The Centre for Neufeldian Jabberwocky

2011-02-26T06:28:00.001-06:00

Thus begins another hobby:

2010-10-24T14:57:00.000-05:00

Road Trip 2010
(recompiled from the originals to be in order)

Day One: Liberal, Kansas

So we're off on another roadtrip. We like roadtrips...they are expensive, sometimes monotonous, and challenging, and who doesn't like such things? We decided to increase the challenge a bit and take along a 2 1/2 year old.

Oh, and I also decided to invoke a beardomorphosis. Purely temporary, mind you, but you can see the varied stages below. I am fond of the "ear-tethered fu manchu" but Debra was not.

A road trip would be bland and pedestrian without last minute car troubles! First, we remembered at 10:30PM on Friday that the gas cap was reported stuck, so I went out to see...turns out it was cross threaded, and a locking wrench was necessary to get it free. One challenge past, we got some sleep, got up at 5AM and got off on our way, only to find our tire pressure low. Then we found out that a nail had damaged the valve stem and low pressure sensor, so we had to postpone departure and get this little bugger, pictured below, replaced at Walmart. After a healthy round of shaking my fist in futile rage at whatever goddam sumbitches conspired to lay nails across the road, we got off a couple hours later.

We had planned to have breakfast at the Matfield Green reststop McDonalds on the Turnpike, but we had lunch instead.

Gretchen discovered the virtue of ketchup used in concert with chicken nuggets.

Knute Rockne! ....died here apparently. Sad, that. Ah well. Knute! Knute! Knute!

Stopped for gas in Greensburg, Kansas, made famous by the movie "Twister". Some still-damaged trees around.

The Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas:

This was an interesting exhibit of rubble from the Twin Towers. One could examine it up close. Nothing special, of course, but it almost has the feel of sacred relics or something.

An F-104 Starfighter:

One of the choppers they show on the intro to M*A*S*H, but they couldn't afford to actually record on set in the actual show.

Family in the HueyCobra:

Gretchen was not as impressed as I hoped but then again, she is a submariner at heart.

Actually she is a "doggie" at heart. Barking and crawling around in front of the SBD Avenger.

It's a fantastic museum.

One of the side effects of bringing along a small one is that bed times are rather soon in arrival, so I'd best wrap this up. Cheers, and shall likely post again tomorrow.

Day Two: Gallup, New Mexico

Slightly longer day today, started out with an actually quite decent "continental" breakfast. Continental in what sense? The European sense, as in prone to smelly cheeses and world wars? Or as in the Continental US? Do they serve these cold free breakfasts in Alaska and Hawaii?

But anyway, it stormed fairly heavily out of Liberal and most the way through the OK panhandle, but that didn't deter us from a quick stop for this photograph in Hooker, OK:

I'm not sure but it seems like they are playing off of some kind of double meaning here, or something like that. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Crossing into Texas, the enormous windmills. Texas pretending to be green by putting windmills right on their borders. Sort of like a meat market putting soy chicken substitute in its front window.

One of the things I have noticed is that the comic fodder on this trip has been significantly picked over...amusing, I hope, observations I would otherwise be prone to make have already yet been made, the last time we traversed this particular path three years ago. Ah well. The road signs are still amusing. In New Mexico:

Lights On For Safety! It's a fantastic little motto, like Hats Off For Cancer Awareness, or Knees Bent For Organic Farming.

As we sowed McNuggets, so did we reap. The semi-mountainous roads just outside Albequerque were a bit much for Gretchen and the poor girl offered up her stomach contents in oblation. So we had to stop in Albequerque and figure out how to clean up our daughter and our vehicle. Again, this is all part of the challenge that makes this "fun"! We're settled in Gallup, NM, on the other side of the state, and tomorrow should be a bit more fun with the Petrified Forest National Park and then the Grand Canyon.

Pretty country though!

Day Three: Grand Canyon, Arizona

This morning, we left Gallup, and rather shortly, New Mexico, around 8AM. Right at the Arizona border is one of those kitschy "Indian Settlements" that sell blankets, jewelry, and a lot of other classic southwest gift shop things with lots of gaudy signs, so we stopped and visited the "Largest Teepee in the Southwest" which actually was a nice little shop, but as mentioned, completely the same as all of these genre of souvenir shops. Got a decent price for some turquoise jewelry.

Another hour or so and we were at the Petrified Forest National Park. We bought our annual park pass and intended only to make a cursory run around part of the park (Gretchen was asleep anyway). But the northern "Painted Desert" section was stunning in person. Now that we're in a cabin on the rim of the Grand Canyon, these pictures make it look a bit weak and uninteresting but after driving through KansasTexhomamexico flatness it was quite cool.

Further south in the park were the "Teepees", strange cones of rock. Here were a few of the whiter ones, most of them were a dark grey, almost black.

