old guy thinking

When I was young I knew everything.

Now I'm old and I know very very little. Replacing knowledge is opinion. I had opinions when I was young, as well as certainty, but they weren't the same opinions I have now.

To my children I apologize for the blunders their father made that they had to live through.

Here's what I have learned after 36 years of being a father, 33 years as a teacher...

It doesn't matter if you eat all your beets. All that matters is that you share food with people who love you, and who you love. Same with veggies in general. When the time is right you will develop a taste for them.

You don't have to eat with a fork when you're little. It's a handy tool and when you're ready you'll pick it up. All that matters is that you share food with people who love you, and who you love.

Doing well in school is nice because learning is fun. It is the brain's endless hobby. But if you are in a setting where learning isn't fun, it's perfectly reasonable for you to ask to be excused. That's not the same thing as refusing to rise to a challenge or to overcome a barrier, but learning is fun and if that is not your experience in school then something is wrong with school, not you.

Until high school, homework is irrelevant and steals time away from more important learning - unless it's some sort of project that you embrace and that your parents or friends embrace with you. Learning is a social activity primarily. From time to time it is a great solitary process, but not as a rule. When you're in high school the value of homework is that you take the time to reflect on neat stuff that class periods don't give you the time to reflect on. Homework is best done jointly with a friend. Doing endless pages of rote calculations (I teach math) does not make you a better person, student, or doctor. Doing repetetive boring work does not build charcter, it crushes it.

Question authority, just like the bumper stickers say. Not because authority is wrong but if it can't answer your questions properly then it's not authority but bullying.

Rules are agreements we make with one another. Most often life is easier if you share agreements with those around you. But there is no rule that says "Daddy knows everything" (sorry, you guys) or that if you're the guy or the dad or the woman or the mom that you have to be obeyed. Leadership does not mean telling people what to do, but making agreements with them about how we will all do it together.

Just because you start something does not mean you have to finish it. You don't. You can change your mind, or take a breather. That's fine.

That said, don't make promises you don't intend to keep.

"Nice" is better than "smart" any day. And if you have a clever wit don't ever use it to make yourself look good at the expense of others. Laughter can be vicious and cruel when used in this way and nobody likes that no matter how hard you make them laugh.

You are here first and foremost for yourself, not for other people. The trick is that you only become yourself or grow to like yourself by giving yourself to other people. It's a strange thing but true.

Love is not just a feeling. It's an active verb. Don't ever forget that.

You don't owe anybody anything that is burdensome unless carrying the burden makes your heart sing. Having one's own children makes the heart sing, in my experience. A life best lived is, in fact, lived for others. This is a conundrum, at least on the surface.

Here's a funny thing I have learned that I cannot explain or even articulate very well - you must learn to listen to your heart rather than your mind. Your heart knows truth, while your mind is easily confused.

These are true statements, in my heart's opinion.

Alex-less thinking

Alex the African Grey parrot is dead.

This is a loss to many people, and a loss to me. For 31 years (out of an anticipated lifespan of 50-70 years) Alex has been blazing trails in science. He was purchased in a pet store in Chicago on July 5th, 1977 by a researcher named Irene Maxine Pepperberg. She deliberately allowed the store manager to pick out the bird from a group of 12-15 month old African Greys. She wanted the selection to be reasonably random as she wanted to study the ability of such birds (renowned for their ability to communicate since the time of Aristotle) to actually do so under scientifically controlled conditions in order that she might understand their cognitive abilities.

Lots of birds can learn to imitate sounds. I have heard that if you split the tongue of a crow it can learn words, although I have never seen such a thing and cannot understand how such a discovery could ever be made. Myna birds talk, in the sense of reproducing sounds they have heard, although there is no apparent communicative intent. I own an eclectus named Charlie who says "I love you," "Gloria" and a bunch of other stuff mostly in Korean. (He spent his formative years in the house of a Korean friend of Gloria's.) None of what he says seems to have communication as its intent, although some may disagree. Charlie, when I challenge him, has yet to do so.

I heard about Alex several years ago from my friend Liz Lee. Alex, she told me, could use words to communicate ideas, and could put together words he already new to express new thoughts. I'm not sure I entirely believed her at the time, but it really stuck in my mind. An example (true) is this: Alex had learned to describe objects by color, shape, size, number and several other attributes (read the book.) One day he was given corn on the cob to eat without being given its name. The next day he asked for "more long yellow... more long yellow...'

I like ideas. I love math and teach it because it is the study of the interplay of pure ideas stripped of the mundane reality of specific meaning. (My interest is evidently in what is called pure mathematics rather than applied mathematics in which I have little interest. I don't wish to debate the relative merits of either. I'm old and can love whatever I want. Forgive me Mr. Kite, for thinking your very astute intelligence will have the necessary counter-examples. Logic will no longer change my mind, completely overcome by my affection.) To examine the thinking processes of a bird seems to me to be examining the interplay of pure ideas, and of ideas formed in a very alien brain. (Think T-Rex. That alien a brain.)

So Alex enthralled me and I bought and studied Dr. Pepperberg's very scholarly book, The Alex Studies. It is wonderful, although it ain't casual reading.

It's fascinating and I immediately understood that it was necessary for me to get an African Grey to live with me. Last Christmas I got one as a gift for Gloria. I called her to give her the good news. She declined the gift, sensibly enough, so I bought the bird as a gift for my dog Vinnie. I named the bird Scipio after Vinnie declined to offer any name other that "Arf," which isn't right for a bird.

Scipio, now known as Skippy, is a male. I learned this by paying big bucks for a DNA test, the only way to kn ow for sure short of watching who gets on top under the right conditions, which are not about to be offered.

I planned a sabbatical during which it was my intention to teach him everything that Alex knew, and more. Alex was my ideal, the goal, the dream. He set the bar and he set it very high.

The night before dying he said something approximating this: "Will you be in tomorrow?" to which the answer was "Yes', Ill be in tomorrow." But tomorrow morning, he was dead in his cage. Nobody yet knows why but his vet is returning early from vacation to try to figure it out.

I find the world a smaller place without him. Skippy seems relieved.

Lazy Thinking

I'm on vacation. Sleep, eat, surf (the web), sleep, eat, surf (the web.)

Fin de Siecle Thinking

Alright, fin de siecle is an exaggeration... It might be fairer to say simply "turning a page" but somehow it feels a bit more consequential than that.

I just finished a four year stint as director of a summer school. Capital S summer school. 4200 students, K - 12. SIx weeks, 3 million dollars gross, the most outstanding programs and teachers I have ever seen.

Directing it was exhilarating, but exhausting. The six weeks are the easy part, the really fun part. Staffing it, looking after the logistics, that's the hard, tiring and stressful part. Faced with some health issues that gave me pause to reflect on the meaning of my life I decided to step down, take a year's sabbatical and go back teaching, which is what I love to do.

So I was expecting that yesterday would be my last day at work for a year. But it won't be. I was asked to fill in for a math teacher who was transferred at the last minute. I was delighted to agree to do so. (But keep it secret. Conventional wisdom is that I am making a huge sacrifice and "taking one for the team." That's not the case at all. I was almost dreading the sabbatical and wasn't entirely excited by the projects I had undertaken to complete while on sabbatical.)

So I have 3 weeks off and then back into the classroom.

