Every four years the state of New Mexico selects a new governor. Unfortunately, it is that time of year again. No one in the state will receive any peace until this election is over. The way the two candidates are acting, you would almost suspect that someone in this state cared.
Is it just my imagination or has our current governor, Bill Richardson, set a new record for being out of the state during his term? For a while he was campaigning for the presidency, but ever since he lost in the 2008 presidential primaries you get the general impression the governor has become bored with us. As I write this, Governor Richardson is in Cuba on a trade mission. Since I have no idea what this trade mission could possibly be, let me make a wild guess. New Mexico will trade green chili for pineapple, the cargo ships can sail up the Rio Grande.
It really doesn’t matter why our governor is gone, what really matters is that if the state can get along without a governor during all the time Wandering Bill has spent out of the state, I question whether the state really needs a governor at all.
Richardson is constitutionally barred from running again, so we have two new candidates. Frankly, I’m not happy with either. While both are probably very nice people, and undoubtedly mean well, I’m already tired of both of them. And I’m very tired of their advertising campaigns.
The Republican candidate seems to be claiming that the secret identity of our current Lt. Governor is actually Bill Richardson. This appears to be unlikely since I have actually seen the two of them together. Not to mention that the governor and the Lt. Governor don’t really seem to like each other. Meanwhile, our Lt. Governor, a Democrat, seems to be suggesting that every problem in the state can be solved by giving our public schools more money. While I generally support public education (I are an edjaKator!), I think giving public schools more money is about as dangerous as giving a wino a $100 bill. That much booze all at once could kill him.
I have previously suggested an alternative method of selecting elected officials, and while I still believe my idea was brilliant, the only result was that I received an even larger volume of hate mail than normal. Evidently, we will just have to have an election, and since it seems inevitable, can we please, please elect someone else?
Would any of you like to be our next governor? I volunteer to be your campaign manager. I’m serious; I have a foolproof, and utterly brilliant, plan to elect someone, anyone, governor. All we have to do is legally change your name to “None of the Above.”
Can you imagine the campaign slogans? “Who can solve our state’s financial problems? None of the Above! Who can bring more jobs to New Mexico? None of the Above!” The irony of this advertising is that it is both effective and still strangely truthful.
As your campaign manager, I will take out ads in newspapers all over the state: “None of the Above will be coming to your town to campaign for Governor.” The beauty of this idea is that not only do you not actually have to go anywhere or actually do anything, but if one of your political opponents goes anywhere, they can be accused of breaking a campaign promise.
Similarly, it is almost impossible for a newspaper to make a negative comment about your qualifications for the job. What could they print? That None of the Above is unqualified to be governor? That doesn’t even sound like they are talking about you.
This should be the easiest campaign in New Mexico history. Since far fewer than half of the registered voters ever show up at the polls, any statistician would conclude that the majority of the voters support None of the Above. And as for financing the election, how hard can it be to get someone to promise to send money to None of the Above?
If you’re ready to be our next governor, I’m ready to hear from None of the Above.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Proudly Geek
Yesterday, two computer science majors were walking across the university campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"
The other computer geek replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."
The first geek nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit you anyway."
Alright, I’m lying; no woman has ever said anything like that to a computer geek. I can tell this joke because I’m a computer geek, too. Besides teaching history, I still work with computers and before I went to work at the university, I ran computer stores for a living.
I have lost track of one of the strangest men I have ever known, and I would really like to know what happened to him. Almost 30 years ago, I had a computer store just off the beach in Galveston, Texas. This is a great place to have a store for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the constant traffic roller skating or walking back and forth along the seawall.
One of my favorite customers was Mike R., who was the perfect example of a computer geek. Mike was about as wide as he was tall, and maybe the most slovenly person I have ever met until I raised a couple of teenage boys. He wore the same three piece suit every day and chain smoked cigarettes. I vividly remember Mike digging around in the pockets of his suit until he finally produced a wrinkled and wadded ball that vaguely resembled a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls. Mike would pound the pack flat on a table and pull out a cigarette about as twisted and crooked as a politician’s conscience.
Mike, of course, was usually covered with ashes, flakes of tobacco and the remains of his last several meals, but he was immaculate compared to his car. I cannot remember what make of car it was but I do know it was a four door and the back window was missing. The entire back seat was filled level with trash, mainly empty cigarette packs, Styrofoam boxes from McDonald’s and Twinky wrappers. As Mike drove down the street, some of the trash freely flowed out the back window.
Okay, Mike was never featured in GQ magazine, but in the world of computers he was a Greek God. The only man I have ever known who could just sit down and write Z-80 assembly code as simply as an ordinary mortal could produce a grocery list. Mike was a genius, and regularly, and without cost, solved some of our most complex computer problems.
One summer day, Mike was in the store playing with the new Fortune 32:16 Unix Computer we had on display while about a half dozen geeks-in-training were comparing the Atari 400 to the Commodore Pet. Most computer stores back then were exclusively male clubhouses and mine was no exception, at least until the door opened and an extraordinarily attractive young woman came in. She was tall, made even taller by her roller skates, and was wearing what I think may have been a self-knitted bikini.
“Can one of you help me with my camera?” she asked. She was holding a camera, and no, it was not a digital camera. Remember, this is almost 30 years ago.
“Sure.” Mike said as he walked over. Actually, as I remember it, he was the only one of who answered her. Or moved. The rest of us watched, intently, but no one else did anything constructive for the next 10 minutes as Mike removed the batteries, cleaned the oxidized contacts, and reinserted the batteries. Now that the camera worked again, the young lady thanked him and skated out the door and down the boardwalk.
I walked over to Mike and said, “Wow, Mike, you don’t see something like that every day.”
“No,” he answered. “That was a neat camera.”
The other computer geek replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."
The first geek nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit you anyway."
Alright, I’m lying; no woman has ever said anything like that to a computer geek. I can tell this joke because I’m a computer geek, too. Besides teaching history, I still work with computers and before I went to work at the university, I ran computer stores for a living.
I have lost track of one of the strangest men I have ever known, and I would really like to know what happened to him. Almost 30 years ago, I had a computer store just off the beach in Galveston, Texas. This is a great place to have a store for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the constant traffic roller skating or walking back and forth along the seawall.
Mike, of course, was usually covered with ashes, flakes of tobacco and the remains of his last several meals, but he was immaculate compared to his car. I cannot remember what make of car it was but I do know it was a four door and the back window was missing. The entire back seat was filled level with trash, mainly empty cigarette packs, Styrofoam boxes from McDonald’s and Twinky wrappers. As Mike drove down the street, some of the trash freely flowed out the back window.
Okay, Mike was never featured in GQ magazine, but in the world of computers he was a Greek God. The only man I have ever known who could just sit down and write Z-80 assembly code as simply as an ordinary mortal could produce a grocery list. Mike was a genius, and regularly, and without cost, solved some of our most complex computer problems.
One summer day, Mike was in the store playing with the new Fortune 32:16 Unix Computer we had on display while about a half dozen geeks-in-training were comparing the Atari 400 to the Commodore Pet. Most computer stores back then were exclusively male clubhouses and mine was no exception, at least until the door opened and an extraordinarily attractive young woman came in. She was tall, made even taller by her roller skates, and was wearing what I think may have been a self-knitted bikini.
“Can one of you help me with my camera?” she asked. She was holding a camera, and no, it was not a digital camera. Remember, this is almost 30 years ago.
“Sure.” Mike said as he walked over. Actually, as I remember it, he was the only one of who answered her. Or moved. The rest of us watched, intently, but no one else did anything constructive for the next 10 minutes as Mike removed the batteries, cleaned the oxidized contacts, and reinserted the batteries. Now that the camera worked again, the young lady thanked him and skated out the door and down the boardwalk.
I walked over to Mike and said, “Wow, Mike, you don’t see something like that every day.”
“No,” he answered. “That was a neat camera.”
Saturday, August 14, 2010
The Students Are Coming! The Students Are Coming!
The fall semester is about to start-- the signs are all about me: increased traffic around town, the parking lots are getting busier, and every now and then someone shows up at my door wanting permission to take a course that is full. And if the students are like swallows returning to Capistrano, then the only appropriate tired old metaphor for the faculty would be a dog returning to its vomit.
Welcoming back old students is fun, and meeting the freshmen even more so. Every year, it seems like you are meeting students who are completely different from you, but by the end of the year, they seem perfectly normal. Consider the following:
Has anyone ever gone to a school and not complained about the parking? And when they did complain, invariably someone will answer, “If you think the parking is bad here, you should have seen what it was like at the University of Old Fart; we paid twice as much to park three times as far, and we were glad to do it.”
What an idiotic argument. The administration tells us to respect the needs of our students while simultaneously treating them like a resource to strip mine. Admin, here is a hint for you: if you really want to treat students like customers, then you should realize two rules. First, if your customer thinks something is a problem, it is a problem. Secondly, no one ever won an argument with a customer.
We overcharge for food, parking, books, and fees. Since the tuition money pays for my salary, I firmly believe we are undercharging, or at the very least giving the student a hell of a bargain. As a whole, the university doesn’t seem to take the student very seriously, in this the students help by being as passive and non-complaining as church mice. They get angry, but they rarely complain.
The university will probably get away with this attitude, after all, it’s not like there are several other universities in the state that our students could… Oh, crap!
There is something else the students frequently want this time of year: advising. For years, I used to give all students the same advise, “Sex and real estate. Get all you can while you’re young.” In today’s tough economy, however, I think more is needed, and like the very best teachers I will use a parable.
It was graduation day and four new alumnae were walking across the campus for the last time. Suddenly, they found a strange machine blocking their path. There were rotating gears, flashing lights, and a steady hum coming from the device. The first student, who had just received his degree in physics, walked up to the machine and said, “How does it work?
The second student, with a new degree in engineering, said, “What does it do?”
The student with a new accounting degree looked at the machine and asked, “How much does it cost?”
The last student, with a degree in history, looked at the other three students and said, “Would you like fries with that?”
Welcoming back old students is fun, and meeting the freshmen even more so. Every year, it seems like you are meeting students who are completely different from you, but by the end of the year, they seem perfectly normal. Consider the following:
- The freshmen today are about the same age as Harry Potter.
- They have never known a world without a GPS system, Seinfeld, or Windows.
- Clarence Thomas has always been on the Supreme Court.
- They have always had caller ID on their cell phone.
- They watch TV, but usually not on a TV.
- Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.
What an idiotic argument. The administration tells us to respect the needs of our students while simultaneously treating them like a resource to strip mine. Admin, here is a hint for you: if you really want to treat students like customers, then you should realize two rules. First, if your customer thinks something is a problem, it is a problem. Secondly, no one ever won an argument with a customer.
We overcharge for food, parking, books, and fees. Since the tuition money pays for my salary, I firmly believe we are undercharging, or at the very least giving the student a hell of a bargain. As a whole, the university doesn’t seem to take the student very seriously, in this the students help by being as passive and non-complaining as church mice. They get angry, but they rarely complain.
The university will probably get away with this attitude, after all, it’s not like there are several other universities in the state that our students could… Oh, crap!
There is something else the students frequently want this time of year: advising. For years, I used to give all students the same advise, “Sex and real estate. Get all you can while you’re young.” In today’s tough economy, however, I think more is needed, and like the very best teachers I will use a parable.
It was graduation day and four new alumnae were walking across the campus for the last time. Suddenly, they found a strange machine blocking their path. There were rotating gears, flashing lights, and a steady hum coming from the device. The first student, who had just received his degree in physics, walked up to the machine and said, “How does it work?
The second student, with a new degree in engineering, said, “What does it do?”
The student with a new accounting degree looked at the machine and asked, “How much does it cost?”
The last student, with a degree in history, looked at the other three students and said, “Would you like fries with that?”
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Is the Chevrolet Volt a Smart Car?
After billions of dollars in Federal subsidies, years of research, and enough media hype to sell the Brooklyn Bridge; this is the year of the electric car. Twenty years after the first announcement, Chevrolet is selling its first electric car; the Volt.
The Volt is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that has such dramatically lower emissions that every single time you drive it, the number of baby seals in the world increases dramatically. The car can go forty miles on fully charged batteries, not bad when you consider that 75% of Americans have a daily commute of 33 miles or less.
Recognizing the future of electric cars, the New York Times stated that the electric car has long been recognized as "ideal" because it was cleaner, quieter and much more economical than gasoline-powered cars.
I need one of these cars. I live about 3 miles from the university, about 2 miles from the grocery store and the mall, and less than a mile from the university golf course. My average commute is so short that during the winter, I’m at my destination before the heater warms up. I’m not sure my car has been over 35 miles an hour this year. I’m not real sure about last year, either.
Hell, the Volt might be overkill; I could get to work on a golf cart. Or a Segway. I could even, shudder, walk.
Or maybe not. I drive a pickup, and in the last ten years, my poor little truck has been rear ended twice by students evidently learning to drive by crashing. One crash happened while I was stopped at a stop sign and the other time while I was stopped at a crosswalk. While neither crash was serious, they would have been if I had been driving anything much smaller.
As perfect as southern New Mexico weather is, in the last ten years, I have driven home in dust storms, high winds, (and even in the desert) the occasional rain. I’m not real sure that I want to do that in a golf cart, even if it helps baby seals. Occasionally, I do drive to the mountains, the lake, or the desert, all of which are more than 40 miles away.
