Like Falling Off A Bicycle...

I cut my lawn today.
   BFD, you might say. Who doesn't cut a lawn? And I might have said the same thing with you nine years ago. I made spending cash for a very long time cutting lawns and doing yardwork and generally being an indentured servant to people with more time and money than I. At least once a week from the time I was 8 years old until I was 35 I did some sort of manual labor out in the hot Texas sun. Even when I lived in an apartment I still did work on my grandmother's house, or for my parents, or - less frequently - for friends and friends of friends.
   Then I moved to SoCal.
   People don't do their own yards in California, they get someone else to do the heavy lifting. That someone else used to be me, but I lived in an apartment in the Playhouse District in Pasadena, a place with more concrete than yard, and there just wasn't any reason for me to do any real work. In the past nine years I've grown accustomed to not sweating in that way, to not moving in that way, to not thinking in that way. I got out of the yardwork habit.
   But now that I'm back in Texas and now that I have a yard of my own I've been shoved into the deep end of the manual labor pool. I borrowed my brother-in-law's mower and edger this morning and got to work.
   I gotta say, I did pretty good for being nine years out of practice. I never realized when I was still doing it just how particular I had become about the way I do things. Very picky. And I'm right back there now, finding the rhythm, feeling the beat, getting back into the groove. I'll get this yard into the shape I want it, and then I'll keep it that way. Because that's how I roll. Behind a lawnmower once again.

Safe Inside Or Out In The Nuclear Wasteland

You want to have a little fun with your friends? And by fun I mean start more trouble than you thought you would or are really comfortable handling? You are? Good. Try this:
   When you're gathered around twenty or thirty people - friends, family, co-workers, what have you - get one other person and start playing a hypothetical 'what if' game. Or, as Einstein put it, ein Gedankenexperiment. What you'll do is assume that the world has been utterly destroyed in a nuclear holocaust except the building you're inside. Every door and window has been sealed, there is no way for any of the radiation to get you. You're all safe.
   However... there are not enough resources to keep everyone alive. So you and your friend have to make the tough decisions regarding who gets to stay safe inside and who gets shoved to almost certain death (or mutation) outside. And you can't do it in secret, you have to discuss this right out in front of everyone. If people ask why you're the ones making the decision just tell them because you thought of it first.
   A friend of mine and I did this years ago, between shifts at the Olive Garden. We had some time to kill and decided to rank everyone in sight according to their fitness to stay inside our non-nuclear safe zone. For a while there we had a Purgatory of an airlock, halfway between salvation and damnation, but we had to abandon that idea when the population inside the airlock was greater than that either in or out. Being that we were in our early 20's we kept a lot of the hot waitresses because we'd need breeding stock to repopulate the Earth when the time came, and we kept a few of the smart guys because they'd be fun company, and then most everybody else we shoved outside. We kept only one guy in the airlock, so he could run outside and repair the antenna when we needed him to.
   What for us was a way to kill ten minutes turned into a days-long back and forth, complete with negotiations and pleas and backstabbing mutterings. Our population grew from just those people we could see that afternoon to the entire population of the restaurant, cooks, bus boys, waiters, cashiers, bartenders, managers, regional mangers, absolutely everyone. People really got into it, with those we kept inside very proud and disdainful of those outside, and those outside eager to make their case as to why they should stay safe and become part of the 'in' crowd. Those we relegated to the wasteland eventually decided they were going to form a radioactive mutant army and come back to storm the restaurant and take it by force. Until we pointed out that, because they would be contaminated by radiation, if they did breach the walls they'd just be turning the last hope for non-mutant humans into more nuclear fallout. And then we told them their lack of foresight is what made us put them outside in the first place.
   It was a very telling exercise in human nature, one that took us entirely by surprise. Who knew that people would take it so seriously? And, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, if I'd been a little quicker on the uptake back then that whole business probably could have gotten me laid.
   Ah well, live and learn.

