I Don't Care

Heretic. Blasphemer. Subversive. Deserter. Turncoat. Commie. I have been called all these things, and worse besides. But I'm a creampuff, really. What could possibly make otherwise sober and level-headed citizens revile me so?
   I don't care about the SuperBowl.
   Yup. Couldn't give a rat's ass. Means as much to me as World Cup soccer, and I don't even know when that is. And I don't mean this particular SuperBowl, I mean all SuperBowls, across all time. It's one of those things that's hyped beyond all reason, pumped up in such an overbearing and grandiose fashion that it couldn't possibly live up to the expectations. And it doesn't. Falls flat.
   'Oooh, but you'll miss the SuperBowl ads,' you say. And I say 'no, I won't.' If I wanted to see them I could watch them on YouTube, but I don't give a rat's ass about that either.
   Don't get me wrong, I'm not an elitist, I haven't turned my TV to PBS and unplugged it. I watch a lot of bad TV, I revel in it, and lately I have watched some football. For God's sake, I watch NASCAR relgiously so I'm not exactly highbrow. I'm just tired of overblown, over-hyped crap that I'm supposed to like if I was in any way a good American. Enough already.

Here's a short list of other crap people seem to think matters that I also don't care about. This is just a sample, the entire list is far too long to share.
   Grammys
   Lost
   Twitter
   Lady Gaga
   Seinfeld - a blast from the past, but it's still a horrible show
   YouTube
   American Idol
   Trans Fats
   Winter Olympics - when somebody non-white wins something let me know

p.s. Yes, I do know the SuperBowl is next weekend. That's how much I don't care about it, I'm letting you know well beforehand.

Puppet Veracity

I don't think I'm alone when I say that ventriloquist's dummies kind of creep me out. Unless you're a ventriloquist yourself, I think it's a safe bet that almost everybody gets a little shiver when those lifeless doll's eyes turn your way.
   Yet I am completely entranced by puppets. If I find the puppet section in a toy store, watch out, I'm trying on every one that will fit on my meaty mitts. Especially if it's a dinosaur. Unlike ventriloquist's dummies - which really will murder you in your sleep - puppets are friendly and plush and adorable. And Craig Ferguson likes them too, so that's an endorsement right there.
   Puppets attract people, when you see someone with a puppet on their hand you want to go towards them; when you see someone with a ventriloquist's dummy you want to get as far away as possible. And when you have a puppet on your hand, you can get away with saying things you never could otherwise. 'You could stand to lose a few pounds, honey.' I didn't say it, the puppet did. 'Boy, this meatloaf is so dry it could choke a corpse.' Now, Mr. Dino, don't get sassy.
   I think everybody should get a puppet alter-ego, that way you could say everything you're really thinking and yet claim the notions came from somewhere else.
   To the scrawny white guy in Best Buy: 'Okay, Brandon or Cody or Jordan or whatever your name is, you get paid to know about the features of this TV, not to play Rock Band all day.'
   To your boss: 'Yes, I do mind, and no, I'm not working late. Suck it.'
   To the guy at the car wash: 'I know you're new to this country, but the car is supposed to come out cleaner than it went in.'
   To the Post Office clerk: 'Hey bitch, don't walk away from the window when I'm next in line.'

See? It'll be like one great big therapy session, all the time. What could go wrong?

Why Are All The Fire Trucks Here?

As I left the building this morning to go work out I heard sirens. With the way the sound was echoing down the various streets, I had my suspicions immediately about where they might be headed. When I rounded the corner by the cooking school I saw that my hunch had been correct: the fire trucks - all six of them - were outside the gym.
   I saw civilians leaving the building and fire fighters gathered around the entrance, so using my Batman-like powers of deduction I concluded the fire fighters had ordered the building evacuated. The fact that several of the people exiting told me that exact thing only confirmed my amazing skill at piecing together information. But I know how these things go, and the firemen weren't in any sort of hurry. No hoses, no ladders, no axes, no urgency meant no fire. So I wandered up to the front door to wait for them to re-open the building.
   Here's the scene - six fire trucks in the street with lights flashing, fire fighters in reflective gear outside the door, gym employees outside the door, gym patrons outside the door. You'd think that anyone arriving would be able to figure out the situation immediately. And you'd be wrong.
   I stood there for fifteen minutes and nine people - I counted - came up and tried the door. And they all seemed genuinely surprised when the gym staff told them the place was evacuated and that they couldn't go in. One guy in a business suit said, and I quote him verbatim:
   "Really? Was there a fire?"
   I guess he thought the fire fighters were having a pancake breakfast fund raiser? That the fire truck ten feet away - literally - was for the kids to play on?
   Just when I start having faith in my fellow man again, somebody comes along to knock some sense into me. Are people that clueless, or are they that self-centered that they think fire trucks and evacuations are for other people?
   Yeesh. Some people just don't get it. This is why reality television is still profitable.
   On the plus side, I know now where the lockbox for the firemen's keys is. If you keep your eyes open you notice a lot of stuff.
   And, for complete closure on that anecdote, the fire was caused by a short in a wall plug (I overheard the fire fighters' radio), into which was plugged a vending machine. With an extension cord.

