METAFILTER COMMENTS I have been active on metafilter.com for over a decade and have made several thousand comments along the way. While technically not a journal, they might offer some insight. It was fun but sometimes cringeworthy digging through them all. Unfortunately, these seem to be the pick of the lot: AUG 2008: Should anal retentive be hyphenated? SEP 2008: I wound up playing the viola because I rode the bus to school and didn't want to wrestle with a cello or bass viol everyday and all the violins had been taken. I rather enjoyed the instrument, especially after I began to think of it as a tenor cello rather than as a violin with a glandular problem. And it can be very expressive in its own quiet, subdued way... OCT 2008: You can lead a piano to water but you can't tuna fish... MAY 2009: One of my duties at an historic church in Texas was to maintain the parish records. As the parish archivist I had access to records as far back as the 1850's. The spike in parish deaths amongst mostly young adults and teens during the Spanish Flu pandemic was frightening. There were burials at least once per week, often more, for months in a parish of a few hundred individuals. NOV 2009: Is it reasonable to assume that an omniscient, omnipotent, eternal and unknowable entity is somehow constrained by human understanding? Just asking... OCT 2010: There are two kinds of vessels in the navy: submarines and targets... NOV 2010: I'm pretty sure this will fall on deaf ears but the organization being talked about already exists and has for a century. It is an organization specifically crafted to confront and mitigate the abuses of wealth and power. Because of its very effectiveness it has been relentlessly targeted for decades and is now but a shell of its former self. But it still exists and it still works. It is, of course, organized labor. Unions are kryptonite to the plutocracy... APR 2011: Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. - John Steinbeck JUN 2011: Kee-rist! I lived through all that bullshit! Don't make me have to look at it again... JUN 2011: As a child of the 1950's I would say, retrospectively, the so-called innocence was actually naivete... JUN 2011: The no smoking ordinance in Austin ruined my own funerary plans. There was to be a pub crawl up and down 6th Street with some portion of my ashes left in an ashtray at every stop. It was to be an endurance test, to see if me or the mourners gave out first... JUL 2011: I was there. I was working a summer job in downtown Austin before my senior year in high school. I was close enough to see the puffs of limestone from the bullets striking the tower. I caught several glimpses of the gunman shooting through the drainage openings in the observation deck. I knew several people who were shot, some of whom died. One was the girl already elected president of my senior class. Another was Whitman's wife who had taught at my school. Not a happy memory. I won't be following any of the links... MAR 2012: I used to do announcements in a stadium and I indeed had to stick my fingers in my ears to block the delayed, reverberating sound of my own voice... AUG 2012: I spent almost two decades behind the bar. I started at the end of the cocktail era so I learned and used a number of the classic recipes. Though cloaked in much myth and mystery, the Martini was one of the least interesting concoctions. It was widely acknowledged amongst mixologists that as the recipe had become drier and drier it had pretty much ceased being a cocktail and instead was little more than a raw slug of gin (which may not be a bad thing if you really like gin). But even at near classic 50/50 proportions with superior ingredients it never interested me as much as, say, a Negroni or even the humble Gin and It. In any case, I was known for my Rob Roy... SEP 2012: I think of myself as a "fractal reader". I never begin a book or finish one. I open a book randomly and begin to read. It may be for a few minutes or for several hours. After I set the book aside I might pick it up again tomorrow or it may be next year. In either case, I will again read from it randomly. This applies to fiction/nonfiction, short/long formats, across all genres and from any source... OCT 2012: Dogs have owners, cats have staff... OCT 2012: I worked at Universal during the 70's. Part of my job was to watch all of their product broadcast on prime-time. To this day I will rarely voluntarily turn on a TV... NOV 2012: As a pessimist I'm always happy to be disappointed... NOV 2012: "When he signed the act he was euphoric, but late that very night I found him in a melancholy mood as he lay in bed reading the bulldog edition of the Washington Post with headlines celebrating the day. I asked him what was troubling him. 'I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come,' he said." -- Bill Moyers in his book Moyers on America on LBJ following the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill... NOV 2012: Normally I use this argument in reference to campaigning but anyone who offers a constitutional amendment as a solution to a problem is essentially blowing smoke up your backside. Excluding the Bill of Rights, exactly 17 amendments have succeeded in 218 years. The last one that passed, the 27th, was proposed in 1789 and took 203 years to pass. Conversely, typically around 200 amendments are proposed every session in Congress and the overwhelming majority fail to even make it out of committee. This is a monumental waste of time and resources. Could look good on your resume though... NOV 2012: I lived at a co-op once that did something not dissimilar. We bought an old single brand soft drink machine and stocked it with with an array of mystery beers. You pays your money and you takes your chances... NOV 2012: Remember how when the Cold War ended and the military and their budget shrank down to practically nothing and we had that massive peace bonus to invest in ourselves? Me neither... DEC 2012: On Chairman Mao's first visit to the vet after he chose me to save him from starvation, I was informed I was very lucky. My vet is of the opinion that neutered male black short hairs are the best you can have if you get a good one. Apparently I was lucky indeed. The Chairman follows me around like a dog and never lets me out of his sight for long. He is a "talker" and converses earnestly with me throughout the day. He tolerates the attention of others but is strictly a one-man cat. His abandonment obviously left scars but, after a year's worth of getting to know each other, he finally rewarded me with a purr... DEC 2012: The benefits of employee owned businesses are manifold. They don't ship their own jobs overseas. In hard times they are more likely to take reduced salaries or hours than lay off their coworkers, thereby reducing the strain on public services. They are less interested in producing flashy quarterly numbers for The Street than making decisions that will secure their investment of time and labor in the company for the future. Labor/management conflicts are rare (We have met the enemy and they are us. --- Pogo). The salary discrepancies between management and labor tend to be far narrower. Employee owned businesses are neither rare nor noncompetitive. A simple inverse linear correlation between corporate tax rate and percentage of employee ownership could transform the economy (admittedy a personal pipe dream). And don't tell anyone but once you reach 51% employee ownership the entity is, by the classical definition, socialist... JAN 2013: I will never forgive Lotus for litigating VP Planner out of existence. VP Planner Plus ran circles around 1-2-3 without needing extended or expanded memory and the never-released VP 3D was quite likely a Lotus Killer: a 3 dimensional spreadsheet built on a 5 dimensional matrix array that ran in 512K thanks to Forth. CALL IN THE SHYSTERS!!! FEB 2013: After hanging on every word of Powell's dog & pony show at the Security Council I knew three things to be absolutely true: 1) Everything I had just heard was absolute, concocted bullshit. 2) We were absolutely going to war against Iraq anyway. 3) There was absolutely nothing to be done but watch. FEB 2013: As a freshman in 1967 I went into the library listening lab at the University of Texas to kill time. I clicked around until, by chance, I landed on Van Cliburn's 1958 recording of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. I didn't exactly know what it was but I listened anyway. It was the first (but definitely not the last) time I cried at a piece of music. Somewhat disturbing though for an adolescent Texas male of the period... MAR 2013: At the Unitarian church of my youth the running joke was that we were a halfway house for atheists, a place for people who felt guilty not getting dressed-up on Sunday mornings. This joke was reflected in the actual numbers. Half a century ago 85% of all active Unitarians had been raised in other faiths and few born into the church remained active into adulthood [raises hand]... MAR 2013: Many decades ago I was a tour guide at Universal Studios in Hollywood. We were only allowed to point out Lucille Ball on Thursdays when she was in full makeup. On any other day no one would have believed us... MAR 2013: When I was a kid we were driving through Dallas and were stopped at a traffic light. It was a warm day but not hot enough for air conditioning so we had the windows down. Suddenly a gurgling and rumbling came from the left side of the car but I couldn't see anything. I slid over in the back seat and there next to us, waiting to make a left turn, was a GT40. It was so low to the ground its roof line was beneath our windows. It was painted in the