nth time about how smokers' rights are being trampled by Washington's anti-indoor smoking law, I have to say:

Smoking is many things: a pastime, a vile social ill, a social activity, a crutch, a tradition, whatever. But it isn't a right.

Voting, yes.
Free speech, sure.
Owning a gun, fine.

Smoking? Which part of the constitution covers smoking? The same part that covers drinking beer?

Bullshit. Complain if you like that smokers are discriminated against, or that the rules are unfair, but don't try to pretend smoking is the same as voting.

Campaign finance: A corollary manifesto

The buttefly lady sees the future of the National Recycling Act outlined below as hinging on a change in how political campaigns are financed.

I strongly suspect that she views the system as corrupt because it vests immense political power in the hands of the rich and ultra-rich. But the rich and ultra-rich are as entitled as you or I to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech, and judging from how the Constitution sets up our form of democracy, I suspect the founders would be pretty comfortable with the way things work now. But they're dead, so the question is moot.

Because of the inherent conflict in politicians changing the rules they benefit from, I suspect the question of campaign finance reform is also moot.

And yet:

Over the decades all kinds of superb (and awful) public policy has been carried out. Although the voters are frequently lambasted for their collective choices or apparent apathy, they do have a choice, and they do flex their muscles.

When Newt Gingrich sold people on the Contract with America, the voters responded. When Bill Clinton sold people on the Third Way, the voters responded. When Ralph Nader called Al Bush and George Gore clones, the voters responded.

Did they respond how everybody wanted them to? No. But like newspapers' readership, voters are a bad crowd to underestimate. I think the problem isn't "fixing" the voters - or the readers - but learning to listen to what they care about and speaking to those wants, needs and fears in a way that they connect with. If you can't connect with voters, all the money on Earth won't help you.

Likewise, I don't think the problem is "fixing" campaign finance rules, I think it is voting out the candidates who behave in a manner inconsistent with the principles of democracy (i.e. by selling themselves to the highest bidders). Voting out the bad eggs depends almost entirely on the previous point, learning to connect with voters. Maybe as a side benefit, the people who are voted in will come up with a constitutional answer to the campaign finance conundrum.

So my answer is sticky, glib and bound to produce frustration:

Power to the people.

which leads to my father's maxim:

In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.

The road ahead is a hard one, fraught with all sorts of perils. But good leaders can find a way to a more democratic future, if they can show people why they should care enough to follow them down that path.

In the words of Joshua "Lawrence" Chamberlain, "Let's fix bayonets."

Recycling: A supplier-side problem

Like just about any other person on the continent, I have a small stockpile of dead or obsolete electronics, including the dreaded computer monitor.

Like just about any other person who gives a shit about the planet, I'd like to get rid of the stockpile in a responsible manner, which here means "not in the landfill."

What's missing, of course, is this third sentence:

Like just about any other person in Sentences A and B, I sent the unwanted goods back to the manufacturer for ecologically friendly recycling and reuse.

So.

I have wished for a national bottle bill since the day I realized that not every state is like Oregon (and my home state's rules aren't even all that effective now that a nickel's not worth as much and so many containers are exempt).

Here's my manifesto, or mission statement, or whatever:

All recyclable goods shall be sold with a meaningful deposit that is refunded upon return of the used item to the retailer that sold it. All manufacturers of recyclable goods shall be ultimately responsible for their product's end-of-life care.

When I say "all recyclable goods," I mean empty beer cans, shampoo bottles, toaster ovens, retired monitors, old cell phones, junker cars, speedboats, refrigerators, the box the fridge came in, the packing materials, the whole nine yards. Every god damn thing under the sun that can be recycled, and that's pretty much everything but food, diapers, Kleenex and toothpaste.

Why pick on retailers instead of just leaving this to manufacturers? Here's my rationale:

As long as consumers are allowed to discard what they want, pretty much how they want, they won't do expensive or laborious procedures unless they really want to on a personal level. That is fine for some things, but not for managing our shared natural resources.

Consumers need to be on the hook (the meaningful deposit - maybe 10 percent of the item's sticker price?) and have an easy way to return the recyclable (to the retailer, not some godforesaken warehouse in Tiffin, Ohio).

Manufacturers, at the other end of the delivery chain, tend to be too far removed (physically) from consumers for easy returns of empty bottles, dead computers, etc.

Retailers, however, are mostly physically close to the consumer and have well-established supply lines from manufacturers (or distributors) that could be used in reverse.

Complications:

• Retailers would have to deal with higher prices from manufacturers, who would have to arrange to deal with their goods' denouement, and would also have higher costs of operation (to handle customer returns of used-up goods). Because this rule would be absolute, everybody would have to deal with the same problem. Everything would probably cost more. Oh well.
• What about onlines and other outfits that ship items? Well, I guess they'd just have to provide postage-paid returns of defunct and empty items then, wouldn't they? Again, everything would probably cost more. Oh well.
• What happens to orphaned goods? Inevitably, some of the things you buy, the maker will go broke before you're done with it. But usually, they'll get bought out, and as king of the realm, I decree that responsibility travels with ownership, so when Kmart buys Sears, it also buys all those potential returns. Hey, that's the cost of doing business. Truly orphaned goods could wind up in landfills, along with all the stuff people were willing to give up the deposit on. This system is never going to catch everything.
  

