Inflated and Burst in One Breath

I Just called in an order to a local Olive Garden restaurant for a birthday celebration at the shop tomorrow.

The phone was picked up on the second ring, and an unintelligible stream of syllables flew out of the handset so quickly that I literally moved the phone away from my ear and stared at it for a moment in confusion.

Naturally, I immediately questioned whether I had called the right number.

"I'm sorry," I hesitated, "but I didn't understand a single word of what you just said. Is this the Olive Garden Restaurant?"

A female voice, dripping with sexy Italian intonation replied, "Yes sir. I apologize. I said, 'Buon giorno, grazie per chiamare il ristorante Olive Garden.'" *

Except this time, she said it with such a languid, sultry slowness that put me in mind of gauzy, white, off-the-shoulder blouses and raven tresses framing olive skin.

I was transported for a moment into a fantasy world of Sophia Loren's eyes, Monica Bellucci's mouth and Gina Lollobridida's ... er ... talents. 

Breaking what must have seemed like an extended, awkward silence, it was with dismay that I received her next statment, in clear, Texas twang - now devoid of the artifice that so evoked my previous reaction: "They make me say that." I could practically hear the gum in her mouth now, smacking against crooked teeth set behind cartoonishly painted lips.

"Yeah..." I sighed, once the shock and disappointment had worn off. 

"Yeah, um ... I'd like to place an order for pickup..."

*This may or may not be her exact words. This is based on my sketchy grasp of Italian and dodgy memory.

I Can Has IQ?

For the life of me, I don't know if that's a good thing or not...

Blind Confidence

I came home to a darkened house a little late last night, having spent several hours enjoying conversation over cigars and Hefeweizen at our local cigar shop. The conversation and company was the sort that arises out of shared passions and experiences, and ends with new found friends and a desire to pick up again sometime soon.

Arms loaded with my purchases, I was met at the door by my wife who sternly but playfully reminded me that I still had to go to work in the morning, which was distressingly coming too soon. Determined to find myself in bed as quickly as possible, I headed to the kitchen to store away my spoils.

There was no need to turn on any lights. I know the layout of my house with my eyes closed as surely as if it were brightly lit. In fact, I like to occasionally amuse myself by testing my ability to walk through the complex living room arrangement without any lights to guide me. The goal is to see how confidently I can navigate the layout without touching any of the furniture. 

So it was last night, confidence buoyed by the lingering pleasure of an enjoyable evening, that I moved swiftly through the maze with sure-footed precision. However, it was at the entrance to the kitchen where my self-satisfaction came to an abrupt end. As I took my first step through the entryway, my foot found something new, unexpectedly yielding and very noisy.   For some inexplicable reason, our dog had decided to bed down for the night directly across the approach to the kitchen, and I had rewarded this change in his routine with the full weight of my right foot. 

I wish I had a video of the dance that ensued.

Naturally, old Gus screamed at being awakened suddenly by my nearly 200 pounds on his hind-end. Old though he may be, we both discovered to our surprise how quickly he can move when sufficiently motivated. Unfortunately, his dodge and my suddenly-hesitant left foot chose the same spot in the now-unwelcome dark and we met again for another round of yelping. Reeling from the succession of blows to my balance and footing, I tucked my packages and prepared to take the fall, rather than risk stepping on Gus again. 

Care to guess where he positioned himself? 

Now disoriented and keeling over hard in the darkness, I tried to envision how I needed to adjust my fall to the right to avoid the hard edges of the baker's rack I knew was there just inside the entryway, when I again felt that same warm softness of fur, panicking and pushing now, against the side of the leg that even now threatened to finally crush him. 

No help for it, I spun back hard to the left, doubtless looking like a contorted contestant in a game of Twister. Sparks erupted from behind my tightly-clenched eyelids as the back my left hand found the corner of the rack, taking the full weight of my fall, even while cradling my packages against damage. My wife, having heard the ongoing commotion, arrived on the scene to turn on the lights just as my momentum finally came to a halt. Concerned, but looking slightly amused, she gently slipped my unscathed packages out from under my arm and helped rock me back onto my feet, before storing away my purchases herself.  She returned with a look on her face that carried a reproachful, "see what happens when you stay out too late?"

A little ice for the bruised hand and sleep for the bruised confidence will heal all, and I'll certainly have a new story to add to my next evening of conversation.

Smells like a close call...

Don't you just love it when a plan works out?

Especially when that plan involved very little ... ahem ... planning?

By now, Dear Reader, you are aware that we have two boys, now both in school. However, during the summer break from classes they are cut loose from the educational mill and we have to find something for them to do with themselves. As the Mrs. and I both work in less-than-child-friendly environments, and the nearest retired grandparents are in another state, our only recourse is that most American of child repositories - Daycare.

All impassioned arguments for and against daycare may be checked at the door, as you may rest assured that we've run the gamut of emotional and fiscal scenarios and came to two conclusions: It's necessary for us, and yes, we feel like parental failures.

But that's not what this little missive is about, Dear Reader. This is about money. More to the point: how to pay the equivalent of a car payment each week for the pleasure of continuing to be a two-income family?

Enter, The Plan. Each of the last several years, we've received fairly sizable tax refunds, due to the boys' dual-classification as both "children" and "tax deductions." Rather than race out and spend our sudden annual "windfall," we decided to just add it to our operating funds to get us through the summer expenses.

"How much exactly would we need?" " Will it be enough to keep us afloat and pay our bills?" Feh, these are just details...

Like the deaf, dumb and blind eponymous hero from The Who's "Pinball Wizard" who played "by sense of smell," we tend to handle our finances purely on instinct. Truth to tell, I don't think we've ever taken the time to balance our checkbook. Our plan "smelled" about right and if we close our eyes tightly enough, we can ignore all the warning sirens and flashing lights. So it was that we blithely went about our summer activities, with us at work and the boys being socialized by people we hardly knew.

Of course, this is the year that the Texas Government decreed that all school districts would begin classes on the same date statewide, and in order to accommodate all the various schedules, this year's summer break was nearly a month longer than it had been in the previous several years. Add to that the costs of all the various summer activities - Vacation Bible School, Aikido Camp, the annual family pilgrimage to Galveston - and you have a veritable hemorrhage of cash.

We knew we must be getting pretty low on reserves these last few weeks, but our instincts told us the plan was working, and all would be well, especially if we didn't look too closely. After all, we had written our last childcare payment check last week and school had finally resumed, lifting that financial burden. Like Schrodinger's cat, our finances would hold out just fine, provided I never lifted the lid on the box to check.

Curiosity won out eventually, though, so I took a rare look at our online banking statement last night.

We had $1.56 left.

Of course, at the stroke of midnight, The Mrs.' direct-deposit paycheck hit the bank, once again leaving our account flush with a month's worth of government-worker earnings. I get paid tomorrow, and without the onus of childcare expenses, it'll feel as though we have yet a third paycheck in the bank, as well. (Or it will, by the end of next month, anyway.) All our bills, dues or tithes are - or will be - paid on time, as they always are, and we get to continue our usual routine unscathed.

If anybody asks what our secret to financial success is, we'll just wink at each other and tell them that we had a PLAN.

Doubtless, some of you are wondering if we learned some greater lesson from this exercise in fiscal irresponsibility. The answer is "yes," of course, but I'm setting this in very small type so I can continue to appear smug about our fiscal near-miss. Truth is, the $1.56 was just in our operating funds, and doesn't represent all the liquid monies we have available to us, should we need to move some around. It just makes for a better story... so there.

Joining "God's Team"

My older son, the subject of several entries in this increasingly sporadic 'blog, accepted Christ as Lord and Savior a little over a year ago at the tender age of seven. Our church allows children his age to be baptized, but I felt that perhaps seven was just a little too tender an age to fully comprehend the decision.

At eight years old now, he wouldn't be put off anymore. He attended the requisite classes and interviews and yesterday, with family and church members cheering him on, he took the plunge.



I hope someday to be worthy of the children with whom I've been blessed.

National Ride to Work Day

A little fresh propaganda for your consideration this morning.

17 Years Ago Today

(This is a repost from two years ago)

"What are you doing here," asked Dianne Worthen, my Karate Sensei, with a spreading smile of surprise. She was incredulous that I would show up for class just a few hours before my wedding was to take place. Indeed, the truth was that I had to be there. I was so full of excited energy that I needed an outlet to safely tap off a bit, lest I be reduced to a gibbering wreck.

It was a crisp day, slightly overcast with the silvery-gray glow that comes early with Texas winters. In its plastic cleaner's bag, my tuxedo hung over the back of one of the long-legged chairs that cozied up to the breakfast bar in my apartment. The images of wide-collared, pastel tuxedos with contrasting piping hanging in the halls of friends and family cemented my decision to go with a classic and timeless style that wouldn't induce groans when viewed years later in a dusty photo album.

Purged of my excess energy, I drove to my my parents' home to wash up and get dressed. My grandmother had arrived the night before from New Orleans to attend the wedding, and greeted me at the door with a barrage of kisses in a swirling cloud of rose perfume. After I showered and doused myself with my own cologne, she was a good sport and didn't tease me too much as she braided my eight inch rat-tail, an affectation popular in the 1980's and the only outward sign of subversiveness in my otherwise button-down image.

With an hour to go before the ceremony, I drove my 1978 Datsun 280Z to Plano Bible Chapel and strategically parked it in a spot I thought would make for a fast getaway later. It was my dream car - fast, nimble and sexy. It's only faults were to be found in its cheap Earl Scheib mocha brown paint job and its propensity for electrical problems. I had given it a very thorough cleaning, inside and out, in preparation for the day. After all, it was to be the carriage in which I'd take home my bride.

Inside, I found that some guests had already arrived and took a moment to visit with them before hiding myself away in the Pastor's office. Jim Lewis was a passionate preacher with the sort of face that rarely hid his mood. Intimidating to look at when he was set upon by righteous anger, today his eyes twinkled with an excited joy. "Are you nervous yet," he asked me with a mischevious grin. I wasn't.

For almost eight years I had dated my bride-to-be. We had known each other since 6th grade. She was the best friend of my then-girlfriend, Carrie. When Carrie and I amicably parted company, she suggested that perhaps her best friend would be a better match. She had no idea how right she was at the time. We became friends and would attend events together when my parents would let me invite a friend along, but it wasn't until a trip to the Japanese Gardens in Fort Worth that I realized how much I'd come to love the gentle spirit and radiant beauty that she posessed. There, standing on the arched bridge that stretched across the koi pond, sun highlighting hair that danced lightly in the breeze, she turned to face the camera I held in suddenly shaky hands. The viewfinder framed an angel, and at the tender age of 13, I was forever lost.

All through high school and college we dated. We developed that comfortable familiarity that long-married couples share, and indeed, even among our families and friends there was no doubt that someday, when the time was right, we would wed.

And so it was, 17 years ago today that I stood calmly in my Pastor's office. I wasn't nervous, because there were no doubts, no lingering concerns, no uncertainties about what I was about to do. I wanted her with an aching in my heart that threatened to crush me under the weight of my longing. My older brother served as best man, and together with the pastor, we walked solemnly out to the designated spot we had rehearsed just the night before and turned to face the entryway to the sanctuary in anticipation.

The music swelled and was joined by the staccato rushing of my pounding pulse as the gathered friends and family rose. It was then that they beheld what I had seen all along, as my angel glided into the room and took final posession of my heart.

It's that time again!

The Cycle World International Motorcycle Show will be in Ft. Worth again this year from November 17th through the 19th.

The family and I will be there in the mornings, when the crowds are typically much smaller. As usual, I'll be picking out my next bike, as I do each year, and obsessing over it until reality (and lack of funding) ultimately kicks in. My wife likes to look over the large-displacement scooters, and the boys like to climb on anything even remotely kid-sized.

Godspeed

Early Wednesday morning, I'll be driving down to New Orleans to attend the funeral of my paternal grandmother.

A retired English teacher and strict grammarian, "Gramma" Fink was first and foremost a Lady (capital L). When I make references to the "genteel society" in which I was raised, I must respectfully tip my hat to woman who most engendered it.

She was graceful and proper, yet pragmatic - and my brothers and I rarely needed to be admonished to watch our manners in her company, for her presence and quiet dignity wordlessly commanded it in a way that even young children could understand. Despite this, she was not an imposing figure. She was gentle and understanding, and only firm when necessary.

Giving birth to triplets in the early 1940s made her a minor celebrity at a time when America was looking for homegrown heroes. The death of my uncle, James, at 3 months due to pneumonia transformed her celebrity into the role of tragic and brave heroine. It became her public secret, and we were all cautioned never to ask about the resident of the simple grave in Hook and Ladder Cemetary after whom both my older brother and our first cousin are named.

She lived alone after the death of my grandfather until her own health gradually began to fail her. When she began to require more care than her aging younger sister - and later a retirement community - could provide, my father made the decision to move her up to a unique living and nursing environment here in Texas where she could live in a neighborhood residence under constant care. More importantly, she could now be in the company of family, particularly her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in whom she took great joy. When my parents retired to Arkansas, my grandmother moved with them. Undertaking the herculean task of becoming my grandmother's sole caregivers was not made lightly, and I honor my parents' dedication and sacrifice to the well-being of my increasingly-frail and bedridden grandmother. Love and loyalty can buoy a body for only so long however, and eventually my grandmother's care requirements increased to the point of taking a serious emotional and physical toll on my parents.

A difficult and tearful decision was made to place her in a local nursing home in Mena, Arkansas, where her condition continued to deteriorate. There would be moments of clarity when the light would shine through the clouds in her mind and she would know who she was and who had come to visit, but they became more and more rare. In the last few weeks, her only real responses were reflexive in nature and her kidneys failed her. Blood clots had settled in her legs, and to our dismay, her doctor was unable to find any trace of a pulse in her already-discoloring lower legs.

After consulting with doctors and family members, the decision was made to do all that was possible to make her comfortable and pain-free, but to discontinue her medications and to remove the IV which so ravaged her frail hand. An extra bed was placed in her room for my parents, who made plans to remain with her for the days or weeks that followed.

She lasted only an additional few hours.

Although one might easily make the argument that her life and suffering continued well after any hope of quality had passed, we believe the end was mercifully quick and painless for her, and even now she is in the arms of the Lord. None of us wanted her to go, and yet we couldn't bear to make her stay. The gentle and swift nature of her passing was a loving answer to a painful prayer.

Well after she ceased to know us, she continued to be - and still is - loved.

Wednesday, I go to honor her memory.

Rear View

"Truly the last"
as time goes by.

Childhood flickers in the
blink of an eye.

When hopes and fears
and plans for tomorrow
give way to bitter remembrance
and the dreams we have to borrow.

Between the Posts

How many times have I contemplated a blog entry on my way to work, only to have it slip away along with the time to type it the moment I sit at the computer. Sigh.... It's been busy lately, and frankly when I get to work I have this almost irrational desire to ... um, well, you know... work.

I'm truly apologize to those who, time and time again, come here looking for new material only to see cobwebs forming on the posts below. I've been very busy and distracted with the process of living life, that I haven't made the time to sit down and write about it.

Some of those distractions have been in the form of musical compositions on my new iMac using GarageBand, though, if you'd like to take a listen. I've been working on more, but it's a lot harder than sitting down and typing out what's on my mind, and the ideas come more easily to me than the actual production, so I have another half-dozen or more tunes languishing for completion at present. I may even begin playing with PodCasting my blogs in the future, but like everything else, that takes time away from other commitments. Quiet, contemplative "alone-time" is pretty-much limited to the morning commute right now, so bear with me while I continue to suffer this creative ennui.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Remember,

(A little ghoulish humor courtesy of i-mockery.com)

They Walk Funny, Them's That Hate Us

I saw this blessing during the holidays and thought I'd share it.

May those who love us, love us.
Those who don't love us, may the Lord turn their hearts.
And if the Lord cannot turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
so we may know them by their limping...

It's a good kind of sore...

There were three tests held today at North Texas Aikido. After a full hour of spirited tanken-dori, the students were lined up in order of rank and two of the test-candidates and their ukes were called forward to perform the required techniques and weapons excercises required for their new rank of Gokkyu. Sitting on the sidelines, I found myself discretely trying to keep my muscles from cooling off from the prior excercise in preperation to serve as uke for our Sankyu candidate's test, which was to immediately follow.

Even though I wasn't the person testing, I found myself getting a charge out of the energy and excitement that always permeates the testing environment. We frequently claim that Sankyu is the first of the "big" tests at the dojo, and the training and preparations involved can literally take months before a candidate is ready to test. I was thrown down in some form or another 30 to 40 times before it was time to demonstrate weapons excercises (and give me a break from bouncing off the mat). The candidate performed well, and with few hiccoughs in technique, so the test proceeded as quickly as the comprehensive list of requirements could allow.

Sore? You betcha! But it's the kind of productive pain that remains after achievement. After the "runner's high" subsides, there's always that pleasant soreness that reminds you of the miles behind you and beckons you toward those to come. Individual accomplishments strengthen the dojo just as surely as excercise strengthens a muscle. In this case, the accomplishment was not my own, but a boon for the dojo as a whole, regardless.

Freedom From Want

I was considering the concept of Thanksgiving and how it truly has little to do with our current circumstances, but rather our attitudes toward them in contrast with what we already have, when the following gem appeared in my inbox. I subscribe to the Steve Troxel's "God's Daily Word" and receive a daily devotional message from his ministry each morning.

I think he says it all far better than anything I could have written this morning, and so I share it with you in its entirety. (Emphasis mine)

Freedom From Want

On January 6th, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his State of the Union speech to Congress and articulated four freedoms which he said were fundamental American values. These freedoms were, Freedom of Worship, Freedom of Speech, Freedom from Fear, and Freedom from Want. Norman Rockwell, made a series of paintings to correspond with these four freedoms, and these paintings were circulated in the Saturday Evening Post from February to March 1943. The most famous of the four paintings was the one titled Freedom from Want. In this famous painting a large family is gathered around a dinner table. The picture is full of happy faces and lots and lots of food. But the focus of the picture is an elderly woman setting down a cooked turkey which is big enough to feed a small village. Mr. Rockwell is a wonderful painter but I believe he gravely missed the point in his depiction of the freedom from want. He would even later say of his work that the painting better depicted overabundance - or perhaps overindulgence.

Today is called Thanksgiving in the United States. The origins of this holiday go back to the founding of our country but today it is a time when people gather together, eat too much food, watch too much television, and some actually try to reflect on reasons to be thankful. The idea of a time of thanksgiving would be a great worldwide time of reflection - but we need to have a much better concept of thankfulness and what it really means to have freedom from want. 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-18 "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."

