Next Stop... Skynet

I've been going to my local gym for years. It's in the basement of the old Pasadena Star News building, in the area once occupied by the printing presses, when those things were two-story-tall monster machines. It's a pretty cool space, three-level and very open. But lately things have been kind of not cool.
   For most of the time I've been going I just hand over my gym ID card, the person behind the counter scans it, and I get to go in. Bada-bing, bada-boom, easy peasy lemon squeezy.
   No more. The company has gone to a fingerprint reader. You key in a ten-digit number - probably people use their phone number - and then scan your right index finger. Up until now I have steadfastly refused to let them scan my fingerprints, I stick with the ID card. Except now they're not using the ID cards. If you don't want to use the fingerprint scanner you have to fork over a driver's license and let them look it up that way.
   So now I'm on the horns of a dilemma. I don't want to use my driver's license - which is for driving not venue admission - yet I steadfastly object to letting a gym, of all businesses, take a record of my fingerprint so they can provide a service I've paid for. What the hell? The only reason they want my fingerprint is to make their extremely easy job - keeping the gate - even easier. Other than the company being lazy, there is absolutely no Goddamned reason they need a record of my fingerprints. AT. ALL. They're a fucking GYM!! I go there to sweat, not to create the next Manhattan Project. Biometric security should be the least of their concerns. How about working this hard to keep soap in the dispensers by the sink?
   I can hear you asking 'What's the big deal, Don? It's just a gym.'
   Which is my point exactly. It's just a gym. I don't want to come across as some crazy conspiracy theorist, but this is where the abrogation of our civil liberties starts. It's just a gym. So why do they want my fingerprint? That's the one definite personal identifier I can never change. And if I give it to them, they'll have a way to tie that biometric data to my name, my address, my phone number, and my credit records, all of which that gym also has.
   Where does it stop? How much personal privacy do I have to give up just keep my heart from giving out on me when I'm 70?
   If I want to keep working out there my choices now are down to two: fork over my driver's license every time, which is also none of their Goddamned business, or let them scan my fingerprint.
   I'm going for the driver's license. Fuckers.

Be Still My Heart...

The elevator in my building is fixed.
   Yes, FINALLY. It's been over a year since it gave up the ghost, and now it's repaired, inspected and ready to go up and down like an elevator should.
   I'm positively giddy, and I swear I squealed like a schoolgirl when I saw the inspector down in the garage pressing buttons and making things happen. Right now I'm a big fan of elevator inspectors. I almost asked him for his autograph. I'm thinking of putting his picture up on my bedroom wall next to my poster of Leif Garret.*
   I took my first ride just now, and it was all brand new, like the rosy blush of young love or your very first hit of crack, anything seemed possible. I wasn't taking the stairs like a chump, I was standing still, like Americans should, letting a machine do the work my legs had proved perfectly capable of doing until that very moment. Ah, good times, good times...
   I have to confess, though, the elevator car smelled. Not offensive, just stale. Like something that had been sitting unused for thirteen months, closed up and untouched. Like going into a storage unit you haven't opened for quite a while, that kind of stale. And a little damp, probably for the same reason. And I felt just the slightest bit claustrophobic, I didn't recall the elevator being so small. But still, it was a good visit.
   So now I have a decision to make every time I drive back into the garage. Do I take the stairs, which I have done every single day I've been here for over a year, or do I wimp out and take my old friend the elevator? I dearly love my old friend, and I miss him and his buzzing clanks, but I'm not so sure he was good for me. Never once did I decide to sit out the evening in the garage because I was too tired to climb the stairs, so there's no real reason I would absolutely NEED to use the elevator. I'm not feeble, not after a year of climbing the stairs every day. But I know that since my good buddy Elevator is ready to help me out, I'll probably use his services more often than not.
   Because I'm a lazy American, that's why. Don't you judge me, with your Chocodiles and your pork rinds and your NASCAR... Say, when is NASCAR coming back? February? Gotta stock up on Chocodiles now that the elevator is working again.



