Tecumseh Valley blog

After reading a post of Lulu's a while back, I found myself surfing in places I do not typically go, or at least places I would not typically acknowledge going. Naturally, I found something interesting.

New loom

I have not yet met her, but I will soon be the owner/operator/caretaker of a new-to-me loom. It is a 36-inch counterbalance loom (translation: Uh, I don't know how to translate that), and it is believed to be handmade. Its recent past is sad, but I am sure that a few hundred yards of cloth can fix that. When she finally arrives, I will a) figure out how to use a counterbalance loom (I have been weaving for 30 years, but on jack looms, a different species); and b) post a picture...

Fortune is fickle, I guess. I wasn't shopping for a loom, but maybe one was shopping for me.

More on bears & frogs

Like when there's a frog around, I don't have to hang my sandwiches from a fuckin' branch... A frog knows they are not for him. Plus, frogs are less likely to carry coins & screwdrivers.

Just below this item in the catalog is a "jerky gun," which looks like a grease gun that you smoosh ground beef and "spices" through to make jerky sticks. Gross.

I like to talk about the difference between bears and frogs

for one thing, frogs rarely race bees anywhere.

On a simple meals kick

My usual practice around dinnertime is to go for the overly complex, which means we tend to eat pretty late. Maybe the butterfly lady and I have been hungrier lately, or maybe I'm just sick of complicated meals.

On the menu at our house lately: A lot of quasi-Tunisian meals (hard-boiled eggs, fruit, yogurt, sausage - hey, I said quasi - and other simple meals (i.e. chops or burgers, plus a salad). Besides which, we've completely dropped soda, unless you count the occasional ramune (a Japanese citrus soda that comes in snazzy bottles).

I'm not sure what it all means. I like to make tricky meals (I think this is another way of saying I like to show off), but I haven't yet figured out how to fold an extra hour or two into the day!

Middle management

Johnny Yen has an entertaining post about middle managers. I'm one of those, although I don't think of myself as a manager (and that word isn't in my title, thank god).

Junior managers are often drawn from the ranks because they are particularly good at their job, or at least some part of it. When was the last time a marginal performer was assessed for leadership and promoted on that basis? So you suck at making widgets. You might be a good leader anyway (Mario Mendoza, namesake of the dreaded Mendoza Line, became a coach after all).

Junior managers are usually left to their own devices to figure out how to be a good manager. Training? Expensive, and usually just risk management wearing a disguise. Role models? A bunch of people who used to be junior managers.

Good luck, fucker.

Now, a very short story: If you read the USA Today spread on Burger King a while back, you know how all the punditry is in gee-whiz shock mode because the new CEO, who has managed to see the company back to prominence, isn't a "food guy." But he is a wicked genius marketer, who realized the company can take one segment of its eatership (the 18-35 guys) and ride it to fame and fortune.

The moral: If you want good workers, hire good workers. If you want good managers, hire good managers. Don't assume that just because you have hired the best workers, you have a latent pool of the best managers, waiting to be found, sculpted or otherwise wrought.

The real moral: Johnny sees junior managers as people in search of a reason for having a job. This means they are often huge pains in the butt to everybody else. I see junior managers as a caste in crisis, a group whose villified performance is partly a result of changes in business culture from paramilitary organization to today's fuzzier system. The culture has changed, but the selection criteria and "training" regimen have not.

Maybe the time for a new system is now.

Observations, etc.

Passed a sign on the local United Methodist Church this morning: "Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is right." OK, that's a paraphrase, but you get the point. I'm not sure what the motivation behind the sign is, but that's a point I have observed some people overlooking. Just because you *can* do a thing doesn't mean you should.

I think the flip side is true, too. Just because something is illegal doesn't mean it is wrong.

What else? Spent a fair portion of last weekend pulling weeds, which got an earlier start than the desired plants in the front yard (and back yard, too, come to think of it). This weekend, I was happy to see the Russian sage plants survived the winter and are starting to show signs of life. Other bits and pieces of the yard are starting to show interest, too. The hyacinth (yeah, yeah, only one), is up and blooming, the trio of tulips is on the way, the pussy willows and the two unidentified trees (crabapples?) are budding, and assorted other odds and ends are making moves (what an illuminating clause that is!)...

So I celebrated by holing up in the studio (aka basement) and putting a warp on the loom (eight damn hours for a four-hour job). The warp's pretty, as are all the warps I put on, but the creel (a spool rack) I built has got to go. It is small, which is necessary, but it is too small and poorly designed for my taste. Klein, aber nicht oho.

On the plus side, I had eight hours to scheme a better design. I can also see some application in building a new creel to another project I'm interested in, which is a sauna. You can buy a kit, but they're expensive, non-customized and expose the buyer to a lot of bullshit. For example:

"Some weight loss authorities believe that our bodies use fat to dilute toxins. As an Infrared LuxSauna is an unsurpassed expeller of toxins, it is also a great way to get rid of any fat our bodies are using to dilute toxins we are storing."

Uh-huh. Well, whatever.

Up to my *!@ in alligators

So here's a tide-me-over for all you (and I think I do mean that in the singular :) reader sorts out there. The other two are my paternal Oma & mama.

What a bore

While at the Home Depot on Saturday (I sometimes wish I still went to the Apartment Depot, which is just a big warehouse full of people standing around saying, "I don't have to fix shit."), I got to thinking.

I wanted a 5/8-inch wood-boring bit, which I found, no sweat. But I didn't want to buy a set of bits, so I had only one choice, an Irwin Speedbor spade bit. Fine, whatever. But this is a far cry from what you'd call a self-respecting store in Japan, where I would have expected at least four or five brands, and probably more.

Sure, the Home Depot could claim it limits choices because it has so many different goods. What rubbish. How would you feel if you went to the grocery store and found only one brand of coffee? I wouldn't go there anymore.

Of course, the Home Depot has killed the alternatives, mostly. But I visited the "local" stores before they went out of business, and they were no great shakes, either. To really have a choice around here, you have to go online.

I made this observation a while back, and a commenter remarked that pretty much anything could be found around here, if you just looked.

Uh-huh.

What he meant is, if you want hand lotion, you can find hand lotion. He didn't mean you can find Kiehl's. At times like this, I do not like living in a small city.

more hoarding

Ah, what to do with these? The butterfly lady has her sights set on a homemade cork board. I think that sounds pretty cool...

In heavy rotation

Needless to say, I suppose.

It's not hoarding if it's organized, right?

Really, I can tell you why I kept each of these things.

I'm not so sure about what to *do* with all this stuff, though. Especially the styrofoam. I just can't abide by tossing it in the landfill, and I hear there's a guy recycling styro in the area (by making it part of construction materials of some sort).


As for the glass jars - those are from peanut butter and wind up being used for lots of storage, especially of candy (which the butterfly lady and I have a weakness for, to put it mildly).

I used a bunch of the coffee cups (I got them as insulators for to-go cups from a place that used to double up) during the butterfly lady's convalescence, and the styrofoam coffee cups I got for use in an encryption machine. I guess I'll have to have a party with lots of to-go soup or something. I do actually use the yogurt containers (next to the jar with the red stuff in it) for freezing chicken stock, and sometimes the other containers come in handy. sometimes.

Lastly, I have a bunch of yarn cones. Great for crafty projects, but yegods, I have enough to do.

yarn

I think this is self-explanatory. You might be surprised at how much weaving you can get out of this little yarn. I figure I can eke out three or four more scarf warps with this. I really need to get around to selling more!

