It's Not The End Of The Decade

I've seen all sorts of 'Decade in Review' stuff on TV these past two days, and I've let it go. But the more I think about it, the more I hate it. It's not the end of the decade, just like the year 2000 was not the start of the new millennium.
   Our Western method of noting the years begins with the birth of Christ, or at least when people generally assume Jesus was born. The whole CE-BCE academic conceit aside - don't get me started on that one - the Gregorian calendar begins with the year 1. There is no year 0. Since a decade is ten years, the first decade would have ended on Dec 31st, 10, and the next decade would have begun on Jan 1st, 11. This means the first century would have ended on Dec 31st 100, the second century would have begun on Jan 1st, 101, etc. etc. etc. The second millennium began on Jan 1st, 2001, which means the first decade of that millennium ends next year, on Dec 31st, 2010.
   Is it so hard to get this right?
   And don't try to tell me that if everybody thinks the decade ends on the last day of 2009 that makes it so. The truth cannot be altered by ignorant consensus. If I get a bunch of morons together who all agree that the sky is yellow, that does not mean that when I step outside I'm going to look up to see a lemon heaven. The sky is blue, no matter what people say otherwise, and this is not the end of this decade, even though all the jackasses on TV say it is.
   Maybe I'll be less cranky with the new decade. You know, in 2011.

More Travel Notes

I spent 10 hours in transit yesterday - DFW and snow never mix well - and I'm trying not to be resentful of the delays and inconvenience. It's a miracle of modern technology that I can be annoyed when it takes me 10 hours to get from Texas to California when it normally takes about 5 hours. Just hours to cross 1,300 miles is a privilege I kind of take for granted, honestly. If I had been traveling 70 years ago, 5 hours would have gotten me about 100 miles West of San Antonio. Maybe. So I count myself lucky I can make the trip as quickly as it happens now.
   But still...
   Some random stuff I noticed during my sojurn yesterday. My lengthy sojurn... see? I just can't let it go.

Extra classy- I saw a fat redneck wearing knee-length camo shorts (yes, while it was snowing outside) but the best part was the 'F' and the 'U' tattooed prominently on each of his meaty calves. I bet that brings the ladies a-runnin'.

When you haven't eaten in five hours the smell of the onion rings from the TGI Fridays by gate C29 in DFW is almost enough to make you want to kill for a taste. Then you realize that it's TGI Fridays and you get over it.

More red sneakers. I mentioned before that I saw more red shoes at the airport than I ever had and the trend continued this time. One pair in San Antonio, one pair in DFW. I swear, I never see them anywhere else.

Standing side-by-side: a guy with the biggest head I've ever seen and a guy with the smallest head I've ever seen. These were not deformities or abnormalities, these were just regular guys, one with a noggin the size of a jack-o-lantern and one with a head the size of canteloupe. As far as I could tell they did not know each other, but they would have made a great comedy duo. Big-head and Tiny.

When you wash your hands with yellowish antiseptic soap they end up smelling like Band-Aids. It took me a little while to figure out why I imagined I was back in the infirmary getting stitched up after wrecking my 3-speed on the elementary school parking lot.

In a truly odd travel-related coincidence, I saw a friend of mine in DFW. Turns out she was on the same flight as I was back to Burbank. But I have unexpectedly encountered people I know in airports before, it happens. The really freaky part is she was in the seat right next to me. Really.

