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..."