blue and white Ford racing colors. Its engine noise throbbed and resonated in our car. I couldn't see the driver but I saw his hand on the shifter. The light changed and whoosh he turned and was gone in seconds. That brief encounter is indelibly etched into my memory... APR 2013: I grew up in Waco. As a kid I once went to a Czech wedding in West. It was like entering another world. The service was early in the morning and then seemingly the entire town adjourned to the local fraternal hall. I have never seen so much food. I was told the women of West had been cooking all week in preparation. The beer flowed incessantly as did the live polka music. The bride, who worked for my dad in Waco, was required to wear her full length wedding dress all day although she could take off her shoes. This was good because she also had to polka with any man who asked her all day as well, including the priest. The oddest bit was when the bride sat in a chair in the middle of the dance floor and everyone gathered around her. Still in her dress, she took a plate and put it between her knees as a target. The menfolk lined up and gently tossed silver dollars at the plate so as to not break it. That honor was reserved for the groom, but only after there was a pile of silver at her feet. As a preadolescent the ...er... symbolism of the practice escaped me at the time. My heart goes out to the wonderful people of that little town... APR 2013: I have a certain fondness for jumping spiders. As a child I was on a long trip, exiled to the backseat and was bored to tears. Then this teeny jumping spider emerged from somewhere down in the door and scurried onto the window. I looked at it and it looked at me. I would tilt my head this way and it would tilt its head (?) the same way. I would move forward and it would scuttle backwards. I would move away and it would crab after me. We kept this up for hours. A meeting of the minds... MAY 2013: Social Security draws so much interest and ire because it represents the last great pool of cash in government the private sector hasn't been able to lower their siphons into. All contributions are either paid directly to recipients or are invested in special securities that can only be traded between Treasury and the SSA. Even worse, the entire plan runs with around a 1% administrative overhead meaning that 99% of the funds are tantalizingly just out of reach... MAY 2013: The only statistically significant thing you can do in a lottery is to buy a single ticket... MAY 2013: I nearly got my sh*t blown away in Tulsa in the 1975 tornado. I was curled up in the floor board of a VW beetle that was hopping around like a frog underneath an overpass in Crystal City. I had unwisely ignored the radar blips moving northward along the Indian Nation Turnpike. The chartreuse green mammatus clouds should have been a warning. With an ounce of sense I would have been scurrying for the "fraidy hole". It is a sphincter clinching experience that will never leave you. My heart goes out to the Okies this has befallen... MAY 2013: I once did some chauffeuring in a 1959 Rolls, complete with right hand drive and an egg timer for a turn signal. Occasionally I would flip through the owners manual. When it came to mechanical specifications, horsepower was simply listed as "adequate"... JUN 2013: If it doesn't include insects, carrion, cannibalism and stuff that looks OK but might kill you then it really isn't paleo... JUN 2013: I enjoy Chandler for his descriptive powers. A few carefully chosen, seemingly unimportant details, casual observations or stinging wisecracks make his fiction alive for me like few others. The plot or genre seem almost irrelevant. The effect may have been amplified in that I first read Chandler while living in LA... JUN 2013: My wife and I (to no avail) kept trying to get our friend Victor to rename his salon to Vicky Sue's House of Big Hair as a sort of tribute to Ann Richards... JUL 2013: I've never put much stock in supplements but then I started to have some really disturbing symptoms. Blood work showed that I had very low B12. Apparently as we age some of us lose the ability to absorb sufficient B12 from diet. The symptoms of significantly low B12 mimics the onset of Parkinson's, ALS and related neurodegenerative nightmares. After 6 months of injections I now happily pop a fruity sub-lingual dose daily but still will pass on the Flintstones... JUL 2013: I saw The Tingler first run in a theater. I remember being disappointed that I wasn't sitting in one of the wired chairs. I had even made an extra trip to the restroom to make sure I didn't pee on myself (or worse)... AUG 2013: There is also the problem of inflexible demand. When you have consumers willing to spend themselves into penury or bankruptcy to save the life or restore the health of themselves or loved ones, there is practically no downward pressure on pricing. Normal market mechanisms simply don't function... AUG 2013: I have long maintained the the so-called American Century was just a stroke of geographical luck. While the other industrial powers burned through talent, treasure and infrastructure in two world wars, North America remained blissfully out of range. Well, that bit of luck has been wearing off for some time now and the US economy has been inexorably sliding back into the pack. This wouldn't be such a problem if our politics, policies and hubris had kept apace... AUG 2013: On a trip to the Rio Grande Valley I gave two Mexican students studying at the University of Texas a ride back to Brownsville. Miriam's family was located on both sides of the border between Brownsville and Matamoros. I spent a night at their apartment in Brownsville and was treated the next morning to a feast. Her mother handmade all the tortillas, the pico de gallo, the guacamole, the huevos rancheros and the chorizo. It emerged in waves from the kitchen, punctuated by a hot tortilla being dropped on your plate for the next round. Everyone sat around scooping, building, spooning and eating. It was one of the best breakfasts I've ever had... AUG 2013: I use my cellphone as a phone. I use my computer as a computer. And never the twain shall meet... SEP 2013: My wife REALLY wanted a child and I was ambivalent but decided what the hell, why not give it a try. "Life altering" doesn't begin to cover it for a thirty-something with zero time around infants or children. It's not an experience I would trade for anything but I do recall when he was still very young we leaned over his crib and said in unison, "Dear, you're going to be an only child." SEP 2013: "Best we can hope for are for the tax loopholes to get closed." Those loopholes were lovingly crafted with years of lobbying and political donations and will be maintained, in perpetuity, with the same. Any notion of changing the game when you don't have a seat at the table is folly... SEP 2013: The most universally applicable and adaptable skill set across all of business, government and non-profits is accounting. If I were headed off to college I would get the best accounting degree I and my parents could afford, even if it was just from a juco, and would be confident that I had equipped myself with the Swiss Army Knife, the Lingua Franca of employment that would serve me no matter what I wound up doing for a living and no matter how many times I had to change careers... SEP 2013: I drove a 1965 commercial VW bus for a number of years (mine was nowhere near this nice). It had been a florist delivery van in Hawaii and still had the Honolulu license plate holder on it. Never could find out how it wound up in Texas. It was one of the 6 volt systems so a good supply of ether was de rigueur for cold weather starting. With the slab-like profile and light weight any puff of wind would send you skittering towards the ditch or into oncoming traffic. Still, many good times in the old Blue Beast... NOV 2013: If Ayn Rand is the only answer, you're definitely asking the wrong questions... NOV 2013: I have forwarded this to my wife. Her master's thesis was about the vagarities of the Texas Board of Education. It will either be nostalgic or she will come after me with a stick for dredging up past horrors... NOV 2013: Cynics have no less a survival rate than Pollyannas. The disease sees to that... NOV 2013: "Veteran parents, what did you wish you had when your baby came along?" A brown paper sack filled with $100 bills... NOV 2013: I've taken steroids only once, a "pack" for an irritated elbow over the course of several days. They turned me into an absolute gibbering idiot (more so than normal) and I have refused them ever since. My first instinct with everyone was to grab their head and start punching. I couldn't sleep or relax and missed a week's work. I knew I had problems when I found myself washing the same load of clothes over and over and over because I couldn't remember if I had used any soap. Never again... (YMMV) DEC 2013: I never wish anyone a Merry Christmas, a Happy Holidays or anything else. But if someone wishes me a merry/happy/whatever I wish them, with common courtesy, the same in return. It's called not being an asshole... DEC 2013: There was actually a medieval theological basis for inquiry and discovery. It was believed that all of creation was a form of hidden scripture. If one could discern that obscured truth then man's knowledge of God and His universe would be increased. True, this was mostly practiced through an analysis of divine symbolism hidden in nature (all medieval art and church architecture is dripping with symbols at every level) but it is not necessarily at odds with a more scientific or mathematical approach... JAN 2014: A creative type down the hall