A chip off the old writer's block

Having been a blogger since August 2004, an aspiring writer since junior high and a professional writer (in theory)  since I graduated from college, you would think that writer's block would not be an issue, especially for someone who could basically give you a thousand words about whale vomit without blinking. But you know, sometimes you just don't have anything to say.

This, of course, doesn't apply to my three year old son who always seems to have something to say. Just none of it makes  sense to anyone but him. But he states everything with a great deal of authority, so I believe he will be very successful someday.

I'm not so sure I am really suffering from writer's block as much as a lack of time and inspiration. I traveled more in the last month or so then I have in quite some time and I don't really blog when I travel anymore. It just alerts everyone that you aren't home (not a good idea from a home security standpoint) and frankly, when I am in my hotel room I'm pretty much occupied flipping through channels looking for episodes of Doomsday Hoarders and I don't have time to blog.

I think part of my problem is also being self conscious that I am approaching my 1000th blog post and feeling pressure to produce something really great to mark that auspicious occasion. I'm sure a thousand blog posts seems nothing to my fellow blogger Baggy who seems to crank out a thousand posts a week. But it seems like a pretty big number to me.

Not that everyone of my posts has been the most awe inspiring prose mind you.  I evolved like everyone who has blogged for some time has. You go through phases in the beginning of trying to hard, or posting mundane stuff (not unlike Facebook status reports). And if you get people following and commenting on your posts, you can fall into the trap of writing crap you think they'll want to read. But the best blog posts are those where you just forget anyone might be reading and write for yourself.

And that is usually the only person who is reading it anyway.  I have written some many random posts that I honestly forget writing some of them and read them with rapt interest when I stumble onto them in my archives. At times it is almost as if someone else wrote them. And if you subscribe to some of my drivel about space time continuum and multiple universes, maybe some one of my other selves did.

Since I missed my goal of blogging my 1000th post on February 29, I am now going to shoot for August 4, 2012 to coincide with my blogger anniversary. That shouldn't be too hard to accomplish. Of course I'll have to think of something to write.

That could be a problem.

Don't quote me

"Don't quote me." -- Mark Twain (not)

Someone mentioned the other day that they had listened to a program on NPR about all of the quotes attributed to Mark Twain that he never really said. I was disappointed a bit that Twain never said, "“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it,” but I wasn't surprised. As a Journalism major, I learned very quickly that very few people speak eloquently enough to actually get a coherent quote for them. Thus you paraphrase.

As a PR writer I also learned that the best quotes for your press releases were the ones you wrote yourself and got your CEO to approve. The same goes for speeches. We all know (or should know) that President's of the United States don't write their own speeches. That is why they sound so articulate (George W. Bush being the exception...you have to be able to read in order to deliver a good speech).

I imagine most quotable quotes are probably contrived in one way or another. Let's face it, unless you are making a canned presentation, very few people spout original prose worth remembering. Case in point is a conversation I heard at the train station this morning:

Station agent (to female customer): "Morning, how are you?"

Female customer: "Oh, it's Friday..." Hilarious laughter.

End of conversation.

Even if you do spout something worth quoting, chances are you stole it from someone else.

You can quote me on that.

Out of the wild JetBlue, yonder

I have never flown on JetBlue Airlines. And after reading all of the news about a JetBlue pilot being locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot because of "erratic behavior," and then being subdued by passengers and hauled off the plane tied to a stretcher, I'm not sure I ever will fly JetBlue. There's just something about "erratic behavior" and "pilot" that tweaks an uneasy feeling in me.

It's not that I'm afraid of flying. I'm more afraid of crashing. I particularly don't like landings where you bounce and slide a bit before stopping.

But I digress.

In the JetBlue incident the pilot apparently came out of the cockpit and walked to the back of the plane muttering about "them bringing us down" and bombs. If I had been a passenger on board that airplane, I would have considered that a red flag. I would have also considered having the co-pilot (the person who usually gets on the speaker and tells you what altitude you are flying at and what side of the plane to look out to see the Grand Canyon) locking the belligerent Captain out of the place where he is supposed to be flying the plane another major red flag.

I wonder if it occurred to any of the passengers who rushed the Captain and wrestled him to the ground that maybe he might have been acting belligerent because the co-pilot was hijacking the plane. Fortunately for everyone on board, that wasn't the case. The plane, destined for Las Vegas, ended up in Texas. So it was a tragic journey all around.

There seem to be a rash of airline personnel having "episodes" on board airplanes of late. I seem to recall a flight attendant getting on the PA system on board plane a couple of months ago and ranting about the plane crashing. Now granted, this would be a bit more entertaining than them droning on about how to use a seat belt and where to find the list of premium beverages in the in flight magazine that are available for purchase (with a  debit card because they no longer accept cash...presumably because the flight attendants pocketed much of it). But I prefer that my flight crew having undergone some psychological screening before putting them in charge of several tons of airplane that could easily fall from the sky like a brick if their cheese randomly slides off the cracker (if you catch my drift).

Not that I don't understand why someone who flies two or three flights a day with a plane load of people who don't seem to comprehend the concept of fastening a seat belt or staying in their seat when the Captain (belligerent or not) has turned on the "fasten your seat belt" sign, would go postal. I start feeling like Jack Nicholson in the Shining just riding as a passenger on a plane after sitting next to someone who needs to use the restroom six times in a two-hour flight. I'm sure if I were a flight attendant in coach, I would seriously consider opening the cabin door at 50,000 feet every time I passed it.

