Not Quite the Electric Yarmulke

We're developing another kind of junk drawer at our house that I suspect is just as ubiquitous as the original.

This new junk drawer is filled with strictly electronic flotsam: Cell phone and video camera chargers, an old portable CD player, a digital camera that saves its pictures on 3 1/2 inch floppy discs and, our latest addition, a Palm IIIc complete with charger and computer connection cable. We used to have two very old cell phones in there, but they've disappeared. I vaguely recall giving them away to some cell phone recycling outfit, but it's more likely than not that they were simply transported to Deseret Industries, with some of our other outmoded detritus.

Now, we've been diligent in keeping our electronic refuse to a minimum. Older computers have been passed on to family members. We have a complete computer system, including scanner, printer and LCD monitor, in storage, just in case something we've got goes south. At about this time last year, I replaced the battery door on our old digital camera, rather than simply tossing the camera. (I say old camera because we did get a new one at Christmas, but we'll keep the old one as a backup.) So I can feel fairly confident that the stuff we've outgrown isn't contributing to pollution and illness among scavengers in Nigeria or China.

A Guy Who Can Get Things Done

I think I know how Phil Connors felt in “Groundhog Day” when he realized his winter was never going to end. And how the bowling alley guy felt when he said “That pretty much sums it up for me” when Phil Connors asked how he’d feel if nothing he did ever mattered, and that every day seemed the same. So I need to seize the day, I suppose, learn to play the piano or walk around looking for people to help. Or learn to make love like sea otters. Scratch that. Forget I ever wrote it.

Speaking of Bill Murray, just learned today that Mitt Romney has a house on Lake Winnepesaukie in New Hampshire. I’m about ready to head up there and indulge in some Death Therapy. I hear it’s a guaranteed cure.

I take this all as evidence of past Bill Murray experiences intruding on present time. I wouldn’t rule out ESP or clairvoyant activity either. No. That’s wrong. Gotta look it up.

Ah, and thanks to the Internet, I have it here:

VENKMAN

Generally, you don't see that kind of behavior in a major appliance. What do you think, Egon?

SPENGLER

(checking the polygraph)

She's telling the truth -- or at least she thinks she is.

DANA

(defensive)

Why would anyone make up a thing like that?

VENKMAN

Some people like the attention. Some people are just crazy.

STANTZ

(muses)

You know, Peter, this could be a past life experience intruding on the present.

SPENGLER

Or even a race memory, stored in the collective unconscious. And I wouldn't rule out clairvoyance or telepathic contact either.

So what am I getting at here? Well, my days here at work are starting to blend together a bit more than they used to. We’re between projects at the moment so things are a bit slow. But it’s more than that. There’s some kind of weird circadian rhythm in me that causes me to have a lull this time of year. I won’t say intellectual lull lest I invite many snide and rude comments about how I can tell I’m in a lull. February and early March is just a terrible time for me. Winter seems like it will never go away, I feel cooped up at home and I go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, so the only time I get any real sunshine is when I walk outside. I have been walking – try to do at least a half hour a day, and that’s good for the sanity. But by golly I wish the days didn’t blend together here so much.

We Got the Microwave Back!

It's official. After three weeks without a microwave, Michelle and I both agree that we'd much rather live without TV service in the house (which we've done for the past 11 years) than without a microwave. Fortunately, we got ours back today. Now we owe Robert (our friendly neighborhood repairman) batches and batches of butterscotch chip cookies until the end of time. Well worth it.

This Truck Will Self-Destruct

Of the many things I have to deal with in life, one of the things I enjoy the least is getting a vehicle fixed.

The Davidson Gene insists that vehicles be driven into the ground, much like in that old Gordon Lightfoot song. Don't know why that came to mind. SO when my truck started having shifting trouble Tuesday night, I knew the inevitable was beginning: The visit to the repair shop.

I'm not a Catholic, so I've never done a proper confession, in one of those booths with the priest on the other side of the grille. But I think I know what it feels like, every time I have to get a vehicle fixed.

Oh, my son, the mechanic says. I have here a list of your sins. The list is a sheaf of printer paper, stained with greasy thumbprints, of the many, many, many things wrong with my vehicle. The list always contains a string of excalamation points, declaring each of my automotive sins worst than the last. I fidget in the confessional, wishing I had one of the fan belts hanging on the wall behind him to finger like a rosary. For each sin, a penance, an indulgence -- cash from my pocket to his will make the sins go away, my automobile will appear as white as the driven snow.

