Long Commute

Far as I can tell no one read my account of the Battle of Fresno. Well, never mind. I will continue the paradigm even so. I have been up for nineteen hours and just got back from dinner with a gentleman who's been up for twenty-five or however long it takes to get to Oregon from Belgium. We sat in an Irish bar in a strange city, watching an amazing sport called "hurling" on a flatscreen hanging over the whiskeys. Neither of us had ever seen it before.

Anyway. Here is the text. Here are some pictures.

SMF, 6am

Dawn

First breakfast

Early shadows

Ancient volcanos

No left turn

Down to the river

Battle of Fresno

Last weekend was the third in a row that I went camping. But this time it wasn't with boy scouts. It was with a bunch of men who like to play dress-up and shoot and cook outside and drink.

A friend asked me to go and lent me all the equipment. I had expected it to be something like our college camping trips except in wool trousers. But it was much more than that. Re-enactors converged on Kearney Park in Fresno to portray not just soldiers but historical figures. Abraham Lincoln and Sojourner Truth rubbed shoulders with teachers, candlemakers, doctors and plate-glass photographers.

It was a trip. More here. Others write more here and here.

Thursday Thirteen Blogging Meme

Thursday Thirteen n. 1. A popular blogging meme, that uses clever alliteration to draw attention away from its rank stupidity.

Blogging v. 1. To blog. 2. To write worthless drivel for the purpose of distracting mindless readers across the internet from the utter pointlessness of their wasted lives.

Meme n. 1. A cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. 2. A concept or idea meant to inspire writing in bloggers who can't think of anything by themselves, typically passed around like a flu virus in a grade school playground.

Kyped from Paula.

1. Do you like the look and the contents of your blog?

No. I want it to look like a Shinto temple and read like a Raymond Chandler novel but it's only MY blog so, obviously, I can't do anything about it. Dur.

2. Does your family know about your blog?

Yes, telling them was slightly less embarrassing than not telling them and getting found out.

3. Can you tell your friends about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?

They think I'm weird enough already.

4. Do you just read the blogs of those who comment on your blog? Or do you try to discover new blogs?

Now and then I go read random blogs. Some of the most amazing people are found this way.

5. Does your blog positively affect your mind? Give an example.

For a brief, shining moment after I post a nice picture or something that in my delusion I think was well-written, I feel as though I have added some beauty to the world. But I go have a glass of water and the feeling goes away.

6. What does the number of visitors to your blog mean? Do you use a traffic counter?

I refuse to whore myself out with stupid blog-memes just to up my visitor count.

7. Do you imagine what other bloggers look like?

Of the few who don't post pictures, I can't help forming an image. They're all reasonably attractive people but for the facial twitch.

8. Do you think blogging has any real benefit?

It dissipates focus and enables more shit slinging about the interwebnetosphere to no purpose whatsoever, so, of course, yeah.

9. Do you think that the blogsphere is a stand alone community separated from the real world?

No, though some of its members clearly are. Or should be.

10. Do some political blogs scare you? Do you avoid them?

Politics can be fascinating, but when presented from the single-minded viewpoint of an unedited amateur it becomes a total waste of eyeball.

11. Do you think that criticizing your blog is useful?

Absolutely, but no one ever has the gumption to do it. Or when they do, they're obviously WRONG.

12. Have you ever thought about what would happen to your blog if you died?

Who the hell comes up with a question like that?

13. Which blogger has had the greatest impression on you?

Asia, because when her blogging-mood intersects with her fresh vision of language, she writes amazing little works of zen prose-poetry.

While We're Waiting

Life is a bus ride. Sometimes the view is great, sometimes it sucks, and I'm not always sure who's driving. Right now we're between blog posts, so let's take a glance out the window. What we see are the folds of the Tehachapi Mountains early one morning last January, lining up in the haze, each taking on its very own shade of blue. I think of artists who flee south for the winter and spend their lives painting deserts, hoping for something to emerge in their work that they've never seen before.

Family Day in Lambtown

I have weird relatives. One thing they like to do is pretend they're Scottish. This results in us having our annual family picnic at one of those goings-on where men wear skirts and toss heavy things around or if they're really tough -- we're talking brand-new Harley tough -- they set off their white knees with a claymore and a long knife and have a custom leather pouch for their cell phone. But the really great thing about these affairs is not the incessant piping or the overpriced bland bangers or even the hilarious fact that the closest the organizers can get to a drink for a Scotsman is Bass or Harp – it's the Scottish Goosedog.