used Quark. With alarming frequency howls and colorful language would emit from his office and I knew it had yet again eaten or totally munged whatever he was working on. Fortunately for me I didn't support Macs so I could do little more than commiserate and walk away shaking my head, trying not to laugh... FEB 2014: I nominate Switzerland for both the Summer and Winter Olympics in perpetuity. The Swiss will fund all construction, maintenance, security and labor costs. In return the entire world visits every two years and willingly empties their wallets, in perpetuity. The IOC is confined to a dingy office suite in the outskirts of Zurich with nothing but a fax machine, yet again in perpetuity... MAR 2014: I've often thought if I ran a banana republic I would grant complete freedom of the press, with one small caveat: All assertions about the government or government officials must be factual and independently verifiable, otherwise the government will sue for massive damages in every instance. Neatly circumvents any need for censorship or control... APR 2014: Ah, a walk down Memory Loss Lane... MAY 2014: We once used a special pink/peach neon for indirect lighting in a club. It gave everyone a healthy, youthful glow and didn't make the drinks or food look too weird. Just the right shade. Old neon tubes when they start to break down are interesting to watch. The plasma swirls, curls, breaks and then reforms in a shaky colored ribbon. The tube will be dead soon but it's pretty to watch the death throes. I'd never really thought about it but I guess I spent a good portion of my working life accompanied by the hum of neon sign transformers... JUN 2014: Jeez, when you find your youth the subject of archaeological digs you know you have been around a wee bit too long... JUN 2014: Not really that new of a phenomenon. In the 60's the hippie/commie/negro scare pumped a lot of money into local law enforcement to buy paramilitary hardware to combat the perceived threat. In Austin a student protest at the University of Texas Student Union gave the local fuzz a chance to try out their new toys. The APD pulled up in their imposing armored vehicle packed with a sexy SWAT team that boiled out to fight the enemies of democracy, god, country and apple pie. Their cunning plan had a small flaw however: tires. There is nothing less awe-inspiring than a pricey piece of hardware waddling and flapping up the street on four flat tires. Every APD vehicle that answered the call that day suffered the same fate. And that was my first lesson in asymmetrical warfare... JUN 2014: I have two enduring memories of Sanborns House of Tiles in Mexico, DF. First, it's a beautiful and impressive space. Secondly, that's where my wife contracted la turista from her breakfast. But it also introduced us to the healing powers of lomotil that was available over the counter from any farmacia... JUN 2014: I can't give any insight on relationships because I'm still as clueless as ever but I can offer an old guy anecdote (old guy, as in on Social Security and married for 3.5 decades old). My wife and I were once both bartenders so we have an abnormal fondness for unpretentious dives with a good cry-in-your-beer jukebox. Randy is sort of the unofficial master of ceremonies at one such watering hole we visit occasionally. Karen and I were discussing something or the other one night when Randy came over, put his arms around our shoulders and announced to the bar, "See these two? Every one of us in here, including the bartender, could leave and they'd still be sitting here talking and enjoying themselves and would never even notice we were gone." JUL 2014: Yes, as practiced, atheism is often just another form of zealotry. That's why I refer to myself as a nontheist, one who simply can't be bothered to give the matter any thought whatsoever. A pox on all their houses... AUG 2014: "Split I-35 in Austin. Whoever the fuck thought that was a good idea probably never had an actual good idea in their life." Yeah it sucks but, believe it or not, it's a vast improvement over what it replaced. At Airport Blvd there was the ONLY at-grade RR crossing in the entire 40,000 miles of the Interstate Highway System. You haven't lived (or nearly died) until the 18 wheeler you're following slams on his air brakes and jackknifes at 70 mph to keep from T-boning a freight train... DEC 2014: My participation in pregnancy consisted of late night emergency runs to Dunkin' Donuts, awkward hours in Lamaze classes hopelessly trying to be a coach and uncomfortable visits to the La Leche League offices. Pretty sure none of that qualifies as sympathy pains... DEC 2014: Actual service members aside, it's not about honor or service. It's not about mom, the flag or apple pie. It's not about protecting the homeland or the American way. It's simply about profits. And that's exactly why it's immune to reform or change. Like much of the federal apparatus, the military is a profit center vigorously defended with lobbying, polemics and campaign contributions. And it pays off handsomely... JAN 2015: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it ... good and hard." - H. L. Mencken JAN 2015: "You want to elaborate? I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, although it sounds very zen." Hardly zen. Almost all political debate from any quarter seems to center on what is right or wrong, how do we fix things and how do we make things better. These debates of opinion, no matter the facts, are essentially endless and are easily manipulated to other ends. For me the cogent question is not what should we do, but rather what WILL we do. Then politics becomes a simple exercise in tallying up potential oxen gored, feeding troughs filled and players with the ability to stop things cold or force things through. Yes, very much a hack perspective, but it greatly reduces being blindsided by nasty surprises or getting your hopes too high... JAN 2015: I had a professor who did a lot of restoration on consignment. Tedious doesn't even begin to describe the process. One piece she let me examine at close hand was an Egyptian funerary encaustic portrait from sometime around the 1st century AD. The wood it was painted on was falling apart and couldn't be stabilized so she was removing the painting as a single piece. Daily progress was measured in mm. Way too tedious for me. The painting itself was spooky. The sarcophagi for commoners were mass produced with a rectangular opening for an individual portrait. Encaustic painting uses pigment suspended in hot wax. It is never totally opaque and has an almost flesh-like quality in some instances. Very strange to be staring closely into the fleshy visage of a 2000 year old corpse... JAN 2015: The ability to efficiently and expeditiously bug out would seem to be an essential component of any US military adventure over the past half century... FEB 2015: It should be noted that a REAL Texas legislator would have reached under his or her desk and produced a 12 gauge, double-barreled coach gun loaded with buckshot and leveled it at the petitioners' genitals. Two can play that 2nd Amendment bullshit game... FEB 2015: "Yeah I recommend that everyone stand in front of a full stack with a few 100 watts of distortion going through it at least once in their life." I can also recommend standing in front of a 150 year old full pipe organ when a Bach fugue is being played. Nothing quite like having the fluids in your body moving about in a Baroque fashion. I actually teared up... FEB 2015: I used to drive through Laurel Canyon regularly when I lived in LA and always kinda wished I lived there. But when the rains, floods, mudslides and fires would come I was happy to be stuck in Van Nuys. My only worry was the occasional tremor and the creepmeter in my front yard. Ah, Babylon... FEB 2015: I have long been of the opinion that whoever comes to power wherever and under whatever banner in the Middle East will need cash flow. That naturally means producing and selling oil, maybe even with our help. So, problem solved without ever lifting a finger. And if they don't have any oil? Then who gives a sh*t. And why is this not a workable solution? Because Israel doesn't have any oil... MAY 2015: I was around when new homes came with a fallout shelter so you could survive the coming nuclear holocaust. This always puzzled me. Why the hell would you want to survive? My plan for when the sirens went off was to take a deck chair and a cooler of beer up on the roof and wait for the (admittedly brief) show... JUL 2015: I spent a summer in my adolescence switching back and forth between the short stories of Flannery O'Connor and J. D. Salinger. I emerged very confused and conflicted... AUG 2015: Well, when you find your hegemony on the losing end of the demographic stick, one must be creative in shrinking the electoral pie. Race has been a most useful tool in this regard... AUG 2015: As one who was tending bar before he was born and who was trained in the even then waning classical cocktails, I will "lift the wee finger" in his memory on the 31st. Far too early in the evening to be closing out your tab... SEP 2015: In the late 70's my (future) wife and I lived at the 21st Street Co-op. Sterling [Morrison] would drop by from time to time for some free grub. Everyone was like, "Velvet Underground? Cool! More mashed potatoes?" SEP 2015: All of us here in Texas knew Governor Goodhair was dumber than a sack full of doorknobs but we wanted to see just how long it would take the rest of you to figure it out... NOV 2015: I used to play [chess]. The only real compliment I ever got was from a guy with a ranking. He said, in effect, that my game was terrible but he enjoyed