Symbolically Speaking

I want a symbol, something that people could look and instantly know me.
   Everything memorable has a symbol. Apple has their logo with the bite taken out, Chevy has the bow-tie, NBC has the peacock, the World Wildlife Fund has that panda. Even the Nazis had their swastika, memorable doesn't necessarily mean good.
   So I need some kind of symbol. I could use it instead of a signature, like those red symbol things they use in China. Even better, I could plaster it across my chest like the red 'S' that Superman wears. See? Another instantly recognizable symbol.
   Problem is, I'm completely at a loss for a suitable image. I need something that screams 'me.' Not screams in a flaming, flamboyant way, don't get the wrong idea; I need something that screams in a manly, entirely hetero-appropriate way. Maybe a monkey wrench?
   Hmm... what says 'unemployed middle-aged white guy?' A sink full of dishes? An unmade bed? A guy asleep on the couch in his underwear?
   I'm willing to take suggestions.

Ode To The Streets Of LA

O, potholed asphalt 'neath my wheels,
Rough in the best of times when dry
Winds howl and morons teem your way,
How much a week's rains doth destroy.

Water from heaven takes your stones
And erodes your oily binding,
Leaving you crack'd, warp'd, and broken,
Vengeful traps for my truck to trip.

Ev'ry mile a painful adventure,
Now I pick my way with care lest
Mine axle do snap asunder like
A stale churro left long outside.

O, potholed asphalt 'neath my wheels,
The weather knave doth say more rain
Shall fall hence. Could'st a favor
For me do? Stop falling apart.

'Tis a small thing I beg of you,
Fight the dictates of entropy
And crumble not into foul ruin.
Do this and I shall tread lightly.

Pray, but keep thyself in one piece,
Expose not pipes and wires below,
And I will pledge to drive well as
Many have not the fortitude.

O, potholed asphalt 'neath my wheels,
You are my true friend, have I told
You that anon? Just let me get
Where I need to go and not die.

Change The World Or Make A Profit

Something's been bothering me lately. Okay, a lot of things bother me, but I've been pondering one in particular.
   Why have Baby Boomers so completely abandoned the ideals of their youth for a few extra bucks?
   Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation begat quite possibly the most worthless generation. And keep in mind that Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and Robert MacNamara all served in WWII and were part of that Greatest Generation. So all the Baby Boomers had to do to be successful was not start a Red Scare, not be a criminal in office, and not engage in an unwinnable land war in Asia. The bar was set pretty low, is what I'm saying here. But they weren't up to the task.
   I'm old enough that I remember when work didn't used to suck. It was never theme-park fun - they call it work after all - but in the last ten years or so there's been a growing sentiment in corporate America that the people at the top should squeeze their workers for all they're worth, fire them when squeezing doesn't get results any more, and then take the money and run.
   You can track the beginning of this problem to the exact moment when the children of the 60's became the robber barons of the next millennium. When former hippies became CEOs.
   But why? That's what concerns me. How did an entire generation that aspired to so much fall so far into the mire? Was their naive idealism so fragile that when the real world came crashing in they went too far the other way? Did they never lose the sense of undeserved entitlement that all youth has? Did their parents, the Greatest Generation, completely fail to instill the same sense of duty and shared obligation they themselves had?
   Lying and thievery are rampant at the upper levels of corporate America, and the situation doesn't look to get better any time soon. These men (and a few women) are who they are, they're not going to suddenly find enlightenment, realize they've been bastards all along, and decide to mend their ways. We're stuck with them. For at least another ten years, probably longer.
   So what do we do? How do we fix this? I don't know. There's got to be something. Maybe I can go back to my schoolyard bully days, start giving out Indian burns, pink bellies, and Texas titty twisters to every thieving, lying bastard of a CEO I can find. You'd probably think twice about destroying an economy if you knew you were going to get a swirlie every day because of it. Right?

