In Honor of Katrina

A pretty damn vivid dream

We (Meg, the Bub and I) were visiting Bob and Kelly, who were living in a two room suite at Northland COllege (but it wasn’t Northland, if you know what I mean), and who were in the shower with Matt and Mandy when we knocked on the door. They called out “just a minute” and eventually got the door open.

Bob and Kelly were moving out that day and Matt and Mandy were there to help them. I’m not sure why we were there. We sat on their couch to hang out alittle and talk, but Bob and Kelly were both totally worked up. Apparently, they had put some sort of metal beam across the floor of the room to make a structural adjustment to the whole place, then encased it in a drywall box, and Doug Stoves was having an absoluite fit. He was bent on charging Bob and Kelly over $2,200 worth of damage to the room, and they were in turn freaking out. Kelly kept saying they had to make the change to the room so they could live safely in the room, and Bob called Doug to see if they could meet for a beer to talk about things because there was no way they could — or were going to — pay taht amount, and especailly since they didn’t damage the room when they made this modification.

We said goodbye and goodluck, then went to look at some houses we were considering trying to buy, but they were all too expensive for us, and beside, none of them seemed right for us. They were all too small, too old (or maybe not old enough), and too run down, plus we really couldn’t afford any of them.

We found our way over to a big old school that had been converted into up-scale townhouses and found that Bob and Ruth Parsonage lived in one of them, but they were at a show at the local theatre, which was also in thej building, but down a floor. However, their place was open, and we needed a place for Alden to take a nap, so we went in and made ourselves comfortable.

Later on, as we were getting ready to leave, Meg looked out the apparently nearly soundproofed windows which, up to that point, had been covered by thick drapes, because we heard all sorts of sirens. The sky was ugly and roiling and police cars were out, telling people to take cover because there was a storm coming our way. Meg said, “A.J., we gotta get downstairs to the basement!”

We started running down the hall, but I stopped partway down and exclaimed, “I forgot the kid! You go ahead and I’ll find you down there.” Before Meg could answer, I whipped around and raced back to the Parsonages’ appartment and ran through the apartment with the weather radio blaring about imminent danger to life and property. The kid wasn’t where I ha d left him, but eventually I found him in a bedroom.

Just as we were ready to leave the aprtment again, Bob and Ruth showed up, back from their play. They were surprised to see us, but gracious about us crashing at their place, none the less. They made polite small talk about all sorts of things, asked me if I has seen Rick Penn who was in a wheelchair after having a heart-attack triggered by a gas grill explosion; He had no hair. I tried telling them about the storm warning, but they wouldn’t stop being polite long enough to let me talk. Finally, Ruth heard their weather alert radio going off and said, “Oh my, dear. We had better go to the basement.”

I ran down the hall with Bub in my arms, jumped down a flight of stairs, but obviously took a wrong turn somewhere since I flew through a theatre dressing room and smack into Susan Hall. “Susan,” I yelled, “You’ve got to get into the basement because there’s a huge storm coming!” She smiled a dreamy smile and told me languidly, “The show must go on, dear.” I figured I had at least tried and decided to make a run for it while I still could.

I went down more stairs and around a few corners, and through some big double doors, and finally made it into the basement, where I immideately stopped dead in my tracks. There were over a thousand people down there, all milling around or sitting at old lunch room tables, or some sitting at a bar, complete with polished oak back bar and neon signs. I wandered around asking people if they had seen Meagan, and finally she heard me asking, and came ans got me and took me back to the table where she was sitting with Jen.

There were wall-mounted TVs throughout the place and a whole lot of law enforcement from different agencies there, too. The TVs were turned to the Weather Channel, not surprisingly, and were currently showing how a school building just like ours, or maybe it was ours in the future, but at any rate, the storm collapsed the building and the TV showed hundreds of tons of bricks falling down and burrying all the people who had taken shelter in the basement. Right then, Meg decided we had to go.

“When I worked with your Dad at summer camp,” she said, “were were down here a couple times and decided we should find an emergency exit. There’s a ventillation shaft at the back of the place we can crawl through.” I didn’t think the cops would let us out of the place; I figured it was all some large, vague conspiracy to kill off the country’s political left, but we started table hopping none the less, asking everyone we met if there was a way out of the basement. Some people stared like we each had two heads, and some told us that there were other doors, but all were guarded by the cops. We just kept working our way to the back of the basement, though, and soon enough, we were in the shaft, and then above ground.

The sky was a wierd gray-green, and the wind was whipping and a few rain drops were occasionally flung sideways through the air, but overall, it looked like the storm had passed and we were going to be all right. There were more dark clouds on the horizon though, and while it was impossible to judge whether they were headed toward us, we decided we oughtta find more hospitable shelter.