playing me because I was always seeing things and doing things that had never occurred to him. One of life's little limited victories... NOV 2015: My Mom was a red dirt, Depression era Georgia farm girl so this list is quite familiar. Well, except for the shrimp and rice. That's definitely Gulf Coast. My Mom had never seen a shrimp, much less eaten one until she moved to Houston as an adult. Her sister lived her whole life on the original homestead so we were always well supplied with homemade chow chow and piccalilli. Compared to our own Southern table the list is noticeably missing fried chicken, rutabagas, "relish trays" (melon, tomatoes, green onions, etc) and giant glasses of sweet iced tea... DEC 2015: We have become our own cheap foreign labor stealing our own better paying jobs by shipping them to ourselves... DEC 2015: I probably have a different perspective than most here. I spent 15 years behind a bar and another 10 running them. I have seen and sometimes had to deal with every sort of inebriate on the planet. I recognize two kinds of problem drinker: First, if you become a substantially different person when you drink you run a high risk of doing stupid, regrettable or damaging things to yourself or others. This means not only personality changes but physical ones as well. You shouldn't drink. Second, if the words "stop" and "enough" have no meaning after a few toddies then alcohol is a poison that will kill you. Don't drink. Ever. Just about everything else is manageable. That doesn't mean healthy. Just manageable... JAN 2016: I am nominally an adult because people call me an adult and treat me as an adult. Myself, I will be essentially a pre-adolescent for the rest of my days. Sixty-six years and counting... JAN 2016: As I understand it, the ACA was not primarily about improving anyone's healthcare. It was about slowing the growth of prices in the healthcare sector which had been rising at multiples of the rate of inflation for decades. These increases had been eroding profits in the other sectors in two primary ways: increased costs insuring their workers and less discretionary cash in the pockets of consumers. Those were the planets that fell in line to make the ACA happen. Healthcare was essentially out-lobbied in Congress. The sop to the healthcare sector was requiring everyone be covered, trading quality for quantity to protect their margins. Everything else was pretty much incidental... JAN 2016: Listen boys and girls, if you are faced with the real possibility of a Donald Trump as your presidential candidate, then Donald Trump obviously isn't your fundamental problem... JAN 2016: I was the manager of a club with large (10'x15') projection screens. We had the launch up on all of them as we went about the business of getting ready for opening. I stood there, mouth agape in the middle of the dance floor, and watched the pieces fall into the ocean... FEB 2016: Reminds me of Brown Buck. He had been a stud [rabbit] at the university labs but had become too old for the "work". A student who lived in our apartments adopted him. He was huge. Easily as big as the one in the article. She would just let him out and he would graze on the front lawn. Local cats would come by to check him out and then slowly back away sort of saying, "Nope, nope, nope..." FEB 2016: Imagine you are at a Texas summer camp. Imagine you are sitting in a one-holer outhouse that is like a sauna. Imagine a huge red wasp lands on your bare thigh and starts walking around with its abdomen pulsing up and down. Imagine you sit there, sweating like a pig, for 10 or 15 minutes and the bastard doesn't leave. Imagine you are allergic to wasp and bee stings. Imagine finally the door swings open and there is a counselor who sees your predicament and removes the wasp with a quick swipe of his hand. Imagine your relief... FEB 2016: Have absolutely no idea why it worked and yet we have been at it over 35 years. Still manage to make each other giggle, snort and blow milk out our nose so maybe that's it... FEB 2016: Yeah, Texas is pretty diverse. As I pointed out to someone the other day, there are more Muslims living peacefully in Texas than there are fighting for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/whatever... FEB 2016: Almost any produce you can buy at a grocery is a cultivar, the product of human genetic engineering... MAR 2016: I grew up in the middle of this mess and it left me with a permanent set of dog ears. The Dixiecrats were a year before I was born. All public facilities were segregated in Texas when I was a child. The Goldwater election was in my first year of high school. We regularly traveled to small town Mississippi and rural Georgia during the civil rights protests and I heard plenty of "them northern agitators are coming down here and stirring up our black folks" talk from relatives. The first (and only) black student I went to public school with was in my senior year. Agnes was one lonely girl. I was the only student from her new high school that attended her birthday party. A frequent bridge partner my freshman year in college was the first black to play football for the University of Texas. Our 24/7 floating bridge game possibly contributed to E.A. not making it past junior varsity. No Republican had been elected to a state-wide office in Texas for over 100 years when I was in college. By the time I was in my 30's the entire state was blood red. All this is possibly news to some but I threw up my hands and gave up long ago. No one alive right now will outlive this stain... MAR 2016: The purpose of terrorism is to cause terror. No better way than to attack the defenseless and innocent. Terrorists have no military value whatsoever. The 9/11 attacks barely show up as a blip on the US economy. Their sole impact is on the opinions and actions of the populace and government. Think of them as the armed wing of outrage journalism... MAR 2016: Funny this talk of the UU. I grew up in the UU long enough ago it was still just the U. I particularly remember two elderly gentlemen. Clarence Felter was a card-carrying member of the IWW, performed slight of hand and had irises like polished aluminum. He lived in a wild, overgrown half acre in the middle of town and left small snacks in his mailbox for the mailman. His best buddy was Mr. Roth, a spitting imagine of the older Einstein. Both habitually wore berets. Both loved talking to the young members of the congregation. A departing minister was moved to tears when Clarence, a life long atheist and socialist, joined the church in his honor. If nothing else, the UU showed me that being old need not mean being stereotypical... MAR 2016: This story gave me the creeps. I once worked for a guy who, in some ways, was a very, very small time version of Le Roux (fortunately not violent). He had faux businesses scattered everywhere. There was a constant stream of bank statements from tiny Caribbean islands. He made business decisions by flipping a coin. He ignored laws and regulations almost pathologically. No lawsuit was ever successful against him because of his endless web of empty shell foreign businesses. He would disappear for 6 months or a year and then reappear without an explanation. He once flew me out to Boca Raton to design a custom daily sales program for a restaurant. For some technical reason that eludes me I wound up sitting on the floor of one of his houses downloading some stuff from Texas. It was a slow process over a dial-up modem so I began to look around a bit. I noticed the floor was littered with paper. Checks actually. Tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in undeposited checks scattered about like confetti. Admittedly not as impressive as $100 million in wicker baskets with pink bunnies stamped on them, but it gave me the creeps. Still does... APR 2016: Green Chartreuse served neat and sipped very slowly. One of the most complex flavors I have ever encountered. In Into Great Silence you can watch an elderly monk tending some of the 130 botanicals in the recipe... MAY 2016: I lived in Huntsville as a kid in the 50's. The prison rodeo was a big deal for a sleepy little town. So were (attempted) escapes when the sirens would go off and everybody stayed home behind locked doors. Occasionally you would see a chain gang doing road work and there were always prisoners working the prison farm outside of town watched by guards on horseback, shotguns at the ready. Outside of that, nobody payed much attention to the place... JUN 2016: "It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract." -- Alan Shepard JUN 2016: I'm the third type of traveler: "Y'all have a good time and tell me all about it when you get back..." JUL 2016: My troika of Can't Miss, Must Watch television as a kid and adolescent was The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Predictably, the rest of the time I had my nose buried in a Ray Bradbury paperback... JUL 2016: Fleebnork's Dad: "Obama has brought this country to its knees." I would see this as a good thing since it was on its face when he took over... AUG 2016: Forwarded to my wife. Somewhere in storage we have several hundred pounds of holographic sequins, ostrich feathers, Swarovski crystals and spandex from costuming skaters and pageant babies. Don't ask... SEP 2016: In your best Groucho voice: "Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana..." SEP 2016: I led a deprived childhood back in the neolithic and had only potato flavored chips. Thin, crispy, oily, salty and free from ridges or other deformations. National brands had not yet asserted their total dominance and many cities and towns had their own potato chip factories, much like bakeries. Driving