Here's the kicker. I will be teaching pre-calculus, and I haven't looked at that stuff in 40 years.

Heads up.

Bird thinking

I cannot explain it, but I've always been fond of birds. I am not an actual birdwatcher with a tally-sheet, but I can identify birds by sight, by sound and by flight pattern. On my last birthday I received a number of books about birds from my children. That pretty much makes the point.

While I have from time to time owned canaries I have always felt badly about putting birds in cages. It don't seem right and it don't seem necessary.

Fast forward to three years ago. A friend of my wife's, on his way from California to Guam, asked if we would put up his two birds - a parrot and a cockatiel - for the month of quarantine required by Guamanian law. Sure we would.

We've had the birds ever since. And any number of dilemmae (?) and bad plans have hatched from the situation.

I don't like to see birds in cages. My wife (was) absolutley phobic about birds loose in the house. So everyday I'd take the birds out of their cages briefly and play with them in a quiet corner. Playing with a cockatiel is not very complex, playing with a parrot (an eclectus in this case) is moreso, as you will see. My wife sat on the far side of the room nervously while the birds were out of their cages.

Then I went to Russia for a week or so, like you do, and when I got home, Gloria was completely in love with both birds, and they with her. In particular the parrot Charlie was, and still is. Disturbingly in love with her. From time to time he gets physical, lovingly humping her arm while encouraging her with the words, "C'mon! C'mon! C'mon!" Sort of reminds me of being a teenager in the back of a car, but it's my wife being seduced by a bloody bird.

I am not making this up.

So then we started leaving the birds out of their cages almost all the time, and the cockatiel just walked out the back door and was gone. We replaced it with two cockatiels. One of them just walked out the back door. We replaced it. Then the other walked out the back door. We replaced it. Then the next... You get the idea. I am populating Kailua with cockatiels to the dismay of everybody who has any sense of responsibility whatsoever.

Last Christmas I went to the pet store on Christmas Eve to buy my dog Vinnie a present. I bought him an African Gray parrot, which he named Scipio.

So now there are two parrots and one cockatiel left. They have cages but when I get home everybody climbs out and walks around the house leaving deposits. The cockatiel from time to time wants to be on my arm, but Scipio drives him away. Charlie wanders out into the backyard and climbs up on his favorite chair. When Glo gets home he preens himself, checks himself in the mirror, licks his hair back and then goes looking for her. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon."

Scipio rides my shoulder and snaps at anyone else who comes near. My shirts are terribly stained and will have to be replaced on a rolling basis.

It's a life for the birds and I'm quite partial to it.

Reptile thinking

I have nothing to add to this picture, I just love the picture.

Zo-lofty thinking

I am reaching zo-lofty heights.

On May 14th I saw my surfer-dude doc and started on zoloft.

Today is May 28, and I am feeling so much more alive than I was only two weeks ago. That's pretty cool - better living through modern chemistry, no irony intended.

Think of all the people you've read about who suffered from "melancholia" and had no way out. They had to drag themselves through one long black day after another.

Around 400 BC Hippocrates described "all fears and despondencies, if they last a long time...." as being symptoms of melancholia. That's a good description. This time it was the fear that got my attention.

And so, zoloft. The first week was grim but I had the hope of knowing the zoloft would kick in sooner or later. During the second week I felt fear, but less often, less chronically. Today I am feeling pretty good. Able to complete tasks, multi-task from time to time, don't feel as stupid or as useless as I felt only two weeks ago.

I think of the people I see who are obviously ill, living on the streets. (See Zoot's post on passport-hunting for a good description.) How horrible! I cannot imagine dragging myself day after day through such a terrifying and bleak existence.

But enough of that for now. The tree in my backyard is producing fresh green shoots. The trade winds are blowing. The pool sweep is working its little heart out keeping the water clean. There is a heron standing on the pool deck eyeing the pool sweep. The first game of the Stanley Cup will start in an hour and a half. Life doesn't get much better than this.

fishy thinking

It's a fish eat fish world out there.



I wonder what fish say to one another, and whether or not one gender bullies the other.

Fish use gestures, colors and pheremones to talk. I'm guessing they say stuff like... are you ready?

"Huzza huzza!"

"Piss off!"

What else is there to say, in the broad scheme of things?

I fancy you. Leave me alone. Beat it. That kind of sums up everything.

At its most basic life is quite simple.

See the posts by Zoot and Fiona on the same picture.

Tardigrade thinking

This afternoon Glo and I went out on the ocean. Haven't done that much since I left the navy, come to think of it. In Kaneohe Bay, on the windward side of Oahu. Saw one turtle, no sharks, waded around on a sandbar for the better part of an hour. It was very uplifting. While strolling across a huge, barely-submerged sand bar, I got to thinking about what was living three or four feet below the sand, and that, of course, led me reflect upon tardigrades.

I used to have an interest in tardigrades, back when I was teaching grade anything at all in British Columbia.

In the spring when the bloom was on I would recreate every swamp in the area in a huge collection of aquarii (?) in the back of my classroom. I'd round up every microscope in the whole school and whatever age kids were being subjected to me would spend weeks studying daphnia, copepods, mosquito larvae, caddis fly larvae, whirligig beetiles, diving beeteles, freshwater snails, leeches... everything we could find. On a few magnificently memorable occasions we found amoebae or parameceums. (I'm just adding an 's' at this point. I have no idea what's the correct pluralization.)

Parameceums were cool but amoebae were the coolest by far. They slithered through, between, over, under, and around like pale grey ghosts, ectoplasmic entities without shape. Form without shape, come to think of it. Interesting. Linguists, does that work?

But we never found a tardigrade. I knew they existed because, along with all the microscopes, I had stolen every book in the school on swamps and ponds and freshwater life, every field guide to anything even close. I read about, and then became eager to find a tardigrade. Never did, though.

Tardigrades are also called water bears, because they look a little teddy bearish. They are, in scientific terms, a phylum of their own. There are 35 phyla, into which all living things are divided. Vertebrates (think "animals" as we loosely use the terms... bunnies, lizards, humans...) are one part of one phyla. Tardigrades are their own. There are about 750 species known.

There is a beautiful video of a tardigrade in motion, which you can find by clicking here.

Hobbyist thinking

You know those applications that you fill out, the ones that ask you to list hobbies and whatnot? I'm always interested by what interests people, and often surprised.

Tae-Bo, for example. This appeared on the application of a young man I was interviewing for admission to a private school. Tae-Bo is a workout regimen developed by somebody claiming the name Billy Banks. It was for a time adverstised through late night infomercials. This boy was about 16, and he was really stuck into it.

I can't, at first blush, think of anything I've ever done that would qualify as a hobby. In fact I've not thought much about what makes a certain pastime a hobby as opposed to a passing fancy, a time-filler, a distraction. Probably they are all more or less synonymous.

I looked for lists of hobbies, and found one that is a pretty short list to my way of thinking, but diverse. The usual - woodwork, drawing, candle making... and then plumbing appeared, something called DIY, and French Literature.

I got to thinking about the things on the list, some of which I have done from time to time, and I realized the ones I liked most (not that I ever stuck with any of them) had the quality that they transported me out of my daily routine for prolonged periods of time, and left me feeling relaxed, accomplished, and re-energized. They were fulfilling and in some strange way rewarding.