And that is the real issue: practicality. I want to be green, I want to be responsible, I want all those things I read about on other people’s bumper stickers, but I also want to stay alive. To be honest, I don’t particularly like my truck--I’m willing to give it up, but only if everyone else does at the same time. I will drive the golf cart to work only if everyone else does. If I’m in the new Chevrolet Clown Car and the student three feet off my back bumper with a six month old drivers license is driving a Suburban while busily texting; I’m going to lose this contest.
No matter how politically correct, an electric car is not yet practical. They cost too much, and when you add in the cost of the eventual battery replacement, they are expensive to operate. They are under powered, too small, and overly impractical. And while I am being honest, I’ve never been politically correct, I’ll run my truck on pureed panda if I have to.
If a green vehicle is going to catch on, it’s going to have to be a little more practical than a Chevy Volt. How many people really want to drive a $41,000 car that is actually still powered by hydrocarbons? Yes, it’s an electric car, but most of America gets their electricity by burning oil, natural gas, or coal. Do I really want to pay that much money for a coal powered golf cart?
For $49,000, I can get a Mercedes E-Class with four doors, leather seats, and a sun roof. Let’s splurge, call it $50,000 and I can make a nice contribution to Greenpeace. If I have to spend that much money for a car, I’ll take the Mercedes.
Oh yeah, that quote about electric cars from the New York Times? They printed that in 1911. Almost a hundred years later, that technology is not quite ready.
The Volt is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that has such dramatically lower emissions that every single time you drive it, the number of baby seals in the world increases dramatically. The car can go forty miles on fully charged batteries, not bad when you consider that 75% of Americans have a daily commute of 33 miles or less.
Recognizing the future of electric cars, the New York Times stated that the electric car has long been recognized as "ideal" because it was cleaner, quieter and much more economical than gasoline-powered cars.
I need one of these cars. I live about 3 miles from the university, about 2 miles from the grocery store and the mall, and less than a mile from the university golf course. My average commute is so short that during the winter, I’m at my destination before the heater warms up. I’m not sure my car has been over 35 miles an hour this year. I’m not real sure about last year, either.
Hell, the Volt might be overkill; I could get to work on a golf cart. Or a Segway. I could even, shudder, walk.
Or maybe not. I drive a pickup, and in the last ten years, my poor little truck has been rear ended twice by students evidently learning to drive by crashing. One crash happened while I was stopped at a stop sign and the other time while I was stopped at a crosswalk. While neither crash was serious, they would have been if I had been driving anything much smaller.
And that is the real issue: practicality. I want to be green, I want to be responsible, I want all those things I read about on other people’s bumper stickers, but I also want to stay alive. To be honest, I don’t particularly like my truck--I’m willing to give it up, but only if everyone else does at the same time. I will drive the golf cart to work only if everyone else does. If I’m in the new Chevrolet Clown Car and the student three feet off my back bumper with a six month old drivers license is driving a Suburban while busily texting; I’m going to lose this contest.
No matter how politically correct, an electric car is not yet practical. They cost too much, and when you add in the cost of the eventual battery replacement, they are expensive to operate. They are under powered, too small, and overly impractical. And while I am being honest, I’ve never been politically correct, I’ll run my truck on pureed panda if I have to.
If a green vehicle is going to catch on, it’s going to have to be a little more practical than a Chevy Volt. How many people really want to drive a $41,000 car that is actually still powered by hydrocarbons? Yes, it’s an electric car, but most of America gets their electricity by burning oil, natural gas, or coal. Do I really want to pay that much money for a coal powered golf cart?
For $49,000, I can get a Mercedes E-Class with four doors, leather seats, and a sun roof. Let’s splurge, call it $50,000 and I can make a nice contribution to Greenpeace. If I have to spend that much money for a car, I’ll take the Mercedes.
Oh yeah, that quote about electric cars from the New York Times? They printed that in 1911. Almost a hundred years later, that technology is not quite ready.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
How to Stop Raising Small Children
Years ago, I left home to go to the University of Houston. Technically, I left my job working along the Mexican border to go home, pack my belongings, and then leave home for Houston. Whatever, at some point I remember standing in front of my father, saying goodbye as I left home for the last time. This must have been very difficult for my father.
“You can’t go off to college yet,” he said.
“Why not?” I was pretty sure I that could, as I distinctly remembered having been finally being granted parole from high school. My life time sentence had been commuted after only 12 years of brain washing in a horrible penal colony.
“You don’t have a typewriter,” my father answered. Obviously, he was using the first thing that came to mind.
I didn’t understand at the time, but if my dad thought I needed a typewriter before I could go to college, I would oblige him. I don’t remember where I went, but I bought what I think was a used Remington portable typewriter. I put it in my car with the rest of my belongings and drove to Houston. At the time, I didn’t realize how upset my father was.
Today, however, I know his anguish only too well. My son, The-Other-One, is being transferred out of town. And, being totally selfish, he is taking my granddaughter, the Munchkin and her mother, the Leprechaun, with him. This leaves me standing on the driveway trying to think of reasons why he can’t leave. I wonder if he would believe me if I sent him out looking for a typewriter. I wonder where he would find a typewriter in this digital age.
My other son, What’s-His-Name, already lives several hundred miles away, and while I’m not exactly happy about this, when he left, there was still one boy in town. After all, for years I have been telling the two of them that one of them was just spare parts. If either of them pissed me off, my wife and I would keep him around just in case the remaining son ever needed an organ transplant. Now, not only are they both gone, but they went several hundred miles in opposite directions.
I really shouldn’t be surprised that this boy is running away just about the time he started being interesting. I remember his first day of school. He was terribly excited, could not wait, and was just dying to ride to school on the bus with his brother. Finally, the school term started and he ran to the waiting bus with his brother. Not once did the little bastard look back at his mother and me, left standing there in the yard with our mouths open. When the bus rounded the corner, I felt so faint that I had to sit down in the grass with my head between my knees. I wonder if that is what my father did after I drove off towards Houston.
This empty nest syndrome crap is not very funny. I keep having dreams where the boys are about 20 years younger and running across a park. No matter how fast I try, I can’t catch up with them. I wake up in a cold sweat, but the reality of them both being only several hundred miles away is not much comfort.
It doesn’t take much insight to realize that I am worried about losing my little boys. I really do know better: if my sons did not leave and go out on their own, they would probably not be worth keeping.
Neither of them has actually lived in this house for years, but suddenly the house seems ridiculously empty. Where are the toy cars with chipped paint? The little airplanes? Why in the world do we own a pool if there is no one squealing with joy while splashing around in it?
Maybe some good can come from this tragedy. Maybe this is a opportunity for my wife and I to grow closer, to start planning a life without children. I look over at the Doc, my wife, and she has taken off her glasses, wiping her eyes. She is having her own empty nest problems.
“You know, Honey,” I say. “Without your glasses, you look like the young girl I married 36 years ago.”
She smiles, looks at me and says, “Without my glasses, you look okay, too.”
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Preliminary Description of Feature #4
October 21, 3112
An object found while conducting a foot survey of a Historic Twenty-First Century Domicile.
While surveying a historic site, a pre-apocalyptic domicile, members of the crew observed a heretofore unidentified object, labeled in the survey log as feature #4.
The feature, or object, was 45 cm. long, 15 cm. wide and 32 cm. tall. The object was roughly cylindrical, with five appendages. Four of these appendages were fastened to each of the corners of the cylinder, and extended 14 cm. to the ground. The fifth appendage emerged from the upper caudal end of the cylinder and stuck in the air at a variable angle. This appendage, 31 cm. in length, appeared at first to be a handle. When one of the survey members attempted to move the object by lifting it by the handle, he claims to have received positive proof that this is not the correct function of this appendage.
Two pair of sensory devices were located on a rotating sphere positioned on the arbitrarily designated leading, or cephalic, end of the object. These organs were bilaterally symmetrical along the longitudinal axis. One pair were bright yellow spheres that were observed to be photosensitive. The other pair were thin pyramid shaped flaps covering apertures into the cylinder. Nothing was observed to enter or exit from these apertures.
The object is covered by a shaggy form of upholstery consisting of fine black hairs approximately 2 cm. in length. Periodically the object emitted a short shrill cry that was not unlike the sound produced by viciously squeezing an infant. This experiment was repeated by all members of the survey team on a control group of infants, until all members could adequately reproduce a close approximation of the sound. This cry was found to emanate from what was observed to be an intake aperture from the cephalic end of the object.
The location of this object cannot be permanently tied to the archaeological datum point as it seems to be periodically mobile. Independent observations from numerous sightings confirmed that the object does indeed travel. While several locations were returned to frequently, the range of points traveled to include the entire survey site. Some of the locations most commonly frequented included; the top of the television, the kitchen, all window sills, and locations that the observers came to call ‘destruction points.’
These destruction points had a similar pattern; all were the tops or sides of upholstered furniture. Several times a day, the object would approach one of these locations, the selection of which was either random or determined by means not apparent to the survey crew. Upon arriving at one of these sites, the object would begin shredding, ripping, or pulling at the fabric of the chosen object. This destructive act, accomplished by retractable tools from the four primary appendages, would continue for several seconds, when suddenly, the act would cease as abruptly as it had commenced.
Since the object was repeatedly observed ingesting organic material as well as water, this may be the source of power for the object. An alternative theory, based upon numerous observations that the object spent lengthy periods of time in a prone position in direct sunlight, has the object powered by solar energy.
Regardless of the purpose of consuming the organic matter, there can be no question of the end result of the process. From the caudal end of the cylinder, small parcels of partially decomposed organic substances frequently appeared. These soft parcels were cylindrical in shape, averaging 5 cm. in length and 1 cm. wide. The color ranged from light brown to dark black. Unfortunately, all were uniformly odoriferous.
At various times a day, the object initiated a self maintenance program of cleaning and preventive maintenance. An internal, small, wet, pink appendage appeared from the cephalic area of the object that was vigorously applied to all portions of the object. An exhaustive search of the survey site revealed that the only other object present with a similar function was labeled, “Self-Cleaning Oven by Hotpoint.” The possibility exists that both objects have a similar manufacturing origin.
While no proof was available as to the cultural function of this object, the most likely explanation is that this is a self-powered composting machine. The two main functions of this object seem to be the destruction of large objects, rendering them into smaller objects, and the production of the fertilizer packages. It is probable, indeed likely, that left unattended, that this object could recycle the entire survey site.
An object found while conducting a foot survey of a Historic Twenty-First Century Domicile.
While surveying a historic site, a pre-apocalyptic domicile, members of the crew observed a heretofore unidentified object, labeled in the survey log as feature #4.
The feature, or object, was 45 cm. long, 15 cm. wide and 32 cm. tall. The object was roughly cylindrical, with five appendages. Four of these appendages were fastened to each of the corners of the cylinder, and extended 14 cm. to the ground. The fifth appendage emerged from the upper caudal end of the cylinder and stuck in the air at a variable angle. This appendage, 31 cm. in length, appeared at first to be a handle. When one of the survey members attempted to move the object by lifting it by the handle, he claims to have received positive proof that this is not the correct function of this appendage.
Two pair of sensory devices were located on a rotating sphere positioned on the arbitrarily designated leading, or cephalic, end of the object. These organs were bilaterally symmetrical along the longitudinal axis. One pair were bright yellow spheres that were observed to be photosensitive. The other pair were thin pyramid shaped flaps covering apertures into the cylinder. Nothing was observed to enter or exit from these apertures.
The object is covered by a shaggy form of upholstery consisting of fine black hairs approximately 2 cm. in length. Periodically the object emitted a short shrill cry that was not unlike the sound produced by viciously squeezing an infant. This experiment was repeated by all members of the survey team on a control group of infants, until all members could adequately reproduce a close approximation of the sound. This cry was found to emanate from what was observed to be an intake aperture from the cephalic end of the object.
The location of this object cannot be permanently tied to the archaeological datum point as it seems to be periodically mobile. Independent observations from numerous sightings confirmed that the object does indeed travel. While several locations were returned to frequently, the range of points traveled to include the entire survey site. Some of the locations most commonly frequented included; the top of the television, the kitchen, all window sills, and locations that the observers came to call ‘destruction points.’
These destruction points had a similar pattern; all were the tops or sides of upholstered furniture. Several times a day, the object would approach one of these locations, the selection of which was either random or determined by means not apparent to the survey crew. Upon arriving at one of these sites, the object would begin shredding, ripping, or pulling at the fabric of the chosen object. This destructive act, accomplished by retractable tools from the four primary appendages, would continue for several seconds, when suddenly, the act would cease as abruptly as it had commenced.
Since the object was repeatedly observed ingesting organic material as well as water, this may be the source of power for the object. An alternative theory, based upon numerous observations that the object spent lengthy periods of time in a prone position in direct sunlight, has the object powered by solar energy.
Regardless of the purpose of consuming the organic matter, there can be no question of the end result of the process. From the caudal end of the cylinder, small parcels of partially decomposed organic substances frequently appeared. These soft parcels were cylindrical in shape, averaging 5 cm. in length and 1 cm. wide. The color ranged from light brown to dark black. Unfortunately, all were uniformly odoriferous.