past one was torture. The smell extended for blocks in every direction and all you could think of was POTATO CHIPS! Very effective advertising... OCT 2016: MetaFilter and rec.games.roguelike.nethack are as social as I get. Yes, I live under a rock... NOV 2016: OK, I'm too old to deal with this nonsense. Keep the Social Security and Medicare taps turned on and I won't bother you. If you voted for this asshat he's your problem. Let me know how it turns out. I'll be busy elsewhere... DEC 2016: You have a not insignificant percentage of humanity who are a**holes but who are too chickensh*t to do it face-to-face. The internet and its anonymity allows them to finally LIVE THE DREAM! DEC 2016: Avocado originally tarted herself up for North American megafauna that no longer exists. Fortunately the hairless apes responsible for the extinction stepped in to fill the gap... DEC 2016: "Aluminum trees, color wheels and lead icicles, those were the days." It was my job to assemble the aluminum tree, bedeck it in pale pink ornaments and place the color wheel so it would be properly illuminated through the front bay window for our neighbors... FEB 2017: Nothing works quite so well as The Politics of Hate. It can be nurtured and passed on as a legacy from generation to generation. It requires no coherence, reason or even tangible results. It can anneal the most disparate and unlikely of elements. When you lose the hate only intensifies and becomes more urgent. And when you win it is the glorious time for retribution, the taking of scalps, for blind bludgeoning and dancing on graves. Prepare to be bludgeoned... FEB 2017: I once worked for a guy who was a bit of a loon but often had some brilliant insights. He built a nightclub on Austin's 6th Street, sort of a Bourbon Street knockoff. He insisted it have the largest, best appointed and most luxurious women's room in the venue. His logic was that women would prefer his club simply because of the facilities. And if the women were there, you didn't have to worry about the men showing up. It worked like a champ... MAR 2017: As luck would have it I've been reading The Disappearing Spoon (excellent read). In a section on transition metals he talks of a Phrygian kingdom whose metallic deposits were unusually high in zinc and produced a natural brass that was highly prized because it was more gold-like than bronze. Modern tests have reproduced this result from the local ores. The monarch's name was Midas... MAR 2017: When you are relying on common wisdom for your answers (hello, Google) you are also, simultaneously, relying on common stupidity and deceitfulness... MAR 2017: This looks like my apartment complex. Not only in terms of melanin and cultures but also gender pairings. It's a nice place to live... MAR 2017: Good ideas are not always successful ideas. Nor are bad ideas always failures... MAY 2017: I am a sucker for Soviet art. It ranged from academy styles to almost blatant advertising. And all of it, at some level, was propaganda for the state. But propaganda often with a light, whimsical, even humorous touch. The WPA was as close as we ever came... JUN 2017: The crepe myrtles are getting cranked up here in Texas and will bloom continuously through autumn. There are dozens and dozens of them planted around our apartments. These, combined with our indigenous mountain laurel, can be quite dazzling... JUL 2017: "The customer is always right" is the truncated version for public consumption. Anyone in the service industry knows the full version is, "The customer is always right, even when he's dead wrong". One is pleasant and forgiving with troubled customers for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks. That's where the money is... AUG 2017: LA regularly got me out of my car when I lived there in the 70's. The traffic jams on the Hollywood freeway were so bad we motorists would turn off our engines and go sit on the hood of our cars. We would smoke, chat and curse, all the while looking far ahead for tail lights that indicated the mess was starting to move again. Then everybody back inside to move ahead a few more hundred feet... SEP 2017: We cook dinner for each other. Breakfast and lunch are your problem. Sometimes dinner is as brainless as setting a timer for some frozen glop. Occasionally my wife gets a wild hair and it's a production number. Me, I'm strictly short order greasy spoon, as witnessed by last night's migas. We worked together for a number of years behind a bar so we are fairly adept at staying out of the way. What we have pretty much abandoned is the pretense of sitting down at a table for a meal. Think Alamo Drafthouse style except not in the dark and substituting computers for the silver screen. We reached a compromise on pizza toppings and religiously avoid including dreaded comestibles in shared meals. It's been 39 years so this just might work out... OCT 2017: Every time I find myself in some sort of 2nd Amendment kerfuffle I will reference back to the original intent and purpose of the act. I am usually met with blank and disbelieving stares. I find the emphasis on "original intent" to be a nice tweak to the nose of the Scalia types... NOV 2017: My dad was an engineer for Southwestern Bell. When I was a kid I attended a number of "cut-over" parties, usually barbeques in some small town that was converting from operators to direct dial. The ladies losing their jobs was considered a taboo topic at these celebrations... NOV 2017: I had a somewhat different experience with officialdom. I worked a bar that was a hop and a skip from the headquarters of the TABC, the dreaded Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commision. These guys had discretionary enforcement powers that made the Stasi look like crossing guards. There literally wasn't a place in the state they couldn't close or license they couldn't suspend with or without cause in an instant. And we were their secret neighborhood watering hole. Apparently is was against regulations to fraternize or be seen publically bending an elbow. We knew who they were but never identified them to any of the other patrons. Not even all our employees knew. They were just another table of business guys with a fondness for baggy suits and flattops. In exchange for our discretion, occasionally one would saunter to the bar and say something like, "Jim, be sure everything is kosher and correct tomorrow night about eight o'clock." I would smile, thank him for the heads up and we would both go about our business... NOV 2017: There used to be a place here in Austin called Virginia's. Virginia was the owner, proprietor, cook, waitress and scullion. The hours were irregular, especially if she had a doctor's appointment. Everything was cooked in cast iron, either on the stove top or in the oven. The choices were on a chalkboard. No substitutions. You ordered by writing on a small piece of paper with a golf pencil. She would pick it up when she had time. The service was glacial. The food was devine. And god help you if you complained about the wait. She would hand you a small map with directions to the nearest McDonalds. You might as well go because you weren't getting fed... NOV 2017: There seems to be a persistent fantasy with owning and operating a bar, restaurant or, gawd forbid, B&B. The easy cure is to go work in one for somebody else. If the hours, pay and toil don't do the trick then the pure joy of working with the public in a servile capacity certainly will. The hard cure is jumping in with both feet like this poor misguided fellow. He will be waking up in the middle of the night in a flop sweat the rest of his life. Fawlty Towers was a documentary... NOV 2017: I never read a lot of fiction but a disproportionate amount was science fiction. I enjoyed that it was inventive. It invented worlds, histories, technologies, biologies, terrors, etc. Unfortunately these inventions were invariably populated with cardboard cutouts uttering sci fi boilerplate in adolescent plots. Ray Bradbury was a notable exception. Him I could probably still read. His worlds seemed populated with interesting people... NOV 2017: One measure of cheap cabernet mixed with an equal measure of bargain merlot equals two measures of faux Bordeaux... NOV 2017: Mortality is universal. It is why you were born... DEC 2017: I have a theory. The Boomer generation (guilty!) was a historical aberration. Never before or since has the developed world experienced such widespread destruction of economic capacity and loss of workforce (with one GLARING exception) as postwar Boomers. To grow up with ever expanding horizons and prospects was unprecedented. And then the rest of the world recovered, caught up and it all went away. So now it's back to the historical norm: a small wealthy elite, a modest mercantile class and the swirling masses of The Great Unwashed. This reversion to form has certainly not been painless but, by all appearances, will be mercifully swift due to the modern innovations of robotics and AI... JAN 2018: In addition to no removal or sanding equipment, another exacerbating feature in the South and Southwest is nobody knows how to drive in the stuff. And we just had a New Year's Eve with ice. Wheeee [crash!]