Giving thanks should never be dependent on our circumstances - never based on what we have, how full our table or bank account. This is a true freedom which only comes by understanding the gift of Salvation, the joy of eternal glory, and who we are in Christ as we live the rest of our days as a child of God. Paul expressed this thankfulness best in his letter to the Philippians: "I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through Him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:12-13). Let's learn the secret of a thankful heart by learning that thankfulness is not dependent on what we see. True and lasting thanksgiving is only obtained through faith in Jesus Christ and God's free gift of Salvation - and then by living with an understanding of what this gift implies. Freedom from want is not obtained through having more, it is obtained by understanding what we already have. Let's begin today to live with a true Freedom From Want.

A Slice of Crunklenut

The late fall sun, rising over beloved Crunklenut, Texas, finds the sleepy little town reluctantly casting off the night's hopeful dreams and stretching into full wakefulness.

Down on the corner of 1st and Elm, at the Fallon's Full-Service Gas-n-Go, the smell of coffee drifts through the doorway of the back office and intertwines with the everpresent scent of old oil and stale gasoline. "Tweed" Fallon, feeling even older than usual this morning swings his bare feet over the edge of the sagging military-surplus cot and recoils, sucking in his breath and coming fully awake as they touch the frigid concrete floor. He massages his tightly-clenched eyes with stained fingers that long ago stopped coming fully clean and tries to recapture some of the previous night's dream. There was warm sunlight and youth, flowers and the soft smile of a young french woman whose face he couldn't quite make out. All the other details were quickly evaporating in the crystalline morning insinuating itself through the gap in the tattered blinds. Dust dances in the narrow beam, as it falls on stacks of old papers, oil-stained boxes of used engine parts and the collected miscellany of the past six decades. Sighing, he rises slowly from his lonley bed, straightens out his rumpled bed-clothes, and shuffles with another new and unfamiliar ache to the pot of coffee that awaits him on the automatic burner.

The Future is Like a Scallop...

from: Slow Wave

Where your dreams become their surreal cartoons.

Seven

“The child gives birth to the parents”
-Chinese Proverb

Seven years ago I underwent one of the most significant transformations in my life.
Transfixed by the impossibly cerulean and infinitely-trusting eyes of my first-born son, I suffered the most painful heartbreak of my life.

Let me explain...

Years of carefully cultivated disregard had hardened me, forming a callus of defense against emotional vulnerability. I felt I had been hurt too often - too deeply. As a result, I had deliberately developed the professional detachment of a coroner, and that was the way I preferred it to be. Marriage and a near-death experience had chipped away at the hard crust of my heart, but in many ways it was still held in thrall by my desire to remain safely dispassionate.

That is, until the day I found myself awkwardly cradling my newborn son in unfamiliar arms.

He was all need, all trust, all love and hope. As his tiny, perfect fingers, miniature in comparison to the one I offered, wrapped me in his first embrace, I was struck by the absolute nature of his need. He reached out for comfort and safety, never doubting that I was there to provide for him.

There was a welling up of peculiar fierceness within me. Helpless against the tide that surged through me, I began to weep as at first fissures formed, then burst through the hardness of my heart. Too long dormant, the pain of sudden liberation was both sweet and insufferable, and a deep wound was opened in me that will never heal. Like soil that must be tilled to be planted, I was broken open to be fertile ground for fatherhood, and my son was forever planted in my heart. I was filled with such an overwhelming love in that moment, that my ability to remain dispassionate was forever diminished. To this day, I still ache with the memory of those first pangs of unfettered love.

It was also in that moment, I had a moment of clarity about the parallels with our eternal relationship with our Heavenly Father and his desire to fellowship with His children. I understood then the depth of desire for intimacy and fellowship of a father with his son.

My oldest son is sweet-natured, affectionate and ever-thirsty for knowledge. He wants to know, and more importantly, genuinely considers the answer I give. As a result, I find myself frequently challenged to develop a better understanding of things, if only to know better how to explain them to him. It is a manifestation of my love for him that I strive to answer him fully, but within the limits of what he can comprehend.

He is my beloved first-born.
Breaker and builder of my heart.
The eyes through which I can see the world anew.

Those tiny fingers that first wrapped around my own have grown much in the last seven years, but they have never let go.

Weekend Plans - The Quick Version

I'm leaving tomorrow morning with Blubrik for a motorcycle ride up to Arkansas. I'm looking forward to seeing the fall colors along the Talimena Scenic Byway this year. Somehow, I have always managed to miss the changing of the colors up there.

This weekend the CMA is having their 30th Anniversary party at Iron Mountain, their national headquarters in Hatfield (about 10 miles from my parents' house). There will be a huge quantity of bikers from around the country packed into western Arkansas. Add to that the Wheels and Wings Festival at the Mena Airport, and I doubt that there's a spare room to be had for a 50-mile radius.

We'll likely ride up to Altus, the "wine region" of Arkansas to visit several of the wineries up there, including one that is slated to have a grand opening of their new facilities on Saturday.

All in all, it should be an enjoyable weekend, full of activities and sights. It will also probably serve as something of a "last hurrah" before the weather turns too cool for longer rides.

Upside ...

I'm having a really good day.

No, really. iTunes is pumping in some lively music while I crank out job after job. I'm happy to be here and to be doing what I'm doing. Nothing is bringing me down, and darn it, I probably look good today, too.

Life is good!

See? There is an upside to being mildly manic-depressive - the manic days!

Five

Today is my youngest son's birthday.

A near full-swing of the pendulum opposite his older brother, he is my little imp - petulant and moody, yet with a almost-knowing smile that belies his age and forgives the worst offense.

While my eldest will respect, mournfully at times, the boundaries we set, my little imp will push his shoulder at the gate, chafing and sore, until at last we are forced to shore up our defenses or else relent.

Frustration at being too young, too small, too slow or too restless often send thunderclouds across his face, darkening his eyes and contorting his sweet smile into a portent of the tempest to come. The squalls are brief, however, and the light of his disarming smile insinuates itself through the parting clouds.

He is my challenge.
My innocence.
My rage and triumph.
My joy.
My boundless love.

He is my son.

Waiting

Hesitant hands hold
pausing over the keyboard
is it time again?

It's only funny because it's true...

...except of course the Scion xB is being snapped up by old folks like my wife and I ... and my parents.

Ben Stiller's Gym

Somebody at Slow Wave is dreaming of Ben Stiller...

Broken Cities - Broken Families

As some of you know, my family hails from the New Orleans/Jefferson Parish area. My parents have retired to Arkansas along with my father's mother, and my dad's twin brother and wife live in Colorado. All the rest still live down there - or did.

My Great-Aunt Mabel (my dad's Aunt) came to visit my folks in Arkansas last week, and my mother flew with her back to New Orleans last Saturday, so she could visit with her own mother, whom she hasn't seen in three years. They were met at the airport by my dad's cousin Erin (Mabel's daughter), and her husband Kenny. I believe they had already packed for the evacuation order which came down sometime before the plane landed, and intended to leave the airport for a hunting camp 30 miles outside Natchez, Misssissippi.

That was the last we heard from any of them for three nervous days.

My father finally got a static-ridden call from Kenny's cell phone reporting that they were OK and heading to a location where my dad could come pick up my mom. Initial reports (don't know the source or accuracy thereof) claim that my Great-Aunt Mabel's home was spared, but it will be at least a month before the local government will let anybody back to stay in their homes in Jefferson Parish.

We've heard nothing from or about the rest of our family down there as yet.

If you pray, now is a good time to do so on behalf of all those displaced by the storm, and those still unaccounted for or stranded in the broken cities.

What can Brown do for You?

Two nights ago, as we were watching TV, a commercial for some basketball-related something-or-other came on. Current stars of college hoops swooped and ducked, spun and launched themselves over their opponents to slam-dunk the ball. The vast majority of stellar talent was represented by tall, muscular black men.

My 4-year-old son really latched on to the imagery and launched himself into a frenzied pantomime of playing ball, complete with imaginary 3-pointers from behind the sofa.

"Daddy lookit me, I playing bassetball!"

So, I watched, amused at the display, until he had finished the game — at which point he solemnly approached me with a light in his eye.

"When I grown up and get brown, I gonna play bassetball on TV!"

Stuff on My Cat (dot) Com

I don't know why, exactly — but I find THIS really amusing.

It's not you ... it's me

I'm not anti-social, really...

The fact is that I suffer a permanent hearing loss most likely as a result of all the loud things I've done in my youth. I was diagnosed with tinnitus while still in college by an audiologist who could actually hear the bruit in my ear canals.

Put me in a crowded restaurant and the people across the table from me are no clearer and no louder than the folks several tables away.

If I'm not looking at you, chances are that I'm not hearing you, either. I come across as distracted, or disinterested ... but the fact is that I just didn't hear you and would rather not let on. It's distracting, embarrassing and frustrating on a level that makes me want to scream out loud sometimes.

The same thing happens when I'm trying to watch a movie. Frequently, I wind up leaving the room in frustration because I can't make out the dialogue when it's competing with the conversations of the extended family and the playful sounds of my children, nephew and nieces.

So ... I'm typing this in here instead of fighting a losing battle in there.

I'm not anti-social ... really.

ROT-ten

I'm down in Austin, Texas at the moment to attend the R.O.T. Biker Rally. For the uninitiated, R.O.T. stands for Republic Of Texas - which refers to Texas' heritage, not the fringe political group of some years back that claimed that Texas was never officially made a part of the United States and therefore had no legitimate government in place. Most of that group is currently enjoying the hospitality of the illegitimate gubmint's prison system.

No ... the ROT rally is about bikers and all the stuff that bikers like - namely loud motorcycles, alcohol, nekked wimmens, and um ... alcohol-soaked nekkid wimmens on loud motorcycles.

Personally, I consider myself to be here in an advisory and observational role, since I'm the only married guy in my group, and I know all pictures and stories from my friends will get back to my wife... eventually. Somebody has to be the designated milquetoast, after all.

Day 1 was yesterday, and there were pretty healthy crowds to be found, but the tone and atmosphere of the place was a bit muted, overall. Not many of today's weekend warrior motorcycle crowd are willing to take too many days off from work to go stand around in the heat at biker rallies. Consequently, the wildness-factor was on the low end of the scale. I met and had my picture taken with Jerry Covington and Johnny Chop, who looked like they were really suffering in the heat yesterday. I didn't have the heart to tell them that this is the coolest it's been at the rally in the past 4 years.

Once again, our friends Dan and Becky with Qwik Shade had a booth at the rally and we were welcomed to park our bikes to serve as product models and have a comfortable place to hang out when not wandering the site. Since they have a large, shaded booth this year, we made sure to take advantage of their hospitality as often as possible.

We left a bit early last night, to rest up for the late nights we anticipate tonight and Saturday at the rally, and caught dinner at a local Taco Cabana, before coming home and hitting the showers.


Day 2
The weather had turned very overcast and was downright threatening in the morning. The occasionally stray drop found its way to my windshield on the way out from Craig's house. C.J. had ranged out to go meet some friends who live north of Austin and spent the night with them. He'd planned to meet us later at the Qwik Shade booth.

Beer at the rally is 4.75 per can, and water is 2.00 per smallish bottle. Ouch! We got wise yesterday and stopped by the local super-Wal•Mart to buy our own drinks to import into the rally. If you're not too particular, there are some brands of beer that can still be had for less than 4.00 per six-pack- and those are the big cans. Consequently, we weren't feeling too picky...

The motorcycle traffic on the way to the Travis County Exposition Center had greatly increased. There were dozens of bikes in every side road and convenience store parking lot along the way. As we got closer to the rally site, the concentration of bikes intensified, until cars made only an occasional interruption in the flow of trafffic. We parked our bikes at the Qwik Shade booth and we set about finding some ice and a place to put all our stuff. The majority of the day, we sat at the booth and helped answer questions for passers-by. Not far from us was a booth hawking "girls gone wild" type videos, complete with some of the featured girls. For $20 you'd get both DVDs and the girls would strip down and pose with you for a souvenier. As you might expect, that booth had a fair amount of traffic throughout the day. The kid running that show, looks like he's just out of high school (assuming he finished) and took great pleasure in driving around the fairgrounds in his shiny red Ferrari... sigh.

People like to dress up (or down) for biker rallies, and the crushing sea of humanity presented a wide spectrum to sit and view from the shaded comfort of the booth. It's like watching an endless parade of escapees from the circus side-show. The real freak-show parade waits until dark to get started though. Around 4:00 in the afternoon several vendors start selling cheap mardi-gras-type beads for the on-the-ground biker parade. Most of the women who participate in the parade will flash the bystanders for a string of plastic beads, and this year it seemed like there were more willing participants than usual. The noise of the straight pipes competes with the acrid smell of burning tires, as bikers show off for the massive crowds of gawkers lining up on either side of the parade route, hoping to catch a glimpse of skin in trade for beads. There was at least one injury when a topless woman was thrown off the back of a chopper, dislocating her wrist. Craig helped out by calling out the EMS crew to haul her off to the hospital.

We dragged ourselves back to collect our bikes and head home for the night, exhausted from the long day.


More to come...

Like a hole in my head ...

My wife had a simple request for Mother's Day.

"I want my ears pierced."

I was a little surprised, since this wasn't going to be the first time she had undergone the process. When we were dating, some umpteen years ago, I had suggested that it might be easier to buy her jewelry if only I had a few more places to hang shiny, sparkly things. By this point, she had many more rings than fingers, and as many necklaces as my meager earnings could buy.

You could even make the argument that I pressured her to get her ears pierced back then. In the end, it was her decision though, and I encouraged her choice by lavishing her with many pairs of inexpensive earrings ("Guaranteed Hypo-allergenic!") to fill the new voids in her earlobes.

Perhaps it was the budget studs and hoops that were the problem, however. It wasn't long before both of her ears were painfully swollen and weeping from the violation. Eventually, all the sparkly-but-cheap trinkets were orphaned to the jewelry box, and her ears gradually forgave her by healing back shut, leaving little divots to serve as a reminder.

Fast-forward 15 years or so to present-day where the scene opens at Claire's Boutique. Both boys are in full-fidget mode and can't resist touching every shiny object in sight. There are seats next to the piercing-booth and they are banished to the chairs, where they take up an impromptu pillow-fight with the cushions. Good enough, we decide, and consign ourselves to being added to the list of parents who don't control their children in public places. My wife and I look over the selection of piercing studs. There are the requisite birthstones, assigned to each month ages ago in what must be in the marketing-ploy hall of fame somewhere - sitting on the shelf next to all the greeting-card holidays. Those faux semi-precious stones - a phrase that sounds as disingenuous as "certified genuine vinyl leather-ette," are set in "Guaranteed Hypo-allergenic" mystery metal studs. We'll pass, thanks. Being as the new studs have to be left in place for six weeks to ensure proper healing of the new hole, she picked out a set of flat, daisy-shaped crystal studs for herself.

"Any are YOU looking for yourself too, sir?" asked the pretty clerk with a wry grin.

"Erm, well ... maybe," I offered. The fact is, my wife had mentioned at the start of the whole discussion that she thought I'd look good with an earring. Personally, I think it was payback for my own pressure on her 17 years ago. Then again, they say that good girls tend to like bad boys, and my wife has usually encouraged a certain level of bad-boy image in my appearance.

"It'd make you look ... 'swarthy,'" she purred, eyes gleaming with not-so-hidden meaning.

"I'll take THAT one," I squeaked, and hurredly jumped into the chair to get perforated.

Synchronicity

Last Sunday, my wife relayed an out-of-the-blue request from my eldest son.
"Can we go to a museum?"

Big P has a level of curiosity that is only surpassed by his amazing capacity to understand. Consequently, we have discussions about concepts and ideas that are typically reserved for more adult conversations. His recent viewing of a documentary on sacred relics of the Catholic Church had him wanting to view some antiquities. Since there were no churches in the area claiming to contain a piece of the True Cross or Holy Grail, we'd have to settle for good old fashioned stuff from Texas.

Oh, and something with dinosaurs would be cool, too. Little P, though not nearly so curious, would certainly like that, and Ft. Worth has them in spades.

The weather was nice, so we packed the whole family into the aging family wagon and set sail for the Ft. Worth Museum of Natural Science and History. We watched the wonderfully-dizzying IMAX show, "Aliens of the Deep," by James Cameron, then took in as many exhibits as we could before the 2:30 showing of "Ticket to Mars" in the planetarium. "Ticket" was neither wonderful nor dizzying, unfortunately - and despite being billed as a 3-D production with red/blue glasses for all in attendance, was completely flat - both in dimension and interest-level.

Having not eaten since breakfast, we were all looking to quit the museum in favor of something to satisfy needs other than educational. My friend, Blubrik, has chided me in the past for my eatery of choice while in Ft. Worth. He'd roll his eyes in pain whenever I'd mention that we always ate at Dos Gringos, just across from the museum-corridor. It's good old-fashioned Tex-Mex - heavy on the cheese, heavy on the cumin, heavy on the chili powder ... just heavy - but convenient, and rarely crowded.

"You mean you were in Ft. Worth, and you DIDN'T eat at ...." Dang, I couldn't remember the name of the restaurant. When Blubrik or The Brain make a restaurant recommendation, the background music always falls silent, and a quick glance around will reveal everyone in earshot straining towards the advice, not unlike the old brokers-agency commercial. Sitting in the basement of the museum while the boys entertained themselves with some hands-on exhibits that required wearing a rubberized smock (to prevent wearing the exhibit too, I presume), I decided to dial-up Blubrik in the hopes of refreshing my memory.

"Helloooooo, Cheese" I was greeted. Caller ID takes all the surprise out of calls these days.

"Heya, Blu. You know how you always make fun of me for missing out on that mexican restaurant in Ft. Worth whenever I'm there? The one you so highly recommend? What's its name?"

(Pause)
"Are you," he paused again, "IN Ft. Worth?" There was an odd tone to his voice.
"Um, yes. We're sitting in the basement of the Ft. Worth Museum of...., " etc. etc. "and getting hungry, so I thought we'd try it out."

(Yet another pause)
"WE'RE in Ft. Worth. Along with Sensei and Mrs. Sensei ... and we're planning on going to that very restaurant. Soon." There was a certain wonderment in his voice, and I could tell by the way he spoke that he was simultaneously relaying the peculiarity of our entire group independently arriving at the same destination to The Brain and Mr. and Mrs. Sensei. [Editor's note: Blubrik's godchild and her mother were also in attendance and were his principal reason for being in Ft. Worth in the first place. However, I don't have nicknames for them and am only omitting them for expediency and the lack of proper stage-names.] "We would LOVE for you to join us."

... and so we did. The restaurant is Carro's, where the margaritas are strong and the tostadas are oddly, but wonderfully chewy and puffed like a sopapilla. It was definitely better fare than we would have had at Dos Gringos, to be sure.

Better than the food, though was the unexpected pleasant surprise of good company, so far from home.

Heavy Hearted

... and I can't even share why, yet.


Sigh.