As we were scanning the street to find a likely building, I noticed a swirling column of green leaves; bigger than a dust devil, but smaller than a tornado. It swayed closer to us, but by the time I couold bring myself to say something about it to Meg, the whole thing had fallen apart and leaves were just floating through the air.

We saw a small, squat brick building two blocks away, perched on the shore of Lake Superior that not only looked old and like it was a veteran of many ruckases, but had a light on in a window. We made our way slowly to the building, and as we got closer, it looked like the building actually housed some sort of retail business. Closer yet, and we saw it was a small-town Sears; the kind that has a tiny bit of everything in it. We could also see a man’s legs, in blue suit pants and well-shined black shoes, crossed and sticking out into the aisle, like someone was sitting on a bench just inside and to the side of the door.

We went inside and the manager of the building put down the newspaper he was reading, regarded us for a moment from the bench he was on, pulled a pipe from his mouth and asked, “May I help you?” His wife called up from the kitchen, “Harold! They’re just looking to get out of the storm. And look, they have a baby with them.” She turned to us, “Here you go dears, you just come right in here and make yourselves at home.”

We stepped up into an area that was distinctly un-Sears looking. In fact, it looked more like a trailer home crossed with a 1970s dinner club. There were a couple other poeple there who, after they gave us a cursory glance, pretty much ignored us. In a few minutes, Harold and his Wife clambered up into the new section of the building and announced, “We’re ready to go.” No one else said anything, but everyone looked expectant. Everyone, that is, except Meg and I. We just gave each other confused glances.

Harold did something with a hidden control panel, and the room was suddenly a vehicle with giant treads rolling back down the street we had just walked up. “Hey!” We yelled. “We don’t want to go anywhere else. We just want to get out of the storm and go back to our house. Harold and his wife and a couple other people confered among themselves for a minute, then swung the machine over to a house that hard been mostly torn apart by the storm and let us out.

There was a young girl crouched on some sheet metal thaht had fallen on the floor of the house when one of the walls blew away. She seemed half wild; shell-shocked by the storm. She just crouched there, staring at the three of us, her tangled blond hair dancing in the wind and said,”Your future awaits you,” then lept out of the house and dissapeared.

I turned around and we were at some sort of outdoor carnival. It was still the same place, on the shore of the Lake, but there was no storm, no destruction,. Instead, there were a lot of kids and teenagers running around chasing each other, eating ice cream, or whatever. We made our way through the crowd and I saw Paul, or at least thought I did. I grabbed this guy by the shoulder and spun him around, but it was a younger guy, with thick-framed glasses. It was definitely Paul, but younger, and he had no idea who the hell we were.

I saw a guy on the edge of the crowd who was trying hard not to be seen while he was watching us. I edged over toward him, then turned and grabbed him by the front of his shirt before he could jump out of the way. “What the hell is going on, here?” I asked, none too gently. “And why are you watching us?”

“You don’t belong here,” he said, obviously wondering if I was going to clock him right there on the edge of the crowd. “I know where you go, but I can’t take you; only I can go.”

“We all go, and we all go now,” I said, actually lifting him off his feet a little.”

“It won’t do it,” the guy said, nodding his head at a phone booth next to us. “It’ll only take me.”

I turned, with the guy still in the air, and slammed him through the glass of the booth, then used him as the right tool for the job of ungently dismanteling the phone booth or whatever the hell it was. Sparks were flying, the guy’s hair was burning, and he was wailing, but not from pain.

“You broke it,” he cried. “Now what will I do? I’m stuck here with… you”

“You,” I told him with cold fury in my heart, “are going to get us out of here, and put us back where we belong. And you’re going to do it right now.”

We walked down to a flat part of the lawn overlooking the Lake where the guy promptly climbed into a small beat-up Lund fishing boat on a trailer. “This is it,” he said. I grabbed him again, careful to keep my feet on the ground, and told him to wait until we were all in the boat. Meg came down the lawn with a confused, half-asleep look in her eyes, asking the guy if he had any PFD for Alden. He handed her a large stock pot without saying anything.

We all climbed into the boat, the guy did something, and then were in the middle of a stragling group of homeless refugees scrambling slowly along Superior’s rocky North Shore. We were all in a ragged line, people clutching what few personal goods they could salvage from their homes and carry with them. We hauled ourselves to the top of a sunny outcropping and flopped down, exhausted. I pulled out my cell phone and called Dag.

“Oh, man!” he exclaimed. I’ve been worried since I haven’t been able to get hold of you. Are you OK?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “I think we’re OK, but I’m not gonna be able to make it into work today.”