That being said, I still am going to think twice before booking JetBlue and I'm going to look pretty hard into the cockpit while I'm getting on any plane to look for any signs that all of the Captain's dogs aren't barking at the same cat.

I don't moon over Miami

I just got back from a business trip to Miami. First, I want to be very clear that, although it is warm and has palm trees and an ocean view, I have never been overly fond of Miami. So it really was a business trip and not a pleasure trip.

A flight from Seattle to the East Coast is always a daunting proposition. I tried to ease the pain a bit by using some miles to upgrade to First Class on the flight to Miami (via Houston). It helped, though it didn't totally make up for having to catch a 4 a.m. shuttle to the airport. And although First Class is a thousand times better than coach, it isn't what it used to be. The service is basically what you used to get in coach before the airlines stopped serving food. The only think that is reminiscent of the First Class of bygone years is that they give you a hot towel before they give you food. And the food comes on actual plates.

One of the challenges of flying to the East Coast is that you lose three hours. But you still arrive exhausted even though you have simply been sitting on your behind for seven hours watching DirectTV. I caught a taxi to my hotel, checked in and ordered overpriced room service. When I finally fell asleep, I woke at 3 a.m. to the sound of a party going on in the apartment/condo building across from my 19th floor room. Lots of loud music, screaming and people dancing on the balcony.

I put a pillow over my head to shut out the noise. Then the PA system in the hotel began blaring "You may now return to your rooms. The fire alarm was false." WTF?

This set the tone for most of the trip. Each afternoon when I returned to my room after a conference session I heard someone down the hall from my room practicing the trombone. Who practices trombone in a hotel?

So I was relieved when the conference was over and I could head home. My last memory of Miami was dealing with the surly ticket counter people at United.

My coach flight home was long and uncomfortable. The DirectTV unit in my seat would only let me hear the music track and none of the dialogue. I discovered this after paying for it.

I almost kissed the floor when I got to Sea-Tac Airport.

Prologue: When I checked my credit card bill from the hotel in Miami, they had charged me for my room and for a complete stranger's room (another $900 in charges). The accounting person at the hotel corrected it but seemed put out about the whole thing,

Is it little wonder Dexter and the National Inquirer are based in Miami?

Night of the Living Beach Boys!

I watched the Grammy Awards last night just to remind myself how old I am and out of morbid fascination to see what the Beach Boys looked like on their 50th anniversary.

I'd seen Brian Wilson perform a few years back in what was billed as a Beach Boys concert. But he was the only Beach Boy there and he just kind of shuffled across the stage while much younger musicians covered the vocals, keyboards and guitar. At least there were four of them on stage at the Grammys. And although it wasn't overly embarrassing, it wasn't pretty.

But as geriatric as the Beach Boys looked, at least I knew who they were. I can't say the same for 99 percent of the musicians performing, presenting or nominated. If they hadn't wheeled out oldies like the Beach Boys, Paul McCartney, Glen Campbell and Tony Bennett, I wouldn't have recognized many of the 20 somethings hip hopping across the stages.

To his credit, Paul McCartney's voice still has it. I do miss the Beatles, though part of me is glad that John and George didn't survive to make a come back. I prefer to remember the Beatles the way they looked singing on top of their Apple Records studio for the album Let it Be.

As for the rest of the token aged musicians, Glen Campbell seemed sober, so that was something. Tony Bennett didn't seem like he knew where he was, but he sounded okay.

I am bummed that I miss Lady GaGa making her entrance on the Red Carpet being carried inside of what looked like an egg from the movie Alien. I did enjoy the blank look on her face when the camera zoomed in on her during the Beach Boys performance.

I was pleased to see the Civil Wars perform a 10 second version of their song Barton Hollow as a opener to Taylor Swift's performance. Judging from the crowd's response, I was the only one who recognized them. So I am not totally out of it.

I was pleased that 23-year old Adele walked away with six Grammys. Though until the Grammys, I had never heard of Adele. Great voice though.

To make up for my woeful lack of knowledge of the current music scene, I am listening to the Grammy playlist on Spotify. By this time next year I should still be woefully lacking in my knowledge of the current music scene. But I am hoping Paul Revere and the Raiders will perform.

On my ghost radar

Although I don't really believe in ghosts, I have always been a sucker for a good ghost story. I guess it is human nature to want to believe that we don't just end when we die. If I knew for certain this was it, I probably wouldn't spend so much time on the treadmill and I'd have that bacon cheeseburger I craved in my last whiny post.

But I digress.

Since I don't have an iPhone and only recently got a Blackberry that approaches smart phone status, I have been blissfully unaware of the multitude of apps out there. But Blackberry App world is slowly introducing me to the multitude of possibilities out there to waste time with my phone without actually using it as a telephone.

Enter the Ghost Radar app.

Ghost Radar is created by a company called Spud Pickles (a company name you have to trust) and claims to turn your smart phone into a ghost detector by measuring electromagnetic fields, vibrations, and sounds. In short, Ghost Radar claims to analyze the quantum flux. I have no idea what quantum flux is, but it sounds pretty paranormally.