Y2 Crazy

A friend of mine reminded me that this past New Year's Eve marked ten years since the Y2K insanity. Ten years... how time flies. Seems like it was only yesterday.
   What was I doing? Glad you asked.
   I had started a new job in February of 1999. Being the new guy, and seeing as how shit flows downhill, I got to be our department's Y2K compliance guy. Wheeee!
   At the time the term Y2K hadn't quite taken hold, that really happened over the summer when clueless media finally got in on the panic. Since the company I worked for had mainframes, and since they knew five years before they were going to have a problem, they'd already come up with their own term, Change of Century. Y2K vs. CoC. You can see the reason Y2K won out.
   Anyway, I spent about half my time from March until December documenting in detail exactly why going to a 4-digit year wasn't going to have an effect on any of our systems. I talked to software vendors, I talked to hardware vendors, I talked to programmers, I talked to administrators, I got piles and piles of supporting documentation from everybody under the sun.
   I even spent quite a while devising my own tests and verifications for systems that other people had already tested and verified. Why? Because my manager wanted it. Why did he want it? Because his manager wanted it, and so on up the line. In an amazing spasm of incompetence and insecurity, our senior management decided not to accept the results of tests anyone else performed outside the company. We had to verify the operation ourselves. Twice. Several times I spent an 'executive hour' (fifty minutes) going over my test results with a VP who clearly had no idea what I was talking about. He just wanted to be able to tell his boss he'd heard it for himself, in person.
   Fast forward to New Year's Eve, 1999. I had to be at work. Yup, despite the three-foot stack of proof I had that there would be absolutely no problem with any system I or my team touched, used, or breathed on, I had to be in the building along with about 500 other unfortunates. 'Just in case.' Just in case what they never said.
   We counted down the minutes in a large meeting hall, where they plied us with candy and caffeine. When I say I would rather have been anywhere else I really mean it. It would have been less punishment to be snuggled up to a huge, hairy murderer in prison. But I don't have that kind of luck.
   Three... Two... One...
   Everybody waited, as if the carpet were going to roll up and the ceiling would collapse. Nothing happened. The lights didn't go out, no planes fell from the sky, there was no more panic or looting than is usual for New Year's Eve. A big, fat non-event. And I wasted it being at work. I went back to my desk, did about 45 minutes of tests to verify - AGAIN - that I hadn't been lying with all the other tests I did needlessly, and then I went home.

Later that night I got a call from a severely drunk friend of mine who needed a ride home. He was so intoxicated that he fell asleep against the windows of my new truck, leaving nose and eyelash prints on the glass. Even that was more fun than what I'd been doing.

It's Not What You Say, It's How You Say It

There's a tradition that on Christmas Eve animals can speak, from midnight until the dawn of Christmas Morning. I know that several times I stayed up and waited for our family dog and cat to start talking but they never did. Maybe they just didn't know how to start the conversational ball rolling, seeing as how inexperienced they were at it. Maybe they just didn't think I would be interested in how funny people look when you're staring up at them, or have your snout in their crotch.
   I was never really interested so much in what the animals might say, though, as what they might sound like when they did talk. When I was a kid I thought our dog Tina, a miniature schnauzer/miniature poodle mix, might sound like Mary Hart, very enthusiastic without anything of substance to say. I thought Puff, our white cat (a boy), might sound like Richard Nixon, an idea that still makes me laugh to this day. "I did not knock over the trash can. I did not pee on your shoes."
   My sister and her family had a Brittany Spaniel, Hank, who I always imagined would sound like Paul Lynde.
   My mother's horrible, vicious cat Smokey - she claims he's just misunderstood - would sound like Joe Pesci. From Goodfellas, not from My Cousin Vinny.
   My friend Marna has an American bulldog Tex, who I absolutely know would sound like Jeff Bridges as The Dude. "So I'm Tex, that's what you call me. Or his Texness, or Tex-er, or El Texerino, if you're not into the whole brevity thing."

