Ebb and flow

Genealogy is as addictive hobby. I may put it aside for months at a time and then suddenly I open up my family tree software and begin my search anew. With the impending arrival of my son, I have been inspired to taking up digging around in the roots of my family tree again.

I am struck that the current of my family has oozed across the country like the tides. I find streams beginning in places like Ohio, Missouri and Virginia. They trickle through to Iowa, Kansas and Oregon. Mine washed up in Idaho. Then I drifted on to Washington and sit on the shore in Seattle watching the boats. Some of my mother's family ended up in California and also sit on the shore watching boats. I had one uncle who ended up in Hawaii for awhile. But then he drifted back to California.

The trouble with family trees is that they only tell you where your family was at any given time, not who they were. I begin to understand how archaeologists feel as they piece together bits of information to try an know something about the people who were here. Census reports were obviously recorded by people with various levels of education. I imagine the prerequisite was that you could write.

Information is recorded, but it is obvious at times that the census taker either didn't bother to ask how to spell names or the person providing the information didn't know how to read or write anyway to help the census taker along. My great, great grandfather on my mother's side was named Austin Clark. One census records his name as Oston Clark.

You can get snippets of soap opera as you dig through records. One of my widowed great aunts is shown in one census living with her son and a boarder. Ten years later, the boarder is listed in wedding records in Idaho as her new husband.

Occasionally I see names I recognize from my mother's stories of her family or labels from old photographs that I can now put in context. The irony about genealogy is that the more you piece together the puzzle, the bigger it gets and the more pieces you find missing.

I am in awe, at times, of the way families stretch back exponentially through time. And it challenges my OCD nature to stick to one thread of family without meandering off on another as they branch and weave through time and geography. I wonder at times that we aren't all somehow related somewhere at sometime.

I do this in a way for my children. I want them to know where their parents came from physically, emotionally and demographically. As near as I can tell, my roots were primarily farmers and laborers scratching livings out of the dust of history. I suppose part of me wishes they were all heroes and great figures out of history. But I suppose knowing what I know about public figures, it is better that they were just simple people living out their lives.

In a way, my children are a product of me looking at my roots. A few years ago, not that long after Tess and I married, we were driving to a friend's birthday party. I'd been working on the family tree that weekend. Suddenly I turned to her and asked her if she felt we were missing something by not having children. I could tell by the look in her face at that time that she believed we were. Now three years later we have a lovely daughter and are awaiting our son.

The tides are flowing.

Note to self

Note to self: Flesh out a synapsis for Dirty Harry, the Musical and submit to some big Hollywood studio. Also shoot off a query letter to the FOX network for a reality program about casting for Dirty Harry, the Musical. Both projects reek of major dough, ray for me


Note to self: Figure out how to launch Dizgraceland, the podcast.


Note to self: Remember to learn to play the banjo.


Note to self: Trim eyebrows.


Note to self: Unpack and organize my animal skull collection that has been in boxes in the garage for three years.


Note to self: Figure out a way to keep my wife from disposing of my animal skull collection (if she already hasn't).

Note to self: Hire someone to do my day job at half the salary. I would keep collecting the paychecks, pay the surrogate and collect half my salary without working. I could even get several jobs, do the same thing and make major bucks without working a lick. And no, this isn't a pyramid scheme.

Note to self: Create a broom with bristles made out of double-sided tape. This puppy would pick up everything.

Note to self: Figure out how to get dirt out of double-sided tape broom.

Note to self: Think of a way to keep the millions of people who read my blog from stealing my great "note to self" ideas and reminders (though if anyone wants to trim my eyebrows that would be cool).

Disengaging the enemy

I was riding the bus from my office to Seattle's waterfront to go to a meeting the other day. That in itself is not unusual. I have been using public transit for 26 years. I work in the industry. This particular day it was a bit chilly and looked like it might rain so I had grabbed a jacket from my office that has my company logo on it. As I sat down on the bus, a young man with a backpack got on behind me and sat a few seats away. He looked at my jacket, saw the logo and asked, "Are you a bus driver?"

Inside I cringed. I am not a bus driver and people assume that anyone working for a public transit agency either operates a bus or is a mechanic. I do neither and trying to explain the other functions required to operate transit systems is not my favorite topic.

It is not that there is anything wrong with driving a bus, but I knew that this question was a precursor to either a complaint about the bus system, suggestions on how to improve it or a detailed description on how many seats there are in the standard 40-foot coach. The fact that the bus wasn't operated by the agency I worked for wouldn't matter. Regardless, I shook my head and replied, "No, I work in their marketing department."

They young man was quiet for a minute and I prayed briefly that I had dodged the bullet of a prolonged discussion when all I wanted to do was play backgammon on my Blackberry. But then he began speaking. He complained about where we were putting our new light rail system and how we shouldn't have buses or trains that use fossils fuels. He complained about the cost of riding the buses and the trains and recounted how it used to be cheaper to drive than take public transit. Then he complained about how the cost of gas was driving him to the bus.

I nodded politely.

Then the young man began his tirade on environmentalists, off shore drilling, spotted owls, the timber industry and government waste. Fortunately I got to my stop before he could begin providing his solutions.

I smiled at him and scurried off the bus while he turned to look for some other captive audience on the bus to pontificate to. I shook my head as the bus pulled away and chastized myself for wearing anything that identifed where I worked on a bus. It is the equivalent to wearing a kick me sign.