Deja vu explained

If you find yourself in Linens 'n Things and everything looks creepily familiar, I have an easy explanation, which is that as might imagine, corporate HQ hands out plans for how to display all the merchandise. I found these sheets amusing:



What do you do for a living? I arrange displays for stores around the country, all in my secret lab at headquarters. Sounds kinda fun...

windows and pivots know no decay

Because I have sustained injuries "during sportive exercises" I've gotten to see a lot more of the medical profession than I would normally choose to. Dr. Needles, besides using acupuncture, sent me home with a tiger balm-like liniment, which is a nice pain reliever and will maybe ease my nuisance-y shoulder. I got a kick out of the prose that came with the Drug Facts (hint: it is easier to read if you click on the image).

found objects

I love the little bits & pieces you find just by paying attention (or by buying oddball things).

Here's an ad from a classified section (maybe that of my place of employment?). I did not know you could buy a whole solar system for so little. I would have thought that $3,000 would maybe get you part of Pluto, or possibly some out-of-the-way moon, like Iapetus.

a nit to pick

One of our state legislators, hoping to make a dent in gang violence in the state, has introduced a bill that would ratchet up the penalties (aka time in the clink) for gang-affiliated people who get convicted of crimes in the state.

Our state's practice is to offer a standard range for sentencing (for example, vehicular homicide has a standard range of 15-20 months in prison) that a judge may use to determine a miscreant's bid. The standard range can get longer - or shorter - for a variety of reasons, so this bill wouldn't be a shocking change from how things are done now.

Whatever. But here's the real crime, in a quote from the bill's sponsor, Washington state Sen. Jim Clements, R-Selah.

“Gang violence is a caustic acid that eats away at our communities,” said he.

A caustic acid??? Yegods, what has the world come to. What a basic mistake.

The Wild Life

OK, so Lulu called me out (nicely, though): I mostly do not have a wild & crazy existence. The butterfly lady and I have our nest here in a quiet town and a couple of dogs that take up a lot of our time. We spend a lot of time just hanging around, which suits us.

This doesn't mesh with the expectations of many of my past acquaintances and friends, who expected me to... what? In college, I was named most likely to be involved in a scandal of some sort. And although I have not been apprehended in connection with any known criminal conspiracies, it is possible that career path might have been expected by certain of my potential associates.

Hey, I don't mind. And on a somewhat more exciting note, the butterfly lady & I did score tickets for a Regina Spektor show in one of the larger cities in our area in April. Maybe that's a start :)

Another busy weekend

After the past couple of weekends, I am disinclined to:

A - Spend money for about a month.
B - Go anywhere you can't get by walking.
C - Do much besides watch movies.

That said, the butterfly lady and I have made a big dent in spring cleaning projects around the house. I suppose the outdoors is next, but I can always put on another warp and weave too much to leave time to wander around the yard, pulling weeds (that's Newfy's specialty, anyway).

We went out to the land of gnus and water buffalos Saturday, where the stores are much larger and more plentiful than in our town. Needless to say, we bought stuff. And oh, you'll be blown away at how exciting it all is:

• Two smallish casseroles (8.5 by 6.5 by 2.5 inches).
• A new whisk (A nice one, which is a first for me).
• An Oxo two-cup measure (with the measure marks inside the cup and easy to read, not on the outside. I measure left-handed, so ordinary Pyrex measures show the metric marks when I hold the cup. Grrr.).
• Four pounds (!) of Jelly Belly jellybeans, found at Costco (aka cheap). Happiness ensued for the butterfly lady.
• A new dog bed for the little pig. Bigg Dogg likes to hog the little one's bed, which looks pretty silly (she is about twice as big as his bed and really prefers linoleum anyway). Plus some treats for her.

Pretty thrilling, eh? We followed that up on our return home with another onslaught of cleaning and reorganization. The downstairs studio now actually looks like a studio and multiple trips to drop off thrift-store donations have been made. Color me happy.

My favorite new favorites

I have a tendency to find something new to listen to, then listen it to death, then drop it for a while, then fold it back into medium rotation. Latest contenders are a couple of Regina Spektor songs, Fidelity and Samson. And here they are:

A reading from Second Samuel

Lulu notes that the Cat in the Hat turns a half-century old this year (you can send birthday greetings and cause a book to be donated here), which reminds me of a couple of things:


Rick Ankiel and a few other Cardinals have at times worn their uniforms with a lot of sock showing, and the Cards' socks are very Cat in the Hat.

Besides socks and books, Dr. Seuss also had the very positive effect of inspiring one of my all-time favorite SNL bits:

Busy weekend

When the butterfly lady and I lived in Walla Walla the first time, we had a medium-size apartment (square footage? who knows, but it was a pretty large two-bedroom type), and we had a fairly large amount of stuff. When we moved to New Hampshire, we shipped our books and carried everything else with us in our car and a 5-foot-by-8-foot U-Haul trailer.

Before we moved, we got rid of a hell of a lot of stuff. We didn't even take a bed, just a futon.

The place we moved into in New Hampshire also had two bedrooms but was much smaller, so we had to get rid of a lot more stuff. Yet, when we moved back, we had to rent a truck, a fairly large one at that, to haul all our stuff, even though we got rid of a lot of . Our apartment didn't grow in the intervening years, but it sure seemed that way on moving day.

Now we have a house, and we spent the weekend doing spring cleaning (the weather was decidedly vernal over the three-day) until all hours of the night. Fun, but not exactly relaxing.

Accomplished:

• Got a router/wireless base station - Now the smartypants doesn't have to hook the damn ethernet cable to her laptop just to go online. That's only been two years in coming.
• Assembled a photo album/organized old letters - Doesn't sound like much, but now all that stuff is way more organized and takes up way less room. I should have done this when space was at a premium.
• Bought a couple of organize-y drawer things for the butterfly lady to use in the closet - Hey, I didn't have to do much except take out my toolbox, aka wallet.
• Weeded out a bunch of junkola - Like my father, I looked at my late uncle's (his brother's) house - overrun with stuff, and when I say overrun, I mean stuffed to the gills - and thought, "If that runs in the family, it isn't running with me."
• Wove a lot - The warp I'm working on is nearly done, but I've got a couple more behind it...
• Made clam chowder - How is that spring cleaning? Well, it helped me reorganize some bacon, clams, potatoes and milk that were cluttering the place up, and we were able to put a fair amount of it "away."

maybe there were some other things, too, but my brain is full.

1-800-328-7448

I'm pretty sure you can figure out what that number's all about, but what if you wanted it for your own? How would you know whether it's taken.

Maybe there's another, easier way, but here's one way I found. The TN Database lets you cruise for potential phone numbers with a fairly simple interface. First you choose an area code, then an exchange, then you can narrow down the choices by the first two digits of the four-digit suffix (i.e. 800, then 423, then 56xx to get close to a number for my current employer).

The database won't tell you who holds a given number, but it will tell you, usually, if the number is assigned.

In the case of 1-800-328-7448, however, the assignment comes up "unkown." As does, oddly enough, the number for my current employer, and that of a former employer, too.

Go figure.

A great movie

The butterfly lady and I watched The Tunnel the other night, a movie I picked out on a whim from Netflix.

I think I was predisposed to enjoy it, having been waaay into German/East German history and dynamics when I was in high school.

Whatever. The Tunnel was great, one of the best/most entertaining movies I have seen in quite a long time. It sure as hell beat Babel and, to pick another non-random example, Crash.

I wish more action/adventure/suspense movies were this good.