I'll bet you can't look at your pets now without imagining what their human voices would sound like. Go on, just try it, you can't.

Goons And Henchmen

Why is it that only bad guys can have goons and henchmen? When mafiosi and Nazis and third-world dictators have a few people around who like them and are willing to do what they say without question, those people get the title henchmen. When somebody in charge needs something done, the person they send to do the job gets called a goon. But, in an odd twist of terminology, when the person in charge is not a crime lord, dictator, or cult leader, their faithful are called supporters or followers.
   I don't know about you, but I'd rather have henchmen. A few guys to go around and do stuff that I need done. Like wash my truck or do the dishes or get the dry cleaning. I don't have much dry cleaning done now, but I assure you if I had henchmen to do my bidding I'd take pants and shirts there more often. I'd have goons only when I've earned them.
   Which makes me think, does a CEO of a corporation have goons or supporters? What about the least-drunk hobo in the railroad car, henchmen or followers? Those self-help gurus on PBS? I'm guessing they have goons, you don't make PBS money and only have henchmen.
   And what about the henchmen and goons themselves? They're people too, husbands with families who've taken to gooning to put food on the table. From everything I've seen, heard, and read, goons and henchmen don't really get benefits. No 401K for them, no term life package, no health insurance where they can see a doctor in-plan for a $10 co-pay. They're contractors, and not even W-2 contractors, they're 1099 contractors, responsible for all their own stuff. Nobody's got their back. Who's fighting the good fight for them? Who does things for them when things need doing? Who henchmens the henchmen?
   I think I've found a new Hollywood charity. Please, won't somebody think of the goons?

Okay, Here's What We Do...

There's a challenge to California's Prop 8 in the courts right now. Prop 8 is the one passed in 2008 specifically banning gay marriage. There's been a lot of ink spilled over this, a lot of acrimony, and a lot of heartache. I'm not going to come down on the issue one way or the other, but I've been thinking about it and I believe I understand the root of the problem.
   The whole issue, for and against, boils down to the word 'marriage.' If we take that word out of the debate, then I think the issue resolves itself. Eventually.
   Let me 'splain. For thousands of years organized religion and government have been intertwined. In ancient Rome, for example, sacrificing to the gods was a civic duty, and emperors were deified. There have been varying forms of this same thing across countries and across cultures. But when the United States was created, there was a specific ban on a relationship between church and state. It's the First Amendment to the Constitution, as a matter of fact.
   However, we have one word - marriage - that means two different things in two different contexts.
   1. For the state, marriage is a legally binding union which establishes a familial relationship under the law. It mixes assets, provides for rights of survivorship, and establishes various legal obligations for both parties.
   2. In a religious context, marriage is a binding union in the presence of God - or gods, if that's your bag - with spiritual, emotional, and theological connotations.
   You can't legally get married in a church, any church, without a marriage license from the state. So, essentially, you get married twice. Once when the state says it's okay from a legal standpoint, and then again when your church says it's okay from their point of view.
   Seems to me the best solution would be to remove the option to 'marry' people from the state.
   If states only gave licenses for civil union (not romantic, I know, there's probably a better term), then that would satisfy the state's legal requirements. People could mix their assets and be legally related to one another with all that implies from a civic view. Because, really, all the state should care about is the legal relationship between two people, not their genders.
   Then the two people wanting to be married in the eyes of their religion could go find a church that would perform the ceremony for them. If there was a church especially opposed to marrying people of the same sex to one another they wouldn't be obligated to, and, conversely, if there was church with no particular objections to marrying two people of the same sex they wouldn't be prohibited from it.
   Bada-bing, bada-boom. Problem solved.
   The state gets what it wants without meddling in religion, and churches get what they want without the state telling them what they must or must not do.
   For my next trick, I'm going to resolve the current economic catastrophe, improve US relations abroad, and pick the next MegaMillions numbers. Just give me a moment to roll up my sleeves...

