Beano for the brain

The problem with mental flatulence is that it can't be attributed to too much fiber in your diet. For my own part, I attribute it to not having enough creative outlets. So every now and then I just hop up manically and start letting loose random ideas with very little merit.

For example (and I feel bad about exploiting the misfortunes of others), it dawned on me that this would be an excellent time for an investor to buy one of the Great Pyramids of Egypt and have it moved stone by stone to some place in the United States, maybe a WalMart parking lot for example. Then whoever bought it could market their company as truly one of the great wonders of the world. If you threw in some camels, you could have all kinds of opportunities for hump day promotions, too.

I have several of these types of ideas on any given day. The problem is, my talents are for coming up with big ideas. But I have very little interest in the practical aspects of implementing them. The big challenge in any great idea is overcoming the petty details and obstacles thrown in their way by operations and logistical people. No matter how loudly I shout, "Give me solutions, not problems," most people ignore me.  Perhaps this because am often shouting this on the bus or train at random strangers who aren't privy to my grand ideas.

I wish I could figure out a way to get recruited by some big think tank where I got paid beaucoup bucks to come up with big ideas. And after I'd passed forth these pearls, I'd leave it up to some other swine to string them together into a necklace. I'd be in hog heaven.

The problem is, someone other than myself would have to recognize me as a creative genius before they would offer me a six-figure job passing brain farts every day. It's the same problem I have getting my blog to go viral and capture the world's attention.

I suppose it is all in how you define genius. Thomas Edison once said that "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent inspiration." Most of the population, however, seems to think that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent regurgitation. I prefer to think genius is closely aligned with original thought. And the more original ideas you have, the more of a genius you are.

Notice I said original ideas, not good ones.

Not that I think there is a lot of room for original thought in the world anyway. I've expressed my frustration on more than one occasion about having what I thought was a cool idea only to Google it to find out that about a million other people had the same cool idea. And don't cliche me with "great minds think alike" crap. Mediocre minds think alike.

I'd like to think great minds digress a lot, too.

Anyway, I was thinking of changing the title of my blog to Beano for the brain.  But a quick Google search has shown that several other people have gone down that path, so I'll pass on it.

Besides, I am the only Dizgraceland and I'd hate to see all the brand equity dissipate by trying to freshen it up with a cheap play on words. A man has to have a place to pass on his ideas without someone wanting to beat the dog.

I feel so much better now.

Computing in the fog...er cloud

I had a post almost complete yesterday when blogger belched and it evaporated into the computing cloud that Microsoft is so proud of touting on its television commercials. I haven't a clue as to what key combination I hit that made the post disappear. God only knows where or when it will turn up.

I was going on about how silly it seems to refer to Web based computing as the cloud as if it was some new invention to use software that wasn't housed on your PC or laptop. Before personal computers and the Internet, people used remote terminals hardwired or connected via a modem to a mainframe computer. So it isn't like it is a new concept. Just instead of tapping into a mainframe, we're tapping into a network of servers.

I used to consider myself fairly tech savvy. I worked as weekend computer operator on an IBM mainframe computer for the Idaho State Department of Transportation when I was in college. It was kind of a pain in the ass job because you had to work two rotating 12-hour shifts. One week you'd work from 11 p.m. to 11 a.m. The next weekend you'd work from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. You'd get every third weekend off. It wouldn't have been so bad if it was the only job I had, but at the time I was also working full time at the local public library and carrying a full load at college. So for almost two years I was working 64-hours a week and going to college. There we some weekends where I'd work all night at the computer job and then go work at the library, get off and go back to the computer job.

I drank a lot of coffee back then.

The computer I worked on took up a room the size of a small gymnasium. The CPU sat in the center of the room and rows of large magnetic tape drives surrounded it. And being a computer operator back then involved essentially being the machine's bitch. There was a monitor and keyboard console at the front of the room along with a card reader. You'd feed a stack of punch cards containing computer code -- usually COBALT or something like that -- into the card reader. That would be processed by the CPU and then, depending upon the program, the monitor would beep at you to go retrieve a numbered tape from an adjacent tape storage room and load it on one of the tape drives.

Sometimes you'd load a tape and the computer would access one small bit of data and then ask for a different tape. I used to curse at the programmers who ran jobs that asked for 40 or 50 tapes. If I wasn't loading and unloading tapes, I was loading paper on a large chain printer the size of a coffin that sat in the back of the room. And if I wasn't loading paper on the printer, I was carting stacks of three-part carbon forms to a room behind the computer room that housed a machine known as a burster. You'd load the three part paper stack into it and it would burst the three copies apart into three separate stacks and spit out the ribbon of carbon paper between the copies.

Although it was mind numbing work at times, I got so I preferred the days and nights when lots of jobs had been submitted because the alternative was 12 hours of sitting there with nothing to do but pace around the
CPU and check in on the monitor every 30 minutes to make sure the thing was running. In addition to housing the data for the department of transportation, the computer also housed all of the state's driving and driver's license records. So it had to be up 24-hours a day because cops would call in to their control center when they made a traffic stop to check some one's license. The control center would in turn would tap into the computer records via remote terminals.

Because the computer housed driver's license and driving records, the computer room was under 24-hour surveillance by Idaho State Police via closed circuit cameras. The cops were housed in another part of the building so I never met them, but I got to know them via telephone. The were quick to call me saying the "com" was down even when they saw me on the computer frantically trying to reboot to solve a problem.