Right now, the system doesn't work. The world's trash is piling up in junkyards, ditches, rivers, oceans, beaches, forests, pretty much everywhere. A lot of that trash should never have been thrown out in the first place. If it isn't curbside or at a transfer station, recycling is too god damn complicated. Something needs to be done, and this is a start.

Fools and their money

Fortunately, gmail has a very good spam interdictor, but sometimes I like to cruise through the junk mail that accumulates to see what kinds of crap people are trying to pull.

One offer I received targets people who have illicit connections to "Dishnetwork." The offer claims some sort of DISH Network electronic countermeasure will blow away "receivers that are using cards with blockers" and of course offers to fix you up with an "XFTA enabled receiver" for the bargain price of $299.98 or $149.99 (the offer is ambiguous).

It is going to be hard times for consumers who call the attorney general (or dish, that would be fantastic!) to complain that the devices they bought to illegally swipe programming don't work...

Osama in College Place, Wash.?

The College Place City Council authorized city police to buy some fancy stuff - night vision goggles and a fingerprint imager - using a small portion of city funds and about $20,000 from the federal Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program.

That's cool, because the city only had to ante up about 10 percent of the overall cost, but I'm thinking that only the fingerprint imager makes much sense.

Sure, terrorists would do well to hide out in Small Town America, but I don't think night vision goggles are going to be their undoing. Maybe the goggles will help during a drug bust, or a domestic, or to catch some 9-8s who are highly 9-2, but I really don't think Osama bin Laden and his friends are going to be nabbed by people who can see in the dark.

If the federals are underwriting these buys in every town the size of College Place, I think I can explain some of the budget problems we hear about now and then.

Speaking of Osama, my all-time favorite typographical error, caused by an auto-fix spell check by The Associated Press in Concord, N.H.:

Osaka bin Ladder

sweet!

too busy to blog!

or so it seems. This weekend, I managed to:

• not sleep in - Puppy and Pig were too busy for that.
• with the butterfly lady:

1. visited two heretofore unvisited galleries
2. buzzed through the farmers' market, where we gained nothing but ideas
3. shopped for paint and found many more home ideas, for within and without
4. bought paint (wowzahs)
5. drank coffee
6. watched 1.75 movies ("Whale Rider" and "Red Dawn")
7. walked, fed & entertained aforementioned canines (yegods, busy monsters!)
8. painted - she a project I started earlier for the kitchen, I the plant stand (which is now white and awaiting decorative trim she plans for it)
9. ate clam chowder
10. lots of other stuff!

• wove 3.5 scarves
• offloaded a truckful of recycling (where it all comes from, the gods only know)
• drink more coffee
• install a new ceiling fan in the dining/sewing/open/who-really-knows-what-it-is-for room. The old one wobbled, was noisy and had the worst possible lighting kit imaginable. The lights were designed to provide the maximum glare on any reading material below.
• read half a book and half a magazine.

Aside from that, however, not much happened :)

Plant stand progress

So, it took a while (really, only two days of carpentry/priming, etc., but spread out over a few weeks), but the plant stand is taking shape. All that's left is some crack sealing and a paint job. I had a more complex scheme in mind, but scrapped it in favor of simplicity. The stand, after all, will soon be covered in plants.

Medical Care Can Kill You, too

Or so claims Louise Lane in her cheaply produced but spendy book of similar title ("Appointment with Danger: Medical Care Can Kill You), a copy of which landed near my desk.

The review copy came with a complimentary "bookmark" (a thin slip of paper, really) that reads:

Medical care is the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Riiiiight. Evidence this book is maybe not the best ever written?

"This book will focus on 'Just the facts'..." - page 16.

"In Stony Brook, Long Island, a baby just six days old died as a result of being given ten times the amount of potassium chloride. ... One can wonder if the indificual who made the mistake got his position through affirmative action." - page 82.

Sweet.

Reading can kill you!

How can you get those darn kids to read? Well, it isn't hard. Open a library, launch a reading program and bribe the kiddies with little bendable toy dogs and cats.

Alas, even this best-laid plan has gone awry.

The Oregon Department of Human Services reports today that certain of these "program incentives" contain lead in concentrations deemed unacceptable by the authorities (um, I think lead doesn't belong in toys in any concentration. There's already too much of it in the god damn air - thank you very much, O Kings Of Industry).

The villains? Pictured below, in this image provided by Oregon DHS.

nine and counting

The buttefly lady and I, walking toward a life of love...

Chipmunk!

I heard a frantic rustling this morning in one of the tree of heaven saplings in the alley I walk down on my way to work, so I stopped to see who was making the commotion. A chipmunk!