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I hesitate to walk over manhole covers or those trap door things in the sidewalk, not because I'm afraid I'll fall through, but because when I do fall through I know I'll end up in a secret subterranean world, and I just can't keep a secret.
   There are many things below ground, phone lines, water pipes, cable TV cables, sewer pipes and the C.H.U.D.s that live in them. But I'm pretty sure that there's more, a hollow Earth maybe, or just really big caverns where blind cavefish have developed a some sort of civilization where there's no shame bumping into walls.
   It would be my luck to fall into the one manhole that doesn't end up in the sewer but ends up in some barbaric, Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired world of dinosaurs and psychic flying lizards. I'd inevitably get captured by the psychic flying lizards, who would set about planning to kill me in an absurdly round-about way. I'd get out of it by explaining to them that no one on the surface world would possibly believe me if I told them what I saw, but I would assure them that I wouldn't say anything in the first place.
   Because the psychic flying lizards are gullible (right? everybody knows that) they would let me go. Then, of course, once I was safely back on the surface world I would blab the whole thing to anyone willing to listen.
   Before too long you'd have developers moving in, clear-cutting forests of giant ferns so they could put up condos, displacing the dinosaurs and buying the psychic flying lizards out for pennies on the dollar. Then the gorilla-men would go next, and the sabretooth-men, and finally the Stone-Age type human beings would start walking around with cell phones discussing what they'd seen the night before on TMZ.
   See? It's just better for everyone concerned if I walk around metal plates in the sidewalk.

Off The Grid?

I have friends in Australia who recently made the investment in wind and solar power, enough that they took their house entirely off the grid. That's right, no bill from Australian Con Ed, or whatever they call it over there. They also collect rainwater that they use on their plants and to wash clothes, so they're really close to being entirely self-sufficient, no reliance on local utilities at all.
   I know what you're thinking, good for them, but how many people have the time, money, or perseverance to see that sort of thing through? Aren't we all still stuck on the grid?
   Not so fast. I've been reading Scientific American, listening to NPR, surfing the web and generally paying attention to things, and I think as a society we're pretty close to a major change in infrastructure.
   Just like the Internet changed content delivery for all media - music especially - there is a coming revolution in the way homes will generate and store power that will have effects far beyond keeping the porch light on. There are now solar generators in development that will electrolyze water, putting they hydrogen produced into fuel cells stored underground. Already there are smaller-sized wind generators that produce more than enough wattage to power a home. Jay Leno has several of these wind generators, as a matter of fact, he uses them to power his gigantic warehouses full of expensive cars, and the excess he feeds back into the grid. One of the richest men on television actually gets a check back from SoCal Edison every month.
   Just like the Internet took content generation out of the hands of a very small number of producers, publishers, and record labels, in the next few years we're going to see immense changes in the way power is generated.
   So what?
   It's a growth industry, for one, so if you're an investor - or job-seeker - that's something to look at. It's also a vast, inevitable unknown. When suburban communities, office buildings, and baseball stadiums regularly generate far more power than they consume, what will happen to the utilities? Will they go out of business? Will they change their business to something else? What are we going to do with all that extra energy?
   Interesting times.

Wafflicious

Have you ever heard the expression 'I got a hammer, and now everything looks like a nail?'
   Well, for Christmas I got a waffle iron and now everything looks like it should be round and dotted with square holes.
   I know that I'm difficult to buy gifts for. But I was still taken by surprise when I unwrapped a waffle iron on Christmas Day. I didn't quite know what to think, which means it was a good gift indeed. I got it home, plugged it in, and whipped up a batch of batter as outlined in the owner's manual. I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out, if the batter was going to be too thick or too thin, if the waffle iron's non-stick coating really was, or if the waffles would actually be tasty. The first one came out a little lopsided, but it was crisp and brown and oh-so-delicious.
   I gotta say, I likes me some waffles.
   After the success of the first batch, I went out and sprung for some authentic maple syrup (it's pricey) and got ready to try out all of the waffle recipes. Cornbread waffles tonight.
   Now I'm thinking of ways to combine waffles with other things. Maybe waffles instead of hog dog buns, waffles on a stick, waffles instead of tortillas, waffles as the shell for beef wellington, waffles layered inside a lasagna. Okay, maybe not that last one, but I am thinking about waffles a lot.
   I really, really need a job.