UPDATE: Since everybody's "SOOOO Happy" according to someone who simultaneously speaks on behalf of the affected party while claiming NOT to speak on behalf of said party (go figure - but par for the course with this particularly unhinged individual), I suppose I'm no longer in a position to feel badly about the lost potential of my former office-mate. I tried to hint. I tried to guide. I even gave plain-English warnings, "don't even look like you're doing this. Better watch out for that." In the end, choices were made, the die was cast and I no longer could serve as a buffer between him and those who make the decisions. Truly, I was a better friend to him than he knows or will likely believe - despite it all. In the final analysis, everyone lives or dies on their own merits. I wish things could have been different, but it's time to close the door on this chapter, and I am doing so.

Artists' Conceit

I am a professional graphic designer - a concept man, if you will. I think in colors and textures, mood and feel, words and composition. I've been doing this longer than most of my clients have been in business, and this experience has developed in me a strong sense of what works and what doesn't. Most of the clients actually appreciate the fact that I occasionally say "no" to ideas that just don't fit or are patently wrong for them. Frequently, I will take the initiative and "tweak" provided artwork for clients, knowing that it will ultimately give them what they want - even if it's not what they specifically requested. My employer has even coined a term and sells it as a service to our clients. She tells them that I'll "Keith-erize" their artwork for them. They pay me to make them look good, and that's what she knows I'll do - sometimes dragging them kicking and screaming all the way, until at last they finally see the end-product and the realization of what they really wanted all along.

I call it artists' conceit ... and I wince every time I do so. It's the sense of believing that I know better than the client what they really want. Personal ego really has no place in serving others, and tends to lock us designers into a single design style, regardless of the application. As a Christian, I recognize my talents as God-given that I might serve His purposes. This helps to keep me grounded, particularly when people praise my work. Creativity is just one of the aspects of being created in the image of God, and to create is to enjoy a form of communion - a new bond through a common interest, like a child sharing a hobby with his father. And just like that child, the first attempts always look rough and unsteady until the Father leans over to gently guide the child's hands and make the work smooth.

As part of my morning prayers, I have a daily entreaty: "Not me, Lord - but You through me." I have been blessed over the years with the ability to serve my clients with a consistantly high level of design work to which they have become accustomed. Fortunately, that service has never been uncomfortable ... until now.

Out of the blue, two clients in two days have come to me asking for me to create and maintain websites for them, based on the printwork I've designed. True, I have created websites, and in the past have even maintained an entire online catalog for a client - but frankly, my level of expertise in web-design leaves me thinking that "expertise" was a poor choice of words. It is rudimentary, at best, and I honestly don't believe that I can deliver websites anywhere on par with the level of design of my printwork. At the same time, the timing of the requests makes me wonder if I'm being led down this path, as part of serving a higher purpose - or learning the more salient lesson: my discomfort is a product of my own ego - my fear that I won't be able to earn the praise to which I've become accustomed ...

"Not me, Lord - but You through me."

What Dreams May Come ...

While you're impatiently waiting for the next story, spend a little time getting to know the nocturnal emissions of complete strangers as illustrated by Slowwave.com.

2004 Feb 21
"toe tips" by Mike Gigante

Working on a new one.

I have a new horror story idea that I've just started working on today.
My desire is to keep it as short as possible, while still conveying the storyline in its entirety, as I find that I am more of a sprinter when it comes to writing. Frankly, I start to lose momentum when a story takes longer than three pages to develop. I just get in a hurry to get to the "punchline," as it were, and the quality of the writing suffers from my desire to rush through it to the ending.

Consequently, my "Serial Novel" is on hiatus, while I scratch this new itch.

Back

I got back last evening from a four-day motorcycle trip to Arkansas. There are some amazing roads to be had there, and hopefully I'll get a chance to post a complete report as time allows. But for now, I have some catching-up at work to do.

Lane-Splitting Coming To Texas?

You're stuck in traffic again after a long, highly stressful day at work. The boss has been riding you hard to make an impossible deadline, while at the same time adding new requirements and restrictions to the proposal. You just want to get home and relax, but like everyone else on the highway every day, you're just inching along, one car-length at a time, radiator and temper about to pop from the heat and frustration, when you hear a familiar, but out-of-place rumble. Optimistically, you believe it's a motorcycle cop, picking his way through the log-jam to find and remove the source of the roadway's constipation. Instead, as the source of the burbling motor comes into the range of your side-view mirror, you see a grinning bearded man wrapped in black leather, seemingly unencumbered by your plight, riding between the overheating cars and drivers.

Do you:

1. Mentally congratulate him on the choice of transportation and the reduced emissions and strain it places on our congested roadways and consumption of fuel-oil? After all, motorcycles take up less space, get better gas-milage, and statistically carry the same number of passengers as most every other vehicle during rush-hour commutes.
2. Find yourself day-dreaming of wind-in-the-hair adventures while exploring the scenic back-roads of this great state of ours?
3. Cut that "sombeach" off by moving over close the gap between you and the car next to you? After all, why should he be able to move freely by, when you're stuck in traffic?

I'm not sure how I feel about this, since I rarely have occasion to get stuck in traffic anymore, due to the hours that I work. On one hand, I celebrate any legislation that further recognizes motorcycling as a valuable tool in reducing congestion on our roadways. However, I think there will be a lot of irritated people, ignorant of the new law, trying to prevent a bike from legally (if this gets passed) riding up between cars during a traffic-jam. Worse, I can see the possibility of angry commuters taking actions that can endanger motorcyclists taking advantage of the new law.

Heretofore, it has been illegal in every state of the union except California to split lanes of traffic. If this makes it into law, there would have to be a massive public-education campaign.

I, for one, won't be waiting in line to be the first to excercise any newly-minted right to squeeze by any overheated commuters stuck in traffic and jealously guarding their lane-position...

The proposed law:

79R517 JRJ-DBy:
Griggs
H.B. No. 1522
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED AN ACT

relating to the operation and movement of motorcycles during periods of traffic congestion.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:

SECTION 1. Section 545.060, Transportation Code, is amended by amending
Subsection (a) and adding Subsection (e) to read as follows: (a) An
operator on a roadway divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for traffic:
(1) shall drive as nearly as practical entirely within a single lane,
except as provided by Subsection (e); and
(2) may not move from the lane unless that movement can be made safely. (e) The operator of a motorcycle may operate the motorcycle for a safe distance between lanes of traffic moving in the same direction during periods of traffic
congestion if the operator:

1. is at least 21 years old;
2. has successfully completed a motorcycle operator training and safety course under Chapter 662;
3. is covered by a health insurance plan providing the operator with at least $10,000 in medical benefits for injuries incurred as a result of an accident while operating a motorcycle; and
4. operates the motorcycle:
   (A) at a speed not more than five miles per hour over the speed of the
   other traffic; (B) in traffic that is moving at a speed of 20 miles per
   hour or less; and (C) in a location other than a school crossing zone or
   other than a location where the posted speed limit is 20 miles per hour or less.

SECTION 2. This Act takes effect September 1, 2005.

**UPDATE** Unfortunately, with school finance reform and a host of other things on Texas lawmakers' plates, this bill never made it out of committee.

A Moment of Zen

Overhead last night in the HeadCheese household:

"Put down that monkey and come ON!"

Serial Novel

Isn’t it funny how things trigger a memory sometimes? Other times, it’s just not funny at all.
. . . . . . . .

I rumbled along the highway, my motorcycle belting out its deep, warning staccato that growls at the cagers like a dog letting you know that you’re too close to his food bowl. Summer heat had begun to press down on us with its thick, oppressive weight, and even in the predawn twilight, you’d get sticky and damp, just waiting for the engine to warm up and even out before hitting the road. It was one of those long, dry spells we get towards the end of July, when it hadn’t been hot long enough to get used to the heat and it was way too early to start dreaming of cooler weather. Everyone’s lawns were browning like rolls in the oven, and slab-foundations cracked as the Texas clay underneath shrunk and retreated in search of moisture. “All the water’s in the air, and none of it in the ground,” the weathermen in their uniform-like tweed suits and red bowties would say, grinning their false smiles and wishing they were anchorman material.

“No kidding,” I thought, dripping in spite of the rush of wind pushing past me at highway speed. When the roads haven’t seen rain in such a long time as this, the grit and dust that settles on the on shoulders come creeping back into the lanes, sucked onto the roadways by the speeding cars and spun into whirling blurs by the massive eighteen-wheelers, hauling their stinking loads of staring cattle to the slaughterhouse. For me, it meant a constant barrage of stinging sand, like little needles piercing at any exposed flesh they can find. Today, it was worse than usual, as though the grit were some maniacal tattoo artist looking to give me a full-coverage facial of ink.

In spite of the constant hail of debris, or perhaps because the abrasion had heightened my sensitivity, I could detect an occasional splatter of moisture - faint and near-subliminal in its impact on my exposed skin. I looked up. No clouds in the sky. No birds overhead. Certainly nothing to justify the mysterious moisture. Resuming my focus ahead, I unfortunately found the source. Two cars ahead, rocking and jostling its labored way along, was one of those large garbage-scow trucks with the mechanical compactor on the back. It was rusty, very full - and worst of all – dripping something.

My mind reeled to consider all the possible fluids that could be oozing from the back of a truck overflowing with festering refuse, and in the way a scent or a song can evoke a memory, I found myself unwillingly transported back to the days of my youth down in New Orleans.

I was raised among the genteel society of the Old South on the trailing edge of a dying age when women were ladies and children were seen and not heard. We were taught to sit quietly with our hands in our laps, to pretend to be interested in the stories of Aunt Edna’s endless litany of surgeries – or whatever it was the adults discussed, and to only reluctantly accept whatever sweets might be offered to us and to never ask for seconds. It was still an era in which women “powdered their noses,” and men would quietly excuse themselves from company to take care of unmentionable body functions. Politics were never discussed, as it all was just a “dirty business,” and I suspect more than one of my older relations was still bitter about the North winning the civil war, even though that was over a hundred years ago.

In was in the hushed and rarified air of this atmosphere in which I first learned of my Uncle George. I never knew exactly how we were supposed to be related. Questions about him were quickly shifted away to other topics or ignored altogether. Uncle George was never seen in anything other than his black silk suit - one mother-of-pearl button fastened against his girth that looked nothing so much as if there were a basketball hidden in his shirt. “It’s a goiter,” he would laugh, referring to the hard, peculiar roundness of his mid-section, in sharp contrast to his otherwise-unremarkable arms and legs. But even as a child I knew it had more to do with his love of his ever-present bottle of Jax beer than a lack of iodine in his diet. No one had to tell me that Uncle George was somehow an embarrassment to the rest of the family. The way most of my relations would all stiffen and hiss their disapproval through tight mouths when he arrived at family functions was more than enough for even a young child to know that there was something clearly unwelcome in this man. My parents strictly forbade me to speak to him at these functions, lest it be mistaken as in invite to come and socialize, and by extension bring some sort of unspoken shame on my parents. Whatever it was that tainted Uncle George in the minds of my relatives, they must have thought it was something could be rubbed off on them, like a greasy stain in your good, Sunday shirt.

As most of the family gatherings were mind-numbingly dull affairs and as a child I couldn’t contribute to any of the conversations, I was often left to quietly entertain myself, and made a point of studying my mysterious relative. I noticed, for instance, that in spite of all the palpable tension that seemed to follow him into a room, carried swirling along with his heavy scent of Aqua Velva and cigars, he either remained oblivious of the obvious discomfort of the others or was very good at pretending not to notice. He presented himself as a very jovial man, quick to laugh at the smallest joke – usually his own, and at the expense of the nearest family member, who would smile tightly and obediently while at the same time looking around to see if anyone was watching the interchange. Another thing I noticed: although people would go out of their way to avoid any contact with Uncle George, they would be excruciatingly polite and almost unctuous in their replies to him, should they unhappily find themselves the target of his attention. It was as though he were some foreign royalty come to visit a little backwater town, where the residents would make comically exaggerated attempts at acting courtly and worldly-wise, while at the same time finding it all terribly inconvenient. I watched as anyone, once cornered by my mysterious uncle, would agree to anything he asked, if only to keep him happy in the hopes that his attention would soon turn elsewhere. Once released, however, the unwilling relation would sigh resignedly, knowing that he or she was now marked for further conversation in the future, and that Uncle George would undoubtedly come to call again.

It was at the funeral of my paternal grandfather when my Uncle George’s attentions finally came to rest on me while I was acting as a greeter to the hundreds of relatives and friends who came to the evening visitation. I stood at the doorway of the viewing room, shifting uncomfortably in an ill-fitting suit that was quickly cobbled together for the occasion. I was wearing one of my father’s pale blue suit-jackets that was too broad in the shoulders and too short in the sleeves for my long, ropey arms. My pants were commandeered from my older brother’s collection of dress slacks and had been hurriedly hemmed too high, allowing my sagging socks to show above my scuffed and well-worn dress shoes. Everything was ill-fitting, but that was to be expected. I was in that awkward stage of a growth-spurt when I looked like an amateurish marionette, arms and legs all akimbo and disproportionate to my enormous hands and feet, which my mother would frequently tell me by way of consolation that I would eventually grow to fit. It was with those large paws that I would take each offered hand, hold it gently for a moment and as sincerely as I could still muster, thank each of the gathered as they shuffled past my assigned post on their way to the wake. I had long passed the point of paying much attention to the many hands that I mechanically shook, or the bodies attached to them, until one didn’t let go. It was a meaty and soft – obviously a hand that didn’t see too much manual labor. There were large gold-nugget rings of differing designs on each of the sausage-like fingers that were firmly clamped around my hand, as though there was some extra message they were trying to impart. That message, as it turned out, was in the form of a tightly-folded wad of money being pressed deeply into my cramped palm. At the other end of the crushing grip was my Uncle George, grinning toothily at me with sharply-focused eyes and his wide, loose mouth.

“You’d be little Mickey, now wouldn’t you,” he stated more than asked, eyes darting back and forth between my hand and my right jacket pocket until the message was clear. He released my hand slowly, never taking his eyes from mine as I pocketed the cash without looking to see how much it was. I stood there awkwardly, not really knowing what to say to the man who still fixed me with an intent gaze. To my parents, it was bad enough for my Uncle George to have to audacity to show up for the funeral, when he was clearly uninvited, but they would be unhinged if they knew I was speaking with him and apparently accepting some sort of a cash donation. “That’s just for you, Mickey,” he said, winking conspiratorially, “your folks don’t need to know.” He stood there surveying me in my mismatched and pitiful outfit, oblivious as always to the growing line of disapproving mourners in the queue behind him. “You might want to spend it on some clothes,” he added, chuckling at his own little joke.

To Be Continued ...

Swamped!

Isn't it just typical?

Just as soon as I make a point of welcoming all the new people who have discovered my little corner of the blogosphere, I burn up my home computer and get completely slammed at work.

Sorry.

It's not as though nothing of interest has happened to me lately - quite the contrary. There's the trip to Vegas, courtesy of Blubrik and The Brain ... and that most-unpleasant flight home. I have even started an allegorical children's story before we left that has gone wanting for attention.

Alas, it is the nature of the beast that is the printing industry - feast or famine. Considering that our shop's ribs have started to show lately, I'm grateful for the feast - but like the well-meaning GI's that glutted the starving concentration-camp prisoners upon their release, I fear we may choke before take on enough sustenance to restore us.

So, again ... Welcome. Now wait.

Welcome New Readers!

If you're new to my little corner of the blogosphere, welcome!

If you're a regular reader or have visited before, apparently I've done a poor job of driving you off...

Regardless of the reason you find yourself here, I thought I'd take a moment and remind you of some of the basic "rules" of my web-log.

This site exists solely as an excersise in exorcising some of the stagnating creative energy that starts to pool when I get caught up in the daily grind and don't have time to express it. Originally, I planned to write on a daily basis, but that in itself became part of the daily grind.

Stories that are in italics are fictional works sprung from my fevered brain. They may be sweet or sick as the mood that inspired them dictates, but please don't confuse them with actual events. Speaking of ...

Posts that are in regular type are just my thoughts laid out for the sake of expressing my views on a topic or reminiscing about past events. I reserve the right to take some artistic license, particularly when trying to dredge up memories of my increasingly distant childhood.

While there may be elements of personal disclosure on this blog, it is not a private diary - It is intended to be read, and I don't post anything here that I don't want you to know. That said, I do go out of my way to provide a level of anonymity to persons other than myself that I write about, so I would prefer that your comments extend the same courtesy. Ah yes, comments...

If you like what you read, leave a comment. If you are inspired, disturbed or moved by something you read, leave a comment. If you are left in a permanent vegetative state by something your read here, have the executor of your estate leave a comment. The point is, I want your feedback. I also reserve the right to delete moonbat comments or offensive material at my sole discretion and based on seemingly arbitrary rules of conduct. It is MY blog, after all, and I get to decide the content.

Lastly, don't forget to click on the archives to see all the articles available here. Only the last few posts show up on the main page, and if that's all you read, you're missing the majority of the content here.

15 Years Ago Today ...

"What are you doing here," asked Dianne Worthen, my Karate Sensei, with a spreading smile of surprise. She was incredulous that I would show up for class just a few hours before my wedding was to take place. Indeed, the truth was that I had to be there. I was so full of excited energy that I needed an outlet to safely tap off a bit, lest I be reduced to a gibbering wreck.

It was a crisp day, slightly overcast with the silvery-gray glow that comes early with Texas winters. In its plastic cleaner's bag, my tuxedo hung over the back of one of the long-legged chairs that cozied up to the breakfast bar in my apartment. The images of wide-collared, pastel tuxedos with contrasting piping hanging in the halls of friends and family cemented my decision to go with a classic and timeless style that wouldn't induce groans when viewed years later in a dusty photo album.

Purged of my excess energy, I drove to my my parents' home to wash up and get dressed. My grandmother had arrived the night before from New Orleans to attend the wedding, and greeted me at the door with a barrage of kisses in a swirling cloud of rose perfume. After I showered and doused myself with my own cologne, she was a good sport and didn't tease me too much as she braided my eight inch rat-tail, an affectation popular in the 1980's and the only outward sign of subversiveness in my otherwise button-down image.

With an hour to go before the ceremony, I drove my 1978 Datsun 280Z to Plano Bible Chapel and strategically parked it in a spot I thought would make for a fast getaway later. It was my dream car - fast, nimble and sexy. It's only faults were to be found in its cheap Earl Scheib mocha brown paint job and its propensity for electrical problems. I had given it a very thorough cleaning, inside and out, in preparation for the day. After all, it was to be the carriage in which I'd take home my bride.

Inside, I found that some guests had already arrived and took a moment to visit with them before hiding myself away in the Pastor's office. Jim Lewis was a passionate preacher with the sort of face that rarely hid his mood. Intimidating to look at when he was set upon by righteous anger, today his eyes twinkled with an excited joy. "Are you nervous yet," he asked me with a mischevious grin. I wasn't.