The punctuation is there to remind me that if I dare leave the cathedral of grease without seeking absolution, I am in danger of losing my soul, or at least at risk of having the lower ball joints on the front wheels break down completely and deliver me not through the green pastures and still waters but to the abominable field of misery and woe, where only tow truck drivers dwell. If absolution is not sought, the face of the priest darkens. "Oh, I should make you sign a paper," he says. The paper is to absolve him of any culpability lest I lose my automotive soul; lest the vehicle explode spontaneously as I pull out of the lot, determined to find someone who can fix the clutch hydraulic system for less than $140, the ball joints for less than $570. If I dare mention my blessed ignorance of my sins before I came in for confession as a reason to continue driving until I find another priest with more reasonable rates, his face darkens further. He has seen my oil, unchanged for 5,000 miles, and knows it is black. His head shakes. I see, in his eyes, the fear that the four mechanics of the apocalypse will descend upon my huddled form, broken down, miserable, on the side of some lonely highway, to whisk my soul to eternal damnation in a waiting room filled with the smell of grease and rubber, old golf magazines and a friendly dog who sheds loose hair on my jeans, forever.

"You don't owe him an explanation," my wife says, innocent of the sin of having the vehicle in need of repair, thus heedless of the misery of a soul unrepentant leaving a mechanic knowing his truck could self-destruct if the mechanic-priest wishes it. "Don't tell them you're shopping around," she says. "Just leave."

Just leave. The mechanic who knows the flight of a single loose bolt, the grind of a single underlubed differential, will follow me to the ends of the earth, even as I seek solace and absolution at another cathedral. He'll know I drove the truck home, doomed to explosion, death, endless torment and Hell. He'll know.

Farewell, Mr. Melendez

I’ve always had a soft spot for Charlie Brown, but for sheer childhood innocence, it’s Linus Van Pelt all the way.

Watch him here in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” So happy to help his sister by hauling a giant pumpkin to their home, despite the obstacles of the fence, the pumpkin’s sheer bulk and its weight as it drags him along after he tries in vain to stop it after he sends it for a roll.
Then to see his eyes bug out as he describes to Sally the anticipation of waiting to see the Great Pumpkin “with his own eyes.” You have to have a heart of stone not to feel like a kid again when you hear his eager innocence.

Then there’s his speech in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I can’t read those Bible passages now without concluding, “And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” Religion without pretention, a rarity these days.

Now Bill Melendez is dead.

Melendez, the ex-Disney and Warner Brothers animator, worked with Charles Schulz to bring “Peanuts” to television, with that first holiday special so many years ago. They worked on a shoestring – animating “A Charlie Brown Christmas” in Los Angeles, then sending the cels to Mexico to be painted, where the artists used ordinary house paint. Many deride the art as simplistic, the storytelling mawkish and moralizing. I don’t care. These shows are precious to me, and to have Melendez pass on saddens me.

Peanuts and the Melendez cartoon specials certainly belong to a bygone era. Today, some would focus cynically on Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Christmas special; then again today, with our cynical culture it’s hard to imagine a Christmas special as low-key, unpretentious, innocent and decent as “A Charlie Brown Christmas” being made today, unless there were men like Schulz and Melendez behind it. I’d like to be proved wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

No matter. We have these specials to watch. Our children watch them and laugh. They don’t seem to care the shows seem old-fashioned, the messages too overt. They just like it when Linus swoons in the pumpkin patch, and when Snoopy battles it out with the deck chair in “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.”

Thanks, Bill. Animate a bit more heaven for us.

Will You Shut Up, Please?!

Been reading the Federalist Papers this week, especially looking for what Hamilton, Jefferson and Jay had to say about partisanship and party politics. I’m particularly struck by what Alexander Hamilton says here(from Letter No. 1):

So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong side as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so thoroughly persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question. Were there not even these inducements to moderation, nothing could be more ill-judged than that intolerant spirit which has at all times characterized political parties. For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Though Hamilton uses this to set up the framework for the series of letters urging support of the U.S. Constitution over the Articles of Confederation, I find his rhetoric and passion equally applicable to partisan politics on the whole.

Everywhere in American politics today we see those false biases, that lack of moderation, and that intolerant spirit. It is as Jon Stewart said at the Democratic National Convention, “you’re either a rapture-awaiting promise keeper, or you drive a car that runs on gorp.” We’re regarded or regard each other only as rapturers or gorpers. Both parties are trying so hard to differentiate themselves that they’re driving politically moderate people like myself away, leaving us in a political netherworld that is disenfranchised because there are no politicians to our liking on the ballot. Do we vote with the rapturers or the gorpers, or, as it has been suggested, throw away our votes on the Naders and Pauls, or just don’t vote at all? Read any Internet posting or listen to any political commentary and you’ll find evidence that clearly illustrates the final point in this quote from Hamilton: “For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.” The people in agreement are agreeing with what they already agreed to, and those in opposition are falling into that “personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these” in stating their arguments and trying to persuade others. It’s easy to agree with stuff you already agree with. If someone dares ask you to consider something else, well, those false biases show up, where we cling to a cause because it’s what we’ve always clung to.