The only way to escape the fishbowl of the computer room was to slink off into an adjacent data processing room filled with card punch machines manned during the day by a small army of data processing clerks. It was my sanctuary. After a few weeks I started to figure out ways to take naps during the lulls in changing tapes and printer paper. I discovered a custodian storeroom behind the card punch room. In it were stacks of quilted pads used for moving office equipment. I converted them into a makeshift mattress and blankets

We weren't technically supposed to sleep because you were required to check the machine every 30 minutes to make sure everything was running. But I managed to program my body to take 30 minute naps and wake up automatically to stumble into the computer room and check the machine. I wasn't fully awake, so I suppose you could say I was originator of the concept of computing in a cloud or for as the case may be.

Looking back, it all sees so archaic. I probably have more computing power now in my desktop computer than that mainframe had back in 1980. And long gone are the days of programming via punch cards and computer tape. I don't imagine anyone uses the phrase "data processing" anymore. We now surf and float in the clouds, tweeting and interfacing on social network sites.

Even though the technology has evolved and become an inseparable from our lives, the basic concept of computing comes down to a series of 0's and 1's combined in various patterns at an ever increasing speed. But boiling down the complexity of computing to binary code doesn't sound as sexy to marketers trying to keep Microsoft hawking its system snake oil to the ignorant masses.

That's okay. I have always liked the fog and my head in the clouds.

Bad medicine

I don't think all television sucks, just the plethora of programs that have been cloned by the creators of Grey's Anatomy, especially that new one called Off the Map about doctor's working in a remote and undisclosed location in South America that is actually filmed in Hawaii. That show sucks major loads of swamp water.

I watched the first episode on On Demand during a desperate search for something I hadn't seen before. The actor who used to play Lenny on Laverne and Shirley (Michael McKean) guest stars as a tourist who is injured after running into a tree while repelling through the rain forest. His internal injuries are so severe they need to operate on him at the jungle clinic. They discover in the middle of the surgery that they don't have enough plasma on hand so the doctors leave Lenny on the operating table while they go retrieve coconuts. They then hook Lenny up to a coconut IV since everyone knows coconut milk is an excellent substitute for plasma.

Lenny survives the surgery and the coconut milk, but resists being airlifted to a real hospital until he has the opportunity to dump his late wife's ashes in a local lagoon famous for its glow in the dark algae. Apparently this was the real reason for Lenny coming to the undisclosed South American location. No one bothers to ask him why scattering his wife's ashes to get closure wasn't the first thing on his To Do list before taking the canopy ride on a harness through the rain forest. They simply throw his stretcher into a canoe and paddle to the lagoon. Lenny then proceeds to pollute the pristine ecosystem of the lagoon with his dead wife's remains and looks quite relieved. Perhaps this is really because he will have less luggage on his return trip home.

I won't go into any of the other inane and implausible subplots going on in the program but suffice it to say they involved cheesy stereotypes of third world patients gratefully paying the young, beautiful white doctors in chickens to thank them for saving their lives.

I want to go out on a limb here and state bluntly that the biggest lie shows like Grey's Anatomy and Off the Map perpetuate is that people who work in hospitals are attractive and majorly buff. Maybe I'm not going to the right hospitals, but no one in a hospital even looks remotely like anyone from Grey's Anatomy. No one in any hospital I've been in even remotely looks like they have ever seen the inside of  a gym or passed by a box of jelly doughnuts.

These doctor shows also falsely suggest that when you enter a hospital, you are immediately surrounded by surgeons anxiously waiting to remove your spleen regardless of whether there is anything wrong with it. My experience with hospitals is that you can languish for hours in the waiting room filling out paperwork before you get to spend an average of three minutes with someone you assume is a doctor. They generally look at your paperwork, look at their watch and then rush out the door presumably to act busy and distracted with the next patient. None of the doctors I have encountered seem overly enthusiastic about trying any new breakthrough surgery on any parts of my body, either.

But I suppose no one would watch television shows that depicted what doctors and hospitals are really like. Nor would they want to watch television programs about doctors who chose less glamorous specialties than brain surgery and plastic surgery. Dr. McDreamy wouldn't be as dreamy if he was a podiatrist or proctologist now would he? And what makes a person decide to concentrate on such things when they go to medical school anyway. Do they wake up one morning and say, "You know, I think staring at assholes all day is the direction I should take with my medical career."

Of course, I think staring at assholes all day is the direction many people's careers take them.

Butt, I digress...get it?

Anyway, I'll be glad when we get off from the doctor themed doctor drama's and move on to the next theme in the cycle. But please don't let it be more crime drama's or remakes.

I think the new Hawaii 50 sucks, too, BTW.

Snow how, snow way

As predicted, it did indeed dump a great deal of snow here on Tuesday night. By morning we had five inches of snow. But a heavy rain was falling when I backed my car out of the driveway into the now slush filled streets to drive to the train station.

My wife rushed our kids to a local park to make slush angels and lopsided snowmen in the rain. By the time I returned home in the evening, the snow had been reduced to what looked like skid row versions of Frosty the snowman lying in the gutters.

Temperatures are now in the 50s so the bogeyman has retreated into the closet until the next slow news day.

I'm sure other parts of the nation would like to dope slap Seattle for its whining about snow. We are definitely a city of weather wimps. Perhaps it comes from all the rain. It creates a mental mold that is hard to shake off. Even when the sun shines here and the temperatures rise above 60 degrees, people bitch about the heat.