Sheepdogs are old hat. Actually, sheep are expensive. Even in Dixon. But the sheepdog contest is always popular, almost as popular as the piglet race, and you gotta please the crowds, so the dog's gotta herd something. And as it happens, geese are natural flockers, they're a pretty white, they're cheap, and they're du-u-umb. Therefore it's sort of fun to watch the gosherd call his dog about and herd the stupid birds through gates and across walkways and into a pen. Not as fun as watching someone roll her grandmother's wheelchair over a gray splat of gooseshit that then makes a soft rhythmic sfit-sfit-sfit sound as they go along their way, but close enough.

Beyond that, it's not all manly hammer-throwing and caber-tossing, either. The women get into the act too. Women make fine athletes. Even white ones. Check out these lean and limber babes.


This one chose not to shave her beard.

But I thought of it already!

Back in the 80s I had a friend who liked to get stoned and go to the movies. One night we got lit and saw Brazil. It was a weird Terry Gilliam thing, like Time Bandits, full of whimsicality and visual wonder. I loved it.

One feature that particularly caught my imagination in this strange retro-futuristic film was the design of the computer terminals. They looked like old Royal typewriters with tiny black and white monitors, enhanced with magnifying lenses not unlike those deals people stick in the rear windows of their RVs. I had my father's old Apple ][ and I thought, hey, I could build one of those!

In the twenty years that passed I occasionally thought about it. Still do. I just need the time. Everything else I have to do would need to be shoved aside for an art project, but it would be cool: An old typewriter carefully wired up to emulate a computer keyboard (I know how to do that); the Apple ][ guts hidden away in some old box; video output sent to some ancient B&W monitor of the sort used years ago for security cameras; and a magnifying sheet stuck in front of it in a frame. It would be an odd-looking thing, rickety, kind of cool, and totally functional.

Now some hopeless geek is getting international attention for doing just that: A Laptop Your Great-Grandfather Would Love. I like my idea better, because he copped out and used a modern LCD screen. But credit is given for using an old telegraph key for a pointing device.

How to write like a slumming angel

It was throwaway prose. Hacked out of a bent typewriter for pennies a paragraph. Destined for cheap paper, the floor next to the bed, the trash bin. Seventy years on, and I can't come even close.

The jarring of the telephone bell woke me. I had dozed off in the chair, which was a bad mistake, because I woke up with two flannel blankets in my mouth, a splitting headache, a bruise on the back of my head and another on my jaw, neither of them larger than a Yakima apple, but sore for all that. I felt terrible. I felt like an amputated leg.
– Raymond Chandler, Trouble Is My Business

And another thing!

While having a late breakfast on a lovely Saturday morning, I discover PJ has linked me. Yay! So now's my chance to rant about something.

When archer started his up I noticed that his link to PJ slightly overlapped his link to Paula. Hmm, weird, I thought. How sloppy. Typical lawyer.

But when I finally started mine up, also using Beta, which has this nifty settings page whereby you can add links without having to edit the template HTML, I included links to those two incredible ladies too and GUESS WHAT. Same thing happened. Overlap.

Look for yourself (at archer's; I'm fixing it here).

What to do, what to do. I took a gander at the source code and it looks fine. Yes it does, trust me, I'm an engineer. Better yet, trust me, I'm not a lawyer. I went all over Blogger Help for awhile but that availed me about what you'd expect. Even left a message on their bulletin board. No response.

Okay, it wasn't as clear a message as it could have been. I could try again but, I'm sorry, I can only give so much of a shit about this sort of thing. Never the less, it is annoying and because I don't like things to be annoying I may have to change PJ's name. Cause you know what: If I change the text from "PJ" to "Peggy", it all of a sudden looks fine.

It's having two capital letters together that screws the line formatting.

Right. I'm changing her name, and then announcing it to a vast and uncaring world. Gahd, don't you love making decisions?

Get your cotton-pickin' fingers off my taxes

I don't really know anything about this, but I heard it on NPR, twice in one year. So it's important.

Some of our tax money, which should all be used buying important things like the loyalty of Iraqi Shiite sheiks, is instead being diverted to subsidize American cotton farmers. This makes it economical for them to grow cotton while the price is low, and encourages the price to go even lower. Cotton farmers elsewhere, such as Africa, where a family's entire income may be dependent on the yield of five acres of cotton, cannot sell at a profit. Their children don't get to go to school and don't have shoes to wear if they did, all so some Americans with new Dodge pickups and steel sheds to park them in can still make a living growing cotton just like Pappy did. African cotton farmers don't like this. They think it's unfair. They suspect America's incredible might and power has something to do with why they are getting so badly screwed. It makes them wonder if Americans are really as nice as they want everyone to think they are.

