Thursday, September 28, 2006

Disaster Planning - Before It All Goes To Hell

I don’t mean to sound overdramatic, but I’ve got my plate full today and tomorrow.  And by full, I mean seam-burstingly overpacked like a corgi in sausagecasing.  If life is like a box of chocolates, I feel a bit like Lucy in the candy factory.  I can’t swallow fast enough to choke down this much reality.  Plus, I’ll be out of town tomorrow, leaving well before dawn and getting home after 9 at night.  Anyway, I don’t know when I’ll be able to get down any of the stuff I’d want to be dumping on this here cybernetic landfill of ideas, but to keep you from abandoning me entirely here’s a few notes I took at last week’s staff meeting:

We try to have a guest for the first part of each staff meetings.  Last week it was L, from our L.A. office, who discussed disaster preparedness.  L went through a lengthy community training program to learn how to scream in the event of a disaster, what to pack in your survival paratrooper duffel, and how to perform triage on plastic mannequins.  She shared with us a lot of information and many valuable lifesaving hints (start a campfire with wintergreen lifesavers!  glue a whistle to your crowbar!  keep extra painkillers in a hollowed-out tooth!), but my favorite nuggets wound up in my notebook and here they are:

* Make a P.A.S.S. for safety!  That’s right, P*ull, A*im, S*queeze, S*weep!  Pull one out, point it where it counts, squeeze one off, and then work the gentle brushing action from side to side.  That’s good advice in anyone’s book, but in this case it’s how we’re told we should use a fire extinguisher.  These guys are a hoot.  I mean, how could this be about how to use a fire extinguisher if there’s no mention of a tiled hallway and a castered task chair? 

* This graph:

Atomic threat, atomic threat with even more ovals, pirate, infected steering wheel, exploding bowling ball.  I think they should have included a shark and a Darth Vader, but other than that I think they’ve got it covered.  I must say I feel a lot more secure and calm now that all the threats have their own place on the swooping line.  It seems that the strategy should be to stay the hell away from that line for as long as possible, and things should be okay.

* The program that put all this data together (okay, technically, “these data") is called the Community Emergency Response Training - the C.E.R.T. (it’s a disaster training!  it’s anti-terror training!  It’s two - two - two paranoia-inducing trainings in one!) However, in San Francisco I guess they thought the word “community” was too exclusionary or paternalistic or trademarked or something, so they call it the “Neighborhood” E.R.T.  That’s right, it’s the N.E.R.T. program.  Hell, I’d go through it just for the t-shirt.  “S.F. NERT - we’ll help you get them out of the vise!”

So, thanks for your attendance, and remain vigilant - only you can prevent a natural disaster, only natural disasters can prevent terrorism, and after that things get a bit muddled for me.  Okay, I’d better get the hell back to all that crap I need to deal with.  buh-Yeah. 

Sunday, September 24, 2006

Why It’s Okay that Monday Is Next

I really needed that weekend, from the delightful Rosh Hashona repast Kel had ready for me when I stomped in late and tense on Friday afternoon, to the many incredible moments during services when Zak really seemed to “get” it - playing with the other kids, or the other grown-ups, or just on his own, when he seemed to perk up, start watching the singing and dancing going on around him, and joined in with a sturdy jig of a dance, regular clapping of hands (in perfect time), and a quiet cooing of a song I’ve never heard from him before....  Glorious, all around.  Then home for some more apple tart from Schubert’s (really it’s to die for) and some hard, deep sleep, and then more of the supernal spirit the next morning, and then some great indian food, and then some aggravating driving right into a huge crowd of football fans leaving a game, and then to the Paiges’ for Kaleb’s “family” birthday celebration, with pizza and chow mein and all manner of colored cupcakes, plus rice krispy treats and plenty of Belgian-style beer.... we got home late and it was a good day all around. 

Sunday, then, we celebrated Kel’s birthday (one day early, in case you’re casting her charts or something).  We started off with Alton Brown-style french toast (and a bit of strawberry-blueberry simmered in butter and maple syrup, so it shouldn’t be a total loss), and then got out for a day in Marin enjoying the Pt Reyes peninsula.  It was a gorgeous day as we left the city:

Our first stop was in Pt Reyes Station, a small town with some really good food (Cafe Reyes, I’m looking at you) and some really photogenic scenery:

Stuffed with pork (and I mean that in the nicest way), we then proceeded to the top of the park and McClure Beach, where we were told tidepools awaited us.  And truly they did, but under a whole mess of moving water and plenty of cold low clouds:

(that one’s a three-photo panorama, so I’M SORRY that the edges don’t square up.... it’s for documentary, not aesthetic purposes, you jamoke.... okay, here’s a nice clean single shot of the access to the beach.  I hope this satisfies your rectilinear jones, Mr and Mrs Rectilinear Rectitude....)

