9/29/07
Fish Story
I'm back, and very soon I'll tell you the thrilling yarn of how the fishing was on Martha's Vineyard last week. (Life-changing, if you need to know right away.) And it was great to treat my responsibilities like a pack of yelping, barking dogs and shoo them out into the yard and shut the door. Now I have to let the damn dogs back in and get about a billion things done, but as soon as I get the pics I'll show you what I did on my summer vacation.
9/20/07
Brief Intermission
Right now I'm in the midst of frantic last-minute cleaning and packing (I'm always worried the catsitter will declare my hovel unfit for feline habitation) and there may be some interruption of the broadcast here for a while. I'm off for a bit, to clear my head and catch some salt air. I may or may not have access where I'm going, but if I do I'll pop in. And I'll have some holiday snapshots at some point too. But for the moment, just figure I've hung a big cardboard "Gone Fishin" sign in the window of my little shop here, because that's pretty much the story. I haven't had a vacation in a year and half! It's very much time. But check back. And be good! Thanks for visiting.
9/19/07
Moai and Me
Good lord, what a past few days I've had! Not busy so much—it's more that I've been fretting about all the things I have to do without actually getting around to doing any of them. But still, there were moments that would stop me, take me away from the time and place I was in, transport me if only for a second or two to somewhere very far away.
One such place is Rapa Nui, which I learned about long ago as Easter Island. I'd be looking through my parents' copies of National Geographic, and there'd be this windswept Pacific island with all these enormous stone figures gazing out to sea. What was out there, what could be so powerful as to command for so many centuries the attention of a person twenty or thirty feet tall, a person made out of stone? Things like that are always spooking little kids, and they still spook me a little. What's out there, over the horizon? What will it do when it gets here? No way to know. But it certainly made an impression.
So it's only natural that sometimes I'll see things that recall those statues (they're called moai) to my mind. A few years ago I took an early train from Wilmington, Delaware down to Washington. I couldn't get over the business guys, standing there stock still on the platform, waiting for the train to come and lift the trance they seemed to be under. They just stood there in the wintry air, utterly motionless, the gray sky over them, their briefcases hanging from one hand, and I thought of those centuries-old statues. Did their families carry these immobile business guys like logs to the train station and stand them there, reverently, on the platform? If snow began to fall, would they move, or would it collect on their shoulders? I thought that if the train never came, they might stand there for centuries themselves.
And then Tuesday morning, I'm rushing out in the alley, taking the trash out in the middle of everything else, and I look down the alley, and there they stand, in rows—those moai. Well, trash cans, actually, all in a row, down the alley, waiting. So there you are, you know, you're heading for a busy day in Washington, or you're taking out the trash, or whatever it is, and then all of the sudden it all drops away, and there you are again, a little kid again, spooked but fascinated, looking at those still stone men, waiting, waiting, waiting forever, maybe, at the edge of sea and sky. And then you go back inside and give the cat his food and pick out a pair of socks and all the rest. But there was that moment, at least.
9/18/07
Horse Sense
Well, I know this blog is supposed to be an exercise in cataloging life's magical little moments as observed by an embittered curmudgeon, but I'm also an old newspaper guy and this happens to be, as far as I know, a worldwide scoop: The rich folks in a township not far from here are tired of having just anybody driving around through their vast estates and they're proposing, seriously proposing, to gate their roads. Not private roads, either—regular public roads. They assure everyone that anybody who had any business being there—ambulances, school buses, catering trucks—could stop, open the gate, drive through, close the gate, and proceed. The riff-raff and hoi polloi would feel this to be too troublesome, however, and would find their scurvy selves some other route.
That actually might be true—most of us would find it inconvenient to open and close gates as we drive. The rich people out that way are used to it, though; they all have horses, and when you have horses on your property you open and close gates all the time. It would be like us regular folks turning light switches on and off as we go around the house—you wouldn't notice it after a while.
But of course, some of the people at the meeting this was proposed at raised some objections, suggested that the legal and other implications be looked into. There might be some eyebrows raised at the idea that publicly funded roads would be gated to inconvenience people who don't live there. It raises the whole subject of "gated communities," and all that. It's wildly discriminatory in its intent, of course, and would draw a swift flurry of injunctions, like a swarm of killer bees.