When you fire up Ghost Radar, you see what looks like a radar screen with constantly changing numbers in three of four quadrants. The fourth quadrant occasionally shows what appear to be random letters being typed by apparently dyslexic spirits. Occasionally colored dots appear supposedly indicating paranormal activity. Blue means a little activity. Green means more and yellow means even more. Red means look over your shoulder.

The really eerie part of Ghost Radar is that out of the blue (or green, yellow or red) words pop up on the screen and are spoken with a voice synthesizer. This startled me at first because I downloaded the free version that comes with virtually no instructions. Apparently you have to pony up 99 cents to get the premium version that tells you how to use it. I had to Google the thing to learn that the words are supposedly triggered by entities using your smart phone as a translator.

Most of the time the thing just spouts gibberish not unlike you hear from strangers sitting on the bus. Mine just said "fish", followed by "couple." Then "lying." One could interpret this as someone lying about the couple of fish they caught. But who doesn't lie about catching fish.

Occasionally the thing spouts things that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. I was sitting on the train waiting for it to leave the station. I turned on the Ghost Radar. Almost immediately red dots appeared and the thing said "nuts." I was staring out the window at some graffiti that read "Hot nuts."

Coincidence you say. That night I took my phone into my daughter's room. After I read her stories and tucked her in, I sat in a rocking chair until she fell asleep. I turned on the Ghost Radar. Dots appeared. And the thing said, "Tim." I turned it off.

Okay, I think the thing just scans your phone and finds data. Of course my name would come up. But I've read other people's experience with the thing and some claim that it says the name of people in the room with them. It is pretty unnerving.

I've just asked the Ghost Radar how I should end this blog and I'm waiting for an answer. Wait for it...here's the first word: "recently." Okay. Wait, here's the next word: "sang." Hmmm. Oh, there are lots of red dots now. The last word is coming. This should be good: "butter."  The spirits have imparted these final words, "Recently sang butter."

Eerie.

Pound of flesh

You need to burn 3500 calories to lose a pound. In theory to lose a pound a week, you would need to reduce your calorie intake by 500 calories per day or burn an extra 500 calories a day. Of course, you can do a combination of the two (i.e. god forbid, reduce your calories and exercise more).

Why am I stating the obvious that you can find anywhere on the Internet or plastered on the headlines of magazines on the racks at the grocery store checkout? Because I have once again stepped up my self imposed efforts to lose weight. I say self imposed, but at my last check up, the doctor noted that my weight was up and suggested I might be "over fueling." Her suggestion was punctuated by the lab results. My cholesterol was up along with my blood sugar levels.

My immediate reaction was self loathing (not a healthy reaction). There was also an epiphany about self delusion. A few years ago after an examination to get life insurance I was forced to acknowledge that I was at an unhealthy weight. So I did something about it. I altered my diet and increased my exercise. I lost 52 pounds.

Once I was at my "healthy" weight and could wear jeans with a 31-inch waist and still breath, I assumed I could ease off the strict routine of diet and exercise. So I allowed myself occasional lapses of eating not so healthy food (i.e. stuff that actually tastes good). And I stopped weighing myself. Now granted, I didn't go crazy. I still worked out for an hour a day and avoided the worst food choices like fries, ribs, hamburgers, and pizza. But my workouts became lower energy. I just used the elliptical machines and stopped running on the treadmill.

Instead of passing up the constant snacks co-workers would leave out at work, I'd start nibbling here and there, especially as the holidays approached. I told myself a little bit here and there wouldn't hurt. I noticed my clothes weren't feeling as loose and I couldn't really wear jeans with a 31-inch waist anymore. Even my 32-inch waist pants were a bit snug. But I kept looking in the mirror and telling myself that I didn't look like I was gaining weight.

 That's when the doctor pointed out that I had gained 20 pounds by over fueling my body. This was about a week before Christmas. I kicked up the workouts a notch and started running again (which I hate with a passion). I also stopped snacking and cut out many of the remaining foods I like (bread being a major one). The good news is that I can once again wear my 31-inch waist pants and I've lost the 20 pounds.

 The bad news is all I really want to do is eat. And the temptation is there now that I have lost the weight again to just ease off. But the reality is that I'd just be back where I started. I want to be very clear that the weight thing isn't about vanity. Since men at my age are essentially invisible it doesn't really matter what I look like. It's more about my health and a desire to see my young children graduate from college.

 Though I have to say I am sick of reading about the top 20 worst things for you to eat which coincidentally are also on someone else's top 20 best things for you to eat list. I've come to the conclusion that nothing is good for you. Diet soda apparently can make you fatter. Non-fat products have more calories and bad things in them. Natural foods generally are kept natural through chemicals. Comfort foods comfort you by sending you into a food induced coma.

Being healthy sucks. I just want a bacon cheeseburger.

It's Groundhog's Day (again and again)

Once again groundhog Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow on Gobbler's Knob so we can expect six more weeks of winter (which near as I can tell pretty much coincides with the first day of spring). And once again I post a photo of my face Photoshopped on the face of a groundhog and post about Punxsutawney Phil.

I appear to be stuck in this point on the space time continuum somewhat like Bill Murray in the classic film Groundhog's Day.

Coincidently, I rewatched Lost in Translation last night. It is one of my favorite Bill Murray films. It has nothing to do with Groundhog's Day so I'm stuck in another digression.