... JAN 2018: I experience synaesthetic pain although I'm not an amputee. If someone stumbles, stubs a toe, walks around gingerly while barefoot or I even think of any of these things I experience sharp, almost electric pain from the knees downward. This was a painful post... FEB 2018: "What! Removing art? This is an outrage! Wait, 19th century Pre-Raphaelite Romanticist treacle you say? Never mind..." FEB 2018: Alienation, emotional immaturity and tribal behaviors are pretty much the hallmark of a not-insignificant number of adolescent and young adult males across the board. What seems to have changed is incessant graphic media coverage, farflung gated social networks of like-minds and an exponential increase in lethal civilian firepower. What could possibly go wrong? FEB 2018: TRUMP: The Magical Thinking Man's Magical Thinker... MAR 2018: "Clearly, since American gun ownership is at its lowest rate in 40 years according to Gallup & the GSS, but gun purchases are at a historic high. It's almost as if a minority but toxic portion of the US population is holding the rest of it hostage." There is roughly one gun per person in the US, yet about 75% of Americans do not own a gun. Even more tellingly, 3% of Americans own 50% of all guns. Do a political and psychological survey of that 3% and you will know exactly who the firearm manufacturers and their mouthpiece the NRA are targeting. [source: Quartz] MAR 2018: I knew a working border collie once. His job was to keep a farm and an adjoining golf course free of stray or feral dogs. He had the run of the whole place. The golfers treated him like a pet but he was ferocious with intruders. You could walk outside and call his name once. He might be half a mile away but would soon coming running up to you. The smartest and most dedicated non-human I have ever had the pleasure of knowing... MAR 2018: My rule of thumb is to buy the cheapest, simplest thing that will get the job done given the amount of time and sweat equity I'm willing to invest. I'm not here to save the world. I just want some socks... MAR 2018: No matter what humans might design, other humans will find a way to game it... APR 2018: I have chronic pain everyday from damaged sciatic nerves in both legs. It breaks down into two categories: 1) pain I can ignore, and 2) pain I can't. Over time I have become capable of ignoring more and more. It's there. It isn't going away, but fuck it. And if it passes the threshold of tolerance, then a few hefty glasses of Chardonnay will usually do the trick. Still hurts, but somehow it doesn't seem quite so pressing or urgent... APR 2018: If I'm being overly formal and polite towards you it means I don't know you and probably don't want to... APR 2018: I had a functional equivalent of this back in the 50's. I believe it was from Edmund Scientific, one of those things advertised in the back of Boys' Life. Every few months a mysterious box would appear in the mail with a new project in it. A radio, a metal detector, a telescope, etc. Much soldering, sorting, reading and re-reading and assembly required. And they all eventually worked, after a fashion. The weirdest thing I built was my own cloud chamber complete with a radium source on the head of a pin. I learned a lot from it, but mostly that I had no aptitude for electronics... MAY 2018: We once had a dime store version of this in Austin. Back in the 70's and 80's a retired capitol stringer ran a bar/dive called Don Politico's here. It was frequented by various media types including cartoonists. The men's room (can't speak for the ladies) had absolutely the best graffiti, wit and scrawls in town. They were so entertaining you had to be careful not to lose focus and whiz on your shoes... JUN 2018: Recently pulled down my copy of Ovid's Metamorphosis. Good translation, but after the umpteenth pursuit, capture and rape it went back on the shelf. A seminal work indeed... JUN 2018: We have nighthawks in Texas. I used to watch them zoom up and down inches above the street at dusk. They are aerial insectivores much like swallows and swifts. Rather than "night" "hawks" they are actually "crepuscular" "nightjars (aka goatsuckers)". They also sound like farts when they dive... JUL 2018: I don't hate chocolate but it simply pushes no buttons for me. Never has, even as a child... JUL 2018: I am a skeptic rather than an independent. I feel both parties spew an inordinate amount of nonsense but, with the Democrats, it is at least rarely malignant. I therefore vote the nonmalignant party line since I really have no other viable choice... JUL 2018: I have no talent for languages. What ever was spoken where I was born would be my single tongue for the rest of my life. It just happened to be English. That it has become a lingua franca has made things much easier for me. And I salute all who have taken it on as a second or third language. A kleptomaniac borrowing language with Latinate, Germanic and Brittonic roots that seems to mutate almost daily and in every locale. What a mess to willingly lower yourself into... AUG 2018: I will tolerate no besmirching of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete.. AUG 2018: Iceberg is the salad of my youth and I still love it. Slather, season or garnish it as you will, a wedge of iceberg is a tactile experience. It is a crisp, crunchy, sweet thing to be eaten with a knife and fork. It is the antithesis of any limp collection of mulch, clippings or bitter forage presented as "salad"... SEP 2018: Humans insist upon living in an anthropocentric universe. It requires a good deal of magic to maintain this illusion... SEP 2018: Humans have gone from an exceedingly vulnerable 10k breeding age individuals to 7.6 billion in a mere 250,000 years. Barely a bat of the celestial eye. We aren't going anywhere. We are essentially a virus. We have adapted ourselves to every inhabitable environ on earth and then some. No matter what the cosmos or our own stupidity might wrought, we as a species will persist until our sun dies. Civilization, however, is another matter... OCT 2018: Classical ballet makes demands not only on a ballerina's body but also of it. Long neck, small head, sloping shoulders, small bust, thin and graceful limbs. Being able to actually dance is considered a plus as well. In some ways it is not unlike being judged and graded at the Westminster Dog Show. But occasionally a Misty Copeland or two manages to sneak through so there is possibly still hope... OCT 2018: My wife was bartending one Halloween and one of the owners and his wife were in attendance. The owner's wife was a wee bit in her cups and decided to put a jack-o'-lantern on her head. This poor thing had been on display with a candle burning in it for about a week and was well on its way to decomposing. But the owner's wife apparently walked around with it on her head much of the evening, sipping her adult beverages through a straw until the gourd finally fell asunder. The next morning my wife received a frantic phone call from a very hungover owner's wife wanting to know WTF this snotty, slimy shit in her hair was and how it got there. And thus a legend was born... NOV 2018: While in my case it is far more symbolic than substantive, I have for some time invested solely in municipal bonds. This is how almost all infrastructure is built, maintained and replaced in our country. I privately invest via a mutual fund and civically vote for every bond issue that appears on my ballot. My grain of sand on the beach... NOV 2018: Here's a list of New World foods unavailable elsewhere before Columbus: corn, potato, tomato, bell pepper, chili pepper, vanilla, beans, pumpkin, cassava root, avocado, peanut, pecan , cashew, pineapple, blueberry, sunflower, quinine, wild rice, cacao (chocolate), gourds, and squash... NOV 2018: Given a chance, expenses will always expand to consume any possible income. That is why you always pay yourself first. In this instance that would be eradicating debt. Start with the highest interest debt and work your way down to zero. And keep it there. I've heard rumors there is this thing called a "budget" that might be helpful in that regard... NOV 2018: "Biofilm is a fancy word that scientists use to avoid saying gunk." Stuff grows like mad in commercial ice machines with their constantly running water. Huge ropey gelatinous masses. We affectionately referred to it as "whale snot"... FEB 2019: Pink Squirrel #1: 1 part creme de noyaux, 1 part light creme de cacao, 1 part half and half. Shake and strain into a chilled champagne shell. Pink Squirrel #2: 1 flying squirrel, 1 UV light source. Shaking and straining not recommended... FEB 2019: As retired, my life now more closely resembles my college and early twenties, but hopefully with less stupid. There were a number of promises I made myself should I ever have the time after my responsible adult phase ended. While hardly a bucket list, I do now regularly ascend on nethack, my ponytail is halfway down my back, I listen to classical music every waking minute and my exceedingly lax schedule is governed more by the circumnavigation of the earth around the sun than a ticking clock... FEB 2019: The only thing I ever agreed with George H. W. Bush on was broccoli. It's a stinking mass of sulfur compounds pretending to be a cute little tree... MAR 2019: I inherited a ton of vintage Pyrex from the 40's, 50's and 60's including a complete double boiler. From fridge to oven or stovetop? No problem. From oven or stovetop to fridge? Equally no problem. For decades. Borosilicate is the stuff they use to fashion laboratory glass and for a reason... AUG 2019: I have many failings but can, on the other hand, fold a fitted sheet into a rectangle... SEP 2019: I can flip on the engaged, humorous, gregarious mode when necessary. The battery lasts for a few hours but the recharge takes forever... SEP 2019: At the height of the 80's dial-up BBS craze someone here in Austin, unannounced and unidentified, gave access to a restricted shell account. I was totally lost and clueless but also smitten. And remain so today in all regards... NOV 2019: Never make the mistake of cooking up a double batch of weed-infused chocolate brownies