We used to see them in our parking lot in Newmarket, but that was in the woods. I certainly didn't expect to see one in the rundown alley by the armory.

It was hyper and cute and gave me the hairy eyeball before dashing off to some unknown adventure. Maybe it is headed out on maneuvers...

Lunch in space

After all these years of laboring under the impression that astronauts were still stuck in the bad old days of Tang, powdered applesauce and squeezable, room-temperature meat food, imagine my relief when I learned that the folks on the International Space Station got a shipment from Emeril Lagasse, as well as a chat with the chef himself.

I'm not sure which notch they've been kicked up to, but there you have it.

Other oddball food-in-space facts gleaned from NASA:

• Tortillas are an "easy and acceptable solution to the bread-crumb and microgravity-handling problem." Fuckin' A. I hate that microgravity crumb thing.
• Skylab had a refrigerator.
• Meals for astronauts are calculated to offer "100 percent of the daily value of vitamins and minerals necessary for the environment of space." OK, but whose calculations? The nine-grains a day people? Yuck.
• Meal planning begins with menu selections about five months before a flight and includes tests, revisions, production and storage that leads up to the launch. So, you're stuck with what you liked back then, as long as NASA says it is OK.
  
• Water generated by the space shuttle's fuel cells is used to rehydrate food. Cool!
• NASA makes no mention of dehydrated whisky. Drat.
• Moist towlettes are used for cleaning up.

You can read more about eating in space here.

After last night, when the butterfly lady and I gobbled up homemade whole-wheat samosas stuffed with kheema and sookhe aloo, I'd have to say that after a few months in space, eating a bunch of predetermined, precooked chow would make me very sad.

But the view would be impressive!

A book project

Holly didn't tag me with her responses to the book meme, but I'm tagging myself.

1. One book that changed your life?
Well, there are plenty. I'll stick with "The Killer Angels," a relentlessly researched historical novel by Michael Shaara about the battle of Gettysburg that attempts to set the record of the battle straight. I didn't even know there was a record to set straight, and after reading the book a few times (and listening to it on tape about 10 times more), I concluded that the history classes I took in high school and college were nothing but a digest version intended to spur students to dig deeper. I also concluded that the history classes I took in high school and college were mostly bunk.

2. One book that you have read more than once?
One? Well, the Associated Press Stylebook is probably the book I've read the most bits of the most often! In a way, it is just a book of rules and a glossary, but like a dictionary, it is easy to get lost in.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
Like Holly, I would choose "Wind, Sand and Stars," by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Of airplanes, he says that progress is measured in how much can be taken away, how simple the machine can become for the pilot, that sort of thing. His writing, too, strips away all the chaff.

4. One book that made you laugh?
"The Bad Beginning," the first in the Series of Unfortunate Events. Holy cow, they're all funny.

5. One book that made you cry?
"Parsifal Rides the Time Wave." The kid's dog dies, 'nough said.

6. One book you wish had been written?
"How to Build Anything From Stone" Secretive stonemason motherfuckers, they never publish anything good.

7. One book you wish had never been written?
Look, many ideas suck, but keeping them out of print won't keep them out of circulation. I oppose the idea of unwritten books, even awful ones.

8. One book you are currently reading?
"Words and Rules: The ingredients of language" by Steven Pinker. A loaner from my father thta I've finally got to the top of the to-read stack. Pinker says the book is entirely about regular and irregular verbs (and of course, that means it is about a universe more), which suits me perfectly!

9. One book you have been meaning to read?
"Crypotgraphy: A Primer," which is in the books section of my profile. Reading that book will mean reading a few others first, so it is in the seriously long-term stack...

10. Tag 5 people to do the meme!
As people who know me often find to their annoyance, chagrin or relief, I rarely pass along projects. Self-tagging is so much easier.

curling, yes!

In retrospect, and considering the comment I got today, I'd say that yes, curling's a sport. In the early 1990s, a friend and I considered forming the Jamaican curling team, figuring that it would not be impossible to beat out the other Jamaican teams and grab the slot.

The idea never bore fruit, although we did drink some Red Stripe, I believe. Or maybe it was Lucky Lager and we just pretended it was from farther south.

That said, curling is quite a bit different from its relatives, not the least reason being the need to skitter around on the ice while coaxing the missile to its target. And it is fun to watch on television, unlike some more widely regarded sports, such as track and field (which TV strips utterly of drama, speed and power. The usual camera from above can't beat the view from trackside.)

Come to think of it, not many sports are as good on TV as they are in person. Maybe billiards, because of the advantage of the Telestrator. Maybe tennis, because then you don't have to have the bouncy-head syndrome.

Anyway, I'll buy curling.

A trend of which I was unaware

until I read a particular blog this morning: A list of five significant songs. I dunno if these are significant like "Masters of War" or "Battle Hymn of the Republic" but they count to me:

Pancho and Lefty (Townes Van Zandt)
Telling Stories (Tracy Chapman)
Tom Joad (Woody Guthrie)
32 Flavors (Ani DiFranco)
If I Needed You (Townes Van Zandt)

Death's choices

The sign outside one of the churches between home and work reads like this:

LIFE HAS MANY CHOICES BUT DEATH HAS ONLY TWO

Uh, OK. So what are they?