At various times a day, the object initiated a self maintenance program of cleaning and preventive maintenance. An internal, small, wet, pink appendage appeared from the cephalic area of the object that was vigorously applied to all portions of the object. An exhaustive search of the survey site revealed that the only other object present with a similar function was labeled, “Self-Cleaning Oven by Hotpoint.” The possibility exists that both objects have a similar manufacturing origin.
While no proof was available as to the cultural function of this object, the most likely explanation is that this is a self-powered composting machine. The two main functions of this object seem to be the destruction of large objects, rendering them into smaller objects, and the production of the fertilizer packages. It is probable, indeed likely, that left unattended, that this object could recycle the entire survey site.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
R.I.P. Mexico
Evidently, I’m going to be attending a lot of funerals. Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead at a funeral. Years ago, I swore I would never attend anyone’s funeral unless he came to mine first.
But the sheer number of recently dead is absolutely staggering, I can’t ignore them all. You see, 20,000 friends of mine have died in the last year, and probably that many will die this year, too. I’m talking about Mexico, of course. Over 20,000 people have died in the drug war in Mexico during the last year, and no one is discussing an armistice. This is going to be a long war.
I’m not the governor of Alaska, but from my house I can see another country. Okay, I have to stand on my roof, and it’s Mexico, not Russia. I wish it was Russia, because I have always loved Mexico. I’ve traveled in Mexico for over 40 years; by train, bus, and car. I’ve worked there and taught courses about the country. I’ve eaten the food, drunk the water, among other things, and taken advantage of a few other assorted pleasures. And in every case, Mexico’s peoples have given me far more kindness than I deserved. This is a beautiful country with amazing people.
It has always been amazing to me that so few of my students know anything about Mexico’s history. Everyone can name several battles of the American Civil War, but how many can name even one battle from the Mexican Revolution? This revolution was just a hundred years ago, there were at least a million casualties out of a much smaller country, and a lot of the battles happened right on the US border. You can see the site of one of them from my roof.
Now, it looks like Mexico is going to have to go through that level of violence again. And this time, most of the guilt belongs north of the border. Mexico is suffering and dying from violence because America will not simply recognize the stupidity of our drug laws.
Our drug laws make criminals rich, undermine the legal system of our neighbors, swamp American courts, jail a larger percentage of our citizens than any other country, and put an incredible economic strain on our public finances. I am at a loss to find anything positive resulting from our drug laws. Somehow, we as a nation have convinced ourselves that our laws are preventing people from using drugs. Maybe this is because our government keeps telling us that we are making major progress in the war on drugs. Stop and think about this, do you really believe there are fewer people using drugs today than 30 years ago?
Several years ago, my son, not What’s-His-Name, but the The-Other-One, told me that within blocks of our home, he would have no trouble purchasing any form of drug or alcohol that he might want, with one exception. He even knew where to get a Cuban cigar. What he couldn’t get was a pack of cigarettes. Now that’s the kind of progress that completely justifies the billions of dollars we have spent on the “War On Drugs” during the last 39 years.
This idiotic phrase, “The War on Drugs,” came out of the Nixon Administration. That alone should give you a clue about how well the program is really working. I have no idea why, long after we have rejected almost everything else Richard Nixon stood for, we have continued this idiotic war. While our government still claims we are winning this war, it should be painfully obvious that if we had fought World War II as effectively as we are fighting drugs, this blog would be written in Japanese.
I’m tired of paying way too much money to fight drugs. Some estimates say we have now spent more fighting drugs than we spent fighting Viet Nam. But it’s not just the taxes; fighting drugs costs a lot of money that we can’t really notice. How much extra is my home owner’s policy because I have to insure against someone crawling in my window to steal my TV so he can buy drugs? How much extra is my car insurance? How much extra cost is built into the price of everything I buy to cover some part of a policy that cannot conceivably work?
And forever more, why are we making criminals rich? Illegal drugs are expensive drugs. This is why we hear of cocaine cartels and marijuana cartels but no one has ever read a story about French wine cartels. This is why my son can buy a Cuban cigar and I can’t find a decent bottle of Beaujolais.
Remember Al Capone? He got rich because we made alcohol illegal. As he often said, “I am just a businessman, giving people what they want.”
Making drugs illegal does not make them disappear, if we can’t keep drugs out of federal prisons, how could we keep them out of Los Angeles? If drugs have to be in our society, do we really want criminals to profit from them? Does our government have some secret economic stimulus program for gangs?
Let’s ignore all of this. Let’s ignore that the government doesn’t have any business telling us what we should do with our own bodies. Let’s ignore that there are more drugs around today than before we started this silly policy. Let’s ignore that we jail so many of our own citizens that China has lectured us about civil rights in the United Nations. Let’s ignore rich criminals and an ever larger police force. I’ll give you another reason to think about changing the rules of this war; Mexico is losing its war on drugs and my friends are dying.
If we have problems with the present government in Mexico, think what it will be like when the drug cartels take over in Mexico.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
The Lizard Of Oz
Last night, my honorary granddaughter, the Munchkin, and I caught a late night showing of the Wizard of Oz on cable. She was completely mesmerized. I doubt if she blinked until Dorothy was back in Kansas.
This definitely was not my first viewing. When the boys, What’s-His-Name and the The-Other-One, were little, they would become fixated on a single movie and repeatedly watch it until even the cats would hock up a hairball as soon as the boys shoved the tape into the VCR.
I’m not sure how many times we watched that movie, certainly enough for my wife and me to lip sync the parts along with the actors. Enough so that it was not at all uncommon for the breakfast table conversation to center around the various merits of the B-17F as compared to the Lancaster. For several years, however, long before the Memphis Belle, the boys were hooked on the Wizard of Oz, or as the boys called it, the Lizard of Oz.
I know we watched that movie at least 200 times. I got where I could identify individual munchkins. (The guy dressed in green plaid must be the director’s favorite; he is in almost every scene.) All of us, the boys, my wife and I could mouth every part with perfect timing; we could have acted out the entire movie by ourselves, including Dorothy, the witch, and the flying monkeys.
Actually, my wife and I didn’t mind watching the movie as we’ve always enjoyed it. Now that I think on it, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who didn’t love the movie. If you are old enough to remember phones with dials, shoes without Velcro, or when a one pound coffee can actually contained 16 ounces of coffee, you probably remember when this movie was shown just once a year on TV. The network would advertise it for weeks and on the night it was shown, every kid in America was ready. Just before the show started, the mothers of America would say in unison, “Now if this is too scary for you, you don’t have to watch it.”
Damn straight that witch was scary, but there was no way a kid would admit it to his mother. A thing like that would get you talked about. My mom would tell some other mom about how I had gotten scared, then that mom would tell it to her son, who probably was just as scared, and the next thing you knew your entire year of third grade turned into living hell.
It is amazing the extent that this movie has soaked into our culture. Can anyone go a whole month without hearing one of these phrases?
After 71 years, think of how the world has changed. When the movie premiered in the summer of 1939, FDR was president and you could buy a new car for under $700 and for an extra dollar, you could buy 10 gallons of gas. Hamburger was fourteen cents a pound, and a new house was less than $4000. In Europe, Hitler was lusting for Poland while the rest of the continent was as nervous as a Chihuahua in freeway traffic.
After all these years that movie is still wonderful. Somehow, the topics the movie deals with; family, home, courage, and the triumph of good over evil, will be with us forever.
One thing has changed however; in today’s world, if Dorothy was to find men without brains, hearts, or courage, she wouldn’t be in Kansas. She’d be in Congress.
This definitely was not my first viewing. When the boys, What’s-His-Name and the The-Other-One, were little, they would become fixated on a single movie and repeatedly watch it until even the cats would hock up a hairball as soon as the boys shoved the tape into the VCR.When the boys were a little older, they became fixated on Memphis Belle. After a couple of hundred viewings, I had nightly dreams about bombing Munich. This used to make me feel guilty, at least until I visited Munich. Now I wish I could have the dreams again.
I’m not sure how many times we watched that movie, certainly enough for my wife and me to lip sync the parts along with the actors. Enough so that it was not at all uncommon for the breakfast table conversation to center around the various merits of the B-17F as compared to the Lancaster. For several years, however, long before the Memphis Belle, the boys were hooked on the Wizard of Oz, or as the boys called it, the Lizard of Oz.
I know we watched that movie at least 200 times. I got where I could identify individual munchkins. (The guy dressed in green plaid must be the director’s favorite; he is in almost every scene.) All of us, the boys, my wife and I could mouth every part with perfect timing; we could have acted out the entire movie by ourselves, including Dorothy, the witch, and the flying monkeys.
Damn straight that witch was scary, but there was no way a kid would admit it to his mother. A thing like that would get you talked about. My mom would tell some other mom about how I had gotten scared, then that mom would tell it to her son, who probably was just as scared, and the next thing you knew your entire year of third grade turned into living hell.
It is amazing the extent that this movie has soaked into our culture. Can anyone go a whole month without hearing one of these phrases?
- Toto, I don’t think we're in Kansas, anymore.
- Not nobody, not no how.
- We’re off to see the wizard.
- I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too.
- If I only had a brain…
- I’m melting! Melting!
- Ding Dong, the witch is dead.
- Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
- The Great and Powerful Oz has spoken!
- Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
There is something comforting about an old and comfortable movie. According to my wife, we watched the movie on our honeymoon. And we may have for all I know, that’s not the part of the honeymoon I remember.
After 71 years, think of how the world has changed. When the movie premiered in the summer of 1939, FDR was president and you could buy a new car for under $700 and for an extra dollar, you could buy 10 gallons of gas. Hamburger was fourteen cents a pound, and a new house was less than $4000. In Europe, Hitler was lusting for Poland while the rest of the continent was as nervous as a Chihuahua in freeway traffic.
After all these years that movie is still wonderful. Somehow, the topics the movie deals with; family, home, courage, and the triumph of good over evil, will be with us forever.
One thing has changed however; in today’s world, if Dorothy was to find men without brains, hearts, or courage, she wouldn’t be in Kansas. She’d be in Congress.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Term Limits
Slightly over two years ago, I walked around the house pulling the phones out of the wall. I got tired of people calling me and telling me how I should vote in the upcoming election. I still have a phone line, there are just no working phones in the house. Since then, it has been so peaceful that I’m considering chopping down the mailbox.
I doubt if this would work. Lately politicians have been knocking on our front door. I probably wouldn’t mind if we didn’t have such a sorry herd of candidates. Almost anyone could dig a pit somewhere out in the desert and catch a better crop by accident. Failing this, there seems to only one possible solution to chase the foxes out of the henhouse: term limits.
But aren’t term limits a violation of my freedom of …of …something, perhaps speech? Probably. The whole idea of term limits seem to be that every individual believes he or she alone can be trusted to vote correctly and everyone else is a moron. I don’t think I have ever heard someone lament, “Help! Stop me before I vote again!”
Term limits have been around a very long time. (Do you feel a history lesson coming on?) Ancient Greece placed a limit of two single year terms on a member of the council, while Rome put a limit of one term for a Consul. Both civilizations then barred those politicians from ever holding office again. If we practiced such a system, most of our politicians would be thrown out of office before they could figure out who paid the best bribes.
And term limits have frequently been the case south of the border- a region that has experienced far too many individuals wanting to be President-For-Life. Latin American constitutions frequently limit presidents to a single term, and newly elected presidents just as frequently ignore this. Both Cuba and Venezuela used to have such a provision….
Mexico has had such a limitation since the Constitution of 1917 was written, and no president has successfully broken this tradition. The one president who sat out a term and ran again was assassinated before his inauguration. Assassination might seem a somewhat draconian solution to term limits, but no one can doubt its effectiveness.
For six years, the president of Mexico has almost unlimited power, in the not too distant past, he could even select the next president. The only power absolutely denied to the president for the last hundred years has been reelection. Perhaps Mexico doesn’t actually have a president: this system has been more appropriately called a six year monarchy.
Obviously, this system wouldn’t work in America; we certainly don’t want to give our politicians more authority. Giving more power to elected officials would be as dangerous as giving a wino $50 all at once. You could kill him.
It’s not like term limits have never been tried in the United States. William Penn wrote them into the Pennsylvania Charter of Liberties back in 1682. More recently, in 1951 the 22nd Amendment passed, limiting presidential terms to two. Since then, there has been little traction in passing some form of term limit for national office. This explains why the turnover rate in the U. S. House of Representatives is 7%, only slightly better than the 5% turnover rate for the British House of Lords, whose members serve for life.
I asked a friend, a veteran of Chicago politics, what he thought of political term limits. Horrified, he said, “Absolutely not! Let them serve their full term just like any other prisoner.”
This was an innocent mistake, as my friend probably thought that every state used the “Chicago Term Limits Plan.” This is a simple system, one every state should adopt. From now on, all politicians shall be limited to two terms. The first in office. The second in jail.
I doubt if this would work. Lately politicians have been knocking on our front door. I probably wouldn’t mind if we didn’t have such a sorry herd of candidates. Almost anyone could dig a pit somewhere out in the desert and catch a better crop by accident. Failing this, there seems to only one possible solution to chase the foxes out of the henhouse: term limits.