We got tired of the cold wind and submerged tourist attractions so we moved on to another hike, which turned out to be way the hell out and gone at the west end of the peninsula.  We had a great drive, past elk and watery bits like this -

and then we finally wound up at a nice cafe in Inverness where Z could get some delicious cold cowjuice and some tasty angelfood cake, and K and I could drink some good cheap vino blanco (dang they know how to fill up a wineglass there!) and we could all traipse and frolic in Plant Park, where the blackberries were ripe and the tramampoline was irresistable and the overall vibe was calming and delightful....

...which got us in the right mood to get the hell back home, more than an hour’s drive away, through some of the most beautiful country and parkland in the state and of course also past the freaky burned-out shack that made me pull over and take this photo:

... and thence, home.  And wouldn’t you think that’s enough for any natural man?  Well it is, you’re right, but it was sunday and that meant I also got to watch Amazing Race.  If you don’t care for it, good day to you and devil take the hindmost.  For the rest of you right-thinking folk, I offer the following notes, written as the show progressed, and then subsequently blogged to your very self (in the extended entry): 

Friday, September 22, 2006

Jogging My Memories

I am feeling a lot of stress these days.  The sordid details of why and wherefore are not relevant to our considerations; suffice it to say, tension and anxiety in some form have been coursing through my veins for months now and I’m getting pretty tired of it.  It saps me of vigor and deadens my initiative.  But just as importantly, it darkens my outlook.  I dwell on bad things and don’t notice – or appreciate – good ones.  That’s particularly pernicious, of course.  It makes good times seem bad, and bad times seem irredeemable. 

The thing is that, at least theoretically, this last one is actually something I have control over.  I may not be able to affect some of the events touching my life these days, but even as to those that are entirely within my power, it is only in the framing and the viewing of them that the individual constituent stressors that constitute my life can be addressed, evaluated, and somehow accommodated.  I can influence how I respond to things, and that will influence what things I am responding to.  In theory, anyway.

This is a particularly apt realization to embrace at this season of the year.  It is Rosh Hashona tonight, and time to pause and reflect on the world entrusted to us and the power inherent in us all to uplift it.  It is a time for seeing the grace that surrounds us.  And in this spirit, here are three little gifts of beauty and wisdom bestowed on me during a run with the boy in the park on an obligatory but nonetheless deeply appreciated day off work yesterday:

* I really felt tired and unprepared for that run.  My joints were stiff and my feet weren’t happy with me.  It was therefore a matter of some satisfaction to me when my big jogstroller and I zipped past another jogger on the path. I may not have much to offer, but I can still bring what I’ve got.  My strength is strong.  No matter that I was 20 or 30 years younger than that other runner, or that I was the only one of us wearing attire designed for exercise, or that I am differently gendered than she.  I totally kicked that floppy-hat-wearing old woman’s ass at jogging in the park.  I RULE.

Then, not a minute later, I got mine.  The guy who passed me had calves like two fists side by side, thighs like cordwood, and a high tech jersey that seemed to bounce lightly over what appeared likely to be a richly-defined and very trim physique.  He was past me almost before I even saw him, glistening in a light sheen of sweat but assuredly not over-straining himself. As I watched him recede into the distance before me, I realized: You’ve got to compare yourself to the right example.

* My run starts me in the park’s rose garden. It’s a lovely display but certainly a modest one: maybe 200 beds, mostly in two ranks of rectangular plots on either side of a small semi-circular plaza in the middle.  The garden attracts a lot of visitors, as much by virtue of being on the maps and near a lot of other things that people want to visit, as for its own inherent beauty. I don’t mean to talk it down, but it’s just a rose garden – exemplifying, if you will, that which I never promised you, but otherwise not especially noteworthy.  The specimens on display are, of course, exceptionally beautiful, and to run through this garden in a casting light and smell the myriad blooms on a clean ocean breeze…. I love the rose garden, but I don’t let that blind me.  It’s great, but it’s nothing special.

As I ran through yesterday, I saw a lot of tourists checking out the rose garden, with their cheap paper maps and museum guides crumpling in their sweaty tourist hands.  They were taking elaborate photographs and examining the flowers with nearly-scientific attentiveness.  I wondered if any of them were going to visit the dahlia garden too.  That’s a smaller plot of land next to the beautiful old conservatory, where hundreds of amazing, huge, colorful, exuberant dahlias are in full bloom.  It’s a short walk down the road but a bit off the beaten path so a lot of people miss it.  As I ran past that garden on JFK a few minutes later and took special note of the incredible reds and yellows and purples erupting from the ground back where the dahlias grew, it occurred to me that sometimes you get what you’re looking for at the first garden you visit, but sometimes there is another better garden just a little further down the road. Tourists, beware: the garden you’re visiting may not be the garden you were looking for. 