Plumbing began to make sense. Nothing more satisfying than clearing a plugged sewer line or installing a new toilet. And then looking for more of both.

DIY, it turns out, stands for Do-It-Yourself, which is a TV network that showcases programs on, well, figure it out for... you know...

At this particular moment, waiting for the zoloft to kick in, a hobby is most desirable and I am glad to have discovered blogging.

Blogging is a little more accessible than French Literature, n'est ce pas?

Amazing thinking

Wow!Some things are amazing. This solar picture is, but it has nothing to do with the subject of this blog, funnily enough. (I'll explain the chimp in a minute.)

Laughter is amazing. What a curious physiological response it is. The study of it is called gelotology, from the greek "the study of geloto." Really. Geloto means laughter. In the gelotolgy sub-culture there are many gelato jokes, gelotologists being a good-humored group.

There is some evidence to support the notion that laughter exists in non-human species, including primates, dogs, and rats. In all species it seems to be contagious and inspires light-hearted, playful behaviour from those who hear it. (Of the same species, I presume. I cannot claim that the sound of rat laughter ((which always sounds derisive to me)) inspired me to behave in a frolicsome manner. Quite the contrary.)

I recall reading of a strange research project conducted years ago. Some Anthropology professor sent his poor grad students into the subways of New York to test the responses of people to chimpanzee threat displays. (I'm sure there was a large grant behind this - why else would you do it? And who but a grad student would agree to do it?)

A chimpanzee threat display looks quite a bit like human laughter - wide open, grinning mouth, lots of teeth. When you see a chimp making such a face , as you did above the solar picture, I'm guessing you would smile, thinking erroneously that the chimp was laughing. Or am I the only one?


Here is the value of modern research. When the grad students sat across from someone in a subway in New York, imitating such a face and holding the pose for some length of time, few people grew frolicsome, if any. All the rest said piss off, or rude words with a simlar intent.

A stellar response by any measure. Amusing to reflect upon, amazing because it really happened.

Renard thinking

I saw a red fox when I was about 11 years old. It was trotting through London on its way from one park to another. It looked perfectly at home, checked for traffic before crossing the street, didn't pay much attention to the passers-by. Only I thought he was unusual, as far as I could tell. Perhaps he was visible only to me.

According to Wikipedia there are over 20 million of them scattered around the world. I spent an afternoon north Aarhus, Denmark a few years ago in a forest with a fox warren right there - all sorts of entries and exits scattered about. Despite my efforts to blend into the background and be invisible I saw no foxes. They out-invisible'd me.

Like a fox, the rest of this blog will seem to be invisible.

Depressed thinking

There are few straight lines in nature. Right now I think this does not speak well for nature, which is a chaotic, pathetic excuse for a system unless you're the sort of person who likes chaos or its exuberant cousin creativity.

I find myself of two minds about nature, curved lines and creativity. One mind manifests when I am at the top of my game, healthy, alert, engaged and active. Then I am a nature nut, a chaos champ, a creative fountain of ideas.

The other manifests itself when I am at the bottom of my game, depressed, anxous, stupid and ill. Then I need straight lines, defined borders, organizational predictabilty to the point of boredom. I need security because I need control.

When I first saw the sculpture above at the Chicago Art Institute I thought it was wonderful. Now it looks quite terrifying to me.

Depression and I go back a long way. I cannot say we are old friends, but we are well acquainted. It always surprises me when people refer to depression as a mental illness. I never think of it that way. Winston Churchill called it "that black dog that lurks in the corner of every room." I think of it as a storm of black cloud just over my horizon, rarely visible, but sometimes, sometimes it creeps in and I realize it is suddenly upon me.

It is suddenly upon me. I know my blogging about it will distress my children because they will not like to think of me suffering from anything at all. But I can manage depression, and I will blog about it because so few people who suffer depression ever dare tell anyone about it. They suffer in dreadful silence thinking that something is wrong with them, (there is but not in the way they think,) they feel confused ("I have nothing to be depressed about!") and/or weak ("I feel so stupid!")

It's a very very common disease and very treatable.

The hardest part, I think, is realizing what's wrong. This time around it first showed up as an inability to complete very simple tasks like making lists or paying bills. Combine that with a growing sense of dread - anxiety growing to fear with no particular object, just the fear itself, palpable, oppressive, cruel in the way the ocean is cruel - it is completely unaware of your existance. The fear couldn't care less about you. It simply swallows you whole.

This time I caught it early enough, I think, to avoid the worst of it. I was sitting in my office yesterday bewildered (again) about my inablilty to address this one simple task that I've been putting off for weeks. The task will take an hour or less. It requires no intelligence, but it requires the ability to choose. And I suddenly remembered that, for me, that has always been a symptom of depression, the inability to make choices, even simple ones.

Then a whole bunch of other things popped up on my radar screen. Last weekend I had found it necessary to promise myself that I would accomplish one thing - either mow the lawn, pay the bills, anything at all just so the weekend wouldn't be gone without my having accomplished something, anything at all. I accomplished nothing. The previous weekend had been exactly the same. And there has been an undercurrent of fear in my belly for a long time now, fear with no object.

If I leave this untreated I can predict exactly what will come next. Over the next few weeks my ability to think will diminish - I will become stupid, really, unable to follow thoughts or conversations. Then the idea of suicide will begin to cross my mind. In the early stages I will recoil from it, but after a while it will begin to look like an old friend. After a while it will become welcome. In the meantime the entire atmosphere of my life will continue to darken until all is black, all is heavy, all is suffocating and poisonous.

I've never got past that darkest point without getting better. It's not so hard to figure out what would come next.

Yesterday, after I realized what was happening, I called my surfer-dude doctor friend. He's a good listener, and asked a lot of questions. He sat back and said, "Well, there's no question that you're suffering a significant depression." Notice that he did not say "severe." He's right. It's significant but not severe. Nice catch on my part! He went on to say that, if I could look back and start identifying problems starting two weeks ago, the depression has been growing a lot longer than that.

Depression is a chemical issue, not an illness of the spirit or a failure of the heart. It is a chemical issue and is treated effectively with chemicals. I started taking zoloft yesterday. I feel better just knowing what's wrong, and that it's being treated. In a few weeks the zoloft will kick in and the darkness will lift and I'll be fine again.

I won't need straight lines, I will love to look at the crazy Chicago sculpture, I'll embrace chaos, I'll generate ideas and I'll look fondly on the nuttiness of nature again.

Imprudent thinking

Have you ever done something that you knew in there somewhere you really shouldn't do, but you just went ahead and did it anyway? And then you got nailed for it? Inside that pussycat up there there is a small voice saying, "I probably shouldn't do this, but what the heck, it's just a bird. How much trouble can I get into with a bird?"

And then the thought, "Big bird, mind you." Followed by, " Oh well..."

I do such things. I agree to take on tasks that I have no idea how to do. In there somewhere I know that I should just say no, just like the drug people tell me. Once I decided to back my car through a narrow space that I couldn't really see all that well. In there somewhere I knew it wasn't a good idea, and then I floored it and stripped the side mirrors off, clean as a whistle.

I am interested in the area that I referred to earlier as in there somewhere. What is that, exactly?

In my case I know where it is, more or less. It's in my stomach. I can feel it when I am acting imprudently. It feels like the memory of the echo of a pain... That's backwards... It feels like the foreshadowing... I don't what foreshadowing feels like...