Pasadena Vampires

Children of the Night have invaded the Crown City. I know this because I seen 'em, down on South Lake.
   I've been really cranking on my latest novel for the past week and half or so, putting in eight, ten hour days because, honestly, what else do I have to do when the sun is up? Working so diligently, however, I have been kind of falling down on my grocery shopping. Anything I have to eat is something I have to take time to prepare. Except for cereal, and you can only eat just so much cereal in a day.
   Anyhoo... long story short, this afternoon, about 2 PM, I got hungry. And not just 'I could use a bite' hungry, this was 'my next door neighbor is lucky I'm not a cannibal' hungry. I had nothing thawed and I polished off the last of the crackers and baby carrots last night, so I had to go out.
   I've been trying to eat sensibly, so fast food was right out. Luckily, there's a great place just down the street, the Mediterranean Cafe, good food at a good price. I could walk there but I didn't, I wanted to get back to work more on my book.
   It was then, as I drove through the parking lot, that I saw them. The Children of the Night, the minions of Vlad Dracul, the nosferatu, das vampyr. They were walking out of KooKooRoo, which surprised me because I thought vampires craved blood, not chicken. But, whatever.
   The six of them wore jet black garments except for some splashes of silver, their sable locks flowing over their shoulders, and both the boys and girls were deathly pale, but with dark eyes and blood red lips.
   ... okay, hold on a second...
   Now that I think about it, they were probably just some Goth douchebags out for lunch in between angsty discussions about how much they hate their parents and getting together for another round of Vampire: the Masquerade.
   Dammit, I thought I found a little excitement today.

I Want To Be The Termite Guy

My apartment has termites. I know this because I saw them crawling on the carpet, and one hit me in the back of the neck when it was flying around. I thought they were ants until I took a closer look at the one that hit me in the neck. So I called the manager and told her about it, and she called in the termite guy.
   Man, what a gig. I have no doubt he knows his stuff, but it just seems so easy...
   He carried his stuff in a plastic bucket, and in the other hand he carried a step ladder. He looked around for a few minutes, and I showed him the termites I put in a sandwich bag in the freezer (yes, I really did that, they were evidence). He identified them right away, and we had termite conversation for a few minutes. Then he looked up into a light fixture and saw that was where they were coming from. Kind of like a termite Sherlock Holmes, because I had certainly never thought to look up for bugs that crawled on the carpet.
   Here's what he did. Got on the step ladder, drilled three holes around the light fixture, injected some termiticide into the holes he drilled and then filled the holes with spackle.
   Bada-bing, bada-boom. Done. In and out in fifteen minutes, tops, including the search.
   I don't know what he billed - I don't own the building - but whatever it was he's making a killing. Especially since he mentioned that what he'd just done was kind of hit-or-miss since there was no crawlspace he could get into. In other words, what he'd just done might not have killed termites, and the only way I could tell it didn't work was when I saw more termites. And if I did see more termites then the manager could just call him back out.
   Don't get me wrong, he was a nice guy and extremely professional, but I want a job where I can do something that may or may not work, and if it doesn't work I get to bill for another service call.
   Any ideas?

I Thought It Would Be Different

I just turned 100,000 miles in my truck. And I do mean just, less than an hour ago, right on Colorado Blvd. on my way to the grocery store.
Here's a picture of the odometer, just in case you don't know what 100,000 looks like already.


   I bought the truck brand-new, and with the exception of about 800 miles when my brother-in-law and I drove from San Antonio to Pasadena, every one of those miles was under my foot. My truck and I have been through one accident (not my fault), one severe blowout, four flat tires, one replacement water pump, one replacement power steering pump, one replacement master cylinder, and several burnt-out taillight bulbs. That's not a lot of maintenance, honestly, for quite a few miles.
    Make no mistake, I've turned 100,000 miles in a car before, but never have all those miles been mine.
   Kind of anti-climactic, to tell you the truth. I did pull over to the side of the road and snap the picture with my cell phone, but... no big deal.
   I expected the heavens to open, light to shine down, and a rich baritone voice to tell me 'Job well done, young man.' Didn't happen. Nobody ambushed me with a huge novelty check, no dancing girls celebrated my arrival at the grocery store, no ribbons, no glitter, no clouds of confetti. I was at 99,999 miles in the gas station parking lot, then a mile away the odometer rolled over.
   That's it.
   I feel cheated out of some sort of celebration. Maybe I'll go to Chuck E. Cheese and crash some kid's birthday party. With my truck.