Maybe Next Year

A few weeks back I outlined what I wanted for Christmas this year. I didn't get a single thing from my list. Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss. Zilch. Zip. One of my nieces did give it the old college try with the leather shoelaces, but she had no better luck than I did. I did get a few questions about my list that I thought I should answer, though.
   Most questions came specifically about my desire for the still-beating heart of Bill Gates. Why would I want such a thing, and what had Bill Gates ever done to me that I thought the only way to even the score would be to subject him to an Aztec-style sacrificial death?
   Well, let me 'splain. What has Microsoft given the United States and the rest of the world time and time again, since the late 70's? One thing, above all.
   Mediocrity.
   Microsoft, and by extension Bill Gates, the man responsible for Microsoft, has given the world sub-standard software that works just well enough, but not really well at all.
   Because of Microsoft's half-assery, people have come to expect that kind of neglect and irresponsibility from everything in all aspects of their lives. It's the tragedy of just good enough. The software doesn't work like it should? Well, that's just the way those things go. The project didn't deliver what it was supposed to, on time and on budget? Eh, we'll fix it in the next go-round. The car seats don't meet Federal regulations? They rarely do. Overpaid jerkoffs blatantly steal, and abandon their fiduciary responsibility to the global financial system? Ah, well, that's the way of things. Local, state, and Federal governments are incompetent and corrupt? Of course they are, that's the nature of government.
   Don't you see? As a society we have grown used to things not living up to what they should be. We have come to expect shoddy workmanship instead of craftsmanship. We have come to expect prevarication and lies instead of straight talk and honesty. We have become so used to people trying to weasel out of obligations that we don't hold them to their word, and we're even a little embarrassed to mention it.
   And, yes, I'm blaming Bill Gates for all of that.
   He built his business not by focusing on what he was selling people NOW, he built it by focusing on what imagined he was going to sell people NEXT. That philosophy means that you couldn't give a rat's ass about making a good product today, because you're going to replace it anyway.
   The older I get, the more I realize that one bad decision today can screw up things decades later. Microsoft's history of bad products that don't work properly delivered years late only proves that point. Somebody's got to pay, someone has to be punished so that other people realize it's not okay, this is not the way things should be, and it's not what anyone should accept.
   Sorry, Bill, it's your mess and you have to clean it up. The Aztec way. Old-school.

A Christmas Gift From My Dad

I had been waiting for the thunderstorms for hours, watching their progress on local news, clicking over to the weather channel during Letterman. I went outside several times, finding the sidewalk and the street still bone dry, even though the weatherman said the rain was supposed to be here. The radar image lied to me, the rain wasn't where the green dots said it was. The line came closer slowly, as if it were teasing me, getting to my mother's house only after rain blanketed the rest of the city.
   I went to bed, opening the window a crack so that the cool, moist breeze could waft over me, bringing the sweet scent of rain. I had the blinds open so that I could see the flashes of lightning, strobes that froze raindrops in place, halfway between heaven and earth. The storm passed overhead, thunder rumbling through the clouds and bringing a smile to my face.
   Then it was quiet. So quiet. No car alarms, no neighbors talking, no police helicopters or highway noise or sirens. Just the smooth, even sound of rain falling, and a slight breeze in the naked branches of the trees. Serene. Magical.
   When I was young I used to wait for nights like this, I used to pray for nights like this. In a good year I'd get two or three times where the circumstances aligned, some years I'd wouldn't get even one. But when it happened just right, like it did last night, my father and I would stand out on the front porch together, watching for the lightning and listening to the thunder, ignoring the raindrops the wind spattered us with. We didn't say anything, we didn't need to; we just let it all unfold around us.
   I'm not a particularly spiritual man, and I'm usually more blasphemous than religious, but I'm pretty sure that my father arranged that storm last night. I'm back in Texas only a few days each year, and I get exactly the right kind of storm at exactly the right time of night on one of the days I'm in town... what else am I supposed to think?
   Merry Christmas, Dad. I miss you.

The Joy Of Manual Labor

I started working when I was 8 years old. Growing up in Texas, 'working' meant serving as slave labor for my grandfather; you name the menial task and I probably did it. Of course there was mowing grass, raking leaves, edging lawns, pruning roses, and picking vegetables. But there was also shingling roofs, pouring cement, tilling the earth, turning the compost pile, cutting down trees, and weeding beds of okra, which is such a revolting task I challenge anyone who hasn't done it to try it and tell me that's not the worst job ever.
   I moved to Pasadena in February, 2002. Since that time I have not done one lick of manual labor. Not even a tiny bit. Sure, I've cleaned my apartment, done the dishes, and killed spiders, but none of that counts. There's no lifting involved, no bending, no real cursing, not the creative kind of epithets that seem more appropriate outdoors. I missed working outside, but it's kind of like missing the taste of some familiar food you can't get in a foreign country; after so long you don't even remember what the thing was really like in the first place.
   Well, this morning I reminded myself. I just finished four hours of manual labor around my mother's house. I wasn't certain I would remember what to do, but when I got that hoe in my hand things just fell into place. It was like old times, walking the yard, raking leaves, getting my hands really dirty and letting them stay that way for hours. And I'm a little sore too, across my back and down my legs, but it's a good sore, the kind of ache that lets you know you've accomplished something.
   Maybe when I get back to Pasadena I'll become a gardener or something. At least then I'll have something to show for all my work.