In my younger days I may have engaged the young man in a debate and pointed out his misconceptions, corrected his facts and suggested alternative viewpoints. And he would have been more passionately engaged and rigid about his point of view. I've encountered hundreds of such people at parties, at public meetings or just riding buses. Other than the fact that he votes and likely will reproduce progeny that he may be able to imprint with his narrow point of view, he is probably harmless.

I learned long ago that when you work for a government agency you give up having personal opinions when you are identified as a government employee. If you voice one in defence of your company, you risk being repremanded for taking a stand that may be perceived as the company's. At the very least you risk being mired in a neverending debate with a person who has no interest in facts, regardless how rational those facts may be. Because everyone knows government lies and private industry (and citizens) always tell the truth, right?

So I've learned the path of least resistance is to nod, smile and say things like, "That's a very unique way of looking at it" or "You make an interesting point" (which is the equvalent of telling someone with an ugly baby that "he sure has lots of hair).

Deep down, though, I feel like I've taken the coward's path when I don't stand up to people with really twisted opinions or are just blatantly wrong. Because there are too many times in history where people just nodded, smiled and tried to ignore very scary points of view.

I wonder if Hitler rode the bus?

You wouldn't believe me if I told you

I watched one of those thought provoking films the other night, The Man from Earth. It was a 2007 independent film written by late screenwriter Jerome Bixby. Bixby is best known for episodes he wrote for the Twilight Zone and Star Trek. He apparently finished the screenplay for The Man from Earth on his death bed in 1998.

The cool thing about The Man from Earth is that it is entirely comprised of dialogue between intellectual characters sitting around a living room by a fireplace. There is no action, no special effects and no nudity. By Hollywood standards that translates to no audience. Shoot, by my normal low standards that sounds like a snoozer.

I loved the film.

The premise of the film isn't new. A college professor is picking up and moving after ten years teaching at a school. His friends don't understand why. They ambush him at his home where he is packing up a pick up truck with his possessions that include what one professor identifies as a pretty darned good rip off of an original Van Gogh painting.

The main character then proceeds to tell his circle of friends that he moves every 10 years to prevent people from questioning why he never ages past 35. He then proceeds to tell them that he is 14,000 years old give or take a couple of decades. He goes on to tell them he was a Cro Magnon man who was driven away from his tribe when they couldn't get past the fact that they were getting old and dying and he wasn't.

Of course, all of the professor's friends think that he is pulling their collective legs or that he is a major nut job. He proceeds to describe being a student of Buddha, a crew member of Columbus' ships and a friend of Van Gogh. That doesn't help much.

I don't want to ruin the movie for any of you who want to see it, but the guy really freaks out his friends when he claims to be a major character out of the New Testament who later has a rock opera named after him by Anthony Lloyd Weber. One woman practically has a breakdown because, if he is telling the truth, it counters every religious belief system she had.

Okay the plot is a bit reminiscent of the Highlander (sans the action and bad acting), the dialogue is a bit too pat and the intellectual friends a bit too cerebral and glib, but the overall "make you think" factor of this film is pretty impressive. It presents a fairly practical look at immortality and reinforces the reality that coming clean about being Jesus is a sure ticket to the funny farm. As Jack Nicholson said in a movie some time ago, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth."

I don't think anyone wants the truth if it means giving up something they have believed in for a long, long time. Even in this day of instant information and cameras everywhere capturing reality every second, most people don't believe what they see, read or hear. You can watch video clips of a politician's speech where he claims to be the Antichrist and 99 percent of the people who watch it won't believe it, especially when the politician's image consultants move in afterward and begin recreating what was said with carefully crafted messages and misdirection.

So god knows how many times Jesus or Buddha or L. Ron Hubbard has returned and been committed, ridiculed, discredited and locked up because no one really can believe the truth.

Now ain't that the truth?

Hiding the elephant

I have a tendency to size people up, categorize them and file that impression in my head. Once they are in a file, it is pretty hard for me to refile them. I'd say a good percentage of the time I've put them in the right file. But occasionally, when I get to know a person better I come to realize that maybe they belong in a different file or even more than one file.

I started thinking, hypocritical as it may seem, that it would piss me off if I discovered that other people classify and file me as well. Who wants to be generalized? After all, we are all multifaceted and individuals. But unfortunately life is too short and time is too precious not to segment people into categories to help manage our expectations of them. So I imagine I am pigeonholed the way I pigeonhole others.

I'm one of those firm believers that perception is reality. And self-perception is a powerful force. I know how I'd like to be thought of (or pigeonholed if I have to be). But I can also give you a list of character flaws a mile long (though I fantasize that I'm the only one aware of them). I hate the realization that, if I can see my flaws, so can everyone else. You can put a tablecloth over an elephant and pretend it is not an elephant but it is still an elephant. And lately my intense self-reflection (self-absorption and ego to some) has been pulling up the corner of the tablecloth and poking that elephant with a stick.

It is paralyzing to some extent to unveil the elephant, because the ability to act decisively depends a great deal upon having the self-confidence to forge ahead without tripping over self doubt. You have to believe what you are doing is the right thing.

I have never really fancied myself a leader. Throughout my life, however, leadership has been thrust upon me. Teachers were always putting me in charge of study groups, class councils, and science projects. I was a safety patrol lieutenant, president of the chess club in junior high and 9th grade president (I ran unopposed and won by a landslide). I was made a drum major in band in high school. But I learned being made a leader by school authorities and being accepted as a leader by peers are entirely different things. I wasn't comfortable with being a leader.