For almost eight years I had dated my bride-to-be. We had known each other since 6th grade. She was the best friend of my then-girlfriend, Carrie. When Carrie and I amicably parted company, she suggested that perhaps her best friend would be a better match. She had no idea how right she was at the time. We became friends and would attend events together when my parents would let me invite a friend along, but it wasn't until a trip to the Japanese Gardens in Fort Worth that I realized how much I'd come to love the gentle spirit and radiant beauty that she posessed. There, standing on the arched bridge that stretched across the koi pond, sun highlighting hair that danced lightly in the breeze, she turned to face the camera I held in suddenly shaky hands. The viewfinder framed an angel, and at the tender age of 13, I was forever lost.

All through high school and college we dated. We developed that comfortable familiarity that long-married couples share, and indeed, even among our families and friends there was no doubt that someday, when the time was right, we would wed.

And so it was, 15 years ago today that I stood calmly in my Pastor's office. I wasn't nervous, because there were no doubts, no lingering concerns, no uncertainties about what I was about to do. I wanted her with an aching in my heart that threatened to crush me under the weight of my longing. My older brother served as best man, and together with the pastor, we walked solemnly out to the designated spot we had rehearsed just the night before and turned to face the entryway to the sanctuary in anticipation.

The music swelled and was joined by the staccato rushing of my pounding pulse as the gathered friends and family rose. It was then that they beheld what I had seen all along, as my angel glided into the room and took final posession of my heart.

Veteran's Day

His tired, pale blue eyes, focused on a fading memory, slowly lowered back down to me. Almost immediately, the remembered pain faded from his face to be replaced with the mischevious grin he reserved for his grandchildren. It was early yet and dawn was still more than an hour away when I was awakened by the smell of eggs, bacon, grits and the ever-present "cig-er-REET" smoldering between his loosely-curled fingers. Unlike with my other grandfather, who preferred to be alone with his thoughts during the early morning hours, my maternal grandfather always welcomed company and conversation.

The ghosts of the aging WWII veteran's past would come to haunt the silences and fill his head with the sounds of shouted commands, gunfire and the cries of the wounded and dying. Their voices still rang sharply in his ears, and refused to fade despite the intervening years. Some men would allow themselves to become embittered by such experiences, but not my grandfather. Albert "Pete" Pitre choose to exorcise his past with a restless urge for the present. Always active, always involved, always living and loving each moment that remained with a stubborn refusal to slow down, he strove to fill his waking moments with friends, family and constant activity.

There were stories of the war, of course. But the real tales were never told. They lingered in the dimming of his eyes and struggled against the razor-wire he had left on the beachheads of his memory. We only heard of the things that didn't reopen old wounds long scarred over. There was no hint of regret in his voice. He did what he had to do when the need arose and served his country with honor.

The padding of my feet into the kitchen where he sat, long ash drooping under its own weight at the end of his Lucky Strike, served as a welcome Reveillé to awaken him from dreams of D-Day. He looked down at me for a moment before recognition came and reminded him that his efforts had not been in vain. And then there came the smile.

VOTE!

What are you doing reading this silly blog? If you are eligible to do so and haven't yet - go out and vote! The last thing we need is another election tied up in the courts. Go out and widen the margin in favor of your candidate of choice.

I'll still be here when you get back...

Coffee Maker

"Good morning," I droned, not looking up from my oversized mug of coffee. Steam materialized on the surface and broke away, shrouding my drooping head in a gauzy veil of columbian supremo haze. It rolled over my face like a fond memory, caressing my skin and tickling my ears even as it teased me. Even in my drowsy state I knew it was much to hot to drink yet.

She had put it there for me, as she always did. Although she didn't drink it herself, some unspoken sense of duty drove her each morning to make a pot of coffee she'd never taste. Through trial and error, we'd evolved from hot water faintly tainted with coffee, to a black mess slightly thinner than porridge and brimming with dark, course grounds - eventually finding the perfect balance and the perfect cup. All this time it was her hands and my tastebuds, working in tandem - a gastronomical symbiosis that served her need to provide and my need for a strong morning stimulant.

"Good morning," I said again, my tone registering a slight irritation from the lack of a reply. There was a hollowness to the sound of my voice as it bounced off the oak veneer of the kitchen cabinets and worn linoleum flooring.

We had remodeled the kitchen the same year we found out she was pregnant with our first son. "Easy installments" on our Sears charge card had stretched out for over a decade as the woodwork took on a patina of splashed grease from Friday night fried chicken and absorbed the smells of all her home-cooked meals she made over the years. The boys are grown now, with families and debts of their own but the cabinets remain in mute remembrance of the good times.

There were bad times, too. Besides the usual bumps and bruises - and occasional broken bones - rambunctious boys will suffer in their conquest of the world, our little family took a harder blow eight years ago when she came home from her doctor looking drained and visibly shaken. "It's just a little lump, that's all," she told the boys. But they were older by then and knew more about cancer from high-school science classes than perhaps we did at the time. We learned more than we wanted though, in those weeks and months that followed. She continued to put on a brave face as first the cancer and then the chemotherapy took turns eating her from the inside out. Her brave, bright eyes dimmed and what hair she had left faded to match the steam rising from my coffee cup.

"Hon, everything OK?" I asked a little more concerned now, but still refusing to open my eyes to the bright morning rays that pried at the corners of my eyelids with sharp fingers of brilliance.

The morning sun always floods in brightly through the window over the kitchen sink where the boys and I would join her to wash dishes and sing some of our favorite family songs. Sure, it was corny, and the boys would be mortified if their friends from school caught wind of it, but it was one of those family traditions that didn't get put away along with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Towards the end, it was one of the few things that could still make her smile through her fog of pain. When we saw her lips curl up despite the masks and hoses, we would sing louder still to drown out the beeps and hums from all the machines that clawed and bit into her like a hungry animal refusing to drop its meal. We stayed all night, gently holding hands deeply scarred and bruised from the endless succession of needles, and sang every song we could choke out past our tears. We were there, still singing quietly when she slipped away with an almost contented sigh, free from the needles and tubes, pain and bodily betrayal that had consumed her. My oldest son quietly left the room to make the necessary phone calls, while my youngest silently sat with his arm around me for the hour it took for me to finally let go of her hand.

There was no point in staying to mourn over that empty shell that served as her physical prison in those last few months, so I allowed myself to be brought home and with a tenderness I'd never previously known by them, put to bed by my two sons. There were no words exchanged. None were needed. In the silence we found solace and a bond beyond that of a father and his two sons.

It was the same silence that enveloped me even now as I finally relented and opened my eyes to the morning light to peer into my empty cup.

Something ... Anything

In an attempt to overcome the static friction that seems to be holding me in thrall and the general sense of ambivalence towards blogging in general, I thought I'd just start a blog-post and let my mind roam for a bit.

I've been suffering a general sense of creative malaise lately. That's not to say I haven't had a wide variety of topics on which to expound, and in a few cases - unleash a verbal army of rabid weasels. Rather, I felt a need to let a few things slide back into obscurity so I could get back to the orginal purpose of my blog: a vent for creative writing and an excercise in coalescing random thoughts into a cohesive pattern. Apparently, it gives me an opportunity to shake the cobwebs off my internal thesaurus as well.

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

We recently returned from a long weekend visiting my parents at their new home in rural Arkansas. This is usually a beautiful time of the year to visit the rolling hills at the foot of Ouachita mountains with all the fall colors to be found in abundance. I say usually, because on this particular occasion, monsoon season had decided to make a vacation trip to Arkansas as well. Still, it was a pleasant and peaceful visit, watching the rain fall while sitting on the generous front porch of my parents' home. The ride home, however, was about as stressful a trip as ever I have made in a car. We (read: I) decided to take the scenic route home - riding along the top of the Ouachita Mountain Range on the Talimena Scenic Drive into Oklahoma and then back down into Texas. Thick fog and heavy rains made the twisted mountaintop drive an excercise in eye strain, trying to discern the faint contrast between the yellow stripes on the road against a backdrop of complete white-out. Amazingly, we passed a number of hapless motorcyclists who either courageously or foolishly braved the same conditions on half as many wheels. I was greatly relieved to finally drop down below the fog line, only to be set upon by blindingly heavy rains that pooled on the poorly designed and maintained Oklahoma roadways. Hydroplaning is one of those concepts taught in most driving schools, but remains virtually an academic excercise on Texas roads. Not so in Oklahoma where it was a constant struggle to keep our aging Mercury Sable Wagon from sliding off the road or into oncoming traffic. I felt like I was piloting a jet-ski more than a nearly twelve-year-old land-barge. Eventually, we finally made it across the state line into Texas, where we missed an opportunity to take a break inside the comfortable and spacious visitor center by only 10 minutes. The rest of the trip was completely uneventful, and I collapsed into the recliner just as fast as I could pull my boots off.

My first date with The Happy Hookah

Here it was, my greatly-anticipated first date with that dusky mistress, Narghile, and alas, I had some ... ahem ... performance issues. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have always held a fascination with eastern culture, probably cultivated in part by my father's own love for all things oriental. As a child, I grew up in an environment frequently seasoned with asian influences. My father was a volunteer English instructor for Project L.I.F.T. in New Orleans (an English as a second language program), and the majority of his students in the early to mid-seventies were Vietnamese expatriates with whom my family frequently interacted with on a social level. A sizeable part of my early years were formed in the company of almond-eyed, smiling faces with whom I shared perhaps 20 words of common language. I ate at their tables and played with their children - but more importantly, I learned at an early age that there are cultures alien from mine, with their own etiquette, morés and social structures that deserve equal respect and consideration as our own. As a result, I have always enjoyed seeking out those aspects of different cultures that are available to me in my everyday world, and enjoy exposing my own family to them, as well. With few exceptions, I have found that people from around the world are eager to share their culture, and my respectful inquiries have always been met with enthusiastic replies ... and instant friends.

As a child, I remember being mesmerized by the rings of smoke my Grandfather would blow for me as he would pull on the hose of his hookah. He was a smoker, and could almost always be found with a cigarette in his hand as he sat at the breakfast table, reading the Times Picayune in the predawn hours - before the rest of the household would rise and begin making demands on his time. I would pad-foot down the hall, roused by the single light in the kitchen and be lovingly, but disapprovingly greeted in his gruff manner by "look at the head on that nickel! Go back to bed boy, it's too early!" I always stayed though, mindful of the quiet he so loved and would refuse his offers of toast or juice, knowing that to make them for me would be an intrusion on his only personal time when the house was full of family. The only request I can remember making, was for him to get rid of the stinky cigarrettes and bring out the mysterious and fascinating hookah instead. Unrepentant, as most smokers are, he would refuse to stub out his cigarette, but usually promised to bring down the porcelain-vased contraption later in the day for me to see. In the downstairs living room, he would later sit in his recliner, ornate hose held only slightly away from his mouth as he formed a silent "O" with his mouth that would roll in on its smoky self as it sailed toward the high ceiling. The hookah would gurgle and glow as he would pull, his eyes focused on some distant memory as he performed the ritual at my request. Unlike the acrid, stinging smell of cigarrette smoke, the mu'essel in the bowl of the hookah always filled the room with the pleasant odors of fruit and honey.

When my grandfather passed away and I was asked if there was anything of his that I wanted, his hookah that factored so highly in my memories was the first thing to come to mind. Alas, it had already been appropriated by my Great Aunt for her collection of ornate bottles. I saw it not too long ago, when family business brought me back to New Orleans. It sat in the window, looking sad and shrunken compared to my vivid and doubtless exaggerated childhood memories. It's hose was brittle and cracked, and the whole pipe just looked diminished. Somewhat dejected, I decided not ask for it then, but promised myself that I would purchase one of my own someday.

There has been a resurgence of interest in the hookah that has been growing for the last few years. Perhaps it is its exotic nature, or its claimed (but unproven, I should point out) reduction in health risks as compared to other tobacco use, that has seen a sudden rise in popularity on college campuses, and in cafés and clubs dedicated to its use. As a result, I have seen them with increasing frequency in the import shops that are usually tucked in remote corners of shopping malls. Among the incense burners and olive-wood carvings, onyx animal figures and assorted cloisine items gathering dust, there will be one or two poorly-made and ridiculously over-priced hookah pipes. Regardless, I dutifully look them over, wanting them - then walking away dissatisfied.

A recent stop at an unfamiliar cigar shop on the other side of town greeted me with a long-forgotten, but instantly recognizable smell. In the back, seated in the smoking lounge was an arabic gentleman on a sofa pulling contentedly on the hose of a massive hookah pipe. I was drawn immediately by the sweet scent of honey and strawberries that curled up invitingly from the top of its 3 foot height in wisps of dense smoke. Waiting for him to acknowledge me, I immediate set to innundating him with a barrage of questions of when/where/why/how, and was rewarded with a recommendation of a shop in the next town; where not only could you rent a hookah as one of the regular menu items in the café, but you could also purchase one of your own for much less than the decorative-only models I had been teased with for years at the imported-junk shops.

I easily talked by brother-in-law into taking a trip to check out the recommended shops, as he was displaced by a bridal-shower taking place at his house, where he is the token male. He even readily agreed to do the driving. Unfortunately, at each of the shops in which we stopped, all the reasonably-priced hookahs had been snapped up by the growing local market, leaving only the high-end, expensive models that even the shop-keepers suggested were not in my best interests. However, the hook was set, and I turned to the internet to satiate my sudden obsession. A quick google-search turned up so many options that I was truly surprised that it hadn't occurred to me to search it out that way before. Ultimately, I ordered a two-hose unit, social creature that I am, so I could easily share my newfound interest with my like-minded friends.

A day later I received the standard courtesy email informing me that my order had shipped and would arrive in a few days to somebody living around 500-600 miles from me! A quick check showed that I had slipped on my zip code by a single, but very important digit, and UPS was winging my package to a far southwest Texas town - population 59. Needless to say, I was mildly distressed at the thought of my prize propping open the door of a milk-barn somewhere just north of Mexico. A desperate call to UPS resulted in a rerouting order that will get the package to me ... eventually. In the meanwhile, the locally-depleted shops have since restocked their shelves with all manner of products for lovers of all things hookah. Having the patience of a five-year-old on Christmas Eve, I went ahead and bought myself one of the lovely pipes on display to enjoy while I waited.

Eagerly, I brought my prize home, and following as best I could the directions I'd read online, set up my hookah for its maiden voyage - only to immediately break the detachable bowl. Yet one more trip to buy a replacement, and I was finally ready to light the pipe and partake of the sweet smoke. Despite my adjustments and occasional tweaks to the setup, I could never really get the rich, thick smoke I was expecting. Flavor was nice, starting out with banana, but was thin and watery compared to the copious amounts of strong smoke I was accustomed to from my cigars. I could tell that there was supposed to be more, but my setup was somehow wrong, so I decided to try the mint. Results were slightly better, eventually coaxing more smoke from my hookah, but still nowhere near what I was expecting.

At this point, I'm going to tackle this issue two ways:
1. I'm going to solicit advice from one or more of the online Hookah forums, and
2. I'm going to go "rent" a hookah at one of the little cafés, to take note of the proper setup and perhaps get a more accurate set of expectations from my own pipe.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

[Update: After receiving some suggestions and reading the excellent information to be found at HookahCulture.com, I've determined that I need to make a few adjustments to both my setup and my expectations. Since the tobacco mixture doesn't so much burn as it "cooks," the smoke will be thinner than that of a cigar. Oh, and my wife really likes the way the Double Apple flavor smells, too - enough so, that she had no problems whatsoever with my smoking in the living room the other night. That is ... until I dropped some hot coals on the carpet.]

[Update #2: My two-hose Hookah from Caravansarai Imports finally arrived after a very convoluted route caused by an incorrect zip code (my fault).

I was immediately dismayed when I saw the box. Despite multiple bright red labels all over the box stating "FRAGILE: Handle with Care - Glass," the package looked like it had been used for football practice and was even partially open.

Remarkably, the base was intact, as were most of the parts. However, the metal tube that extends down into the base from the shaft was bent almost 90° and broken almost completely through.

Even if there were no damage, I would've been unhappy with the quality of the pipe itself. In several places the chrome (or similar) plating was missing, exposing the raw copper-colored metal underneath. Welds are rough throughout, and appear incomplete on the hose grommets.

Sigh ...

I sent an email Wednesday evening to Caravansarai Imports detailing the damage and my general dissatisfaction, but have yet to get a reply. ]

The Twisted Ballad of Farmer Bill

(Guitar-pickin' tune not unlike "Hot Rod Lincoln")

Well, you pays your nickel and you takes your chances,
and I'm not one for wild romances,
But I've gotta admit this gal still does something for me.

When she takes out her teeth
and her faded glass eye,
and pulls the false leg from the stump of her thigh,
man, I get excited by all the possibilities.

She rattles when she breathes,
so she don't talk well,
and the hooks on her hands have a funny smell,
but I can tell exactly what she's trying to say.

By the look in her eye
and the twitch in her hips
I can see the kiss there behind the foam on her lips
as she gurgles out her love for me every day.

Well, love is blind
(and in her case half-true
with her real eye brown and her false one blue)
But I can see past all the scars and the holes in her face.

Way back when
I can remember a time
before her fateful dance with the farm combine
When all her limbs were attached and in the right place.

A beautiful girl
any man would want
And plenty men told her at her restaurant
She was a full-time waitress and a part-time cheatin' heart.

She found a rich man
gonna get a new life
hit the big city and quit being the wife
of a poor dirt farmer who couldn't bear to part.

She came to tell me
while I worked the field
I begged and pleaded- she refused to yield
Pulled the ring off her finger and threw it on the combine's floor.

She turned to go,
but then she slipped
The ring on the floor sent her on a trip
With a horrified glance she tumbled out the door.

Well, the old combine's
an unforgiving thing
and she'd never would have fell if it weren't for the ring
Still, I can't help but wonder at the irony of it all.

She got chewed up
when she fell in
The machine jerked and seized with a mighty din
and there wasn't very much left of her after the fall.

She lost her hands
she lost a leg
She got cracked and whipped like a scrambled egg
But I didn't panic, and no, I didn't grieve.

Her eye was gone
and her looks gone, too
I told myself, "if she pulls through,
I can console myself with the fact that she'll never leave."

I love more now
than I loved her then
when I had to compete with her side boyfriends
because I know I have her all to myself.

She doesn't cheat
and she'll never stray
She just sits there drooling at me everyday
and I keep all her old parts in jars up on the shelf.

Well there's my story
and the story of my wife
For better or for worse, we're together for life.
But don't you go and start to pity me.

I have a little secret
if the truth be told
I kept it from my wife, but it was hard to hold.
(pause - music stops)
(spoken)I've always had a "thing" for amputees.

(music slowly fades to maniacal laughter. Large farm equipment can be heard faintly in the background.)

