Music: Wave of Mutilation

The Pixies:

Just wear something, will you?

Transcribed audiorecording of myself, June, 2015:

00:03: "No, you cannot go in the back yard until you at least put on some underpants."

01:20: "Not on your head. Put them on the way you're supposed to."

02:25: "Wait, those are your brother's underpants. You can't even cross the room without them falling off."

02:30: "See? They fell off. Now find some that fit."

02:50: "No, not mine. Put my underwear back on my shelf and go get your own."

02:55: "The shelf, not your head."

03:47: "What? Of course you have underpants. They're right here in your... where is your underpants bin? Did you take it off the shelf? Did you hide it?"

04:32: "Fine. Sure. Of course it wandered over and took a nap under the blankets on your brother's top bunk all by itself. Underwear bins do that all the time. Now, do you want to go outside or not? Because aside from that one mitten, you're still naked."

05:00: "Oh, look. Real underwear, and you're wearing them... well, backwards, but close enough. Now you may go outside."


25:14: "Where did your underpants go? No, the tree did *not* eat them. Where are they? And why did you take them off?"

26:37: "So why didn't you just come inside, where we have flushing toilets and toilet paper? No, you know what -- never mind. Don't tell me. I don't even want to know. Just stand there until I finish hosing you down, and then put the underpants back on."

30:12: (muttering) "And yet, if I duct-tape them to his body, somehow I'm the bad guy..."

One of those random lists of questions

I'm just going to pretend that I'm famous enough to be interviewed...

1. ARE YOU NAMED AFTER SOMEONE?
Sort of. There's a longish history on my father's side involving the patterns of the first names. However, my dad was not the oldest, so my brother and don't quite fit the pattern, and my kids don't fit the pattern at all.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
No idea, but probably pretty recently and probably over some YouTube video that someone was passing around. Definitely when we buried my mom a few weeks ago.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
I learned to type in self-defense.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Cheeseburgers?

5. DO YOU HAVE ANY KIDS?
Two boys. I might have written about them before.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
Of course. It'd be like the bit in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World where the title character finally meets Nega-Scott.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
No. Never.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Yes, as well as a small but very tasteful collection of other people's.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Yes, and while being a parent has made me more cautious, that would not be the craziest thing that I've done.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
...Crunch Berries? I don't know if I could still eat that. It's been years.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
Rarely.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU'RE STRONG?
Physically? Yes. Not like I was in my youth, but yes. Mentally/emotionally? Eh. Nobody's unbreakable, but I get by.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Usually the coffee-ish flavors. Again, it's been a while.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
The way they move, sometimes. Other times, it's the usual superficialities: clothing, build, coloration...

15. RED OR PINK?
Sure.

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF?
I don't always realize when it's time to stop being nice/reasonable, and I frequently don't know when to shut up.

17. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW?
Why, hello there Everyone On The Internet! As it happens, I'm not currently wearing pants or shoes. This would be a lot more embarrassing if I didn't suspect that an awful lot of you were doing the same.

18. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE?
Popcorn.

19. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
Collide: Wings of Steel.

20. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Forest Green

21. FAVORITE SMELL?
The air after a rainstorm.

22. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My wife.

23. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH?
I don't generally watch sports. Gymnastics, when it's on.

24. REAL HAIR COLOR?
Brown fading to gray, with some lovely silver highlights. It used to be a very dark brown, but no longer. I blame the boys for this.

25. Eye color?
Brown.

26. Do you wear contacts?
No.

27. FAVORITE FOOD?
I have a particular bowl that I make at Genghis Grill (if you don't know it, it's a sort of build-your-own stir fry place) that's both tasty and very hot. Adding the Asian Chili Death Sauce means that it isn't just a meal; it's also the best over-the-counter decongestant that I've ever found.

28. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Scary movie, but it can have a happy ending if it fits the plot.

29. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
Jurassic World; the boys requested it.

30. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Black.

31. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Winter. My allergies behave themselves during the winter.