But aren’t term limits a violation of my freedom of …of …something, perhaps speech? Probably. The whole idea of term limits seem to be that every individual believes he or she alone can be trusted to vote correctly and everyone else is a moron. I don’t think I have ever heard someone lament, “Help! Stop me before I vote again!”
Term limits have been around a very long time. (Do you feel a history lesson coming on?) Ancient Greece placed a limit of two single year terms on a member of the council, while Rome put a limit of one term for a Consul. Both civilizations then barred those politicians from ever holding office again. If we practiced such a system, most of our politicians would be thrown out of office before they could figure out who paid the best bribes.
And term limits have frequently been the case south of the border- a region that has experienced far too many individuals wanting to be President-For-Life. Latin American constitutions frequently limit presidents to a single term, and newly elected presidents just as frequently ignore this. Both Cuba and Venezuela used to have such a provision….
Mexico has had such a limitation since the Constitution of 1917 was written, and no president has successfully broken this tradition. The one president who sat out a term and ran again was assassinated before his inauguration. Assassination might seem a somewhat draconian solution to term limits, but no one can doubt its effectiveness.
For six years, the president of Mexico has almost unlimited power, in the not too distant past, he could even select the next president. The only power absolutely denied to the president for the last hundred years has been reelection. Perhaps Mexico doesn’t actually have a president: this system has been more appropriately called a six year monarchy.
Obviously, this system wouldn’t work in America; we certainly don’t want to give our politicians more authority. Giving more power to elected officials would be as dangerous as giving a wino $50 all at once. You could kill him.
It’s not like term limits have never been tried in the United States. William Penn wrote them into the Pennsylvania Charter of Liberties back in 1682. More recently, in 1951 the 22nd Amendment passed, limiting presidential terms to two. Since then, there has been little traction in passing some form of term limit for national office. This explains why the turnover rate in the U. S. House of Representatives is 7%, only slightly better than the 5% turnover rate for the British House of Lords, whose members serve for life.
I asked a friend, a veteran of Chicago politics, what he thought of political term limits. Horrified, he said, “Absolutely not! Let them serve their full term just like any other prisoner.”
This was an innocent mistake, as my friend probably thought that every state used the “Chicago Term Limits Plan.” This is a simple system, one every state should adopt. From now on, all politicians shall be limited to two terms. The first in office. The second in jail.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
So Many Bands, So Little Music
This is a strange time of year around the university. During the summer, the place resembles a ghost town. I miss the students, the rest of the faculty can stay away a while longer.
There are very few classes, this is a time to rewrite lectures, rebuild the computers in the lab, and read. And read. And read. I love summer reading the way a small boy loves a puppy. I guess that’s sort of obvious. This blog is a year old, and in the previous 52 entries, about every fourth one mentions a book.
The population of the town drops by thousands during the summer; many students go home, and some of the faculty go back under their rocks. Suddenly, I can drive to school without three cars behind me all trying to become my personal proctologist. In total, the town becomes peaceful and quiet.
Well, until next week. Once a year, the university turns the intramural field over to the Warped Tour. It is difficult to use peaceful and Warped Tour in the same sentence.
For those of you who don’t know, Warped Tour is a touring music festival. Bands play for ten hours, thirty minutes each, on ten different stages. Each band has an incredible sound system, by the end of the day; somewhere near a hundred bands will have performed. At any given moment, perhaps a half dozen are playing simultaneously.
I won’t pretend to like the music. Individually, each of the bands sound like someone is trying to break up a pillow fight in a sorority house by banging a bass drum with a cat. When several play at the same time, it sounds like freight trains having sex on Normandy beach. The level of noise causes compressions in your chest, pitiful little birds attempting to fly over the field fall from the sky stone dead, and Hugo Chavez holds a press conference proclaiming to have proof of the American secret earthquake device.
At least, this is what it sounds like to me. I should point out that my office is across the street from this sonic abattoir, I have no idea what it sounds like if you actually attend. I suspect that no one does, since if you were present, you would be deaf for the rest of your life.
I’m sure the event will be a lot of fun. Southern New Mexico in June, a field without a single tree, tickets cost $33, and you cannot bring any outside food, beverage, or water containers into the event. No doubt the concession booths will be manned by cheerful and generous people whose only concern will be to ensure the enjoyment of every person wishing to attend. They will probably give away free cotton balls so their patrons can attempt to staunch the blood pouring from their ears.
Why New Mexico in June? Do they hold a similar concert in Alaska in January? Are misery and pain part of the enjoyment? Why hold the festival when most of the students are out of town? Wouldn’t overcrowding enhance an event such as this?
Unfortunately, most of you will miss the concert. Don’t worry. Amazon sells a compilation CD for $8. Of course, to get the full effect, buy 5 copies and play all of them at the same time. Inside a phone booth.
There are very few classes, this is a time to rewrite lectures, rebuild the computers in the lab, and read. And read. And read. I love summer reading the way a small boy loves a puppy. I guess that’s sort of obvious. This blog is a year old, and in the previous 52 entries, about every fourth one mentions a book.
The population of the town drops by thousands during the summer; many students go home, and some of the faculty go back under their rocks. Suddenly, I can drive to school without three cars behind me all trying to become my personal proctologist. In total, the town becomes peaceful and quiet.
Well, until next week. Once a year, the university turns the intramural field over to the Warped Tour. It is difficult to use peaceful and Warped Tour in the same sentence.
I won’t pretend to like the music. Individually, each of the bands sound like someone is trying to break up a pillow fight in a sorority house by banging a bass drum with a cat. When several play at the same time, it sounds like freight trains having sex on Normandy beach. The level of noise causes compressions in your chest, pitiful little birds attempting to fly over the field fall from the sky stone dead, and Hugo Chavez holds a press conference proclaiming to have proof of the American secret earthquake device.
At least, this is what it sounds like to me. I should point out that my office is across the street from this sonic abattoir, I have no idea what it sounds like if you actually attend. I suspect that no one does, since if you were present, you would be deaf for the rest of your life.
I’m sure the event will be a lot of fun. Southern New Mexico in June, a field without a single tree, tickets cost $33, and you cannot bring any outside food, beverage, or water containers into the event. No doubt the concession booths will be manned by cheerful and generous people whose only concern will be to ensure the enjoyment of every person wishing to attend. They will probably give away free cotton balls so their patrons can attempt to staunch the blood pouring from their ears.
Why New Mexico in June? Do they hold a similar concert in Alaska in January? Are misery and pain part of the enjoyment? Why hold the festival when most of the students are out of town? Wouldn’t overcrowding enhance an event such as this?
Unfortunately, most of you will miss the concert. Don’t worry. Amazon sells a compilation CD for $8. Of course, to get the full effect, buy 5 copies and play all of them at the same time. Inside a phone booth.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Its Not That Hot - Part Two
It is the early 1960’s, Saturday night about 9:00 PM; my family is gathered in the living room. Naturally, we are watching television. Have Gun Will Travel just ended and any minute we will get a close-up of James Arness’ butt. For some reason, Gunsmoke, my dad’s favorite show, always started with Marshall Dillon’s ass filling the screen. And every week, my mother would promptly say, “Why don’t his pants have a seam down the middle like everyone else’s?”Well, I assumed his ass was in color, but this is the way it looked at my house. Look at that picture! Why don’t those pants have a seam?
The horrible situation that we were trying to shame my father into correcting was the family’s lack of a suitable television; a color TV. We were convinced that we were the last family in America still watching a black and white television.
A similar activity is now occurring at my house, but it involves air conditioning. According to my wife, this is the last house in the in the country south of the Arctic Circle that has not ditched the rusty old swamp cooler in favor of refrigerated air conditioning. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read last week’s blog.
Now, every time my wife hears the weather report, she reminds me of our need for better air conditioning. She does not start chanting, “Air conditioning! Air conditioning!” However, she does give me what I call the Gregor Mendel Look. If you aren’t married, the Gregor Mendel Look is the angry stare a woman gives her husband while remembering that he donated half the chromosomes to their children.
I have a great reason for not wanting to make the change, actually, about 6000 reasons, that being about what it will cost. My wife has about 85 reasons why we should, that being the inside temperature.
“Honey, remember all those pioneers who settled New Mexico.” I say, “They did it without air conditioning.”
“Yes,” she answers. “All those pioneers—they’re dead. That’s what people did back before air conditioning, they just died.”
Frankly, she has a point. I have always wondered about the sanity of those early pioneers. I have this mental picture of a man driving his ox-drawn covered wagon. Day after day he sits in the seat of that wagon, facing the afternoon sun, intent on a better life somewhere in California. Suddenly, he comes to the dried red sand of western Texas. It’s as hot as a pawn shop pistol. There’s no water, no shade, no trees, and no neighbors. This is the kind of land where buzzards pack a lunch as they fly past it.
“Honey,” he yells as he climbs down from the wagon. “Let’s live here!”
I have thought about that moment more than a few times. Why didn’t his wife get down off that wagon and brain him with a frying pan? What route could this wagon have taken from the east where a sun baked desert was the best ground they had seen since crossing the Mississippi? Was this pioneer couple thinking of starting the first commercial lizard ranch?
I suspect my wife will eventually get new air conditioning; I have two good reasons to believe it. First, I’m descended from that idiotic pioneer. Secondly, my father eventually bought my mother a color television.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Its Not That Hot - Part One
It’s summer time in the desert. No clouds, endless sunshine, and perfect temperature. Well, perfect if you normally winter in hell. We also have zero humidity; dogs are chasing fire hydrants, we staple envelopes closed, and the local cactus is moving north for the summer.
Because of this, most houses use two forms of air conditioning, one of which would not work in the rest of the country. We use an evaporative water cooling system, colloquially called swamp coolers. Basically, this is a large box on the roof where water is poured over some form of filter. Fans suck dry air from the outside, force it through the wet filter, and then blow it down ducts into your house. Along the way, the air picks up a lot of humidity. No refrigeration, no Freon, and a very low operating cost.
Surprisingly, it actually works fairly well. It works right up to the point where it doesn't work at all. It will pretty much lower the inside air temperature about 20 degrees. If it is 88 degrees outside, it can make the house a little chilly. As I write this, it is 106 outside and about 86 inside. This is where the second system comes into play; cold beer.
Okay, swamp systems aren’t perfect, but they have certain benefits. They leak until the roof gets water damage, something that otherwise is pretty hard to do in a place where every time it rains, awestruck people double the average church attendance. Swamp coolers have about as many moving parts as ’57 Chevy, one of them is always squeaking, perpetually sounding like a flock of canaries. Most importantly, this is the only way a house around here could develop a serious mold problem. All the fun of living on the gulf coast without the cheap seafood. With endless sand, we have the beach; we just don’t have the ocean.
This New Mexico method of cooling is not exactly efficient. People living anyplace else in the world would probably change over to something that actually works, but here, swamp coolers are actually a sort of hobby for some people.
What fun! Tomorrow, I get to climb on my roof, adjust the float valve, oil the squirrel cage, patch the roof where the idiotic float valve has flooded the roof too many times, and the while wondering why in the world I use a cooling system from the 19th century while living in one of the harshest environments in the United States that isn’t actually on fire.
Why? Well, first off, the damn swamp cooler is simple. If a dust storm rolls it off my roof into the neighbor’s yard, I can probably knock it back into shape with a ball peen hammer. Forty years ago I was an engineering major at the University of Houston. While I can’t say I remember everything, I did learn the cardinal rule of engineers; Bash to form, file to fit, and paint to cover. I can do that.
The second reason to keep the stupid cooler is cost. If my neighbor won’t give it back after the dust storm deposits it into his flower bed, I can buy a new one for $300. Last time I got a quote to convert the house over to refrigerated air, it was roughly $6000. Alternatively, I could buy a new cooler and have enough left over 800 six packs, and still have enough left over for a new book.
The best reason not to switch is… It’s the calendar. We don’t need air conditioning during the spring, fall, or winter. That takes care of two months. During all ten months of the summer, the temperature only rises above 95 for about two months. And there is no way in hell I’m climbing on that roof during the day when the temperature is that hot.
I did that a few years ago. When it is 100 degrees on the ground, it is 130 on the roof. I climbed up to fix one of the endless water leaks, leaned against the blistering metal swamp cooler, and the matches in my pocket caught fire.
That was several years ago, but I doubt if anyone who lives within a block has forgotten the time their neighbor was screaming on the roof of his house waving a pair of burning pants.
Because of this, most houses use two forms of air conditioning, one of which would not work in the rest of the country. We use an evaporative water cooling system, colloquially called swamp coolers. Basically, this is a large box on the roof where water is poured over some form of filter. Fans suck dry air from the outside, force it through the wet filter, and then blow it down ducts into your house. Along the way, the air picks up a lot of humidity. No refrigeration, no Freon, and a very low operating cost.
Okay, swamp systems aren’t perfect, but they have certain benefits. They leak until the roof gets water damage, something that otherwise is pretty hard to do in a place where every time it rains, awestruck people double the average church attendance. Swamp coolers have about as many moving parts as ’57 Chevy, one of them is always squeaking, perpetually sounding like a flock of canaries. Most importantly, this is the only way a house around here could develop a serious mold problem. All the fun of living on the gulf coast without the cheap seafood. With endless sand, we have the beach; we just don’t have the ocean.