We are, aren't we?

Jenner

Panorama shot, four pictures stitched together, taken from the deck of the inn. To the left, the low hills whence the Russian River rises; to the right, the sea.

Less than two centuries ago this country was known only to the Pomo and the Miwok. Then the Russians built a log fort and gathered otter pelts. The Spaniards built missions and gathered Indians. A lot of land separated them, and this river, and so the river got its name.

It runs through an unspectacular but peaceful country. The sea air holds its breath as the sun sinks gently into bed.

Where river meets sea ...

... we look at sea lions ...

... and they look at us.

Down the road are reminders that this coast is young, and every storm carves its name in the earth.

Face of Evil

Why Is Ahmadinejad Smiling?
The intellectual sources of his apocalyptic vision

"He does not represent all political forces in Iran, not even all radical forces. Doubtless, Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is, for many Iranians, a question of traditional national pride or a bid for great power status. But as long as he is president, Ahmadinejad represents an important dimension of the Iranian revolution we cannot afford to ignore. As long as Iranian policy is dominated by Ahmadinejad and his allies among the senior clerics of the Islamic Republic, Iran cannot be negotiated with. Their commitment to the destruction of the Jews is a matter of principle, just as the implementation of the Holocaust was for the Nazis and the liquidation of the kulaks was for the Bolsheviks. Genocide through nuclear weapons is designed to bring about the happiness of the Year One for all of us. I believe that is why Ahmadinejad is almost always smiling."

Polo

My grandfather was a journalist for a little while: Worked for the Oakland Tribune writing copy and taking pictures just before the Depression hit. I don't think he ever had his own byline.

Well, my son does and I just now saw it over his first article, in the sports section of the school paper. He writes pretty well: Uses strong language to describe the often brutal sport of water polo. He should know: He's the goalie and the team captain.

They had a tournament in Roseville last weekend. Roseville's very own Olympian gave her name to the pool at the Aquatic Center. That's kind of exciting. She's now a big celebrity doing commercials for auto dealerships.


It was a double-elimination tournament so our team played twice. They didn't win. Not even close. They never do. They play with heart, but their school is small and has little money, and this is a disadvantage in sports. All the other schools show up with a dozen and a half to two dozen guys, more than enough to sub everyone out and play by capability. Not ours. There are ten guys in the entire squad. With seven in the water at any given time, this means only three are available as subs, and most of the players never get a break at all.

It also means there are freshmen on the varsity team. Not an advantage.

It also means twenty percent of the team are sons of mine.

It's a total blast having both my boys on the same sports team again. That hasn't happened since some time in the nearly-forgotten days of Little League. I have a great picture of them both defending the goal, the elder as goalie in his red cap, the younger sailing across the front like that figure at Rockefeller Center. I'd share it, but I suspect former Congressman Foley still has his internet connection so I'll just give an example, i.e. the aforesaid figure at the R.C.

It looks something like that. Almost exactly, in fact.

I Am Too Extreme For California

I wasn't gonna do politics. Politics ruins a good blog. And this one isn't even a week old yet.

But what the hell. I've got two. I'll let the other one be all serious and writerly and that. No off the cuff remarks there, just, you know, writerly stuff. Stuff I've given more than half a minute's thought to. Here it's more, like, whatever.

And whatever is going on this election year? No less than that our beloved Governor Moonbeam is running for Attorney General. Not a bad choice. He did some interesting things as Mayor of Oakland. He is an independent thinker. But there's something interesting about his opponent.

Brown says Pachoogian is too extreme for California. He's kicked off this message by focusing on his record as a legislator opposing the assault weapons ban. Police chiefs go on TV and explain the damage a .50-calibre bullet can do to police cars.

I know we have an epidemic in this state of police cars getting shot with .50-calibre weapons, but we have to balance any solutions to this problem against our liberty. Liberty is too easy to take for granted and too easy to lose. Big huge slippery slope that anyone who uses the internet knows all about already.

The thing with the assault weapons ban is it bans ownership of an object not because it is a strong factor in violent crime, but only because of its individual destructive potential. This is wrong: It presumes criminal intent without any evidence for criminal intent -- not even the sort of epidemiological evidence used in attempts to ban possession of handguns; and we know how well that's worked. In fact, of guns used in crime prior to the nationwide ban enacted in 1994, only 1% to 2% were assault rifles. Here's more on that.