Yeah, That's Pretty F-in' Big...

I'm still in Texas, and I took a look at the local Super Wal-Mar today. Really took a look. From the inside. No, I didn't get a job there, not that kind of 'inside,' I was grocery shopping with my mother. I noticed how much wider the aisles were than in the stores I visit in SoCal, and yet how people just as easily managed to get in one anothers' way. I kind of idly wondered just how many customers would fit inside. So I looked at one wall, then squinted across the store, past the curve of the Earth, to see the far wall. The far, far, far wall, off in distance, lost in the mists of the store's microclimate.
   Holy crap, that place is huge. Ungodly huge. Ridiculously huge. Unnecessarily huge. Obscenely huge.
   It looked to me that, wall-to-wall, the store stretched at least 100 yards across. As big as football field; and I mean real football, American football, not 'futbol.' But I thought to myself 'self, you must be losing your ability to estimate distances, it can't be THAT big.' So I looked it up on Wikipedia. The average Super Wal-Mart is 197,000 ft sq. Which, if you assume a square footprint, comes out to 443 feet on a side. I was wrong, a football field is 100 yards across, or 300 feet, 360 if you include both end zones. The Super Wal-Mart would be 147 yards across, on average, or 47% longer than the Cowboys' home field. That's 136 meters if you prefer to measure things like Europeans do.
   Hokey smoke, that's just insane. I know things are bigger in Texas, but Texas isn't the only place that has Super Wal-Marts. Chances are good the biggest one isn't even in Texas. How much electricity does that place use? How much water? How much gasoline do all those people burn getting to and from that immense building every day? How many people surreptitiously cut a fart while walking down one of those fifteen-foot-wide aisles? That's greenhouse gas right there.
   I'm not into granola and I don't wear hemp clothes. I'm not a green fanatic by any measure. But just thinking about the simple statistics for what it takes to keep this one Super Wal-Mart open is enough to turn me into a tree-hugging, polar bear-loving hippie. And then when you think about all the other Super Wal-Marts across the country... man, I'm starting to long for a Volkswagen Microbus that I can take into the forest and get away from it all. Jeez, how much do we need, and how big a store do we need to put it all in? Enough, already.
   Where's my tie-dye? I need to make some clothes.

And That's How Swine Flu Spreads

I'm back in Texas for the holidays, time for fajitas and barbeque and maybe a gun show or two. Usually airports are good places for people watching, but I was scheduled pretty tightly, no time to chit chat or dilly dally or any other slightly effeminate verbs like those two. But along the way something interesting did happen.
   I drank a Pepsi from England.
   No, I didn't buy it in a novelty British food store, a passing chimney sweep did not hand it to me, I didn't pick it off the corpse of an international spy. On the flight from Burbank to Dallas, the flight attendant served it to me right out of the drink cart. This was a Pepsi can bottled in England, with a contest paid in pounds sterling advertised along the top rim. Straight from the Empire.
   Remember, I got on the plane in Burbank, and so did the Pepsi can. And Burbank is eight time zones removed from England. So the can had to travel all that way, probably in the drink cart of an airplane taking off from Heathrow, making several stops along the way at JFK or O'Hare or Hartsfield, until finally it found its way to that one drink cart in Burbank, where it started making the trip back East. How many hands did it go through? How many flight attendants or airport catering dudes handled it? How many miles did it actually travel before I drank yet another soda I didn't need to be drinking?
   I think the risk posed by swine flu has been blown waaaaaay out of proportion, far too alarmist, but when I get a drink bottled in England on my trip from Burbank to Dallas, I can see the point of raising the issue. People travel across the globe on a whim these days - apparently so do Pepsi cans - which means their germs travel too.
   Speaking of germs, I have a bit of a cold myself, so I think it would be interesting to see who on that plane catches my cold. I'm hoping I infected the douchebag in front of me who leaned his seat all the way back, I know I tried my darndest to give it to him. Maybe, just maybe, my cold will travel all the way back to England, infecting the staff working in the bottling plant that made the Pepsi I drank. That would be cool, huh? Talk about closing the loop.