Tales From My Past - That's Not Stolen, Is It?

There's something about me - the way I look, maybe the way I carry myself, maybe the way dress - that attracts crazy people, homeless people, people with some sort of agenda, and desperate people of all sorts. Now, if you add all those things together, a crazy, possibly homeless desperate person with an agenda, then you'll get something special.
   You'll get someone trying to sell stolen goods.
   It doesn't happen to me so much any more - with one recent exception - but for a while there when I was younger, I had the opportunity to buy something hot about once a month. Here are a few I can remember:

A guy trying to sell me a pickup truck bed full of auto mechanic tools while I was mowing the grass at my grandfather's rent houses. No lie. Drove right up while I was emptying the clippings and told me they would make a great Father's Day present. When I asked if they were stolen he laughed nervously and sped off. I was sixteen.

A guy trying to sell me a clarinet when I was at the Greyhound station waiting for the bus from Austin to San Antonio. He kept cajoling me, telling me he could tell I had money, even though I was taking an $8 bus ride. I finally turned my pockets inside out, showed him I had $1 on me, and said if he'd take a dollar for it, I'd love the clarinet. I was eighteen.

A guy in Sherman, TX trying to sell me a ditch witch, you know, one of those cool, rentable power tools that you can use to dig a trench? I was at the Wal-Mart buying shampoo and Pringles (really), and as I was leaving he drove up with the ditch witch on a little trailer. Said I could have it for $100, and that I'd make my money back with a good weekend's work. I told him if he could figure out a way to sneak it into my dorm room I could find a hundred bucks. I was twenty.

Two guys in Rome tried to sell me tickets to something. Since I barely spoke Italian and I read it even worse I had no idea what they were tickets for. But since they were trying to sell them to me around midnight as I was taking pictures of St. Peter's, I'm pretty sure they were stolen. I was twenty-seven.

A woman in O'Fallon, IL - if you've never been, don't bother - tried to sell me a box of cigarettes. Not a carton, a box full of cartons, probably a gross of cigarette packs. Camels. She started at $300 and worked her way down to $75 as I repeated over and over that I didn't smoke. When I asked her if they were stolen she told me she got them from an Indian reservation, which didn't really answer my question. I never did check to see if there was a reservation around there. I was twenty-nine.

A scary-looking little Japanese guy in Okinawa tried to sell me stereo equipment. He spoke English very well, and I could see the tattoos peeking out from under his long-sleeved shirt. I was extremely polite to him as I refused his business, explaining that Japanese electronics wouldn't work when plugged into American power outlets. I ran back to Kadena AFB and locked my billet door. I was thirty-one.

I Can Run Real Fast Now

For Christmas my sister gave me money to buy new sneakers. Mostly to stop my complaining and dropping broad, un-subtle hints about how much I wanted new exercise shoes rather than out of the goodness of her heart. Never underestimate the power of annoying your relatives around Christmastime.
   So once I was back in Pasadena I went to the store and got myself some new kicks. They're bright and shiny white, not dingy and gray like my old pair, and the tread is nubby and raised, not slick and smooth like my old pair, and they look like little spaceships on my feet instead of like Fred Sanford's junkyard truck like my old pair.
   And, just like when I got new sneakers back in elementary school, I can now run fast. Way fast. Super fast. Like I was The Flash or something.
   Seriously. I went to work out wearing my new shoes and I got to the gym before I left the apartment. I got on the treadmill and I went so fast it burst into flames and fell to pieces. When I left for home I ran so fast the wind blew all the protein bars off the shelf. Seriously. It happened. Ask anybody.
   I know when I'm in the gym all the people at the gym are looking at my new shoes, staring with envy, or avarice, or a little bit of both. But you can't have them, they're my new shoes. And I run faster with them on.
   Thanks to my sister for feeding my delusion.