Body Modification

I've taken the plunge.

After much careful consideration - weighing the pros and cons of what some may consider to be a radical alteration to an otherwise nondescript body part - I have elected to untertake a painful and personal procedure.

This is just for me. While there may be some evidence to the trained eye, most people will never know the secret hidden beneath my clothing.

But I'll know ...
Just walking down a hallway at my office will bring interesting new sensations of pressure and presence of which only I will be aware. Like having a tooth pulled, my thoughts will frequently turn to the unique newness of sensation radiating outward from its source. Pleasure and pain- twin mistresses petulant as pouting children - will tug at my sleeve, insatiable in their desire for my attention, rarely allowing my thoughts to drift far from their influence.

My birth certificate - that document that sought to quantify, label and declare will no longer hold the whole truth of me. Indeed, a crucial evidence of my arrival attested in that document will no longer be correct.

This is no mere cosmetic change I am undertaking. My modifications will go deeper than skin, reaching into very bone and sinew - an evolution of my body parts into a new form never before known by me. My own mother wouldn't recognize them as mine ...

What is this dark secret? Why would I undertake such a change? (Why won't I just get to the point?)

From birth, I've been very flat-footed. My birth certificate clearly shows to longish, flat blobs with toes, where otherwise I'd have properly-formed feet. I'm sure this was quite endearing to my mother, but it makes for quickly-tired legs, among other complaints.

I've recently been measured for orthotics to try an introduce an arch in my feet to combat the improper alignment of my feet, knees, hips and back that have been causing me an increasing level of pain as I have aged. This can be compared to orthodontic braces for teeth, to correct for improper alignment that may cause problems otherwise unrelated to teeth. In my case, trying to align bones in my feet that have been settled in their current position for nearly 36 years is likely to cause a fair amount of discomfort, and my enthusiasm for proper alignment will most likely be severely curbed by the sensation of walking with a golf ball in each shoe. Each day, I am to increase my self-inflicted torture duration by a half-hour until I finally reach the point of being able to tolerate constant contact with my slowly evolving feet.

So perhaps the next time someone suggests to me that I "get bent," I'll be able to tell them that "I already am, thank you."

Birth Announcement

I'd like to take a moment to congratulate my friends Dianne and Andy on the birth of their new son, Kevin. It's been a long and eventful pregnancy, full of uncertainty and questions, as well as a renewed and strengthened faith in God to meet their needs. There have been tears and triumphs, longing and learning - and much prayer. Many complications have to date kept Kevin and his parents apart, but at long last, all the preparation and anticipation has come to fruition.

You see, Kevin was born a few years ago in Guatemala.
Yesterday, he became their son.

Since becoming a father myself, I have developed a particular weakness of sentiment with regards to the relationship of children and their parents. Sometimes I rage at their plight, when I read stories such as the recent tradgedy in Russia, but a much more common emotion for me is getting just a bit misty-eyed at the thought of these new beginnings. Today is no exception, and I know that both Dianne and Andy have worked hard to prepare themselves and their home for their long-awaited new arrival.

Little Kevin will finally meet his parents in about two weeks, when they travel to Guatemala to arrange his visa to come home to the United States.

In the meanwhile, let me encourage you to read Dianne's ongoing journals recording her transformation from hopeful to expecting to parent.

The Burden of Information

Among the duties I perform at the office where I am employed, I serve as the ersatz computer technician and maintenance drudge. When there are software updates, I get called upon to make sure all the systems in the shop are loaded up with the latest and occasionally greatest programs. The same can be said for my relentless quest to keep all our virus and spyware protections up to date and functioning properly and mercilessly against the daily onslought we face.

I put a particular focus on the several computers within my immediate reach and check them almost daily. My newest office-mate, LucasFan, has inherited the computer left by the previous Elder-Statesman who occupied that seat. For some reason, and despite all the measures I use to innoculate it, it is more susceptible to viruses than Blubrik. Constant browser-hijack attempts and spyware installations keep me on my toes as well. I suspect that the Elder-Statesman had opened a door I just can't seem to shut back before Napster become synonymous with the promise of a police raid.

LucasFan is a devoted user of AOL Messenger and can be frequently found (to my employer's increasing chagrin) furtively tapping away details of his day and whatever other missives seem important to convey to his wife, who similarly keeps up a constant chatter in reply. As his most immediate superior (snicker), I've suggested that it's OK, provided it doesn't become a distraction to the tasks at hand. I'm hardly in a position to suppress his IM use, lest I put myself in a position of utter hypocrisy. My own contact list reads like a phone book, and for some of my friends - even local ones - it's my principal form of communication.

However, one very significant way in which we differ in our instant-messaging use, is that I never leave my conversations up on the screen for the world to see when I leave my desk - even for a minute. Every time I get up from my computer to refill my coffee cup or to equalize the coffee pressure on the other side of personal filtration system, I close all the open message windows. This serves to protect me from anyone's impression, however correct, that I spent too much time online, as well as protecting any information I may have sent or received from becoming immediately public. (Yes, I'm aware that my messages are most-likely being logged on some server somewhere - but those people don't much care about the pitiful details of my daily existence.)

My newest office-mate doesn't take such precautions. Frequently, when I need to access his computer directly in his absence, or during my usual morning viral spot-checks on all the computers in my office, there will be his AOL Messenger window, open wide and inviting, with the complete transcript of his daily chatter from the time he clocks in, until the moment he leaves for home. Initially, my reaction was a quick and mildly-disapproving clucking of my tongue followed by an immediate shutting down of the messenger window. His business is his business, and nobody needs to see it, myself included. I was protecting my fellow employee from his sloppy security practices.

Have you ever noticed how you can instantly pick out your own name out of a long blur of words? I have- and there in the middle of the computer screen one day recently, was mine. Curious, as any reasonable person might be, I quickly scanned the context of my reference and found myself suddenly unhappy about it. In fairness to LucasFan, they weren't his words that bothered me, but rather those of his wife, who reacted childishly and and jealously when she found out that a design idea that she really liked was not her husband's idea, but mine. Truly, in context, it's a small thing. In the comfortable context of presumed privacy we have all said things about other people that we would never utter in public, whether out of courtesy or fear of reprisal, and I recognize that this was most-likely the case in this situation. More recently, there have been other revelations about LucasFan's private life and troubles laid bare and splashed across the screen that have given me pause and evoked a sense of sympathy tempered by embarrassment on his behalf that he would leave such sensitive information literally plastered on the front of his monitor. While I may have proprietary notions about the computers on my desk, they aren't exclusively mine, and I'm aware that anyone in the shop may use them in my absence, and I theirs. That's how it's always been in the office, and it keeps secrets and innapropriate material to a minimum.

However, some secrets are better kept than spread, and I for one don't want the burden of someone else's personal information added to my baggage. I think I'll excercise my authority (snicker again) and have a little chat with him this morning about company policy and privacy rights.

Lest anyone get the impression that my office-mate is some sort of deviant or a member of a terrorist sleeper-cell based on the above post, nothing so interesting as that was made public on his computer screen. His disclosures were all benign, but personal in nature, and I prefer that they remain private and unknown, especially by me.

Waiting for a call

This morning, shortly after 5am a phone starts ringing in our house. It's not the usual ring of the kitchen phone or the chirping warble of the cordless phones strategically scattered from room to room. Rather, it's an alarming tone that my wife has inexplicably set to indicate when her sister is calling her cellular phone.

No matter how long that we've been up, and regardless of the fact that the phone hasn't jangled us out of our sleep, a ringing telephone before daylight always evokes alarm in our household.
"Who could be calling us at this time of morning?" Trepidation tinges the unspoken question.
Not once to date has someone called our house prior to daybreak to announce that we've won the lottery or that they saw our name on the state comptroller's list of people that Texas owed money. Good news always waits until after coffee.

No ... when the phone rings at our house - after we kill the lights and prior to dawn - someone in the family is dead, dying or basking in the glow of ambulance strobes.

With a worried glance at me, my wife grabbed her cell phone and immediately proceded past the obligatory greetings to the point of the call ... which I as yet don't know.

The obvious relaxation of her shoulders and halt to her pacing indicated that nobody was bleeding their last, but the conspiratorial tones that followed only deepened the mystery. Expectant glances and my attempts to meet her eyes failed to produce an answer to relieve my curiosity. One thing I do know, when women talk in those tones, some man somewhere has screwed up. The fact that the call couldn't wait for daylight means whoever he is, he has somehow offended the great Sisterhood of Women - and as a man myself, I'd better lay low lest I get caught in his undertow by association and swept out into the sea of outrage.

I was already late for the door to get to work, so with a hurried peck on the cheek that wasn't occupied with the phone, I left- echoes of a promise to call me swirling behind as I stepped into the pensive predawn air.

Warning!

Stay away from Webboggle!

Your brain will overheat, you'll smack yourself for lack of vocabulary, and later - the willpower to leave.

Don't say I didn't warn you...

Validation

All this time I thought nobody noticed my little corner of the blogosphere.

If I were to base my readership on comments alone, I would probably be able to count on perhaps four people who have actually spent more than three minutes reading through my various ramblings. The vast majority of people who have at least registered a hit on my counter at the bottom probably fall in the "how-did-I-wind-up-here?" category and are back off in search of some smutty pictures to show to all their coworkers and hide from their boss. Perhaps a few of the transients who stumble across my site pause for a moment, caught by the dark tone of the page and vaguely disturbing image of the top half of my bald head staring back at them like some fevered version of Kilroy. Alas, these visitors also quickly depart, having found no rants or witty gems to forward to all the hapless members of their mailing list.

It does get more than a little lonely, ostensibly talking to myself - and frankly, since I've already heard all my own thoughts, I feel less and less like tossing them up on the website to see what sticks to the digital wall. Of course, the hit counter at the bottom registers the raw number of browsers that pause here, however briefly, and I can see the easily gleaned details of their visit. I've had viewers representing nearly every time zone on the planet (no kidding). What I don't get, for the most part, is feedback - any feedback.

This past weekend, someone I respect approached me and actually admitted to reading my blog. He even went so far as to state that he gets disappointed when there's nothing new posted during his daily check of my site.

Somebody checks my site daily and expects new content? While it puts a certain pressure on me to perform, I'll admit that I like that. It tells me that I must be doing something that has value to someone else. I like to know that someone is not only receiving a signal, but chooses to tune it in for whatever reason they may have. I guess it boils down to the fact that I enjoy the idea that I have an audience, albeit one that requires very few chairs to accommodate.

Let me know if I should set out a chair for you, too.

Triskadekaphobia

Today is Friday The 13th.
[Cue spooky music, evocative of slasher films]

Did you trip over the cat while sleepily stumbling your way to the shower this morning? Did you run out of hot water before you could rinse the stinging lather out of your eyes? Afterwards, did the toaster mysteriously set itself on "cremate" rather than "light," setting off the smoke detector in the hallway that made the dog wet the carpet with fear? Did you get a late start for work because you spent most of the time you usually dedicate to personal hygiene looking for your car keys - only to discover them on the seat of your car, behind locked doors? Did you arrive late to work, your boss pacing the floor anxiously wondering where you are because the current "emergency" has your name all over it?

Me, neither...

My life is interesting enough, with all its little plot twists and turns, without adding in any irrational fears based on calendar dates. Being a Friday, I tend to arrive at work in a lighter mood, knowing that the weekend is only a few hours away.

You've got to pay to play ...

... and boy am I paying for playing last night! An excellent time was had by all, thanks to our hosts, friends and staff at Abacus Restaurant. (See "No Good Deed...")

However, despite our best intentions and promises to the contrary, my wife and I didn't leave the restaurant until nearly 11:30 last night. By the time we'd made some damage-control phone calls, raced to pick up the boys from my In-Laws', deposited sleeping children and fell into bed ourselves, it was approaching 1:00am.

Our alarm clock goes off at 4:00am.

Lack of sleep and far more wine than I am accustomed to drinking has recast the world into an image not unlike one from a funhouse mirror. With an impossibly large and heavy head and bandy little legs sprouting from a distended torso, I'm staggering around as though the contorted glass has cast a new reality for me, as well. It's going to be a long day, I think ...

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Have you ever tried to do something nice for someone or perhaps help them out in some way, only to have it thrown back in your face?

In my line of work, people will frequently bring me rough sketches or ideas for me to add my artistic interpretation and bring to life for them. Many times, even when a client doesn't specifically ask for a tweak, I'll make little adjustments I feel improve on the design or idea, based on my experience.

I call it my artist's conceit.

There is an actual modicum of conceit involved. I'm a professional graphic designer with well over a decade of daily, high-pressure, high-dollar design work for customers with whom you are probably familiar. You may very well have seen some of it. From credit-card companies to motorcycle manufacturers, cigar factories to Christian publications, I have a modest list of satisfied clients who like my work and my interpretation of what they want (else I don't get paid). These people have used expensive ad agencies and flatter me with their patronage and high expectations. So it's in this mindset that I evaluated a new project, freshly-plucked from a newer client's desktop inkjet printer and placed before me for what I mistakenly assume is a rework into a high-end ad for a high-end real-estate publication.

I was wrong, but not about the publication part. Long ago, my mentor and friend, Don Lokke' told me that:

"the bane of a good graphic designer is the client with strong will and bad taste."

He has been proven correct many times over the years and once again in this particular case. I had taken the original concept: black, unreadable script over a snapshot followed by black unreadable script at the bottom and produced an ad I would be proud to have in my portfolio. Concensus in the shop was equally positive. "The client would be blown away."

She wasn't. In fact, I think the client was offended that I felt her ad needed any work at all. I didn't even charge for the "upgrade." Stung, I uttered a much-used phrase around here: "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished."

My wife and I got to be on the receiving-end of that phrase just yesterday. Blubrik and The Brain offered to treat my wife and I out to eat at Abacus to celebrate my bride's upcoming birthday. This is quite a treat, considering that my wife and I rarely get to eat at a "sit-down" restaurant anymore, let alone one without a playground and a "value menu." Abacus is decidedly outside our means, and under ordinary circumstances, we'd have to take out a loan just to make an appropriate gratuity for our server.

It went something like this:
Blubrik: "What are you doing tonight?"
Me: "I don't have anything specific planned, why?"
Blubrik: "The Brain and I are having a conflict with attending Mrs.Cheese's party Saturday, and we want to take her out for her birthday. You can come too, I suppose."*
8 p.m. was the appointed hour, and I made a quick call to the Mrs., who made an impassioned call to her mother to secure babysitting for the evening. Short-notice rarely yields good results, but good fortune and a tone of desperation got the deal done.

Later, while sitting in the theatre with my 5-year-old watching Spiderman 2, my phone silently buzzes me back to reality and almost out of my skin with surprise. It's Blubrick leaving a message. During a critical scene (of course), my son's little bladder could hold no more and we raced to the bathroom to depressurize. A quick check of my voicemail yielded the following message:

"Wednesday. Let's do this on Wednesday. Sempai-san is graduating with his Master's on Saturday and we want to treat him and his wife, Saint Eunice of Constant Patience, too. Sensei [has been invited, and] wants to come as well."

I made a quick call to the Mrs. to let her know of the sudden turn of events and the need to renegotiate for babysitting. She assumed the same time as the previous invitation, and mindful that it took place on a schoolnight for our freshly-minted kindergartner, promised to pick up the boys between 10:00 and 10:30 pm.

I rolled my eyes when she told me about the pickup time. "Sweetie, we'll probably only just be starting dessert at 10:00 or 10:30," I chided. Still, eye teeth had already been pulled and deals made, so we steeled ourselves for an opulent, but very late night. Blubrik popped up on my instant messenger later that afternoon.

Blubrik: "Do you know two people who would like to come tonight? Sempai-san and Saint Eunice have had to back out because it's too late for them and we have reservations for eight at 8:30."
Me: "No one comes to mind, but you should know that the Mrs. is having some anxieties about the lateness of the reservations, herself."

There was a pause here - the sort that is as rich with meaning as it is poor on words.

Blubrik: "I ... could try moving the reservations up a bit, but I don't expect much luck."
Me: "Every little bit helps."
Without any pause this time:
Blubrik: "Reservations are now for 6:00p.m."
By this time, my wife had come into the computer room to see what was going on. Her jaw fell open an onto my shoulder when she saw the last message.
She (aghast): "My mother ... I ... don't get HOME until 6:00!"
Not knowing the reactions on our end of the computer, Blubrik continued:
Blubrik: "Calling Sempai-san"
Me: "Might be too early now." (this was followed by one of those blushing-with-embarassment emoticons.) "Should have asked, really."
Blubrik was doubtless stunned by the sudden stonewalling. This was evidenced by the long pause that followed. Finally:
Blubrik: "As Sensei would now intone, 'No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.'"
Another pause, followed by, "Reservations are NOW for 6:30."
Me:"We will do everything we can to make it for that time."
And we are, truly. Thanks Blu!

I'm sure Blubrik will have something to say on this very topic, himself. It'll probably have something to do with the futility of trying to herd cats, or the way that some people just HAVE to make everything difficult.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get dressed for dinner.

*These "quotes" are approximate, based on memory or completely fabricated from my tortured persecution complex. If caught, I will deny, deny, deny ...

A Superior Inferiority Complex?

Among the many responsibilities placed upon the senior students of North Texas Aikido, being in the rotation to teach the beginners' class and occasionally fill-in for the Dojo-Cho are high on my list of favorites. On the nadir of that curve is the admonition to be on a constant vigil against developing an inflated ego as a result of being placed in that elevated position of authority.

An established piece of my personality is an odd conflict between my personal ambitions and my desire to abandon self and "defeat my ego." Concurrent with my hope to become established as a teacher on a regular basis, is a desire to make myself almost anonymous in a crowd of Aikido practitioners of higher rank. At the same time that I seek status, I crave humility, and these two desires wage a heated battle for the rights to hoist their flag over me.

This conflict has been growing steadily for the last few years, as I've found myself more and more in a position of authority, particularly in the absence of our most senior student who has been pursuing his post-graduate degree. Of the Nidans (2nd degree black belts) at our dojo, I am the second from the bottom of the totem pole, as it were, because we factor in such criteria as how long we've been training overall into our concept of seniority. There are several other people of the same rank as myself, but higher in seniority above me due to their greater number of years of training and knowlege of the art. School, work, health issues and other personal matters have limited their ability to attend classes on a regular basis, leaving the remaining black belts to shoulder the responsibilities that we all have to the dojo and our fellow students.

If I sound as if I'm complaining, please understand that it's not out of any sense of feeling put upon. Indeed, it's this very atmosphere that feeds my sense of ambition and a desire to make a place for myself. If I were looking for the proverbial "lucky break" to establish myself and cement my position of authority at the dojo, this would surely be it. The problem is that I have come to realize that these ambitions don't come from the best aspects of my personality. Rather, I see it as a sign of weakness that I always seek to be in charge, to control the situation to my liking and feed an already turgid ego. It is during these times of introspection that I find myself wishing to strip myself of rank and any pretense to authority and subject myself to selfless training under a sea of superiors. On some occasions, it's driven me to the brink of abandoning my training altogether.