Die, bread bag, die!

So it’s been a pretty shitty morning. (I’d use stronger language to say exactly what I think, but my Mom occasionally reads my posts, and while she sent me a link to the Rude Pundit, I still think she’ll kick my ass if I allow myself too much of a potty mouth.)

While I won’t go into the gory details, I do have an accurate datapoint for the depths of the morning:

While I was making my lunch, I glanced at the bread bag and saw a little heart printed on the side of the bag happily proclaiming the bread to be “heart healthy.”

Before I could stop myself, I thought, (and by “thought,” I mean projected all my mental energy in one coherent beam in an effort to not just make toast but incinerate the entire counter top) “Shut up, you fucking bread bag!”

Yeah, so don’t mess with me today.

A Lesson in Basic Economics

As applied to computers and digital applications

Anyone who’s had any sort of grounding in economics knows there are two things that make the free market go ’round: goods and services. Goods are things that have economic utility or satisfy an economic want (ie. things you can fondle or at least oggle). Services are work performed by others for your benefit, (ie. things that fondle or oggle you).

Now, at the risk of sounding a little zen and a whole lot hillbilly, goods is goods. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a computer or a refrigerator; it’s all the same, in a general economics sense.

And as all true, red-blooded hillbilly Americans know, there are only two things to do with goods that don’t satisfy the aforementioned economic utility or want (read: crappy or busted): go to the service department and complain long and loud about how you spent your last forty dollars on this crappy refrigerator that was on super-extra-deep double-discount at the Five-n-Dime and how you even left the tatoo of your third wife’s girlfriend’s dog’s skin cancer that looks like Jesus unfinished so your beer could stay could stay cold, but the damn compressor keeps smoking and even though the thing is out of warranty by eight months, ya’ll better by God do somethin’ about it or I’ll be coming back here with a Dixie flag on my back and a shotgun in my hands, because the South will rise again with my help and your blood; or you put them (the afore-mentioned and ever-vexing goods) in the front lawn, drink some beer, do a little swearing, and take an occasional pot-shot at ‘em.

Now before you get all bored and superior on me, nodding smugly and thinking, “Oh, well, I already learned all that in junior high school, and now the bullies don’t even pick on me for wearing a pocket protector because I drive a BMW and make it with their boyfriends,” consider the average well-educated, middle class sub/urbanite and the case of the cranky computer:

The computer does something unexpected. Or doesn’t do something expected. “Oh,” JJ, our mythological (in the same sense that my “friend” I once called the Beer Store for was mythological) WEMSU says. “I didn’t tell it to do that.”

I’ve got news for you, JJ. Computers only do what they’re told. They can’t think. If your computer shows any signs of thinking on its own, I’d yank the power cord from the wall, then wail on that silicon sucker with a baseball bat until there’s nothing left but motherboard dust wafting lazily through the late afternoon sunlight streaming through your living room windows. And even then, I’d be wearing a dust mask.

But back to economics.

What does JJ do? There’s no yelling into the phone at the tech support guy (who most lives in India and probably doesn’t realize that Americans have any volume other than raging-hallelujah-pissed-off or stone-drunk because that’s all he’s ever heard over his headset and seen on cable TV). There’s no pitching the offending piece of garbage out on the street and yelling for Mrs. JJ to “fetch me my gun, woman!”

There’s just this quiet, creepy, desperate despair that takes over JJ’s life. “Oh, everything important is on my computer,” he whines. “My credit card numbers, my photos of my nephew, my novel, and my address book. I just gotta have it working.”

Note to aspiring and current computer technicians:

This moment in JJ’s life is a particularly nasty time to point out that not only did you tell him how to use a spyware scanner and a virus scanner and a firewall, but you e-mailed him detailed, step-by-step instructions complete with screenshots and links. But do as you will.

End note

Now if this offending good was anything but a computer, JJ’d be up in arms. He’d be calling the service hotline, the govenor, the president, and grandma. He’d be making such a ruckus that people talking on their cell phones in nearby restaurants would ask him to shut the hell up, please, we’re trying to make a phone call here. But it’s a computer, which is totally different because it’s…

Wait a sec. What was that at the beginning of this rant?

Now go forth, gentle reader, into that good digital night. Be not afraid of microchips and gigahertz. Boldly backup your data. Seek Kumar Panyiapapi’s wisdom in matters of the central processor. But most of all, friends, RTFM.

Prowl, Yowl, Growl

The full moon was high in the southern sky, slowly slipping to the west last night while the coyotes had a yap-fest in the yellow light bathing the hay field out back. I wasn’t quite sure what had woken me up, so I just laid in bed listening to Meg and Alden sleep.