The two major parties and the media (from the left-wingers to the right-wingers) are falling into this petty trap that Hamilton warns us against. The Huffington Post is argle-bargling about the Republicans’ apparent lack of family values due to the Palin situation. Fox news is still trying to convince us that George W. Bush eats flowers and poops rainbows. I listen to both sides and want to throw the heck up, especially when the candidates from both sides say that this kind of stuff doesn’t matter, but, wink wink, if other people want to chatter about it, hey, it’s a free country. Our national judgment and most of the media messages we get are based not on sound argument, but false bias. Nowhere have we learned this lesson of moderation that Hamilton advises – simply because there’s little room for moderation. False biases in both parties get the base riled up and to the polls, while a few olive branches to the moderates convince them to vote for what frankly comes down to the lesser of two evils. As a moderate, I’m tired of that kind of non-choice.

A Wolverine County Win -- and an Eye-Roller from Obama

Hats off to the county commissioners in Bingham County. Our neighbors to the south have paved the way for a pretty significant wind power project in the Wolverine Canyon area, or so says one of our local news stations.

The county has weighed this decision pretty much all summer, and had to play against some pretty heavy hitters, including Frank VanderSloot, local political agitator and deep-pocket mogul. He has every right to use his money how he sees fit, to express his opinion and try to sway public opinion. In this case, however, I'm grateful the county commissioners didn't let power get in the way of their decision. No pun intended.

I've written here about how I support efforts for renewable energy, particularly T. Boone Pickens' effort to invest billions in wind power to help wean us off imported oil (more power from wind, he reasons, means less power from domestically-produced natural gas, which could, in turn, be used to power vehicles, rather than gasoline made from imported oil). I'm also pleased to see smaller efforts, like that of Ridgeline Energy, to put into place smaller-scale wind power plants. IF we're to wean ourselves from foreign oil, we're going to have to accept more things liek this -- and the occasional aesthetic affront they may bring. Personally, I've visited Wolverine Canyon, and am here to tell that I was much more disturbed by all the cowpies I encountered than I might be by the presence of the occasional wind turbine perched on a ridge. Besides, I think the plants are aesthetically-pleasing myself. I like driving in to Idaho Falls from the west to see the wind turbine project on the hills east of town. Their presence doesn't bother me at all. I think the opponents to the Wolverine Canyon project will find they're in the same boat, after they get used to the turbines being there. And they can say they're doing their part to wean us from foreign oil.

On other energy fonts: An eye-roller. Barack Obama wants to tax oil company profits in order to give people who are struggling with high energy bills a $1,000 rebate. That's going to solve our energy crisi how, I wonder? I suppose I could put it in the bank and hope, in a few years, to get into a wind power project on a very local scale: I've looked into getting a smaller wind turbine to plant in our back yard, but the least expensive ones I can find run about $12,000. I'd love to do it. Maybe in a few years, after we've saved up enough cash. And we can convince the city to let us do so. But I can't say the idea of taxing the oil giants is a way to do that, especially since most of that rebate money, in the hands of the average recipient, won't go towards energy efficiency. The tax-and-rebate is just a dumb, election-year parlor trick.

To Obama's credit, he's thinking bigger than just a rebate -- He wants to undertake an effort to wean the U.S. from foreign oil (or at least oil from Venezuela and the Middle East) in ten years. That's laudable. He wants the U.S. to invest $150 billion in alternative energy projects, including getting a million hybrid cars on the road. He wants to see private investment in alternative energy be a part of that program. But I just wish he'd drop the windfall-for-rebate idea. It's a dumb one. Now, if he wanted to do the windfall for alternative energy investment, I'm all for that. That's long-term thinking, not political pandering. But since political pandering is the monnaie courant to get into office these days, well then, guess which idea will hold wind.

Feeling Even Stupider

I thought that yesterday I achieved the pinnacle of stupidity. Then came today. I don’t plan on talking about it here. Suffice it to say, I’ve lived two Dilbert cartoons today:

-One-

PHB: Alice, see me at the end of business today.

ALICE: (To herself) Ohmygosh ohmygosh, what corpse floated up from the ocean floor? I can’t wait seven hours! Gah!