* 'Mom? Who's Leif Garret?'
He was like Shaun Cassidy or Rick Springfield.
  'Still not sure...'

The Moon Is Bright

I'm waiting for the lunar eclipse, which is supposed to start in a little more than an hour. Though I'm perfectly capable of staying up I may not, partly because I'm working on becoming an old man before my time and partly because the moon is so freakin' bright tonight I'm not sure I want to spoil it.
   The Winter Solstice, a full moon, and a lunar eclipse don't all happen on the same night very often and tonight's the night they're all crammed together like the Super Bowl, World Series and... uh... whatever hockey has all in the same day. It's a special time, cosmologially speaking, is what I'm trying to say, and the universe is delivering the goods. I was just outside with a newspaper and I could read all but the smallest type pretty easily.
   Comets are supposed to portend big changes, perhaps apocalyptic changes, and comets come by way more often than lunar eclipses on the Winter Solstice, which have happened together twice before in the past 2,000 years, most recently 372 years ago. I'm not particularly alarmist, but I am guessing this celesital happening is foreshadowing some big changes. Or hoping it does anyway.
   So keep your fingers and toes crossed the changes are good ones. Or that the clouds stay away until I get to see the eclipse, at the very least.

Cojones Grandes

Man, I've seen some daring people before, but just now I witnessed a lady who takes the cake. And eats it. And then takes your cake and eats that too.
   I went to get gasoline in the truck, and decided that I would run it through the 'Touchless' car wash to knock the Los Angeles off of it. I wiped it down afterwards and then went inside to get my lottery tickets. You can't win if you don't play.
   A lady came in behind me and handed over a receipt. She asked the clerks for a refund on the car wash, since it 'wasn't valid' and there were too many people in line right now and she couldn't use it anyway. Could she please have her money back. No big deal and none of my business.
   Until I walked out the door.
   A little econo-box was sitting right outside the doors, and it was still dripping wet from the car wash.
   What are the odds...? I thought. So I waited. Got in my truck and watched the door. And, sure enough, the lady who wanted a refund on her car wash because she couldn't use it got into the freshly-washed car and drove away.
   Astonishing. Just... remarkable. Not only to lie like that to get a free car wash, but to park your still-wet-from-the-wash car right outside the door when you do it? That takes some nerve. Completely reprehensible and wrong, but you gotta admit that takes major chutzpah to even think about doing, let alone carry out successfully. That's like... Captain Kirk ballsy.
   When I grow up I want to be like that lady. Only honest.

Doctors Don't Know

So I was thinking about stuff the other day, as I usually do, when a puzzle presented itself. I pulled out a few hairs on my leg - because that's what I do when I'm thinking - and I wondered how long it would take those hairs to grow back. Then I thought the whole thing through a little more and a question arose.
   When someone shaves their legs, how does the hair know it's been shaved so that it can grow again?
   If you're wondering how the hair knows when to stop growing you could always cop out and say 'genetics' and you'd probably be right. The hair on your legs is different from the hair on your head, and it only grows so long. But that still doesn't answer the first question, how does the hair know it's been shaved in the first place?
   If you think about pulling the hair out that's different, there's nothing where there used to be something, so that's simple enough for the follicle to figure out. But if you just cut it off at the skin, how does the follicle realize the hair isn't as long as your genes say it should be? Something's gotta tell it, right? And then something has to tell it to start growing again.
   Ask your doctor that one, I'll bet he doesn't know. You could also ask him why the human body still has an appendix, when keeping a vestigial organ that can get inflamed and burst and kill us seems like a negative evolutionary adaptation. Or ask him how Himalayan monks can raise their body temperature voluntarily to dry out soaking wet sheets that they've been wrapped in.
   It's like a big game of Jeopardy without Alex Trebek, but nobody gets to know the answers.