This New Mexico method of cooling is not exactly efficient. People living anyplace else in the world would probably change over to something that actually works, but here, swamp coolers are actually a sort of hobby for some people.
What fun! Tomorrow, I get to climb on my roof, adjust the float valve, oil the squirrel cage, patch the roof where the idiotic float valve has flooded the roof too many times, and the while wondering why in the world I use a cooling system from the 19th century while living in one of the harshest environments in the United States that isn’t actually on fire.
Why? Well, first off, the damn swamp cooler is simple. If a dust storm rolls it off my roof into the neighbor’s yard, I can probably knock it back into shape with a ball peen hammer. Forty years ago I was an engineering major at the University of Houston. While I can’t say I remember everything, I did learn the cardinal rule of engineers; Bash to form, file to fit, and paint to cover. I can do that.
The second reason to keep the stupid cooler is cost. If my neighbor won’t give it back after the dust storm deposits it into his flower bed, I can buy a new one for $300. Last time I got a quote to convert the house over to refrigerated air, it was roughly $6000. Alternatively, I could buy a new cooler and have enough left over 800 six packs, and still have enough left over for a new book.
The best reason not to switch is… It’s the calendar. We don’t need air conditioning during the spring, fall, or winter. That takes care of two months. During all ten months of the summer, the temperature only rises above 95 for about two months. And there is no way in hell I’m climbing on that roof during the day when the temperature is that hot.
I did that a few years ago. When it is 100 degrees on the ground, it is 130 on the roof. I climbed up to fix one of the endless water leaks, leaned against the blistering metal swamp cooler, and the matches in my pocket caught fire.
That was several years ago, but I doubt if anyone who lives within a block has forgotten the time their neighbor was screaming on the roof of his house waving a pair of burning pants.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
The Lighning Cooker
My son, What’s-His-Name, taught me a cute trick about nuking a white grape in a microwave the other day. It takes too long to explain, but if you are really interested, you can see how to do it here. It seems the internet is full of ways to turn your microwave into a personal incinerator or self defense weapon.
Not that I’m complaining, I play with my microwave myself. Take a CD you would like to destroy, place it on top of a coffee cup you have turned upside down and nuke it for 5 seconds. You’ll get a better show if you do this with the lights turned off. Don’t think of this as childish behavior, this is a creative process. You are either producing abstract art or Christmas tree decorations for Iron Man.
I showed one of the Munchkins at work how to do this trick, next thing I knew half the video library had been turned into wall decorations.
Actually, I have long been fascinated by microwaves. I can remember the first time I saw a microwave. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what it was.
Forty years ago, during my freshman year at college, I worked at the Shamrock Hilton in Houston. The Shamrock was a great old hotel, it was the hotel featured in the last half of the Rock Hudson movie, Giant. I had a great job; I worked the midnight shift guarding the alley. As a guard, I did such a great job that even today, 23 years after the hotel has been torn down, my alley is still there.
The hotel employed well over a thousand employees, all of us grossly underpaid. Since it was impossible to leave the hotel for lunch, and certainly none of us could afford to eat in any of the hotel restaurants, the hotel had an employee cafeteria in the basement. Every day, each employee was given $1.50 in special tokens to use in the cafeteria. Unfortunately for me, by the time the midnight shift rolled around, the cafeteria was closed, all that was left were special vending machines that only accepted the tokens.
Luckily, one of the machines sold cans of chili. I have to admit that I thought vending machines that could sell you a can of chili were pretty amazing. I had no idea such wonders of sophistication even existed, but that was nothing compared to the incredible box they had to heat up your chili.
Now cold chili is an abomination, something on a par with the weird things that Yankees do to their chili, such as adding macaroni or potato chips. Luckily, there was an oven there. The only way I knew it was an oven was the little plastic sign attached that listed the heating times for the various foods available. Accordingly, I opened the can, put it in the microwave and turned the dial on the timer to two minutes.
Bzzzzztt! Cool! It cooked the chili with lightning bolts! Bzzzzt! Crack!
I had never heard of such an amazing invention, but there was no denying that it really worked. In two minutes, those little lightning bolts produced a hot steaming can of chili. The machine did leave little black burn marks all over the edge of the metal can, but those little lightning bolts really did a great job. The machine did have one serious flaw, it was a little delicate. In about a week, I had to eat my chili cold, the lightning bolt cooker had died.
A few days later, there was a replacement machine, but within about a week or two, I couldn’t get it to work either. For a while, there was a steady procession of replacements, Wolf Brand Chili and I killed each and every one of them. Eventually, someone put up a large sign, I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it was brief, profane, and educational. I reluctantly learned not to put metal in a microwave. At least not in one I needed to cook my lunch.
I’m still fascinated with microwaves. About a week ago, I was in a local convenience store late one night. Since it was late, the clerk was restocking the store. In the back of the store, on a shelf, was a microwave. Next to it was a small unopened cardboard case of 24 microwave popcorn packages. What would happen if I put the whole box into the microwave and set the timer up to about 10 minutes?
Would the whole machine explode? Would it catch fire? I’ll let you find out for yourself.
Not that I’m complaining, I play with my microwave myself. Take a CD you would like to destroy, place it on top of a coffee cup you have turned upside down and nuke it for 5 seconds. You’ll get a better show if you do this with the lights turned off. Don’t think of this as childish behavior, this is a creative process. You are either producing abstract art or Christmas tree decorations for Iron Man.
I showed one of the Munchkins at work how to do this trick, next thing I knew half the video library had been turned into wall decorations.Forty years ago, during my freshman year at college, I worked at the Shamrock Hilton in Houston. The Shamrock was a great old hotel, it was the hotel featured in the last half of the Rock Hudson movie, Giant. I had a great job; I worked the midnight shift guarding the alley. As a guard, I did such a great job that even today, 23 years after the hotel has been torn down, my alley is still there.
The hotel employed well over a thousand employees, all of us grossly underpaid. Since it was impossible to leave the hotel for lunch, and certainly none of us could afford to eat in any of the hotel restaurants, the hotel had an employee cafeteria in the basement. Every day, each employee was given $1.50 in special tokens to use in the cafeteria. Unfortunately for me, by the time the midnight shift rolled around, the cafeteria was closed, all that was left were special vending machines that only accepted the tokens.
Luckily, one of the machines sold cans of chili. I have to admit that I thought vending machines that could sell you a can of chili were pretty amazing. I had no idea such wonders of sophistication even existed, but that was nothing compared to the incredible box they had to heat up your chili.
Now cold chili is an abomination, something on a par with the weird things that Yankees do to their chili, such as adding macaroni or potato chips. Luckily, there was an oven there. The only way I knew it was an oven was the little plastic sign attached that listed the heating times for the various foods available. Accordingly, I opened the can, put it in the microwave and turned the dial on the timer to two minutes.
Bzzzzztt! Cool! It cooked the chili with lightning bolts! Bzzzzt! Crack!
I had never heard of such an amazing invention, but there was no denying that it really worked. In two minutes, those little lightning bolts produced a hot steaming can of chili. The machine did leave little black burn marks all over the edge of the metal can, but those little lightning bolts really did a great job. The machine did have one serious flaw, it was a little delicate. In about a week, I had to eat my chili cold, the lightning bolt cooker had died.
A few days later, there was a replacement machine, but within about a week or two, I couldn’t get it to work either. For a while, there was a steady procession of replacements, Wolf Brand Chili and I killed each and every one of them. Eventually, someone put up a large sign, I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it was brief, profane, and educational. I reluctantly learned not to put metal in a microwave. At least not in one I needed to cook my lunch.
I’m still fascinated with microwaves. About a week ago, I was in a local convenience store late one night. Since it was late, the clerk was restocking the store. In the back of the store, on a shelf, was a microwave. Next to it was a small unopened cardboard case of 24 microwave popcorn packages. What would happen if I put the whole box into the microwave and set the timer up to about 10 minutes?
Would the whole machine explode? Would it catch fire? I’ll let you find out for yourself.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Going Up?
There is an interesting website called Urban Word of the Day. This could be described as an updated version of Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary. The main difference is that the words are submitted by the readers, in essence forming a dictionary that you write yourself.
Today’s word is elevator reflex, which the site defines ”as the urge people get once inside an elevator to stare compulsively at the ascending numbered lights (usually on top of the elevator doors) either because they are truly convinced this will speed up the whole 'process' or they are simply socially-awkward beings who can't bear to look at random people in the face for 30 seconds.”
The Doc, my wife, suggests that this is an inaccurate definition, that elevator reflex refers to people who enter an elevator as soon as the doors open without checking to see whether the car is going up or down. People push a button, the car arrives, and they get on only to discover the car is traveling in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go. Seconds later, the car they actually summoned arrives, going in the right direction, opens its doors and no one gets on, usually to the great annoyance of the people waiting in the elevator. The elevator industry calls this a phantom stop. I like this name, especially since the History Channel will eventually get around to producing a one hour show claiming phantom stops are proof of paranormal activity.
It saddens me to say this, but both the people at the Urban Word of the Day site and my wife are wrong. Elevator reflex actually refers to the irresistible urge people have to push an already lit button. Years ago, while working in the hotel business, I attended a short elevator maintenance class. Among the fascinating tidbits I learned was that the average wait in a building with a properly designed elevator system is 30 seconds. Frustration sets in shortly after this point and chances are the person waiting will push the button again.
Why do people do this? Are they trying to impress upon the button how sincere they are? If you ask them, they will say something along the lines of, “The button might be busted.” This nonsense is even harder to understand, if the button is busted, why push it at all?
By the way, the strangest part of that elevator course was surfing the cars; riding on top of the elevator cars. Elevator surfing is incredibly dangerous, you should never, ever consider doing it as several people die every year while doing this reckless activity. Unbelievably fun, especially if the shaft is dark, but don’t even consider it.
I have been thinking about elevators all week. The university has had a couple of power failures this week and my building has an elevator. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch anyone.
Elevators reveal a lot of strange behavior in people. Lots of studies have been done about where people position themselves in the car. The key factor is maintaining personal space. If there is only one person on the car, he will stand in the middle; two will move to the back corners, the third person who enters takes the middle, and so forth. In general, the pattern tends to follow the same pattern you see on the sides of dice.
There are a couple of sex based variations to this rule. An alpha male techno-geek entering a car will move directly in front of the controls and remain there no matter how many people enter the car. Women entering a car will frequently cross their arms in an attempt to claim a little more personal space.
I’ve always liked the anecdote about Alfred Hitchcock and elevators. If he rode on an elevator with a friend, whenever a stranger boarded the car, Hitchcock would begin a long description of an unusually bloody and violent murder scene. The gruesome story would continue until the somewhat freaked stranger got off the car. Hitchcock called this his elevator story.
I remember an old Candid Camera gag where actors would face the wrong direction in an elevator, standing with their backs to the door, for example. Anyone else entering the car would stand facing the same direction. Halfway through the elevator ride, the actors would turn 90 degrees and face a side wall. After a long pause, all the other people on the car would turn and face the same way.
Remember the elevator in my building? For years, the elevator car had a certain design flaw. My building has a basement and three floors, but for some reason the indicator lights inside the elevator were numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. In other words, the ground floor was represented by number 2; the basement was number 1, etc. This is not a big mistake, but people looking for the third floor usually got off on the second floor and almost everyone trying to leave the building took an unscheduled trip to the basement. Hilarious.
Eventually, some new dean had this “fixed”. Some people have no sense of educational tradition.
Today’s word is elevator reflex, which the site defines ”as the urge people get once inside an elevator to stare compulsively at the ascending numbered lights (usually on top of the elevator doors) either because they are truly convinced this will speed up the whole 'process' or they are simply socially-awkward beings who can't bear to look at random people in the face for 30 seconds.”
The Doc, my wife, suggests that this is an inaccurate definition, that elevator reflex refers to people who enter an elevator as soon as the doors open without checking to see whether the car is going up or down. People push a button, the car arrives, and they get on only to discover the car is traveling in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go. Seconds later, the car they actually summoned arrives, going in the right direction, opens its doors and no one gets on, usually to the great annoyance of the people waiting in the elevator. The elevator industry calls this a phantom stop. I like this name, especially since the History Channel will eventually get around to producing a one hour show claiming phantom stops are proof of paranormal activity.
It saddens me to say this, but both the people at the Urban Word of the Day site and my wife are wrong. Elevator reflex actually refers to the irresistible urge people have to push an already lit button. Years ago, while working in the hotel business, I attended a short elevator maintenance class. Among the fascinating tidbits I learned was that the average wait in a building with a properly designed elevator system is 30 seconds. Frustration sets in shortly after this point and chances are the person waiting will push the button again.
Why do people do this? Are they trying to impress upon the button how sincere they are? If you ask them, they will say something along the lines of, “The button might be busted.” This nonsense is even harder to understand, if the button is busted, why push it at all?
By the way, the strangest part of that elevator course was surfing the cars; riding on top of the elevator cars. Elevator surfing is incredibly dangerous, you should never, ever consider doing it as several people die every year while doing this reckless activity. Unbelievably fun, especially if the shaft is dark, but don’t even consider it.
I have been thinking about elevators all week. The university has had a couple of power failures this week and my building has an elevator. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch anyone.