In my work life I tried to keep a low profile for years. Writing, after all, is a solitary profession. But I eventually had to accept that unless I became a best selling author, making progressively more money as a writer would require me to take on more responsibility. I progressed to managing projects and programs. Finally I was faced with managing people. And as I had learned in my school leadership days, being a manager and being accepted as a manager are very different.

In my fantasy world, being a manager would mean having people do things the way I want them to do them and being in control of my own destiny. But I never took into account that everyone, even the people you manage, have a fantasy of everyone doing the things the way they want them done. And the quirk of managing people is that you also are managed by someone else who wants you to do things the way they want them done and direct other people you supervise to do things the way you have been told to do them.

In other words, unless you become a millionaire by winning the lottery, you never really get to do anything the way you would really want to do them. Even if you have a boss who is open to you expressing your opinion about the best way to accomplish something, you will more than likely be constrained by some corporate police, guideline or directive dictated by something worse than a manager who wants things done their way -- a committee. A committee is a group of people all wanting to do things their way at the same time.

What does any of this have to do with trying to keep that elephant hidden? A great deal. Being a leader at any level puts you under scrutiny by everyone above you on the org chart and everyone below you on the org chart. And unless you are the rare person who is liked AND respected by the people who report to you and the people who supervise you, you aren't going to fair well when people start analyzing, categorizing and filing their perception of you.

So the best I can do is take the table cloth off the elephant and admit I am not a perfect manager. Then at least they can pigeonhole me as honest. Though I still have the urge to cry out, " I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man (ager)!"

Dear Tim_Id:

I am in receipt of your whiny letter of July 9. Thank you for your interest in communicating with your blog. Your letter will be filed with the rest of your whiny letters about your age, your weight, the economy, your paranoia and your lack of the ability to interact with people (you were pretty dead on with that one, by the way...after all you are writing to your blog as if it were a human).

In the interest of full disclosure, we generally only accept blog posts that are on a particular topic or describing some amusing anecdote from your life. We realize that you have likely exhausted your amusing anecdote supply and will accept letters to your blog as a temporary measure until you get your shit together.

In the meantime I want to take this opportunity to thank you for using blogger.com. It is bloggers like you that make the blog community what it is.

Sincerely,

Your Blog

P.S.
I am fine.

Dear blog

How are you? I am fine.

Okay, I'm not really fine. My sinuses are still infected. My joints ache and I could lose some weight. I wish I made more money. I'm not thrilled with the economy, rising gas prices or the political climate.

Other than that, I'm fine.

Sort of.

I mean, I'm still freaked about being 50. I find myself questioning everything I believed in at one time or another. No one gets my sense of humor so I am beginning to believe I don't have one. I seem to have lost my ability to communicate. Which is okay because I still feel invisible most of the time anyway.

But I'm fine.

A bit paranoid though. I pretty much believe everyone is out to get me. But I know that is my imagination.

Or not.

But I'm fine.

I've been writing a lot of blog posts lately. My blog stats, however, are at an all time low. Did I mention I no longer think I have a sense of humor and I've lost the ability to communicate?

I don't think anyone likes me. But that could just be the paranoia talking.

Other than that, I'm fine.

How are you doing? I'm pretty much okay, other than all that low self-esteem stuff and the paranoia.

Oh well, take care.

Your friend (or not),

Tim_Id

P.S.

I'm fine.
Sort of.

Taking liberties

When I was a boy, I thought myself patriotic. The Fourth of July was one of my favorite holidays. I believed the stories about George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and Abe Lincoln never telling a lie. And though I'm sure they were relatively good men, I know now that those were just the myths created by presidential press secretaries.

But I suppose all holidays are built around myths: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Pilgrims sitting down with the Indians (or Native Americans if you want to be politically correct about it), and Leprechauns. Let's not forget the little people from the old sod. Why shouldn't the Fourth of July be built around myths, too. So what if Paul Revere never really warned the people of Concord and Lexington that the British were coming? And who cares if the Sons of Liberty were really barflies and bullies pissed about taxes that really weren't that big of a deal. Okay, Ben Franklin was a womanizer and Thomas Jefferson slept with his slaves.

The truth doesn't make for good PR. But we need our myths. The truth rarely inspires. And history needs polishing or heroes quickly tarnish. Just like my parents, I have no desire for my children to grow up too quickly disillusioned by the lies of our forefathers.

It is too easy and cliche to blame the government for everything. The government isn't a thing. That is most people's mistake. They view the government as an malevolent entity that conspires against them. The government is simply people. And people operate out of one basic principle -- self preservation. Bureaucrats have families, too. Government workers have mortgages, pay taxes, buy groceries, and worry about their children. If there is a conspiracy in government, it is based on individuals trying to hang on, survive and pay bills.

I don't necessarily believe this is true for politicians. Politicians aspire to power. And anyone who aspires to power should be suspect and not trusted with power. Even the ones with good intentions bend to the addiction of power and sink into various forms of corruption to hold onto it.

There are other bogeymen people seek out to blame for our woes. Small businesses blame big businesses, Protestants blames Catholics, Christians blame Muslims, Blacks blame whites, whites blame minorities, Republicans blame Democrats, Liberals blame Conservatives, freaks blame straights, environmentalists blame industry, workers blame intellectuals and just about everyone blames WalMart.

I personally blame reality TV and Deal or No Deal for the downfall of civilization...or at least prime time television.

But the one person no one blames (as I've said before and forgive me for repeating yet again) is themselves.

And that is probably the one person who is really to blame.

Is there death after life?