Ironically, I moved here years ago to go to college because I liked the idea of being near water. You would have thought that would lead me to look for colleges in California or Florida, but no, I chose the Pacific Northwest. Forget the fact that when sitcom and screenplay writers want to pick someplace at the edge of the known world, they pick Seattle. When Frasier Crane ran away from Cheers and his ex-wife Lilith, he ended up in Seattle because it is as far as you can get from Boston without going to Alaska. And I'm sure the writers ruled out Alaska because it would be too much of a ripoff of Northern Exposure.

I am used to living in places which are considered on the fringe of civilization and culture. Idaho is also used by screenwriters as a place still waiting to be discovered by Lewis and Clark. I am surprised Kelsy Grammer, star of Frasier, didn't end up in Boise instead of Virginia in the plot of his failed sitcom Hank a few years ago.

I can tell you though, after growing up in Idaho, Seattle is pretty darned urban hip in comparison. But the rain thing is a bummer. And don't get me started again about what happens when it snows here. Also, living here makes you digress a lot.

Is the bogeyman made out of snow?

"A bogeyman (also spelt bogieman, boogeyman or boogieman) is a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening children. This legendary monster has no specific appearance, and conceptions of the monster can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases, he simply has no set appearance in the mind of a child, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. Bogeymancan be used metaphorically to denote a person or thing of which someone has an irrational fear. Parents often say that if their child is naughty, the bogeyman will get them, in an effort to make them behave. The bogeyman legend may originate from Scotland, where such creatures are sometimes called bogles, boggarts, boggers, bugaboos or bugbears."

--Definition of bogeyman from Wikipedia

Ironically, the definition of bogeyman could easily be applied to the threat of snow in the Pacific Northwest:

"Snow (also known as blizzard, slush or freezing rain) is a monstrous imaginary figure used in threatening commuters. This legendary weather has no specific appearance, and conceptions of the weather can vary drastically even from household to household within the same community; in many cases, it simply has no set appearance in the mind of a commuter, but is just an amorphous embodiment of terror. Snow storm can be used metaphorically to denote a an excuse employees use to avoid coming to work."

I shouldn't be surprised that people in the Seattle area react so viscerally to the concept of snow. These are the same people who don shorts, tank tops and sandals if the sun peeks through the every present cloud cover. If a snow flake is spotted within a 40-mile radius, people here sack the local grocery stores for supplies and run home to cower under their beds waiting for the Apocalypse.

Oh, I exaggerate slightly. It does snow heavily once or twice here every five years or so. And since much of region seems perched either on the top or the bottom of a hill, most drivers voluntarily drive their cars into a tree or other parked car to get it over with.

I try to avoid being one of those annoying people who drone on about people here not knowing how to drive in snow. Unless you are in the Ididarod driving a dog sled, no one really knows how to drive in snow. I grew up in Idaho where it snowed a lot. And yes, we drove around regardless of how much snow there was, but I lived in a relatively flat place that wasn't quite as populated as Seattle. You could slip and slide and chances are you wouldn't hit anything except an unfortunate squirrel trying to protect its nuts. So it isn't really fair to say people in Idaho were better driving in the snow. They just had more experience and less things to run into.

Still, I get irritated that the media here talks about the possibility of snow as if it were the threat of alien invasion. And nine times out of ten we get a dusting of snowflakes and it stops. Then the media points the finger accusingly at Al Gore and starts ragging on the economy until some new more promising clouds form.

I kind of miss the joy I felt as a kid when it snowed. Snow translated to snowmen, snow forts, snowball fights and hockey games in the streets. Later it meant great skiing at the local ski resort. Unfortunately when I was a kid in Idaho, snow never translated to school closures or delays.

But I do think the bogeyman lived in the coal bin in my grandmother's basement.

Fee, FIOS, Fo Fum...

I pay Frontier FIOS for umpteen hundred channels including most of the premium channels. But the only thing I ever watch anymore are the on demand shows that you can't get unless you pay for the premium channels. The irony is that I never watch the real time premium channels, just the on demand shows. So why do they bother having anything but their on demand shows?

Its not like they make any more money by having the regular premium channels. I don't see the point. If everything is available in the on demand what is the purpose of having scheduled programming that you have to tune into or DVR? It isn't like the commercial channels that need you to watch commercials to pay for them. I'd even be willing to watch on demand programs with commercials you can't fast forward through if someone would simply give me the option of only on demand television.

I have this dream that some innovative cable company will create an option of just paying one fee a month to simply get unlimited on demand television. I don't want to skim through guides trying to figure out what is on. I don't want to have to use the DVR anymore. I just want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it.

 Is this too much to ask out of life?

Elvis turns 76 (or turns over in his grave at 76)

Elvis was born on January 8, 1937 in Tupelo, Mississippi. He would have been 76 years old if he hadn't died on the toilet in August 1977 at aged 42. And I would be remiss if I, who once inexplicably (even to me) called himself Tim-Elvis and started a blog called Disgraceland that eventually became Dizgraceland after a upstart record label stole the domain name, didn't wish the king a happy birthday and say a few words about what Elvis means to me.

I'd have to say that Blue Moon is one of my favorite Elvis songs, though Mystery Train and Heartbreak Hotel are up there, too.

I once made a pilgrimage to Las Vegas strictly to visit some of the sacred Elvis sites, like the statue of Elvis at the Las Vegas Hilton. I also visited Landmark Drug Store where Elvis had his prescriptions filled. And I swear that I ran into Colonel Tom Parker coming out of a casino nearby. But I could have been having hallucinations.

I was Santa-Elvis at a work holiday party many years ago.

I used to have a Elvis shrine at my desk at work years ago. I even won a local newspaper's best toys in the office contest.