In there, there are all these little guys like old fashioned bank clerks. They are wearing those funny visors, and their shirtsleeves are rolled up and held in place with elastic bands of some kind. They are smoking, they are nervous, there is sweat on their foreheads. They are not happy and they are trying to get my attention. Each of them is feeling faintly sick to his stomache, as if inside his stomache there were all these little guys like old fashioned bank clerks... On and on down through layers of hurty tummies all trying to warn one another that it's not a very good idea tell the boss that his wife dresses like a tramp even though that's important information that he ought to have.

The thing of it this: those sweaty little guys with the hurty tummies, by trying to help you, they also really really limit you. The best moment of my life came when they were screaming the loudest and I chose to ignore them.

I was in a lovely, peaceful, tranquil place and my heart was beating wildly. I had just realized that I was completely in love with the woman I was sitting with. She was married, and so was I (but not to her!) and I was in love head over heels for the first time in my life. Suddenly I knew what love felt like. She was married, I was too. Oh Jesus!

Inside me the bank clerks were raising merry hell. They were pounding on the walls, screaming at me, "Stop it you fool! Stop it! Don't! Don't! Do! It!" I could feel each of their little fists hammering against the inside of my belly. I must not say a word to her... If I do she will never speak to me again, she will hit me, she will hate me... I should just stay quiet for ever, suck it up... Don't say a word you fool...

I said a word. And then another.

Before I knew it I had told her everything, and then she told me everything back, and that was almost twenty years ago and we haven't ever stopped telling one another those things, back and forth, every day.

That's why I stripped the mirrors off my car, because when the little bank clerks start telling me what to do, I do the opposite.

The cat with the eagle up there? Maybe that could work out really well. Frankly, I don't see it myself, but it's his life he's living. There is a time to go out on a railing towards an eagle.

Leopard thinking

Lemme tell ya, friend, this gal jus' loves to sleep. Ah loves to sleep, that's mah non-secret, mah gran' passion, mah ambition and mah joy.

I like the annelope huntin' jus' fine. Annelope huntin' is the necessary lead-in to a good sleep and I'm verra good at it.

What kind of annelope is the best kind? Some like yer dik diks, others like yer duikers. I'm a gemsbock gal myself, klipspringer in a pinch. But them's all good.

I walk up to a herd of them little guys in that casual way that says, "I ain't huntin'..." They lemme walk right up to them when I walk that way. I check 'em out, look for the fat ones, the tender ones. I know the book says you wan' the sick ones and the lame ones, but no, you don't really wan' them sick and lame ones at all. Not unless you're sick er lame yerself in which case yer days are nummered anyway, the big sleep juss 'round the corner.

So I walk up to 'em. I'm real up front about it. They don' mind a bit.

"Hi girls. It's juss me.... how are you? Say, you are lookin' good Sha'Quonne, real good..." You scope 'em out, charm 'em a little, make 'em feel comfor'ble. If you git a chance it never hurts to drive off a hyeener or two, establishes ya as a good person, a go-to kind o' gal. Everybody relaxes a little. Like, when you're around, nobody gots to watch out for hyeeners.

When the sun gets warm I lies down, right there amongst them annelopes. I love the sun, the dust, the flies, the whole gestalt of the place. The sweet smell o' warm annelope hide, warm annelope shit, warm annelope piss, it just kind of makes everythin' dreamy like. I rest while mah appetite prepares itself.

And when my appetite finds itself prepared I stand up and doggone it, right away everybody jus'knows mah appetite done prepared itself.

Then I gots to walk away and do mah spot magic, make mah spots do that mojo they do so well, and I kinda jus' vanish, like. An' when I all vanished I creep back up on 'em again, all down low now, belly-walkin' style, pressin' way down, only shoulder bones in the sand, thass all I am. Lookin' for Sha'Quonne, Sha'Quonne baby you is lookin' so damn good, shugah.

Then I eats her.

And then I sleeps. I do love to sleep.

Interviewed thinking

Today I was interviewed as a prospective citizen of the United States. My interviewer was not quite what I had expected. I had expected three big guys in dark glasses, tall, broad-shouldered guys with crew cuts, white teeth and no smiles. What I got was one small, cheerful, gracious woman of Asian descent.

She had been to Russia in 2003, sent there to do refugee interviews at the Embassy in Moscow. She was really interested in my travels to Russia, and we compared notes. What did I like? What had she liked? We noted the inside-joke that Moscow Embassy staffers all know: there is a Cathedral across the street that has a stained glass window towering above the American Embassy. Staffers call the cathedral "Our Lady of Perpetual Surveillance." We both knew the joke, we were cool.

Even so there are protocols to follow. I had to answer, under oath, the question, "Have you ever committed a crime for which you were not charged?"

Heck, no.

Have I ever claimed to be an American? Have I ever trafficked in drugs or prostitution? Would I support the Constitution of the United States? Stuff like that.

Then my civics test: How many stripes on the American flag? How many states in the union? What entities comprise congress? How long is the term of a senator? What are the duties of the Supreme Court? She did not ask me to name the 13 original colonies, so I told her I wanted that question.

"Okay, what were they?"

I rattled them off. She laughed, shrugged and said, "I'm just gonna take your word on that."

My English test was brief. I had to read aloud the sentence "It's a good job to start with," and to write the sentence, "They buy many things at the store."

That was it. My application is approved. Sometime in the next three or four weeks I will be sworn in.

Nobody asked me what special favors I was prepared to grant in exchange for citizenship. I'd have granted a lot.

Apocryphal thinking

Why are they all so calm?

Rightful thinking

Tomorrow I will report to a building in downtown Honolulu at precisely 9:20 a.m.. To the armed sentry I will surrender my Alien Identification Card and a letter issued by Homeland Security on what look likes banknote paper. At the appointed hour I will be escorted into the presence of an Interviewer. The Interviewer will quiz me to determine just how grievous my character flaws actually are, to gauge my fluency in English, and to measure the depth of my knowledge about civics and history as they relate to the United States. If I pass this interview and its tests I hope to be granted citizenship in the country that has been my home for almost twenty years.

I have been studying for the civics test, and despite the fact that I have taught American History for years I have learned a few things. There are 96 questions to which one must know the answer. I appreciate the heads-up because I would have probably got some of them wrong by virtue of over-thinking them.

What is the constitution? Think about it citizens. How would you answer that?

The answer is "The supreme law of the land." It's that simple. Forget sacred documents, forget shared understandings, just go with the answer which is not a bad summary.

How about this one: what were the 13 original states? If that one doesn't stop you cold in your tracks, you're unnatural. Who would be able to rattle those off, and for god's sake why would you want to be able to? I won't list them all, but I will tell you the mnemonic device I created in order to answer the question. "Calm down, Granny! Many more new hamsters, new gerbils (and) new yaks, north and south, relentlessly pee on Virginia."

The rest are easy, except may be the one about"What constitutional amendments relate to voting rights?" (15, 19, 24 and 26, but you probably knew that. (Race, gender, poll-tax, age 18.))

There are also about 100 sentences that one might wish to memorize in order to display a working knowledge of written English. Among them are such treasures as:

1. The colors of the American fag (sic) are red, white and blue.
2. He is lucky to have such a good wife.
3. My car is broken.
4. It's a good job, to start with.