(Seven hours later)
ALICE: WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?!

PHB: Can you come back tomorrow?

-Two-

DILBERT: I significantly increased my visibility at work today, Dogbert. Yesterday, I was invisible to my management. But today I am known by all.

DOGBERT: You screwed up, huh?

DILBERT: Ooh yeah. Big time.

I can’t say what I did was a major sin, but it still makes me feel stupid when I make a mistake. I guess this is when it pays to have those puppy dog eyes and overall demeanor, since no one’s come a-yellin’ over what’s happened. Maybe it’s not a yellable offense. So I curse the darkness and my own stupidity, yet take comfort in the fact that my puppy-dog demeanor may have saved me from a bawling out. That kind of demeanor won’t get me promotions, but I suppose it’ll keep me employed.

Today, I embody the Peter Principle, in that I have reached the level of my own incompetence. I am, however, one of those of whom Laurence Peter describes as having recognized the fact, having learned to live with it and accept it and, in some perverse ways, take it to my advantage. I knew working at the last paper I worked for that, the longer I stayed there, the more incompetent I got. I think Peter talks about that in a sliding scale of the Peter Principle, in that over time, people who were once competent in a job slip into incompetence.

I joke here that I’ve seen the boss’ job and I don’t want it. Truth be told, I’d existentially pass my level of incompetence and emerge on the other side if I were ever offered the boss’ job. So I’m content to stay where I am, doing my incompetent best, and hoping that a combination of skill and puppy-dog eyes will keep me employed. I think it’s a credit, however, that I can at least recognize my position and seek out ways of making improvements, or at least make compensatory measures to ensure that my overall incompetence doesn’t force others to a breaking point.

Feeling Stupid

There are days I feel pretty stupid. And then there are days like today, where feeling pretty stupid would make a vast improvement in my overall self-esteem. Another of the jobs I applied for went to someone else. I suppose I shouldn’t be worried about it, since I have this job. But it still makes me feel as useful as something really useless, like sunglasses for cinnamon bears. Yuck. I hate cinnamon bears. I think it’s time for a little break from work. Michelle is going off on her Akela’s Trail campout for her Cub Scout calling next week starting Wednesday. I may decide to take both days off, just to get a little time away from work, to see if there’s something I can do to recharge the batteries. I just feel tired. The weeks here are fast, but the days sure are long. Whaa whaa listen to the well-paid weenie boy cry. I ought to slap myself back into reality. But who wants reality? I’m not sure I want that. I probably told them too much. They ask that question I hate: What’s one of your weaknesses? And I always answer it honestly: When the workload is low, I tend to coast. I back that up by saying I always look for other things I can do, talk with people I might help. Maybe my answer to that question dings me. Maybe it’s something else entirely. But since the only feedback most of us tend to get back on interviews is silence, I’ll never know what the deciding factor was. Hiring and getting hired, I’m growing to know, depends on whims more than reason: I was hired for the job I have now because the guy who hired me was a former newspaperman and liked that I had newspaper experience. He’s now moved on, so if I were applying for the same job now, that experience wouldn’t mean jack – or, at least, a lot less – to the current boss. (Not bad-mouthing the boss. Just expressing an opinion that it was Art’s presence in the drivers’ seat that helped me get my job due to a whim of chance, and that this whim would have been lessened or non-existent had Danny been in the driver’s seat. Just trying to figure out the play of politics and chance in this whole job-scurrying thing. It’s something for me to keep in mind next time I find myself unemployed in Greenland.)

I don’t really know what’s eating me lately. What I’m afraid of is that it’s the same kind of gleeful angst that got me tired of newspaper reporting. Mercifully, as I work here at RWMC, I don’t feel tired of the work. I feel a bit tired of all the running about trying to get signatures, but that’s about it. I like the people I work with. I like the people I work for, and that’s going a lot further than I ever felt at the papers I've worked for, at the end. (I think I’ve written about this, but the last paper I worked for recently closed its Rexburg office. They’re also contemplating quitting their Monday paper. Also, my ESOP stock tanked to the tune of nearly $6,000 last year, or about 35 percent. So I don’t think they’re doing all that well financially. Glad I’m not there any more.)