Corporate Monkey-Spank

The more things change the more they stay the same. And just when you think corporate weasels would start to get the message they prove that they just don't get it.
   I worked out this morning, and as I was walking home I decided to stop in at the convenience store along the way for a soda and a lotto ticket, my only two vices if you don't count curling up in my robe on the couch Friday nights to read the latest vampire book while my hot rollers set my hair just-so.
   The place is closing.
   They have a half-off sale on most things, including beer, as they try to liquidate inventory before they close in ten days. So I doubled up on the diet soda - half off is essentially 'two for one' - and I asked the guy behind the counter why the place was closing. I expected to hear 'raising rent' or 'losing money' or 'lost the liquor license' something like that. Not even close.
   The corporate offices decided to close the store because it wasn't making enough money. Not that it wasn't making money - the manager assured me they had been turning a profit since the day they opened - but that they weren't making the kind of profits the corporate weasels wanted them to.
   This is why I hate, hate, hate MBAs. They don't know how to run a business, they know how to do algebra on a spreadsheet. Some jerkoff who's never actually operated any kind of store, web site, or even a cart at the mall sets a sales goal, a number he creates out of thin air according to his flawed analysis of whatever bogus metrics he can think up. Then when the store doesn't meet those artificial goals, he makes the 'command decision' to shut the place down because, after all, not meeting goals needs to have consequences. Ridiculous and short-sighted.
   'But Don,' you MBAs say, 'there are all sorts of considerations beyond profitability that might call for closure.' Bull and shit. If a place is profitable it should stay open, even if the profit is only $1. If it doesn't make enough cash to contribute to the middle-manager corporate bloat of do-nothing asswipes then the ranks of those weasels needs to be thinned.
   So for want of a few extra dollars to pay the salary of someone who shouldn't be working anyway, people lose their jobs, the neighborhood loses a store, and I get an excuse to go on my anti-MBA rant again.
   Oooh... it just angries up the blood...

More Holiday Cheer

Why stop with just a Christmas list? This is the holiday season, after all, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and whatever Wiccans celebrate... I dunno, the Winter Solstice or something? So here are some non-Jesus, non-Santa holiday things.

Let me preface this by saying I loathe Adam Sandler. A lot. An awful lot. Along with Will Ferrell and almost everyone else from the last 30 years of SNL his one-joke shtick got stale decades ago. But Adam Sandler did write The Chanukah Song, even if he didn't sing it very well. The good news is Neil Diamond has done a cover of The Chanukah Song and his version not only does not suck, it's very good. And who doesn't love Neil Diamond?

Did you know there are Kwanzaa songs? Me neither, but why shouldn't there be? I don't think Kwanzaa has been around long enough for it to become as commercialized and subverted as Christmas has, though. But if I have to sit through the barking-dog version of Jingle Bells, why shouldn't people celebrating Kwanzaa be just as annoyed?

Okay, so Diwali fell in October this year, months before Christmas, but it's the closest thing in the Hindu faith, so I'm lumping it in. It's the celebration of good over evil so it's pretty much in the Christmas spirit anyway. I'm guessing there are Diwali songs - there's lots of music in India for everything else - but I'm fairly certain there aren't any barking-dog versions of any of them. I could be wrong, though. Can anybody tell me if there's a Diwali version of 'A Christmas Carol?' The British Raj ruled India for almost 100 years, some of that Dickens stuff had to have rubbed off.