for an outing and that is quite literally the only thing you have to eat when the munchies arrive. A vicious circle that leaves you unable to do anything but stuff more brownies in your face and moan. We had to start giving them away to save ourselves. The off-duty sheriffs playing softball nearby thought they were delicious... NOV 2019: As a bartender and sometimes sommelier over several decades I can assure you the best wine is the wine you like best. The rest is social pressure, a need to belong or differentiate and advertising. Therefore I am now perfectly content with my 5 liter box of Chateau d'Cardboard Chardonnay. Cheers... DEC 2019: [In reference to the rocky launch of WT.Social]: I poked around and eyeballed it for a bit but then the ghost of Google+ appeared in my bedchamber moaning, pointing and clanking chains so I politely declined the invitation... JAN 2020: Come on guys. It's an election year with an unpopular incumbent. Of course there's going to be a war... JAN 2020: In 1960 the manned bathyscaphe Trieste descended 11 km to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. So why haven't we colonised it and built vast cities there with permanent populations? Because it's a monumentally pointless, dangerous and stupid idea, especially given that robotics and AI are far more efficient at a mere fraction of the cost. This is assuming, of course, you are more interested in producing science than aerospace profits... JAN 2020: If you're lucky, you'll live long enough not to care about any of this stuff anymore. Nobody actually keeps score. There are no prizes or medals at the end. And nobody really cares anyway. To quote Elwood P. Dowd, "In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant." FEB 2020: My mom crocheted. I was the only kid in the neighborhood with doilies all over his bedroom and lace on his pillow cases. She worked with the very fine thread rather than yarn. Raised grape clusters, florals and such. We still have a dining room table cover as big as a tarp. Copies of the Workbasket all over the house were a given. Crochet was a significant part of my childhood... FEB 2020: I have no problems visualizing in the greatest detail with actions, reflections, sounds, smells, forward/backward, zoom, whatever. I had all of that in place by the time I finished reading the sentences [in the visualization test]. But it has to be done with my eyes open and somewhat unfocused. Closed, the images in my head are like the toys whirling and circling in Carol Anne's bedroom in "Poltergeist". They refuse to obey me and are too interesting to watch anyway... FEB 2020: My first clue [about possible autism] happened in my 50's. I had a nonprofit employer that was big on development and testing so I had my first Myers-Briggs. Afterwards, I went to review the results. The little dot that represented my score was in the farthest corner of, I believe, the architect box. I said something to affect of, "Wow, is that my score?" Her answer was something like, "No, but the test won't let us plot beyond the bounds of the box," motioning towards the edge of the paper with her hand... FEB 2020: In addition to my other duties, I was once the IT and network support for a large metropolitan church full of priests and other clergical types. It was a lesson in patience, humility and tongue-biting... FEB 2020: I have only two places that incoming mail can go: the primary inbox tab or the spam folder. If something lands in spam that doesn't belong there, I tell gmail. Conversely, sending inbox items to the spam folder informs gmail as well. Just like a new puppy, you have to train gmail and, eventually, it will get almost everything right. A new gmail instance is almost certain to pee on the floor... MAR 2020: We used to frequent a watering hole that a sign behind the bar that read, "Hangovers installed and serviced here"... MAR 2020: I'm an old guy in the crosshairs [of COVID-19]. I concentrate on what I can do and try to ignore the rest. I can stay factually informed. I can practice science-based hygiene. I can avoid humanity obsessively at every given opportunity. But should I catch it anyway, I'll be grateful for any help and comfort offered. The rest is beyond my control... MAY 2020: I posted this because JPL aerospace engineers with zero medical background, in consultation with medical professionals, went from nothing to a prototype that passed all tests and was approved by the FDA in a mere 40 days (and nights). It is a short term device using off the shelf components and is being offered on a royalty-free basis worldwide. The reaction here disappoints me, to say the least... JUN 2020: While not a board game, my wife and I play nethack "together". We sit in the same room, each logged into a remote server. We kibitz, trade ideas, strategies, anecdotes and queries. There are the occasional vocalizations of glee, incredulity, wonderment and far too often, abject defeat. Between us, we've been at this silly game for about six decades. Retirement and the lurking plague outside our door have only served to immerse us deeper and deeper into this delightful mire... JUL 2020: We never spent much time pondering moral philosophy in the bar business. And our concept of what constituted permissible behavior was definitely more relaxed than that of society as a whole. But we could sniff out someone who was probably going to be trouble as soon as they walked in the door. Dispensing a mind altering chemical to a room packed with both genders of breeding age hominids tends to really sharpen the senses... JUL 2020: I am a timid soul. I neither speculate nor invest. My few shekels are hidden away in a municipal bond fund. I don't touch them. They grow slowly and quietly, month by month, as dispersals are reinvested. Everything, other than capital gains, is tax exempt. But I never sell so there are no gains. A simple request can turn the income stream on or off as needed. My reasoning has long been that should municipal bonds ever prove to be unviable, that would be the least of my worries... AUG 2020: As a Texan, I fear it might require a spectral analysis to detect 1 tsp of chili powder in this particular recipe. I expect the result is not unlike waving a closed spice container at the pot and whispering "chili powder"... AUG 2020: I was one of the original beta testers for Chrome OS so I'm pretty familiar with it by now. Still, normally after an update, something I know existed yesterday appears to have grown legs and disappeared. Then I get to waste time trying to track it down. I usually find it with a changed name, a different feature-set and hiding in a remote dark corner. It's a little game we play... SEP 2020: Cereal is always first [before milk] due to significant differences in specific gravity and absorption rates amongst my Breakfast Pantheon: Grape Nuts, Rice Krispies, Wheat Chex, Multigrain Cheerios and the original big biscuit Shredded Wheat... SEP 2020: And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards SCOTUS to be born? OCT 2020: I just wish to interject that following this thread is infinitely better than actually having to watch and listen to the debate. I simply don't have that much wine on hand... OCT 2020: I second The Haunting (1963). I first saw it a few years after its release. It was a school night so I was supposed to be in bed asleep. But no, I had my little portable B&W TV on in the dark, listening with the earplug from my transistor radio and not making a sound. I've seen it a number of times since then and it has aged beautifully. The cast, the pacing, the cinematography, the sets, the script are all wonderful. And still scary... OCT 2020: When I feel the need, I make a todo.txt file in my home directory. As things occur to me I echo and append them >> to the file. I can review the list with 'less todo.txt' and edit out the done stuff using the v command from inside less to fire up my system editor. It's called the Unix Toolkit for a reason... NOV 2020: Earlier in October I voted in my 13th presidential election. Fresh out of college, all starry-eyed and optimistic, McGovern vs Nixon was my first plunge into the frigid political waters (unfortunately my "Dick Nixon Before He Dicks You" t-shirt is long gone). As you can imagine, I have seen some horrendous shit in 48 years of political participation but nothing could have prepared me for these last four years. Nothing. Here's to a brighter, or at least less murky future for us all... NOV 2020: No matter where you go, there you are. You are your own excess baggage from which there is no escape... DEC 2020: My family was not only in [slavery] shipping but also sales and ownership beginning in the late 18th century. Myself, I grew up in a totally segregated former Confederate state on the right side of the tracks. I was in high school when the Civil Rights Act was signed into law and my corner of the world exploded in hate. My alma mater produced the last Division I all-white national championship football team while I was attending. I was never an immigrant, the wrong hue nor an outsider. I was born into a white Boomer Paradise that I had done nothing to earn or deserve. Apparently the chink in this immersive cultural armor was that I was also raised a Unitarian, for which I will be eternally grateful... DEC 2020: Back in the 70's I worked for a restaurant in Tulsa with a veteran of the Negro Leagues. I knew him by no other name than Smokey. We would be doing prep work together in the kitchen and he would regale me with tales of black baseball. Stories about facing legends like Satchel Paige and watching the "major leaguers" knowing they could beat the pants off of them. He was quite an education... JAN 