But you have to understand, these folks are biologically human but they don't live in the same universe you and I do. They've been doing pretty much want they want for hundreds of years. They're exactly like the landed gentry in the old country, except they don't have formal titles, they just have those goofy nicknames you get in prep school and carry to your grave, names like "Munchkin" and "Skipper." They're perfectly comfortable being laughed at—they're laughing themselves, all the way to the bank, and they don't care what we think about them. You can laugh all you want. But set one toe on their property, and they'll release the hounds. I don't think they can keep us off the public roads that traverse their vast holdings, but if they keep trying and you read about it elsewhere, remember—you heard it here first.
In other news, I gave the poor cat the last of his series of ten subcutaneous fluid injections. He was great about it, very brave and cooperative, all the times except once. I hated doing it and I'm glad it's over, but his kidneys needed the help and the vet said it would lengthen his life, so there you are. I can't see inside his mind, but I can see his behavior, which is trusting and affectionate. If we were all a little more like him, this would be a rather nicer world. And now, just like the first day I did this, I'm going to go pet him some more. Plus which it's another super-busy day a-dawning. L8R, gang.
9/17/07
Everyone Has One
The title is from a rude old saying about opinions and what they're analogous to, and the reason we bring it up is that the Times caved. Now you can read what Dowd and Krugman and Friedman and Brooks think about things for free. Personally I always thought at least one or two of those people were a little too predictable, and one or two were sort of worth reading but not paying for (although one has some interesting books that I did, in fact, buy) but I never wanted to pay extra when there are lots of people saying interesting things for free, people who always offered what they had gratis. The people at The Times never seemed to understand that there are basically three things people will pay for on the Web: dating sites, porn sites, and academic journals. Anything else, including and especially opinions, well, there's a lot of that on the market, you might say. The Times was running the risk of looking like one of those Japanese guys they used to find on isolated Pacific islands in the '70s, still fighting the last war, sadly unaware for all that time that the war was over.
That said, I have to admit I'm pretty susceptible to strongly voiced opinions myself. Years ago I found a book at a used-book store, Photographing Buildings Inside and Out, by Norman McGrath. I thought it was a pretty good book. Then recently I was researching books on lighting and photographing building interiors, and several people mentioned this one book that was the best of the best and you should forsake all the others and buy it. Which I did, efficient person that I am. And it arrived in the mail, and I looked at it, and it looked kind of familiar, and as I paged through it the realization swept over me that it was, as you by now realize, the same book. Sigh. If anyone wants a copy of the abovementioned book, let me know.
9/16/07
I'ts Been a Quiet Week
I live in a small town where one of the major industries is growing mushrooms. The only reason that mushroom growers are concentrated here is that 80 years or so ago a flower grower decided to grow mushrooms underneath the flower beds, because if the flowers hogged the light it would make no difference, and one thing led to another. There are 62 mushroom growers in Chester County, who produced 348 million pounds of Agaricus mushrooms in the 2006-2007 season.
But does that make Kennett Square the mushroom capital of the world? I'm sure I don't know. And I'm not sure if we should say so, even if we are. That's because the word "mushroom" is like the word "duck;" there's something faintly funny about it. But that's just what appeals to the civic leaders around here, they like that it's cute and funny and they work mushrooms into every communication we have with the outside world. And now this! $10,000 American they spent, to paint this claim on the side of the local water tower. Our delightfully incompetent local newspaper said the slogan would be painted on the water tower that for years had "stood quietly" by the park—this was the editor who wrote the story, mind you—which seemed like wasted words to me. It's news if they don't stand quietly, but if they do, it seems hardly worth mentioning.
These enthusiastic and fun-loving local solons raised the money privately, because certain curmudgeonly taxpayers might have objected—I can think of at least one, that's for sure.
9/14/07
Caturday
Ahhh! Caturday, as all cat lovers know, is the best day of the week. Yes, I still have a host of undone tasks swirling around me like stinging gnats, but I'm just sitting on my bedroom floor, gazing out the window, listening to Tom and Ray M. If you don't have enough incredibly smart, funny friends, then find a way to listen to them and it ought to help.
BTW, a lot of people from all sorts of different countries visit my little conversation pit here and I'd like to say to them that the majority of sensible Americans are really sorry about the Current Occupant and the mess he's made. I won't go on about it, but sometimes I feel guilty, getting ready to go out and buy brisket so I can attempt to slow-grill it Texas style. I think about Texas, and I get sad and angry and guilty.How did we ever come to elect this guy? Well, his father was a president and lots of other stuff, and I imagine people assumed you'd learn a little about the job just sitting around the dinner table. And I think we also assumed that anyone who'd run for president would make it his or her business to learn a little about governing and the world, or they'd hire people who did. But I've also seen people elbowing their way to positions of authority who don't know a damn thing, and you have too, and that's what's been going on here. None of them know anything; they're a pack of fools. We really have to stop electing people because we think we'd like to have a beer with them. I think we ought to go and have a beer with our own friends, and elect people who know stuff—you know, governing stuff. But it's a media culture we live in; we elect people who look and sound good. We're not the only ones who've done this, in the Philippines they elected an actor who played lower-class underdog roles. He didn't work out either—they ended up impeaching him.