Elevators reveal a lot of strange behavior in people. Lots of studies have been done about where people position themselves in the car. The key factor is maintaining personal space. If there is only one person on the car, he will stand in the middle; two will move to the back corners, the third person who enters takes the middle, and so forth. In general, the pattern tends to follow the same pattern you see on the sides of dice.
There are a couple of sex based variations to this rule. An alpha male techno-geek entering a car will move directly in front of the controls and remain there no matter how many people enter the car. Women entering a car will frequently cross their arms in an attempt to claim a little more personal space.
I’ve always liked the anecdote about Alfred Hitchcock and elevators. If he rode on an elevator with a friend, whenever a stranger boarded the car, Hitchcock would begin a long description of an unusually bloody and violent murder scene. The gruesome story would continue until the somewhat freaked stranger got off the car. Hitchcock called this his elevator story.
I remember an old Candid Camera gag where actors would face the wrong direction in an elevator, standing with their backs to the door, for example. Anyone else entering the car would stand facing the same direction. Halfway through the elevator ride, the actors would turn 90 degrees and face a side wall. After a long pause, all the other people on the car would turn and face the same way.
Remember the elevator in my building? For years, the elevator car had a certain design flaw. My building has a basement and three floors, but for some reason the indicator lights inside the elevator were numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4. In other words, the ground floor was represented by number 2; the basement was number 1, etc. This is not a big mistake, but people looking for the third floor usually got off on the second floor and almost everyone trying to leave the building took an unscheduled trip to the basement. Hilarious.
Eventually, some new dean had this “fixed”. Some people have no sense of educational tradition.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Raising Small Sick Children
Small children are always sick. Seems like What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One were sick several times a week, if not more. And a cold could rebound between my wife and the boys for half a year. As soon as one of them got well, one of the other ones would share the virus again and it would start up all over again. Typhoid Mary has nothing on this family. Why can’t children share toys as easily as they share germs?
And the fevers! A small boy can go from feeling perfectly fine to having a fever higher than his IQ in less than five minutes. Then a half hour later he wants to go outside and play, the fever is gone and he wants to know if he can have a sandwich!
Not that the boys didn’t really get sick occasionally. The dark angel of projectile vomiting visited our house more than once and both boys got sick enough occasionally that they were like a French submarine; they leaked at every orifice. We had the usual bouts of chicken pox, the galloping galontis and the creeping crud. Thankfully, nothing serious and nothing that stuck.
The sicknesses that I remember the most, however, were the far less serious ones. The ones that happened an hour before the school bus came or when it was someone’s turn to wash the dishes. I work with some people who regularly come down with the brown bottle flu or suddenly need to take a mental health day. These were the kinds of illnesses my boys came down with the most frequently.
Or sometimes, the boys saw the Doc or me take a couple of aspirins and suddenly they needed medicine, too. Within 30 seconds they had developed more symptoms that a convention of hypochondriacs. They were dying!
Luckily, the Doc and I found an all purpose cure for every disease unknown to medical science. I don’t even remember where we found the cure, but I think it was at one of those roadside novelty shops next to a highway. You know, the kind that advertises both gasoline and fireworks for sale. For a dollar, you can go out back of the shop and look at the “Thing” that lives in a cage. Well, sometimes it floats in a big glass jar, but you get the idea.
In the novelty shop, amidst all the genuine Native American kitsch made in China, there was a real treasure: a bottle of candy labeled as fake medicine. A hundred green candy peas in a plastic bottle with a medicine bottle style lid. The perfect all-purpose Wonder Drug!
Now before I tell you the rest of the story, I know what this week’s hate mail will be about. “You should never teach children that medicine is candy!” Oh, shut up! Every damn cough medicine on the market tastes like cherries, I can’t even describe the flavors they put in children’s vitamins. You want to blame someone, blame Mary Poppins. She’s the one who put a spoon full of sugar in the medicine.
The point of the story was that the boys didn’t think those peas were candy, they actually believed that every one of those peas was a powerful drug that combined antibiotics with painkillers and a dash of Pepto Bismol. We told them over and over again it was strong medicine. We kept it in the medicine cabinet and every time we used it, the Doc and I would hold serious conversations in front of them about the proper dosage. Hell, I saw many a sore throat cured with just one pea, if What’s-His-Name wanted two of them, he would have had to cough up a lung.
The peas did perform miraculous cures. The-Other-One once reattached a leg with… no that’s not quite right. But both boys made the school bus fairly regularly. And painfully scraped knees stopped hurting pretty quickly with the right dosage. Of course, any minor injury was much more painful if there was an audience for it.
We still have the bottle. Well, we did. I have previously written about how I suddenly became a grandfather-to-be. This precious child, the Munchkin, now occasionally needs medicine. So I passed the heirloom bottle down to The-Other-One. I have no doubt it will be equally effective for another generation.
And the fevers! A small boy can go from feeling perfectly fine to having a fever higher than his IQ in less than five minutes. Then a half hour later he wants to go outside and play, the fever is gone and he wants to know if he can have a sandwich!
Not that the boys didn’t really get sick occasionally. The dark angel of projectile vomiting visited our house more than once and both boys got sick enough occasionally that they were like a French submarine; they leaked at every orifice. We had the usual bouts of chicken pox, the galloping galontis and the creeping crud. Thankfully, nothing serious and nothing that stuck.
The sicknesses that I remember the most, however, were the far less serious ones. The ones that happened an hour before the school bus came or when it was someone’s turn to wash the dishes. I work with some people who regularly come down with the brown bottle flu or suddenly need to take a mental health day. These were the kinds of illnesses my boys came down with the most frequently.
Or sometimes, the boys saw the Doc or me take a couple of aspirins and suddenly they needed medicine, too. Within 30 seconds they had developed more symptoms that a convention of hypochondriacs. They were dying!
Luckily, the Doc and I found an all purpose cure for every disease unknown to medical science. I don’t even remember where we found the cure, but I think it was at one of those roadside novelty shops next to a highway. You know, the kind that advertises both gasoline and fireworks for sale. For a dollar, you can go out back of the shop and look at the “Thing” that lives in a cage. Well, sometimes it floats in a big glass jar, but you get the idea.
In the novelty shop, amidst all the genuine Native American kitsch made in China, there was a real treasure: a bottle of candy labeled as fake medicine. A hundred green candy peas in a plastic bottle with a medicine bottle style lid. The perfect all-purpose Wonder Drug!
The point of the story was that the boys didn’t think those peas were candy, they actually believed that every one of those peas was a powerful drug that combined antibiotics with painkillers and a dash of Pepto Bismol. We told them over and over again it was strong medicine. We kept it in the medicine cabinet and every time we used it, the Doc and I would hold serious conversations in front of them about the proper dosage. Hell, I saw many a sore throat cured with just one pea, if What’s-His-Name wanted two of them, he would have had to cough up a lung.
The peas did perform miraculous cures. The-Other-One once reattached a leg with… no that’s not quite right. But both boys made the school bus fairly regularly. And painfully scraped knees stopped hurting pretty quickly with the right dosage. Of course, any minor injury was much more painful if there was an audience for it.
We still have the bottle. Well, we did. I have previously written about how I suddenly became a grandfather-to-be. This precious child, the Munchkin, now occasionally needs medicine. So I passed the heirloom bottle down to The-Other-One. I have no doubt it will be equally effective for another generation.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The Cycle of Life
I am waiting to hear word from Oslo about my upcoming Nobel Prize. Okay, the awards aren’t due for months, but the Scandihoovians can vote an extra early award for special circumstances. After all, it is not often that in a single moment of clarity an individual not only clears up one of life’s greatest mysteries but discovers a new life form.
My discovery started several weeks ago when I began searching through my desk for my magnifying glass. (I have noticed as I get older that the manufacturers of frozen burritos keep printing the microwave instructions in progressively smaller typeface.) I couldn’t find the magnifying glass, probably because every drawer was filled to overflowing with ball point pens.
Last week, I needed a red pen. I was grading final exams and several of the blue books needed smiting. In search of a suitable weapon to use, I ransacked the desk… and the ball points were all gone. It turns out that you can smite blue books with a pencil. Not quite as satisfying, but effective.
A few days later, I’m hanging shirts in my closet. Every single shirt I owned was either on my back or hanging in my closet, yet I had several dozen extra wire coat hangers. Where did they come from? And stranger still, a few days later, where did they go? Suddenly, I had more shirts than hangers!
(Note. This reminds me of something that really needs a comment. My son, What’s-His-Name, is married. His wife, the Teach, believes that shirts may only be hung up if all the same colors are grouped together. It would be unkind of me to say that this foolishness is possibly a little OCD. So I won’t say that. But, Teach, you are anal enough to suck up a sofa cushion.)
Where was I? Oh, yes. Lots of ball point pens, no hangers. Something else was strange about the laundry. Half of my socks are missing. How in the world does this happen? I am damn near certain that every single day, I come home from the university wearing two socks. I can’t be losing them. I could understand it if I was losing shoes… No, my socks are disappearing, too.
Being a little absent-minded, I decided to make a list, so I went to my desk for a pad of paper and …ALL THE PENS WERE BACK! My first thought was that my wife was playing tricks on me, but then I remembered that the Doc had her sense of humor surgically removed during her second year of medical school.
It took me days to figure it out. And during that time, the hangers came and went, the ball point pens ebbed and flowed and I think I am down to three mismatched socks. Socks never come back.
And then it hit me; something was eating the socks. The socks were food! Here’s the way I see it. Earth has been invaded and there is an alien life form of shape shifters that are living and multiplying among us. What we think of as ball point pens are in reality egg cases. They incubate harmlessly in desk and kitchen drawers, under sofa cushions and in glove compartments. Obviously they select dark and warm locations for the eggs to hatch.
Eventually, the eggs hatch and out emerge and change their shape to match, as you’ve probably guessed, coat hangers. On their trip to the closet/nursery to hide out, they stop by the laundry basket for a snack. Not wanting to appear obvious, they only eat one sock from each pair. Then they jump into a closet and hide. This is the larval stage.
I am still working on the pupal stage, but I think it may be old cake pans and pie plates in the kitchen. I could be wrong; I did notice we seem to have more garden tools than I ever remember having used. But I am sure of the next stage.
Once the aliens get to the adult stage, this iron based life form is mature enough to try and blend in with their environment, so they take multiple forms. It is difficult to spot them, but if you are careful you can spot them around your house. Do you suddenly have an extra old bicycle behind the garage? Is there a rusty barbecue grill in the back yard you don’t remember having before?
A few of them may even leave your house to migrate to other locations. What else could explain all those ugly Volkswagens on the road?
My discovery started several weeks ago when I began searching through my desk for my magnifying glass. (I have noticed as I get older that the manufacturers of frozen burritos keep printing the microwave instructions in progressively smaller typeface.) I couldn’t find the magnifying glass, probably because every drawer was filled to overflowing with ball point pens.
Last week, I needed a red pen. I was grading final exams and several of the blue books needed smiting. In search of a suitable weapon to use, I ransacked the desk… and the ball points were all gone. It turns out that you can smite blue books with a pencil. Not quite as satisfying, but effective.
A few days later, I’m hanging shirts in my closet. Every single shirt I owned was either on my back or hanging in my closet, yet I had several dozen extra wire coat hangers. Where did they come from? And stranger still, a few days later, where did they go? Suddenly, I had more shirts than hangers!
(Note. This reminds me of something that really needs a comment. My son, What’s-His-Name, is married. His wife, the Teach, believes that shirts may only be hung up if all the same colors are grouped together. It would be unkind of me to say that this foolishness is possibly a little OCD. So I won’t say that. But, Teach, you are anal enough to suck up a sofa cushion.)
Where was I? Oh, yes. Lots of ball point pens, no hangers. Something else was strange about the laundry. Half of my socks are missing. How in the world does this happen? I am damn near certain that every single day, I come home from the university wearing two socks. I can’t be losing them. I could understand it if I was losing shoes… No, my socks are disappearing, too.
Being a little absent-minded, I decided to make a list, so I went to my desk for a pad of paper and …ALL THE PENS WERE BACK! My first thought was that my wife was playing tricks on me, but then I remembered that the Doc had her sense of humor surgically removed during her second year of medical school.
It took me days to figure it out. And during that time, the hangers came and went, the ball point pens ebbed and flowed and I think I am down to three mismatched socks. Socks never come back.
And then it hit me; something was eating the socks. The socks were food! Here’s the way I see it. Earth has been invaded and there is an alien life form of shape shifters that are living and multiplying among us. What we think of as ball point pens are in reality egg cases. They incubate harmlessly in desk and kitchen drawers, under sofa cushions and in glove compartments. Obviously they select dark and warm locations for the eggs to hatch.
Eventually, the eggs hatch and out emerge and change their shape to match, as you’ve probably guessed, coat hangers. On their trip to the closet/nursery to hide out, they stop by the laundry basket for a snack. Not wanting to appear obvious, they only eat one sock from each pair. Then they jump into a closet and hide. This is the larval stage.
I am still working on the pupal stage, but I think it may be old cake pans and pie plates in the kitchen. I could be wrong; I did notice we seem to have more garden tools than I ever remember having used. But I am sure of the next stage.
Once the aliens get to the adult stage, this iron based life form is mature enough to try and blend in with their environment, so they take multiple forms. It is difficult to spot them, but if you are careful you can spot them around your house. Do you suddenly have an extra old bicycle behind the garage? Is there a rusty barbecue grill in the back yard you don’t remember having before?