The hospital scene

Having just spent an interesting 30 hours at Northwest Hospital in Seattle, an observation or two:

• Nurses have too much to do, or hospitals need to hire more of them. Judging from the want ads, I'd say there aren't enough to go around in the first place.
• Many undignified things happen in hospitals.
• If you know what you're doing, the nurses will let you help out. But they won't pay you, except with smiles.
• The butterfly lady is braver and tougher than people might guess from looking at her.
• Northwest has free wireless Internet, but blocks access to flickr and youtube.
• My SIL, who I've known since she was in middle school, has grown up a lot in the past few years. And her husband is nice, too.
• I'm glad to have that place in the rear-view mirror.

Favorite foods

Sets of threes:

Dairy
Grafton Village cheddar (the now-extinct Gold - aged three years)
Parmiggiano-Reggiano - from Italy of course
Whole milk - very cold, please

Fruits
Raspberries (with that milk!)
Blackberries (in cobbler)
Bananas (lotso K and good for primates of all stripes)

Vegetables
Odwalla carrot juice (carrots are OK, but this is way better)
Okra (stuffed with kheema and baked!)
Spinach

"Vegetables" that are really fruit
Squash - summer or winter, I love 'em all
Tomatoes - preferably a funky heirloom variety, right off the vine in the sunshine
Red Hot Chili Peppers

Meats
Hill Meats bacon
Homemade chicken soup
Ground lamb (good in lots of things!)

Grains
Jasmine or basmati rice
Sushi rice
Bob's Red Mill oats

Grains that have actually been made into something
Extra-crispy English muffins
That kick-ass crusty bread you get at good Italian joints, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar or harissa
Biscuits and gravy (maybe that counts in meat, too.)

Fats
Bacon fat - the best
Extra-virgin olive oil - also nice on the hands
Unsalted butter

In the skies of Iraq

It appears that lately, people who do not like the U.S. military presence in Iraq are getting better at doing something about it, as though they needed much improvement. The latest fashion is shooting down helicopters, and being as I run/have run in circles that include military helicopter pilots, I thought it would be interesting to have a quick look at what kinds of birds are in use.

Here's a quick look at the makes and models that have been shot down - and have therefore been in use - over the past few years.

UH-60L Black Hawk

A general-purpose aircraft, "used for troop transport, cargo lift, anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue, drug interdiction, anti-ship warfare and special operations," according to a U.S. Air Force profile. Carries a crew of four.

OH-58 Kiowa

A small reconnaissance helicopter that can carry missiles, guns or a couple of stretchers in an emergency medevac situation. Carries a crew of two.

AH-64 Apache

A heavily armed attack helicopter. Carries a crew of two.

CH-47 Chinook

In use since Vietnam, a heavy transport helicopter capable of hauling up to 33 combat-laden troops or heavy gear such as two humvees. Carries a crew of two.

CH46 Sea Knight

Superficially similar to the Chinook, but carries less stuff: Up to 14 troops and a crew of four or five, depending on the mission.

Other aircraft that have been used - and shot down - include an OH-6A flown by contractors and an Mi-8 HIP that also was being used by contractors. Other helicopters may be in use, but haven't had the misfortune of crashing/being shot down, and of course, fixed-wing aircraft are also heavily used, but helicopters are cool and airplanes pretty much are not.

The Superb Owl

I am not sure where I fall on the sports-fan continuum, but I think it is safe to say that although I like sports and am athletic and competitive, I don't spend a lot of time hanging on the outcomes of big games.

I am highly aware of what's going on - partly my job, partly my interest - but I just don't wind up being very involved emotionally. Hey, the Cardinals won the World Series. That's cool, because I'm a fan, but if they had lost I wouldn't have been heartbroken. (Mystified, maybe, because the Tigers did everything they could to lose...)

So I didn't watch the Super Bowl. And I'm kinda pleased with that choice - I think the Colts are annoying, plus the butterfly lady and I had a nice dog walk in the fog with zero other people out and about during the fourth quarter.

From what I hear and read, I didn't miss much.

A great line from an obit

I love this:

At his request, there will be
no service, although he would
have appreciated the
sentiment of a toast in his
honor at a tavern.

A book tag

Hardback or trade paperback or mass-market paperback? Depends on the book. Some books I like (A Series of Unfortunate Events) come in hardback, so that's how I buy them. Mostly, I prefer trade paper, but if the book is free...

Amazon or brick and mortar? Brick and mortar! My preference is Powell's, where I have spent oodles of hours - and a few bucks - over the past 30 years (yegods). But I'm happy to shark around just about any bookstore, especially second-hand and college shops.

Barnes & Noble or Borders? Well, ya makes do with whats ya got, and we got neither here. I used to like wandering around the B&N in Newington, N.H., but now that Powell's is only 250 miles away, why bother with the chains?

Bookmark or dog-ear? Bookmark! My books have all sorts of unusual bookmarks, including handmade paper ones manufactured by the butterfly lady, 3-D postcards of Jesus Christ, assorted New Yorker cartoons and other oddball slips.

Alphabetize by author or alphabetize by title or random? Alphabetized by city of publication; within each city organized by telephone number of p.r. representative, lowest initial digit first. OK, really by category. All my cookbooks are in the kitchen...

Keep, throw away, or sell? Throw away? What? I prefer to give away or sell books (at Powell's, so I can buy more right away!).

Keep dustjacket or toss it? I'm not sure who these two are directed at; I can't think of any reason to throw away parts of books, never mind the whole thing. That's weird.

Read with dustjacket or remove it? I own so few books with dust jackets this is almost irrelevant, but I read them with the jacket on.

Short story or novel? I'd rather read a novel any day. Short stories just don't do much for me (though there are notable exceptions).

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)? Would you prefer anchovies or oysters on your chocolate ice cream?

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket? Well, I enjoy both series, but I think I like Lemony Snicket's better. It took a few books for the characters to develop, but by the end, I was pretty fond of them. Maybe I'm just a sucker for clever writing.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks? I stop reading when I wake up and realize I've read the same paragraph four or five times and don't have a clue what it said. I guess that's when I reach "tired."

"It was a dark and stormy night" or "Once upon a time"? Well. I dunno. If Lulu hadn't tipped, I wouldn't have been able to identify the former as the start of a mystery. I'd rather read a story that started "There was nothing else going on at the luncheon." I think I'm going to have to write that one myself, though.

Buy or Borrow? I like to buy, but borrowing is more fun. (I like lending, too!)

New or used? Used, almost certainly. Some books just aren't available new, and if there's a choice, I'd have to say that the cost usually sways me to the older book. I like to buy field guides new, but that's not always possible. Besides, used books are usually sold in places that are more fun to wander around than new books (Powell's has the combination figured out, of course, but lots of places do not).

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse? I'll take any idea I can get. I really like to browse - I could spend hours in bookstores without really noticing the passage of time.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger? I'll take any ending that isn't a cop-out or a bullshit wrapup concocted to hide the fact that the writer really didn't have an ending. "And they all died" is just as dumb as "And they all lived happily ever after." What rubbish.

Morning reading, afternoon reading or nighttime reading? Sounds good, especially if someone could swing by with snacks and coffee/soda/bourbon (depending on the hour).

Standalone or series? Doesn't make me no nevermind. I love books. If they're good, that's what counts. If they're good and there's more of them, super! But some series are only good for the first couple of books...

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard? The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron. Maybe that's too mainstream. The Forgotten Kingdom, by Peter Goullart.

Favorite book(s) read last year: Night Flight, which I've read before, takes the cake. I reread a lot of books last year...