I am lobbying to have this sentence included:

5. I am trained as a thoracic surgeon but my goal is to become the best cab driver in all of New York.

One question/answer combination that leaves me uncertain is this one: Who is protected by the Bill of Rights? The answer is "Everyone who lives in the United States." I think that answer is misleading. Originally it meant white male citizens. Now it is much more inclusive, but I am not certain that it includes illegal immigrants, so-called terrorists, or, frankly speaking, non-citizens. I will research this and get back to you, but I do not believe that I have the right to bear arms until I am a citizen. Not that I want it or will want it later.

My authority for this information is a gun shop owner. I walked off the street a few years back and said, "Hi. I'm an alien. Can I buy a gun, a really big one?'

He said no.

I'll check into it further and report back.

Natural thinking

Every now and again I have lost my mind and embraced the noble savage concept, fallen prey to the delusion that closer to nature means closer to humanity, or something like that. Thought erroneously that to sit in a simulated-leather-upholstered, comfy, made-of-artificial-stuff-as-well-as-the-simulated-leather chair, thought that that was wrong. A glance at the photo reassures me that natural is not better, it's probably a lot worse.

Parasites are natural. Dysentery is really, really natural, as are cholera and toe fungus and thirty foot long nematodes living in your gut (Yes, you. Your gut.)

Death at age 40 is natural. I learned this in a personal way when I was in my doctor's office some time ago, grousing. My doctor (I call him son, he calls me Christopher) is a laid back surfer dude with long blond hair and a very quick mind. I was reviewing with him my ailments, which I will not review with you, and I asked, "Am I doing something wrong here, that all these pestilences and afflictions so besmite me?" (I'm paraphrasing.)

"Yeah," he said. "You're livin' too long. You were supposed ta die 15 'er 20 years ago. The parts, man, they just, you know, like, wear out."

Thus have I bid adieu to any fondness I ever had for things natural. Artifical hips? Bring 'em on. Gamma knife surgery? Oh yeah, baby. More mundane things too: plastic bags work just fine for me, as do automobiles and word processors.

That said, I am aware that certain unnatural objects or practices are not in themselves all that hot either. Breast implants are grotesque, hydrogen bombs are a very bad idea by any measure I can think of, and the book Omnivore's Dilemma is leading me to think that raising cattle on feed lots is going to create an awful lot of problems for us. And for cattle, of course.

There evidently must be some balance. God, I hate that. Makes my head hurt. Makes me want to curl up in a comfortable chair and by god that chair will not made of branches held together with swallow spit.

Cyrillic thinking

АВНИНЫ - участки поверхности суши, дна океанов и морей, характеризующиеся незначительными колебаниями высот. На суше различают равнины, лежащие ниже уровня моря, низменные (высота до 200 м), возвышенные (от 200 до 500 м) и нагорные (выше 500 м). По структурному принципу выделяют равнины платформенных и орогенных (горных) областей (главным образом в пределах межгорных и предгорных прогибов); по преобладанию тех или иных внешних процессов - денудационные, образовавшиеся в результате разрушения возвышенных форм рельефа, и аккумулятивные, возникшие путем накопления толщ рыхлых отложений. В совокупности равнины занимают большую часть поверхности Земли. Величайшая равнина мира - Амазонская (св. 5 млн. км²).

This post speaks for itself. But is that not a most beautiful alphabet?

Secretive thinking

I know lots of secrets. Military secrets. And I'm prepared to spill them all here.

Frankly I'm discouraged that nobody is offering me large sums of money for them, for I can be bought. But all the military secrets I know are 30 years old or more and have appeared in popular literature (Body of Secrets, Blind Man's Bluff. etc.)

What is left that is cool, then, about knowing old secrets?

I was in Sochi on Augst 2, 2000. That was the day that the Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Baltic Sea. The Rusian navy denied it, obscured it, and finally came to terms with it. Vladimir Putin elected not to disrupt his vacation and he came to Sochi, where I was. (But not because I was there. I was staying very low-key and he didn't realize I was there. We just bumped into one another at a nightclub. )

He tied up traffic terribly and movement around Sochi (a resort town on the Black Sea) became difficult. It was a long time before he made a public statement, and the Russian navy was always vague about the cause of the Kursk disaster.

But I knew what caused it from the very moment I heard of it. It wasn't because I knew anything in particular about the Kursk, it was all the other little bits and pieces I knew that all fit together at that moment. Let me put some pieces together for you.

On public record, Kursk was carrying "experimental topedoes." I guessed that before I learned it from the Russian press. It was a very and thoroughly modern submarine. Of course it would carry such torpedoes.

On public record was that an American ex-navy captain had been arrested in Russia several years previously, before the Kursk disaster, for expressing curiosity in something called a squall torpedo, capable of travelling at speeds in excess of 200 knots. Inaudibly. If you are its target, you will have no idea until the explosion occurs and your lungs are implosively filling with water.

Squall torpedo is the name. Details are now readily available. But forget what we can learn in restrospect. Let's see how we could work it out on our own, and then check that against what we learned.

Goal: get a torpedo to travel at 2oo-300 knots, silently.

Technology - easy to do,at least in principal, and well tested.

What you need is a sheath of bubbles so that the torpedo body itself does not touch the water boundary. That provides both speed and silence. Then you need a motor that will move the torpedo, say 2 tons or more, at such a speed. What one chemical will produce both speed and a sheath of bubbles?

Answer: Hyrdrogen peroxide, the stuff you dye your hair with, only a lot more concentrated. Give me a 90% pure hydrogen dioxide mixture, and I give you navol, hydrogen fuel for the doomed.

Navol has been used as torpedo fuel since long before I was in submarine school and it is (and has always been) a horrible accident waiting to happen. It is hugely, massively and amazingly flammable because it brings its own oxygen to the party. (Chemical formula, written without subscripts, please forgive me: H2O2) Put it in contact with anything that can oxidise and you have instant combustion. And once you have that, how the hell are you going to put it out?

It is also notoriously unstable, breaking down into H2O and O2 all on its own and that's a problem nobody needs.

So hydrogen peroxide is used to fuel the motor, and also, unless I'm much mistaken (never happened before) to create the sheathe of bubbles the torpedo flies though.

I know my torpedoes, and I know torpedo fuels. Squall is a torpedo just waiting to blow up. Apparently that is what happened in the Kursk. (The explosion was in the forward torpedo room, which is where forward torpedoes are normally stored. Coincidence, or is it more?)

A horrible way to die, trapped for days alive deep underwater in the freezing cold waters of the Baltic.

Iran has purchased these torpedoes from the Russians.

They claimed to have developed their own, yeah yeah whatever. We wish your sailors much better luck. Your secret is safe with us.

Non-problematic thinking

I am a lingua-liberal. I can speak the King's English or standard American English (I am bilingual) but I do not have any sense that the language should be spoken in either of those two ways. I don't get neurotic if language conventions change over time, including spelling. If night changes to nite I couldn't care less, not one iota.

I say that to establish my good-guy credentials immediately before going off on a language rant. There is an expression that seems now to be firmly established in our culture that I don't care for. I don't care for it one bit, and I blame young people for it. (Not a damning judgement. I blame young people for computers and the Internet, good medecine, good literature and bad food.)

Would you like me to tell you what it is, this expression I don't care for?

No problem.