Ironically, when I began writing this post, the title was "It's Groundhog's Day (again)." Turns out that I used that same title two years ago. So I really am stuck in the whole Groundhog's Day phenomenon of repeating myself.

I think age and having small children has something to do with it as well.

Regardless, here's to six more weeks of winter.

Knit picking

Someone gave my daughter a small knitting doll for her birthday in October. It was an odd little wooden spindle thing that had metal hooks on top that you wound the yarn around to theoretically knot things. The instructions were vague at best and there was no way my five year old was going to figure them out (especially since she can't read). So I set out to master the damned thing.

After several failed attempts, I was rewarded with a tube of knitted yarn shooting disturbingly out of the bottom of the doll. The useless instruction provide no information, however, on what you are supposed to do with the knitted tube once you produce it. So cool as it was to knit something this way, it left me curious about how one actually knits something with real knitting needles that don't involve yarn shooting out of a wooden doll's butt.

So I bought myself a "teach yourself to knit" kit and began to teach myself how to turn a ball of yarn into something useful. Fortunately the instructions were a bit better than the ones for the knitting doll that poops out yarn. I sat down with my needles and a ball of yarn while I was in the playroom watching my children and started following the lessons in the book that came with the kit. I felt pretty smug when I "cast on" the first few stitches. It took me awhile to realize that this was only the prelude to knitting. The next lesson was actually learning the "knit" stitch. This was followed by the "purl" stitch.

For days all I did was practice casting on, knitting and purling. Finally I took the plunge and started actually knitting something. And the simplest thing to knit seemed to be a scarf. So that's what I'm doing, knitting a red scarf for my 5-year old daughter because she wanted a red scarf and she is very forgiving when it comes to what it will look like when it is finished.

I have been working on it for about a week now. And although my speed is picking up as I work on it, I still don't anticipate it will be done for a couple of months. But I have to tell you, as unmanly as knitting a scarf sounds, it is a pretty therapeutic activity, especially when you are doing something like watching your kids fight or watching television.

I watched the NFC and AFC championship games yesterday while knitting and the irony of watching football and knitting did not escape me. Though I remember watching football great Rosey Grier on talk shows openly confess that he knitted in his spare time. And at the time he was a pretty hefty and aggressive lineman. So that gives me some cover.

I also knitted while I was watching the first episode of Spartacus, Vengeance on Starz last night. And if you aren't familiar with the Spartacus mini-series, it is about as violent and pornographic as you can get on mainstream (albeit premium channel) television. The only real downside to knitting and watching football of gladiator shows is remembering whether the last stitch was a knit or a purl. But in the long run, my daughter won't know or care.

Once I've completed the scarf, I may tackle knitting a hat. But I'll probably have to knit another scarf. When my 3-year old son saw I was knitting one for my daughter he demanded I knit him a blue one. Maybe I knit one for his birthday. That will give me about a year to work on it.

Snow Buddha

Some would say the Buddha is meditating on the state of enlightenment. I kind of think he was wishing he was in Hawaii instead of in my back yard. I know that is where I wished I was. Well, maybe not Hawaii. Maybe some place in Mexico or the Caribbean. I don't mean to diss on Hawaii, but I wasn't overly impressed when I visited there several years ago. Apparently the Aloha spirit only applies to mainstream tourist parts of the state. If you wander off the beaten track you risk being beaten by the locals who pretty much resent everything about the tourists but their money.

But I digress.

Two days of snow has fallen and is now in the process of melting. And melting snow is about as depressing as a Christmas tree the day after Christmas. It has lost most of it's appeal.

I stayed home the second day of the storm. It snowed the entire day. Fortunately we didn't lose power so we stayed relatively warm except for the hour or so we ventured out to play in the snow and take a photo of the Buddha hunkered down in a snow bank. My kids were thrilled. Though it wasn't the good kind of snow that you can bring a Frosty to life from. This snow was powdery and icy.

After several hours of sitting inside watching children's video tapes and breaking up fights, cabin fever began to set in. I began to really understand the Donner Party.

There is a certain irony in the fact that we feel trapped and isolated when we can't jump in our cars and drive to the local supermarket. Forget that we have telephones, the Internet, television, DVD's, MP3 players and countless other diversions. Human nature is to dwell on the one thing they can't do in a sea of choices.

I would not have done well had I been born pre-20th century.

To show my independent spirit, however, I fired up the grill and cooked steaks and chicken on my deck. Fortunately the snow had stopped falling by that time so all I had to contend with was the freezing temperatures and my kids throwing snow at me while I turned the meat.

But now I am back in the office watching the aftermath of the storm melting and morphing into gray slush on the streets below. Hopefully this will be the only snow storm of our winter in Seattle.

But again, at least we don't live in Chicago. What would we have to talk about except for unseasonably warm weather if it wasn't snowing.

Winter of discontent

In the land of rain, snow is the great boogeyman. We cringe at the frozen cousin of our normally liquid nemesis. A single flake can shut down schools and reroute buses. A snow storm is the stuff of legends here and the news media scrambles to give them names like Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon.

Everyone here says they know how to drive in snow and the problem is everyone else. The reality is no one here knows how to drive in snow beyond pushing the button on their all wheel drive.