Then I head it again: mmmmrrrrrrrrrooooooooooowwwwww! wwwwooooooooorrrrrrrrrroooooooooowwwwww! Like some kind of demonic call and response in the yard.

As the voices raised toward antagonistic heights, I figured I oughtta do something, so I tromped downstairs, grabbed a flashlight and headed out the door. In the side yard, as I was sweeping th elight back and forth, I found one half of the not-so-melodic duo: a wild, long-haired, black and white cat that was sitting in the hostas with a look of sheer terror on its face. And for good reason, since there was an almost naked (I had my flip-flops on) 250-pound man with a big Mag light staring at it.

The cat streaked around the corner of the house; I streaked (considerably slower, I might add) back inside, secure in the knowledge of a job well done. You gotta love contry living.

Jetskis and Guns

There I was, in the bedroom of an upstairs apartment, rummaging around in the closet for more .22 shells for the gun fighter re-enactment Dad and I were going to. I put shell after shell in my bandolier, and checked my two pistols which were sometimes fine ivory-handled Mexican dueling pistols and sometimes deadly looking matte-black snub-nosed semi-automatics. But either way, I still had the bandoilier full of shells.

“How’s this, do you think?” I asked Dad who was watching me gear up.

“I think that’ll do fine,” he replied. “You can take them from a bit of a distance, and I’ll get them up close,” he continued, shouldering a huge shotgun.

I thought the shotgun looked like a good idea, so I slung one over my shoulder as well.

Down at the beach where the re-enactment was supposed to be, there were just a bunch of people with paintball guns squaring off and having quick draw contests. I decided that wasn’t really what I was in the mood for, so the guns went away and Pete and I went to watch the body surfing championships in Lake Menomin.

Not surprisingly, the lake was glass-flat. There were all sorts of spectators bobbing around in the water, trying to make like they were body surfers, too, but the organizers of the event had planned on that and had a bunch of jet skis there to give people tows and get them going quick enough to “surf.”

After a couple runs being towed by one of the circuit drivers, I comandeered a ski and gave Pete a few tows out into the lake, then we traded spots. As I finished my last run, I wound up floating next to Meg talking about surfing and the farm.

Procrastination, sort of

I set out to build another computer this evening. I was even going to add it to my growing home network; turn it into a file server and everything. But apparently the power supply is shot. So instead, I’m installing Skype and listening to kjazz.

Life could be worse.

Well, Shit

Pete and Robin have taken off for D.C.

*Sigh*

I spent the day (most of it, at least) helping them get a trailer from U-Haul, then packing it. The packing was easy. Most of their stuff was ready to go, and we just put the boxes in the trailer. The getting the trailer, on the other hand, was a freakin’ nightmare. Long story really, really short: Make sure your car’s wiring harness works with U-Haul trailers pre The Day.

Anyway.

Pete and Robin and Robin’s dad Richard and Sam, a mutual friend of all of us (except maybe Richard, seeing as he just met her today) all came over for steak and corn tonight. We had a little champagne, a little wine, a little beer, some huge steaks (even the little ones were big!) and a bunch of corn man corn. And a hell of a lot of good conversation. It was a pretty nice send off, if I do say so myself.

So.

Pete, Robin; Robin, Pete: Take care of each other out there in the big city. Make sure you take time to do all the fun stuff the city has to offer and don’t just work and go home and pay bills and all that mundane crap. At least see the dung beetle sin the Smiithsonian’s entemology hall. That there’s some special crap!

Robin, study hard. Write your papers early, so you have an opportunity to proof and rewrite and mull and consider. Keep in mind that this is the real deal; Unlike Northland, all this work will be on your permanent record. And if you need a kick in the ass, call me. I know all the excuses, so I’ll just cut right through the crap and light that fire.

Pete, keep in mind the bull-rush doesn’t just work on big mountainy guys. It just might get you a job, and at the very least, you’ll have some interesting stories to tell me when next we talk. Keep your feet under you, your head over your shoulders, and send me those damn pictures.

We’ll be talkin’.

One Piece, With Poop

Meg and El Bub made it back from the East “coast” (let’s face it: they were in central New York, which isn’t the coast to anyone who’s not from Wisconsin) in one piece. And the big news from the trip? The kid has started to have some solid poop, what with all the solid (in reality, it’s rather mushy, more like a fifth physical state that lives somewhere in the hinterlands between solid and liquid than “solid,” per se) food he’s been eating recently.

Untitled, yet fun

Also, this.

Inspiration

Here are the things I want to do after seeing “The Corporation:” Get old computers into the hands of kids, and teach them to refurbish, maintain, and use them effectively; Do the farm.

More later.