Three years ago I was in Australia for Christmas - technically Chanukah, since my friends are Jewish - but since December in Australia is the middle of summer, Santa isn't the jolly German elf we know from the Thomas Nast illustrations, rather he wears shorts and is ably assisted by koalas and kangaroos. It was very odd having a barbeque cookout on Boxing Day, with the chance of thunderstorms.

Tis The Season

I am extremely difficult to buy gifts for. I know this, and, honestly, it's partly by design. When people ask me what I want for my birthday or for Christmas I tell them 'I don't really want anything' and I truly don't. I don't need gifts, I don't need any more stuff because I already have too much. But gifts aren't really about the having, they're about the giving. What I really enjoy are gifts that show me someone took some time to think about me. My nieces are particularly good at finding absurd things they know I'll like, but other people have stepped up to the plate as well.
   I prefer to remain an enigma, but this year I've decided not only to make a Christmas list, but to put it out there for everyone to see. Now no one can say I'm hard to buy for.

Dear Santa, please bring me:
   A jet pack - one that fits me and can lift me, I want to sail over castle walls like James Bond.
A posse - anything that's good enough for Tupac is good enough for me.
   A three-finger ring that spells out 'TCB' - if it's good enough for Elvis it's good enough for me.
A Sinatra breakfast - if you don't know what I mean, you aren't meant to. If you do know what I mean, then get busy, daddy-o.
   TCR slotless slot cars - it's the one thing I really, really wanted for Christmas but never got.
Three wishes from a genie in a bottle. And I don't mean Christina Aguilera, what she's got I don't want. An alternative would be a monkey's paw that grants wishes, I'm not all that particular.
   My '72 Chevelle, best car ever. Good luck with this one, I know where the engine is, and it's not with the body. And I'm pretty sure the body's now been recycled into a Weber grill.
The still-beating heart of Bill Gates. I'm not particularly mad at him, not anymore, but he still has a lot to answer for.
   One good, solid punch in Alan Greenspan's face. I know, I know, he's old, but he's got a lot to answer for too. Bastard.
That one day in 1982 when my friends Jeff, Bob, and I were out in Jeff's front yard playing football in the rain. It's all been kind of downhill since then.
   For the guys in charge of Google to come clean and admit they really are in it for the money just like every other corporate bastard. Time for the charade to end.
Leather shoelaces for my f**kin' boots. And not the square ones, those suck, the round ones, like what I have now. But not broken.
   A chance to visit the 18-year-old me, to tell him what he did right and what he did wrong.

There you are, that's all I want. Some of it's gonna be hard to wrap.

Tell My Shame

I have this thing wearing on my conscience, a personal failing that I've hidden for days now. It's always there, lurking in the darkness, my own Telltale Heart that's slowly driving me mad. I have to come clean before it becomes the end of me.
   I bought a copy of 'O' magazine.
   I'll give you a moment to pick yourself up off the floor. Yes, I did it, I have no one else to blame. I didn't even try to get someone else to buy it for me, like a teenager begging beer at the convenience store, I walked right up to the Vroman's magazine rack, put my hands on the Christmas issue of 'O' magazine, and surrendered my five bucks. And then I took it home.
   Why? Why would I have anything Oprah related in my house? For the chance to win free stuff from Ellen.
   Okay, hold on, let's back up. I'm digging myself deeper here. See, Ellen has her 12 Days of Giveaways, and, in grand Oprah fashion, is buying the loyalty of her audience with loot. And if you buy an 'O' magazine and read it to find the code to enter online, you can be one of the people who wins said loot without being in the studio audience.
   How do I know this?
   Oh boy... all right, here's what happened. See, I was in my apartment, minding my own business, flipping through the channels. The TV seemed to tune itself to Ellen and then there was a tiny micro-earthquake - centered on my living room - that knocked a bookcase over. I was stuck under hundreds of pounds of books, the remote just out of reach, and I was forced to watch an entire hour of Ellen before I could find the strength to dig myself out.
   Yeah, that's what happened... All right, I'm gonna stop now. Nothing to see here, just move along.