Now that's a better question than, "Is there life after death?" It doesn't presuppose that you die first (which technically means you cease to exist) and then wonder if you go on living (a paradox). So the real question becomes do we die after we live or does death really exist??

Merely semantics, I'm sure some people think. But as a writer, words are my mathematical formulas and they have to add up properly or they are just a series of letters strung together.

I don't want you to think that I am preoccupied with death. I firmly believe that we should be preoccupied with life. It's just that nagging question of the afterlife that pops up when the spectre of our mortality rears it's ugly little head.

I wouldn't really want to live forever. I think it be frustrating to eventually have to say, "Been there, done that," to just about every suggestion. I don't mind doing things I like over and over, but eventually even fun things can grow stale if there isn't something to break up the monotony.

Perhaps that is what death is. It's something to break up the monotony of living. It is a reasonable theory. But it's flaw is when you ponder the tragedy of a young person or a child dying. That breaks my heart. It puts death back into the random, senseless realm. And if death has no rhyme nor reason, how can life?

Sometimes I feel as though my thinking processes are patterned after a dog chasing his own tail. I am a writer/philosopher chasing his own tale.

But perhaps it is the pondering of death that holds the clue to it. If we live and die and poof...that's it, where does the collective knowledge and experience that permeates our DNA come from? I mean, one person can only theorize about death for so long before they die. So how is that theorizing passed on so that the next person pondering death doesn't have to start from scratch?

Damn you, tail...tale!

Is there life after death?

If you think about it, it is kind of a stupid question. Death means the end, finale, the final caboose, that's all she wrote, etc. It reminds me of the old Mad Magazine bit about snappy answers to stupid questions, like "Is this the end of the line" when 50 people are obviously lined up, facing in one direction.

Is there life after death? Well, no.

There I answered that one. I think what people are really trying to figure out is what happens after you die. Is it like a video game and you have to start over at the first level? Or do you get to start where the game left off? Or do you start a completely new game?

The dumbest option I can think of is that you float around in the spirit world, hanging out where you died or lived a long time and hope that someone takes a photo of you that appears to be an "astral orb" or uses sophisticated recording equipment to try and capture your spiritual wisdom and all you can whisper is, "Soooo..."

I used to want to believe in ghosts because I thought it would ease that cosmic fear I have of death just being the end and then you are nothing. I still don't want to believe that. But I also don't want to believe that death means being put on hold in a limbo world listening to elevator music.

This post was prompted by a program I watched today on the History Channel while working out on the elliptical machine. It was about a group of ghost hunters who put tons of cameras and recording equipment in several rooms of the Lizzie Borden house to see if they could capture the ghost of Lizzie or her murdered father and step mother (remember the nursery rhyme, "Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother 40 whacks...When she saw what she had done, gave her father 41").

After about 50 hours, the best the ghost hunters could come up with was a recording of what sounded like a whispered, "Sooo..." after the ghost hunters were packing up the rest of the equipment. Oh, and they took an infrared photo of a trunk in one room that liked like the bottom of the trunk was hotter than the top part.

Apparently the next world doesn't have cable so spirits spend lots of time trying to figure out how to communicate with this world. They think of clever things to say like, "So," and "yeah" (perhaps all spirits are teenagers). And they heat up the bottom of trunks.

Maybe death just being the end isn't so bad after all.

Fourth of July 2008

We spent the evening at Gasworks Park in Seattle overlooking Lake Union and watched the fireworks. It was EM's first Fourth of July in the United States. Since the fireworks didn't begin until 10 p.m. she was fast asleep in her stroller. She slept through the entire show.

So this post is dedicated to her and to allow her to see what she missed.

I have to admit that I was just as enthralled by the spectical of skyrockets as I used be as a kid laying on the roof of my grandma's garage watching the starbursts from Boise State Stadium. I'd never been so close to a show as we were at Gasworks (other than the time I when out on a tug pulling a fireworks barge for a freelance story I never wrote).

Ashes rained down on us as we thrilled at the explosions. And yes, I'm sure it wasn't good for the environment. Nor were the hordes of onlookers who rushed back to their cars to avoid the inevitable jams getting home.

But those few minutes of fire in the sky were somehow worth it.

Living in the then

It dawned on me this morning about the accumulative effective of life. We are where we are because of where we've been. I realize this after sifting through lots of memories in search of clues as to who I am and why.

You don't realize this when you are young. How could you? Your life bank account has barely begun accumulating interest when you are young. It is only after years of living that you realize you are standing upon the shoulders of experience. Or mired in it.

So I'm not buying blaming things on circumstances. As Jimmy Buffet, my philosopher of choice says, "Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know, it's my own damned fault." Because shit doesn't just happen. You set the stage for it.

And I'm not saying it's your fault if a meteorite hits your house and kills you when you were sleeping. I'm saying if you don't finish high school (or college these days) then you aren't going to get a decent paying job. And if you don''t have a decent paying job, you aren't going to be able to afford a house. And if you can't afford a house, you aren't going to have anything to sell and buy a better house. And if you don't ever have a better house than you aren't going to have anything when you are too old to work that crappy job you had because you didn't get a good education.

Everybody makes mistakes. The trick is not making the same mistake over and over. So if you mess up and don't do anything to correct it, you are going build on that mistake. But if you correct the mistake, you have a new foundation to build on. You've changed the future.

I bought a house when I was 30 years old. I sold it when I was 48 for enough to put a down payment on a much nicer house for my wife and I. And we had enough left over that allowed us to afford adopting our daughter without going into debt. And we have a house big enough for our daughter and the son we are expecting.