Wield scythe, or switch to an H&K G36.
Continue to ride outdated white horse, or maybe a Ducati 999R.
Wear flowing black robes (so timeless), or perhaps a ghillie suit.

Aside from those, I don't think Death has a lot of choices to worry about.

My $0.02 on packing light

The butterfly lady, with whom I travel, is a truly brilliant packer. She can fit everything for a trip of any duration and variety into her backpack, no sweat.

I'm not one to be one-upped, so of course I carry everything in my pack, which is a less-adorned, yellow twin to hers.

All travelers aren't equal, though: She fits a much greater diversity of goods into her pack, and I think she winds up with more clothing options, too. On the other hand, I usually carry some oddball stuff (i.e. a spotting scope, or a field guide or two and binoculars in addition to a camera, etc.). Sometimes I volunteer for something heavy or bulky that we'll need & can share.

I do most of the same things she does, packing-wise: one pair of shoes, no full bottles, certain clothes as a cushion at the bottom of the bag. The biggest difference is I've taken a more radical stand on clothes.

For our most recent off-Homeland vacation, a three-week road trip in North Africa, I had two shirts, two pairs of pants, two pairs of boxers and two pairs of socks. I also brought a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. The trick was that I got all but the PJs in quick-dry specialty models (pretty easy on the wallet, which was nice) from a travel outfitter, and we were headed for a pretty dry place. Much easier on the laundry than Central America, I daresay.

As it turned out, I didn't like one of the shirts at all, so I only wore it twice in three weeks. The other shirt I kept clean by washing it nights and wearing it the next day even if it was still a little damp. In retrospect, I think I could easily have gotten away with one of each item instead of two, given the climate.

I couldn't speak for the butterfly lady, but as for me, packing lightly has gotten a lot easier since I:

a) bought those packpacks!
b) decided I'd carry only that pack while outbound (hey, some souvenirs are worth picking up an extra bag for) and then started a competition with myself to eliminate every non-essential item.
c) realized that you can almost always buy stuff on the road that is cooler than what you would have brought with you if you'd remembered it in the first place.

Of course, b) and c) have been the most fun, because I don't buy a new pack for every trip. But b) and c) really are fun, and because I value my portability, I don't mind buying new stuff every now and then to lighten that bag.

My moral for this story:
Unpack your mind before you pack your bag.

Will God slay Fidel?

President Bush was quoted in an AP story today as believing that when Fidel Castro, apparently ill with an intestinal malady, will "move on" is the "work of the Almighty."

Well, I guess ol' Fidel's not a bad guy then, because the Almighty's had 47 years to do something about him and he hasn't done jack shit. In fact, you could even say the Almighty has protected Castro, if you believed in that sort of thing.

I also guess that the Almighty doesn't think too much of Fidel's neighbors to the north, nor the displaced fascists in Miami who have called for Castro's head since '59. Or maybe the Almighty is only at work when she's doing something Bush likes.

Also in the news, people who see the world only in black and white apparently do something different - brainwise - than the rest of us to keep themselves in the dark.

Coincidence?

Burger King's evil new sandwich

This morning's junk e-mail brought a press release denouncing Burger King's new offering, the BK Stacker.

Here's what Burger King says of the burger:

"Get meat and cheese your way with BK STACKERS. Choose from double, triple or quadruple layers of beef and cheese - topped with bacon and sauce. It's the flame-broiled meat lover's burger and it's here to stay - no veggies allowed."

And (predicatably, but still funnily) here's the best part of what Jeff Novick, director of nutrition at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa, has to say:

"Fast food like this is great if you're in a hurry - to die!"

In search of a sport for which steroids won't help

OK, baseball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, swimming, sledding, skiing, track and field, bicycling, rugby, lacrosse, soccer, boxing, skating, rowing, fencing, gymnastics, weightlifting (duh), wrestling, volleyball - all these are out. Even table tennis and badminton are probably on the list of steroids-could-help-you sports, if you are one of the serious, non-back yard types.

And I can't say I think golf, darts, curling, shuffleboard, bowling, shooting, sailing, polo, riding and other such games and pastimes really count as sports, even if your conditioning is superb (and maybe steroids would help you after all). I guess the latter sorts fall in with racing cars, which certainly requires mind-boggling conditioning but isn't really a "sport" either, at least in the Platonic sense I have in mind.

So what's that leave?

Archery? No, alas, even bows and arrows have their troubles: Mark Hainline was busted (for refusing a test) in 2005. Jai alai? I don't think so.

I must be missing something good.

They're misappropriating my favorite words!

While speaking over with a colleague, I found myself saying "misrepresentation" instead of "lie" in a situation that most assuredly merited the latter, more black-and-white term. Yegods, thought I.