32. HUGS or KISSES?
Hugs, usually.

33. FAVORITE DESSERT?
I'm not a big dessert person. Tiramisu, maybe?

34. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING?
I recently decided that I needed to re-read Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. This may have been... over-ambitious. I'm currently about halfway through The Great Hunt, which is book two -- out of, I dunno, thiry-seven or something.

35. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
The mouse. (Kidding. I don't actually have a mouse pad.)

36. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST ON T.V.?
...No idea. I don't actually watch TV, at least not in any sense that most people would use the phrase. The last TV show I watched was the Robot story arc from the classic Dr. Who (Fourth Doctor / Tom Baker) series.

37. FAVORITE SOUND?
My kids, snoring.

38. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
Not really, no.

39. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE TRAVELED?
The Blue Mountains outside Sydney, Australia. It was awesome.

40. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
Lurking? Skulking? Looking suspicious when I'm not actually doing anything? I'd list writing and climbing, but if we're being honest I'm kind of out of practice on both of them. Oh, wait! I actually do have a special talent. I work in IT, and my special talent is explaining computer stuff to non-technical people in ways that make sense to them. It's like a mutant power, but much less exciting!

Video: Otter juggling rocks

I have nothing for today, so here's a video of an otter playing with (juggling? Sorta?) some rocks:

Real Work Conversations: You don't say...

A Co-worker passes me in the hall. I nod to him while I'm making my tea.

Co-worker: "You don't say."

Me: "I never do."

Co-worker: "Well, why should you?"

Me: "Exactly. When I say that something should go without saying, it darned well goes without being said."

It was sort of the opposite of that old Bugs Bunny scene:

Choose Your Own Adventure Cookbook

Inspired by something I saw on facebook...

"If you do not have enough olive oil, turn to page 122. Um, okay. Page 122... 'Order Pizza.'"

"WHAT?"

"That's what it says. We're out of Olive Oil, so I turned to page 122, and it's telling me to order pizza."

"Are there any other options?"

"Hang on, I marked our place with my finger... Okay. 'If you think you can run to the store to get more olive oil before your guests arrive, turn to page 76.'"

"And?"

"Hang on. Page 76... 'You will not have time to finish the sauce before the chicken is overcooked to the point of petrification. Turn to page 122."

"And what's on page 122?"

"It still says, 'Order pizza.'"

"What if I substitute melted butter for the olive oil?"

"Well, let me flip back... Here it is. 'If you wish to substitute butter for olive oil under the wildly misguided belief that this won't thoroughly destroy the flavor of your sauce, turn to page 130."

"Fine. Page 130?"

"...Says, 'May all the saints and angels protect you. You're on your own from here. Godspeed.' Then, in parentheses, it adds: 'It's still not too late to turn to page 122.' Which is the pizza page. I... may be detecting a theme, here."

A Confrontation at Twilight

The man straightened, regarding his accuser. "No," he said, with flat authority. He was a tall man, handsome, richly dressed, and wore dignity like a cloak. "I am the Keeper of the Flames, the Transmuter of Organics, the Adder of Flavor, and the Watcher of the Grocery List, and I say to you that if you have not finished your food, you may have no dessert!"

"But Daaaaaaaaaad...!"

A Priestly Book

While we were out of town, we stayed at a house that belongs to a friend of the family. This particular friend of the family happened to be in the ministry, at least until he retired. One of the rooms in this house was his office, so naturally I found myself browsing the bookshelves (as one does). In doing so, I stumbled across this:

(If you can't read it, it's a book cover:
The Christian Priest Today, by Michael Ramsey)

I was, of course, charmed by this. It's such a topical and timely title, and being on this particular set of bookshelves, it had to be... yep:

"First published 1972.
9th Impression 1983.

This book is older than I am.

Just out of curiosity, I flipped open to the bookmark and looked at the (rather long) paragraph that this minister had marked.

I'm not going to transcribe the whole thing, but it's basically talking about how, as a priest, you may feel that much of the work you're called to do is trivial and unworthy of the full glory of God; and that it's important to remember that so much of God's work, and so much of the value of Christianity, is found in the little things.

Yeah.

That's the kind of Christianity I grew up in.