Favorite books of all time? Hmm. Wind, Sand and Stars, The English Patient, the three I just mentioned... I like plays a lot, too, so if they count, Romeo and Juliet.

Tag? Someone who likes books!

Mandatory kill

That's wire-service speak for "Oops, that story/photo/graphic was a mistake. Do not run it."

I suggest a mandatory kill on a few words, at least in specific contexts:

• Artisan - This is a good word when you need a gender-aspecific way to say craftsman, but I'm tired of seeing it applied to cheese, chocolate, wine and any other food that can be made well. Yeah, I get it. Grafton Village cheddar, Moonstruck chocolate and Zerba Cellars 2003 syrah are better than generic mozzarella, Hershey's milk chocolate and Thunderbird. But for Christ's sake, artisan duck breast? Alas, yes. So it is time to strike artisan, no matter how convenient a longhand it has become for "good."
• Improvised explosive device - It's a homemade bomb. Or maybe even a roadside bomb. This phrase is even more annoying when it is Improvised Explosive Device (unless that's the title of a book).
• Comprise - Only a minority apparently knows how the fuck to use this word correctly, so fuck it, let's just throw it under the bus.
  
• Issue - Are you speaking about an edition of a magazine? A political topic? Cool. A problem? Not cool. You didn't go bankrupt because of financial issues any more than Enron collapsed because of accounting issues. They're problems, damn it, problems!

There are others, of course. Perhaps you can think of a few, too!

In the studio

Here's my/my mother's loom Marigold complete with the warp I put on the other day.





As you might surmise, this warp produces garments that have strips of regular cloth with web-like parts in between. For an idea of what I mean when I say "web-like parts in between" take a look at the snazzy items at left.

Shuffling

Here's a sample of what was on my iPod on a busy Saturday (wove three pieces this morning, just finished the taxes, about to replace the molding around the back door - the previous molding having fallen victim to a strange attack of destructiveness by Her Newfsance, the Baroness von Roughenhausen).

Past the Mission - Tori Amos
Worn Out Shoes - Joe Purdy (a new favorite)
Broken Boy Soldier - The Raconteurs (a newish favorite)
Chitown Tonight - Joe Purdy
Otherside - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Northern Star - Hole
Graduation Day - Chris Isaak
Parallel Universe - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
Pancho and Lefty - Townes Van Zandt, live at the Old Quarter (the song I want played at my funeral)
Suitcase - Joe Purdy
Casey Jones - Grateful Dead
Lover's Cross - Jim Croce
Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Welcome To: - Ani DiFranco
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

A note from the pool

I don't usually post swimming stuff here anymore, but hey.

Since last spring, I've had a sketchy shoulder, courtesy of my usual all-or-nothing approach to workouts. I don't know why, but I'm not very good at setting small, easy-to-reach goals. I like the other kind more. Maybe the intercollegiate athlete in me is still lurking somewhere beneath the surface.

So I've been on the massage table, and recently the acupuncture table. Mr. Needles instructed me to "push it a bit" and I did today. I only swam a mile and a half (the half was a warmup), but I did the mile without holding back (aka I swam slowly, but it felt fast to me) and sprinted (aka swam a little less slowly) at the end. No pain, no problems.

An observation on health care

I was reminded this week of a conversation I had over the holidays with a person I could only describe as privileged dude who doesn't give a shit about the less fortunate.

He was griping about how socialized medicine is an awful evil, etc. He also suggested the good ol' U.S. of A is way better because of the wonderful health care we "all" have access to.

I responded that to me, it seems there is a simple marker for whether you are rich (one that doesn't have anything to do with your income, either): Do you have health insurance? If you do, you're rich. If not, you're fucked.

That said, there's another level of this kind of wealth (this one is partly monetary) that I can see now. If you live in our city (population 30,000), you can get pretty good care, but if you are willing/able to drive to Seattle or Portland and also are a proactive patient, you can get much better care.

This isn't an abstraction. Someone I know very well indeed is due for surgery, come hell or high water. If this person had not taken the time to learn about the situation, that surgery would have been done here in town and have been pretty invasive (i.e. the kind that leaves a four-inch scar and takes six weeks to recover from).

Luckily, that person is informed and is a good self-advocate and is able to travel to the larger city, where a less-invasive procedure (in on Friday, back at work Monday, the optimists say) is de rigeur.

So you can only get adequate care if you have this huge stack of factors on your side. And that pretty much blows.

Tangled webs

Other people's weekends appear to have been more fun, but mine was at the very least eventful.

The butterfly lady and I did the usual weekend things, buying dog chow (and a water cooler-style water dish for the thirsty piggies), going to a movie ("Babel" - I'm not sure what to say about that one) and having a nice dinner (A dish of my own design and some pinot noir).

I also put on a warp. It is beautiful and will no doubt result in a lot of easily sold garments, but for reasons apparently too arcane to explain, the process was absolutely damned maddening. I did not document with video or stills: You would have seen a lot of pictures of me frowning, or heard angry grumbling. Maybe that would have been funny, though.

Nine fucking hours. For which, I admit, I am paid. Even so, if I was the pull-out-my-hair type, I would have.

Ah yes, art is so soothing.

Needles

I don't know how I was when I was a kid, but needles don't trouble me at all these days.

Hepatitis vaccines? No problem. Give blood? Sure. Tetanus shots? Fine.

I added acupuncture to the list today, and it was no big deal. I didn't have a clue what to expect, so I don't know what is typical.

Besides a few needles here and there, I got to participate in resistance tests (to find out what all is catawampus), some adjustments here and there, a list of foods to eat and foods to avoid. Most of what is on the OK list and what's prohibited will not surprise you.

Best of all, I got instructions to push a little bit in the pool, which I've been itching to do.

Tag!

Thank you, Lulu.

Three screen names that you’ve had:
Triton, Mediahound, Losmoros

Three things you like about yourself:
My sense of humor. My smile (One of the top five nicest things anyone has said to me: "you have a kind smile"). My ability to relate to others.

Three things you don’t like about yourself:
I can be impulsive. I apparently mock people sometimes (I must make that more subtle). I tend to be shy.

Three parts of your heritage:
I’m Scottish, which means I like whisky and kilts and bagpipes and bad weather. I’m Ukrainian (but not in the majority, ethnicity-wise), so I'm good at fleeing the country before they come to kill me. I'm Indian (in a very vague, medical missionary sort of way), so I cook fantastic food.

Three things that scare you:
Religious extremism. Climate change. Yellow jackets/hornets.

Three of your everyday essentials:
Coffee. Peanut butter. Kisses & hugs.

Three things you are wearing right now:
A Le Tigre polo shirt. LL Bean military-style khakis. A red, ultra-fine, felt-tipped pen (PMOP, which I think is Paper Mate, a division of Newell Rubbermaid). This would be city editor uniform apparel.

Three of your favorite songs:
Pancho & Lefty ~~ Townes Van Zandt. Shelter from the Storm ~~ Bob Dylan. Why You ~~ Joe Purdy.

Three things you want in a relationship:
Shared values. Humor. Hot sex. (all in large quantities!)

Two truths and a lie:
When I talk in my sleep, I speak German or French. Because of my time in a foreign military. I am allergic to iceberg lettuce.

Three things you can’t live without:
Reading. Good food. Swimming/exercise (as a result of the second, perhaps).

Three places you want to go on vacation:
Algeria, to hike, look for birds in the Atlas Mountains and sit in cafes. Spain, to hike, look for birds in the Pyrenees and sit in cafes. Japan, to hang out in shrines, sightsee, eat, shop and generally have fun with my dad and the butterfly lady.