* Finally, as I ran back home, I realized I’d learned two important lessons.  But I like odd-numbered lists so I set to wondering whether a third lesson was in the offing for me.  My delicate brains wrestled with this question as I trotted along my sweaty way, until I realized that two lessons was going to have to be all I learned.  Sometimes life gives you nothing.  When you get two lessons instead of zip, appreciate them – don’t demean them by looking for more.  Appreciate what has been strewn along your path.  That, as it turns out, was lesson three. 

It’s time for me to shut down and head home so I can get ready for services.  It’s been a long time since I last went, and Zach has never davened.  This is going to be a good path, this weekend, with unexpected gardens and reconsidered benchmarks.  I really need it to be that, anyway.  Good luck to you and yours, and have a weekend full of satisfactions. 

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Exductive Reasoning

The CNN News Headline on my GMail page reads: “Investigators Hope Testing Will Reveal Source of E.Coli.” I don’t think you need a fancy degree and a biohazard burkha to answer that one, chumbly.  The source of the E.Coli outbreak is ASS.  A BUTT is where it is from.  Evidence points to RUMP.

Let me know if you have any other science stumpers for me.  If it has to do with ASSHAZARDS I may be able to advise you.  Meantime, in other news: Popeye Asks Bluto for Another Roll of Tissue; Olive Oyl Frets. 

Monday, September 18, 2006

Roddy and the Tidbits

Names Considered but Rejected in the Course of Choosing the Name, “Roddy McDowell”

Rodney McDownell
Rakey McTrowell
Woody McPolestick
Lance Weiner
John Thomas Cockington
Dick Van Wang
Richard Roundtree

And just so you know, it was a very nice weekend.  We got to see some friends down near stanford and went on campus to see some art, to wit:

Those were the Goldsworthy installation, which is massive and cool, though it’s sort of out in the middle of a field and poorly integrated into the fabric of the campus, if you ask me.  That problem does not plague the Papuaian installations in an oak grove near the bookstore, engineering quads, and school of woodtrollery:

How did Zaq like it?  Just fine.

A final note on the weekend before I go and get mr one-nap-per-day-now-regardless-how-zombified-i-may-look-at-
10:30-to-the-untrained-eye (he’s now in his crib repeating “upadow” with heartwrenching good humor):

me: (some self-assured pronouncement of fact)
k: great, now we have to figure out if he’s just making crap up again.
me: ahem!  I’m right so often it’s embarassing!
k: well, you’re right about the embarassing part.
me: you see?!!

this promises to be a brutal, preoccupied, heavy, overstuffed week.  I’m way over my head.  I think I’d better move on to something less overtly unproductive.  I’ve procrastinated as much if not more than I’m comfortable with.  Thanks for enabling.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Stuff and Nonsense

I want to get a little new material up here but, for various personal and professional reasons, there isn’t much time or energy for it.  However, yesterday morning I kept having notions and thinking, dude, blog this.  And maybe - just maybe - I will.  Like now.  It’s better than going outside into the sunny warmth for a walk at lunchtime, right? 

Item the first: I went to my home computer not long ago to mess around with iTunes and my playlists, and I noticed a little icon to the left of some of my favorite music that indicated my computer didn’t know where it was being kept any longer.  What the hell?  I sorted by album and scrolled through 14 gigs of music, only to discover that about sixty albums suddenly have disappeared from my hard drive.  They’re still on the ‘pod itself, so as long as I don’t try to update it I’ll still have the music with me when I’m out and about.  But how could all those albums suddenly evaporate?  (I went and hunted through the hard drive, too - there’s no trace of them!) Regardless of the cause, I’ve now pulled the disks out of my big cd binders and I have a tidy little project ahead of me now - reripping my way through the stack.  Maybe I’m not pitiable but I am definitely aggravated.

Item the second: The local NPR stations are doing their fundraising drives, so I hear sponsorship messages I’m not used to hearing before my morning coffee has been brewed and injected into my bloodstream.  That’s probably why I got confused by what sounded like a plug for a dentist for whales.  What’s he going to do, clean the baleen?  Slap a retainer on a narwhal tusk?  Floss Willy?  Cetatian dentists… that’s just weird. 

Oh.

Item the Third: Damn.  Well, once again, I came to work with the wrong little memopad.  I’m sure there’s something else I wanted to waste your time and brainpower with, but it ain’t coming through.  So, instead, here’s a photo of drapery.

There you go, then.  Have a good weekend. 

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Shrimpy and Flaky

Tonight it finally happened.  I knew it would happend eventually, but once it happened I didn’t recognize it till it was too late.  And now, the shame is mine to bear.