A Rhetorical Financial Question

I am sick and tired of being a responsible adult. Can I please spend just one week being rich, pampered, and slightly obnoxious? Do I not have a ridiculously affluent relative who will give me $30,000,000 with the condition that I have to spend it all within thirty days in order to receive the full $300,000,000 inheritance? Will the world not rise up and shower my clear and obvious genius with money, fame, and social status?

...Oh. Yeah. Right.

Never mind, carry on.

School Schedules

The boys start school again on Monday, so I'm trying to get everybody in my house (including myself) back onto a school-year wake-up schedule... and, by extension, a school-year bedtime schedule.

Sisyphus had it easy.

Real Work Conversations: Websire

Me: "I have just typed the word 'websire'. I missed the T."
Me: "Presumably a websire is the father of a website, so it's probably an old-style BBS."

Boss: "And now I will knight you."

Me: "In olden days, knights were virtuous. Nowadays, they're virtual."

Out of Office

Sean Keegan sprinted down the corridor with a single-minded determination he hadn't displayed since high school. Something small and dark buzzed past his head, but he didn't break his stride. His heart was pounding, his lungs burning, and his gut seemed to get in the way of every movement. He could hear the thing behind him, crashing into the walls as it gave chase. He was pretty sure it would have caught him by now if it hadn't been almost too large to fit in the hallway.

Two more of the buzzing things -- they moved like insects, but they were too large for any insect Sean knew -- were suddenly ahead of him, and coming straight towards him. He flung up a forearm to protect his eyes, and one of them slammed into it. The other one buried itself in his calf. He missed a step, recovered, and kept going: even the burning pain that followed their impacts couldn't compete with the sheer, adrenal panic that filled him.

He could see what was happening to his arm, and it wasn't possible. The insect wasn't biting or stinging; instead, it seemed to be dissolving into his flesh. Skin and muscle darkened and swelled, making a charcoal-colored lump on his arm. That was the source of the burning pain, and he could see it every time he brought his arm up to help propel himself along. It was spreading rapidly, and the burning in his leg said the same thing was happening down there, too.

He didn't so much open the door as slam into it so hard that he bounced off at an angle. That finally stopped his headlong flight. He landed on the sunlit concrete outside the office.

The thing reached the door a heartbeat later, and... stopped. It stood there, hunched over with one charcoal-skinned hand on the door frame, looking out through the glass. Sean lay helplessly on the concrete and stared back at it; he was too busy gasping for air and writhing with pain to move any further.

Except... his arm was suddenly cold, not hot. The dark lump was shrinking, smoothing out against the rest of his arm. He turned his hand, and the dark spot moved with the rest of his skin and muscle. It was still part of his flesh, just... darkened. Even the pain was fading.

His leg was still burning, though. It's the sunlight, he realized. The infection reacts to the sunlight.

He tore at his belt and unfastened his slacks, then shoved them down to his ankles. It worked: as soon as the sunlight touched the dark swelling on his calf, it stopped swelling, stopped expanding, and began to shrink. I'll be damned.

It was at precisely that moment that Sean looked up and realized that his boss was standing on the sidewalk, gaping at him. Some explanation was clearly needed, so he sucked in a lungful of air and gasped out the first thing that came to mind: "I forgot to set my Out Of Office."

(As a reminder: I'll be out of town all next week, and I don't have anything prepared. So, blogging will resume sometime after the 15th.)

Real Work Conversations: Team Instinct Edition

I mentioned a while back that I'm not playing Pokemon Go. However, several of my co-workers are, and they've printed off logos for their teams and hung them on their cubicles.

So this morning, I printed off a couple of logos for Team Instinct and hung them around the office when nobody was looking. Now I get to listen to my co-workers wandering around saying things like, "Who would do that???"

Who, indeed?

Music: There's Always An A-Hole On The Internet

This seems strangely timely:

Trump is Trump

Meanwhile, Donald Trump -- Donald Trump -- is now the Republican candidate for President. I am baffled by this to a degree that I find a bit hard to articulate; it's one of those things that makes me wonder just when we slipped out of the real timeline and into this bizarre alternate history. Still, Trump could not have secured the nomination if he didn't seem like a reasonable choice to a significant portion of the electorate, and I am not prepared to dismiss that portion of the electorate as merely "stupid" or "bigoted" or what have you.