If you really know how to drive in snow, you don't. Because the main rule is don't try to drive up or down a hill. And everything in Seattle is either on top of a hill or at the bottom of one.

Since I work for public transit and take a train into work every day, I don't get the luxury of staying at home because I am snowed in. I can walk to the train station from my home, so unless the trains aren't running, I have no valid excuse to stay home. If the trains aren't running when it comes time to go home I will truly regret my dedication.

I am also regretting my decision to watch a movie last night about mutant cannibals living in the subway tunnels in New York City. It is just a little too similar to what it is like being on a train platform with a bunch of snowbound commuters panicking that they may be stranded in downtown Seattle. I checked the lunchroom refrigerator to get an inventory of what lunches have been left in there in case I'm forced to spend the night and need to ration food supplies. If that happens, there is a jar of olives in there that has my name on it.

I do wish I could be at home with my wife and kids building a snow man and enjoying the fun side of Snomageddon instead of watching buses jack knifing on the roads outside my office window. Chances are the rains will return by Friday and I'll be lucky if I can put together a slush puppy.

Oh well, at least I don't live in Chicago.

I'm with stupid

The heck with news about the economy, war and disaster, I honed in on breaking news on Yahoo about  a "Man with incredibly weird name arrested in Wisconsin." Now granted, the man, Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop, did have a stupid name. But it wasn't as if it was given to him. He changed it from Jeffrey Drew Wilschke.

The man was arrested not because he had a stupid name, but for being drunk, possessing drugs and carrying a concealed weapon. But the real stupid thing about this stupid story was that the journalist (and I use this term loosely) goes off on a tangent about a study out of Canada that shows people with stupid names don't do well in life.

I suppose Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop would probably agree. I can only imagine what he goes through trying to make an airplane reservation on line. Though I don't imagine Zopittybop-Bop-Bop has ever been out of Wisconsin.

I would have never read this story if it hadn't have popped up on Facebook as an article my nephew had just read. So I have to marvel at how the Internet has truly changed my life. A few years ago I would have had to had read about this while standing in line at the supermarket staring at the headlines on the National Enquirer. But I might have missed it even then while being distracted by a story about a boy trapped in refrigerator eating his own arm or a photo of Elvis appearing on a meat locker in Australia (happy belated birthday BTW to Elvis wherever you are).

Speaking of stupid, I wonder what Harold Camping is up to these days.

Another 365 days

Technically 2012 is another 366 days since it is a leap year. But in the grand scheme of things, a year is just an artificial constraint established by mankind to keep track of how long they have before they expire. And come to think of it, it would be nice if we came with an expiration date so we'd less likely fritter away time like we have all of it in the world or horde it for some indistinct time in the future when we think we can enjoy it better.

I imagine there are a great deal of television programs and movies I wouldn't watch if I knew exactly how much time I actually have left. 

But I digress.

I used to do a year in retrospect blog post with snippets of various posts I have written throughout the year. But that was back when I still fancied myself a blog superstar and still harbored the fantasy that I was a hair away from being discovered and going big time. I'm not sure what big time in the blog world actually is, but I was sure it was my destiny.

Ironically, if I were to look at my 2011 year in blogging statistically, I would discover that my most read post was A great authoritative new and positive blog post about you that you can retweet for free. It was merely a semi-scathing review of a book about social media marketing and the top ten words you should or shouldn't tweet to get reposted. And I'll be damned if using those words apparently worked. The post outdistanced my most read post ever about whether or not clams were really happy.

Now I've come full circle to my original comment in this post about people frittering away time like we have all of it in the world. Google, the primary way people end up reading my posts, is a perfect example of people with way too much perceived time on their hands.

One thing I didn't achieve in 2011 was writing my thousandth post. I fell 25 posts short of achieving that milestone. I'm thinking if I time it right, I could write my thousandth post on February 29 and see if I can cause a rift in the space time continuum. Or at the very least I can hope to cause a minor skin abrasion. I doubt it will get the headlines that a chimp claiming to be Tarzan's Cheetah did when it died.

Oh well, one must at least aspire before they expire.

The Cheetah Conspiracy

A Florida animal sanctuary has reported that the chimp who played Cheetah in the 1930s era Tarzan movies has died, but are they really trying to make a monkey out of us? Some experts are disputing the animal sanctuary's claim since they have no documentation that the chimp really was "the" Cheetah. Plus, if it was the same chimp, that would make it more than 80-years old when it died. Chimps rarely live more than 50 or 60 years.

The director of the animal sanctuary claims Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller gave Cheetah to the sanctuary around 1960 but all of the records of the donation were destroyed in a 1995 fire.

How convenient.

 Adding fuel to the fraudulent flames are some Hollywood accounts that suggest a chimpanzee by the name of Mr. Jiggs played Cheetah but died in 1938.

 So who was this mystery chimp who pretended to be Cheetah all of these years? And why would Tarzan call his chimp Cheetah anyway when his name for his son was boy? Why wouldn't he have followed the same naming conventions and call his chimp, "chimp?" And if Tarzan had kept a pet Cheetah, would he have named it "chimp?" And technically, Tarzan was supposedly raised by apes, not chimps, so shouldn't he have hung out with a young gorilla? Or would that have caused a jungle scandal? Which begs the question as to what was the true relationship between Tarzan and Cheetah? Did it change drastically when Jane came on the scene?

