Here, Fishy Fishy . . .

Wednesday, I came home from work and was greeted by my six-year-old daughter shouting “Daddy! Come look! We have fish!” Indeed, swimming around in a bowl on the kitchen counter, were three goldfish. Now, if ever any other kind of pet were to enter the house, I figured it would be me the guilty party with the sheepish look on my face. But since it was Michelle who relented and let the kids bring these fish (Moby Dick, Ariel and Pongo) home from the credit union picnic, I was absolutely gobsmacked. The only way I would have been more surprised would be if they’d brought home a cat on their mother’s watch. (We’ve had two cats, Michelle and I. She and the cats did not get along. At all. Well, nobody really got on with Willy. He was a cat abandoned by its owners and rather freaked out by it. He would only emerge from hiding during the wee hours of the morning. We think he escaped from the house when we were packing for a camping trip.)

Fish are a new experience for our kids, especially for our daughter, who tries to pet them while they’re in their bowl. (She’s used to dogs, you see.)

I want through a fish phase as a kid. As with most kids, it didn’t end well for the fish. The only thing worse than the Dead Fish in the Fishbowl Incident at our hose growing up was when one of my older brothers’ turtles escaped from his pen and wandered off in the house. He was found a few weeks after his disappearance in one of my older sister’s shoes. When he was extricated, his head and legs fell off. Needless to say, the shoes were never worn again.

I have hopes that our kids will be more responsible for their fishy friends. Time will tell, of course. As parents, we’re already planning interventions.

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.

Horseshoe Lake: Where Uncharted is Shilled

Tired of Uncharted.net shilling yet? I'm not. Behold:

Horseshoe Lake, where Frogs and Elk are King


The road twists through the woods, thick with pine and quaken aspen. Sometimes the road is only wide enough to let our little Toyota pickup pass, dragging our camper behind it. Sometimes the road isn’t even that wide, and the needles and leaves hanging from the roadside trees brush and scrape against the fenders, pop through open windows, stirring air fragrant with pine sap, road dust and yarrow. Over the low rumble of the tires on the rutted dirt road, we hear the calls of telephone birds, the warning chirps of robins. And always, below the din, the ribbit of frogs.

Through the trees, we see the first patch of blue, bright sky blue lower than the lowest branches of the trees. One more twist in the road, over boulders, we descend to Horseshoe Lake.

Horseshoe Lake is one of the many puddles splashed over the landscape within a hundred miles of Wyoming's Yellowstone Lake. This lake lies in Idaho, about eight miles south of Yellowstone National Park's southwestern border. Unimproved campsites – read, no outhouses anywhere – ring the lake's shores and are open to campers. A state campground on the lake's southern shore is used intermittently by individuals in the state's juvenile detention program, and is not open to casual campers. The campsites are divided, by Nature, into two areas: Those mostly on the west shore of the lake are in heavily-wooded areas and are best used by tent campers. Those on the north shore of the lake are in a gentle meadow and are best used by those brave enough to bring campers up the rough road.

Not being fishermen, we like the lake for its swimmability – it's rather shallow and warm , if a bit clouded with organic material – for the scenery: Wyoming's Grand Teton Mountain range can be seen poking above the forest canopy to the southeast, and for the flora: starting in mid-summer and extending long into the fall, vast patches of the lake are covered with floating lilies, with their dinner plate leaves and yellow and white blossoms providing landing pads for the lake's innumerable dragonflies. We like to canoe out into the patches and sit, soaking in the quiet as the dragonflies buzz the pads around us. We never saw any frogs, but we certainly heard them. Throughout the day, we heard random croaks, but as the sun set and for hours afterward, the little kickers chirrupped and bugarrumphed loudly.

But after the sun goes down is when the show really begins.

The lake, far from man-made light, reflects stars and a faint band of the Milky Way as the sun sets and nature's nightlights come out. This tiny lake, calm as a mirror at night, looks like a hole in the earth to an alternate universe of stars.

Then, too, in the fall, after the sun sets, the woods surrounding the lake are filled with bugling elk, who offer their eerie wails and yelps to nights so black and calm that even the campers are quiet as they listen to nature's symphonies. Sometimes the elk will bellow all night. They're loud enough, at times, they wake me up – and I'm a sound sleeper. But I don't mind. I just lay back and listen. They sing be back to sleep.