These things were the cumulative effect of doing something positive back when I was 30 and didn't have a clue 20 years later I'd have a wonderful family that would benefit from my decision to invest in a house. If I could go back and give advice to the young me (and knew that the young me would listen), I'd tell him that everything you do matters. Karma is not a metaphysical concept of punishment and reward. It is natural law of cause and effect. Just living in the now is like driving a car at 70 mph on the freeway with a blindfold on. It's a guaranteed accident waiting to happen.

I'd also tell me to invest in Microsoft and Starbucks stock.

Zanzibar

I walked by the Zanzibar, but I never actually walked in it.

It's kind of like the real Zanzibar. I have always been a bit curious about it but never enough to actually go there.

But I may have to settle for the real Zanzibar if I really want to go there. This Zanzibar, in Reno on Virginia Street, is no longer open. I Googled it and it has been closed down. And the adjacent Zanzibar Motel is closed as well. Two transients died there in a fire trying to keep warm in January of 2007. For all I know, both the bar and motel may have been torn down.

That's the advantage of being a country and not a bar in Reno named after one. You rarely hear about them closing down a country and they rarely tear them down (Iraq could be the exception).

I snapped this photo in Reno maybe 15 years ago. I was shooting black-and-white film because I was in my misunderstood artist phase. Plus I had a dark room set up in my laundry room. and black-and-white film was the only kind I knew how to process. I was on one of my annual pilgrimages to Reno to visit my friend Michael (a slot supervisor at Harrahs).

Michael was also a pretty accomplished photographer. He had been a photographer for my college newspaper when I first met him. But a combination of low self-esteem and a highly impulsive and impressionable nature led him to Reno soon after graduation. Reno doesn't normally attract the crispiest flakes in the box and Michael was pretty darn bright so he quickly worked his way up from a slot attendant to a slot host to a slot supervisor.

I've written a few times about my many trips to Reno to visit Michael and our traditional desert shoot outs. More often than not I'd head to Reno when I was depressed and needed the therapy that only the Biggest Little City in the World, my best friend, gambling, drinking and shooting groceries on the desert could provide.

Reno always drew me like a white trash moth to a flame. It had none of the pretense of Las Vegas (and none of the class). Whereas what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, what happens in Reno, no one remembers.

I don't even remember what particular mental malady drove me to Reno that year (see what I mean). I packed my .357, my 35 mm camera and my boots and booked my trip. Michael picked me up at the airport and took me to whatever hotel had struck my fancy that trip (Circus, Circus; the Comstock; the Reno Hilton; or the El Dorado).

Somewhere between shooting sacks of potatoes amongst the sagebrush and shots of Cuervo in Fitzgerald's after a pass through the Lucky Grotto, Michael and I decided to do a photoshoot we were going to publish called, the Art and Architecture of Reno. It was supposed to be ironic because Reno had neither.

So after a buffet at the Atlantis or the Peppermill, we drove around in Michael's Jeep snapping what we thought was the quintensential Reno.

Okay, these two photos were the only ones I really liked. Oh, I have lots of shots of the Reno arch and some great ones of the Nevada Club (also gone). But there was something about the Zanzibar and Reno Antiques that spoke to me. For one, Zanzibar reminded me of the many bars that only catered to locals in Reno. They were places that hunkered down in the shadows of big casinos catering to casino employees who couldn't drink or gamble legally where they worked. Plus most casino workers needed a break from the blue headed bus tour patrons who bitched when the nickel machines didn't pay out after they'd fed at least $5 into them.

The local's bar Michael and I frequented when I visited didn't even have a name that I recall. It did have pool tables, a classic jukebox and drink specials on crap like peppermint Schnapps. I remember getting into the peppermint Schnapps zone one trip there and ending up in my hotel room controlling which direction the bed would spin until I puked.

I always imagined that the Zanzibar was "the" local's bar. A Humphrey Bogart lookalike (although a seedier version) would be behind the bar. Sailor's would be hunched over the bar plunking quarters in the video poker machines sipping Mai Tai's and Whirling Dervishes would be whirling on the five by five dance floor. Fake coconut palms would line the hallway leading to the restrooms and monkeys would pelt you with peanuts as you played pool.

I'm convinced Zanzibar would have been a time or space portal transporting blue collar workers into the Spice Island and a Shangrila with a perpetual happy hour and free ribbed condoms (for her pleasure) in the men's room.

But I'll never know. Because I walked by the Zanzibar, but I never actually walked in it.

Cheeseburger in Paradise

Cheeseburger in paradise (paradise)
Heaven on earth with an onion slice (paradise)
Not too particular not too precise (paradise)
I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise
--Jimmy Buffett

I was listening to one of my play lists on my iPod the other day on the train ride home and Jimmy Buffett's song Cheeseburger in Paradise came on. For a couple of minutes I was transported back to 1995 and my first cruise on a Windjammer Barefoot Cruise in the French West Indies. One of the stops on that cruise aboard the 248-foot schooner the Polynesia was St. Barts (St. Barths, St. Barthelemy or however you want to refer to it). And St. Barts is home to Le Select Bar, the place Jimmy Buffett supposedly was thinking about when he wrote Cheeseburger in Paradise.


I'd discovered Windjammer Barefoot Cruises at a Travel Show in Seattle. I was about to turn 37 and hadn't really travelled much. I'd kept waiting, thinking I would someday meet someone who I could travel with. But as I headed down the hill towards 40 I began to realize that if I was going to travel I'd better bite the bullet and go by myself or I would never see the world.