I got home late after a long, complicated, and draining day.  As I stumbled in, looking not much forward to setting in immediately to cook supper, Kel accosted me with concern in her eyes.  “Thank god you’re here,” was how she greeted me.  “The smell is terrible.  It’s worst in the bathroom.  I had to take him out of the tub.  (With this, she inclined her head toward the toddler in her arms, who was still a bit damp and discombobulated from having been plucked peremptorily from his bath.) I think something’s wrong.  Can you check?”

I believe that the question, “can you check the bad smell in the bathroom?” has got to be one of the worst questions to be confronted with, along with “has this gone bad?” and “wanna see what they did to my colon?” But at home, I’m the guy - or at least, the guy who can operate the bathroom door all by himself, so I put down my bag and immediately went to check the situation. 

I opened the hall door – and started to smell something sour.

I walked down the hall and opened the bedroom door – the stink got really intense, like burning rubber or a fish that had long since stopped being food.  I checked out the window – it smelled good out there.  I pulled my head back into our sleeping chamber – eurgh.  How could something have crawled into our mattress, died, and decomposed to such an extent, within just a few hours? 

I walked to the other side of the room, past the closets, and I opened the bathroom door.  WHOA.  What a stinky, stinky, room.  It was horrible, a sharp acrid stench that caught me by the throat and dared me to taste my inhalations.  I peeked out the airshaft window just to see if I could tell what the problem was, but I couldn’t.  It just really smelled bad, and mostly in that one very critical room. 

I reserve the right to dictate what stinks in my own crapper, thank you very much, so this caused me much consternation.  I went back up front, closing doors behind me as I walked.  “No idea what it is, but hell right it stinks.”

“Can you go downstairs and check?  Once they were welding the pipes in the garage and smoke came into our bedroom.  That stuff is toxic, I don’t want to risk making the baby sick.”

It seemed like a fair concern, so I walked back outside again and down the stairs to my landlady’s apartment one floor down.  I knocked.  No answer.  I knocked and rang – and then the door down in the ground floor garage apartment opened and the landlady’s son peeked his head out.  His grandmother, the landlady’s mom, lives there – a crusty old woman who never bothered to learn English and doesn’t recognize me on the street after 15 years in the same house with me.  “Who is it?,” he called out into the entryway.

“Up here, it’s me, Dan from upstairs,” I announced with resignation. The son was not a great source of information – he had a brain trauma when he was young and never really completely came back from it.  “Um, I was wondering if you knew what we were smelling upstairs.  Something smells wrong.  We smell it in the master bathroom – like something’s burning, or gone wrong.  It’s really intense in there and it sort of made Kel feel bad.  She’s worried there might be something dangerous in the air.”

The son stood there, blankly blinking at me.  Then his mother poked her head around him.  “Oh hi Dan,” she called up.  “You smell something?”

“Yeah, hi, I do smell something.  Something smells really strong, and not good.  Horrible, really.  We smell it in the bathroom.  Is anyone burning something or melting something?  We’re concerned that the baby might get sick.”

“It’s my mom.  She’s cooking.  She’s making food.  Chinese cooking.  I think… I think you smell the dry shrimp flake, eh?”

Oh yeah.  Yeah, that’s the smell.  Like someone making fishfood gumbo, a skillet of sautéed sea monkeys.  Naturally, when I smelled that rank stank I didn’t associate it with food, to the extent dry shrimp flake qualifies as food… especially not when I smelled it in the bathroom.  That’s not a place I associate with kitchen odors, especially not the odors of the kitchen of the damned, which apparently is where grandma cooks. 

I’ve dealt with her smells a few times before, when she was boiling down retchweed on a big hotplate in the backyard right under our bedroom window.  It’s always been a horrible smell, but I could look out the window and see what the problem was – the cooking of something that was manifestly not food.  I always avoided making the huge stupid mistake of going out of my way to tell her that her so-called cooking was a toxic hazard.  But this time when I looked, I saw nothing cooking-related and so I assumed the worst.  And what it was, instead, was the old woman’s supper.  And I called it air poison.  That is because I am tactful and always know what to say.  So I went ahead and said it:

“Oh, right, dry shrimp flake.  Sounds great.  Have a good supper!” I went back up the stairs in nauseated humility.  I just love insulting the landlady’s mom’s cooking.  Maybe next week I can impugn her daughter’s virtue or something.  I’d hate to leave anyone out. 

Monday, September 11, 2006

In Lieu of Anything Interesting, Everything Mundane

This was a pretty intense weekend.  I’ll stick with the high points:

We went to an engagement party on Saturday in Petaluma, where cold foggy winds caught me by surprise in my sheer nipple-chilling singlet.  The party featured a keg of good red beer from a local brewery I’ve known of for years but never visited, as well as a big tank of truly chuggable sangria.  I don’t remember much of the ride home (I was not driving, needless to say).  Key phrases worth remembering from this event: we took a very rural winding back road to get from superhighway 101 to the edge of Petaluma town, and at one point I overshot a left turn and had to turn around in a farmer’s driveway where a sign was posted which read: “No Trespassing (/) Violators will be Shot (/) Survivors will be Shot Again.” Usually I’m okay being offered a double shot but this time I just put it in reverse and rolled out.  Also, the engaged couple was honored with two delicious cakes.  The chocolate cake read, “Congratulations on your Bar Mitzvah;” the lemon cake read “2006 Kiwanis Canasta Champions.” I think canasta is a card game, or a dance, or some combination of the two.  Shuffle, deal, do-si-do.  Needless to say, queens are wild.  And I think the Kiwanis season is now officially open in the farmer’s driveway down the hill. 