Three things you just can’t do:
Be an apathetic bystander. Publicly state most of my political opinions (part of my job, alas, is keeping these to myself). Vote for anyone who intends to - or has a track record of - restricting constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties.

Three kids names:
Clarice. Mathilde. Ophelia.

Three things you want to do before you die:
Write and publish a novel, too. Go to Scotland for a spell, to hike (Sgurr Alasdair is on my dream list of summits to bag), watch birds, go golfing (I'm not great, but it's Scotland!) and have a glass of whisky... Learn to play a musical instrument.

Three celeb crushes:
Eva Green. Maggie Gyllenhaal. Cate Blanchett.

Three of your favorite musicians:
Townes Van Zandt. Joe Purdy. Tori Amos.

Three physical things about the opposite sex that appeal to you:
All the soft and curvy parts. Luscious lips. Pretty eyes.

Three of your favorite hobbies:
Cooking. Bird watching. Playing word and logic games.

Three things you really want to do badly right now:
Get a massage. Cook up a huge Indian feast attended by all the butterfly lady and my friends and fellow conspirators. Have a double espresso magically appear in my hand while I sit at the summit of Mount Lafayette and look down on Franconia Notch (if it is visible through the clouds/fog/snow).

Three careers you’re considering/you’ve considered:
Writer. Hand weaver. Intelligence agent. These are all roughly the same job, by the way.

Three ways that you are stereotypically a boy:
I like to fix things (sinks, ceiling fans, my loom, you name it). I like spiders and snakes and skunks and frogs. I know far too much about weaponry.

Three ways that you are stereotypically a girl:
I don't like to kill things. I have a lot of stuffed animals. I watch my weight (grr.).

Three people that I would like to see post this meme:
The butterfly lady, Daphne and Tenacious S (who claims to be too busy to blog - pah!)

Standardized testing at the pearly gates?

Seen this morning on a church reader board:

Have you read my bestseller. There will be a test.

I wasn't aware that literacy was a prerequisite to eternal life in the company of the Christian god(s).

I'm also curious about whether St. Peter grades on a curve...

Not quite popular

A wire story on popular names for children moved me to check on my own. Alas:

Alasdair is not in the top 1000 male names for any year of birth in the last 150 years.
Please enter another name.

So sayeth the Social Security Administration, anyway. I suppose over the ocean blue things might be different.

For fun, I checked on some other people:

• Holly: Surfaced in 1936 (981st), still going strong in 2005 (311th). Best showing: 1979 and 1983. (48th)
  
• Margot: Showed up in the 1,000 most popular names off and on from 1914 (999th); disappeared in 1966 (992nd). Best showing: 1936 (580th).
• Eugenie: Showed up from 1880 (first year the SSA has records for, at 694th), gone in 1920 (855th). Best showing: 1887 (413th).
• Maurice: Showed up in 1880 (146th); still going in 2005 (414th). Best showing: 1914 (94th).
• Robert: Showed up in 1880 (10th); still going in 2005 (39th). Best showing: 1924-1939 and 1953 (1st, and 2nd from 1940-1952).
  
• Daphne: Showed up in 1886 (1011th); still going in 2005 (551st). Best showing: 1962 (266th).
• Richard: Showed up, you will be shocked to read, in 1880 (23rd); still going in 2005 (93rd). Best showing: 1930 to 1947 (5th).
• Lauren: Showed up in 1945 (355th); still going in 2005 (21st). Best showing: 1989 (9th).
• Johnny: Showed up in 1880 (387th); still going in 2005 (243rd). Best showing: 1944 and 1945 (45th).

Not a recent photo

I'm not sure what all I was dressed for. A damp day, for certain, and probably other eventualities, too...

The right call on Mark McGwire

This year anyway, there's no room for Mark McGwire, once the major league record holder for home runs in a single season, in baseball's Hall of Fame.

Most of the talk about whether he belongs has assumed he's otherwise qualified and focuses on whether he used steroids. The question should be moot. With or without steroids, McGwire wasn't good enough for long enough to be in the Hall of Fame.

McGwire hit a lot of home runs (583, seventh-most all time), but in 16 seasons:

• He had four great seasons. Those years, 25 percent of his career, accounted for 42 percent of his home runs and had 37 percent of his runs batted in.
• More than 41 percent of his runs batted in were himself (on home runs). Nobody in the 500-home-run club had such a selfish bat.
• He was in his league's top five for RBI four times.
• He hit over .300 in a full season once.
• He had 1,626 career hits (460 fewer than the next closest 500-home-run guy, Harmon Killebrew, who had 573 home runs in an era that favored pitchers).
• He didn't inspire great fear in pitchers. To wit, he led his league in intentional walks once and had three top-five finishes in that category.
• He had three top-five finishes in MVP races (Albert Pujols, by comparison, has six in his six-year career).
• In 42 postseason games, he hit .217 with five home runs.
• The only category besides home runs in which McGwire is in the top 25 all time is strikeouts.
  

Many people still believe 500 home runs, like 3,000 hits or 300 wins by a pitcher, should guarantee entrance into the Hall of Fame. I prefer to let voters make that decision, and for now, they say the one-trick pony stays out in the corral.

What's in your spice rack?

Mine is a cabinet, because I want to keep the light away.

Lower shelf

• Worcestshire sauce
• Mirin "sweet cooking rice wine"
• red wine vinegar
• seasoned rice vinegar (two varieties)
• one cellophane package of nori
• olive oil (bought in bulk, stored in a bear for honey)
• double-action baking powder
• baking soda
• corn starch
• dried chilis (little skinny ones - that's hot!)
• chili oil
• molasses
• rose water (from Tunisia)
• Spike, regular flavor
• Spade-L seasoning for beef
• garlic salt
• mustard powder (I can't remember the last time I bought prepared mustard)
  
• "California style" lemon pepper
• "Chesapeake Bay style" seafood seasoning
• Chinese 5-spice
• demerara sugar, some in a silver sugar bowl and some in a plastic container
  
• chicken bouillon cubes (I like chicken bullion, but they don't take it at the store)
• cocoa powder (whoops, almost typed coca powder, and I don't think I have that)
• two mortars and pestles
• Two sets of measuring cups, plain Pyrex for 1 and 2 cups wet and pretty robin's egg blue ceramic for 1, 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4 cup dry.
  

Upper shelf

• lavender salt
• dried oregano
• dried basil
• saffron (also from Tunisia)
• harissa, sans olive oil
• caraway
• dill seed
• Dalmatian rubbed sage (I think that should be rubbed Dalmatian sage, but I can see why it isn't)
• sesame seeds
• summer savory
• celery seed
• dried lemon grass
• bay leaves
• white poppy seed
• paprika
• ground marjoram
• sea salt
• pepper
• coriander
• cumin
• turmeric
• fennel
• cloves, whole and ground
• cinammon, sticks and ground
• ground ginger (I also have a bunch frozen)
• cardamom, plain and (I think) smoked
• nutmeg (and snazzy grinder)
• cayenne powder
• chili powder

In other storage areas

• sea salt
• 2 pounds honey (I think it's a spice, too, in a way)
• extra nutmeg, turmeric, bay leaves, coriander, molasses
  
• vanilla, almond and mint extracts
• nuoc mam
  

In the fridge

• harissa
• wasabi
• tapatio
• sambal oelek
• ketchup (hey, that's a seasoning!)
  

'choo got?

A drawback to Idyllicville

Walla Walla is a great place to live, mostly, but the retail situation leaves something to be desired.