Hmmmm.
Anyway, enough of that. There are lots of sensible people in this country, I assure you, and we're sorry. That's all I wanted to say. I have to go and get that brisket now. There's problems in the world, always were, always will be, but hey, it's Caturday!
9/13/07
Rake's Progress
I was throwing cereal into a bowl, getting ready to run upstairs, bolt it down, yell "hi" to you here, then run up to make a deposit at the bank, and I glanced out the back door—the yard needed raking. And then I thought, "No! No! There's no time! Move! Move!" And it occurred to me that when you're leading a busy life, as so many of us are, you're always making the kind of choices you'd make if you had to run out of your house because it was on fire. What do you save? Where's the cut-off, let-it-burn line? And would you want to spend your entire day thinking that way? That's a lousy way to live. Oh, by the way: Byeeeeee!!!!!!!
9/12/07
Of Cats and Cars
Well, I don't exactly apologize for the sincere if perhaps a little histrionic anguish over When Bad Things Happen to Good Cats, but it was relatively short-lived. I'd still prefer not to have to give my cat or anybody else subcutaneous fluids, but I won't take on worse over it than he does, after all, and he continues to be quite good about it, so there you are.
Now, on to more important business: how they name cars. Years ago cars had proper names—Mustang and Cobra and such for the regular folks, Pantera for the more la-di-dah, but it came to the same thing. Then came the yuppie years, with goofy names like Achieva and Impreza. I mean, what's that supposed to be, subtle? It was cringeworthy. Then the names became puffed-up and macho: Maxima, Impulse, Prelude, all excellent condom names but I just never saw how they applied to cars that well. Then they simply gave up, and gave the cars sterile, technological number names: RX7, 626, R2D2, whatever. Just sad.
But I think things are turning around. Take Prius—it's a vague, unspecific name, but at least it sounds like a name. And there's the Yaris, (pronounced "Yarie"), which to me sounds like it's going for a nonspecific multicultural thing, like your daughter is bringing her Senegalese college friend Yaris home for the holidays. We're getting somewhere, I think.
But I think we really should be going for animal names again, but not the fierce, fast animals so much as a New Age, eco-friendly, cuddly non-threatening sort of thing. The Toyota Panda! The Dodge Wombat! The Chevy Vole! Don't they sound great? Oh, you say you need more 'tude? No problem. The Weasel! The Polecat! Just right for twentysomethings, living in the city, working their first real jobs and bopping around town nights and weekends. Seriously, I may be middle-aged but I'm looking forward to the future here—I can't foresee good things happening in world affairs any time soon, but as far as car names go, I'm wildly optimistic.
9/11/07
No Big Deal
That's how the cat sees his subcutaneous fluids—"Sub-Q," as the breezy nickname has it. I don't use the breezy nickname, I'm still pretty freaked out about sticking a needle into my cat. Today he noticed the needle going in and said so, but he stayed still, bless his trusting heart, and waited patiently for about four or five minutes while the fluid flowed. I'd put some food in front of him, but no dice, he wasn't hungry at the moment, but he ate some as soon as we were done, and was his same old self, ready for more petting. I was trembling, just a little. Like I said, this freaks me out. I'm sure that when people take young children to the doctor or dentist and the kids scream and cry, the feeling is worse, but still it's similar—you're inflicting pain, or at least a fairly unwelcome experience, on a little creature that trusts you and can't understand why you're doing this. He helps me, though, by continuing to trust me. If he acted afraid of me afterward I'm not sure I could do it. But I have to; he has bad stuff in him that will shorten his life if I don't. So I have to. But I hate it. And yes, I'm aware, thank you very much, that there are worse things going on in the world than a cat getting fluids. I'd make all of it stop this instant if I could, but I can't. That's why it upsets me.
Yes, I'd fix everything if I could, but I don't run the world. However, I pretty much rule my cat's universe. And when I give him that needle, I come close to understanding the conception of a sorrowing God, looking down on his suffering children, knowing all the time that it's necessary but they can't understand why. Maybe that's how things are—I'm an agnostic, I can't be sure. All I know is that right now I have to go and pet my cat. Have a nice day, everyone.