Maybe I’m just feeling mediocre. I don’t know why that should bother me, as I am mediocre. But it still irks, I suppose. Maybe it’s a point in my favor, to at least acknowledge my mediocrity so I can some way overcome it. Or learn to live with it, at least. I know a lot of it is that it’s just slow at work, which leaves time for listening to heavy German music and lots of idle introspection, which gets the brain to thinking about stupid stuff like this. Mister Mediocre. Ah, listen to the spoiled American. I’m caught up in what George Orwell describes in his book “Coming Up for Air,” viz:

I had the street pretty much to myself. The men had bunked to catch the 8.21 and the women were fiddling with the gas-stoves. When you've time to look about you, and when you happen to be in the right mood, it's a thing that makes you laugh inside to walk down these streets in the inner-outer suburbs and to think of the lives that go on there. Because, after all, what IS a road like Ellesmere Road? Just a prison with the cells all in a row. A line of semidetached torture-chambers where the poor little five-to-ten-pound-a-weekers quake and shiver, every one of them with the boss twisting his tail and his wife riding him like the nightmare and the kids sucking his blood like leeches. There's a lot of rot talked about the sufferings of the working class. I'm not so sorry for the proles myself. Did you ever know a navvy who lay awake thinking about the sack? The prole suffers physically, but he's a free man when he isn't working. But in every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's NEVER free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him.

Of course, the basic trouble with people like us, I said to myself, is that we all imagine we've got something to lose. To begin with, nine-tenths of the people in Ellesmere Road are under the impression that they own their houses. Ellesmere Road, and the whole quarter surrounding it, until you get to the High Street, is part of a huge racket called the Hesperides Estate, the property of the Cheerful Credit Building Society. Building societies are probably the cleverest racket of modern times. My own line, insurance, is a swindle, I admit, but it's an open swindle with the cards on the table. But the beauty of the building society swindles is that your victims think you're doing them a kindness. You wallop them, and they lick your hand. I sometimes think I'd like to have the Hesperides Estate surmounted by an enormous statue to the god of building societies. It would be a queer sort of god. Among other things it would be bisexual. The top half would be a managing director and the bottom half would be a wife in the family way. In one hand it would carry an enormous key--the key of the workhouse, of course--and in the other--what do they call those things like French horns with presents coming out of them?--a cornucopia, out of which would be pouring portable radios, life-insurance policies, false teeth, aspirins, French letters, and concrete garden rollers.

Not that I’m at this may as well slit my wrists and plunge them into saltwater stage, but there is some of that angst brooding about. Brooding angst. Brooding angst. I like it when the German in this language comes out. (And, yes, the anal retentive inside me made me verify that these words are indeed of German origin. Certain on the angst. Certain enough on the German in brood to let it slide. I said I’m anal retentive, not OCD.)

Ben is now home, and up to those common just-returned-missionary tricks, namely running off in all directions trying to regain the life he set aside two years ago. Al and Serena – we saw them at the Iona Community Days celebration on Saturday – say he’s doing well enough, which is good for him. He’ll start school in Rexburg in September, which seems weird. We’ve let him know he’s welcome to come to our house to watch TV or whatever, but we’re not holding our breath on him actually showing up. Uncles and aunts can be so embarrassing.

I think I have a hole in my head. Or I think I want one. Ready to go home, am I. And speaking like Yoda. Speaking of which, we’re going to have to watch “Return of the Jedi” sometime soon, because the kids keep asking about it. They’re just as anxious to see what happens to Han Solo as we were back in 1979, when Empire came out and we had to wait four years until we got to see Jedi. They’ve not even waited a week. Next on their list, I know, is the Indiana Jones trilogy. That’ll be put off for a while longer, because, frankly, it’s all a bit scarier than Star Wars is, at least in my warped opinion.

Back to the angst: I guess part of my feelings of inadequacy stem from the fact that a lot of people around me are leaving and getting better, more stable jobs (engineers, mostly). It puzzles me as to why I can’t accomplish the same thing, but then again, tech writers are a dime a dozen and engineers are much harder to come by. Maybe I should have been an engineer. Of course, maybe I should have flapped my arms and flown to the moon as well, since both are just as likely. I don’t like math enough to be an engineer. I’m not as precise as an engineer needs to be. I’m like Bob Newhart, whose accounting motto was “Oh, that’s close enough.” Which is, of course, why he got into advertising and then stand-up comedy. I need to write that novel. I know I’ve got a good start on a good story. I just need to punch it up and bring in more sensuality (His pulse exploded as he ripped off her babushka, to steal a line from B.C.). OK, not more sensuality. More absurdity. Just more of what I’ve got, because what I’ve got is just a start and nowhere near being completed. I mean, if idiots like Max Barry and Neal Stephenson can write crappy novels, why can’t I? Certainly they don’t corner the market on crappiness.