So I started mulling over other casualties, and I found some good words that don't really belong on the no-say list: graveyard, undertaker, rapist (I shit you not, my former employer - because Granite State laws call it aggravated felonious sexual assault, not rape - wouldn't call a rapist by that term in news stories.): The list goes on and on.

Some words fall out of favor for good reasons (colored, Oriental - offensive but also aspecific). Others, however, are pooh-poohed by people who don't want to be called prison guards (correctional officers), trash collectors (sanitation engineers), strippers (exotic dancers) or whatnot.

Maybe I'm too sentimental, but I think we all lose something when good words, and more to the point, good, descriptive words, fall out of common usage.

Of course, I can already hear the tinny screech of a certain Seattle-area editor: "It's a living language! Supercede is a perfectly acceptable spelling!" and all that nonsense.

To that, I say, "Bovine solid waste, you vitamin C-deficient canine!"

young and full of beans

Who knows why people say the young are full of beans? The mad bomber reminds me of that peculiar expression every so often, when she dashes headlong through the house in the crazed full tilt of a puppy. Like her elder, mutt bro, she usually follows up the bombing run with a kerflomp onto the cool "wood" floor. Pretty cute :)

The Mysterious East

The Far East rightly gets a lot of credit for being interesting. It also gets saddled with a lot of hocus-pocus nonsense from people who invest the region with mystical and supernatural powers.

Let me give you three for-instances from an otherwise Seriously Smart Guy, Geoffrey Miller:

For-Instance 1: In comments that forecast the future of evolutionary psychology lying to the East, Miller says (quoted from Human Nature Review in a forwarded e-mail), among other things, "We realize that the U.S. is morphing into a fascist-fundamentalist plutocracy that will never seriously support Darwinian research."

I can see that. But he also says that "Asians" have:

"sophisticated views of sex: in contrast to sex-negative European monotheism, many Asian cultures are more sex-positive, more urbane, and more sophisticated (consider the Kama Sutra, Tantric Buddhism, Hindu temple carvings, Thai sex tourism, geisha culture, etc.)"

Oh? OK, Mr. Anecdote, if they're so positive and sophisticated, why did the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors (fittingly enough, carried out by Pfizer) find that people in the West - mostly - find their sex lives more satisfying than people in the East?

For-Instance 2: Miller assumes aggressive growth for India and China and forecasts both will surpass the gross domestic products of the United States and Europe by 2050, a prediction he uses to state that China will become the world's most prosperous country.

Maybe Miller thinks GDP is a better measure of a country's prosperity than per-capita, or median, or mean (for Christ's sake), income, but I do not.

I'd certainly rather live in Bermuda than Sierra Leone, for example, even though Bermuda checks in at No. 167 on the CIA World Factbook's GDP list and Sierra Leone stands at No. 159. Hell, Afghanistan, North Korea and Russia all have Bermuda beat, and its per-capita GDP is the highest on Earth!

The latter measure is misleading, too. Would you prefer the United Arab Emirates or Japan? Well, UAE soars above Japan, so by Miller's reckoning, it must have an edge.

For-Instance 3: Miller says China will soon be the world's most "progressive" country. He doesn't back that up, except to say that "China is an officially atheistic state; most other
advanced Asian countries are fairly secular, with very low rates of creationist monotheism. ... Daoism and Buddhism embrace perpetual change as the cosmic norm."

If by "progressive" Miller means to say "amenable to evolutionary science" then maybe. But I take progressive as having implications that reach far beyond the realm of the privileged. China may be headed toward Miller's vision of a "prosperous and progressive" future, but for whom?

Miller's predictions above and at the recent Human Behavior and Evolution Society conference could sound reasonable at first blush, but I fear this otherwise worthy member of the resistance has given up far too early on the rest of us.

need your hog washed?

Just ask AAA, whose flack is linking "record-high" gas prices with "news" that AAA wants to get out about travelers going online (specifically to AAA resources) to make plans that among other things conserve fuel.

Give me a break. Those "records" aren't adjusted for inflation, and a quarter-century has passed since gas was $3.07 a gallon in 1981 (somewhere in the United States, as reported by the ever-reliable Internet yaps).

As I have said, many times now, the extended spell of high gas prices seems to me a good thing, maybe even a very good thing, although my wallet isn't so happy from time to time.

Coming next summer to a city (kinda) nearby

IKEA plans to announce Tuesday it will build a new store in Portland, near the international airport. That won't bring IKEA closer to here than it already is (there's one down the road from Sea-Tac), but it will put the store in striking distance of family.

The company's PR people note the store will be accessible by light rail (two stations) and employ 350 people. Of course, from a more selfish perspective, it will also put my impulsive and indulgent mother just a short drive from the place :)

off the streets and out of trouble

that's what my mother always says about projects that keep you busy. I've undertaken a little carpentry escapade (maybe a fiasco, but not yet): to build a three-tiered plants stand.