9/10/07
Mr. Fixit
In a few minutes I'll be giving my cat subcutaneous fluids. As in, I'll stick a needle in him and hope to high heaven that he sits still long enough to actually get enough fluid to do him any good. I'd do it right now, hup ho, get it over with, but I've got a fresh cup of coffee in front of me and it would be a sin to waste it.
Naturally I feel some dismay about this. I'm doing it alone, which is dicey at best, like rolling a cigarette one-handed, especially when the tobacco may not want to cooperate. And I feel hot and sweaty, it's very muggy, and the idea of using this bag of fluids with all its tubes and needles and such feels horribly disreputable, as if the vet told me that to help the cat's kidneys I had to borrow a junky's works and cook up some heroin in a bathroom and give it to him. The Web is full of people who have long, upbeat descriptions of how they did this themselves. You'd think this would help, but it doesn't. If it were easier and more fun, people would write about it less, or not at all. Nobody creates a website to help you go to the beach. Going to the beach is easy and fun. I don't think giving the cat fluids will be easy and fun, but you'll be the first to know.
And as I said, you'll be the first to know. It went pretty damn well, actually. Got him to lie down, tented up the skin over his shoulders, and put the needle in. He didn't flinch. Then I opened the valve, and the fluid began to flow. I talked to him and petted him, showed him the food I'd enticed him over with, and damn me if he didn't eat some. After three or four minutes the needle slipped out and I don't think he got the full dose, but he got a pretty good bit, and it'll do for a start. He deserves the credit, mostly, for being a brave guy, and for trusting me. He seems fine, just ambling around, although I'm about to faint myself.
9/8/07
Actually, Yes, I Did.
I often smile at Wikipedia's front page and its "Did You Know..." section because they simply slap up a sentence about four or five incredibly obscure things from new articles—today it's this: "...that the disastrous defeat of Yaroslav the Wise's sons at the Alta River led to a popular uprising in Kiev and dethronement of Grand Prince Iziaslav?"—and ask if you knew that. I'm reasonably good with trivia knowledge but I rarely know these things; I had no idea what caused the dethronement of Grand Prince Iziaslav, and was actually pretty vague about whether such a person existed until today. I got to wondering, what's the nature of a good surprising fact? I haven't finished my thinking but maybe it should connect the familiar and the unfamiliar in some unexpected way—like if you were told that Oprah Winfrey has, among her household retinue, an employee whose sole job is to write dirty limericks, of which she is a huge fan.
That's not true, by the way. But not many people know that W.C. Fields, a comic film actor in the 30s and 40s, was a world-class juggler in his youth. (Not many people today know that Fields was in film, either.) So I trundle over to YouTube, and damn if some of his juggling isn't the first thing to come up. Now you know! Enjoy—it's a bit grainy, but the juggling's amazing. Gotta do other stuff, but I'll be back soon.
9/6/07
If
I couldn't help thinking about the word "if" yesterday, because some friends were e-mailing back and forth about the possibilities of an upcoming fishing trip, and one wrote, "if the bait stays inshore and we don't get hurricaned, we'll do well." "If!" I thought. Not to make too much of a leap, but in high school once a history teacher told us about the Spartans' tendency to speak concisely. There's an adjective for this: "laconic," from Laconia, the region around Sparta. The story the teacher told us was that when Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father, was in the process of subjugating the Greek peninsula, he sent a message to the Spartans demanding that they accede to his rule like the other city-states. "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city," he said.
The Spartans sent back a one-word reply: "If." Ya gotta love them Spartans! Macho, yes, but they had style. Philip actually left them alone—the Spartans weren't just talking when they said stuff like that—and Alexander left them alone too.
Obviously Philip knew that for all his boldness and conquering and all, things don't always go your way. How did he learn that? No idea. I think maybe he learned it fishing, in his spare time. You can learn a lot by fishing, if you pay attention.
9/5/07
Hirsute and Heralded
It occurs to me this morning that there's a subset of celebrities we haven't thought about: the hairy genial ones. Pavarotti, of course, but also the later Orson Welles, for instance. Great film artist? No kiddin'. Santa Claus comes to mind. And a certain spokescreature. Why do we love the large and shaggy so? It's a mystery.
