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.