Our Hero Returns

Captain Grant Manley gazed out across the stark Venusian landscape, ready to spring into action in the event one of the degenerate insectoid natives had survived the assault launched from the USS Victorious. The sulfurous volcanic winds blew hot and fast, but Manley kept cool and calm in his skin-tight pressure suit, supplied as it was with patriotic Earth air and kept at a normal, non-degenerate Earth temperature.
   "I think that's the last of them," Manley muttered, though he still kept an eye peeled. "Looks like we taught them a lesson they won't forget."
   "You do good work, Grant," Estelle Sparks sighed. She ran her hands along his wide shoulders, which bulged and rippled with muscles even through his pressure suit. "And I don't just mean slaughtering aliens."
   "Aren't we the aliens here?" Teddy Courage asked. The Captain's trusty cabin boy, Teddy took Manley's depleted Q-ray blaster and replaced it with a fully-charged one.
   "Nonsense, my boy," Manley chuckled, gesturing at the ochre plain littered with the remains of chitinous exoskeletons. "Look at them, with their compound eyes and six legs and those disgusting mouth parts. Why, you can blow three legs off one of those grasshoppers and they still keep coming. That counts as an alien in my book."
   "Grasshoppers," Estelle mumbled, the term the Earth Council troops used to refer to the indigenous Venusian lifeforms. "Why can't they be more like us?"
   "Some day, the good Lord willing, they will be," Manley said, his hand casually draping around Estelle's waist. She sighed.
   Teddy moved between Estelle and his Captain, pressing his fingers hard into Manley's shoulders just the way he liked. The way Estelle could never get right.
   "But this is their planet," Teddy insisted, "we're the invaders."
   "We're only here to win their hearts and minds," Manley reminded Teddy. "And to bring civilization to this backwater cesspool of a planet."
   "Didn't they have a thriving civilization before we got here?" Teddy asked. "Aren't we the ones who blew up their cities and killed thousands of their people and ruined their infrastructure?"
   Manley turned slowly, his square jaw set, his steel-gray eyes focused with purpose. Teddy quailed under his Captain's masterful gaze and his heart flutered in his chest.
   "I'd hate to think you didn't support the Earth Council one-hundred percent, lad," Manley growled. "If you're not completely with us you're against us."
   "Isn't informed dissent one of the cornerstones of Earth Council governance?" Estelle remarked idly. "Didn't our founding fathers and mothers disagree on almost everything?"
   Both Teddy and Manley stopped and turned to the lithe, buxon, raven-haired science officer, astonished at her words.
   "I don't think I like your tone, Estelle," Manley said.
   Teddy nestled closer to his Captain's rock-hard physique. "Sir, doesn't that sound dangerously close to treason?"
   Manley nodded his head. "I believe it does, lad. Estelle, get back into the ship. You and I are going to have a talk about what it means to be a patriot."
   Pale and shaken, Estelle trudged back towards the USS Victorious landing site, her ample hips shaking a counterpoint with each step.
   "Such a shame," Manley said when Estelle was out of earshot, "she's a good officer, but a little too smart for her own good. History is what the Earth Council says it is, not what you read in books."
   "Besides, she's just a girl," Teddy said as he kneaded the knots out of his Captain's shoulders, "she'll never really understand what it's like for us men, out here, alone, on the desolate frontiers of proper civilization."
   Manley sighed and relaxed under his trusty cabin boy's ministrations. "Truer words were never spoken, lad."

Shudder To Think

I had to kill a roach this morning. It was the first one I've seen in my apartment ever, the building owner must be neglecting the pest control bill like she's neglecting the elevator - which is STILL not fixed, by the way, it's been six months. So I got the bug spray, which I usually employ on spiders, and nuked the cockroach, totally soaked it in what is essentially bug nerve poison.
   I followed it for a while to make sure I didn't lose it, and it eventually expired in the front hall, on its back, legs curled up, the classic roach death pose. I left it there while I got busy revising a book and printing out a manuscript for submission to an agent (remember this post?). When I got around to picking up the roach corpse it had been a few hours since I killed it. So not only was it dead, it was, as we say in Texas, good 'n dead.
   But when I got the paper towel and picked it up, I still shivered, a good long shudder that shook me from head to toe.
   Somebody needs to figure this reaction out. I know for a fact that this roach is now an ex-roach, it's moved along the karmic path to whatever its next incarnation is, and I was the agent of that demise. But I still raced to the trash can to throw it away, just in case it decided to scurry out and run up my arm.
   Why? What's so visceral about bugs that a grown man can get squeamish and girly when he has to dispose of a tiny little body?
   That's it, I gotta toughen up. Maybe I'll crawl into a sleeping bag full of rattlesnakes or something, that's man stuff right there.