Scott Adams' Influence on the Masses . . . Young Masses

Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic strip, probably has no idea how much his work has influenced my little family. No probably about it; he has no idea. The probability here circles around: Does he care how much. And again, the probability is slimmer than, well, something very slim. But our oldest, all of eight years old, has pawed through my Dilbert collection a lot this summer. A few nights ago, he asked if I worked in a cubicle. I told him I do. He then asked if I would ever come home as a damp rag wearing glasses, as happens to Dilbert in the comic because, as I recall, his boss demotivated him and others enough they turned into damp rags wearing glasses and ties, or pantsuits in the case of the women. I told him it hadn’t happened yet, but added I could not rule out the possibility of it happening in the future.

His favorite new game is “Quality Zombie,” in which I chase him chanting “quality, quality, quality” with my hands out like a zombie, as if someone had shoved a “We Are Quality” notepad in my face once too often. He’s also fascinated with interns, though gratefully not in a Bill Clinton way. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he mentions the Fist of Death and the pointy-haired boss. I’ll have to tell him my boss doesn’t have pointy hair, because he shaves his head. Then I’ll introduce him to the CEO of Dilbert’s company, who also has a chrome dome. Not that my boss is anything like that; but our CEO is a crazed, double-doctorated Greek who apparently has a fetish for safety rails, safety vests and hard hats.

Puppy Dog Eyes

If Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show ever comes to my corner of the world, I’m going to look into their house of mirrors just to find out why I still harbor the puppy-dog eyes of my youth.


I want to know, specifically, what people see in me that makes many of them treat me as if I were an oft-kicked puppy, forlorn in the eyes and countenance, who must be treated with kid gloves, no matter the circumstances. I’ve studied myself many times in the mirror, and I don’t know what it is that other people see. Including my wife. We were just talking on the phone, and midway through the conversation, she paused, asked, “Are you all right?” So now I have to listen to my voice as well.

Was I that badly treated? Probably no more than any other fat kid growing up in Idaho. I know I was rather sensitive as a kid, but by the time junior high rolled around, I was just about in control as any other kid. But there are vestiges, I’m sure, of some hidden hurt, that occasionally pop out. Not occasionally. They gallop. Because there are many who treat me as if I’m going to burst into tears or something if they so much as fart in my general direction.

I don’t feel like I’m exceptionally gloomy, or sensitive. I take criticism well. Very well, in fact, since I know that I don’t know everything and that there is much in this world that I can learn. But deep inside, I suppose, people must still see some kind of a wimp.

I don’t let it bother me overmuch. Just think about it from time to time, that’s all. I don’t lose sleep over my hidden puppy dog eyes, or whatever it is that others see. I do good work. I’m open to learning. Just once and a while, however, I’d like to find this thing that’s in me and fix it, just a little, so the gloves come off and the pats on the shoulder cease.

Oh Look! Cows!

I wonder.

Should I be worried that some days I have the attention span of a TV channel changer?

Probably. But I'm on to other things now.

By the way, one of those other things I'm on to includes Armageddon, by Max Hastings. Good friend Martin in England evidently thought I was lacking in reading material, so he sends me this book on the last year of World War II. It looks like a fascinating read. I've promised myself, however, that I've got three other books in the queue to read before I can get to this one.

Thanks, Martin.

Come to Find Out, I'M One of Those Bastards

Boy is my face red.

Been reviewing the quarterly statements for our investments, and, for the past two quarters, they've not been pretty. First quarter this year, we lost about $4,000, which is like having a three-year-old body-slam you in the groin. For the second quarter, losses were much less than I'd anticipated. One of our funds actually made money, and I was feeling pretty good about it until something stored in the back of my head about our investment mix made me actually look at the statement this time. Seems the only reason we made money this quarter in this fund is because we're invested in an energy fund. Meaning oil. Meaning I'm one of those scabs I'm angry at for making money on the increase in fuel prices.

But, as this investment has made me more money than the proposed gas tax holidays would save me, part of me feels pretty good about it. It's kinda weird, being on this side of the scab fence for once.

I'm Not Just With Stupid, I AM Stupid

Don't you hate it when your catch yourself on the short end of the stupid stick? I did that earlier today, when one of my professors pointed out that I'd failed to turn in a draft of an assignment because I'd posted it in a discussion thread in our class web site, rather than in the assignment thread. I've taken the Humble Route with the situation, hoping that the prof will take pity on my stupidity. But there's this damn recurring thought throughout our coursework for this master's program, that being that we're responsible adults who are supposed to be bright enough to know where to put our homework.

So, I remain stupid.