That's the phrase I hate. No problem. It has replaced "You're welcome," but it implies something very very different. It implies that something that would have been a problem wasn't, only because of the very positive attitude of the person saying it.

I first encountered it at a fast food place. I had ordered the double lard-burger on garlic bun with mayo (hold the lettuce) and the cute-as-a-button little girl behind the counter, she of the bright and chipper smile, the maiden Bethanee I believe, was gracious and charming and agreeable. When she gave me my greasy bag 'o cholesterol I said, very sincerely, "Thank you."

"No problem," she replied.

I leaped to paternal conclusions. "Oh dear! Was the last order a problem?" I turned to find someone I could punch on her behalf.

"No," she said.

"Oh good!" I cried, relieved. Then, anxious again, "Have you had a lot of problems today?"

She fidgeted and glanced towards the corner where her manager lurked. "Not until now," she said hesitantly. I was growing unnerved, and suddenly I needed reassurance.

"My order - that was not problem, right?"

"Ummm... riiight...."

"Thank goodness." I was being completely sincere, but something was happening that I wasn't following. "What would have made my order a problem?" I asked. I was wanting to know what trap I had avoided so as not to step into it, ever.

"I dunno...."

Then it hit me. "No problem" meant "You're welcome." And the crabby old man gene kicked in. "Wait a sec... My asking you for an order of double lard-burger on garlic bread with mayo (hold the lettuce,) that didn't give you a problem, right?"

"Ahhh... I dunno..."

"It's your job, right? To give people stuff when they order it? That's what you do for a living, right?"

"Ahhhh... I guess....""

"And so you're saying to me that my asking you to do what you do to earn a living is not creating a problem, is that right?" She looked at me,blinked, and began to roll up the bottom of her T-shirt between two tiny fingers. Tears appeared. But I was on a roll and could not stop. "What exactly could I have done that would have made my placing an order a problem for you, ah, Bethanee?"

"You're doing it?" She spoke in a tiny whisper, tears growing. The manager appeared off to the right, slightly downstage.

I knew I had gone too far. Things were not comme il faut and I needed to beat a graceful retreat if possible and reflect on what I had learned. I beckoned the manager forward.

"You are the manager?"

"May I help you with something?" He didn't call me buddy, which surprised me.

I held up my dripping sack-o-grease and said, "This young lady... Bethanee.... has been very helpful to me. I want to thank you for training your staff so well and making this such a great place to come and.. ummm.... shop." I was running off at the mouth. I bit my tongue.

The manager looked warily at me, then at Bethanee, whose eyes were locked onto his, wide open and afraid.

"So... thank you very much...." I repeated awkwardly and turned to leave.

"No problem," he told my back.

Ererybody watched me on the way out. "There was no problem," I told them. "No problem, no problem at all, no problem..."

Bumbly thinking

About two years ago I was walking by a neighbour's house when I noticed a swarm of bees on his tree. I've never seen one before. It was huge, bigger than the one in this picture. It was about three feet across at the top where it was widest, and three to four feet long. Many many thousands of bees in there, not aggressive but not looking entirely insignificant either, from the threat perspective. My first instinct as always was to throw rocks. Maybe I could drive them inside his house before he got home? Sort of a surprise for him. But I didn't do that. He drove up while I was considering how to do it.

"I didn't do this," I promised him.

We scratched our heads together, admired the bees a great deal, made jokes about bees, all pretty predictable. He called a bee keeper who came over a couple of nights later and, for $400, removed the bees. I didn't think about it again until this morning.

This morning I learned that about one-third of all America's honeybees are missing. Not dead, just missing. They leave home but they don't come back.

Speculation is rife.What could account for this? Bee rapture is my favorite. Strange mite infestations is good. Strange mites. The words conjure up strangely unnerving images, only half seen, murky but scary.

Cell phone interference is another proposal. This one seems far-fetched to me. According to this theory bees who talk on cell phones while flying don't pay attention to where they're going and have... accidents? I don't know but the consequences are important.

Bees, besides making honey, pollinate most of our crops. They go, there go the crops. I am beginning to feel hungry already.

Before the arrival of Europeans there were no honey bees in America. Pollination was done by a variety of insects - bees, hornets, other things, but not the hives of honey bees we take for granted. There must be an interesting story behind how the first European honey bees arrived here. Stowaways? Paying passengers? Insects seeking religious freedom? Bugs seeking a better life in the New World? Is it possible they're leaving again, for the same reasons?

Let us hope that that generic group of faceless saviours called scientists, whatever those are, figure this out pretty quick. Life without honey is not the end of the world for me but life without crops sounds bleak, exclusively carnivorous and brief.

Unbalanced thinking

Yesterday was Lei Day in Hawaii. This has been a great celebration since sometime in the 1920's, and almost every school has a celebration of it, many of which are very spectacular, all of which are filled with love and aloha. (Aloha is a very real thing, not just a Hawaiian metaphor.)For the last 30 years the Brothers Cazimero have had a huge concert at the Waikiki Shell on May 1st to celebrate Lei Day, filled with aloha.

Last night I was there and watching the show was like watching a horrible accident occurring in slow motion. These guys are consummate performers, and the show should have been excellent and beautiful, but it spun terribly, horribly out of control.

There were glitches from the beginning, but nothing you couldn't overlook. For example one of the beautiful young hula dancers was introduced as "...a mother and a grandmother..." Significant accomplishments for a girl who looked 19. The intro was meant for another hula dancer who appeared 3 or 4 dancers later. Not a big deal, kind of amusing. But then there was continuing confusion about what year we were in... 2005? 2006? 2007? We never did clearly establish that.

Nevertheless the first half of the show was good and well done and moving, all that stuff. Intermission was good too. More than one woman used the men's restroom, like they do, and we men all teased them about the requirement that they leave the seat up, friendly inter-gender cammeraderie.

So far so good. Then quickly downhill in a major way.

A few weeks ago one of Hawaii's beloved entertainers, Don Ho, passed away. The second half of the show was to have been a tribute to him, featuring his music and friends. Oh Jesus.

About 3 songs in Don Ho's relatively young widow made what was apparently a surprise appearance to dance a hula in his honor. She is a very slight woman and a good dancer. But when she appeared, all was not well. The huge crowd watched in stunned silence as this poor lady lurched, recovered, staggered backwards, fell over, rose to her feet, lurched, fell over again. It was excruciating to watch. I was terrified that she would fall off the stage. As soon as it was clear that something was terribly, terribly wrong Robert Cazimero abandoned his bass and tried to catch her before she fell again. He failed. She fell backwards onto the stage and rolled over to push her way up again. Two young men entered stage right and helped her off, she on an angle and reluctant to go.

It didn't end there. While she was leaving and Robert was staring after her, obviously deeply concerned, brother Roland began to play and sing Don Ho's trademark, Tiny Bubbles. It may or may not have been fair. I like to think it wasn't but it galvanized one of her friends to walk onto the stage and take the microphone in order to defend her. His name is Kimo, and he is also a friend of the Cazimero's. In a passionate but semi-articulate way he pronounced her the finest woman in the world, more woman than any man could ever hope for because, well because "she was with Don Ho through all this..." I assume he was referring to his death, not her dance.