Getting there:

From Ashton, Idaho, follow Idaho Highway 27 east through Marysville for about twelve to fifteen miles. Shortly after the highway curves to the north but before it begins its ascent up the Ashton Hills, watch for signs pointing to the right for Cave Falls. The road is paved for the first few miles, but then turns into a rather good two-lane gravel road. Travel along the road for a good eight miles or so after the pavement ends, and watch for signs pointing to the left for a girl scout camp. The road for the scout camp angles off to the northwest. Don't take that road, but use it as a landmark. The road you're on will cut through a meadow. The road to Horseshoe Lake lies just past the meadow, off to the left. The Forest Service tries to maintain a sign pointing the way to Horseshoe Lake, but more often than not the sign has been knocked to the ground, so don't depend on it.

A few cautions:

The road in to the lake is 4 ½ miles of one lane dirt road, and is rather rough. I recommend not taking cars down the road unless you don't have a particular attachment to your undercarriage. The last 100 yards of the road is especially rocky and rilled with water tracks, so descend to the lake at your peril.

As this is a lake, there are mosquitoes. At times, clouds – no, thunderheads – of them. Bring repellent and pray for hot weather, which keeps the mosquitoes down. The later in the year you stay at Horseshoe lake, the fewer bugs there are.

The woods around the lake are wild and, at times, rather swampy, especially to the east of the lake. Just be wary where you walk.

What to bring:

Aside from your regular camping gear, bring bug repellent, swimming suits, a canoe or raft, fishing poles (and licenses, as the Sneeds patrol the area) and firewood. Though the campground is in a wooded setting, there's little deadfall for campfires. Also, check on local fire conditions by calling the Ashton Ranger Station at 652-7442, as extreme conditions means an automatic ban on campfires.

Also in the area:

Cave Falls, another ten miles up the road. This National Park Service campground (it's just inside Yellowstone) provides access to Cave Falls which, as the name implies, is a shallow cave right at the cusp of a modest waterfall on a tributary of the Snake River. The area is also a springboard for back country hikes into the park itself.

Crickets

In the other places I've lived -- many parts of Idaho and France, an odd combination, that -- I never took the crickets for granted.

Then we moved to Sugar City. For the first summer we lived here, the wind blew daily. That was eight years ago. And for the first time, this summer, we have crickets.

I grew up with crickets. That wild backyard Dad planted, with more than a hundred trees crammed onto less than a quarter of an acre, populated with chickens, dogs and cats, birds, was cricket heaven. For a few years, I slept in a room attached to the garage, where the bugs entered nightly. I never chased the crickets out. I love the noise they make, and lay awake many a night, wondering how they made that noise, rubbing their legs together. I wondered at the creations of God, who created birds to sing, and crickets to sing, I think, with joy.

Seven cricketless years in Sugar City were off kilter in that small way. Many nights I'd sit on the front porch, listening to the meadowlarks, the robins sing, but never the crickets. They just weren't there. Where were they, I wondered. Had Sugar City committed some gross sin against God and Nature to chase these magnificent creatures from the verges of our flower beds and from the cracks in our foundations?

Their return this summer brought me back to that back yard, simpler times, that room where the crickets sang me to sleep.

Thanks, God.

Obama Wants to Be A Jelly Doughnut

It is extremely premature to say that, twenty years from now, anyone will remember what Barack Obama said today in Berlin, or, indeed, that anyone will remember that he spoke today in Berlin at all.

What counts – and what makes exceptional rhetoric last beyond the echoes it makes as it rebounds – is what happens because of or despite of the rhetoric offered. To put it another way, Abraham Lincoln (in his Gettysburg Address) said: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.” (Nicolay transcript) Lincoln’s statement is ironic in that his speech is one of the most memorable ever delivered in American politics. But it’s the context of the speech – dedication of a graveyard where were interred soldiers who fought in one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War (not to forget the Civil War itself) is what makes the speech memorable.

To take another example:

“There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev -- Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Had the Berlin Wall not fallen two years after Ronald Reagan gave this speech at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate in 1987, Reagan’s speech would have been just another speech, a footnote in history, forgotten because it did not have context with the events surrounding it, despite its rhetorical ring.