A few of them may even leave your house to migrate to other locations. What else could explain all those ugly Volkswagens on the road?
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Raising Small Children - Part Three
One of my sons is color blind. Not What’s-His-Name, but The-Other-One. Basically, he cannot differentiate between red and green, most of the rest of the colors are not really great either.
My wife and I discovered this at one of those interactive museums where the children are allowed to touch the exhibits and play with anything they want. Along one wall there was a collection of pictures, each a weird pattern of colored dots that revealed a number. If your vision is normal, you saw one number. If not, you saw another.
Here is an example of what I am talking about. If your vision is normal, you will see the number 70. Those with red/green color blindness will see the number 29.
Looking back, this really shouldn’t have surprised us that much. For years, we had allowed him to pick his own clothes out for school, and most days he left the house looking like something Walt Disney would dream up if he dropped acid. Let’s just say his clothes clashed.
His socks rarely matched, but so what? He’s male. Hell, I looked down one day in class and discovered my shoes didn’t match.
And I remember telling the boy on more than one occasion not to eat a green banana. Trust me; don’t let color blind people pick out your produce.
Somehow, even with all these hints, we didn’t know he was color blind and naturally, neither did he. I was shocked and he couldn’t have cared less. I guess you can’t miss what you don’t know.
As he got older, his being color blind was obvious. One day he was mowing the grass in the front yard and ran the lawnmower over a large piece of red cellophane. It might have been the wrapper off a box of chocolate. Instantly, there were several hundred pieces of red confetti all over the green grass. Since the little bastard had run over it on purpose, it seemed only fair to make him clean up the mess, and it was the kind of mess that you could see a block away.
You could see it a block away, unless, of course, you were color blind. I couldn’t make him pick up the little pieces of red plastic, because it was impossible for him to find them. Thankfully, we have two sons; I made What’s-His-Name do it.
Still, as the father of a color blind child, I knew my duty. Immediately, I started teasing the crap out of him. I missed not a single opportunity to make fun of him, tease him, or taunt him. Obviously, I did this for his own good, since I knew other kids would tease him at school and I wanted him to be immune to this. Besides, it was fun.
It turned out, however, that being color blind has its own rewards. Did you know that color blind people are practically immune to camouflage? This ability to see things that are trying to hide may be the evolutionary explanation why there seem to be so many people with red-green color blindness. Maybe thousands of years ago, these were the best hunters.
I got a great first hand exhibition of this several years ago. I decided to install a camera to watch the pool from an ivy covered wall on the patio. The camera was tiny, and several times while running the wiring, I “lost” the camera and it took me a while to locate it again among the ivy. A small black camera hidden in the dark spaces between the green leaves is invisible. To most of us, anyway.
When I finished, I sat down with a beer to admire my work. The-Other-One walked up and almost immediately asked, “When did we get a camera?”
I still tease him about his shirts, but to tell the truth, sometimes I wish I could borrow his eyes for a while. It would be interesting to see the world as he sees it. And I could let my wife, the Doc, pick out my shirts.
My wife and I discovered this at one of those interactive museums where the children are allowed to touch the exhibits and play with anything they want. Along one wall there was a collection of pictures, each a weird pattern of colored dots that revealed a number. If your vision is normal, you saw one number. If not, you saw another.
Looking back, this really shouldn’t have surprised us that much. For years, we had allowed him to pick his own clothes out for school, and most days he left the house looking like something Walt Disney would dream up if he dropped acid. Let’s just say his clothes clashed.
His socks rarely matched, but so what? He’s male. Hell, I looked down one day in class and discovered my shoes didn’t match.
And I remember telling the boy on more than one occasion not to eat a green banana. Trust me; don’t let color blind people pick out your produce.
Somehow, even with all these hints, we didn’t know he was color blind and naturally, neither did he. I was shocked and he couldn’t have cared less. I guess you can’t miss what you don’t know.
As he got older, his being color blind was obvious. One day he was mowing the grass in the front yard and ran the lawnmower over a large piece of red cellophane. It might have been the wrapper off a box of chocolate. Instantly, there were several hundred pieces of red confetti all over the green grass. Since the little bastard had run over it on purpose, it seemed only fair to make him clean up the mess, and it was the kind of mess that you could see a block away.
You could see it a block away, unless, of course, you were color blind. I couldn’t make him pick up the little pieces of red plastic, because it was impossible for him to find them. Thankfully, we have two sons; I made What’s-His-Name do it.
Still, as the father of a color blind child, I knew my duty. Immediately, I started teasing the crap out of him. I missed not a single opportunity to make fun of him, tease him, or taunt him. Obviously, I did this for his own good, since I knew other kids would tease him at school and I wanted him to be immune to this. Besides, it was fun.
It turned out, however, that being color blind has its own rewards. Did you know that color blind people are practically immune to camouflage? This ability to see things that are trying to hide may be the evolutionary explanation why there seem to be so many people with red-green color blindness. Maybe thousands of years ago, these were the best hunters.
I got a great first hand exhibition of this several years ago. I decided to install a camera to watch the pool from an ivy covered wall on the patio. The camera was tiny, and several times while running the wiring, I “lost” the camera and it took me a while to locate it again among the ivy. A small black camera hidden in the dark spaces between the green leaves is invisible. To most of us, anyway.
When I finished, I sat down with a beer to admire my work. The-Other-One walked up and almost immediately asked, “When did we get a camera?”
I still tease him about his shirts, but to tell the truth, sometimes I wish I could borrow his eyes for a while. It would be interesting to see the world as he sees it. And I could let my wife, the Doc, pick out my shirts.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
In Reference To
Now that the semester is nearly over, it is letter writing season. Students regularly show up hoping that I will write them a letter of recommendation so they can either get a job or enter a graduate degree program. Now that the economy has turned sour, I am writing a lot more of the latter. The job market is cold, while the ivy halls of academia are heated at taxpayer expense.
For most of my students, such a letter is not a gift, but an earned right; if you work your ass off in my class, the least I owe you is a small letter of recommendation. For many others, it is a Christmas gift they are stealing from a parked car at the mall.
My biggest problem is that I simply don’t remember most of these students. “I took your class in Military History,” they say. Yeah, that narrowed it down to about a thousand people, most of them about your age… How do you write a great letter that says nothing?
I wish there were an accepted code used by academics that would seem to be positive, yet actually told the reader the student in question was the intellectual equivalent of a turnip. Men have such a code; all you have to do is say that the woman being discussed has “a wonderful personality” and every man present will know her appearance would stop an eight day clock. You can say this right in front of your wife, and not understanding the code, she will just smile and nod her head in agreement.
Since there isn’t such a code, I would like to start one. From now on, when you read a letter of recommendation that states the student “came to class regularly” it actually means the following:
Dear Sir or Madam:
The bearer of this letter was my student for one or more classes. I can’t remember exactly how many, since he sat in the back row, fell asleep, slumped in the seat, and was all but invisible. I can attest that the student was present at one or more final exams, since I distinctly remember introducing myself.
Unfortunately, this student has delusions of adequacy. To be perfectly blunt, I would not use this student for breeding stock. Actually, come to think of it, I believe he used to study animal husbandry, until they caught him at it.
This student evidently wishes to enter your program in search of a graduate degree. In all honesty, I believe the student has two motives: First, there are no math prerequisites for a masters degree in the Sociology of Range Science Education Literature. To be fair, this is the same reason he sought an undergraduate degree in History.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, this student wishes to postpone his inevitable entrance into the fast food industry as long as possible. Since it seems likely that his parents will prefer to write checks indefinitely as opposed to having their son live at home, your department can probably count on this student to remain enrolled through his post-doctoral years.
Our Athletic Director assures me that the student will have his ankle bracelet removed next week. And I am fairly sure he is no longer contagious.
I urge you to admit this student, as our entire department is looking forward to his future career. Somewhere else.
Sincerely yours,
Mark Milliorn
For most of my students, such a letter is not a gift, but an earned right; if you work your ass off in my class, the least I owe you is a small letter of recommendation. For many others, it is a Christmas gift they are stealing from a parked car at the mall.
My biggest problem is that I simply don’t remember most of these students. “I took your class in Military History,” they say. Yeah, that narrowed it down to about a thousand people, most of them about your age… How do you write a great letter that says nothing?
I wish there were an accepted code used by academics that would seem to be positive, yet actually told the reader the student in question was the intellectual equivalent of a turnip. Men have such a code; all you have to do is say that the woman being discussed has “a wonderful personality” and every man present will know her appearance would stop an eight day clock. You can say this right in front of your wife, and not understanding the code, she will just smile and nod her head in agreement.
Since there isn’t such a code, I would like to start one. From now on, when you read a letter of recommendation that states the student “came to class regularly” it actually means the following:
Dear Sir or Madam:
The bearer of this letter was my student for one or more classes. I can’t remember exactly how many, since he sat in the back row, fell asleep, slumped in the seat, and was all but invisible. I can attest that the student was present at one or more final exams, since I distinctly remember introducing myself.
Unfortunately, this student has delusions of adequacy. To be perfectly blunt, I would not use this student for breeding stock. Actually, come to think of it, I believe he used to study animal husbandry, until they caught him at it.
This student evidently wishes to enter your program in search of a graduate degree. In all honesty, I believe the student has two motives: First, there are no math prerequisites for a masters degree in the Sociology of Range Science Education Literature. To be fair, this is the same reason he sought an undergraduate degree in History.
Second, and perhaps most importantly, this student wishes to postpone his inevitable entrance into the fast food industry as long as possible. Since it seems likely that his parents will prefer to write checks indefinitely as opposed to having their son live at home, your department can probably count on this student to remain enrolled through his post-doctoral years.
Our Athletic Director assures me that the student will have his ankle bracelet removed next week. And I am fairly sure he is no longer contagious.
I urge you to admit this student, as our entire department is looking forward to his future career. Somewhere else.
Sincerely yours,
Mark Milliorn
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Great Moments in Teaching
Finals start within a week, another semester is almost over. This is a great time to look back and think about all the great moments in teaching. After all these years, my rewards for hard work with my students are my memories.
About a dozen years ago, I was teaching a weekend class on the History of Argentina. The class met every Saturday morning for three hours. Argentine history is more than a little interesting, but the kind of student who willingly gives up a weekend tends to be a little on the interesting side.
So there we were, I was talking, the students were pretending to be listening, all was normal and all of us were probably thinking about lunch when suddenly I noticed that a young lady in the second row of seats was wearing a necklace. A necklace that was moving. Right about the time I figured out she had a snake wrapped around her neck, the girl sitting next to her saw the snake, too. It turns out that screaming is contagious.
Eventually, I found out the snake was the young lady’s pet; an Argentine Boa. Since it was from Argentina, she thought it would a welcome addition to class, and I guess it was, since the class ended a little early.
That’s not the only time an animal has livened up a classroom. A few years later, in the same room, a class got a little active for a completely different reason. A young lady in the back of the room suddenly jumped to her feet, screamed, and started pawing at her chest. She eventually got her sweatshirt down and began digging under her bra.
I can’t say that anyone was scared, but everyone was powerfully interested. I was fascinated. Eventually, the young lady pulled out a baby hedgehog. She was raising the little critter and had been carrying it around inside her bra to keep it warm when it had bitten her.
The university used to have a great classroom that though it had over a hundred stadium style seats, only had a single door at the front of the room. Anyone who came late had to enter at the front, interrupting the lecture, and go up a single center aisle to a seat.
I was teaching a survey class composed of mostly freshmen and sophomore students, one of which was unique. This young lady was going through a Gothic phase; lots of torn black jeans, black fingernails, assorted piercings and shiny dangling chains and lots of jewelry. What you really noticed, however, was her hair. Almost every single class, it was a new color, and none of them were to be found in nature. Since she came to class late, every single damn day, it was not hard to remember her. If you are talking about Thomas Jefferson and someone shows up dressed all in black with electric blue hair, trust me, you’ll remember her.
One day, about ten minutes into my lecture, she showed up with fire engine red hair. Well, if fire trucks were covered with glowing red neon lights, it would be fire engine red hair.
“Come on in, Red.” I said. “We were waiting for you.”
She smiled, went to her usual seat, the far back corner and I went on with my lecture. From that day forward, I always called her Red, regardless what color her hair happened to be. This went on for weeks, and I thought I had seen every possible color of hair. I was wrong.
Towards the end of the semester, one day she showed up, late as usual, with a new style. She had shaved her head; she was as pink and bald as a newborn’s butt. Bald, that is, except for a small circle of hair above each eyebrow that she had dyed black. And, she had used something, possibly Elmer’s glue, to fashion them into small devil’s horns.
For several seconds, the room was absolutely still and silent. Then, I roared with laughter, deep loud belly laughs. I couldn’t help myself, if I had even tried to hold it back, my heart would have burst. I rattled the ceiling tiles and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Naturally, because I was laughing, the whole room roared with me. Every time I thought I could get hold of myself and stop laughing, someone else would giggle and I would start up again. And this would set everyone else off again.
“Stop it!” I thought. “Get hold of yourself. Be professional! Think of dead kittens, think of sex with your grandmother! Think of accidentally spilling a bottle of Laphroaig Scotch.”