So far I think the audience was sympathetic, genuinely concerned, and engaged, with aloha. Then Robert reached out to take the microphone from Kimo, and Kimo pulled it away. He began to sing a Don Ho song. The Cazimeros gamely figured out the key and accompanied him. Then Kimo moved not-so-seamlessly into another song, the Cazimeros struggling to stay game and to be okay with it. At the third song Robert reached for the mike again, Kimo pulled free again. "Get off my stage!" shouted Robert, maybe four or five times, reaching for and failing to get control of the mike. "Give me that mike, dammit!" And on it went until Kimo was damned good and ready to hand back the mike.

Finally he did. Robert and Roland (gamely) allowed him to hug them (warmly) before he left the stage. Robert repeated over and over "This is one May Day I'm not gonna forget..." He had the house lights turned up, had all the audience members look around to get a picture - mental or digital - of the people around them, saying "You will always remember, 'I was there in 2006.'"

Whatever year it was the collision wasn't quite over. The fiasco had taken a lot of time, and the Waikiki Shell is required to end all performances by 10:00. There has been a rumor for a long time that this was to be the Brother Cazimero's last Lei Day celebration, and I think the planned finale was originally designed to leave an air of mystery around that question. But there was not time for a finale of any rehearsed kind at all. Robert simply ordered all the dancers to the front of the stage. He made a show of waving goodbye to them, but they didn't know what they were supposed to do. Some left the stage, others waved back at him, one or two made goofy gestures... then finally they all just drifted aimlessly away. Robert turned his back on the audience, and walked backstage. That was it.

I have not read a review of the performance. The newspaper reported only that Don Ho's wife had collapsed on stage and was driven home by a family friend. She did not require medical treatment.

Poor her, and poor Robert trying to control it all and being unable to do anything but watch his beloved Lei Day celebration teeter on the brink and then topple off. (Bombs away.) It was the stuff of nightmares.

Yachtful thinking

If I owned a yacht I would sail away to Zanzibar. Zanzibar has always seemed a most mysterious and wonderful place, tropical and eastern and ancient. In fact Zanzibar is made up of two islands in the Indian Ocean, and these two islands both belong to Tanzania. On one of them cloves are still grown in an economically significant way, one of only two places in the world where this is true. I would like to watch cloves grow.

No I wouldn't. Good God, what was I thinking?

If I owned a yacht I would fit it out for deep sea research. I am particularly interested in the communications between squid (squids?), which use bio-luminesence to create amazing light displays that clearly have communication as a goal. I would like to learn what they talk about. Maybe mess with their heads a little bit... They do have heads, don't they?

I'd sing to them old sea shanties from Newfoundland like "Squid Jiggin' Grounds" to see what sort of reaction I'd get. I'd listen to see what sea shanties squids sing so bio-luminescently. What jokes do squid enjoy? How do they insult one another? What is the squid equivalent of "Huzza, huzza?" What do they pray for, and to whom?

If I had a yacht I would install a huge stereo and steer into the wind to Ride of the Valkyries, run before it to Bolero, tack across it to Carmina Burana, and run aground to Brick in the Wall. I have a confession to make - I put a submarine aground once. We kept it our little secret, but there we were, up on the mud right in front of a swanky hotel on the Carribean island of St.Thomas. Swacked tourists were toasting us from the bar with great hilarity while we churned, full speed astern both engines, and dragged ourselved slowly off the shore.

It was... It was a bad start for a brand new navigator. I misjudged the current while trying to come alongside the jetty there... I made my teetery way up to the bar and that's all I remember from that day.

If I had a yacht I would sell it and blow the money on a 5 star hotel vacation for 2 for as many days and nights as the money lasted. The last time I was in China a 5 star hotel in Beijing was $90/night. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Too bad, it was fabulous, just down the road from Tiananmen Square. It had a glass front and was set to open just before the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. A tank passing by the day before the massacre machined-gunned the glass front (apparently out of nothing more than a sense of mischief) and destroyed $500 million worth of glass in just a few bursts. No injuries. It was the China World Hotel, and that same room now, about five years after my visit, is $290 a night. If you have a moment, check out the link to the hotel and compare it to the photo of the yachts at the top of the blog. And if you clicked on the link tell me honestly - if you were a young punk kid on important government business and you had a machine gun and you knew you'd get away with it - wouldn't you like to break those windows too? Just to say you did it?

The sort of yacht I had in mind when I started this blog goes for about $3,000,000 plus $10 for a license, so despite the grotesquely inflated prices that would still pay for over 10,000 nights at the China World Hotel - a little over 28 years.

How do people get yachts? And what do they do with them when they aren't communicating with squid?

Twenty eight years in a Shangri-La hotel in Beijing. A yacht.

It is so hard to choose.

Thoughtful thinking

The word "thought" generates 412 million hits, taking 22 hundredths of a second to accomplish the task. That gives you something to think about.

"Think" gets 741 million, in only 6 hundredths of a second. The longer word "thinking" gets a third that number of hits, but still takes only 6 hundredths of a second.

What takes "thought" so long? Like, does it think I have all to day to wait?

Deadly thinking

According to deathclock.com I have somewhere just over 276 million seconds to live. (This authoritative, sublimely confident number of seconds was apparently derived from my birthdate, BMI [standing for Beautiful Male Insouciance,] gender and smoking habits.) That's another 8.75 years, gaze on it ye mighty and despair.

Absent from the calculations were my country of residence (a long-lived one), proximity to landmines (not very proximal to the best of my knowledge), drinking habits (a serious omission on deathclock.com's part) and marital status (M, if it matters. But but very, very M.)

I never feared death until I had children, at which point I feared their deaths and they, as they got old enough to consider it, feared not their own deaths but mine.

Death is to be treated very very lightly unless it's someone else's death.

It's gonna be a great 276 million seconds. And then some.

Latitudinal thinking

I was a navigator once. I know the word latitude and the word longitude and I know which is which. Left and right have always blurred together in my mind but I was never tested on them for my navigation certificate. Remembering my latitude from my longitude was far from instinctive.

Here's what I came up with: Latitude-Flatitude. (No relation to flatulence.)

Latitude lines lie flat like the slats (get it?) of the blinds above. Longditude lines go up and down. (I tried mneumonics like Longitude-Flongditude but they made no sense and I only needed the flatitude one, and then longitude was the other one.) When the position of a place on the Earth is given using "Lat'nLong" as we navigators like to call them, latitude is the first one, always. They come in alphabetical order, la before lo like in the dictionary. So the first number tells you how far north or south of the equator the place is, the second tells you how far around the globe it is from Greenwich, England, which apparently is the starting place for going around the globe.

This is what's tricky: lines of latitude, which are flat (as in horizontal) tell how far up or down the place is. (Go to the third slat up the blinds.) Lines of longitude, which go up and down (as in vertical) tell you how far the place is measured left to right.(Go to the leftmost window of the building you can see through the blinds.) That was very confusing for a while.

There are, believe it or not... I'm only showing off now so if I just taught you lat from long and you're celebrating this newfound knowledge, stop reading at this point because the rest will make you queasy... there are in fact six different ways to measure latitude just on the planet Earth, seven if you have broader horizons. They are...

Never mind, it doesn't matter. But my favorite of all times is called rectifying latitude (like it needed rectifying) and the reason it is my all-time favorite is because of this charmingly casual coment in the excellent Wikipedia article that I'm plagiarizing from, "... Unfortunately it requires elliptical integration..."