All of these questions will remain unanswered. Because whether or not the Florida chimp was the real Cheetah, the chimp who played him has definitely gone to that big tree house in the sky.

And chimps can't talk even if it wasn't dead.

Christmas spirits?

We just got back from a weekend in Victoria, B.C., the capitol of British Columbia, Canada. It's located on Vancouver Island and is about 2 1/2 hours from Seattle via ferry (in our case the Victoria Clipper). We went to celebrate my wife's birthday and enjoy the decorations the city sports for the holidays.  We stayed at the Chateau Victoria Hotel.

The first day there, we went to the second floor to use the newly remodeled indoor pool. While walking through the hallway to the pool, we all distinctly heard the squawk of a parrot. There were some offices on the floor so I assumed the hotel kept a pet parrot and thought nothing about it.

A few days later, we were in the lobby and I noticed a framed article on the walk about a Victorian mansion that had been torn down to make way for the Chateau Victoria Hotel. The mansion had been the home of an eccentric recluse named Victoria Jane Wilson. She grew up in the mansion and apparently rarely left it. Her only companions were a variety of birds including a parrot named Louis. When Victoria died, she left her estate to Louis with instructions that he was to live in the mansion until he died. The mansion became known as the Parrot House.


Parrots, however, live a long time. Some life more than a hundred years. And Louis was one of them. But greedy developers eventually figured out a loophole to get Louis out of the house and he died in the late 70s at the home of the mansion's former gardener. The mansion was torn down and the Chateau Victoria was built. And the rooftop restaurant was named the Parrot House at first, but was recently renamed View 18.

The story made me think about the parrot we'd heard. So when we were in the hotel shuttle headed back to the Clipper terminal for our return trip home, I asked the driver if there was a parrot kept at the hotel. He shook his head and said no, but he suggested it might be a ghost and brought up the story of Louis. 

 When I returned home, I did a Google search about the Parrot House and found a few articles recapping what I already known, but no stories of a ghost parrots. Though I did run across a few accounts of employees at the hotel thinking they encountered Victoria Jane Wilson. 

 So who knows what we heard on the second floor of the Chateau Victoria Hotel. But the next time I stay there, I'm bringing crackers.

In god particle's we trust

A headline caught my eye the other day online: ‘God particle’: Scientists close in on evidence of Higgs Boson existence. Apparently, the Higgs boson particle, named after U.K. physicist Peter Higgs, was created at the beginning of the universe and in theory allows other particles to have mass (substance, not a religious ceremony...though you would think a god particle would be open to the whole mass concept).

 According to the article in the Washington Post, Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research have narrowed where the particle can be found and hope to eventually prove that it exists so it will no longer be the equivalent of the Tooth Fairy to physicists. Apparently the hints found in their research could lead to proof of the god particle's existence by next October (which could very well coincide with another doomsday prediction of religious nut job Harold Camping).

Apparently,  finding the Higgs Boson would be the "discovery of the century" in particle physics, a "never-before-seen subatomic particle long thought to be a fundamental building block of the universe." I wonder if the first scientist to actually discover the particle will be surrounded with news cameras and be asked what he or she will do next. I kind of hope they'll say, "I'm going to Disneyland!"

I doubt this will happen, because I don't get the sense physicists have much in the way of senses of humor. Regardless, I'm not certain what discovering the god particle will mean other than confirming the basic principles of standard particle theory (I know I've been losing sleep over this). A more interesting question is what it would mean if scientists determine that the particle doesn't exist after building a $10 billion dollar lab to find it. I imagine their response at that point will be, "that sucks." That would be my response.

Why do Christmas lights burn out when they aren't being used and other mysteries of the holiday season

I am not a handy man. I'll get that off my less than hairy chest right up front. I would just as soon pay someone else to be handy for me, such as hang Christmas lights on my gutters. But I am not an overly wealthy man, either. So I must hang Christmas lights myself.

And I am not trying to suggest that hanging Christmas lights on your gutters is a complicated task, either. It just requires a great deal of logistical planning and manipulation of ladders and hooks and lights that I'd just as soon not engage in. I am not even sure how or why stringing lights on the outside of your house became closely associated with the birth of the baby Jesus. It's not as though the Bible said something like "Behold they wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manager beneath some pretty bitching LED icicle lights."

I'm pretty certain the Bible never uses the phrase "pretty bitching" anywhere. At least not in the King James version. Though I'm not a Bible reading man either.

I hang lights on the outside of my house not because of any religious significance or symbolism, but because my neighbors do and I have kids. Peer pressure and parenthood are two major forces in life to reckon with.

Regardless, I spent the better part of two and a half hours on Sunday on my roof stringing white, LED icicle lights along my gutters. This was my second year decorating with lights. Before that we lived in a two-story house with a roof so high off the ground there was no way I could even reach the gutters with my ladder let alone string lights. Last year I dutifully moved a step ladder along the gutter pushing on small plastic clips designed for stringing Christmas lights. It was a finger  (and mind) numbing experience. When I took the lights down last year, I left the hooks up thinking it would save me tons of time this year.

Not.