But -- and again, this is merely my personal take on it -- Trump kind of scares me. And it's not because of his politics; it's because I'm not entirely convinced that he actually *has* any politics, in the sense that normal, reasonable people would use the word. To put that a slightly different way, I don't think he has much at all when it comes to studied, considered views on matters of policy. What he has, I think, is more akin to a sales pitch.

Trump has been a public figure for my entire adult life. During that time, he has always hovered on the edge of being a joke: an apparent narcissist and manic self-promoter, whose primary claim to success was that he was able to keep telling people how successful he was. He has always struck me as the sort of person who would be a small-time hustler with a shady past, trying to get you to buy in on his latest Get Rich Quick scheme, except that he was born into enough money and influence that the usual rules and consequences didn't apply. He went on from there to become a Reality TV star, which strikes me as something that a successful real estate developer shouldn't have time for. He seems to have essentially one strategy, which he uses for everything: lay down enough razzle-dazzle to bring in the investors, then let them do the work and pay the bills, collect the profits and get out before the bills come due, and bluster and threaten if anybody objects. That seems to have served him well enough to keep him afloat (again, given the advantages he was born into) but it's not what I want in our President.

I watch him in interviews, and what I see is this:
1. He thinks of everything primarily in terms of how it relates to him. I don't see that he has any other perspective, or any awareness that there might be other perspectives worth considering.
2. He weighs everything in terms of power balances, and his primary goal is to make sure that he's the one who dominates.
3. He has the attention span of gnat on crack. I can't even begin to imagine him sitting down for an hour-long situation briefing; I think he'd get bored, "take charge", and start giving ill-considered and uninformed orders in the first ten minutes.

Unfortunately, this man has a decent chance of actually becoming our next President... so I really, really hope I'm wrong about all this.

Not holding my breath for a 3rd Party savior

Over on Facebook, a friend of mine asked:

So... Anyone else hoping that a strong independent that can take the best ideas of the right and the best ideas of the left and can actually FIX this country will emerge for the election?

Here's how I see it (and I'm trying to be brief, so this is going to sound reductive and dismissive, but bear with me):

1. The 3rd Party candidates aren't viable. They're getting more recognition as people (in general) get fed up with the limits of a two-party system, but most people only ever hear about them in election years. That means, in essence, that there's nobody on their teams. It's kind of a Catch 22: nobody is going to vote for them because they can't win, but the reason they can't win is that nobody is going to vote for them. We could hit a tipping point where that changes, but we aren't there yet and it doesn't look like we will be any time soon.
(The best way to get there, I think, would be to have people running for local elections under those third parties, and working their way up until those parties really had a base and a following. That... doesn't help us now.)

2. Yes, theoretically, a "strong independent" could announce a platform and run, with or without an actual party; theoretically, such a candidate could even win if they got enough votes. However, without the backing of a party, they essentially never have the resources or the platform to make that even remotely possible; the closest I can recall is Ross Perot, and his campaign took 18.9% of the popular vote and nothing whatsoever of the electoral vote. It might or might not be worth noting that Trump didn't even try this approach.

3. In practical terms, that means that we get to choose between Trump and Clinton. Nobody else is in position to swoop in and save the day. And Trump is... well... Trump. If you're a liberal, he's temperamentally unfit to be in charge of a little league game, let alone the entire country; if you're a conservative, well... I'm not actually going to presume to speak for you, but from where I'm sitting he looks like a crass betrayal of every value the Republican Party has ever claimed to stand for.

There's a meme going around that says that having to choose between Clinton and Trump is like having to choose between Lex Luthor and The Joker. That's actually not a bad analogy, particularly if you think that Hillary is scheming, dishonest, and crooked -- basically, Lex Luthor in a pantsuit. But here's the thing: Lex Luthor might destroy the world, but if he (she) does, it'll be after careful thought, weighing the available options, and carefully calculating the risks and rewards. The Joker, on the other hand, might strike the match just to see how the world looks when everything's on fire -- or because he didn't realize he was standing in the middle of a refinery.