Where's My X-Ray Vision?

If you're a science geek you've no doubt been following the progress of the Large Hadron Collider, and you know that it's once again operational, and set to come up to full power some time next year. If you're not a science geek, you've probably heard about those crazy particle physicists who are trying to smash protons together over in Switzerland (and France, the thing is huge). It's the largest science experiment ever, it's the largest machine ever built, and is the most expensive pure research project ever. Some misinformed souls also think that when it comes up to full power, the LHC will create a black hole that will destroy the Earth; they've even tried to get court injunctions against turning it on. This is all just ignorant panic and crazy talk, and hides the truth of the real purpose of the LHC.
   It's designed to give people super-powers.
   Stay with me on this one. The LHC is a colossal undertaking, huge tunnels and giant magnets and elementary particles slamming into each other at the speed of light. It cost $9 billion - that's billion with a capital B - and involves the coordination of people and materials from Europe to North America to Asia to Africa to Antarctica (really). Who else could manage that but some sort of evil genius like Lex Luthor or Blofeld?
   I've stripped away the veil, haven't I? It all makes sense now. There's no way that scientists and governments could come together to see a project through almost 40 years of planning and construction... but an evil genius could. An evil genius is almost obligated to do that kind of thing. And all this 'Higgs boson' talk, it's just a smoke screen. It's obvious to any thinking man that the real purpose behind this whole endeavor is to make regular people into super-powered heroes. Why else go to all the trouble? For science? Yeah, sure...
   So I want my super-powers. And I want something cool, not something lame. No giant stilts or some gloppy glue gun, I want wings - angel wings, not bat wings - or the ability to turn my skin to steel or super-speed or control over the elements. Something like that.
   It's only a matter of time, once the LHC powers up all the way next year. Watch the skies...

Lost In The Sands Of Time

The other day I was cleaning out a closet - more like rearranging it, really - and I found a small can of paint. So I got to thinking, somebody must have invented paint. Somewhere, some time, some dude thought that it would be a good idea to coat a piece of wood in a layer of stuff that would keep it from getting wet or keep bugs away. But that had to have been so long ago, thousands of years. We know who invented the light bulb, but there's no way we'd ever know who invented paint.
   Thinking further, I wondered what other ubiquitous things had to have been invented by people we're never going to know.

Forks
   Soap
Mayonnaise
   Thread
Coasters - the kind you put under glasses
   Ink
Boat oars
   Fences
Hammers
   Erasers, either chalkboard erasers or the ones on the end of a pencil
Buttons and button holes
   Wire

This is the kind of thing that occupies my day.

Eating Alone In Your Car

Back before I was 'between assignments' I would occasionally go out for lunch with colleagues. If we wanted to go somewhere just out of walking distance we'd all trek into the parking garage, pile into somebody's vehicle and take off. Nine times out of ten, in the garage we'd see this guy sitting in his truck - he was a white-sunglasses-worn-on-the-back-of-his-head, spiky moussed hair guy - listening to really loud music, or sleeping, or eating. Sometimes all three. I used to wonder how lonely he was that he thought he needed to take his break in his truck, in a cement parking garage, alone. I would have felt sorry for him if he wasn't such a complete douchebag. White sunglasses. Seriously.
   Fast forward to this week. I've been out doing some Christmas shopping (scored an Elmo cap for my little nephew), and I've seen more people sitting in their cars alone than ever before. And most of these people were eating. Maybe I'm just not in touch with the whole American car zeitgeist, but the only thing I like to do in my truck is drive it. I don't eat in it, rarely drink in it, and I certainly don't sleep in it even though it would make a dandy bed. On the rare times I go to Sonic, I'm usually one of those people sitting at the benches up front, not horking down a burger behind the wheel.
   So what's with all the people eating in their cars? I'm not talking about utility workers or dump truck drivers or cops or firemen, those guys I can understand, they eat when they can where they can. I'm talking about secretaries or students or accountants or white-sunglass-wearing douchebags, people who don't have to be anywhere at a moment's notice. Why? Go inside, sit down, have your artery-clogging meal at a plastic table with the rest of society, don't lock yourself away. For God's sake, today I saw a lady sitting in a McDonald's parking lot, eating the meal she had just gotten at the drive-through. Does that make any sense at all?
   Am I completely out of touch with this one? Is this more of my impending old-man-ness showing?