2021: I sold my soul to Google over a decade ago. I was a beta tester for Chrome OS. They even sent me a CR-48 to lessen the existential pain. My own justification has long been that Google is neither a computer nor a software company. They are an advertising agency. They aggregate web data and sell it for profit. In that regard they are no different than any other capitalist entity. And in return they offer a well designed, functional and secure platform pretty much gratis. As I sit tapping away on my modern Chromebook I really have to wonder why I should churn my own butter when WalMart will deliver it right to my door... JAN 2021: Every morning I get up, put on a pot of coffee and go for a walk around the neighborhood. No agenda, no plan and no time limit. Wherever my feet lead me. And when I eventually get back, I pour myself a cup and sit down at the computer... FEB 2021: My shitbowl has been in service for roughly four+ decades. It is a metal hemisphere 8 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep. The exterior is dark green enamel, the rolled lip is enameled black and the interior white. Possibly for the first time ever I looked at the bottom to discover it was made in Poland during the Soviet era. When I was still bartending it had to be emptied regularly as it began to overflow with "chump change", loose coin from tips. These days it is much more stable and sedate although it still harbors weird, forgotten shit at the bottom as any good shitbowl does... FEB 2021: High-end gigs can pull massive tips. I knew a bartender in LA who worked at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He was paid no salary. Instead, he had to pay the hotel to work there. Similar to hair stylists paying for their chairs. He made a ton of money at that place. And yeah, he assured me it was packed full of assholes... MAR 2021: I can remember reading decades ago about individual slime molds coming together to make a migratory body with an anterior and posterior end, locomotion and light sensitivity, all to move to greener pastures. Also coming together to make fruiting bodies for reproduction via spores. And after either of these, breaking apart to be individual organisms again spread over a surface... APR 2021: I'm not gloating, but I had the uncanny good luck to hit adolescence and young adulthood in the 1960's in a progressive college town and was also raised a Unitarian. I'm sure you can put two and two together... APR 2021: We had something not too dissimilar here in Austin decades ago. It was Virginia's. Virginia was the proprietor, cook, waitress and scullion. Hours were irregular depending whether she had a doctor's appointment that day or not. And the menu was what she had decided to cook that day. It was up on a chalk board. Each small table was supplied with a note pad and a golf pencil. Write your order down, place it on the edge of your table and she would pick it up when she had time. The back wall of the small space was filled with gas ovens and much of the cooking appeared to be done in cast iron. The service was glacial. Thirty minutes to an hour waits were normal. And gawd help you if you complained. She would hand you a xeroxed map to the closest McDonald's. And you might as well leave because you weren't getting fed. But for all of that, the food was devine and well worth the trouble... MAY 2021: This may be a bit of a ramble so I apologize in advance. In the early 70's I had graduated from college, was pondering graduate school and needed some form of gainful employment in the interim. Texas had recently instituted liquor-by-drink on a local option basis and Austin, the state capital, was at the front of the line. Prior, one had to be a member of a private club to enjoy the arts of mixology, even if only by a temporary membership on the nightstand in your hotel room. The bartenders in these shadow bars were almost invariably black. But with the sudden legalization demand far outstriped supply and bartending schools started to pop-up everywhere. With nothing better to do, I paid my fee and delved into the arcane art. One of my first gigs was at a prestigious steak house owned by the mayor. All of the kitchen staff was black. This included the head chef, The Reverend (actual ordained clergy with a congregation) who answered any and all queries with, "COOKING!". The assistant manager and my immediate supervisor was Lonnie Melton, also black. He had been a bartender for a number of years pre-landrush and took special interest in my job. He also taught me the basics of being a sommelier. One day Lonnie asked me if I would like to meet the person who taught him to bartend. Of course I said yes. We met at a small Greek restaurant downtown, Mama Elena's. This was not some faux operation. More than once when I dined there Mama would sit down in a chair in the dining area and begin to snap beans or shell peas. Lonnie's mentor was a distinguished black gentleman, graying at the temples. I can't remember his name unfortunately. Drinks were on the house. At the time I was a fan of CC and soda with a twist. Stories, recipes and insights were swapped back and forth for several hours, although I mostly just listened. Not only was I white but also exceedingly green. Several years later I took a date to Mama Elena's and by the time we were seated there was a mysterious CC and soda with a twist at my elbow... JUN 2021: I like to approach this stuff from the other end. All perceived "racial" differences are the result of diet, climate, latitude and genetic isolation over time. But we have not speciated like Darwin's finches. We are still genetically pretty much the same Homo Sapiens that started leaving Africa about 50k years ago, with a smattering of Neanderthal and Denisovan for spice. One trait we all seem to have in common is a proclivity for xenophobia, fear of the outsider, the other. And when this fear is addressed by proclaiming your own particular flavor of human to be unquestionably superior, then you have racism and its horrors. Unfortunately this "solution" seems to be endemic as well. This stuff has deep roots among us apes... JUN 2021: Juneteenth has of course always been a thing here in Texas. In the bar and restaurant sector it was understood that non-celebrants should gladly cover and fill-in one day annually. Happy to see this long and unique tradition formalized... JUN 2021: "Smooth" is most often associated with straight liquor. Decades ago I worked at an exceedingly well-stocked bar. My quest was to find a bourbon that tasted like what I thought bourbon should taste like. We had well over a dozen brands on the shelf (forget the junk in the well). So on a slow night I ran a little contest. The previous winner versus the next brand in line. Just a tiny splash in an old fashion glass (I was working after all). No ice. No mix. Check for aroma and then a tiny sip. Of course they all burned, but one stood out as a clear winner. It's been over forty years so things may have changed, but the winner was extremely old-school: Old Grand-Dad Bottled in Bond, 100 proof. You can tip me later... JUN 2021: The first spreadsheet I encountered was Lotus 123 1A in the early to mid eighties. I believe this was the initial release. But even then you could see there were going to be problems. The design apparently didn't use a sparse matrix array. If you entered a single character into the lower right cell on an otherwise empty sheet, it would eat up all the memory on your poor little DOS box and freeze... AUG 2021: Google makes a lot of good, mostly free stuff but they tend to suck at social because, you know, engineers... OCT 2021: I stood in line with my dad and received my Salk vaccine on a sugar cube in a gymnasium. This imprinted two things on me. First, there are invisible things that can harm me. Secondly, there are magical things that can protect me... OCT 2021: Yes, I'm 72 years old and know who Mario and Luigi are though I've never played the game. But my question is, do you know what a purple capital L in vanilla NetHack is? NOV 2021: COBOL is a financial transaction language. It has that as a single function. If well written it reads like a newspaper and is readily understandable to almost anyone. It runs the entire economy of the planet. It perhaps deserves a bit more respect... NOV 2021: Believing is always far easier than taking the trouble to know... DEC 2021: I have to disagree. Humans have proved themselves to be amongst the most adaptable of species. We inhabit and flourish in the hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, lowest, highest, fertile and infertile environs the planet has to offer. What will disappear is civilization, not us. Undoubtedly with collapse our numbers will diminish, perhaps by many billions. Perhaps time to be practicing those hunter-gatherer skills... DEC 2021: We have been together for over 40 years. Still making each other laugh and blow milk out our nose. Have something resembling a spat at least once a decade. Brand new, first time grandparents. Neither of us ever lifted a finger to make it work. Perhaps we were just lucky. Kismet... JAN 2022: I prefer the notion of science fantasy. That frees both elements to go wherever necessary for a compelling story. I sometimes play with the idea of doing a film of The Martian Chronicles exactly as first written while ignoring all the intervening science, reality and disappointing facts... APR 2022: Russian hardware is crap. Russian logistics are crap. The Russian military is crap. The Russian leadership is crap. But if you have a big and heavy enough sack of crap you can beat someone to death with it. That would seem to be the current game... every@ma.sdf.org