The Windjammer Barefoot Cruise brochure caught my attention because it offered week long cruises on old sailing ships rescued from oblivion and retrofitted to house no more than 120 or so passengers and crew. They sailed to smaller islands in the Caribbean that weren't necessarily accessible to the larger cruise ships. Oh and they attracted a higher percentage of singles.

I booked my cruise to sail the day after my 37th birthday. The 7-day cruise left from St. Martin and sailed to Montserrat, Nevis/St. Kitts, St. Barts and a little island inhabited by goats that I don't even think had a name. I paid a premium to have a cabin by myself. And I'm glad I did because the cabins were the size of a college dorm room and had two bunks, no porthole and a traditional sailing ship bathroom (as one guy on the ship put it, you could sit on the toilet, brushing your teeth and take a shower at the same time).

Small though it was, having my own cabin was far cry from the "bachelor" cabins that housed eight people with a shared bathroom. Needless to say, most of the people in those cabins were sleeping on the main deck by the second night of the cruise.

I won't go into a day by day travelogue about the rest of the cruise. Suffice to say, that vacation was as close to perfect as I'd ever found. There is something about traveling alone that forces you to discover strength and confidence you never knew you had. I went mountain biking on Monserrat and visited Alexander Hamilton's birthplace on Nevis. And can't even describe what it feels like to be awake at 2 a.m. under a clear Caribbean sky with the spice scents of the French West Indies wafting over you in the gentle warm breezes.

During the cruise I made friends many of the people on the cruise ship. There was Bill, an oil refinery worker from Chicago; Franz, a surgeon from Berlin (pictured above in drag at the PPP [you had to dress as a pirate, a prostitute or a priest) party the third night aboard); a couple of surgical nurses from Detroit and a teacher and a bartender from Rochester, New York.

And there was of course, my own cheeseburger in paradise. St. Barts was almost at the end of the cruise. A group of us spent the day driving around the island in a Suzuki Samurai and hanging out at the beaches.

That night we tendered in from the ship and walked by docks of yachts bigger than most people's houses. And we gathered at Le Select on the patio watching a French fry cook with dreadlocks grill burgers to a reggae beat squinting from the heat and the smoke from the cigarette hanging precariously from his lips. Between the bottles of Red Stripe and Carib beer, and the greasy cheeseburgers with fries, I learned the true meaning Jimmy's ode to the burger seasoned by the spice of Caribbean breezes.

I imagine it is really one of those, "had to be there to appreciate" things. But every time I hear Jimmy Buffett's Cheeseburger in Paradise I flashback to the perfect moment when I lived the song.

We all Shrine on...well, some do

I don't profess to know know anything about Shriners or Masons, but there is just something about a Fez that shrieks of parades and miniature cars. You'd think I would know something about fraternal societies. My grandfather was a Mason. And I understand you have to be a Mason before you can become a Shriner. But don't quote me on that. It's just something I read on the Internet.

Not that you would quote me on anything. Nor should you. I'm someone you don't know writing on the Internet. Any real Journalist would tell you that isn't a credible source. Trust me on this.

But I digress.

My grandfather never progressed (?) to the Shriner stage. And I never got to ask him about being a Mason. He died when I was four years old. I have his Fez, though.

My experience with Shriners largely stems from the only circus that ever passed through Boise when I was growing up -- the Shrine Circus. Occasionally some odd fellow in a fez (not to be confused with the Oddfellows Lodge) would approach my mother and I while walking along the sidewalk in downtown Boise and hand us free tickets to the Shrine Circus. It was an excellent marketing ploy because the tickets were good for a free child's admission with the purchase of an adult ticket at full price.

My mother gave in to my whining eventually and took me to the Shrine Circus. I couldn't have been more than five years old. I just remember thinking the clowns weren't funny and that I wanted one of the souvenir Fez's the Shriners were hawking in the audience. I don't believe I ever got one.

It is just as well. I don't believe I would look good in a Fez. I wrote some time ago about how I have a hard time finding hats that fit since I have such a big head. I imagine a Fez would only compound that problem and give me a slightly Zippy the Pinhead look.

But back to Shriners. They always seem to be old codgers. I can't remember ever seeing a young man who was a Shriner, or a Mason for that matter. Of course, they are secret societies so the young Shriners may not strut about in their Fez's. Though I don't know how secret of a society you can be when you take part in 4th of July parades driving miniature cars pulling a giant Fez.

And for some reason I seem to recall the Masons and the Shriners have some ancient tie to the Templar Knights and our founding fathers. I don't think I've ever seen a painting of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson sporting a Fez. But I'm not ruling out the possibility that those paintings exist.

I have never had any desire to be part of a secret society. I have never really had any desire to be part of a not-so-secret society, either. I haven't a clue what would possess you to be one of the Knights of Columbus, a member of the Moose Lodge or join the Kiwanis. And I hope no one in any of those organizations reads my blog, because I really don't want to know what would possess you to be in those organizations.

I have my own reasons for not wanting to be a member of anything. I don't like regularly scheduled meetings for one. And I've already established how I feel about wearing hats. I'm not sure I could master any secret handshakes or keep them secret if I did. I also don't like decisions by committee, fundraising, bylaws, being administered oaths, pancake breakfasts, dues, wearing vests with embroidered patches on them, or people slapping me on the back and telling me dirty jokes (I don't mind dirty jokes, I just don't like them told to me by assholes).