The Chef Bubble

First we had the dot-com bubble of late 1999 and into 2000. To work our way out of that mess, our government engineered a housing bubble, which burst in late 2007, and which is still bursting even as we speak. So how are we going to work our way out of this housing bubble/ credit crisis/ totally fubar economic situation? By engineering a chef bubble, evidently.
   When I go work out, I usually walk past the cooking school a few blocks up. Been doing it for years, but it's only been in the past six months or so that I've noticed a dramatic increase in the number of cars parked along all the side streets. Used to be that all the cooking school people parked in the parking garage right behind the main building. Not no more. The students are crusing up and down every street for blocks around, emerging with their little white hats, hounds-tooth-checked pants, and gargantuan recipe books. There are a lot more cooking school students now than there were even a year ago. A LOT more.
   This is understandable, when times are tough trade school enrollment goes up. People want to know they have a skill they can actually make a living with, as opposed to, say, being an expert in putting together Power Point presentations. But there's a problem here, one I don't think the cooking school faculty is letting their students know about.
   There are far fewer chef jobs than there were before. Americans are eating out less, restaurant profits are down overall, and restaurants are closing their doors across the country. So when all these new cooking school students graduate, where are they going to go? Sure, right now they're greasing the gears of the economy with their tuition money, the school employs more instructors, they build more classrooms which employs more contractors, they buy more food which keeps the delivery companies and ConAgra in business. But then what? The economy can only absorb so many classically trained and accredited chefs, and right now there are definitely more on the supply side than the demand side of this economic curve.
   Before you know it, we'll have rank after rank of cooking school graduates with nowhere to work, making crepes on the exit ramps for spare change.
   So how do we work our way out of the chef bubble? Maybe we start a carpet cleaner bubble. Or a board game bubble. Wait, I got it. A stripper bubble. Yeah... a glut of strippers would put a definite spark back in the economy. At least in the glitter, baby powder, and 6-inch transparent shoe sectors.

From My Bookshelf

I grew up a minority. Really. Caucasians have been a minority in San Antonio for decades, since I was a kid. The city's mostly Hispanic - although try to find Hispanica on a map - but as far as I was concerned people were just people. Some spoke Spanish, some spoke Chinese, or Khmer, or German, whatever. It never occurred to me that my people - white folks - might have a culture outside of what I saw in the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family. Live and learn.

Stuff White People Like by Christan Lander
   This is the definitive guide to white culture. Not to be confused with White Supremacist 'culture,' white culture is focused on self-satisfaction, appearances, and trying to make a difference without really changing anything you're doing in your own life.
   These are short essays about, well, stuff white people like. Such as Music Piracy, Hating Corporations, and Avoiding Confrontation. These are all cringe-inducing insights into the way privileged white folks like myself behave, and how they're perceived by non-white folks. They're the best kind of essays, funny and true, and liable to make some posers change the way they act.
   Mr. Lander is himself a white person, and better yet he's Canadian, which makes him extra, extra white. And thus more than qualified to write this book.

Quote: 'One of the more popular white-person activities of the past fifteen years has been attempting to educate others on the evils of multinational corporations. White people love nothing more than explaining to you how Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Microsoft, or Halliburton is destroying the Earth's cultures and resources.'

That's Globalization, Baby

Sorry, I channeled Dick Vitale there for a second...
   For Christmas, my younger niece got me a polar bear toy that poops jelly beans. It's all good, because I got her a plush zombie that you can pull apart and put back together. The jelly beans are tasty, too, butterscotch and cola.
   But I noticed something as I was reading the package. The package comes from a distributor in Canada. Or at least from Quebec, which is part of Canada for the time being, I suppose. No biggie, I have no quarrel with Canada, except for them making Celine Dion our problem but I've let that go. I did notice something interesting, though.
   The polar bear itself - the plastic bit - comes from China. The jelly beans come from Ireland, of all places (who knew they had the jelly bean infrastructure?). And my niece bought the polar bear package, bear, beans and all, in San Antonio, Texas.
   So you have a silly little toy made in one corner of the world combined in Canada with candy made in another corner of the world, being sold in Texas. I posted recently about a Pepsi can made in England, but this is an even better example of how little national boundaries mean to modern business exigencies. All this effort, all this coordination, all this back and forth through four countries, all this blood, sweat, plastic, and sugar put into getting a candy-pooping polar bear into my hands at Christmas.
   Kind of makes you think, don't it? People want to 'buy American,' but if you do that the only thing you're assured of is the product is assembled in America, the bits might very well have come from other parts of the world.
   I wonder where my Gene Simmons ceramic bobble-head really came from?