Redeemed, however, when I found a copy of "I Am Not Spock" at Deseret Industries. Alibris sells this book for $10, Powells wants $25 for its copy. I got this for fifty cents. It's an entertaining read thusfar, and quite existential. Leonard Nimoy doesn't deny that he enjoyed the Spock role, nor is he distancing himself from the character. He just writes a lot about how difficult he finds it to separate himself from the character, because it's the character, not himself, that people are most interested in meeting. That's got to be a frustrating thing for an actor to struggle with. Of course, it's something we all struggle with from time to time. Back when I was writing for the paper, people wanted to meet the reporter, not who I really was. We don't necessarily have personas as distinct as Nimoy/Spock, but we have our private and public faces, and, occasionally, people want to meet the public face in private, or the private face in public. Myself, I'm quite shy in person, but not really all that shy at all at writing to an anonymous audience on the web, in a newspaper, or in classes.

Speaking of weird, take a look at this: It's the bookmark that came with "I Am Not Spock." I've long collected weird objects that come in the used books I buy. I've found a wide variety of bookmarks, postcards (including old ones from Disneyland and a postcard featuring the likeness of Lyndon Baines Johnson). But the most interesting finds are always the personal notes that get tossed in. One Farley Mowat book I've got has a letter in it from a stewardess from an Icelandic airline in it, complete with business card. She'd found the book left on a flight, and mailed it back to the owner, who happens to be the former owner of one of our local television stations. On the letter he contemplated sending the stewardess a card. I wonder if he ever did. And Geoff Thomas of Idaho Falls -- whom I think is the same as the superintendent of the Madison School District -- I have your copy of "Fail Safe," by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. (Incidentally, it's the book on which the contemporary rival to Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" is based. I'm so full of useless information. It's one of my defining characteristics, according to my mother-in-law, who laughs at it in a good-natured way and buys me books filled with trivia.)

Speaking of not-so-trivial things, I'm also reading "Fighting Auschwitz" by Jozef Garlinski. It's pretty disturbing in a way that gets me to thinking about our contemporary society. America right now has its own concentration camp of sorts at Guantanamo Bay. I wish they'd shut the place down. It's not nearly as bad as Auschwitz, or at least I think it's not, but it's still a place where nasty things happen. As Samuel the Lamanite says in Chapter 13 of Helaman, we are to the point where our land is cursed because we're not listening to God's messengers: "O that wa had remembered the Lord our God in the day that he gave us our riches, and then they would not have become slippery that we should lose the; for behold, our riches are gone from us (verse 33)."

This is kind of a hodge-podge entry. Please excuse.

Warts

I sit here this evening, contemplating the warts on my left thumb. A few months ago, I began working to get rid of them, using one of those salicyclic acid-based wart removers. I hd three warts, and after a long struggle, they went away. A few weeks passed. They came back, and brought a friend. So I've started attacking them again, adding this time a day's soak in a heavily-chlorinated swimming pool. I think I'm winning the battle again, but I can't be sure they'll ever go away. That the three came back with another worries me that I'm going to end up like that guy in Thailand, who is slowly turning into a tree because of all the warts he has.

Bloviation and WALL-E

Because the Internet isn't boring enough:

On other fronts:

• No news yet on the jobs I've interviewed for. Upper lip losing its stiffness. Have another interview tomorrow. Not feeling optimistic.
• They're still holding Elvis Presley's brain hostage on Planet Zort. Ted Koppel doesn't care.

Our Fourth of July festivities were fun, though according to our oldest, not nearly involved enough. Yesterday he came to me, a mite disappointed, complaining that all we'd done for the Fourth was the parade, the fair, the fireworks and the movie, omitting the air show and car show, even though he and his siblings had a ball playing in the pool, with the toys and exploring this classic '60s mazey house we stayed in with Michelle's niece. It was a grandma house, definitely -- shiny wallpaper, shag carpeting throughout even in the bathrooms, dark cabinets, Day-Glo orange bathroom countertops, oversized keys hanging on the walls and, in nearly every room, a speaker with which you could communicate with people who'd rung your doorbell. Sooooo modern, oh, 50 years ago. Oh yeah: Red brick. That ubiquitous red, scored-face brick that EVERYONE used back in the 60s.

