Snow Sense

There should be a "do not drive" list for snowy days. Some of the folks that should be on it, based on my observations today:

Drivers of sub-compact cars who aren't smart enough to avoid that 2 foot deep pile of snow.

Soccer moms that went out and got suv's, but have no idea how to use 4 wheel drive. You'd be better off in a Subaru.

Stupid men that seem to think 4 wheel drive somehow enhances braking. Doesn't work that way, as the cop will be explaining to you soon. You would be better off letting your clueless wife drive, at least she's careful.

Cronic brakers. I got news for you, you can't steer with your wheels locked up, and crawling along with your 4-ways flashing is just asking for trouble. If you're that scared, stay home.

That guy with the VW "newbeatle" that tried to climb that hill behind me. Dude, stupid car for this part of the world, but even stupider idea to try and climb that hill with it. There's a reason there are gradient warning signs on that hill. You did look quite fashionable as I watched you sliding backwards down the hill in my rearview, though.

On the list of people that should be out: that handful of people that grew up in northern states and learned how to drive properly in snow, even in small cars (bonus if you know how to handle a rear wheel drive!). And, of course, fellow Jeep owners that are smart enough to power through a turn but remember to brake early for a stop. Remember guys, leave room around you for all the idiots.

Have a happy and safe Jeep Day, and remember, if no one is around, it's always ok to put it in 2 wheel and let your Jeep shake its tail. Hey, they like dancin' too.

Questions and Answers

The past week or two has sucked, but things are starting to look up.

The changes in my job continue to go well. My new coworkers tell me they are impressed by my ability to assimilate large amounts of information so quickly, and my new boss appears to be an likeable and level-headed person. No matter how suspicious I am, I can't help but have fun working with these guys, which is actually hard to adjust to. Work isn't supposed to be fun, and bosses aren't supposed to be likeable. Except that mine just came rushing over to my desk last Friday:

"Are you and your wife big in the kitchen?" he asked, eyes big and excited.

"Well, yeah, kind of. Why?"

"Amazon.com," he whispered. "Professional grade Calphalon pots, for 20 bucks! They're like, 80% off!" He helped me find them on the site, then rushed off to spread the good news about high quality, low cost, cookware to all his staff.

Yes indeed, the new boss tipped me off to a $160 Calphalon pots that were on sale for $19.95. Plus free shipping if you ordered $25 or more. It's hard not to like that.
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One of the folks who managed to stick their foot in it while discussing the whole church-money-tithing thing apologized to my wife, and they are back on good terms. The fact that this person took the hint (ok, Lullabelle wasn't exactly subtle about things), and that they talked to her and sorted it out reinforces my impression that they are a good person, and the friendship was worth the time we've put into it.

On the flip side, a number of people I know are now not pledging, and a couple of people are just plain leaving. One of the folks leaving is a woman I have tremendous respect and affection for; one of the people that really has helped me feel connected at our church. I will still see her, since we have a number of connections "outside" of church, but the church will lose someone who has been a real worker and resource for them. Of course, diverse perspectives are not what we seem to be about right now. Right now, we're all about growing the brand.
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The other big news was with one of our cats, Shadow. After a long battle with an ear infection that wasn't getting better, he ended up in the emergency clinic on Thanksgiving night with blood running out of one ear and one nostril. Things were pretty tense, and he ended up making the road trip to Lansing, Michigan (a long haul with a cat that's a really bad traveler). He received iv fluids over the holiday weekend, then a series of tests starting the Monday after.

While running a scope through his head, they found and removed a "large mass" that was blocking the tubing in his mellon. That relieved the immediate symptoms, such as large problems with hearing and smell, but also created the new worry that he might have cancer. They did x-rays, and then a CT scan. Finally, they sent him home, with drugs to help his appetite, while we waited for test results.

We finally got those test results, and he does not have cancer, or any other life threatening diseases that they could find. What he does have is a big infection where all the crap was blocked up in his head, a prescription to fight it, and drugs to, as my wife puts it, "keep him stoned." Everyone that saw him at MSU's vet hospital remarked on how friendly and loveable he was. "You just can't possibly pet him enough!" one woman said. No, I smiled, no you can't.

So yes, I now have a cat that has suddenly regained a lot of energy, smell and hearing, and constantly has the munchies. Plus a really big bill from the vetrinary hospital at Michigan State. (sigh)

Nobel Prize for Idiocy

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?"

That was the question asked by Nobel laureate in literature, Harold Pinter, a British playwrite, who decided the best use of his Nobel speach time was to rant about Bush and Blair being "war criminals" who should be tried in the Hague. But that wasn't enough. "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," Pinter claimed.

I'm going to be generous, and suppose that Mr. Pinter is a great writer, who deserved this award, because otherwise, he sounds like an idiot. I am second to none in my disdain for Bush or people who like Bush (we're talking the politician here, stop smirking!), but "war criminal?" "Systematic crimes?"