Sunday we met another family that adopted from Korea - just last month.  Their little 5-month-old boy was very sweet but basically a fashion accessory; their three year old daughter, on the other hand, was full of energy and curiosity, and it was fun to meet them all.  We didn’t hear any particularly funny lines worth sharing during our outing but we did have one hell of a lot of dim sum for about $5 each.  God bless Clement street, where the terrorists have already been co-opted and are buying cute bathroom baskets and live eels in bulk. 

Sunday night we watched Akeela and the Bee, which was fun, if somewhat cloying and stereotypical.  I was glad to see that the LA school system contributes 3/4 of the finalists in the national spelling bee.  I also liked seeing Lawrence Fishburn communing silently with Neo while actually pretending to act in a different movie altogether.  The movie featured a girl who used the repetitive rhythms of skipping rope to learn and regurgitate spellings of obscure words.  I’d have liked to see the real life story on which it was based, in which she used a combination of tribal dance and a slip-n-slide.  Now that’s entertainment. 

Final news note: NPR had a story recently (okay, more than a month ago but it’s new to you, right?) about a recently-uncovered 12th century Tuscan fresco featuring a tree surrounded by women who reach up to pick its fruit, which is dicks. That’s right, this is a phallus tree.  The news story discussed the controversy as to whether it was a holdover of pagan traditions (wherein I suppose fables of the weinerbush abound), or if it was in fact a political cartoon describing the superiority of the ruling Guelphs over the upstart Ghibellines.  The story concluded that, pending resolution of this thorny issue, the townspeople will continue to refer to the monumental mural, not as the “Gulphic Superiority Mural,” but as the Fertility Tree.  Kelly suggested that they just call it “Old Woody” and be done with it.  And so I shall.  Catch you later on, my friends.  If you’re out in the bush gathering fruits, watch that you don’t get pricked. 

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Precious Moments and Melon Patch Ruminations

(written yesterday.  posted today because I couldn’t log on till now.)

Oh for goodness sake, this has been a very full day of work, for which I am grateful and appreciative and especially so because my next stop is a friends’ house where I’ll be fed a delicious homebaked Sabbath meal.  Jackie is a fiend with the fresh challah, yo.  (in Hebrew, that’s spelled “yod – vov” – it’s in the Talmud, yo.) Meantime, I want to get back to a few small points left over from yesterday and put my weary mind to ease for the weekend, which promises to be full of delightful times with new friends and some other time on my goddamn knees scrubbing the kitchen floor:

I found my “good” notebook.  At some point I’ll disgorge some of the less turgid entries therein, but for now, let me just share this final “commercial error”: I was told of a fabulous area called “thousand islands” where small islands dot a river, just big enough for a single house, and the houses have boat slips instead of garages.  You just motorboat over to another island to go to the post office or general store or such, and there were said to be hundreds of people living there in water-lapped glee.  I also found a site advertising a nice lodge on another of the thousand islands, that plugged their availability for weddings.  They showed a photo of a bride and groom looking adoringly at each other, with the caption, “Sharing a Romeo and Juliet moment.” Am I the only one who reads this and thinks that it implies they’ll both be dead within a day or two? AM I THE ONLY ONE?

Okay, I’m the only one.  I cower with shame.  Happy now?

Also, here’s a short piece of a news article I found on the AP wires yesterday, about how Bush is doing with southern female voters:

At a watermelon festival in Chickamauga, in the mountains of northwest Georgia, substitute teacher Clydeen Tomanio said she remains committed to the party she’s called home for 43 years. “There are some people, and I’m one of them, that believe George Bush was placed where he is by the Lord,” Tomanio said.  “I don’t care how he governs, I will support him.  I’m a Republican through and through."

I’m not even sure where to start with this, but maybe a good place is the watermelon festival. I’m wondering what kind of festival they’re talking about.  Do they dress up like melons, compete in rindcracking and vodka-filling contests, and sell seed-based jewelry?  Do they charge admission?  Is it waived for people who are goddamn living stereotypes, like our friend Clydeen?  I’m just curious.  I like washmelon more than most folk, but I can’t imagine spending my precious Chickamauga time festivating with her no matter how sweet her fruit may be.