And I own an original Howard Finster Toddler Elvis artwork.

But I'm not really an Elvis fan.

Really.

Happy Birthday Elvis!

Year of the Rat

Before anyone corrects me and points out that we are approaching the Year of the Rabbit and not the Year of the Rat, this post has nothing to do with the Chinese Zodiac (although my son was born in the Year of the Rat).

I took a vacation day yesterday to wrap up some errands and appointments. And since it is a new year and all of the holiday crap is 50 to 75 percent off at most stores, I decided to take my family on a road trip to a Walmart to check out the artificial trees.

I realize that checking out the artificial trees on sale at Walmart after Christmas is a major white trash thing to do, but when I took the Elvis tree down and packed it up over the weekend, I noticed it was getting a bit ragged and shedding more needles than a real tree that's been up for a month. And since I bought the white artificial tree that would be transformed into the Elvis tree at a K-Mart back in 2001 or so, I figured Walmart would be a suitable place to look for its replacement in 2011.

I will be very upfront here. I do not like Walmart. I feel a strong need to shower just driving by one, let alone walking inside.Let's face it, the stores appeal to the shallow end of the gene pool. But standards or not, I wanted to replace the Elvis tree without spending a great deal of money. And disgusting as Walmart and its corporate policies are, I'm not above trying to save some cash.

The nearest Walmart to us is only about six miles away, but it seemed like we were driving to the Arctic Circle to get there. It has been pretty cold lately and there was still snow on the ground from a brief storm that passed through parts of the Puget Sound region a week or so ago. One thing I noted was that the parking stalls nearest the store entrance were dry and ice free (although packed with cars), but the fringes of the parking lot were icy and relatively vacant. This was due in a large part to the reluctance on the part of most Walmart customers to park anywhere that will require them to walk more than 10 feet to get to the store entrance. There was a line of cars in the parking lot idling their engines waiting for spaces to come open that would minimize their need to walk.

I parked our car in one of the icy stalls on the fringes of the lot and we gingerly made our way to the Walmart entrance. Inside we steered our kids past the McDonald's and dodged walkers and motorized scooters to make our way to a large sign marked "Holiday Clearance."

I left my wife and kids rummaging through bargain ornament bins and rounded a corner to an aisle where boxed trees were arranged haphazardly on large warehouse shelves. I had a glimmer of hope when I saw a white artificial tree on display. As I got closer, my hope was crushed. The tree had a Charlie Brown quality that made my old Elvis tree seem upscale in comparison. Plus, it came prelit with white lights. The Elvis tree can only have blue lights. I am pretty easygoing about most things, but not the Elvis tree.

As I shook my head in disgust at the poor quality of the artificial white tree I caught sight of what I first thought was some one's pet Chihuahua scooting across the aisle floor. Then I realized in horror that it was a rat scuttling out from underneath some pallets supporting cartons of artificial trees.

I went back around the corner and told my wife about the rat and suggested we move the kids towards the other end of the store. Unfortunately this sent them through the toy section. After a half hour or so of saying no to toys my kids had to have and glancing nervously about the floor for more vermin, we eventually herded them towards the checkstands with one cheap toy apiece and then out the door to our car. We passed several people jumpstarting dead engines while other cars waited patiently for their parking spaces.

As we strapped the kids into their car seats, I vowed never to go into a Walmart again.

Well, unless they have some sale that is just to good to pass up.

Talking about a resolution, well you know, I don't want to change a thing

I generally always resolve not to resolve a thing every new year. I've been a health club member for enough years to know that health clubs make most of their money off from New Year's resolutions. Every January clubs are packed with people resolved to get in shape. And every February the clubs are back to their regulars just sweating away and bitching about the dirty locker rooms.

Human nature being what it is, making a New Year's resolution is like drawing a line in the sand with your subconscious. And nine times out of ten, your subconscious is going to whoop your ass.

Don't get me wrong. I think people can and should change things about themselves that they think need to be changed. However, New Year's isn't the time to do it. Change is hard enough without putting the pressure of a New Year's resolution on top of it.

I looked at my blog post from last year around this time and I wrote about resisting to resolve to write in my blog everyday because it would probably have the opposite effect. I was right. I wrote more in 2010 than in 2009 because I only wrote when I wanted to and not because I had to.

I wish that resolving to do things would give you the resolve to actually do them. But resolutions are kind of like wishes in that if they were horses, beggars would ride.

I will say that I did manage to maintain the weight loss I began in 2009 through 2010. But it had nothing to do with resolutions, just diet and exercise. Because accomplishing anything simple comes down to doing it and not thinking to much about it.

I obviously have not resolved to be more profound in 2011.

Turning the page

I am baffled that we celebrate so many holidays that mark the passage of time. New Year's and birthdays are prime examples. Each signifies that another year has gone by. Glass half full advocates will view such things as a new beginning. Glass half empty types would say we are simply celebrating another day closer to death.

The turning of a calendar page is such a contrived thing anyway. Where did time actually begin and when does it actually end? What possessed whoever the primitive person was who began marking time? Was it one of the earliest manifestations of morbid fascination for figuring out how much time we have squandered and how much time is left to be squandered?

I am no one to talk. I am obsessed with time. I have an awesome collection of wristwatches, all ticking away the seconds of my mortality (well almost all...I need to get some new batteries for a few of them). Perhaps it is natural to become obsessed with time the older you get. Because when you are young, time drags because you think you have an endless supply of it. When you reach middle age, it slips quickly through your hands because you become painfully aware that supplies are limited.