And what, you are no doubt asking yourself, do I mean by "something"?

The butterfly lady and I went out Sunday to find three simple items:

• A spiky collar for Katy (for walks).
• A rubber tire/rope toy for the above canine.
• A basic piece of oak transition, the little wood ridge that on the floor between carpeted areas and non-carpeted areas. (non-basic detail - it needs to be 95 inches long).

And what did we find?

• A flimsy, too-small spiky collar (which we didn't buy)
• A shrimpy rubber tire with no rope (which we didn't buy)
• Zero transitions of the correct specs (uh, we didn't buy the wrong ones, either)

Back to the drawing board. We only checked a few places, but there are only a few places to check. In times I like these, I miss the thickly settled East.

An easy soup for chilly days

Some time back, Mama gave me this recipe for taco soup:

One pound ground turkey
One packet taco seasoning (or your own mixture of chili powder, garlic, salt, cayenne, etc.)
One medium to large yellow onion, chopped
One 48-ounce container V8 (low sodium, regular, whatever. Just not V8 splash!)
One 15-ounce can of corn (just the regular variety), drained

In a soup pot over medium heat, brown the turkey, breaking up lumps as you go. When browned, drain the pot of the liquid, if you care. Add the taco seasoning and onion and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the V8 and corn and heat through.

To be all official and stuff, grate some cheese over the top of each bowl and serve with a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt, along with chips...

The standard recipe incorporates very little in the way of chilis, so you might like to add some Tapatio, or to use spicy V8.

How much detail?

While drifting through the wires, I found a few stories about a couple of women accused of turning tricks out of their homes in a fancy Atlanta suburb. Nothing surprising, but I did notice a significant difference in how much detail the stories offered on where information comes from.

USA Today's On Deadline blog post linked to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Gwinnett Daily Post, among other places to go.

As is typical for most news outlets, the AJC story refers to "a Web site which allows clients to post satisfaction ratings for women they've purportedly paid for sex."

The Daily Post, however, gives a much more detailed account and names names. Want to know where "hobbyists" go to talk about how things went with their Easy Date hookups? Try The Erotic Review, which although I could just put a link to is better to Google. More than one site has a similar name, and they seem to offer similar services for the hobbyist looking to share information.

I wonder why the Daily Post made the unusual move of spilling the details of where they got the information. I'm guessing it is because they broke the story, and were the ones who tipped police about the site's existence, but maybe they have a special policy of giving readers access to primary sources. I shall endeavor to find out!

Observations on death

Having missed (oh darn) the trio of high-profile deaths while I was away on vacation, I also missed out on putting together papers containing the news of the demises of James Brown, Gerald Ford and Saddam Insane. Too bad.

It seems to me that only the Godfather will be remembered for his lasting influence.

Maybe Ford was the guiding force to carry the nation out of the stained Nixon years, but I hadn't heard anyone say so until he died. He just seemed like a dude who was president for a while, then played a lot of golf. Nothing wrong with that, but all the fanfare of his funerals would make an outsider think a king had died.

Saddam? Well, his demise speaks volumes about the new Iraq, and none of what it says is good. A hurried killing and the lack of a truth-and-reconciliation process leave me pessimistic, as though I wasn't already - about the future of that part of Mespotamia. Still, sic semper tyrannis.

But James Brown kicked ass for half a century! You know you're doing something right if you can be an icon and an iconoclast at the same time :)

If only he'd received the ink.

Say what?

Seen on a church reader board this morning:

The teaching of the Bible is a life situation

What? Well, whatever.

On another language note, I see that the name Johannisberg Riesling is among those to be disallowed for new labels on domestic (aka U.S.) wines. This is because los federales have had it with U.S. wine producers tacking place names that don't belong (Champagne, Madeira, etc.) onto their wines.

I think a lot of people might expect that wine is South African and would be pronounced like the "world class African city."

Nein, mein Freund. Es ist "Yohannisberg," and named for the German town, which among other things must be near a hill of some sort. Interesting. I have to admit to having been ignorant, and to having referred to the wine as a Jo...

Mama's small person

So, here's my niece, who gave me some smiles, too. Mostly when I sang Iron Butterfly to her, but a couple of other times, too.

Amusing T-shirt

For once, an airplane magazine had something cool, a bit about a cool T-shirt site...

I like this one below, and if you click on the image, you will be rushed off to the site to enjoy the full-size image, a penguin holding a ruler...

Happy Eid, and Happy New Year!

A Tunisian friend sent holiday greetings, so I am, too!
I am not sure why the goat is wearing a sandwich board, but hey, Germans give each other peppermint pigs for good luck, so there you have it.

Christmas in SoCal

Being as Mama has a new small person in her household (my niece!!!), the butterfly lady, my mother and I all headed down to southern California for the Winter Seasonal Holiday Celebration.

Several things occurred:

• Winter Seasonal Holiday Celebratory Commemoration gifts were exchanged.
• Soon-to-be in-laws were met (see below).
• Mama's super-cool boyfriend proposed to her!
• Disneyland was visited.
• A Le Conte's thrasher and Nuttall's woodpecker were observed (it is getting hard to see life birds, so two in one day is a big deal to me).
• Sentences with too many passive constructions were formed.

Anyway, we are returned from traveling abroad and have only to bail B I Double G and Pig out of the clink to complete the holiday thing.

I hope all your Christmases were the best they could be...

Winter in the mountains

Besides being the Unattended Space Heater Sparks Deadly Fire season, now is also the time of year for adventurers to perish in some godforesaken gully on a snowbound mountainside.

The usual responses to the missing-climber stories are two: What a tragedy for the family! and What a bunch of idiots!

The current high-profile iteration involves three men, one of whom has been found dead, on Mount Hood, Oregon's tallest mountain.

My line of work makes me leery of labeling deaths "tragedies" willy-nilly. Many untimely deaths are indeed tragic, but I don't think this counts. Three men, doing something they wanted to, something inherently dangerous, die (assumably, in the parlance of one of my little sisters) on their way down the mountain. Sad maybe, but tragic?

The bunch-of-idiots depends. Reports during this whole fiasco suggest the trio tried for a fast-and-light ascent of the mountain, which is mountaineer code for "We're sure we'll make it, so we're not taking enough gear to be safe." The pretend explanation tendered to worried spouses, etc., is that traveling light is really safer because you're less encumbered and can make good your escape with greater speed.

I'm no expert, but I have done a few fast-and-light hikes in places dangerous enough to kill a fool, or a person less lucky than myself. But never when the weather was anything but sunny and warm, and never in such a godforesaken place.

At least they made it to the top before disaster struck. It must have been quite the view.

Games & fun

The butterfly lady and I are pretty much kids: We stay up late, we eat ice cream a lot (and we have to remind ourselves to eat salad), we have an ever-growing family of stuffed critters (they would be displeased to be referred to as teddy bears), we play games pretty much daily, the list goes on.

So, which games, you ask?

Scrabble. An old friend calls the two of us the Loyola-Marymount of Scrabble.
Super Scrabble. What better way to keep up the run-and-gun than a game that lets you double (or better) your best scores? The manufacturer says the game lets you "play words you once could only dream about." I have to admit, I have had Scrabble dreams.
Boggle. Noisy word fun!
Tangrams. We just got a set for two players - fun! You can play here and here, too.
Cards. We pretty much play only rummy and double solitaire (an OK explanation of the game is here, but it doesn't do much to capture the intensity of the game), and we used to play cribbage a lot.
Mah Jongg. We have a little problem here, which is a lack of a third (or a third and a fourth), so we just play rummy against the day we find a Mah Jongg-playing pal or two...
Abalone. The butterfly lady groans whenever we see this game - she seems to think I have some sort of unfair advantage at it.
Go. Ditto, but she did give me our Go board as a present, and it is the star of the animation at the bottom of this page.