So, Clydeen is a substitute teacher.  I have nothing but respect for the pedagogic professional, but I have to wonder, Clydeen, what are you teaching?  Not grammar, I hope.  Otherwise I’d have expected you to say that “there are some people…who believe bla bla bla….” It makes me wonder, as did our president: Is our children larning? And if not, is it because illiterates is teaching them? 

Next, I need to address the substance of Clydeen’s remarks.  George Bush was not placed where he was by the lord – he was placed there by Katherine Harris, Karl Rove, and the U.S. Supreme Court.  We don’t elevate people to the presidency based on godly indicia (nor on goodly indica, but that’s a whole different debate) – we actually go to polls and elect them.  Are you saying, Clydeen, that anyone who has been president was there by the grace of god?  Including Ulysses Grant, who burned the hell out of your state in the great disruption of 1864?  Does that mean that Clinton was god’s choice in the 90’s?  Does it mean that it was an act of god that we were hit by terrorists shortly after Bush took office?  Ultimately, Clydeen, I don’t believe you understand how democracy works, or I don’t understand how god works.  I think it might be a little of both, really.

Finally, Clydeen does not care how the president governs – she’ll support him regardless.  If he sent her to fight his dirty war personally, without the body armor or weaponry she needed, she’d support him.  If he cuts off aid for her school and she’s out of work, she’ll support him.  If her mountain home is washed away by floods after clearcutting and stripming rapes the natural environment and disruptions in weather patterns cause hurricanes and typhoons, all attributable to this administration’s wretched environmental record, she wouldn’t care.  She’s a Republican and that’s how she votes.  And in the end, that’s the scariest damn thing of all: this woman actually is allowed to exercise her franchise and cast a ballot even though she expressly gives the matter no critical thought at all.  It’s very sad. 

That’s a good reason to visit this site, which allows you to make contributions to the non-republican of your choice.  Ignore it if you wish, but please, if you do choose to vote for the red side, think a little bit about what god really has in mind for you, for us, and for this country.  We need a little critical thinking, people – even on a substitution basis.  We don’t have time anymore to do what we’ve done for the last 43 years just because we’re used to it.  If you can’t take the time to think about who you’re voting for, and why, we’d all be better off if you just hung out in the melon patch on election day. 

The weekend beckons.  Have a good one and don’t swallow the seeds. 

Thursday, September 07, 2006

Dirge of the Missing Notebook

Sometimes you (I) just don’t feel like being productive.  After cooking a surprisingly satisfying meal last night (tilapia fillets marinated in lime juice, pepper and mint, quick-grilled dry; and fresh favas sauteed with scallion, cumin, cilantro and more mint) and cleaning the damn kitchen up afterwards, and then doing a bunch of computer housekeeping till near midnight, and having messed around with some of my old essays for several weeks now in the vague expectation that they’d congeal automatically into a coherent anthology, while at the same time trying to schedule a complicated two-destination five-family vacation, and starting to get my head around the idea that Zaq will need to go to preschool soon enough that I am already behind in my planning and research.... anyway, my brain be frayed and it’s been hard to generate much enthusiasm for the stack of budgets on my desk that I’m supposed to be reading (and writing uptight niggling letters to clarify).  I have not been exercising enough, I’ve been getting between one and three fewer hours of sleep a night than I’d really like, and this four-day week is feeling like an ever-swelling diverticulum in the gurgling lower tract of my life. 

The net result: I’m taking it a little easier today than I did yesterday.  I’m gonna back off, intensity-wise.  I’ll take a lunch break so I can walk leisurely on an errand; I’ve got a farewell drinks happy hour for a departing colleague tonight, and lord love me, I’m going to try to relax.  My two closest coworkers are out of town today, so in a sense it’s all on me - but in another sense, they’re not going to be giving me anything more to deal with.  So all that remains is for me to get a little traction and keep it comfortably in third gear till quitting time. 

And how will I accomplish that?  Well I could type out one of those essays that’s lingering around, but that sounds too much like work right now.  Or I could rifle through my little memopad and improvise a rant on some weird notes I scrawled while on the bus, but actually I’ve got three notebooks in circulation now and I can’t at the moment lay hands on the “good one” with all my most provocative observations (such as they are, which actually they probably aren’t, which lets you know how lame what’s left really is).  So instead, I will try to reconstruct a few ideas about bad commercial choices I’ve seen or that have come to my mind lately, and if you don’t like it you can write your own damn blog post about how the Chucklehut just isn’t making the grade anymore.  And I won’t read it.  That’ll show you.