We saw WALL-E over the weekend. Frankly, Pixar has done better. Oh, I have no qualms about the "message" of the film, which has brought out great umbrage among conservative bloviators and much self-righteousness among bloviators from the left. I think the message is apt -- If we sit idly by, absorbed in our own lives and self-entertainment, we're bound to take for granted the beauties we have around us. I acknowledge that the overt message is that such human carelesness rendered the planet inhospitable. But you must also acknowledge the more subverted message (shown on the Axiom among the two humans who are broken out of their technological coccoons to begin enjoying life as human beings, rather than as consumers) that as we depend too much on technology for not only entertainment and education, but also social interaction, we're destroying the human environment -- face-to-face communication, interaction and play on levels that don't involve cameras, pixels or computers. (WALL-E, EVE; I assume it's EVE, it's hard to tell as WALL-E pronounces it EVA) and the ship's captain also pick up on this message, and it's nice to see it infused in the rest of the group after they make it back to Earth to begin salvaging what they can.)

But back to my original point: Pixar has done better. It's not in character development -- though the number of developed characters in this film is very small. The message, as I've said, is just fine with me. It just feels like the story was treated lightly, almost mechanically, when the action gets to the Axiom. Now, WALL-E's loneliness and the hopelessness of his task on Earth is beautifully portrayed. Who wouldn't pick up a bunch of odd objects and cling to them in that kind of environment? On the Axiom, however, the action was a bit too pat and repetetive. I don't know. It's easy to overanalyze these things.

UPDATE: Something else just struck me as I pondered other things. There has been some commentary on the Internet that Disney/Pixar are bing hypocritical in mass-producing watches and other plastick swag to promote this movie preaching against overconsumption. I would tend to agree -- but this comes from the generation that seems to insist that every web site or business or blog have swag of its own to distribute, mostly in the form of t-shirts and keychain trinkets. Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

Least Influential American?

First, watch the video:

Time Releases Annual List Of Least Influential Americans

Now, try to figure out where you'd land on the list.

Given the criteria The Onion sets forth in this video, it's clear that anyone who has a dog or delivers sweet rolls will rank higher than Jim Stutts of Fort Wayne, Indiana, who hit at -- what was it -- 9,604 on the list. Here's what his wife had to say about his ranking: "He's finally getting recognition just for not having an effect on anyone." Strong, supportive words, to be sure.

Since I have a dog, clearly I'm more influential than this man, since my dog listens to me all the time, except when I tell her to stop barking at random oxygen molecules bounding about in the front yard. Other facets of my life that will put me lower on this list:

• I have three children and a wife who occasionally listen to me.
• I have co-workers who occasionally stop by my cubicle on the way out to the bus to chat so it doesn't appear that they're leaving too early.
• The neighbor's cat Charity acknowledges my presence.
• I'm enrolled in online classes that force fellow students and instructors to acknowledge my presence.
• I blog. [Insert pause for laughter]

Of course, my influence in these activities varies greatly from day to day. Mentioning Second Life in a blog post, for instance, certainly increases traffic here, but that can't be done on a daily basis because, frankly, people who do that look very stupid, unless, of course, they've got interesting things to say. Which I do not.

Maybe it's egomaniacal, but I'm tempted to say that I probably rank somewhere in the middle tier of the least influential of my fellow 299,999,900 least influential Americans. Certainly, I have more influence than most children and non-dog owners, but less than used car salesmen and your average state legislator. (Being listened to is one thing, being effective is another.) It's amusing to think about, that's for sure.

Mouse Hand

I may be at the forefront of a new malady that could make me more famous than Thripshaw's Disease made Dr. Thripshaw in that old Monty Python sketch: Mouse Hand. Which is, of course, my malady, not the title of the Monty Python sketch. Good thing I'm a professional technical writer and can catch things like that before they've been up on the ol' blog here for, oh, say, two or three hours.

My job entails a lot of computer work. But because we have a text processor and are obliged to keep her busy, most of the work I do on the computer is mouse work, rather than keyboard work. That means at the end of each day my right hand is cupped in the shape of a mouse. At the end of each week it's almost debilitating. My mouse-clicking finger is especially sore. That's the finger, of course, that our youngest son loves to pull on all the time when Daddy has to play horsie or car or something like that. He just about pulled it out of the socket this afternoon.

This four-day weekend has been nice, since I haven't had to slouch at the computer all weekend. I've still done computer work, obviously, including a ton of homework for the classes I've been taking. But since the work there means a lot of typing, it's a lot easier on my fingers and hand, and actually gives it enough exercise it feels better after a while.

Other exercises I do to keep the ol' hand working:

1. Mowing the lawn.
2. Thumping on kids' skulls.
3. Holding a diet Coke.
4. Manipulating my "mini-mouse" for the laptop, whilst holding my pinkie to my lips and blackmailing the world for one million dollars.
   

So at work I've instigated a new regime -- I try to type at least 45 minutes a day, whether it's work-related stuff or not. As Cal Meacham says in "This Island Earth," I hope you taxpayers don't mind.