The only thing that finally stopped us was the simple lack of strength to laugh anymore. I don’t remember if I ever started lecturing again, and it probably doesn’t matter. No one who was in that room that day will remember anything but Red… and her horns.
And those are the moments that reward you in education, knowing that you make a difference.
About a dozen years ago, I was teaching a weekend class on the History of Argentina. The class met every Saturday morning for three hours. Argentine history is more than a little interesting, but the kind of student who willingly gives up a weekend tends to be a little on the interesting side.
So there we were, I was talking, the students were pretending to be listening, all was normal and all of us were probably thinking about lunch when suddenly I noticed that a young lady in the second row of seats was wearing a necklace. A necklace that was moving. Right about the time I figured out she had a snake wrapped around her neck, the girl sitting next to her saw the snake, too. It turns out that screaming is contagious.
Eventually, I found out the snake was the young lady’s pet; an Argentine Boa. Since it was from Argentina, she thought it would a welcome addition to class, and I guess it was, since the class ended a little early.
That’s not the only time an animal has livened up a classroom. A few years later, in the same room, a class got a little active for a completely different reason. A young lady in the back of the room suddenly jumped to her feet, screamed, and started pawing at her chest. She eventually got her sweatshirt down and began digging under her bra.
I can’t say that anyone was scared, but everyone was powerfully interested. I was fascinated. Eventually, the young lady pulled out a baby hedgehog. She was raising the little critter and had been carrying it around inside her bra to keep it warm when it had bitten her.
The university used to have a great classroom that though it had over a hundred stadium style seats, only had a single door at the front of the room. Anyone who came late had to enter at the front, interrupting the lecture, and go up a single center aisle to a seat.
I was teaching a survey class composed of mostly freshmen and sophomore students, one of which was unique. This young lady was going through a Gothic phase; lots of torn black jeans, black fingernails, assorted piercings and shiny dangling chains and lots of jewelry. What you really noticed, however, was her hair. Almost every single class, it was a new color, and none of them were to be found in nature. Since she came to class late, every single damn day, it was not hard to remember her. If you are talking about Thomas Jefferson and someone shows up dressed all in black with electric blue hair, trust me, you’ll remember her.
One day, about ten minutes into my lecture, she showed up with fire engine red hair. Well, if fire trucks were covered with glowing red neon lights, it would be fire engine red hair.
“Come on in, Red.” I said. “We were waiting for you.”
She smiled, went to her usual seat, the far back corner and I went on with my lecture. From that day forward, I always called her Red, regardless what color her hair happened to be. This went on for weeks, and I thought I had seen every possible color of hair. I was wrong.
Towards the end of the semester, one day she showed up, late as usual, with a new style. She had shaved her head; she was as pink and bald as a newborn’s butt. Bald, that is, except for a small circle of hair above each eyebrow that she had dyed black. And, she had used something, possibly Elmer’s glue, to fashion them into small devil’s horns.
For several seconds, the room was absolutely still and silent. Then, I roared with laughter, deep loud belly laughs. I couldn’t help myself, if I had even tried to hold it back, my heart would have burst. I rattled the ceiling tiles and laughed and laughed and laughed.
Naturally, because I was laughing, the whole room roared with me. Every time I thought I could get hold of myself and stop laughing, someone else would giggle and I would start up again. And this would set everyone else off again.
“Stop it!” I thought. “Get hold of yourself. Be professional! Think of dead kittens, think of sex with your grandmother! Think of accidentally spilling a bottle of Laphroaig Scotch.”
The only thing that finally stopped us was the simple lack of strength to laugh anymore. I don’t remember if I ever started lecturing again, and it probably doesn’t matter. No one who was in that room that day will remember anything but Red… and her horns.
And those are the moments that reward you in education, knowing that you make a difference.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Damn Yankees
As a child, I was encouraged to believe that Yankees ate their dead.
Yes, the Civil War had been over not quite a hundred years, but somehow the topic was still fresh in Texas. This feeling was encouraged by countless TV shows and a weird revival of Civil War clothing and toys in the stores. As a child we rarely played cowboys and Indians, we refought the War of Northern Aggression. And the South invariably won these reenactments, in part because the Northern army, Texas Division, was pitifully puny; we only had one Yankee kid for miles around, he was forced to fight alone.
Actually, this one poor child didn’t do much fighting; all I seem to remember were his lengthy and dramatic death scenes. This kid could die better than anyone I’ve ever seen, staggering and flopping around for 10 minutes while moaning piteously. His deaths were a glorious conclusion for every victorious battle for, at least the way we kids interpreted history, the south never lost.
Predisposed to hate the north by geography and popular will, I was greatly encouraged by my uncle, who besides providing me with the information that northern funerals were a buffet, filled my head with incredible lies about the world outside of Texas. Actually he believed there was little of value north or east of Fort Worth.
You can imagine my horror when my Dad announced that the family was taking a vacation, by car, to Illinois to visit a preacher friend of the family. Now, I was a product of Texas public education, but I was pretty sure Illinois was a suburb of New York, for damn sure in Yankee territory .
I remember very little of the trip up to Illinois, probably because I spent the entire trip with my nose in a book, but when we arrived on the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois I was fascinated. This was a real city, and for a country boy, there were amazing sights. We stayed in a motel, with a pool. And I had never seen so many cars and stores and people. Best of all, right across the street from the motel was an ice cream stand!
Now, I knew all about ice cream, and I had bought it before, but I don’t think I had ever seen a small store whose sole business was to sell ice cream. My father gave me a dollar and let me go get two cones for myself and my brother. When I went to the corner, I found another modern marvel of urban life. There was a sign there that said, “Walk” and “Don’t Walk”.
I’d seen traffic lights, but a lit sign that would help you cross the street was simply amazing. This must be what they meant by city conveniences. I waited until the sign said I was safe, crossed the street and bought two ice cream cones (chocolate) and then stood on the sidewalk and waited until the sign said it was safe to cross. I stepped off the curb….and got promptly rammed by a Chevy. I got knocked a dozen feet and the damn ice cream cones went flying.
I was killed. No, wait, that’s not right, but it felt about like that. Frankly, it hurt, my whole left side felt like it was being eaten by ants. I just lay there in the street trying to get my breath back. The driver, a worried woman, hovered over me and started asking questions about 20% faster than I could hear. Ever notice this about Yankees?
Before I could get my eyes uncrossed, a policeman and a rather large crowd had gathered around me, everyone was talking at once and asking me questions. The policeman helped me over to the curb and I just sat there scared out of my wits. This was more people than I had ever seen in one spot outside of church and rodeo.
“Are you hurt?”
“What’s your name? Where do you live?”
“Are you okay?”
“Where does your father work?”
Obviously, my uncle had been right about Yankees. They have lying signs, they ruin your ice cream, they hit you with cars, and then they want to know every blasted thing about you. And as sure as shooting, Dad wasn’t going to give me another dollar for ice cream.
Well, I was only about 10 years old, but even a kid knows you don’t lead the enemy back home. I wasn’t about to tell them where my family was, these Yankees would probably line the whole family up and hit 'em with cars one at a time. So I stood up and started walking, and not towards the motel across the street.
And, of course, the whole crowd, including the policeman, started following me. Looking back, it’s easy to see what these good natured folks wanted, they wanted to make sure I was okay; they wanted to tell my folks what had happened to me. And, no doubt, they wanted to go through my pockets and get the rest of that dollar: fifty years ago two ice creams cones only cost twenty cents. Damn Yankees.
Well, there I was leading the enemy away from my family, sacrificing myself to spare them…except I wasn’t. I got once around the block, ended up right about where I had started and simply had to sit down because my side hurt. The policeman promptly walked up to me and put his hand on my shoulder; I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
It was about this time that my father came looking for the idiot child who took half an hour to walk across the street and back. He found me as soon as he came out of the motel room, I was not exactly hard to find as I had a rather impressive, and slightly official, entourage. Dad always said later that he wasn’t exactly surprised to see that crowd around me and that the policeman’s hand on my shoulder looked sort of natural.
I saw my father and tried to motion him off while trying to send the mental message, “Run! Save yourself!” It was no use, before long, the enemy had surrounded my father, too.
Everything quickly got better. I got a ride to the hospital and x-rays showed no fractures. I had a world class bruise, and eventually, even got the ice cream.
Two weeks later, I told my uncle the whole story. Predictably, he thought the tale was hilarious and equally predictably, he provided the story its moral.
“Boy, don’t watch them lights, watch the cars,” he cackled. “Them lights ain’t never kilt nobody.”
Yes, the Civil War had been over not quite a hundred years, but somehow the topic was still fresh in Texas. This feeling was encouraged by countless TV shows and a weird revival of Civil War clothing and toys in the stores. As a child we rarely played cowboys and Indians, we refought the War of Northern Aggression. And the South invariably won these reenactments, in part because the Northern army, Texas Division, was pitifully puny; we only had one Yankee kid for miles around, he was forced to fight alone.
Actually, this one poor child didn’t do much fighting; all I seem to remember were his lengthy and dramatic death scenes. This kid could die better than anyone I’ve ever seen, staggering and flopping around for 10 minutes while moaning piteously. His deaths were a glorious conclusion for every victorious battle for, at least the way we kids interpreted history, the south never lost.
Predisposed to hate the north by geography and popular will, I was greatly encouraged by my uncle, who besides providing me with the information that northern funerals were a buffet, filled my head with incredible lies about the world outside of Texas. Actually he believed there was little of value north or east of Fort Worth.
You can imagine my horror when my Dad announced that the family was taking a vacation, by car, to Illinois to visit a preacher friend of the family. Now, I was a product of Texas public education, but I was pretty sure Illinois was a suburb of New York, for damn sure in Yankee territory .
I remember very little of the trip up to Illinois, probably because I spent the entire trip with my nose in a book, but when we arrived on the outskirts of Springfield, Illinois I was fascinated. This was a real city, and for a country boy, there were amazing sights. We stayed in a motel, with a pool. And I had never seen so many cars and stores and people. Best of all, right across the street from the motel was an ice cream stand!
Now, I knew all about ice cream, and I had bought it before, but I don’t think I had ever seen a small store whose sole business was to sell ice cream. My father gave me a dollar and let me go get two cones for myself and my brother. When I went to the corner, I found another modern marvel of urban life. There was a sign there that said, “Walk” and “Don’t Walk”.
I’d seen traffic lights, but a lit sign that would help you cross the street was simply amazing. This must be what they meant by city conveniences. I waited until the sign said I was safe, crossed the street and bought two ice cream cones (chocolate) and then stood on the sidewalk and waited until the sign said it was safe to cross. I stepped off the curb….and got promptly rammed by a Chevy. I got knocked a dozen feet and the damn ice cream cones went flying.
I was killed. No, wait, that’s not right, but it felt about like that. Frankly, it hurt, my whole left side felt like it was being eaten by ants. I just lay there in the street trying to get my breath back. The driver, a worried woman, hovered over me and started asking questions about 20% faster than I could hear. Ever notice this about Yankees?
Before I could get my eyes uncrossed, a policeman and a rather large crowd had gathered around me, everyone was talking at once and asking me questions. The policeman helped me over to the curb and I just sat there scared out of my wits. This was more people than I had ever seen in one spot outside of church and rodeo.
“Are you hurt?”
“What’s your name? Where do you live?”
“Are you okay?”
“Where does your father work?”
Obviously, my uncle had been right about Yankees. They have lying signs, they ruin your ice cream, they hit you with cars, and then they want to know every blasted thing about you. And as sure as shooting, Dad wasn’t going to give me another dollar for ice cream.
Well, I was only about 10 years old, but even a kid knows you don’t lead the enemy back home. I wasn’t about to tell them where my family was, these Yankees would probably line the whole family up and hit 'em with cars one at a time. So I stood up and started walking, and not towards the motel across the street.
And, of course, the whole crowd, including the policeman, started following me. Looking back, it’s easy to see what these good natured folks wanted, they wanted to make sure I was okay; they wanted to tell my folks what had happened to me. And, no doubt, they wanted to go through my pockets and get the rest of that dollar: fifty years ago two ice creams cones only cost twenty cents. Damn Yankees.
Well, there I was leading the enemy away from my family, sacrificing myself to spare them…except I wasn’t. I got once around the block, ended up right about where I had started and simply had to sit down because my side hurt. The policeman promptly walked up to me and put his hand on my shoulder; I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
It was about this time that my father came looking for the idiot child who took half an hour to walk across the street and back. He found me as soon as he came out of the motel room, I was not exactly hard to find as I had a rather impressive, and slightly official, entourage. Dad always said later that he wasn’t exactly surprised to see that crowd around me and that the policeman’s hand on my shoulder looked sort of natural.
I saw my father and tried to motion him off while trying to send the mental message, “Run! Save yourself!” It was no use, before long, the enemy had surrounded my father, too.
Everything quickly got better. I got a ride to the hospital and x-rays showed no fractures. I had a world class bruise, and eventually, even got the ice cream.
Two weeks later, I told my uncle the whole story. Predictably, he thought the tale was hilarious and equally predictably, he provided the story its moral.
“Boy, don’t watch them lights, watch the cars,” he cackled. “Them lights ain’t never kilt nobody.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)