I'm Back - And So's My Mojo

Okay, so it's still a little unsettled around here - it's not supposed to be this cold in SoCal - but I'm back and I can handle cold weather. You may recall a few weeks ago I was concerned that nothing strange had happened to me in a while. I think the Universe was taking pity on me, in preparation for my father's passing. Still tough to take, but things are getting back to normal. And I mean normal for me, not normal for you.
   The weirdos are back.
   Wheewww... That was me, heaving a huge sigh of relief. I was at the Post Office this morning, the big, fancy one down by City Hall, not the grody, tiny one down by RiteAid, mailing off a few query letters. I was standing in line beside that table they have, the one with all the forms you can fill out for everything, including voter registration. A puzzled-looking lady was standing there, filling out several forms. She wasn't particularly dirty, so she probably wasn't homeless, but she wasn't entirely present in the moment either, if you know what I mean. Her hair was scattered around, and she kept glancing up at every new person who entered as if they might want to steal something from her. I know the look, it's common among the crazy people who flock to me. Another clue was the very loud conversation she was having with herself; I was part of the conversation, I just didn't know it at the time.
    'Temporary... temporary... what do they mean by temporary?'
    'If I can just get these jerk-offs off my back...'
    'What day... day... what's today? What day is it today?'
(a very kind older lady answered for me, not realizing I was supposed to be taking this bullet)
    'Return? When? I don't know when I'm getting back from New York. Maybe I'll send a pizza back, take care of all this bullshit.'

   All this while the line was slowly advancing. And guess who had just stepped to the front of the line when Crazy Lady finished filling out her forms? That's right, yours truly. She came up to me, reached out to touch me, thought better of it, then waved the forms at me.
    'I'm gonna.... they told me to finish... when I finish with these just to go back to the first window. So I'm not cutting in front of you, okay?'
   Of course I let her go, I would never impede one of my people in their daily lunacy. Besides, I was just glad to have them back.

Thanks, Dad

My father passed away Tuesday, December 1st. His memorial was today, Saturday, December 5th, and I spoke in tribute to him. I've included below the text of my comments at that service.


   He was my father. That tells you almost nothing, but it says everything. He was what fathers are supposed to be, stern but compassionate. He set the rules but he knew when to let me break them. He taught me many things that fathers should teach sons, how to throw a ball, how to dig a hole, how to saw a piece of wood, how to mow a lawn, how to walk on a roof and not fall off, how to change a tire. Guy things, stuff you need to know how to do if you’re any kind of man.

   He also taught me the most important thing a son can learn from his father. He taught me to tell the truth.

   When I was a boy I was smart and sneaky. Probably a parent’s worst nightmare. I figured out early that all I needed to do to control a situation was to control the flow of information. What my parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. But my father knew. I couldn’t get anything past him. Turned out he controlled a bit of information I didn’t know. He used to be me. If I fought or cheated or stole or lied, he’d tried to do exactly the same thing 30 years before. I can only imagine what it must have been like for him to watch me working my mojo, letting me play things along, giving me just enough rope to hang myself before he pulled the noose tight. I know he was exasperated, but I imagine he was a little bit proud too. Just like seeing your boy take his first steps, it had to be the tiniest bit gratifying to see me try to change the grades on my report card.

   I did get caught. Repeatedly. And the lesson that I finally took from that is the truth is always better than any lie. My dad taught me that.

   So here’s the truth. He wasn’t an easy man to love. Those who knew him understand what I mean. He had his faults as we all do. I have a card on my desk that says ‘maybe the hardest people to love are those that need love most of all.’ I think that’s true. My father was a big man, physically and metaphorically, and his passing leaves a very large hole in my life that will never fully be filled in.

   I am the man I am today because of my father. I love him and I miss him.