9/4/07
Potpourri
Cynically exploit the growing interest in Bedinabox? Just to get my visitor numbers up? Me? Heaven forfend. But I should note that besides being a reasonable way to get a mattress, the box is just about a perfect size and shape to make into a robot costume for Halloween.
In an hour and a half or so I'll be taking the cat for a checkup. He's just going about his business right now, with no idea that soon I'll swoop down on him and bundle him into a cage. It makes me feel horribly guilty, like I'm a slavecatcher or something. Yes, yes, I know it's for his own good and he'll forget all about it and all after he's home for five minutes. I know that. But I do hate to force a series of unpleasant experiences on him even so. Yes, you're right, I'll try just to snap out of it. And thanks. Here's something a propos to the situation, courtesy of icanhascheezburger.
9/3/07
Energy Bill
At this very moment I'm in the process of paying my energy bill—$78.82, it was, this month—and I'm also paying (by frantically running around) for the things I put off due to a lack of energy too. So there's much that's interesting to talk about but you'll have to excuse me for a few minutes, sorry.
I'm running out of stamps, and I thought I'd get some at the post office uptown when I drop off these bills, and then I remembered the spot of bother last time. The machine kept not taking my money, and at one point it flew into a tizzy, ringing alarms and flashing lights and everything. This was immediately after my fist somehow came into contact with it—I was just trying to push it away—and the whole thing was very off-putting. I'll get my stamps at the supermarket from now on—you hand them the money, they give you the stamps, no alarms or flashing lights, all very calm and civilized.
My car insurance envelope has a lovely, old-fashioned way of telling you the postage isn't paid: It says "Affix Stamp Here." Years ago they paid the postage for you. Then they decided it was preferable if we paid the bill and the postage too, so the envelopes all had dire warnings that you had to put on a stamp and the post office wouldn't deliver it without a stamp. And they say it in very clear, direct language, because we're all too stupid to know that mail has to have a stamp. Humph! So it's nice of the car insurance people to use old-fashioned language, it softens the command. "Would you be so kind as to affix a stamp?" Why yes, car insurance people, I shall, with the greatest of pleasure, endeavor so to do.
9/1/07
You Think You Got It Tough, Pal?
The subject of Labor Day came up on the radio, and they started talking about the worst job anyone could think of, and I said to myself, "No problem, that's an easy one." Something like thirty years ago I was a kid playing music in a bar in the Mississippi Delta. Don't get the wrong idea, we're not talking bluesmen here, it was a Top 40 band and we wore the requisite blue ruffled shirts, what my friend the drummer called "the shirt of shame," and we weren't playing in a juke-joint roadhouse, we were playing in a Ramada Inn bar and it was pretty upscale for the area. (I'd like to emphasize that "for the area.") At one point I was sitting at a table during a break, talking to some of the patrons. We introduced ourselves, and the subject of what everyone did came up. What I did was obvious, and two of the other people were typical patrons, the upscale New South types. One said he was something like a software engineer, another said he was something like a regional director of marketing, you get the idea.
But this third guy was more of a good old boy, although he wasn't in a good old mood at what he was hearing. He was glaring around at all of us, and when it came his turn he burst out, "Ah work for a livin'!" And so he did. My friends, this man worked in a catfish processing facility, and he wore rubber boots all day because where he worked he was up to his ankles in catfish guts. He worked in a sea of catfish guts all day long. That's an image that stays with you. I'd wear the blue shirt every night for a thousand years rather than do that.
I remember this guy's wife, by the way. She had come in earlier, with a friend. They looked like normal people, but at one point the wife's friend teased her about shooting at people. The wife dismissed her friend with a wave of her hand. "Aw, I never shot at nobody but once in my life," she said. And on our off night, a local guy did, in fact, take us to a juke-joint roadhouse sort of establishment. "Now listen, guys, if anybody steps on your foot in there, say 'Thank you,'" he told us. And it was good advice—there were unbelievable mass brawls breaking out there every ten or twelve minutes. Often we'd have drifted outside to sit on our car hoods, and another fight would start. We could see the mass of brawling bodies inside heave and lurch back and forth as we quietly drank our beers in the warm night, the insects circling the light above the door.
It just struck me—that band was my first fulltime job. It was a very interesting trip to Mississippi, all in all, but my jobs have been more civilized since, and so have the nightspots I frequent. I haven't seen one person throw a punch at another in ages and ages, and that's fine with me. And if you're reading this on Labor Day, and you don't work in catfish guts up to your ankles every day, you might think to count your blessings, because I know I do.
© Copyright 2007 by Matt Freeman. All Rights Reserved.