I guess I wouldn't make a good Shriner.

For fun and prophet

Not long after I started blogging, I hooked up with Google's advertising program that places ads on your blog based on the content of your blog posts. In theory you get paid for the number of real people who click on the ads and actually go to the advertiser's site. Google apparently has some code on the ads that prevent you from simply going to your own blog and clicking on the ads yourself until you are a millionaire. Personally, I think that is kind of shitty of them.

Secondly, (I wanted to avoid having to insert an author's note later about this not being my first point in this post) the placing of ads based on blog content doesn't really work for my blog. There is no rhyme nor reason to anything I blog about. So I imagine I leave the server that sorts through the content scratching its memory chips in confusion wondering what kind of ads to saddle my site with.

This is not to say I haven't made any money off the ad scam. After almost fours years of blogging I've received two checks from Google for $100 each. A glass half full kind of person would say that's $200 I wouldn't have had. A glass half empty kind of person would point out that I'm being paid less than a bathroom towel attendant in India to write my blog.

A former co-worker of mine writes a blog and promotes it vigorously by mass e-mailing people (including me) when he has a new post. And every now and then he makes a plea for people to click on the ads on his blog to help him finance his blogging passion. Okay, loss of dignity through begging aside, Google strictly frowns upon people in their advertising program pleading for people to click on ads on your site to artificially inflate their click-through rate. Needless to say, I don't read this guys blog let alone click on his ads.

Okay, I'm obviously not into blogging for profit. If I was, I'd write content that promoted widgets (an unknown product produced by the Acme Company and largely sold to coyotes trying to kill roadrunners). Then the Ad-bot would be able to place ads consistently that matched my content and hooked suckers who could be reeled in by the people who sell widgets.

I've said this before, but I'm really glad no one pays me to blog. It is kind of an experiment in free speech after all. Once you start profitting or propheting, freedom gets bogged down in the desire to perform. Monkeys dance faster when they are motivated by reward or frequent shocks to their genitals. But they don't necessarily dance as well as when they do it because they enjoy it.

Therefore I don't profit from blogging and I am a prophet to no one. This monkey doesn't like to dance.

Seek and ye shall find (just not necessarily what you are looking for)

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I realize this photo makes it look as though I have a serious case of man tit's going on here, but hopefully you know that it is not really a photo of me. It is a photo I found on the Internet when I Googled the phrase, "Religious Prophet." Apparently prophet's don't workout alot and may have higher levels of estrogen than other people. I just thought it was important to note before someone else did. In reality I may have a paunch and a double chin, but so far I do not have man tits. Okay, you can go ahead and read the blog post now. Though I imagine I'm going to get a great deal of hits through Google because I used the word, "tits."

First let me say that I am a big fan of Google. They have literally become part of our vocabulary (why don't you go Google it and see what you can find). I use Google religiously. And I have to thank Google (I think) for producing probably 99.9 percent of my blog traffic. They have turned me into Prophet of Random Information, so to speak.

ANOTHER AUTHOR'S NOTE (Written after the first one): Okay, I realize now that I can't really say, "First let me say..." after I added an author's note in front of the first paragraph. And I suppose it would sound stupid to say, "Second, let me say..." So, sorry.

For example, from my Web stats I can see that someone Googled "naked men talking" and stumbled onto my blog post about Talking to naked men. Someone else in Buenas Aires Googled, "the monkey don't stop my soots" and found my post called Don't mess with the monkey.

Since my stat counter also tells me how long each visitor spends perusing my words of wisdom, I also know that the average visitor Googling their random way into my blog spends less than a second before they realize they have made a terrible mistake and click out as if the hounds of hell (or the Monkey Playing Cymbals) is nipping at their heels.

I kind of wish I could send a blog bot after them that virtually tugs at their shirt sleeve and demands to know why they just popped into my blog and then left as fast as they could. The blog bot would look and sound something like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and scream at these people: YOU CAN'T JUST TOY WITH MY BLOG AND THEN LEAVE WITHOUT CALLING. DON'T YOU KNOW THAT GOOGLE BROUGHT YOU TO ME FOR A REASON? WE WERE MEANT TO BE."

Does that seem as creepy to you as it does to me?

I guess I know why people only stay less than a second.

Wane gibbous moon, damn you, wane!

Once again the full moon slinks away into the veiled night sky evoking gibberish out of my brain. For some reason I feel like approaching strangers on the street and asking them if they've seen my Gaboon Viper and then walking away laughing loudly knowing I haven't really lost a Gaboon Viper. I don't even have a Gaboon Viper. Put that in your Hookah and hork it.

See what I mean? I'm channeling Mr. T's jibba jabba.

This is not to say I really mind spouting mindless drivel. It beats small talk about washing my car or my job. Not that my job isn't interesting. The big excitment lately is a raccoon who has taken up residence in a small green space outside of our break room where people mainly go to smoke. They haven't been able to smoke out there since the raccoon moved in and he is pretty militant about cigarettes within 25 feet of him.

There used to be a crow's nest down in a tree in the green space next to the break room, too. But the raccoon apparently raided the nest and ate the baby crows (yes he ate crow) and then fell asleep in the nest.

I get this news vicariously through my staff who sit near windows overlooking the green space. I have an office with a window, but the window looks out on the hallway where people stare at me when they pass as if it was an exhibit at the Reptile House in the zoo. I keep the blinds pulled most of the time. But it doesn't shut out the chatter about the raccoon's movements. And by movements, I mean his or her moving from one place to the next in the green space next to the break room, not his or her's bodily functions. Though those will eventually involve crows as well I would imagine.