To take another example:

“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades. All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’”

Kennedy’s Berlin speech is also a remarkable example of powerful rhetoric. But again, taken in context – delivered in a city, in a nation, only recently divided by a physical barrier and in a world that would see extraordinary tension rise becasue of these physical and political barriers – his speech is, and remains, meaningful.

Let us consider the context of Obama’s speech: The United States has increasingly alienated itself from Europe, indeed, some say, from much of the world. Obama’s rhetoric is full of hope, to use an overused word. He said today:

“People of the world, look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one. The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers, dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean. We cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats or escape responsibility in meeting them.”

But for this speech to be remembered twenty years from now, the context of world events will have to catch up with it.

Those keen on the beatification of Barack Obama will have to wait for history (and, indeed, the results of the November election) before they can chalk up his speech as one for the history books. His rhetoric and ideals are admirable; they hark back to the themes and memes of unity and freedom that Reagan, and John F. Kennedy before him, uttered at the Brandenburg Gate. But until events catch up with the rhetoric, Obama’s speech will remain historically unremarkable.

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.

Pretend Money

I suppose it's good that I look at part of our investment portfolio as pretend money, because it doesn't hurt as much when we lose a lot.

The pretend money I'm talking about comes from shares I won in a newspaper I used to work for. It's all done through an ESOP, so I haven't put a dime into the fund. Which is a good thing, since it lost 35 percent of its value last year. Now I know newspapers are tanking nationwide. I had high hopes that this paper, however, would continue to grow. Last year, we actually got about $1,000 in dividents from our ESOP shares. This year, we lost nearly $6,000. Thankfully that's not out of pocket. But it does hurt to see our retirement funds dissolving away. Worst news is that I can't cash out of this sink hole for another three years, given that I have to be vested for seven before I can bail out. Hopefully, there's some value still there when I can cash out.

It seems it's a good thing I'm no longer at the paper. They closed their Rexburg office earlier this summer -- that was the one I helped to open back in 2000. I didn't get to read the article when they announced the closure, so I don't know all the circumstances. But the yearly report from the ESOP shares paints part of the picture -- profits are down, and they were looking to cut costs. So it's a fair bet that I'd be out of a job right now anyway.

I don't miss newspaper journalism. The more I look back on that career, the happier I am that I'm not in it any more. Even the stuff I do for Uncharted, on occasion, brings back some pretty unpleasant memories that I don't care to relive, and that's even stemming from the kind of writing I enjoyed the most at the paper, the stuff that was actually fun to research and write.

Internet Suburbia

Readers here know that I’m associated with Uncharted.net, which we’re selling as a mashup between Facebook and National Geographic. I believe in the site. I believe we can do good things. But part of me also believes, deep down, that we’re just adding noise to an otherwise already noisy Internet. Part of me wonders, as I peruse the Internet myself (and make useless contributions to it on this blog) whether we’d be doing a better service by buying up web sites just to shut them down.

Does that happen? Do sites get shut down, or do they just get buried? Buried, most likely. Now, way back in my computer infancy, I ran several websites, hogging space on the University of Idaho servers. I had one on the Secret of NIMH. I had one on Watership Down. I had others showing off my own writing, and even one on sage brush. All shut down. All down the drain. And good riddance, says the author of that dreck. But here I am again, spewing a mighty fireball of nothing onto the nothing that is the vast Internet suburbia of sites that maybe friends or family visit, plus a random collection of national and international strangers who, if Feedjit is right, want information on Second Life. And why they’d want that, I have no idea, since my experience with Second Life boils down to anime characters chatting about prims. Whee.

But that’s okay, isn’t it? We’re all getting our kicks trolling the Internet, thinking, somehow, we, too, can make a contribution that involves tricky sentences with lots of words stacked between commas. But we’re still in the burbs, squatting in some isolated cul de sac that nobody but family and the garbage men ever visit. Most of us are better off where we are, because what we want to contribute isn’t all that great to begin with. So we stay, once and a while replacing the burned out bulbs on the porch because, hey, we want to make sure all the lights are on and working when we get that fifteen minutes of fame. But do we get it? More like fifteen seconds these days, because there are so many in the burbs now, staring at the distant lights of the big, bright city, knowing that we can’t afford the gas to get us there. And nobody in the city’s coming to us, no matter how much we fool ourselves.

So shut them down. Shut them all down.