I decided to just climb up on my roof this year to save the hassle of moving the ladder six or seven times along the gutter to place the lights. So I hoisted up about five sets of lights onto the roof, plugged the first set into an outdoor outlet and began pushing the light wires onto the plastic hooks. But I discovered that a year of being out in the elements had rendered the small plastic hooks extremely brittle. So as I pushed the wire into them, 90 percent of the hooks snapped off.

So, I went back down the ladder and retrieved a box of new hooks I'd purchased but hadn't used the year before. As I'm climbing back up on the roof, I notice that the gutters are pretty full of leaves. I decided that as long as I was up there I might as well clean the gutters. So back down the ladder for gloves and a trowel. I went back on the roof and slid along the edge of my roof scooping out soggy piles of leaves and debris.

Even in real life I digress a great deal and branch off on tangents from my original tasks just as I digress here in my blog on a multitude of topics. But I digress.

With gutters clean, I got back to the lights. The first set went up fairly smoothly. Then I plugged the second set into the first one. One section of the set didn't light up.

Okay, these are the same lights that were working fine when I packed them up a year ago. They have been sitting untouched in a plastic bin in a closet in our basement until I carried them upstairs after Thanksgiving. How is it possible for any of them to burn out when they weren't being used? And what ever happened to the promise most lights have about the others staying lit when one burned out? I had a two-foot section that wasn't lighting up.

So I grab all of the remaining lights sets and climb down the ladder and sit in the hallway with a bag of spare bulbs determined to find the burned out bulb and then to test the other light sets just in case before going back on the roof. I start swapping out light bulbs one at a time (missing the old screw in type that have been replaced by these pop in mini-bulbs). When I get to the last bulb, I discover the reason it is not working. It has snapped off. I replace the bulb and all of the lights light up.

I plug in the next string and sure enough, another two-foot section doesn't work. I check all to be sure there isn't just another broken one and I find a single unattached wire dangling from the section of lights that aren't working. But not being the handy man type, I have no idea where the loose wire should be attached, so I chuck that string of lights into the garbage.

I plug in the last string of lights and once again a two-foot section of lights doesn't come on. I inspect each one and discover one that looks black around the base. I swap it with a good bulb and all of the lights come on. Maybe I am handy after all. I declare myself a genius to my three-year old son who is playing with a miniature nutcracker and a sheet of bubble wrap. He ignores me.

Before I go back to the roof, I ask my wife if she'd like me to clean the skylights while I'm up there. She hands me a squeegee and a bottle of Windex and tells me not to break my neck. I climb back up the ladder with the light sets, the squeegee and the Windex.

I clean our three skylights without tripping and falling through them. While walking from skylight to skylight, I discover what appears to be a large beef rib bone on the roof. I stare at it like one of the monkeys in the opening scenes of 2001 A Space Odyssey and then toss it into my front yard.

Finally I return to stringing lights and waving at my neighbors while silently cursing them for forcing me to dangle on my roof just so mine won't be the only non-festive house on the block. I place the last string of lights along the roof line and discover I am about two-feet short of having enough lights to reach the other side of the house. But since I am not a handy man, this is good enough for me, because something tells me if I go buy more lights I will find myself trapped in a tear in the time space continuum hanging lights forever.

I climb down the ladder, put away all my stuff and admire the handwork of a non-handy man. Later that evening, after a matinee of Happy Feet 2 and dinner at a local dive, my family huddles in front of our dark house while I fumble with the extension cord to light up the house. I finally get it into the socket and my LED icicles blaze brightly enough to land a 747.

My five year old daughter stares at the lights for about 5 seconds and then looks up in the sky and says, "Look papa, the moon!"

It was one of my proudest moments.

The Timbuktu stops here

It figures that I write about time and then I run out of it. This is particularly ironic considering the infinite nature of time and space. But it doesn't seem to be so infinite when you are trying to cook a turkey and explain to a five year old what happened to its head and feathers. It's kind of one of those Soylent Green moments.

But I digress.

When I was a kid, the time around the holidays ticked away at a painfully slow pace, especially during that period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now I blink and a week passes. I suppose it is because all I had to do as a kid was wait and all I seem to do as an adult is try to keep up.

Before we had kids, I used to plan trips around the holidays to avoid some of the madness. I got engaged to my wife on Christmas morning on a cruise ship docked near St. Thomas. A video of a fireplace crackled on the stateroom television. Now that was a Christmas.

Christmas now means perching myself on a ladder trying to stretch icicle lights along the gutter and praying they all light when I plug them in. I have resisted buying one of those inflatable Santa's for the front lawn. There is only so much stuff you compromise on before you have to admit you've become white trash. Besides, I find the sight of the inflatable things depressing when you see them deflated like road kill during the day.

But I digress yet again.

I'm not sure why you race through time faster as you age, glancing frantically over your shoulder to see what you missed. It's probably because you've crested a hill in the spacetime continuum and are headed down the slope with worn brake pads.

I'm also not sure what would happen if you just stopped. Or maybe I do know what would happen if you just stop to avoid the inevitable destination of Timbuktu. But perhaps it won't be Timbuktu at the bottom of the hill. Most likely it's just another hill.

Life is funny like that.

Time traveler

There was no football game on when I was working out the other day so I was forced to watch PBS. Fortunately it was one of their rare non-fund raiser days and they had a program on that wasn't about cheese making or men sitting around in a circle beating drums trying to find their inner children. It was Nova -- The Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time.