How many people did Saddam Husein need to kill before the gutless cowards of this world would send help to his victims? A hundred thousand? A million? Saddam Hussein killed at least a million people when he decided to invade Iran. He later invaded Kuwait, lobbed missiles at Israel (a country in no way involved in the war), and later took out a contract to kill the sovreign leader of another country. (And yes, even though I don't like old Bush any better than young Bush, it's still a crime.) In between, he murdered and tortured imense numbers of his own citizens in ways that are simply bizare and unreal. One incident, which made a huge impression on me as a young soccer player, was when his lunatic son had the feet cut off of members of the national soccer team when he thought they did not play well enough. I wonder how Mr. Pinter would feel about the invasion of Iraq to depose Saddam if it had been his own clay feet that got the ax?

Systematic crimes? I'll be the first person to agree that my country has blown it a bunch of times, but we were also the reason that all of Europe doesn't speak German. Or Russian. Or the Chinese and Indians don't speak Japanese. For every stupid thing we did, we had a moment of greatness. Many times when Europe systematically appeased tyrants like Hitler, or tolerated genocide like in the Balkans, it was Americans that acted. When the UN has needed money, it wasn't Europe, Asia or Africa that paid the big bills, or sent the large numbers of troops. One European journalist noted that the amazing thing after 9-11 wasn't what the US did, but that, given the chance, we didn't just drop the bomb on all the Islamic fundamentalist countries; that we didn't kill people on anything like the scale we could have. Large parts of the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq were our fault. Now we're paying the price to clean it up. We may have provided some very flawed leadership throughout history, but we have never run from a problem. At times when the rest of the world hid their heads in the sand, we, often with Britain at our side, tried to do something.

Bush is an idiot, and lots of us know it. Just because it was an idiot that removed the tyrant doesn't mean removing the tyrant was a dumb idea, let alone a crime. Mr. Noble prize winner doesn't think we talk about our mistakes, don't reflect on our decisions? There are more Americans burried in more countries than any other soldiers of any nation, and we are quickly followed on that sad list by Britain. Some of those folks died in stupid and pointless conflicts fought under stupid and clueless leaders. Some of them died building a world in which a man could win prizes in playwriting, while slandering his country, its leaders and its allies, and be safe doing it.

Maybe someone from the Nobel organization should point that out to him.

Moose moose moose moose, moose moose moose moose...

I got no sleep last night. I had a very strange dream: It was about 12:30am, and I was on the ice, getting hit by pucks, while Bono was singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday." When I woke up, the Michigan Moose had somehow added 2 points and a win to our record. Check out the game description "Once in a Blue Moose," at the hockeygoalie site.

Notebooks... Lots and lots of notebooks.

I've done a lot of writing, but sometimes, I forget how much.

Tonight, I was performing one of my most important regular rituals: digging through piles of notebooks and papers, trying to find the story I felt like working on. I work on different things when I'm in different moods, which is probably why I have a whole bunch of almost, but not quite, finished novels. (and some really bad poetry)

So, these notebooks are in stacks, one in a big milk crate, and then a few others on shelves, which add up to about two more milk crates. I have large portions of novels, written long hand, punctuated by stray pages of things like songs I want to buy, poems to former girlfriends, half-written and unsent letters, some very odd, stylized drawings, etc. To find anything, anything at all, I have to remember what I drew or wrote on the cover of the notebook, and/or thumb through them all.

Some of the random things I found tonight: drawings of Japenese palaces; multiple starts at keeping a journal, initiated by some "life ending" problem, and quit right after the problem went away; a story about a guy trapped between his pro-choice friend and a bunch of pro-life nut jobs, both of whom are destroying his insulated small-town life; a poem inspired by a sad combination of Shakespear and Emily Dickinson, dedicated to a personification of death; a partial list of Van Halen songs for a "best of" tape I never made; a poem I wrote while selling tickets to a movie called (I think) "Last Call at Maud's," (which only maybe Frog will know,) with the "edgy" title, "Do Dykes Like Ice Cream?," which is all about our shared humanity (good idea, bad poem); journal entries about the girlfriend I couldn't live without, shortly followed by journal entries about the girl I had just started dating (and ended up marrying); the beginnings of a supernatural thriller about vampires; a drawing of some sort of odd pagan altar that I think was supposed to go with another supernatural thriller that I'm not sure I even started; a bizarre murder thriller where each character's expression of their sexuality represents some aspect of human nature and societal conflict; a portrait of Jimi Hendrix...

I could go on all night... But I won't... 'Cause you'll get bored... I already am...

Anyway, it's a lot of stuff. A whole shitload. What's really scary is not how bad most of it is. Other than the poetry, it's mostly really good. No, what's scary is, how much of it is worth doing something with, and yet I never have.

But then, my urge to share this stuff isn't as big as my combination of laziness and self-editing. I don't want to negotiate with some numb nuts over my work. I don't have the energy for cover letters, sample chapters, plot summaries. (In fact, I don't know if I could summarize most of the plots. They're really... out there.) Even if I could overcome my disinterest in the business side of writing, I'm also just reluctant to share. People are small minded and short sited. They lack imagination. They assume everything you write is somehow "about you," or worse yet, "about them." Every time I've shown something I thought was interesting to someone, they have responded with the standard, "Do you see yourself/me/the world like that? Is that who you want yourself/me to be?" I don't know that I have the patience for all the BS I'd have to put up with if anyone ever read some of this stuff. (And trust me, the best stuff is also the weirdest.)

At some point, I suppose I should do something with all of this. For now, though, I'm still trying to find the damn story I wanted to work on...