A Beard And A Cigar

Okay, I'm going to admit it: I'm getting tired of being 'between assignments.' There, I've said it. The bloom is off the rose, the shine is off the new penny. I want to work, even if it means going back to a corporate amoeba and putting in my 40 from a cubicle.
   But I still have dreams of something better.
   I'm thinking that, if I play my cards right and have the proper backing, I could become dictator of my own banana republic. And I don't mean the clothing store (those still exist, right? I haven't been to a mall in a very long time).
   I want to rule a blighted land with an iron fist, I want to take over from a corrupt regime and become even more corrupt, I want to grow a bushy beard and smoke a big cigar. I want my image plastered on every wall and have my statues in every public square. I want my citizens to publicly praise me yet privately condemn me. I want Google to cater to me, and then develop a conscience only when my state hackers try to crack their system. I want Wall Street vampires to admire me and wonder how they can duplicate my political success in their financial world.
   Couldn't be worse than fighting LA traffic to work at a soulless corporation for defeated, sallow middle-managers who aren't good at their jobs and don't care to be. At least if I was Great Leader of my own banana republic I'd be the one abusing my power at the expense of others, instead of being the victim.
   Of course, my regime is destined to fail. Eventually. They always do - Hugo Chavez, I'm looking at you here. But if I'm properly paranoid and ruthless I could make it last a good twenty, maybe thirty years. I'm gonna need a cadre of faithful believers in my 'cause,' who I will eventually and gradually betray until I become the very thing I was fighting against. Who's up for it?

A Couple Extra Bucks

I've been thinking about ways to make a few extra buck under the table, enough to pay for gasoline or the water bill, whatever. It can't be too much money, or I'll attract undue attention from The Man, but it has to be enough to make the effort worthwhile. I've been thinking about it a while, coming up with ideas and then discarding them, until I hit on the perfect solution.
   I'll make moonshine.
   I'm not talking 'home brew' beer here, I'm talking rotgut, distilled corn mash, the kind of stuff that goes into ceramic jugs with 'xxx' on side. The kind of stuff hillbillies dream about, the kind of stuff Applachian bootleggers made small fortunes off of (and subsequently created NASCAR because of, it's true, look it up). Li'l Abner stuff, bare feet and squealing pigs and corncob pipes.
   The fact that I have absolutely no experience with any kind of brewing or distilling only ensures my success, beginners luck, as it were. It's time to take a trip to the hardware store, I need copper tubing, propane, that kind of thing. I don't really use my balcony for anything, it would make a perfect mini-distillery.
   I'm pretty sure I'd be the only moonshine operation in Pasadena, CA - at least I hope I'd be - so I'd get away with it longer than if I lived in, say, Little Rock, where no doubt they have a moonshine task force. My local authorities just won't be on the lookout for someone crafting white lightning. Although you never know, there could be thriving moonshine underground in Bungalow Heaven.
   This will also go a long way towards fulfilling my dream of being on COPS. I won't get away with it forever, you know.

Things I Had To Go To Australia To Learn

I went to Australia two years ago, and it was a learning experience for us both. Here's what I learned:

You can put beets and pineapple on a hamburger and it's actually pretty good.
   I didn't know if I would like a burger that way. I do like beets, and I do like pineapple, and I do like a good cheeseburger - but all at the same time? Yeah. Good on ya, mate.

Santa looks good in shorts.
   A little pasty, but it's not the affront to my senses I imagined it might be. And there are some really cool Christmas sand castles. It's summer in December in the Southern Hemisphere, for those of you who don't know. Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, for those of you who don't know that.

Up close koalas are a little creepy.
   Sacrilege, I know, but the eucalyptus they eat don't give them very much energy, so they sleep all the time. So when they're active they have permanent bed-head and bags under the eyes. Like they're on the late shift at the cute factory.

The purple-flower trees lining many Pasadena streets are called jacarandas.
   I never knew the name of this tree until I went to Australia. I was describing the scene - much like today - where the trees are all blooming and there is a riot of purple lining most major streets (except Colorado where they tore all the trees out). My friends told me the name of the tree, and I amaze and confound everyone with that knowledge to this day.