The “bad commercial ideas” idea occurred to me recently when the phrase “def jam” came back to my mind for no good reason.  I find it to be a distasteful name, and I finally realized why: I am ashamed to say, when I hear anyone enunciate this common cultural appellation, I usually think that the syllable “def” is the beginning of a word referring to bodily excretion.  Even though they don’t finish it off with “acation,” I’m just a little too literal and clinical to shake the expectation.  So “def jam” sounds to me like a euphemism for constipation.  And that just won’t get me to listen to whatever it is they’re jamming, regardless of how def it may or may not be.  As far as I’m concerned, the less def, the better.  Maybe some high fiber sheet music will help. 

Motivated by this crude and stupid mental block, I offer up a few other bad choices I’ve been encountering lately:

There’s a new restaurant in my neighborhood that specializes in tapas - little dishes inspired by recipes from the Iberian peninsula.  Sounds fine to me, except that the name they chose for this place is “Spanish Fly”.  Naming a restaurant after a parasitic insect famous for spreading germs and maggots is bad enough, but to specify further a bug that is renowned in low circles for irritating genital tissues and simulating arousal by means of low-grade chemical burns is enough to keep me far from their doors or anything else they’ve got on offer.  Spanish Fly guys: I just hope you’re using high quality condoments.

The San Francisco Giants baseball team is running a PR campaign for their kids’ program, the “Junior Giants.” There are billboards all over town with inspirational images and messages, on the general subject of encouraging kids to play and follow baseball as a means to ensure their development into a wise, confident citizenry.  This is a laudable goal, but I do take issue with the posters that show a big baseball jersey with the text, “Junior Giants: In the game of life, we’re creating heroes.” The problem here is that the most powerful and famous player on the team has been under investigation for years for steroid abuse.  Hero creation apparently has its limits.  Maybe they should try, “We’re creating heroes but only out of vitamin supplements and good, clean living.” Or “We’re medically inducing heroism in our chem labs.” That’s catchy, no?  Plus, it encourages the kids to stay in school.  Those drugs are expensive, boys and girls - study hard and make your own! 

There is a third one too, but it’s stuck in the missing notebook.  I’m tired of trying to think of it.  I declare this post finished.  When I resort to doing my work because my blog post is too much trouble, I know it’s time to move on. 

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Laborious Wrap-Up, plus the Burger with Everything

Welcome back from what I can only hope was a relaxing and triumphant holiday weekend for each and every one of you.  We here in the US enjoyed Labor Day, but do not under any circumstances assume that this makes us soft on communism.  Those are capitalist laborers we celebrated, and specifically, the ones who either came here legally or arrived without documentation so long ago that it doesn’t matter any more.  At a barbeque party yesterday we stood, tipsy and overfed, on the front lawn late in the afternoon, admiring the landscaping that had been done the day before by an obviously hard-working contractor named Mr Molina.  At that moment Mr Molina himself drove past, in a dirty truck with four non-european-looking laborers and a whole mess of tools and supplies in the back.  Everybody looked filthy and exhausted, but Molina honked cheerfully.  That’s the labor we should be honoring - the guys who are landscaping our lawns on Labor Day.  But I digress.

At the Labor Day BBQ we ate marinated pork tri-tip and sausages and Neiman ranch hot dogs, king salmon and halibut from alaska, and a wide variety of supporting delicacies (such as Kel’s chocolate-chip banana brownies with pure chocolate frosting).  In addition, on Sunday we went to a birthday party for a family with a two-year-old and a forty-year-old who were due for a celebration.  At that party I enjoyed both mexican and el salvadorean chorizo, plus jimmy dean sausages and plenty of fresh housemade pizza and fritatta espagna and bagels with lox and numerous other gustatory delights.  It wasn’t healthy eating, but it sure felt good. 

It felt especially good on the heels of getting, in the mail on Friday, a big envelope from my buddies at LabCorp.  Two weeks after returning from Wilkes-Barre and the literal sausage-fest that was held there in our honor, I had yet another blood test to see how close I am to clogging up my own heart with a fistful of solidified lipids.  The answer appears to be: not so terribly close!  My total cholesterol has gone down from an all-time high of 310 to a mere wisp of a 166.  LDL is around 75 (my target was to get it under 100) and my HDL is around 65 (which is actually a good, high number).  This, together with my recent heart scan that revealed very low levels of calcium buildup and a consequently medically “trivial” risk of gasping redfaced death, means that I am actually heart-healthy.  Healthy enough, perhaps, even to have the occasional carnitas burrito again (as opposed to the grilled chicken), or to stop taking the pills every day that have been, I think, making me feel like someone injected me with meat tenderizer.  I am anathrosclerotic and I’m proud.  And I chose to celebrate by eating every form of pork I could get my hands on. 