But time is like the weather, everybody bitches about it, but no one can doing anything about it. Poets wax poetic about it. Songwriters write songs about it (Jim Croce wrote about keeping time in a bottle and then ironically died young in a plane crash). Science fiction writers create endless plots about how to cheat time and achieve mortality.

But time outlasts them all. None of us understand it. Shoot by the time you think you have figured it out by living long enough, your time is up. Father Time is essentially a practical joker shaking your hand with a joy buzzer.

Why am a writing about the futility of time and celebrating its passage? Well, I wanted to squeeze out one more blog post before the year ends and I didn't think I'd have time to write one tomorrow night. I'll be too busy celebrating the arrival of a new year.

Ironic isn't it?

Seeing the light (and pulling the plug)

I have always liked Christmas lights. I don't really understand how they became associated with the holiday, but I enjoy them. In the past, I would enjoy them on other people's homes, but I never got inspired to put them on my own house until this year.

As with most things these days, my motivation for putting up Christmas lights on my house was for my children. I kept reminding myself of that while I was standing on top of a step ladder clinging to my gutter forcing the little light clips on at one-foot intervals. I also reminded myself of that fact when I lost all feeling in my hands and realized that, although I'd spent nearly $100 on lights,  I'd only bought enough to stretch half way across the front. And I reminded myself it was for the kids when I hopped in the car and drove to the store to buy more lights.

Every night, I'd plug the lights in wondering if I was going to get electrocuted in the rain and every night after the kids went to bed, I'd slip into the rainy, cold night and unplug the lights.

Ironically, I don't think my kids noticed the lights. What they did notice were the other houses we drove by that had elaborate light shows with dancing reindeer, sparkling snow globes and inflatable Frosty the Snowmen. Feelings of inadequacy began to seep in when I compared these mega displays with my meager strip of white icicle lights. To add insult to injury, one small two-foot section of my modest lights went out in the center of one string for no apparent reason. It all reminded me of why I had never put up lights on my house before.

It is, however, one of those things you are supposed to do.

But now Christmas is over and the lights need to come down. I wish I could get away with just leaving them up like a friend of mine does each year. When I told him I'd spent a couple of hours hanging lights he said he just went out and plugged his in. Said they were a bit faded from being out all year, but they still worked. Now granted his are the old fashioned big-bulb type. I think they are less noticeable in the daylight than the icicle variety I have that hang down. With my luck, I'd leave them out and they wouldn't work next Christmas so I'd have to replace them anyway.

Although I like Christmas lights, I will be relieved when I've tucked them into boxes with the rest of the decorations and stow them in the garage. Something happens to the magic of Christmas lights and decorations when the clock strikes midnight on December 25. They become as dismal as the piles of discarded wrapping paper from too many presents littering the floor around the Christmas tree.

On that note, my two-year old son came marching through the living room when I came home last night demanding to know where Christmas was. I told him it was over and he said that it wasn't. It was Christmas Eve and he wanted his presents back.

I feel that way about Christmas in general. I always long for the feeling of Christmas coming and dread the emptiness of it being over. Oh well, the stores have already begun swapping out Christmas crap and replacing it with Valentines crap. So I have that to look forward to.

In the meantime, it's time to get out the step ladder and pull the plug on Christmas 2010.

Things you are supposed to do

I have never been particularly good at doing things I'm supposed to do because you are supposed to do them. It is not that I am philosophically opposed to doing things I am supposed to do. I just don't always know that I am supposed to do things that I am supposed to do. I also do not always understand the origins of some things that I am supposed to do and why.

Oh, I understand and accept common courtesies such as writing thank you notes and acting like you want some gift when someone gives you something you don't want or really like. It is other things I don't understand. For example, years ago my first girlfriend's mother used to wrap boxes of chocolates and keep them under the tree without a name tag in case someone dropped by unexpectedly and gave them a gift. She would then slip away, write their name on a gift tag and covertly stick it on one of the unmarked gifts under the tree as if she was going to give them a gift in the first place regardless of whether they gave her one. When I questioned the sincerity of such a gesture I was told it was what you were supposed to do.

Personally, I would rather give a person a gift with no expectations of anything in return. And I'd rather get an unexpected gift without feeling obligated to reciprocate. But this view, although paid lip service by many, is usually superseded by the unwritten rules of "things you are supposed to do."

I wonder if there is someplace where all of these things you are supposed to do are written down. That would have to assume that there are universal things you are supposed to do rather than things that you are supposed to do that were cited by your parents simply because their parents beat it into their heads that they were things you were supposed to do. And they believed this because their parents in turn impressed upon them that they were things you were supposed to do.

I am willing to bet most things you are supposed to do evolve that way instead out of some universal law dictated by the natural order of things. Most people don't question things we are supposed to do because questioning them is something we are not supposed to do.  Besides, the only answer you ever get when you question doing something you are supposed to do is that that is what people do. There is a paradox here somewhere.

I am greatly pleased that wearing live cats as hats is not one of those things you are supposed to do.

Total lunar eclipse over my hammies

Last night I saw my first lunar eclipse. It was the first total lunar eclipse in almost three years. And it was the first total lunar eclipse to take place on the Winter Solstice since 1638.

It was the first lunar eclipse I have ever seen because a) I am normally totally unaware of such things b) if I am aware of them, I fall asleep anyway and c) I live in the Seattle area and most things in the sky are obscured by clouds most nights. I managed to see this one because, a) I read about it on the Internet, b) since having children, I seldom go to sleep before midnight and c) by some miracle the clouds lifted last night and I could actually see the moon.