I guess this makes us pretty much word and logic nerds. :)

Chowder time

All the ingredients were staring at me (so was the Newfy, once she realized I was making some Maritime chow), so I made a batch of clam chowder, my adaptation of a "Joy of Cooking" recipe (their default is for Manhattan-style chowder, which I think sounds awful).


Whenever I make chowder, I'm reminded of a late night in New Hampshire, when I had to head down to the gas station (a Getty with a c-store) to pick up bacon. As the lady was ringing me up, I said, "Glad you had bacon, I couldn't have made dinner without it." She nodded and said, "Making chowdah, huh?" Well, of course.

I know, I know, you've seen this before. But I improved this post with pictures...

3 10-ounce cans clams, drained (reserve the liquid!)
2 cans corn, drained (reserve liquid, too)
5 or 6 strips of good-quality bacon
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1/4 cup flour
5 or 6 medium Yukon gold potatoes, diced
1 quart milk

In a large uncovered pot over medium heat, cook the bacon until fairly crisp.

Remove the bacon and chop when cool.

Cook the onions in the bacon fat until translucent.

Add the flour and whisk for about a minute, then add the liquid from the clams and corn.

Dump in the potatoes, add salt to taste (total crap shoot here, gang. I think 1/2 teaspoon is about right, but you might like more), cover and simmer for 30-45 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked but still firm.

Add the clams, corn and bacon, then the milk. Check to see if the salt is right, then heat through and serve. If you want to be all fancy, serve each bowl with a small pat of butter and freshly ground pepper (in the bowl, not on the side).

The craigslist model

So, from what I understand, craigslist makes its dough (estimated revenue in the $7 million to $10 million neighborhood) by charging for job postings in New York, L.A. and San Francisco. Of course, the rest is free.

I can vouch for the site in a couple of ways.

• I posted a couple of ads for our cars when we got a newer one and sold both within a couple of weeks for the asking price.
• The butterfly lady's research has used craigslist almost exclusively to recruit participants, and her two studies have about 2,000 participants apiece. (Latest posting is in Austin.)

No muss, no fuss.

So, what can I/my employer take from businesses like craigslist, and for that matter, Google?

I'm not certain. The butterfly lady and I tend to agree with the tech-oriented media punditry, that a great local media outlet site would be pared down in design, like Google, and produce Google-like search results, with the difference being that the results would all be local.

Indeed, Google's home page already has lots of the stuff you'd want for a local site - information (they call it "Web"), images, video, news, maps, "more," links to advanced tools and links to the business end of the company.

Although it would probably constitute an unacceptable (and maybe illegal) ripoff, it would not take a rocket scientist to recast the Google home page for any media outlet. I would probably add a link called "shop" where the images/videos/news/etc. goes, but that would be about it.

It's not like many news site really stand out as different. The Bakersfield Californian, famous amoung news people (aka not actually famous) for its radical redesign, also has a Web site that is not garden variety.

As I have said before, probably ad nauseum, one of the top five reasons (maybe the top?) for working at a small paper is the freedom to innovate. I'm sharking for ways to do just that, but I haven't hit on anything spectacular yet...

Geez, louise

You are The Devil

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession

The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I was hoping for the King of Cups, but alas...

News blogs

I like to read blogs (duh), but I'm pretty picky. With one exception (USA Today's On Deadline), I don't regularly read blogs at news sites.

However:

• I work at a newspaper.
• I'm the city editor.
• I like to blog.
• I think blogs have news value.
• I would like to see our site add blogs.
• I have to come up with some goals for 2007.

So, 2+2=4.

But I'm not sure what I would blog about. The obvious choice is to copy the one I like, to write a local On Deadline blog. In a way, this would be very easy to pull off because we, unlike USA Today, still have standard print deadlines that are imprinted in the minds of everybody in the news operation (aka our deadline is not "every minute of every day"), which means I wouldn't necessarily be posting every three minutes.

The other obvious choice would be to do the above and recruit local bloggers to join the club at our site (maybe by paying them?).

I don't have any great insight into this yet, but it is on the short-range radar anyway.

Must be getting older...

End-of-the-year fun at the workplace puts me in the driver's seat (aka Page A1 duty) for the sixth day this week. I don't mind, but I think if I had to do this for weeks on end, I would not be amused.

When I was younger and much more of a striver, there were a couple of years in which circumstances conspired to put me in the office six and sometimes seven days a week. Luckily, those two years were not consecutive and were at different workplaces.

Oh, and I was hourly back then, so I piled up the OT. I recall that one of those years, 20 percent of my pay was time-and-a-half... but I was still a grouch a lot of the time. I'm not sure why the butterfly lady stuck around, but I'm damn glad she did.

Anyway, those two years should have brought riches beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, but newspapers aren't exactly the highest-paying places to work, so I just did pretty well. Newspapers are also ridiculously fun places to work, so I'm far from complaining.

But industry-wide, the low pay is bullshit, especially when you take into account that we are in a very profitable branch of manufacturing.

I am fortunate to work at a newspaper that pays better than its peers, but many people are not. At my last employer, entry-level reporters get about $12 an hour (in southern New Hampshire, where a decent apartment is about $900 a month). Managers fare much better, but that isn't really the point.

I've heard people say that lower pay is actually a good thing, because it means the only people who take the jobs are people who truly want them, not just slackers seeking high pay.

Gee, I wonder who came up with that reasoning.

Taser reporting falls short

I'm a city editor at a small daily newspaper, and I spent three years as a night city editor in the Northeast. Cop & fire stories were my bread and butter then, and I retain a very high interest.

This means I read a lot of Taser stories, and as a result I read a lot of Taser stories that contain an annoying flaw. Here's a for-instance (originally from the Spokesman-Review, one of the country's largest newspapers - aka people with no excuse):

The two 50,000-volt Taser jolts left Strange, 6-foot-7 and 220 pounds, "momentarily unconscious" on the ground, according to the lawsuit.

Wait a sec. If the current in a household electrical outlet can kill you, and it is only 110 volts or so, why doesn't a Taser turn you into a Crispy Critter?

The answer is simple: Amps. A Taser's amperage is really, really low, so the high voltage shouldn't kill you.

Why? This is the point where someone breaks out a water-through-a-hose analogy and we all fall asleep. But here's an alternative analogy.

Think of a high volt/low amp current (like you get in a Taser) as dropping a penny off the Empire State Building. If you hit someone, man will that sting. But it probably won't kill them. The amperage is the small coin and the voltage is the big drop.

Think of a low volt/high amp current (like you plug your blender into) as dropping a car off the roof of your house. If you hit someone, they're fucking dead.

OK, maybe that's not history's best analogy, but if you're writing a Taser story, ditch the voltage unless you are going to talk about amps, too.

An alternative to snow

New England's got Noreasters and Buffalo's got Lake Effect Snow (I think that kind of snow deserves capital letters).

Here in Walla Walla, we get snow, too, but not very much and not very often. That's not for lack of cold - around here, the winters can get much colder than in New Hampshire (to pick an example at random), but we also get very little precipitation, maybe 19 or 20 inches a year.

What we have instead of snow is freezing fog (which the forecast calls for tonight, just like it does off and on all winter). Freezing fog tends to be on the wispy side for fog, though some nights it is damn near pea soup.