All of this reminds me of a story having to do with food I cannot in good conscience call healthy.  But I don’t care.  Life is too short to be healthy all the time.  Therefore, I bring you:

Burger with Everything

I’m going to say this as a person who gets pretentious about cheap hamburgers: Kewpie is the real deal. There may not be much else going on in Lima, Ohio, but if you want a burger, Kewpie is what you are looking for.  It’s been around since the ‘20s, and while their Westgate Mall location may claim to be the most profitable food retailing space in the contiguous 48 or whatever they allege along those lines, the real old fashioned Kewpie experience is the downtown location.  At one time in the way-back days, this particular shop was so popular that they even installed a turntable in their narrow driveway so cars could move through more efficiently - and the line still blocked traffic. 

At the downtown Lima Kewpie, a giant plaster babydoll stands above the entryway and waves to you from behind deliciously untroubled eyes, ten feet tall and streaked with midwest grime, speaking unequivocally: Your grandpa ate here, and he liked it, too.  I’ve gone there for a ground beef fix every time I’ve been in L-Town, and that’s more times than most folk’ll admit to. 

So okay: I was in Lima not too may years ago and I found myself downtown and hungry.  It was just too obvious: I had to get me a Kewpie - the whole deal: burger, fries and frosty.  I walked in and immediately felt surrounded by 80 years or so of history caked to the walls and puddling up out of the floor. Don’t get me wrong - Kewpie maintains a sanitary facility. It’s a first-rate burger. But the lore felt so thick I could have stumbled over it. 

Alright then: I walk, as I say, into Kewpie in downtown Lima.  I check the board - for prices, mainly, since the menu doesn’t really change.  I place my order and am asked, “You want your burger with everything?”

The question catches me by surprise somehow. I don’t recall hearing it here before but my memory is notoriously fickle so I roll with it.  “No mayo,” I answer.  “Everything but mayo.”

“Olives?”

“You put olives on a Kewpie?”

“If you order it with everything, we do.” The clerk’s bordom Is on the verge of transitioning into irritation.  Heaven forbid that I irritate a Kewpie clerk I’ll never see again, I speedily perform a quick mental review: I like olives.  If they offer olives, they must think they’re good on a Kewpie - at least, if you like olives in the first place, which I do, so I figure: okay, what the hell, olives.

“Yeah, give me the olives.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” As the redcapped burgermacher turns away with the full measure of professionalism to which she can lay claim, I feel a gleaning sense of victory.  I may not get up to the Kewpie often, but when I do, I can Kewpie right along with the best of them. 

While I wait, I reacquaint myself with the little historical Kewpie timeline they’ve got set up around the lobby - a few photos, some apparently deep-fried newsprint, some specially-typewritten index cards.  It’s a charming little display. It takes me 30 seconds to get bored with it, and 45 before my order comes up.

“Burger w’olives, frosty, fries.”

It’s my order, but, again, focus falls on the olives.  It gets me thinking.  The olives seem to be a complicating factor. 

I take my order to a little booth and get settled: the tidy little burger positively grins up at me with the face of the trademark Kewpie girlbaby printed on the waxed burgerwrap paper .  I push the straw into the frosty; I puddle some ketchup for the fries on a corner of the unfolded paper wrapper… all is in readiness.  The burgering can commence. 

I heft my preciousss, and take a bite.

Damn.  That is olivey.

I take a few more bites.  I think, each time, that I’m exaggerating the oliveocitude.  It just can’t be that olivacious, I persuade myself.  It’s cool.  Just bite the burger.  And then: Damn. That is a lot of olives. Green ones, pickled tart and chopped coarsely.  I like olives well enough, but this borders on abuse. 

A little past halfway through my burger I find myself at a purist’s impasse.  I’m in a truly authentic burger place, eating the food they’re famous for, just as they eat it themselves.  Plus, I like olives.  Plus, I don’t want to earn the disrespect - if not, indeed, the ennmity - of the burger clerk behind her shabby counter.  But this is just too olivoid for me. It’s hard to eat such intensely condimentacious food.  Dare I breach the bunly integrity of my Kewpieburger, and actually remove an olive or two? 

I take another bite and a wave of briny gorge rolls up my gullet, fighting the oliveocity.  I force down my mouthful of overdressedburger, which I cannot taste.  Defeated, I open the bun. 

The top of what remains of my burger is an unbroken blanket of bilious-green chunks.  Olives are equal to or greater than burger in both mass and volume.  This kind of smothering is not the work of a well-meaning, or even careless, burger builder.  It is malicious, pure and simple, and I ate two-thirds of it anyway.  From the remaining bit I pluck more than thirty pieces of olive.  Each chunk is a mote in my eye.  Metaphorically, I mean.  They weren’t really in my eye; they were just lying on the burger wrapper, curled like worms on the printed face of a Kewpiegirl grinning vacantly at me from the tabletop.

I reassembled my burger but I couldn’t taste it anymore.  All I tasted, for hours thereafter, was those olives. I’ve been back to Kewpie since then and enjoyed a quality burger there, but I sort of still taste those olives even now. 

MORAL: Even if you like olives, sometimes you oughtn’t order them.  Now get back to work.