The photo above is supposedly how it looked from Seattle. I found the image on Wikipedia (thank you Yatharth Gupta whoever you are). I tried taking my own photo, but I haven't yet mastered all of the technical mysteries of my Canon Rebel (translated I haven't read the manual and basically still point, shoot and hope for the best). All I ended up photographing was a big, black square (which is basically what the eclipse looked like at about 11:30 p.m.). But then again, the whole thing could have just been obscured by a cloud. You never know in the great Pacific Northwest.

I am surprised that no one tried to super glue some significance to the fact that th eclipse was taking place on the Winter Solstice. It didn't seem to have any affect on me.

I did have a strange urge to go into a Denny's during the eclipse and order a Total Lunar Eclipse Over My Hammies just to see how the server would react. Given that it would be a Denny's during a full moon, eclipse  or not, I imagine the server would simply ask me if I wanted fries with that.

Note to Denny's: this would have been a great marketing opportunity. A Full Lunar Eclipse Over My Hammies could have been a ham sandwich with two fried eggs with the yolks removed. The next total eclipse will take place on June 15, 2011, so you have time to flesh this one out if you want. Just give me some of the credit, okay?

But I digress. I'm looking forward to the June 15 eclipse. But if I miss that, there is supposed to be another one on December 10th next year, too. Maybe I'll read the manual for my camera by then. But then again, it will probably be cloudy anyway.

Watching football

Of all sports, I enjoy watching football the most. I do not claim to understand all of the nuances of it, but I like the spirit of it. What drives me crazy, however, are the endless string of commentators who babble on during the games. I find their inane diatribes mind numbing at best.

What kind of insight does, "they need to come up with some big plays" provide? And don't get me started on sports casters ability to turn nouns into verbs (as in, "credit him with the pass defensed").

Although I like to watch football, I am also appalled at watching the other people who like to watch football. On the rare occasion I actually go to a game, I watch in horror at the out of shape blobs squeezed into football jerseys that should only be stretched as tight as they are if they are being pulled over shoulder pads and body armor. These jerseys are stretched to capacity by bellies that put Santa Claus to shame.

And the spectacle of it all. The wigs, masks and face paint rivals Mardi Gra in its garishness. But the thing that always blows my mind is the level at which these rabid fans believe that they actually have anything to do with whether the team wins or loses.  Now granted, noise becomes a factor in a game, but the actual physical act of playing the game lies strictly with the men playing the game, not with the mohawked fan wearing the kilt pounding his head against a pole in the end zone stands.

I understand the need for individuals to identify with people, real or fictional, who can live out realities they can't. But it is sad that many of the people I see at football games can't seem to accept that wearing a football jersey doesn't make you a football player any more than wearing a cape makes you Superman.

It is also easy to fall into the trap of second guessing everything that happens on the field. I catch myself swearing at a missed tackle, a dropped pass or a fumbled ball. Then I remind myself that I have never played football out of the confines of a backyard and that I was a drum major in the marching band during high school.

Perspective is everything, especially while watching football.

I broke the wing off an angel

It wasn't a real angel. It was a little plastic glow in the dark angel that someone taped onto my office door. It fell on the floor and I accidentally stepped on it and broke the wing. But I felt bad and glued the wing back on with a glue gun. It's not that I'm superstitious, but I don't need the bad karma breaking a wing off an angel implies.

Technically, it was probably more of a glow in the dark Cherub anyway. Or since this is the holiday season, it may have been a baby Jesus with wings. Funny thing is, the next day five more of the things showed up at random spots in my office. I rooted them out and they are all sitting on top of a commuter coffee mug next to my computer monitor with their little glow in the dark arms reaching up toward heaven (or the sky if you don't believe in such things).

I am not sure why angels have wings anyway. You'd think heavenly creatures could simply levitate without resorting to flapping their wings. But while we are on the subject, why do demons and hellish imps have wings, too? You would think they'd need them since they are supposed to be spending their time slinking around on their bellies in the fire, brimstone and icky ooze of hell.

But I digress.

It can't be good to break a wing off an angel around the holidays even if it was an accident. Now granted, technically the angel had wings so it shouldn't have fallen on the ground anyway unless it was indeed a fallen angel (or cherub). So that would mean breaking its wing off wouldn't be a bad thing because it was headed to hell anyway.

Come to think of it, that is why demons and imps have wings. They are supposed to be fallen angels. It kind of makes sense now. But I am just winging it. Ha, ha...

Now I am really going to hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Elvis tree is still in the building

I honestly couldn't tell you any more when the Elvis tree began. I can tell you that I bought the white, artificial tree from K-Mart (which seems pretty appropriate). And many of the ornaments came from uncontrolled buying binges on eBay. But I can't pinpoint when the tree took root.

I suppose it began as a rebellion against mainstream conventions associated with decorating for Christmas. And it was fed by the convenient aspect of combining my unexplained obsession with collecting Elvis crap with decorating a tree.

Now that I have a family, I have bowed to conventional decorations on one level of our house, but I have held onto the tradition of constructing and decorating the Elvis tree. My toddler children so far find it fascinating and spend a great deal of time pushing the buttons on the musical Elvis ornaments for abbreviated versions of Blue Christmas, Here comes Santa Claus and I'll be home for Christmas. I have forgone my tradition of placing a model of Graceland under the tree until my kids are old enough to resist the urge to touch it.

Some things are just sacred and Graceland is one of them.