Stop Being Curious

I like to know stuff. Actually, I guess it's better to say that I like to find stuff out. When I was in college I worked in the library - I used to say 'libary' to make my boss angry - and I tried to learn something new every day, even if it was some completely random fact I learned off an out-of-date atlas. Like Zimbabwe used to be Rhosdesia, stuff like that.
   Sometime, though, curiosity can be a bad thing. Ignorance really is bliss.
   I got a thing in the mail for a local dry cleaner, I'm sure everyone gets them for their local dry cleaners too. Twenty dollars off an order of $70 or more, if you're interested and want to ship your clothes to Pasadena for some reason.
   Anyway, I got to wondering what dry cleaners use to clean clothes. So I hit the internet and had a look. Mistake. Big mistake.
   Dry cleaning fluid is tetrachloroethylene, which sounds like something crazy people in the Middle East use for chemical warfare. The best thing you can say for it is that it won't catch fire. Other than that, it's nothing good. It's a carcinogen and a degreaser for auto parts, for God's sake, why would I want my clothes put in that?
   I should have just left well enough alone, but evidently I didn't learn my lesson from a couple of months ago, and I just had to go digging. I swear, if I find one more thing that's bad for me that I assumed was okay, I'm going to go live in a convent.
   Yeah, you heard me.


COMMUTE: there - 40 minutes      back - 50 minutes. Ride share Thursday my ass...
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 79 days

Fun Games At Work

During your down time at work today - and let's be honest, you have a LOT of down time - why don't you engage your brain in some 'what-if' exercises? While you're growing more neurons you can confuse, concern, and enrage your co-workers, a win-win all around.

Who Survives?
   You need at least one other person, so find a friend or make one real quick. Both of you sit down in a public area like a break room or dining facility, and take out a piece of paper. Make two columns on the page, one labeled 'In the Bunker' the other labeled 'Outside.' Your objective is to place all your co-workers, bosses, janitorial staff, etc. in one of these columns.
   So what are the columns for?
   The story is this: there has been a nuclear holocaust, and all that is left is your office. The only safe place is inside the building, but there aren't enough resources for everyone. At least half the people must be escorted outside the building where they'll succumb to the radiation. Or mutate horribly, or develop superpowers, whatever. Bottom line: the ones inside survive and the ones outside don't. You and your friend are in charge of who stays and who goes, of who lives and who dies. You'll need justification for each person you keep, Bob is a good cook, Dave knows how to skin a deer, Mary is necessary for repopulating the world, etc.
   Once word gets out about what you're doing, you'll be surprised who takes an interest, especially if they're in the 'Outside' column. When they ask how you have the jurisdiction over life and death you can just tell them you wouldn't have the list if you didn't have the authority. Circular reasoning befuddles the masses.

Note: Don't create an 'airlock' to keep people in some kind of limbo, neither in nor out. Trust me, pretty soon you'll have more people in the airlock than outside or inside. You're the one making the tough decisions, so make them already.

Bacon Is Magic

It's a culinary axiom: Bacon is magic.
   And I'm not talking the metaphorical kind of magic, either, not the kind of 'magic' behind a home run or a the 'magic' of children's laughter or the 'magic' of a Van Halen reunion with David Lee Roth. No, bacon is real magic, like a Van Halen reunion with Sammy Hagar.
   Here's the proof - there is nothing savory that can't be made better by adding bacon.
   I'm not talking sweet. Bacon and ice cream? Probably not the best. Bacon and cheesecake? Pass
   But - bacon and pizza? Mmmmm... Bacon and fillet mignon? Mmmmm... Bacon-wrapped shrimp? Well, I hate shrimp, but people tell me it's good. Bacon and macaroni and cheese, or mashed potatoes or cous cous or spaghetti... I tell you, the list is endless.
   I will go out on a limb here and say that no one can find a savory food that isn't made better by the addition of bacon. Prove me wrong.