The result looks like hoarfrost, so winter mornings around here are often gorgeous, especially on the lucky days that dawn clear after a night of freezing fog.

A picture would probably be helpful here... I'll have to do something about that.

What's on shuffle?

Hooray for tagging! (and thank you, Lulu)

And what, pray tell, is in the shuffle for me?

How many songs: 2507 (but some of those are Pimsleur language lessons/comedy tracks)

First song: 'Em - The Geto Boys (I guess iTunes thinks ' is the first letter of the alphabet)

Last song: Zoot Suit Riot~~Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (popular choice!)

Shortest: Commercial - House of Pain (0:07)

Longest: Alice's Restaurant Massacree (18:36. Official Song of Stockbridge, Mass.)

Five most played songs:

Do Ya - Electric Light Orchestra (74, going on 75 right now)
Catarina - Joe Purdy (73)
Wash Away (reprise) - Joe Purdy (65)
Pancho and Lefty (live) - Townes Van Zandt (55 - the other live performance of this song by Van Zandt is No. 7 at 49)
Poor Taylor (acoustic) - Jack Johnson (52)

First song that comes up on "shuffle” Father and Son, covered by Johnny Cash & Fiona Apple (off of the Unearthed box set)

Number of items that come up when searching (by song only, not albums, titles & artists) for:

"sex": 2 (NoFX and Hot Chocolate)

"death": 4

"love": 80. (Don't get too excited, The Geto Boys are in there, too. Twice)

"you": 172 (does that include "Food, Sex and Ewe"?)

"me": 294

"cry": 7

Who shall I tag??? The world wonders.

Holly, Mama & Daphne

Let it snow!

Living in my un-tagged world, I have to shop for memes. Here's one:

Do you get snow where you live? How much? Yes, but not much. We do get freezing fog (like hoarfrost) and freezing rain. Last winter, we had about a week of freezing fog and one day in which snow fell in the valley. There's tons of snow in the surrounding hills and mountains, though. Once in a while, we get a good dumping, maybe once every five or 10 years.

When was the last time it snowed in your neck of the woods? Two days ago. About an eighth -to a quarter-inch. Wow.

Tell us about the worst snowfall/blizzard you've been in. Well, there was the whiteout I drove the moving truck in around Thanksgiving 2004, which was pretty bad. Probably the most significant snow I've seen was in a Noreaster in New Hampshire in early 2004. The storm dumped a couple of feet of snow over a couple of days. I couldn't even see my car one morning because it was under so much snow.

What is your favorite thing about snow? Snow wipes away trash and grime and makes everything beautiful, at least for a little while.

Imagine two ideal homes, all things being the same except climate. Do you choose to live the rest of your life somewhere that never sees a snowflake or somewhere that sees a plethora of them every winter? Why? I would choose the snowy place. I like shoveling, I like snowshoeing, I like to play with the dog in the snow, I like snowball fights and sledding and running along the frozen river through the snow. Snow is gorgeous and home is all the warmer when you get home.

An easy and classic Indian meal

Although the prep work involved is, well, involved, Indian food - at least the North Indian type I make - is pretty damn easy.

If you want an un-tricky but tasty and versatile dish, give kheema with fried onions a try. The dish is ground meat (in this recipe, lamb) with many spices and fried (really just sauteed ad nauseum) onions, and while it could be eaten alone, it is a more likely candidate to be served over rice; with naan, pooris or chapatis (these three with kheema would be an alternative to pita-and-hummus or chips-and-dip); or as a filling for samosas (deep-fried stuffed breads) or fruits and vegetables (tomatoes, squash, eggplant and okra all work well).

Unless you're wicked fast at prep, you will profit from doing all the prep work before you turn on the stove. For handiness, I put the three sets of spices into separate little dishes.

Kheema with fried onions

Spice set I
2 bay leaves
1 three-inch stick of cinnamon
6 whole cloves

Spice set II
1 tablespoon cumin, freshly ground
1 tablespoon coriander, freshly ground
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon salt (this is a maximum, in my opinion)

Spice set III
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon mace, freshly ground
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly ground
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne

one large yellow onion, halved and both halves sliced into very thin half-rings (this is much easier than trying to slice a whole onion into very thin rings)

one-half of a large yellow onion, finely chopped
five cloves garlic, finely chopped
a 1-inch cube of fresh ginger, finely chopped
3 tablespoons tomato sauce (if you're planning to stuff tomatoes with the kheema, hollow them out during the prep and use the hollowed out stuff - at least six tomatoes worth - in place of tomato sauce)
3 tablespoons plain yogurt
1.5 pounds ground lamb

In a large dish, heat three tablespoons or so of oil over medium to medium-high heat. When hot, saute/fry the onion ring halves until browned (but not crispy), about 10 minutes. Remove from oil (if there's any left) and set aside.

Now the part you need to be attentive for:

• Add a tablespoon of oil to the dish and add Spice set I.
• When the bay leaves turn brown, add the chopped onions, garlic and ginger. Fry for 5 to 10 minutes, until the onions start to brown at the edges.
• Add Spice set II and fry for three minutes.
• Add the tomato sauce and fry for three minutes.
• Add the yogurt and fry for three minutes.
• Add the ground lamb and brown thoroughly, breaking up any chunks as you go.
• Add 1/4 cup water (unless you are stuffing tomatoes and added a lot of watery tomato innards already).
• Add Spice set III, stir, bring to boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer for about 45 minutes.

After the 45 minutes or so, remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaves (don't bother trying to find the cloves; they're fun to eat anyway!) and stir in the reserved onions.

If you're planning to stuff fruit or vegetables, here's the ones I've done:

• Squash - Cut an acorn squash in half, scoop out the seeds and bake uncovered (in a casserole with 1/4 to 1/2 inch of water in it) at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until the squash reaches your desired firmness/cookedness level. Then scoop kheema into the hollow, bake for 5 minutes and serve.
• Tomatoes - Cut lids on the tomatoes (like you would for a Jack-o'-lantern) and scoop out the inner membranes and seeds. I use a grapefruit spoon for this task.
• Eggplant - Just slice off the cap (the stem end), then prepare the eggplant by cooking it in boiling, salted water until it is just tender. Drain the water (duh), scoop out the insides and stuff the eggplant. It won't need much time baking, maybe 20 minutes at 350 degrees. You can affix the cut-off cap with toothpicks if you're tricky.
• Okra - Use large, fresh okra. Simply (ha-ha) slit the okra with a sharp knife and stuff as full as you can with kheema. Bake on a cookie sheet for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

I like the squash and okra best. The squash is sweet but that's simultaneously offset and complemented by the kheema. The okra is just plain tasty, even better than deep-fried, in my opinion.

The tomatoes are good, but when baked can be almost cloying. Tasty, but easy to get too much of.

The eggplant is also tasty, but a lot of trouble for not much return. Mostly, it is amusing to feel the inside of the eggplant after you have scooped it out and compare it to something else you may have touched in a similar manner.

Winter

Peeling back a corner of November's drear,
the ill-tempered sun
offers no warmth,
just harsh white light,
a fluorescent glare to light the way through the freezer-burned city.

The grimy dust of dust, ice, salt and sand,
bleached trash
of yesterday's snow,
litters alleys and gutters,
a vague reminder of delicate beauty.

The arid breeze blows stiffly through the valley,
rushing down from whitened hills and mountains
to push
a few leaves along gray and gritty streets,
a few flakes coaxed from sullen clouds,
a few bundled strangers from here to there.