When teaching class, or placed in any other position of representing my Sensei or the dojo, it's easy to seem certain, and etiquette dictates that Kohai shouldn't question or correct their seniors out of respect.
New students aren't familiar with that particular point of etiquette, and I frequently find myself wondering:
What if I'm wrong?
Am I injecting too much of my own perspective into the teaching?
Am I up here trying to teach, or am I just trying to impress the other students?
What if I'm challenged in some way that I can't handle?

I frequently discuss my worries with my Sensei, and for his part, he has gone a long way toward reassuring me that my concerns are natural, healthy and perhaps by their very existence, an indicator that I haven't yet crossed over into meglomania. My freshly-graduated Sempai has also assured me that he will soon reestablish a regular presence in the dojo, and listening to my concerns, has graciously (and jokingly) offered to put me back in my place.

Coming up for air

I've finally completed the current and possibly final expansion pack to "URU: Ages beyond MYST," and feel the same sort of melancholy that fills me when I come to the end of a good book, knowing that the story is over - at least for now.

For me, the main attraction to the MYST series has always been exploration and discovery, as though I've stumbled upon an ancient and technologically advanced civilization in which the inhabitants have suddenly disappeared. Left behind are the artifacts, libraries and mechanical wonderments that will tell the story of their lives, if only I can determine how to operate them.

Usually, as in most games of this genre, a player gets some sort of instant gratification when the correct sequence of switches, levers or other variables are in place. In this iteration of the URU saga, there were three puzzles that required waiting ... waiting! ... for confirmation of the correct input. Granted, in real life, glue doesn't dry instantly or bread bake completely the moment it is put into an oven, either, but this is fantasy. Along with the usual suspension of disbelief comes an expectation of suspension of the more mundane physics of everyday life. I suppose the game developers thought that it would further build a sense of reality into an already-immersive experience, but speaking solely for myself, I found the waiting to be real kill-joy. During those moments of waiting, the duration of which was approximately 15 minutes per, I found myself babysitting the game rather than playing it. Only one of those three puzzles mercifully provided you with an obvious countdown, giving the player a visual clue as to the time remaining before the next event would occur. Other puzzles relied on a measure of faith on the part of the player that he or she had read the clues correctly. These, and all the other puzzles or tasks are so seamlessly integrated into the game, that they don't seem so much like puzzles as they do a challenge to breathe new life into the sleeping worlds- and they can be maddeningly complex or deceptively simple.

I have the patience of a five-year-old on Christmas Eve, so I couldn't have solved those puzzles without the assistance of URU Obsession, a repository of MYST-related knowledge and speculation.

As with all the games in the MYST canon, the visual detail is gorgeous and provides a feast for the eyes that is limited only by the capabilities of the player's video card. Similarly, the music and ambient audio in the game is rich and surrounds the player (quite literally, if the hardware supports it properly) with a sense of actually being in the amazing and diverse environments for which Cyan Worlds is famous. Prepare to push the limits of your hardware. Cyan is notorious for making your current setup obsolete with their constant pursuit of complete environmental immersion.

It is this truly immersive quality that so greatly attracts me to the games, and leaves me feeling almost homesick between installments.

I hope I get to go back someday.

Ride to Work Day

[Edit: Image removed because it really screws up the page layout]
You did remember to ride your motorcycle to work today, right?

Worldwide Motorcycle Ride to Work Day is Wednesday

Motorcycle riders 13th annual commuting Ride to Work day is Wednesday, July 21st.. Participation in the yearly demonstration is estimated to triple the number of riders on the road, and help reveal to the public that motorcyclists come from all walks of life, work in all occupations, and range in age from teenagers to grandparents. Motorcycle clubs and organizations worldwide actively encourage members to ride their cycles to work on this day.

Each week day in the United States, more than eighty million cars and light trucks commute on American roads, but only about 200,000 of the over six million registered cycles are regularly used for such daily transportation. Adding more motorcycles to the mix can help make urban parking easier and traffic flow better, according to Ride to Work, a non-profit advocacy organization. Studies have also shown that urban motorcyclists reach their destinations faster than those using automobiles, and that most motorcycles consume less resources per mile than typical automobiles.

"Riding to work on this day shows the positive value of motorcycling for transportation. For many people, riding is a socially responsible form of personal mobility that saves energy, helps the environment and provides a broad range of other public benefits," stated Andy Goldfine, this year's event organizer.

On Wednesday's 13th annual Ride to Work Day, motorcyclists worldwide seek:
- Employer recognition and support for motorcycling
- Public and government awareness of the positive value of motorcycling.


The Ride to Work nonprofit advocacy program can be reached at: POB 1072, Proctor, Minnesota, 55810 USA.

The Ride to Work Organization’s Mission: To advocate and support the use of motorcycles for transportation, and to provide information about transportation riding to the public.

Ride to Work Day Participating Countries include: Germany, Philippines, England, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Ecuador, United States, and many others.

The latest issue of 'The Daily Rider' newsletter (#6)

A brief history of Ride to Work Day

A transportation motorcycling fact sheet


For more information about Ride to Work Day, visit http://www.ridetowork.org
or call 218.722.9806 for Contact Persons Christine Holt cholt@ridetowork.org or Andy Goldfine agoldfine@ridetowork.org.

Living with Carriers

My youngest, always the energetic type who's hearing cannot parse words like "stop" or "hush" or "please quit standing on my groin," was unusually sedate Saturday on the way to my company picnic.  Ordinarily, I'd be wishing for hair to sprout on my bald pate so I could pull it back out again when my two boys start getting bored in the back seat of our aging Mercury wagon. He just sat quietly in the back, taking in the scenery through slightly squinting eyes. 
 
It didn't take long for my wife and I to notice the lack of violence in the back seat.
 
"You alright, Hon?" my wife asked
"I tired," he replied, as always sounding like a serial TV-show Indian from the 50's.  It wouldn't be out of the character for him to spout "we smoke-em peace pipe." "Being" verbs don't come easily to him as yet.
 
He had been restless the night before, so we shrugged and decided to take advantage of the 50% reduction in parental stress by listening to the car radio for the first time that we could remember since having children.
 
When we finally arrived at the lake house for the company party, my wife (ever resourceful) produced a digital thermometer seemingly from nowhere and proceded to take his temperature.
"Aha!" she proclaimed, discovering the source of our temporary reprieve.  Our youngest son had a fever of 101.5, damning him (and by extension) one of us from the day's activities.
 
Well ... it wasn't me.
 
Later, after returning home exhausted from constant thrill-seeking on the lake, we noticed that he was the color of a boiled lobster, in spite of being cloistered away in the back bedroom of the lake-house all day with my wife.
 
"Stick out your tongue," I instructed.  Dutifully, he proceded to eject an object that only a fan of French cheese would find attractive.  I recoiled at the sight of his heavily-coated tongue and began running down a checklist in my head.
 

• Scarlet coloring from head to toe
• Fever
• Not too distant run-in with strepthroat

Oh, criminy, I thought. My child has Scarlet Fever.  I managed to contract scarlet fever while on vacation with my parents when I was probably only five or six years old. Vividly, I recall how unpleasant it was, as well.
 
Apparently, he wasn't nearly so bothered by my memories as I was, because his only complaint was itching all over and a headache.  By Monday morning, his coloration had mostly normalized, but he was still splotchy in patches and still running a mild fever.  His doctor gave him a shot to treat him for the strep virii in his little body, and sent him on his way with the admonition to stay away from other children for another 24 hours. Today, he's probably back to driving my wife nuts again, unable to shout at him as he bounces off the walls at our house. She's home with him today, not only because he needs the supervision, but because she herself started exibiting symptoms of strep yesterday and has completely lost her voice, to boot.
 
Come to think of it, I'm starting to get a headache myself ...

Neglected Love-Child

Like any hobby born as a love-child to Boredom and Free-time, my little corner of the blogosphere of gone a bit fallow in the shadow of all the work and social activities going on in my life right now. Trust me, you don't want to see what my house looks like, either. As things settle back down, I should be back to my regular schedule.

The Great Dumbing Down

Let me let you inside my head for just a second. Not too far, mind you - just past the dusty stacks of mathmatical knowledge left untouched since my college days and down the hall to the door marked "Pet Peeves." Do be careful with the doorknob though. Brass conducts heat quite well....

Once upon a time, the vast and ever-expanding universe of knowledge we call the internet was solely the domain (old usage of the term) of scholars and intellectuals, hidden away in the halls of learning and used only by those interested in the rapid dissemination of information. As such, there were certain protocols and points of etiquette associated with its use, consistent with the decorum reserved for use among intellectuals and scholarly peers.

Fast forward to the present-day, when the "'Net" is nearly as ubiquitous as belly buttons. This, in and of itself, is a Good Thing. Unfortunately, however, etiquette and spelling were among the victims of the violent explosion of popularity that the internet has enjoyed.

I'm not talking about typos, for heaven's sake - we all make them from time to time. No, I'm specifically referring to a lack of basic rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Granted, the internet has been opened up to all strata of society, including quite a few people who have never needed to use a keyboard to communicate previously, but it's no excuse for not at least making the effort to learn the proper use of one's native written language. Rapid access and instant communication has led to a shorthand of sorts, called "netspeak," which only serves to make excuses for sloppy writing and lazy, unintelligent communication. I find myself reminded of the whole "Ebonics" debate. (shudder)

Rather than raising the collective conscience by holding the masses to a higher standard of learning, we are allowing this decline to spread through ambivalence to the problem - or worse - ignorance that there's a problem at all. We are becoming a society of idiot savants - illiterates in control of an amazing wealth of knowledge.

Personal irritants of high order (culled from recent communication):

"Your an idiot" Maybe I am, but when the intent is to mean "You are an idiot," use the contraction "you're" , or just spell it out properly. "Your" is posessive, as in "your lack of education."

"R U Nutz?" Increasingly, yes - especially when I get asked in this less-than-zero manner. Instant messaging-level communication is barely above grunting in my book. I'll overlook the cutesy spelling of "nuts" for now.

"Your to hung up about this." Most likely, yes. There's that "your" thing again, followed by another common error - using "to" instead of "too." Yes, it could be a typo, but given the rest of the email as a barometer, I'm going with the assumption that the author got through college strictly on his ability to catch a football and nothing else. For the record: TO - towards a destination or given state. TOO - very or also. TWO - the number 2. It comes after one and before three, the grade-level by which you should already know this information.

If intelligent speech and writing skills make you look intelligent, what image do you suppose such a poor grasp of language projects?

I could go on, but the vein in my forehead is throbbing painfully and looks like I'm signaling a left turn onto the Anuerism Bypass.

I'm a Menace to Society

Personality Tests Don't Lie ...

Wackiness: 72/100
Rationality: 38/100
Constructiveness: 28/100
Leadership: 36/100


You are a WEDF--Wacky Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you a menace to society, depending on how you channel your energies. You chew your fingers and have an addictive personality. Properly guided, you can be enormously productive--otherwise you run amok, stir up trouble, and generally have a hell of a good time.

To your friends, you are a source of relentless entertainment. You often get into trouble, but you almost always find a way out. You are strangely popular and feed off others' energy. You live hard, seize the day, and although your more sober friends would like to see you settled down, you generally have fewer regrets and better memories than they do. Your tenet is that, at the end of the day, one regrets only what one didn't try. You are right.

You could benefit from outside help in balancing your highs and lows. Or perhaps cutting back on the caffeine.

I'm surrounded by clandestine talent

If you ever want to find out how mediocre your skills are in a particular area, discuss or try and display them among your coworkers or circle of friends.

For instance, if you believe you are a tolerable guitar-player, take your guitar to work and find out how many classically trained virtuosos are slumming at the desks near you. After they inspect your guitar (retuning it strictly by ear, of course, while looking at you quizzically over your "custom tuning") and whip out a little Vivaldi, they'll hand it back, expecting you to do the same or better. After all, why else did you bring your guitar to work, right? Try not to trip over your face on your way back to your cubicle.

Or perhaps you're proud of the fact that you just repaired a hole in the sheetrock of your house. Casually bringing it up in conversation will earn you an audio blueprint from the salesman in the front office who recently added on another bathroom to his house, the finer details of the new foundation, framing, plumbing and fixtures pushing your little triumph into the "I can change my own roll of toilet paper" category.

Maybe you think you're a clever thinker or have a budding talent at writing and ... Ah ... oh well, crap... I've whined enough. Just go read my friend's brand new blog.

No, really, I'll still be here when you get back.

Smells like the Feet of Angels...

My employer just returned tanned and rested from a two-week sailing excursion around Corsica, Nice, Monaco and other lovely European places surrounded by impossibly-blue water. Along with all the pictures and postcard-souveniers, she also brought a round-wooden box that contained a cheese-sampler from France.

Anxiously, several of us stood around while she removed the plastic shrink-wrap that sealed in the freshness - and to some of our revulsion and horror - SMELL inside.

The French have long been known - and occasionally ridiculed - for their attraction bordering on obsession with stinky cheese. Our delicate american noses frequently turn up and away with watering eyes from the outhouse-on-an-asparagus-farm odors that emanate from some of their more popular frommages.

My Aikido instructor has been enjoying an interest in fine cheeses lately himself, and recently brought a sack into the dojo for refrigeration until classes were over and he could go home and share them with his wife. Peering into the sack at the end of the day's training, I staggered back, eyes watering from the smell. My eyes told me that he had two portions of cheese in the white sack, but my nostrils would have had me believe that I'd just stuck my face into a sack of dirty diapers. "Hard to imagine it's edible, isn't it?" he asked, smiling at my obvious discomfort.

Considering how very involved the nose is in the processing of taste, I find it very hard to imagine the mindset of the first person who decided that edible curd and the smell of raw sewage were somehow not inconsistent.

I have some friends who are quite the gourmands and bon vivants of high caliber, and they, too are attracted to the juxtaposition of the French curd, and are quite well versed on the topic. One related to me an experience while at a meal in France, of observing a woman delightedly taking in all the pungent odors at a cheese buffet. Selecting her favorite, she proclaimed the effluvia "Smells like the feet of angels."

Judging by the smell in the company break-room right now, Heaven could use a foot-bath.

Therapy

The other post that fell off the face of the blogosphere yesterday was a self-indulgent, "poor-me" missive that was of little interest to anyone.

I am beginning to suspect that the family curse of clinical depression may be creeping its way into my life, as it has with several of my family members. Ordinarily, I self-medicate with heavy doses of perspective and reality - as well as faith in a loving God, the light of which usually burns through the darkness of those periods of withdrawal and irrational lonliness. No pills for me ... yet.

This little blog o' mine is as much therapy as anything, forcing me to reread and distill my thoughts and get inside my own head and outside my self in a way that sheds an interesting perspective on who I am and what I believe.

There ... see? I feel much better now.

How Frustrating...

Yesterday, I had typed up a well-researched and insightful article* into the increasingly polarized and machiavellian turn politics have taken in this age of sound-bytes and spoon-fed ideology for the deliberately ignorant masses. Too often, I run into the MTV generation who can't tell you where Washington is on a map, but will tell you we have to clean it out. This demographic can't explain the differences between party platforms (other than in vague generalities), but will tell you that "theirs is evil and ours is good." They know this, of course, because some vacuous, but pretty entertainer has told them so during a five-second sound bite between rap videos.

We have an seemingly popular movie in theatres right now feeding on - and in turn fueling - this ignorance with with glaring inaccuracies, misinformation, distortions and outright fabrications (ironically, the very things the film alleges to expose in its subject matter). I don't have to tell you the name of the film, nor do I really have to relist all the sources, pro and con, that I spent so much time looking up yesterday. You can read a transcript of the movie here.

There is already a groundswell of internet sites dedicated to pointing out the falsehoods of the film with actual documentation, often the very same documentation used in the film - but this time unedited to fit the preconceived theme of the movie.

The original post, however wasn't entirely dedicated that film. Rather, the point of the article was my concern the movie was symptomatic of an attack-mentality that has pervaded the entire political scene, particular among the younger set.

No longer can we disagree politely, or sit down to work out our differences. These days, the tactic is to get a few soundbites of outrageous hyperbole into the vacant minds of ignorant masses who eat it up and spit it back out to passers-by.

Make no mistake, both sides do this to some degree, but it is always the political minority that makes the most noise.

During any administration, the minority party will grumble and find fault with just about anything that sheds a positive light on the majority party. Plenty of good legislation has been killed over the years by petulant and jealous minority parties. My point yesterday was not this particular trait of human nature- you can watch two siblings compete for their parents' attentions in much the same way.

No ... my point was that as we allow ourselves to become increasingly polarized, there is a increasing tendency to take the civility out of civilisation. With each of the successive administrations that I have been around to witness, the attacks on the sitting president and his policies have become more pointed, personal and vitriolic. The more acrimonious the attacks, the more polarized and slavish the supporters become in response - both sides swingly blindly in the dark, hoping for a knockout. We are becoming less and less the melting pot that was the envy of the world, and more and more an "us versus them" society.