 I have to admit, I am a sucker for theories on time. So as I climbed/jogged to nowhere on the elliptical machine, I was engrossed in the program that attempted to explain in semi-layperson's language what time was (not what time it is, because does anyone really know what time it is).

The most fascinating thing about the program was that it debunked our standard perception of what time is. We always describe time as passing or as Steve Miller sang, "slipping, slipping, slipping into the future." But according to Einstein, time is more like space. It flows in all directions at once.

The other thing the program pointed out was that time and space co-exist in something known as the spacetime continuum. So where we are in space affects where we are in time. The program described the concept of "now" as being a single slice of the spacetime continuum. But no one's slice of spacetime is the same, so everyone's experience of now is different. Apparently an alien living in another galaxy experiences a "now" that is 200 years ago in my time.

And the speed at which we move also impacts time. When something isn't in motion (i.e. slumped in front of the television) time clicks away at a normal speed. Scientists confirmed this by taking two Atomic clocks synced to the exact same time, placing one on a jetliner and leaving the other one on the ground. The lucky clock was flown around the world on the jet. When it returned it was no longer synced to the clock that had stayed still. It was a few microseconds behind.

Physicists also believe that, in theory, going backward and forward in time is possible. To travel to the future, all you have to do is hop in a space ship and fly near a black hole and hang out for a few minutes. When you return to earth, 50 years will have passed and you will have only aged 5 minutes.

Travelling to the past is a bit more complicated. First you need to find a worm hole (an hole in a slice of the spacetime continuum that connects to another slice in the spacetime continuum). Then you jump into the hole kind of like Alice chasing the white rabbit and bam, you are in a slice of the past. Unfortunately you are at the mercy of the worm hole and don't have much control on where or when in the past you end up. My luck, I'd wind up back in the 70s again.

Physicists are skeptical about whether or not you could really travel to the past. They base this on the lack of visitors from the future milling about taking photos of your backyard and the dilemma of people travelling into the past and meeting themselves and advising against eating that marked down Sushi from the supermarket. I kind of pooh pooh these things as proof that time travelers don't exist. For one, if you are travelling around in time I don't think you'd broadcast it. I'm sure there are plenty of people in mental institutions that made this mistake. As for creating a paradox by meeting yourself and altering time, I think the many worlds theory of quantum physics could counter that one.

The Nova program indicated that scientists grapple with the question of how time flows when it is actually just one massive component of the spacetime continuum that makes up our universe. My guess would be that time doesn't flow, we do. Just living our lives makes us time travelers. We are passing through the slices of time, not riding in a river of it.

I would also conjecture that what people think are ghosts or spirits could simply be layers of the same slice of time overlapping giving us snippets of other times and time travelers. This wasn't discussed on the PBS program. It was just something I thought of in my own unscientific way without a mathematical formula to back it up.

Regardless, I think it is time to go.

Here in my car

I have never been one to be obsessed by cars. They have always been a basic source of transportation for me and that is all. I work in public transportation for heck's sake. But on a recent trip to Boise to visit my aged mother I encountered my perfect car.

I always rent a car when I go to Boise because it is not a public transportation friendly environment for visitors. But it is car friendly and having grown up there, it is easy for me to navigate. And Boise's airport is one of the simplest places to fly in and out of. I think it is because people rarely escape Boise if they grow up there so they don't travel much.

So basically when you step off the plane in Boise you claim your bags right next to the car rental counters and then step out the door and there are the car rental lots. I checked in at Hertz expecting to get my compact Nissan. The clerk did try to get me to upgrade for $10 more a day to an SUV, but I didn't have any plans to go 4-wheeling, so I declined. She had me sign the usual waivers and then handed me a key fob and rental packet and I was off.

It wasn't until I walked up to the assigned stall that I realized I had been given a full-sized car. It was a Dodge Charger. I didn't know much about a Dodge Charger other than they are considered muscle cars. This one was had a nice metallic gray finish and had the words "Hemi" emblazoned on it. I have no idea what a Hemi is, but I know it is man talk for "big engine."

I looked at the key fob I'd been given and sure enough it confirmed I had been given a Dodge Charger for the price of an economy car. I looked at the trunk and there was no key hole. Then I looked at the key fob and punched a button that showed a trunk opening and sure enough the trunk popped obediently open. I threw in my luggage and then went to the door and stepped into a leather interior that screamed "you are entering Nirvana."

I looked to put the key into the ignition and was startled to discover there was no key and no ignition. Then I saw the video screen flash, "Step on brake and push start button." I did so and another touch video screen lit up with various icons (map, radio, temperature, etc.). I felt around under the seat and found buttons that raised, lowered and moved the seat forward and back.

I punched on the radio and looked at the channel selection on the video screen. I selected Satellite and then scanned through various genre's of music. Then I put the car in reverse and watched a view of the space behind the car appear on the video screen. I backed up and listened to the Hemi hum.

Various sensors lit up on the side mirrors if a car approached in my blindside. And a digital read out of my speed appeared above the leather steering wheel. I punched in navigation and a map appeared showing where I was. I could also type in an address and the GPS would map a route for me.

I spent my three days in Boise never wanting to leave my Dodge Charger. The rental car attendant had to pry the key fob out of my hand and offer me a tissue to dab at my eyes when I dropped it off.

I never knew such cars existed.