I had a girl friend once who was like that. She pretty much ended my fascination with elliptical integration.

Call me square.

Sibling thinking

I love sibling rivalry. It always worked for me, never against me. My older sister, in an unsual move (very typical of her) decided to take the role of rebel, independant thinker, the baddy, despite the fact that she was the oldest child.

This left the role of goodie-goodie to me, and I exploited it fully. Most second children are forced into the baddy role by virtue of the fact that goodie-goodie was sewn up long before they came along. Not me.

My oldest sister became an artist, of course. Got divorced, if you can believe that. Then she became an aeronautical engineer and an early roboticist so her fall from grace was as permanent as it was catastrophic. Now she lives in Mexico and is an artist again. (You can see her work on the mafonga glassworks link to the right of my blog.)

The picture here is of my three children. The oldest is to the right looking hopeful. The second child is to the front, looking confident. The youngest is on the left looking like she's enjoying herself.

When they were young they had sibling rivalry issues. I always tried to play them off one against the other seeking maximum advantage for myself. At some point they figured it out and wound up best friends, and that's just wrong.

Princess thinking

Ta Daaaa!

Chippy thinking

I was just in Vancouver, Canada. (Not Washington State.)

Vancouver got hammered by a major winsdtorm a couple of weeks back and millions of dollars worth of trees were blown over. I don't know how many trees that is. In Stanley Park they - I'm not sure who they are - are working flat-out to remove the debris and make the park look un-devastated.

So there is a huge pile of wood chips filling much of a parking lot. When I took a picture of it my children all rolled their eyes and said, as one, "Chippy thinking..." They are the majority of my blog readership and I can't let them down.

In North America, I was surprised to discover, chippy is a word used to describe women of low repute, as it were. Probably came out of New Orleans, possibly because of a supposed similarity between the little noises made by women of low repute and those of chipping sparrows.

Chipping sparrows? And those noises? Okay. I have been hanging around with the wrong kinds of sparrows. Thank god.

In the UK the word chippy refers to a fish-and-chips shop, possibly because of a supposed similarity between the little noises fish-and-chips shops make and those of chipping sparrows.

The urban dictionary (available on-line) also uses the word to describe hockey games that get a little out of hand, and it is in this context that I first heard the word. It is this meaning that I prefer - a little attitude, a little je ne sais quoi that winds up as a high-sticking penalty and no front teeth. Cocky, cheeky, a little rude.

There is a similarity between the sounds made by teeth falling to the ice and those made by chipping sparrows.

It all comes back to those damned sparrows.

Flightly thinking

I am about to leave for the airport - no posts today or tomorrow, I suspect.

Let us trust that the plane is more robustly constructed than the vehicle in the picture.

Forlorn thinking

How awful it is to lose someone. To wake up for the sole purpose of spending a little more time with this person that you have loved, and love. The person who gives you the only reason you have to open your eyes, to roll from your bed, to wake up for, to keep breathing for.

But then, after the despair of finding them gone, after the stages of grief, and after the denial, the anger, the guit, the growing acceptance... how nice to find them stuck in the crack of your bum, there all along.

There is a god after all. He just has one bastard sense of humor.

Florange thinking

My neice and her husband are here in Hawaii, to house sit while Glo and I go up to Canada for a week. House sitting in our house requires certain talents, given that we own two pretty neurotic parrots. From our point of view Kirsten and Kenny are here to take care of the birds.

Their point of view is quite different. They are here to get sun tans. At this moment their skin is no longer pasty white, but it's not red either. It's florange.

Check out the little guy under the sun lamp up there. That's what florange looks like. Embrace the word, use it liberally, let's get this word out there and into the general population.

Florangistas, we have a mission.

Orange thinking

The claim, made by self-appointed self-styled lingua-pundits, is that there is no English-language rhyme for the word "orange."

I have three things to say.

First, before this entry has ended, I will disprove the hypothesis.

Secondly, shame on us all! Where has the creative thinking gone, folks? I'm mean it's like the weather with everybody talking about it and nobody doing anything about it. If you were smart enough to make up a name for your company that rhymed with "orange" you'd make the local news, maybe even national! Advertising would be all done for you, for free, and a whole new bunch of doggerel would be written, much of it ending with lines like, "And a smile of face of the orange..." and your company name up above somewhere.

Thirdly I will create a word that should exist, but doesn't exist. And yes, that word will rhyme with "orange."

Quickly though, the origin of the word "orange." It comes from Sanskrit, as do any number of other words in the English language including "huzza huzza" and "Oh, yeah baby..." The translation of "orange" as used in the original Sanskrit is "apple."

First item of business, disprove the hypothesis that there is no English-language rhyme for "orange." I draw to your attention the following fragment of poetry, found in an ancient Emergency Room. Internal evidence suggests that it was written after the advent of the automobile, but not all scholars agree. In any case, here in all its visually moving imagery and its own unique pathos, is the only remaining fragment of the work:

We're off on a lovely beach-walk,

The sun is setting orange.

But I cannot go with 'er;

Me thumb's stuck in the door 'inge.

Less academically satisfying perhaps, given that what appears may be simply a spelling error and not an actual word, is this anonymous quatrian:

Renovate? I can't wait

To paint the ceilings orange!

Gathering the furnishings

And putting them in storange.

Finally the creation of a new word. This word is inspired by quantuum physics, one of my hobbies. One of the fathers of quantuum physics was Neils Bohr. Another was Walter Heisenburg, he of the Uncertainty Principle. Combining the two:

bohrange: a measure of the extent to which uncertainty is widespread.

Thus, the wisdom of the war in Iraq has a very high bohrange. Impressions of W's intelligence, at least among my friends, enjoys low borange.

Green thinking

Green is a good color, despite Kermit's whingeing about how hard it is to be green. (That is the British spelling of the word "whining." The British spelling "whingeing" looks more like it's whining than the other, do you not agree?)

Green is natural and indicates a healthy environment. But actually now that I've said that, there is a strange greenish pallor that comes over the faces of the really really seasick that doesn't look so good.

Green is often natural and usually indicates a healthy environment. When the sunlight drips through the canopies of leaves in my back garden the light becomes a soft, inhalable green, cool, refreshing, calming.

Green is de riguer today. We have finally got it, that we've screwed the planet up pretty badly and it's time to re-think our basic approach. This is a very desirable thing.

Take a look at World Change, which is filled with ideas about how we can be green using the technology we already have. I am not sure what to make of the announcement at the top of their home web page that the domain worldchange.org is for sale, followed by two telephone numbers you can call if you want to buy it. I don't want to buy it, but I called one of the numbers. I reached BuyDomain.com and spoke to Chris. He offered to sell me the domain name worldchange.org for $2,700. I asked if the domain name came with all the content included and he allowed as to how it did not.

I wonder if "they" will recycle the content? Or at least composte it? I am wondering what the composting of virtual stuff produces, and what it would fertilize. If they don't recycle or composte it, will they just drop it all in the trash bin for somebody else to worry about? Ship it to India, I'll bet, or China.

That is silly, of course. But you do have to wonder where ideas go when nobody is thinking them any more. And where "content" goes when it's gone. And what the owners of worldchange.org will do with their share of the $2,700 from BuyDomain.com. It seems a very small amount of money.

But then, one mustn't whinge about that. Money, after all, is green.