Sometimes, I think we forget that we're all supposed to be on the same team ...



~~~
*That article, alas, fell victim to my login-session timing out and disappeared the momement I hit "publish post." Its electrons are doubtless being recycled as we speak into a spam email for penis enlargement or a some insipid rant about how Bush is a modern-day equivalent of Hitler.

I just make this stuff up, see?

... at least the posts that are in ITALICS, anyway. By way of clarification, opinions and actual goings-on are in regular type. Italicized posts are works of fiction, and although familiar-sounding, are not to be taken as historical fact.

Nothing on TV

Something woke me with a start, heart racing with alarm and lights flicking around the edges of my periphery. The hallways of my dream, in which I'd been running just moments before, slowly faded, as the dim and slowly focusing reality of my bedroom insinuated itself back into my consciousness.

I lay there motionless as the dead, willing my mind into full function. Something had awakened me with the cold, metallic shock of alarm that froze me in place. Slowing my breathing to an inaudible level, I reclosed my eyes and took inventory of all the sounds around me. Next to me, my wife slept, breathing slowly in her slightly irregular fashion. An aging plastic alarm clock next to her hummed, the vibrations of its movement amplified by the wood of the cheap box that served as a nightstand. Overhead, the ceiling fan made its regular tick tick tick, as the collected dust on the fan blades threw off its balance and sent it into a gently wobbling orbit. Next to the bed, I could make out the labored breathing of the family dog, unnaturally old and held together by ever-increasing veterinarian visits that had long ago passed the point of kindness. Whatever had awakened me, it hadn't been enough to penetrate the clouds of the old dog's conscious and rouse him from his temporary coma.

Willing myself to focus further into the house, I listened for the boys in their room across the hall. I could hear the breathing of my sons, softly playing point-counterpoint to each other in sleep, just as when awake. The CD of Celtic Lullabyes, played as part of their bedtime ritual had long ago ended, leaving only the faint hissing of the stereo speakers to fill the void.

I visualized the layout of the living room in my mind as I picked out first the clicking of the faux pendulum in the clock on the wall above the oak entertainment center, it's battery-powered swing rubbing against the pressed-wood housing in a regular rhythm. As its batteries became weak, the hourly chime, reproduced by an electronic chip in the back of the clock, would take on a sickly tone, dropping in pitch like the radio from an open window in a passing car. Below it, I could make out a barely liminal high whine that told me that although the satellite receiver had been turned off, the television itself was still on, waiting for a signal. It was an easy thing to miss, fumbling with the overly complex universal remote, while trying to corral the kids into the bathroom to brush teeth and empty bladders in preparation for bed. In the hustle of all that activity and noise, it would have been inaudible, but to my anxiety-sharpened senses in the night's stillness, it was like a coaches whistle. I would have to turn it off if I wanted to get back to sleep, so I'd have to go ahead and get up.

I cracked my eyes open and noted how the the household sounds dwindled immediately into the background. It was as though power had been shifted from the ears to power my newly opened eyes. The lamp in the hallway, left on for the boys to light their way to the bathroom for nightly visits, cast long shadows through the narrow opening of our bedroom door. I glanced at the clock - 2:15 am. "Damn," I thought, "I'll never get back to sleep." Always a light sleeper, I'd learned how to tune out the sounds around me to which my wife was more likely to respond. She could change a diaper in her sleep and not remember it in the morning, but the second I set a foot on the bedroom floor, I may as well put on a pot of coffee and get dressed for work. That foot was on the floor now, as I rubbed my eyes and grumbled to myself about the TV waking me up.

I am my own Echo Chamber

What the heck is an echo box, anyway?

The other night I was sitting with some Dear Friends after a late supper and Friend #1 mentions that he has been reading "outside his echo chamber." I later came to understand that by echo chamber, he meant outside his usual sphere of (in this instance, politically) like-minded individuals. The implication eventually arose that I should do the same.

It's an interesting idea that certainly has merit and I might want to do so, but I think I'm going to run into some difficulty.

Two of my old cronies that visited me at my office yesterday laughed at the idea, and they were quick to point out that my immediate circle of friends is about as diverse as they possibly come in both genetics and ideology. I, myself am a reasonably conservative, middle-income, pro-gun, meat-eating, heterosexual Christian white male, yet among my immediate circle I can count atheists, liberals, vegetarians, non-heterosexuals (awkward-sounding, I know, but "homosexual" was too narrow) and just about every ethnicity. Points of view range from moon-bat left to reactionary right and all points along that pendulum swing, with me sitting quietly and politely listening to it all, nodding with interest. As often as not, I am the token conservative at social gatherings outside my family. I suppose it could be argued that with the exception of attending church, I surround myself with differing points of view as a matter of habit, and rarely seek out people who share my ideologies. I rarely find myself in the company of people who would actually "echo" my thoughts. Quite frankly, though provided with every opportunity, some polite, some heated, I've yet to be persuaded from my ideological perch, so I've come to a conclusion:

I am my own echo chamber.

If someday, you should find me shambling down the street, alone, destitute and disheveled, muttering to myself and shouting at invisible listeners and unfortunate passers-by, don't pity me or think me insane. Just remind me of my decision to get outside my echo chamber. Oh, and give me a sandwich.

"I have goats in my pants"

Have you ever gotten a song stuck in your head, and try as you might to get rid of it, it just keeps floating back up to the surface of your mind like a mafia victim too buoyant for his cement shoes? Man, I know I have, and usually it's a song to which I only know just a couple of words - and I hear those words over and over and over again until I'm ready to drive a railroad spike through my forehead to vent it out.

My friend, Craig, has a simple cure for himself whenever he finds a song stuck in his head. He would simply replace the inane tune with one he likes. Usually it only took the opening lines of Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me" to push out the offending ditty and he was free to think clearly again. Obviously it worked well enough that it became something of an inside joke among our circle of friends.

So what do you do when it's not a tune, per se, but a phrase? Worse than that, a complete non sequitur of the most embarrassingly goofy variety?

For the last several weeks, I have had the phrase "I have goats in my pants" bouncing around in my skull like a frantic rubber ball, waiting impatiently to find some way to insinuate itself into conversation.

[Friend] "Hey, Keith, what's new?"
[Me] I have goats in my pants "Nothing much ... how 'bout you?"

[Different Friend] "What does the Latin phrase Cogito Ergo Est mean?"
[Same Me] I have goats in my pants "I think, therefore I am."

And so on ... Personally, I'm hoping that by typing it out here in this format, I'll exorcise the phrase from my brain once and for all, but just in case:

"Step inside. Walk this way. You and me, babe. HEY HEY!"

Meaty Urulogists

Twice.

Worse, twice in three days.

You see the fancy images on your TV. You hear terms like "dopplar radar" and "NEXRAD," but it's all a ruse. A sham to convince you that the huckster on one channel is better than the snake-oil salesman on the other. The actual forecasting of weather in Texas probably involves chicken entrails and rolling lizard bones in a cup.

No, I take that back, because I think those methods would have a higher accuracy potential.

Case in point: Saturday morning, as I prepare to attend my 9:00 am Aikido class, I dutifully check the instant weather channel on my Dish Network satellite connection. "Sunny to partly cloudy and warm - chance of precipitation less than 10%." According to a local weatherman, "less than 20%" is just a statistical hedging of the prognosticator's bet, and their way of saying, "it's not going to rain, but don't quote me." Not content with a single source of the local forecast, I check in with a local radio station and they confirm the previous report.

Always enjoying an opportunity to take the motorcycle out, I load up my Aikido uniform on the passenger seat, and take out the rain-suit that usually resides in the left saddle-bag to make room for a pair of heavy sandals to wear while training outside. Being warm, I also remove the large windshield in favor of catching the breeze during my ride. Naturally, shortly before class ended, the skies darkened and voluminous clouds rolled in seemingly from nowhere and launched pomeranian-sized raindrops between tremendous bolts of lightning that bounced the power off-and-on again around the neighborhood. I waited for hours after class was over for the rain to settle into merely a standard soaking before resigning myself to fate and setting off for home by the shortest possible route. Once home, I checked the weather channel again: "Sunny to partly cloudy and warm - chance of precipitation less than 10%." Grumbling, I poured all 10% out of my boots on the front porch.

The following day, Father's Day, the weather forecast was grim: "Thunderstorms likely - chance of precipitation 80% - Severe weather possible." I spent most of the day outside in the abundant sunshine.

During the week, my workday morning ritual usually consists of the radio alarm clock going off at 4:00am for my wife to get up, put coffee on and do whatever it is she likes to do without the demands that two young boys and a needy husband put upon her. At 5:00am the alarm goes off again and I lay in bed until 5:08, when Brad Barton, one of the more respected meteorologists in the area comes on the radio to give his best guess for the day. Thus armed with information and the cup of coffee my wife presses into my hands I decide on whether to take the bike or the truck to work. Monday's forecast was sunny and warm, high around 94°, with winds shifting late evening and chances of storms not arriving until after midnight, because they were still way up in Kansas wishing they could find some feature in that bland, cornfield of a state to knock over. So, confident that I had a free ride until at least after I got home from work, I pulled on my remaining dry pair of shoes, took the bike out of the garage and headed off to the office. Sometime around 2:30 in the afternoon, I could hear hurried conversations outside my office door by my coworkers asking each other if the windows were up on their cars, because it looked as though it were going to start raining at any moment. While certainly dark and threatening-looking, the weather was windy at worst when I finally left for home around 3:30 and pulled out of the parking lot. While the rain may not have made it as far west as my office, it was most certainly waiting for me on the easbound leg of my ride, where it ambushed me and several other incredulous bikers with painful, welting drops that felt more like hail than water. Water-skiers will tell you that water feels like concrete at 60 mph. Imagine what it feels like when it hit you square in the face at 70. That watery, full-auto firing-squad assailed me until I finally reached my exit and could ride slowly on the side streets of my neighborhood.

I arrived home red-faced and numbed from the overload of pain in my face, hands and chest, and after stripping off my wet, clinging clothes, collapsed on the sofa until I regained feeling in my battered extremities. I got up, got dressed again and looked out the window to see the sun sheepishly peeking out from clearing skies.

When my boots are dry again, I'm going to use them to kick a meteorologist in the groin ... hard.

Still working on it.

I'm two pages into a new story. Hopefully, it'll be worth the wait. If not ... well, what do you expect for free, right?

6-22-04 Update: I'm liking the direction this little bit of fiction is taking and really want to take my time with it. It may very well be a while before it finds it way into the eternal sunshine of anyone's computer monitor. It clearly looks like it'll be to big to be a blog-post, in any case.

Observations of Silent Aikido

[Note: Those of you who don't train in Aikido, or any other martial art may find the following rather tedious... H/C]

Each year, on the anniversary of the passing of O Sensei, North Texas Aikido conducts a “silent class.” No student may talk from the time they bow at the threshold of the dojo until once again back outside. A kiai, laugh or moan (as the situation warrants) is considered acceptable, and certain allowances are made for the person assigned to handle incoming calls or visitors; but no verbal communication is otherwise allowed.
For the first few years, this typically made me uncomfortable and left me with an awkward frustration. I have been – and continue to be – the sort of student who tends to learn best by explaining and demonstrating to others. My methods have usually been to use analogies – flowing water, inflating balloons or anything that suddenly comes to mind, and I’ve rarely hesitated to expound on them at length to my usually long-suffering kohai during training. Training partners who don’t respond well to one visualization technique to understand the intricacies of tae no henko are frequently barraged by dozens of others in my zeal to help them understand some abstraction I’m trying to convey to them, and by extension, comprehend more deeply myself. Consequently, during these early silent classes, I would maintain a constant internal dialog, spending the entirety of class scripting out how best to file away the information I was receiving, and more importantly – I thought – how to explain it to others. I would focus more on the deprivation of speech, than any deeper lesson that might come as a result. As I’ve begun to mellow with maturity, I have come to realize the value of these quiet times, both internal and external, and have strived to still my tendency to try and package everything with words.

Shut Up and Train

My Sensei, Russell Alvey of North Texas Aikido, has a sign, which occasionally gets posted on the bulletin board in our small kitchen area. It reads simply, “Shut Up and Train.” There is usually no explanation associated with the sign, nor is it ever specifically pointed out during or after class, yet we all get the message: less talk, less discussion and more actual performance of the demonstrated techniques. It has been during the “gentle reminders” in general, and the somber atmosphere of our silent classes in particular that I’ve made some of my more profound leaps of understanding in my own Aikido training. The inherent problems of overanalyzing technique through discussion become increasingly apparent during the silent sessions. As a result, I’ve endeavored to better understand the qualities of silent training that engender a more personal and valuable training experience.

What Color is Blue?

To a colorblind individual, or someone otherwise visually impaired, “blue” is an abstract concept. No amount of description or expository prose on the subject will make them understand the qualities of hue, tint, shade or the refraction of light that – we who can see – call “blue.” So, too it is with aikido techniques. Certainly we can instruct a student to “stand in this fashion” and “hold your hands up this way,” but the internalization must be through personal discovery. Sensei tells us that we cannot have his Aikido, nor he his sensei’s. That is to say that what we take away from his classes must be our own. No amount of explanation can make our techniques exactly like his. No deep philosophical discussions or metaphorical analogies can make us feel exactly what he feels when performing techniques. Frequently, I stumble when trying to explain what Ki feels like when extended. Words don’t adequately convey the sensation, and all my attempts seem shallow and imprecise. This brings me to my next point.

Making Other People Wear My Filters

If I tell a new student, “you will feel a certain way when you do the technique correctly,” I may be inadvertently prejudicing them towards frustration and failure. What I feel during the execution of my technique is deeply personal and is a result of my current level of understand and training in Aikido. Another student at the same level may feel completely different sets of cues and feedback while doing the technique, even though physically performing the same actions. Frustration may set in for the newer student who may not experience what I describe at all, yet performs the technique properly for his or her level. He or she may feel an expectation put on them that a technique isn’t correct unless they experience the sensations I’ve described. Any other personal feedback or physical cues might be interpreted as irrelevant and discarded. As a consequence, a newer student may struggle with the conflicting information between my description and his or her personal feedback.
I experience and understand Aikido through the filters of my own background experience, culture, beliefs and level of training. If learning Aikido is a journey, then asking a fellow student to focus on the view from my vantage point only serves to diminish their appreciation of the vista from their own mountain.

Tuning out the Static

When faced with a silent class, I am forced to quit forming questions for my Sempai and rather concentrate on the subtle shifts of balance and ki. Careful observation of the demonstrated technique to glean the proper foot position and shape of the movements become paramount. Interpretation of the ukemi to see how the uke’s balance has been affected gives rise to understanding of the direction of the throw. Eventually, the static of internal dialog – the constant buzzing of words and phrases in my mind to describe the motions for later use – give way to a more serene, yet more intense physical focus on the techniques themselves. “Direct transmission” of technique through ukemi, concentration on the manipulation of balance, and blending with my partner begin to transcend spoken communication. Physical emulation takes place instead of rationalization. Rather than limiting technique by vague verbal description, the information bypasses my filters and is absorbed directly. I’ve head this referred to as “muscle memory.” When working with kohai, I am forced to be very clear in the performance of technique, to convey physically the essence of what is expected. I am compelled to demonstrate technique without ego or excuse, without explanation or exposition, without the frustrating inadequacies of mere words. I and my filters have been removed from the equation and only the aikido remains. There is a purity I experience in these classes – a distillation of information into its most elemental form. For a brief moment, my partner and I experience communication on a much deeper and sincere level. Because blending with each other’s motion is so paramount to mutual safety and understanding, it becomes more instinctual than instructed. Without the interruptions associated with verbal direction, ukemi becomes more personal and fluid, flowing rather than halting at preset points. The tendency to overanalyze techniques is washed away by the sweat of actually performing them, and questions tend to give way to revelation.

Afterglow

Following these all-too-rare classes, there is a reinvigoration of the excitement I felt when I first began taking classes and everything about Aikido was new and mysterious to me. My fellow students seem similarly energized, as well. Outside, after the class has ended and the restriction of silence is lifted, there is a quiet reverence that still hangs palpably in the air. No one wants to be the first to break the spell of silence as we make our way back to our daily lives. We smile and nod quietly to each other, as though we’ve shared some great secret, some bond of brotherhood that will forever enrich our experience in Aikido and the world around us.

H/C

Writer's Hemorrhage

Surely, everyone is familiar with the concept of "writer's block," that circular-logic frustration of staring at a blank page (or screen) and willing something - ANYTHING - to come to the forefront of consciousness for the purpose of writing. All writers have expressed bouts of the phenomenon, and some have even reveled in it, using it as a topic upon which to expound.

I seem to have the opposite problem, at least at this early stage in my blogging career.

During my morning ablution, during which I routinely make my morning prayers, I considered writing a positional piece on the concepts of grace and gratitude and began mentally outlining my thoughts while wasting a inordinate amount of hot water. I decided it was a topic worthy of more meditation and put it back on the mental shelf.

As I pulled in the choke on my motorcycle in preparation for my morning commute and the engine burbled sleepily to life, I considered writing a bit about my dalliances on the edges of the biker-lifestyle and the odd, almost schizoid desire to remain a part of the rebel image, while simultaneously wishing for the mainstreaming of the whole moto-culture. We say that the world would be a better place if everyone rode a motorcycle and could understand the freedom of feeling the wind in your hair, while at same time the "brotherhood" of bikers is built on an "us against the world" mentality. First-time motorcycle owners just leaving the parking lot of their local dealership begin to look with disdain at motorists in their SUVs and air-conditioned comforts as the common enemy as an almost-instinctive response to pulling out into traffic. We are "us" because we're not "them." If everyone did join the rebel-faction, the bikers would lose their caché... What a conundrum! Perhaps I'll dig into this a bit more at a later time.

During the actual ride to work, I felt the stirrings of a bit of fiction about the origins of the little drips of moisture hitting my face while riding behind a large garbage truck on the Tollway. MMmmm... the places I could go with that one...

Being called "work" for a reason, I obviously can't write about each of those topics while on the company nickel, and I can only type so quickly before clocking in for the day or during my lunch breaks, so you'll have to settle for a quick overview of the virtual hemorrage of topics bouncing around in my skull until I have time to open up a vent and let them out properly.

H/C

Heat

Sullenly, I tucked my flag under my arm and reached into the back pocket of my Dickeys for my already-soaked hankerchief, dragging it numbly across my forehead and neck. In the heat, my arms felt heavy and limp, like the shot-bags filled with lead we used to weigh down the road signs along the construction area. Last year, during one of the windstorms we get here that blow up from the south like a steel-mill blast-furnace, a couple of those signs got blown down in front of a family of vacationers from the coast. It sent their rusty Ford station wagon into the ditch, tossing luggage everywhere and scaring the kids pretty bad. Jimmy, the foreman, was pretty shook up too and hollered and cussed us the whole time we were helping to get the old heap's bags loaded back up on top again and back on the road. We knew not to take it personally, though. The heat out here makes everybody edgy, and Jimmy was scared we'd get sued for not weighing down the signs. He ran back and forth barking and yipping at us like one of those Mexican chihuahua dogs, veins and eyes bulging and desperate. When we were almost done and Jimmy wasn't looking, we mugged around and winked at the kids, who were all wet-faced and dripping snot from crying. Jimmy even gave 'em a couple of those red nylon flags me and the other new union recruits wave around at passing cars- all to keep them from filing a complaint on our crew with the suits in the main office. Twenty-two man-hours, my road-flags and half a day burned up in the searing heat, just 'cause the sandbags weren't heavy enough.