After about a million hours of poorly drawn sketches, I put together a draft scenario by stacking up CD cases, then semi-poorly drew some more sketches, then made a 3-D paper model, then not-poorly-at-all drew some more sketches, with measurements, then went to the store, then toiled for a while. Although there's not much to see yet, the project is coming along.

Whether or not I post a picture would be, I suppose, connected with how well all this works out. :)

Fantastic! Easy Street, here I come

I always like to get e-mail, but who knew I'd hear from the guy whose letter I've pasted below?

Two reasons why this letter's better than the run-of-the-mill crap from the "descendants" of - ironically - Sani Abacha:

Ol' Michel is pretty cheap. You can't have ANY money unless I help you and the best you can do is a quarter-mill in dough and chunks o' gold?

That last part, gold, makes me think Michel's been watching too much CNN in the morning (the only place I know of that you can run afoul of the Monex slobs)



iykedon07@yahoo.com MICHEL NGUESSAN
ABIDJAN COTE D' IVOIRE
WEST AFRICA
Dear One,
It is my pleasure to introduce myself to your good self. My name is Michel Nguessan I am an orphan, My late father was the Managing
Director in a minning company in accra ghana,before he later join the cocoa export company here in Abidjan,Cote d'Ivoire until his
untimely death on the 2nd of June 2005 He was poisioned by his business associates while my mother died of cardiac arrest. Soon as my father died, I later found out that he deposited a consignment in a security company here in Abidjan before he died and it is only me that have the knowledge of this. He also made me the next of kin when he deposited the consignment in the security company . This is the reason why I am contacting you. I am an orphan. . I just finished my high school and I would like to go into business with this heritage. I am contacting you so that you can become my business partner by helping me to retrive this consignment . After the successful retrivement of the consignment, I will then move together with you to your country, where we shall invest the money in a lucrative business . The sum in question is four million, five hundred thousand USdollar(US$4,500,000). and also he deposited (500KG of raw GOLD ASSAY) which
he got when he was working in accra minning company in ghana as executive cheif officer,to be sincere the gold its self was kept in the security company here in abidjan and all the clerification document is with me right now, I also hope to continue my education in your country from this amount as soon as the money and myself gets to your country. Immediately upon the successful retrivement of this consighnment I will then relocate to your country,
I will compensate you with 5% of the total sum that would be retrived for your kind assistance. You will also serve as a guardian of the joint investment we are going to operate together. Please reply me with this my private email iykedon07@yahoo.com .com
YOURS REGARD
MICHEL NGUESSAN

incremental progress

I think some newbies are running the show at the pool: The past few days have been inconsistent, at best, when it comes to the start time.

Yesterday the lap swim began three or four minutes late. This seems to have been no big deal to anybody but me, because everybody else has a workout that doesn't use the whole 60 minutes, but I haven't the luxury of standing around. When the lifeguard says, "go," I go.

So I pushed a little in the warmup but still only had 45 minutes left for a 2,000 and a cooldown. I don't know if the limited time frame was the reason, but I finished with a bit of room to spare, a first for me at that distance. I think I could have squeezed in another 200, but I think I'll save that for next week, because I'm still leery of invoking the wrath of my left arm. I find I only aggravate whatever the injury is at the end of a workout, probably because I don't stay as loose and smooth when I'm tired.

Whatever. I'm still pretty sure I'll be able to get to 3,000 meters per workout by Sept. 6, which is close enough to my goal of two miles for government work.

All of this beats running, anyway. Especially when you look at the projected 100- to 105-degree highs for the weekend...

observations on dominance

Katy the sizeable youngster edges little old Max out of the way pretty often, whether it is for pats or drinks of water. He's figured out ways to work around her (I think he would say that he has "chosen" to do things differently), but she is definitely playing the part of top dog around here.

Similarly, I've found myself swimming in a new lane, edged out by a youngster. Varsity (keep 'em straight, there's only three: Gary, Monkey and now Varsity) started swimming in "my" lane a couple of weeks ago - which I don't really mind - so now I use a portion of the fast lane.

Irony aside, it is interesting to see the difference in how I perceive the swimmers around me. Mostly, I think I need more than one thing to think about at a time, so I watch to see what others are doing. I find it useful to keep track of Gary, who appears to swim at a consistent rate and is therefore a good clock. He laps me several times each workout, but I can tell by when he does how fast or slow I am going, which is a big help near the end of my workouts, which typically end at the same time as the lap swim hour expires.

I can't see the real clock unless I pause, which I am loathe to do, so hurray for Gary. Varsity uses almost the whole hour, but I haven't got her measured yet, so I'm not sure if she'd make a good clock, too.

Neither would make a good wristwatch, of that I am sure...

ugh, too warm to make the rest!

well, that about says it. So, leftovers and other odds & ends is what we had instead of samosas, etc. This is probably a good thing, as I was more in the mood for fruit bowls (which is what we ate today) than for deep-fried snackies.