Consider a fast car. In the wrong hands it has the potential to be a very destructive object. Sometimes fast cars do get in the wrong hands (often drunk) and cause horrific destruction. What sort of logic would lead to banning ownership of cars above a certain horsepower? Criminally bad driving does not correlate to the horsepower of the vehicle. At any rate we have speed limits; and I can't discharge a firearm within the County. I believe the law against unjustified discharge is sufficient gun control. If you disagree, ask any criminal what he thinks about it.

(Disclosure: Yes, I own one of the damn things. I registered it with the DOJ per CA law back in about 1990. I still don't know if registering it was a good idea or not.)

Just in case anyone is inclined to pigeonhole me politically as some kind of wack conservative, liberal or even libertarian, well, it's true:

a) Marijuana trade and possession should be legal, with cultivation subject to licensing
b) Sex work should be legal and subject to OSHA
c) Rent control is a bad idea
d) The "living wage" concept is evil
e) Public schools deserve our full support
f) The military has way too much money already
g) Subjecting religious institutions to property taxes is worth thinking about
h) The Second Amendment applies to you and to me and to our neighbors and for good reason
i) Atheists can oppose abortion too
j) Homosexuality does not disqualify marriage, parenting or adoption

Clearly, I am too extreme for California and you should not vote for me for Attorney General!

While I'm At It

Picture posting finally works hence the draft from Thursday now appears below.

These were our accommodations over the weekend. I spent all of Saturday on the upper deck reading while various boys got dragged around behind a boat. Please note the shoreline. The entire lake is ringed with a rocky slope of forty-five degrees or worse, the very bones of the mountains whose lower reaches now lie drowned as deep as five hundred feet. It was very quiet, except when some houseboats anchored nearby and people started drinking and swearing late into the night, completely destroying the peace and serenity of the starry sky above. God how I wanted to join them.

Hold Your Horses

Fucking Blogger won't let me upload any fucking pictures. I hit the fucking "Add Image" button and get the fucking pop-up and go through the fucking procedure and get a fucking thumbnail with instructions to fucking press "Done" when I am done, which I am; but there IS no fucking "Done" button, so nothing happens, and I hit the X and close the fucking pop-up and there we are, with no fucking pictures. I checked the source code for the pop-up and the fucking code was all there to draw a fucking "Done" button but for some fucking reason the code halts before it gets that far. Fucking does this in Firefox and in IE, and yes I fucking wrote to Blogger about it, twice, but you can fucking guess what fucking good that's done.

Fucking technology.

So what's my fucking point, you ask? I'll fucking tell you. This blog is for the self-indulgent posting of pictures and wee little stories about my fascinating fucking life and is rendered entirely moot if I can't fucking upload any fucking pictures. Now, wait just a minute. I never intended to upload any fucking fucking pictures. I'm not saying I don't have any, but they're fucking not for you, fuck no. Just regular fucking pictures, you know, of regular fucking people (i.e. me) doing all sorts of regular fucking things except, as a general rule, fucking. And pictures of scenery. That's always nice.

Bloke on the Water

This is the intrepid kneeboarder in Lake Oroville


This is the deep concentration of the intrepid kneeboarder in Lake Oroville


This is the lapse in the deep concentration of the intrepid kneeboarder in Lake Oroville


This is the reward for the lapse in the deep concentration of the intrepid kneeboarder in Lake Oroville

I can't believe I'm doing this shit again

But I wrote this last Monday and that cracked open the gate, and here I am going through the six hundred twenty seven megabytes of pictures I took last weekend and suddenly I wondered: Damn, what am I going to do with all this crap?

Post it, that's what. Or some of it.


This is what Lake Oroville looked like after we hauled Boy Scouts and their baggage for seventy five miles through some of California's most unattractive terrain, up Highways 65 and 70, past undersized new subdivisions that look scummy and used up even before anyone has moved in thanks to all the dust and firesmoke. The sun set as we drove across the dam, a fiery red ball dropping behind the western foothills, laughing for unknown reasons; and the half moon being pulled after lent a silvery sheen to the unnaturally smooth waters. After loading a boat we headed east towards the shadows deepening in the coves ahead, steep rocky hillsides glowering, behind us the streetlamps at the boat ramp shrinking into the water's edge and, one by one, going out.