You better believe we weigh 'em down now. Four bags filled with lead shot on each leg. Six if there's even a little breeze.

"It's gonna be another one of those summers," I sighed, watching the distant signs dance liquidly in the shimmering swelter and weakly wringing out my hankerchief before tucking it back into my sweat-stained pocket. A sedan was coming up a little too fast, and I shuffled out to wave my flag ...

Crack-Cocaine for the Masses

Do you know me?
I'm not a stalker, but I play one on T.V.
That's why I carry the American Excess Card

Don't peep through the windows of another home without it!

The brother of a friend of mine has landed a role in the "reality-based" T.V. show, "Joe Schmoe 2." Based on the popularity of the first installment of the show- wherein the "schmoe" is unwittingly dropped into the middle of a cast of professional actors who pretend to be fellow contestants- it's quite a feather in the cap of an actor to get a role in such a runaway hit program.

He plays the stalker, "Bryce," who fixates on one of the other characters and likes to watch her every move without being seen, himself.

It's rather ironic, really, since that's what the show asks us to do as well. His performance becomes ours.

Karl Marx once said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." If that's to be considered, then reality-based TV shows must surely be the crack-cocaine - Cheap, low-grade, highly addictive and seemingly targeted to the simpletons of society, who come back to it time and time again regardless of their revulsion.

They're also inherently mean-spirited. Personally, I consider so-called "reality" TV one of the lowest forms of entertainment - somewhere between snuff-films and burning ants in the back yard with a magnifying lens. It's shaden-freude voyeurism for the unwashed masses, who get to sit and themselves fixate on the discomforts, indignities and mental or physical suffering from the comfort of their living room. Add the that the technological wonder of TiVo, and you can rewind and breathlessly watch over and over again the expressions on the faces of the willing victims at the precise moment of their anguish. Delicious, isn't it?

So ... I'm torn. I could tell myself that I'm watching the show only to view the performance of a good friend's brother, but of course he's not always on the screen. I could claim that it's merely an academic interest to bolster or shift my opinion of such shows, but the narcotic effect of such voyeurism isn't deflected by a badge of academia, and would find its irresistable way in to scintilate my synapses and dull my defenses. And lastly, should the serious tone of my thoughts on the matter belie the fact, I know it's a comedy and probably quite funny.

I am certain of one thing, though: those people who pick up a crack-pipe for the first time, don't do it with the goal of getting hooked, either.

In the movie, "8mm" which dealt with the disturbing topic of snuff films, Joaquin Phoenix's character had a line that has stuck with me long after I've tried to wash the rest of the disturbing images of the film out of my head:"When you dance with the Devil, you don't get to lead."

Perhaps I should just sit this one out.

The Path of The Shell

Coming soon to a computer near you. Perhaps not, but it's definitely coming soon to a computer VERY near me. I'm enthralled by the entire MYST universe, and the new expansion pack to URU: Ages Beyond Myst is a must-buy for me. It will doubtless signal the beginning of a renewed period of hermit-like behavior on my part until, unshaven and maggoty-white I emerge from the computer-cave, blinking against the sudden daylight like Punxutawney Phil, looking for my shadow. I already know the results of the prognostication, however, as THIS is coming fast on the heels of the URU expansion pack.

Look for me soon on the backs of milk cartons ...

Dust

Dust.
Billows of forgetfulness spread lugubriously
over good intentions and future promise.

To clean would only reawaken old failings,
lumbering back into unfettered view, wagging moldy fingers
and voicelessly mouthing regrets and admonitions.

The deliberately forsaken, orphaned by restless regard,
rise - hands clinging for my hem and wait anxiously
to resume their tug, tug, tug for my attention.

As is the worker, so too is the workplace.

Time to tidy up.

2004 R.O.T. Rally Report

This is actually a report from two weeks ago, but I thought I'd post it here for your amusement... H/C

After staying up 'till nearly 1am Thursday night finalizing everything and making sure the bike was packed, we got up at 5am Friday morning for a 6am departure time. This would be a new experience for Keli, having never been on the bike for more than an hour's trip at any given time. It was a new experience for me as well - having to operate a fully-loaded down bike with a passenger and cargo in Dallas rush-hour traffic.

Nevertheless, we got under way only a few minutes behind schedule and managed to get to the south side of Dallas before traffic started to thicken up and the nut-jobs talking on their cell-phones while applying makeup or shaving began to trickle into the morning commute. Keli was sure to let me know when she thought her comfort-level had been exceeded by clutching at me with both hands and knees until I thought I couldn't breathe. Fortunately, we quickly left Dallas behind and found ourselves on the open highway with little to do but watch the scenery blur past.
With each passing mile, we were joined by more and more like-minded folks on motorcycles loaded-down with luggage and dressed in their rally-going regalia, until we reached our first scheduled stop on the way down to Austin - The Czech Stop in West, Texas. The parking lot was full of bikes, and the line at the counter for fresh kolaches and the other treats that the bakery is famous for was nearly wrapped around the entirety of the inside waiting area. Along the tops of all the walls are hundreds of autographed publicity shots of the famous and not-so-famous celebrities who have frequented the store over the years, including Brave Combo, Shakira, Alice in Chains, Kiss (!), Willie Nelson, Hank Williams Jr., and just about every other celebrity who has ever taken a tour bus down to Austin. While there, we discovered that Keli's sunblock doesn't do anything to protect against wind-burn, because she looked like a negative from a photograph of a raccoon.

There were a few more "comfort-stops" along the way to relieve the pressure that too-large fountain drinks can cause before we pulled into Round Rock and looked for the Dell Computers campus to drop off our luggage with Craig. Soon we found ourselves victims of my usual lousy orienteering skills, and despite what seemed like simple directions over the phone, we were touring the local neighborhood instead of pulling into the parking lot of our host's workplace. Fortunately, Keli managed to make out the blue tops of the Dell buildings and steered me in the right direction, where we found Craig waiting for us with a bemused expression on his face, wondering how it was that we came in from the direction that we did. We made our hellos and talked bike-stuff while unloading our tour-pack and stripping off the quick-release windshield, before heading back out to ride the rest of the way to the Rally site.

Checking in at the R.O.T. Rally was much simpler than last year, and considerably more streamlined, as the tickets were all imprinted with unique bar-codes that the staff simply scanned before sending you to pick up your Rally shirt and wristband. All in all, it took less than five minutes from the time we parked among the sea of bikes before we were official rally attendees.

Problem was, we were already exhausted. Lack of sleep combined with road-fatigue from the ride and the already-hot sun had us both making our way to the nearest drink-vendor where we given the choice of $5 cans of beer, $3.50 bottles of water or $3.75 bottles of Gatorade or Pepsi. Ouch! Fortunately for us, Dan and Becky of Quick-Shade fame had their booth at the rally again this year, and welcomed Keli and I to use them as a home-base to rest and recuperate when we weren't stumbling around the fairgrounds. I parked my bike out in front of their booth to serve as a product model for their indispensible bike-cover that shades the saddle and saves me from a roasted rump on sunny days.

After resting long enough for the road-buzz to wear off, Keli and I set out to wander the grounds and take in all that the R.O.T. Rally had to offer - which, as usual, was an overload for the senses. For many of the attendees, the Rally is an opportunity to let down your hair and "play biker" for a long weekend of escapism and fantasy - not unlike attending a Renaissance festival - and those people were plenty obvious in their shiny new leather, spotless bikes and gawking stares. However, the hard-core types were in attendance as well, double-rocker colors on their vests and grizzled road-burned looks setting them apart from the weekend warriors. Both types of rally-goers, as well as the myriad folks that fit somewhere in-between managed to mix just fine for the duration of the festivities.

Late Friday afternoon, I got a call from Craig saying that he and Debbie were off from work and were going to go ahead and try to register before the biker-parade was to leave for downtown and the party on Congress and 6th Streets. It was a calculated risk, because if you didn't get back out on the roads ahead of the parade, you could easily be snarled up in traffic for over an hour just waiting to exit the grounds before discovering that many of the downtown streets were completely barricaded against traffic, as well. As it was, they managed to get in, got banded like endangered species and even look around a little bit, before we all hit the road ahead of the parade. Craig and Debbie had less trouble finding parking for their truck than Keli and I did for the bike downtown, but we eventually met up at the stage area where the Georgia Satellites were set to perform around 9pm. We swam against the sea of humanity that the gathered downtown to try to forage for something to eat, and managed to get inside the Chipotlé restaurant several blocks away before it got crowded. The staffers looked like deer caught in the headlights at the prospect of such a crowd pushing in through the front door, and the manager explained to us by way of apology that the evening crew was completely unaccustomed to the incredible rush of hungry patrons. After gorging ourselves on the melon-sized burritos, we waddled out in search of a margarita or daquiri ($10 each!!) and a spot to watch the concert. The Georgia Satellites certainly didn't disappoint, and after we'd heard a few songs we took note of the increasingly frequent lightning flashes to our north that signaled the frontal edge of the storm that was headed our way. It was quickly decided that a hasty exit was in order, and I didn't relish the prospect of getting caught in a downpour without the windshield on my bike to protect me from the rain. At highway speeds, raindrops feel like hailstones, and I knew my rainsuit wouldn't be much help. Despite my suggestion that she ride back in the truck with Craig and Debbie, Keli insisted on riding back with me (what a trouper!) and in our hurry to get on and get out, we neglected to put in our earplugs. We literally raced back the entire route, and while sitting at the light waiting to turn into Craig and Debbie subdivision, we could see the rain blurring out the traffic light one block ahead us of. Still dry, but nearly deaf from the wind-noise we pulled into the garage, grateful and exhausted from the day. We stayed up and chatted until around 1am or so and Keli and I collapsed on the hide-a-bed.

Saturday
Bleary-eyed and feeling hung-over from lack of sleep, I woke to find a too-chipper Craig and Debbie already dressed and ready to go back to the Rally. Keli and I hadn't really made a concerted effort to see and do everything at the Rally on Friday, knowing we'd be back again all-day Saturday, so we managed to muster up enough excitement to overcome our bodies desire to shut back down again. Since the forecast suggested that we weren't done with the rain yet, we decided to put the windsheild back on the bike for the day's riding. Better safe than sorry, I suppose. We got back to the fairground and were waved past the gate upon displaying our wristbands. Today, the crowd of people queing up to get registered for the day was starting to overflow the entryway parking lot, and we were grateful for our wristbands which earned us a straight shot right into the fairgrounds. We rode past the aftermath of the previous evening's storms, which were reported to have dropped over 3 inches of rain on the hapless campers. Once again, we parked the bike in front of the Quick-Shade booth and set up the bike to display the product (and earn our "rent") before meeting up with Craig and Debbie who had to park in the very-remote car parking area. After seeing some "photo-ops" walking around, I quickly discovered that my digital camera had a broken battery door and had to switch to Keli's for the duration. Unfortunately, her camera doesn't take nearly as nice a picture as mine and so most of the shots taken this weekend are blurry. We looked at motorcycles at the Chop-Shop Tour by Rooke, Billy Lane of Choppers, Inc. and Martin Brothers and I managed to get a couple of shots of misters Rooke and Lane, but I managed to miss the Martins. Keli shopped for do-rags for the boys, and managed to find one for herself, as well, and Debbie got a leather do-rag to wear when Craig finally gets around to buying a bike sometime in July by his reckoning. We went inside the arena to cool off and watch the motocross races - but mostly to cool off. The race classes ranged from 4-5 year olds to the "over-30 class," which frankly embarrassed us to watch. I'm hoping the guys in that race were a LOT over 30, because they rode their bikes like the 4-5 year-olds did, but with a sense of their own mortality that dampened any enthusiasm for leaving the ground.

Since Craig and Debbie brought two coolers filled with drinks and snacks, we made several pilgrimages to the truck to restock (two hands - two drinks!) and refuel. Debbie nodded off for a bit, and Keli and I headed back to help man the Quick-Shade booth with Dan and Becky. Keli caught a quick nap in a chair out in front of the booth, where several people asked if she was working on commission or paid hourly. My reply was that she was on a "union break." After everybody rested up we wandered around some more and eventually went to go check on the "parade" that was starting up early. There's a main road that runs along the perimeter of the grounds and is the primary means of getting in and out of the Rally site. Around 4 pm each day, thousands of bikers start cruising back and forth along the roadway with passengers on the back, while people line up in chairs and in the back of trucks backed up to the road to watch the procession. The atmosphere is very much like a parade during Mardi-Gras where the viewers try to entice the women on the backs of bikes or walking by to show off their "mommy-glands" for some beads or a beer, and quite a few do so. As the day wears on and the blood-alcohol levels increase, so do the willing participants - some of whom really should've quit doing that sort of thing 30 or so years ago. There were two trucks backed up next to each other with plastic liners in the beds that were filled with water and naked women dancing for the passers-by. One of the women was a true amazon with hooters the size of large cantelopes, and she could get those things dancing independently of each other. I have some short video of this trick just to prove it wasn't just wishful-thinking or the beer fooling me. I'm guessing she's a professional ...

Keli and I got seperated from Craig and Debbie right about the time that the Hank Williams Jr. concert was to begin, and we sent each other voice mails in a vain attempt to reconnect somewhere in the massive crowd. Eventually, Keli and I decided that we were tired and wanted to get something to eat off-grounds and rode out to a Taco Cabana along the highway, where we left yet another message on Craig's phone to let him know where we were and that we'd just meet them back at the house.

Sunday morning, Craig got a call from his folks telling him that he needed to come pick up his daughters, because Shelby (his oldest) was feeling homesick and missing them too much to wait for a late afternoon reunion with her parents. Despite the offer to stay as long as we wanted at the house, Keli and I loaded up as quickly as we could so everyone could leave at the same time. We knew that we had a long day ahead of us, as well. We rode the 4+ hours back to the house with great speed and few stops, only to hop in the station wagon and drive another two hours east to pick up our own children who'd been spending the weekend with their grandparents. Needless to say, we were both completely exhausted by the time we got home and collapsed in bed just as soon as we could get the boys into theirs.

Keli was smart and took the following day off to recuperate. I'm an idiot and am sitting here at my desk feeling like a zombie ...

There's nothing to read out there ...

Well of course, that's not really true, but I can't find anything.

A friend, several months ago, had made a comment about the Lemony Snicket series of books stating that he couldn't wait until my boys were old enough to read them and sent me a link to the "author's" website. I filed the information away in the back of my head for later retrieval, but otherwise didn't act on it.

Fast forward to the present when my cravings for some new reading material (outside of the 2-foot stack of magazines on the bathroom floor read and re-read during my morning obligatories) disinterred the recommendation. Yes, I know the books are written for children, but (ostensibly) so are the books in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling - and I certainly enjoyed those. However, unlike the tales of Master Potter, the Lemony Snicket books are short enough for me to consider reading them to my sons as part of their bedtime rituals.

Problem is, they're not available.

Well, all right, YES they ARE available, but not in the cheap packaging I prefer. They've been in print more than long enough to have filtered their way into the used-bookstore system, but apparently not long enough to have found their way into paperback. Amazon.com has them, Barnes and Noble has them - heck, even Wal•Mart has them (just not volume one, blast it!), but they exist only in hardback and command hardback prices.

So, loading up the wife and children in the much-used Mercury wagon, we set out to find used copies at Half-Price Books' nearest location and came up empty, after a thorough search of the aisles and more than one furtive, stolen glance at the more bohemian clientelé.

"Daddy, what does she have an earring in her nose?"
"Because she missed, sweetheart... Never get dressed in the dark."

Rather than pack up the boys and head to another neighborhood location, we decided to go for the big money and drive downtown to the Grand High Poobah of Half-Price Books' locations, the Main Store. This place is larger (by far) than most municipal libraries in north Texas.

I decided not to fool around this time, but marched directly to the information desk upon arrival and asked them point-blank if they had any copies of Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events." A man behind the counter, who had the look of your usual "undecided-so-let's-just-get-a-Liberal-Arts-degree-in-10-years" type made a noise somewhere in the back of his adenoids that I realized was a giggly little laugh. Perhaps it was the look on my face that made him reconsider, and he helpfully explained that the books in that series, along with "The Davinci Code," "The South Beach Diet" and a few others were the holy grail of used books, and were frequently resold and leaving the store tucked under the arm of its purchaser before the original owner could get back out of the parking lot.

Disappointed, but determined to make to most out of the trip I sauntered over to the section where I'd find motorcycle books. If I wanted a coffee-table picture book singing the praises of Harley Davidson in its one-hundredth year of operation, I'd be set - there were dozens. Those of us riding metric Japanese bikes were out of luck. Next, I wandered over the the martial arts section, to see if any of the Aikido books I've been interested in finding could be located. There were NO Aikido books on the shelf. In fact, the entire martial arts section was smaller than my collection of cookbooks at home.

Feeling less and less enthused, I made my way to the sci-fi/fantasy section of the store and wandered up and down the aisles grazing among the colorful covers and familiar authors. But alas, not knowing what I wanted, coupled with the general malaise that had come over me at my repeated failures to acquire anything new to read, saw me leaving the huge bookstore two hours later with nothing to show for it.

On the plus side, my two boys each got a few books out of the deal. They used them to bludgeon each other in the back seat on the long, sullen ride home...

H/C

What's Inside the Head of HeadCheese

Don't ask why I've done it ...

Call it hubris - call it vanity, but I have decided to dip my toe into the crowded and often fetid waters of online web-logging (or "blogging" for the uninitiated- all three of you).

What form will this blog take? Only time and a dedication to keeping house here will tell.

Doubtless, I'll have postings about my ever-evolving interests, but I keep telling myself that an exercise in journaling my thoughts and creative writings would be a Good Thing, regardless of topic.

And so - a brief (yeah, right!) introduction is in order. My real name is Keith, but for so long as I've been posting to online forums (and I day say it's been some time - Remember dialup BBS's?), I've elected to use the moniker "HeadCheese," after the term of endearment my late grandfather used to refer to his even later dog, Tex. "He's got to be the Head Cheese around here," he'd often say when I was a youth down in the steamy suburbs of New Orleans, and whether it was the heat, humidity or my impressionable youth, the name adhered in my psyche somewhere next to all the other names I'd already chosen for myself in preperation for my inevitable rise to fame. I'm still waiting ...

I am a Graphic Designer in Dallas, working for a modestly-sized printing company, The Master's Press. My previous incarnations have included professional juggler, fry-cook and soda-jerk, advertising salesman, art director for a large Christian publishing company, an exceedingly brief stint as the art director for the largest skin-care magazine in the WORLD (no kidding!) and later (perhaps as a means of gently rediscovering humility at the hands of a loving God), art director for a dysfunctional and very small family-run print shop for nearly ten years before finally landing in my current role. What a ride!

I have studied "Iwama-style" Aikido at North Texas Aikido for nearly twelve years now, and currently hold the rank of Nidan (2nd-degree black belt) as recorded at the World Aikido Headquarters in Japan.

In November of 1989, I married my childhood sweetheart after dating her since we were in middle-school, and after stalling her on the subject for nearly ten years until I was nearly killed by a freak illness, we now have two sons, ages 3 and 5. Funny how near-death experiences change your outlook on living....

Other hobbies which will most-likely make appearances here from time to time are my obsession with my motorcycle and spending all my money on its care and feeding, cigars (which I've come to consider part of MY care and feeding), home-brewing, hunting, shooting, and the finest computer games ever created: Myst, Riven, Exile, Uru and the upcoming Myst IV-Revelation. I'll probably link you to political discourses by persons who share my view of the world, but I'll likely not post much of my own thoughts on the matter, as they often make me feel sullied and agitated.

With any luck, I'll use this forum to experiment with creative-writing, too.

So there it is in a nutshell, with me as the nut. Happy reading (or not).