But I do sense my four year old daughter beginning to wonder what the whole Elvis tree is all about. A few nights ago, she was playing in the room where it shone it all its blue splendor. An Elvis Christmas CD was playing on the DVD player. Suddenly my daughter got this very thoughtful, serious look on her beautiful little face. Then she turned to me and asked, "Papa, why do you have all of this Elvis stuff."

I got the same feeling I imagine the Grinch had when Cindy Lou Who confronted him and asked why he was shoving the Christmas tree up the chimney. I stammered something about just collecting Elvis stuff over the years. She nodded her head and replied, "I like Elvis music. He sings handsome." Then she resumed playing.

So I dodged that bullet, but I don't imagine there will be too many more Christmases left that I can put up the Elvis tree in peace without explaining to my kids why.

The problem is, I don't have an answer. I've always kind of looked at the tree as a lark. It's like this perpetual art project that represents everything good and bad about our culture. And regardless of any deep philosophical or psychological reason for it, I just think it's pretty.

But I suppose I'd better start working on a better answer.

Cave paintings

I wonder at times if blogging has become as archaic as cave paintings. Compared to the digital fast food social sites like Facebook and Twitter, blogging has just lost its newness and appeal to most people. For one, it takes too long of an attention span to read a blog post versus a Twitter or Facebook update about what you are having for lunch.

I was so enthusiastic when I started blogging. I felt so cutting edge and progressive. Blogging was my opportunity to share all of these fascinating stories I'd stored up for years. I was pretty damned prolific in the beginning, posting on an almost daily basis. I covered my cave walls with enough stick figures to entertain thousands. Trouble is, my cave seems to be a bit hard to find. And, I seem to be running out of paint and wall space. On more than one occasion, I've even painted the same pictographs over and over.

Kind of like this post. I think it is at least the hundredth time I've whined about blogging. Yet I still bundle up in my fur robes and trudge on back to the cave.

At times I ponder about what will happen to my cave paintings when I'm gone. It is hard to imagine a time when Google will close up shop and scatter all of its various digital properties to the winds. But even the dinosaurs eventually trudged off slowly into the sunset to become petroleum products. Have I built a digital house of cards by storing all of my cave paintings in one blog?

I've toyed with converting my blog posts into a primitive hard copy book. There are several self publishing options out there. But having one copy of a book of my rambling digressions seems a bit sad at times. They don't call the paper book covers dust jackets for nothing.

Once again I've become maudlin and cliche about leaving a legacy when I've gone.

Maybe that is my legacy.

Ug...need more paint.

I've got a turkey, wanna neck?

Actually the clever pick-up line is, "I've got a chicken, wanna neck?" And actually it isn't that clever and never worked for me anyway on the few times I'd holler it out the car window when my friends and I would pretend to cruise Main Street when I was a teenager growing up in Boise. Unfortunately, it also dates me since no one uses the term "neck" to describe making out anymore.

But I digress right from the beginning.

It is time for my annual post about my Thanksgiving journey to Boise. Though technically, I didn't post anything last year about our trip to Boise. Something about having two toddlers skews my sense of time, place and posting.

Anyone who religiously follows my blog knows by now that every year I make a pilgrimage back to my birthplace in Boise, Idaho for the ritual sacrifice of the turkey for Thanksgiving (I'm willing to bet the turkey doesn't see that much to be thankful for in the holiday). The primary reason I go to Boise now is to allow my children to spend as much time as possible with my mother. She is 85 years old and I want my kids to have some sense of her while she is still with us.

There aren't a great deal of options for getting to Boise. Either you drive and risk encounters with winter storms going over a couple of passes, turning a nine hour drive into a marathon affair (not something you want to chance with two toddlers in the car) or you fly and risk encounters with winter storms that turn an hour and twenty minute flight into a marathon affair or cancelled flights and lost luggage.

We opted for the latter. I should have known better when all of the planets were aligning against the trip. We were leaving Monday afternoon at 12:45 p.m. They began predicting snow a few days earlier. When we woke up Monday morning, my daughter had a fever. We looked outside and it was snowing fairly heavily. One of our three cats puked all over the stairs as we were leaving. It took 40 minutes just to get to the freeway from our house.

Still we made it to the parking garage and the airport in ample time to make it through security, have some lunch and make it to our gate. After mediating a debate with my son and daughter over whether to have pizza or hot dogs for lunch, I got the first e-mail alert on my Blackberry that our flight was delayed. Snow was coming down fairly heavily by now, so I assumed it was just the standard weather delay. We made our way to an airport play area to kill time until the new flight time. That's when the second (and third and fourth) flight delay notice came in.

Four hours later we were stumbling down an icy stairway carrying our children and two strollers,  making our way to a Horizon aircraft that is too small to use a civilized jet way. I was a bit relieved to actually be on board the plane and tried not to get annoyed when the pilot announced that they just had to deal with a few maintenance issues and get the plane de-iced before we could be cleared for take off. An hour later we were bumping along toward the runway. The pilot then announced that they had to go back to the gate to deal with some more maintenance issues.

After resolving the maintenance issues and getting de-iced and refueled, we noticed our luggage being taken off the airplane. After two hours we were told we had to get off the airplane because they were having issues now with their radios. We bundled up our kids and headed outside through the snow and back to the gate.

I want to go on record now that Horizon was not prepared for snow in Seattle. They seemed under staffed, under informed and unable to cope with anything going on at Sea-Tac on that fateful day. I got in a line at the gate counter and handed my boarding passes to a surly ticket agent who didn't say a word . She simply typed away on her computer and then handed me new boarding passes saying we were on standby for an 8 p.m. flight to Boise.