The squash remains on the counter, looking sullen.

eats

Well, the local (grown in the front yard) onions worked out just fine. Kheema, chana masala, moong dal and hummus (with tortilla chips, for that Mexicindian flavor) down, and naan, samosas and squash to go...

Weaving is the property of few these days

And weaving has company:

While sharking around at a local thrift shop, I found a very old book, "Selections from the Poems of Ovid." My book is longer than the unavailable listing at Amazon because it has a 91-page vocabulary section (so you, too, can translate a Saint Ex book title to "volatus nox").

The book is small but wonderfully heavy, and wears its 120-odd years of living well. Old books rock.

As does old-school education. The book is "intended as an introduction to the reading of Latin poetry," which presupposes a level of knowledge that I am sorry is no longer widespread.

I can appreciate the view of people opposed to teaching only the old, white and dead, but I can't say the same about those opposed to teaching anything old, white and dead.

Having had an education inflicted on me at South Salem High School, then a nationally recognized school of excellence, I can say with authority that there is more than enough time to teach the new and old, white and non-white, alive and dead - even if that meant double the workload - without pushing students much beyong a reasonable amount of work.

To put it mildly.

on the menu

The addition of our now-not-so-little bear cub reminds me that the old days of cooking for the week on the weekend should be the new days, too. I've been in a make-food-on-demand rut since the necessity of bulk of cooking on Saturday and Sunday lifted (aka when we got the hell out of the Granite State).

On the list for this weekend's cooking extravaganza:

• Baked tomatoes stuffed with kheema and fried onions (with locally raised lamb and Walla Walla Sweets grown in our yard)
  
• Samosas filled with sookhe aloo
• Improvised naan (We don't have a tandoor for the naan, man)
  
• Chana dal, and maybe dals built on black-eyed peas, split peas and/or yellow peas (I can't remember what all we have on hand)
• Hummus (if there're any chickpeas left over. I love chana dal.)
  
• Spaghetti skwash of some sort (if it was an acorn squash, I'd just stuff it with kheema and bake it. Maybe I'll pick one up - at the same time as I buy more storage containers!)

We'll see how many of these things come to pass. I'm also thinking of a chutney or two, if only because I (gasp!) oftentimes overlook making my own.

It is hard to beat quality time in the kitchen with the (quick, call 20/20!) culinarily inclined butterfly lady and the inevitable eight paws and two snouts.

The Decongestant Times, Vol. 4

Yeah, yeah, I know: Volume isn't the same as Issue, but I called it Vol. 3 last time, so here's Vol. 4.

I don't mind buying Claritin-D, but I'm not sold on long-term daily use. For the most part, I have only used it on days I swim, and I also make a point of thoroughly rinsing out my snoot and its related ductwork after each workout. Last night, at the butterfly lady's suggestion, I did another rinse 'round bedtime.

I did not take a pill because I want to see if I can get by with fewer doses than swims each week. The rinse helped: I didn't wake up 18 times to blow my nose (just the usual reasons - to take the puppy out and for no apparent reason a few other times) or rise in the morning with severe stuffiness. That said, it's been a sneezy, runny-nose morning, so the experiment continues...

A good project with a mildly depressing note

Since early May, I have sold books to benefit the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the United Way of Walla Walla County.

The project is made possible by my employer, a daily newspaper based in the city. The company had until early May a rather substantial collection of books, which it made available for sale at a steep discount to employees.

In 2005, that technique raked in about $12. Plus, the books were a nuisance because they took up space. I volunteered to sell the books online on the condition that 50 percent of the proceeds go to DFGF (the default charity for the paper is United Way).

I believe the net benefit to be split between the charities now stands at about $350. Not as much as I thought when I hauled all the books home, but not too shabby. Besides, now all those books have homes.

But on a somewhat sad note, the titles include "Daddy, You're My Hero" and "Mommy, You're My Hero," both of which are written and illustrated for small children whose parents are about to deploy, presumably to war.

They're not the greatest books, but they are touching in their own way. The former sold early on, the latter yesterday.

Irksome noise

I don't really care if you want to play music in your car, or in your home, or in your ears, whether you're on the street or in the pool.

And I know that in some public areas, classical music is piped in to keep out the hooligans. Very clever.

That said, I can't abide by business owners who put ghetto blasters outside their shop, or worse yet have installed outdoor speakers, and play music loud enough to hear as you pass by.

Inside, fine. Outside, I will never buy anything from you, ever.

yardage

Aside from the pesky left-arm trouble, pool and loom times have sailed along nicely of late. On Saturday, I took advantage of the longer lap-swim session to add 200 meters to my regular distance.

What my "regular" distance is changes from day to day, but typically I have been able to go 2,400 meters (500 warmup, 1,800, 100 cooldown) or 2,600 meters (500, 2,000, 100) each day.

I could of course go much farther, but there's only an hour and I'm not particularly speedy. So I jacked up the middle of the workout to 2,200 meters, which put my time in the pool at about 65 minutes. My goal remains to get the middle to 2,600 meters so I can swim two miles in an hour, but that seems like a long, long way off.