That was one classic digression.

Perhaps one day I'll string all of these pearls together and make a necklace.

Endeavor to persevere

We thought about it for a long time, "Endeavor to persevere." And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.
--Lone Watie, The Outlaw Josie Wales

The joy of working out in the modern age gym is that you can watch television while sweating away on the elliptical machine (or treadmill or stationary bike). My habit is to tune into the Travel Channel and flip back and forth between it and the History Channel during commercials. But since they are likely owned by same company I generally encounter commercials on both channels at the same time. Then I switch to the Food Network and watch it for a few minutes until the irony of working out and watching a network entirely dedicated to fattening food overcomes me.

And no, I haven't started digressing, yet.

Anyway, I was watching the History Channel and for some reason they were airing The Outlaw Josie Wales with Clint Eastwood. It is one of my favorite Clint Eastwood films. It was made in 1976 (the year I graduated from High School) after his Spaghetti Western days and before he stumbled into movies co-starring orangutans and his ex-girlfriend Sondra Locke. It was made during his Dirty Harry days and the character he played was kind of like a Civil War era Harry Callahan.

I'm still not digressing, yet.

So in the film Clint Eastwood plays Josie Wales, a Missouri farmer who joins a Confederate guerilla unit and winds up on the run from the Union soldiers who murdered his family. While on the run he meets a Cherokee named Lone Watie (played by Chief Dan George). Lone Watie relates the story of how he and representatives of the five "civilized" tribes went to Washington D.C. and met the Secretary of the Interior. The bureaucrat shook their hands, told them how civilized they looked and amonished them to "endeavor to persevere." That's when Lone Watie says, "We thought about it for a long time, 'Endeavor to persevere.' And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union."

I don't know why that has always struck me as hilarious. It was such a dumb shit thing to say and Lone Watie and the rest of the civilized nations realized that. Perhaps what appeals to me about the quote is the quixotic quality of it. Endeavoring to persevere reeks of windmills and giants. In simple, un-bureaucrat terms it means to "try to keep trying." Or at least that is how I interpret it.

Ironically, when I looked the quote up on Google, I discovered many other people have been impressed by phrase as well. But they banter it about as if it is some inspirational mantra urging people hang in there rather than a condenscending pat on the head by a pompeous politician degrading another culture he thought was inferior. Endeavoring to persevere isn't noble, it's an exercise in futility.

And to think this ironic ephiphany came to me while stairstepping my way to nowhere on an elliptical machine watching a 32-year old Clint Eastwood movie on the History Channel.

A familiar face

"Familiarity breeds contempt."
--Aesop

Since I've come out of the closet about repeating myself, I am going to blatantly regurgitate another post I wrote back in September 2004 called Friends (not the series). Essentially the post was about the phenomenon I have been puzzled about for some time -- why people come into your life and then leave, particularly friends. The post was prompted by a good friend of mine named Michael who disappeared out of my life.

I suppose most people won't want to read the original post (it's pretty long), but the last three paragraphs sum it up pretty well:

"It taught me something about friends and especially best friends: like everything else in life, they are temporary. When you are in grade school, you think you will have your best friends for life. But life happens. You get a girlfriend, a new job, go away to college, get another new job. You make friends with the people in your classes. But you graduate. You make friends with the people you work with. But theyget other jobs or you get other jobs. "Stay in touch, OK," you say. But in this age of e-mail and cell phones no one stays in touch. The big gap between old friends is not distance, but time. Sometimes too much has happened in our lives to effectively catch up on with old friends.

But the hardest part for me is that people drift out of my life and in many cases I don't know why. When you end a romantic relationship, there is more often than not closure of some kind. But with platonic friends, I've found there isn't any definite closure. Even when I attempt to reestablish contact with people I was close to in the past, it has always been temporary. Time is a river endlessly drifting forward and our memories are washed up on the banks.

So Michael J, Gary, Holly, Janelle, Nellie, Dave, Robert, Shan, Tim W, and Irene, if you are out there, Tim says hi and hopes life is treating you well!"

Those paragraphs still ring true to me. And since blogging has turned friendship into a virtual experience in real time, I have been thinking about how my theory can be applied to the phenomenon of why people pop into your circle of blog friends and then just as quickly pop out. The epiphany came to me this morning while I was cooking my daughter breakfast -- people stop reading other people's blogs because they become too familiar.

It is not an accident that I write this post on the tail of being called out as egotistical and my own realization that I repeat myself incessantly. Just as familiarity breeds contempt in the real world, familiarity breeds contempt in the blog world. People simply get sick of reading the same crap over and over. And the quirks that made you charming in the beginning become annoying over time (sometimes not that much time either).

Any ongoing relationship is going to have times where the people just get sick of rehashing of the same old, same old (kind of like I'm doing now). So they click in, skim over the latest post and then click away, rolling their eyes. Then they stop clicking in. And you are left wondering, "What did I say that offended so-and-so?" But it wasn't anything in particular. It was just the bugaboo of familiarity rearing it's boring old head.

Occasionally, just as in the real world, old friends do a drive by and try to recapture the good ol' times. But also like the real world, too many posts have gone by to catch up effectively and everyone smiles their fake smile, apologizes for not staying in touch and then promises to not let it happen again. And just like the real world, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and goes about their business until someone feels a pang of guilt about not staying in touch and the dance of stale friendships begins anew.

Oh well, goodbye for now. Stay in touch, okay?