I watched the monitor above her head for the next hour or so and saw that we had been given seat assignments. I stood in line again and the surly gate agent told me that she wasn't ready to officially move our status from standby to confirmed and that I should wait around. I watched the 8 p.m. flight status change to 8:30 and then 9:15 p.m. Another ticket agent announced that the airplane we were waiting for was having maintenance issues. Then suddenly they changed the gate we were to leave from. A surge of passengers rushed off as we frantically packed our kids and scurried off to the new gate.

We finally boarded the plane at about 11 p.m. and sat there waiting for it to be de-iced. At close to 11:45 p.m. we finally took off in what appeared to be a total white out. We touched down in Boise around 1:30 a.m. their time. The car rental place was closed. It didn't really matter because although we'd made the flight to Boise, our luggage and car seats hadn't.

I waited in yet another line to file a missing luggage report. I was assured that the luggage would be on the first flight from Seattle the next morning. Then I gathered up my family and called the hotel for a shuttle. The shuttles had stopped running, so they sent a taxi instead. The taxi driver took pity on us and drove us around to several mini-marts trying to find diapers at 2:30 a.m. We couldn't find any so ended up at the hotel with one diaper and one pull up to last the night.

To make a long story short, our luggage didn't arrive on the first flight from Seattle the next morning. It came in at 2 p.m. I was able to get the hotel shuttle driver to take me to Albertsons to buy diapers in the morning and then to the airport to pick up a rental car. Almost two days of our Boise trip were spent waiting to fly or waiting for luggage.

I have written my semi-annual complaint to Horizon Air asking them to give me something, anything to make up for the nightmare. I'm assuming they will respond that they couldn't do anything about the weather and pony up 1000 frequent flyer miles in good faith.

I would prefer free flights to Mexico, because the next time I fly somewhere, it better be tropical and serve a decent Margarita.

Oh yeah, it snowed in Boise and the average temperature was below zero.

It was good though, that my kids got to see their grandmother.

Sigh....

My life as an onion

If I were to wager a strong guess, I'd bet that the forbidden fruit Eve partook of in the Garden of Eden was more of a forbidden vegetable. And that vegetable was probably an onion.  Because what symbolizes life and reality better than an onion (including the tears when you chop it up).

In a very layman and uneducated sense, I subscribe to the multiple worlds theory of physics in which there are multiple realities or universes existing simultaneously at any given moment. We navigate through these multiple universes by the actions (or inactions) we take in life. And as we move through these universes, we create layer upon layer of experience that is much like the layers of an onion. To understand your life, you can't just peel away layers, you have to view them as a whole. Because the onion, and your life are nothing without all of the layers.

I also think that, rather than viewing experience as linear, we need to step back and view it as layers of simultaneous reality happening independent of a beginning and an end. We are more aware of the layer we are  on because it is closer to the surface of our onion. But if you were a worm burrowing straight down through the onion, you'd find all of your experiences at that moment.

This is why, I think, as we age we have these odd flashes of what we believe to be vivid memories of the past (for want of a better term). Sometimes I'll be walking along and have this odd feeling that I am sharing space with younger versions of myself living out their layers of the onion.

For some reason we seem to be able to look down through the layers with more clarity than we can look up through the layers. Maybe this is where Quantum Physics comes into play. If indeed there are an infinite number of universes existing at the same time, we don't become aware of them until we actualize them by our actions. In other words, you can see all of the universes you've touched, but you can't distinguish the ones you are going to touch until you actually touch them and add them to your onion.

As I age, this theory is somehow comforting to me. I just haven't figured out what eventually happens to the onion when you die.

I just hope it doesn't end up on  hot dog or a bowl of chili.

Making a withdrawal from my daylights savings

I'm not a big fan of Daylight Savings Time. For one, it means I have to figure out how to change the time on 40 clocks and appliances scattered about my house. And I have to figure out how to change the clock in my car with one hand while driving because I never seem to notice the clock until I'm on the road and trying to get somewhere.

I also don't like the government arbitrarily messing with my body clock. Because just because they theoretically give your hour back in the fall after ripping it away from you, your body never really catches up. This is especially true if you have small children in the house. Setting your clocks back in the fall has absolutely no meaning to them and they will now get up when their body clock says it is time to get up.

I think the clock read 5:30 a.m. this last Sunday when my two-year old son sat up and declared he wanted to watch Tickerbell and the Lost Treasure. He then proceeded to sing the theme song from Little Einsteins while slapping out the drum beat on my back. This was followed by repeatedly putting a pillow over my face and pulling off and crying, "boo." My four-year old daughter quickly joined in the fun. My extra hour slipped out of the room along with the cat, both being chased by toddlers.

Dante has a level of hell just for whoever came up with Daylight Savings Time.

Personally, I like walking to the train in the morning in the dark. It is peaceful. And this is Seattle. Even if the sun is out in the morning, its behind a cloud, so giving me an extra hour of daylight means absolutely nothing.

You can bet our ancestors didn't try messing with time. I'm sure they dragged out of their caves as soon as the sun came out and scrambled back in as soon as it when down. They didn't need the village elders to decide they could save firewood by going out an hour earlier in the spring or an hour later in the fall.  The carnivores waiting outside in the dark dictated strict adherence to nature's clock.

Oh, I am sure there is a federal agency somewhere with the sole responsibility for defending Daylight Savings Time with a vast arsenal of charts and graphs showing us how much energy and money we save each year. Honestly, I don't care whether they are right or wrong. I just want them to leave my body clock alone. Go regulated plastic bags and bottles and leave my freakin' clocks alone.