Well, I guess that's how a good goal works.

At the loom, I've been tooling along through a couple of warps worth of contract work before returning to my sometimes-on-hold own work.

In a fit of pique, I reconfigured the basement, which in the fullness of time I plan to use as the weaving area. Weaving is exercise, so the cooler temperatures would be a benefit, and there is plenty of light - mostly because of the egress window.

Besides, the pup likes to be rambunctious, and the hard edges of the loom, bobbin-winding station and creel aren't too friendly. As it happens, the butterfly lady has the only shiner to show from the loom, and impressive multicolored job.

I was planning to make the move later in the year, when the loom returns from its annual vacation in southwestern Missouri. But I feel amibitious, so I might do the switch when I finish the warp I'm working on now.

Maybe the butterfly lady will veto the plan, but then I'll just wait until she's away for a few hours or asleep and do it sneaky like. :)

Sacred markers

These snazzy lightning bolts are made from paper, usually heavy, clothlike stock.

You'll find them hanging from ropes at shrines, or as the wikipedia article linked above suggests, in a stand-alone fashion.

Although my father and I capitulated and just unfolded one when we were trying to puzzle them out, they turn out to be simple - and intuitive - to make.

I sharked around for a diagram, but maybe it is more fun to figure it out on your own!

very funny post that isn't mine

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society

My favorite psalm

My list of favored psalms is quite short, so choosing a favorite isn't the toughest call. But I'm quite fond of Psalm 23, so here - for lack of an original thought of my own - it is:

1. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

I suppose that it would by typical to appreciate most the imagery of green pastures and still waters (especially in a desert religion's book), but I am (usually) most taken with 23:5. I suspect that whatever it is about me that likes that verse is the same part that likes this bit of "32 Flavors," by Ani DiFranco:

"God help you if you are a phoenix and you dare to rise up from the ash. A thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy while you are simply flying past."

The rockets' glare

wasn't really all that bright this year. The barrage went on for a while, but didn't seem to be as fierce as in the past. Maybe that's because of the Fourth being a school night, so to speak. Or maybe it was just a function of which part of the neighborhood I live in, or inattention on my part...

Piggy didn't seem to enjoy the show. On his nightly walk, we passed several groups firing off artillery shells, and he watched some of the fireworks, then lowered his head and trucked on down the sidewalk. I think he was trying to act casual. When we made the turn to head home, he sped up more than usual. But he wasn't particularly clingy at home (maybe that's because I was vacuuming, another activity he has a dim view of).

In case you were curious

So, people make a lot of yap about cold, wet snoots on their pooches. I know that when I wake up in the middle of the night (which because I rarely sleep well is all the time) I sometimes check Piggy's snout and find it dry and warm. Why? Because he hasn't yet had a chance to do this:

lucky strike - not the cigarette, either.

I dropped by Joe Purdy's site tonight, hoping he might head this way on tour. No dice, so I decided to take another listen to his unavailable music (I only own eight songs from "Joe Purdy" and "Sessions from Motor Ave." - songs that were free to download at his site before it was redesigned).

After a little surfing, I realized those two older albums are finally for sale at iTunes, so I snapped up the remainder of each...

I don't know why he's not better known. If you are reading this post, go here, click on Music and take a free spin through his music.

toast

Toast is hard to beat. At the very least, it is warm and crispy and a perfect place for jelly to lay...

Being an enthusiastic toast consumer but also highly cognizant of bread's highly caloric nature, I've re-become a big fan of English muffins. I think I started gobbling them up again after moving to the city, so that's only the past year and change... anyway, a muffin (both halves) has the same number of calories as a typical slice of bread, so you could have two pieces of bread or four muffin halves. Yeah, I know, that's silly math but it works for me.

English muffins also seem to be heat resistant. My toaster has nine settings (unlike my fan, which is also a liar), and regular toast is a 5. English muffins are a 9, and that's only if you want your muffin just lightly browned.

Fewer calories and harder to toast. Just like that other delicious snack: tinfoil.

hurray for modern living

Something you will encounter if you hang around in Japan is modern architecture, a nice counterargument to the nonsensical rot that people who wish the old times would live forever try to push on everyone.

My usual practice with weirdos is to accept them on their own terms, but for me cultural preservationists fall into the same category as creationists: unfixable.

Why? Well, think about it for .02 seconds. Remember the good ol' days, when mom and dad looked after you and life was wholesome? Yeah, well, that was the same time that black people couldn't drink from the same fountain, so forgive me for calling bullshit on people who think the past is better. Oddly, "people" includes Hagakure, who thought everything gets crappier as time goes by.

Of course, he also wrote this:

If you cut a face lengthwise, urinate on it, and trample on it with straw sandals, it is said that the skin will come off. This was heard by the priest Gyojaku when he was in Kyoto. It is information to be treasured.

Yegods. Maybe he shouldn't be the authority figure.

Anyway, if you think the good old days really were better, talk to me about polio.