In the far south of the park is the actual petrified forest section:

There was an entire field of these logs:

Up close:

Here's some more of the somewhat lunar scenery on the way out:

Back on the road, we approached what is the city of our eventual intended dwelling, Flagstaff. Located quite high in altitude with a generally mild climate, I just need to be offered a good CIO position there or become independently wealthy. We'll see what happens first. Once through Flagstaff and driving north, the Cococino Forest was quite beautiful, but we only really found out that when we frantically pulled over believing Gretchen to be in the initial throes of carsickness. We took a walk.

Lovely crisp clean air, pine trees, I think I'm love. Mountain just behind us:

But we got back in the car and hurtled on towards the south rim. You'd never guess, well, you might, or you might know from actual experience, but the mass of humanity clustered round this particular tourist attraction is particularly diverse, in the sense of being made up of mostly non-Americans. The sheer ubiquity of Germans would have been sufficient, one would think, to make the also-prevalent Frenchies a bit nervous in a way reminiscent of 1940. It took rather a long time to sort out where to park; it really was packed out. But we reserved a nice little cabin room about 50 feet from the rim, perhaps. Here is Gretchen in front of it as we're preparing to go see the canyon:

Don't fall in!

Pictures are a rather lame way of showing this:

Towards the canyon floor...

To prove she was there!

The canyon just after sunset.

Day Five: Disneyland

So Day Four is missing, you say. No, in case your mind is swirling with all sorts of improbable astrophysical explanations for a missing day, I must ask you to apply the Razor that that bloke Ockham bunged about the place. No need to overcomplicate, the simplest explanation is that we simply didn't blog about it. Due to some great fun at the Grand Canyon involving sleep, or particularly, the inability of our daughter to get to the same, we ended up leaving quite early in the morning, about 3:30AM, and made an early start to our trip to Los Angeles. I would say that the scenery is beautiful in Western Arizona, and indeed I remember it to be, but the pitch black night did not favour me with a refreshment of the memory. Breakfast in Kingman, AZ, with a LOT of coffee, and we were in Diamond Bar by midday. The rest of the day was spent recuperating and spending time with family, and I've got no further pictures. Bit of an adventure, and the stars finally aligned that night for Gretchen to get a full amount of good sleep. And us as well!

The next day, of course, was our long-awaited Disneyland trip, Gretchen's first. Debra has been excited for this for ages. Gretchen too, although she scarcely understood the meaning...she'll happily prattle about Dih-Nee-LAND! but I think she assumed we were going somewhere to watch Disney movies.

And...we're there! Disney frigging Land!

Gretchen in line for the Peter Pan ride:

She's excited!

Blowing kisses to her fans (her old man, and grandma) from the carousel:

A look of boredom while waiting for it to commence...

Followed by some growing panic as it moved a bit faster than carousels of her previous acquaintance!

The horticulture here is incredible.

Looking out on the Casey Jr's train ride:

And sacked out after a morning of lines and rides.

She did snag one of the requisite mouse ear hats, embroidered with her name.

Waiting in line for a million psychotic, probably murderous dolls to shriek repetitive platitudes at us...in air conditioning...at the "It's a Small World" ride. Replete with CHURROS!!!

Gretchen, Mom (in keeping with her independent streak, Mommy is now "Mom" now often), and Grandma on the way out. Good times had by all. Bed time was no problem.

Day Seven: North Hollywood, California

Pleasantly restful day, excepting the homicidal intensity of Los Angeles freeway transit. We galloped, galavanted, and generally gallopvanted off to a place of my youth, "Travel Town" in Griffith Park. Basically, a train museum.

Here I am assuring her it will be more fun than she is at the time thinking:

Off and running!

Up in the locomotive:

And one of the empty passenger cars was fun:

...because you can run around like mad in it.

Racing to catch up to mommy and grandma:

But the highlight of the trip was of course getting the plastic toy train whistle, which was mastered within SECONDS! This child is a train whistle prodigy!

Then it was off to North Hollywood, to visit with Gretchen's great-grandad. Fine old chap and a gentleman. I raise my icewater to his health and long[er] life! The girls out front:

Day Eight: TANKLAND

We drove out to visit some more family in sunny Rancho Cucamonga today, which is just a fun thing to say, and Gretchen was much pleased to see and somewhat harass a pair of large labradors. From there, the 210 and the 57/60 led us past South El Monte and........TANKLAND!

The American Military Museum (as far as I can tell that is its official name, generic though it may be) is a wunderland for those few of us geeky enough to seek out armoured vehicle museums in their travels. As a child I wanted our family to head east to visit the US Army Ordnance Museum in at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. But this is a good first step.

I was on, if not Cloud Nine, then one of the Clouds at least above level Four, conservatively speaking.

The family very sportingly came with. Gretchen was particularly fascinated with the quality and grading of the rocks, gravel, and dirt with which the outdoor museum was lavishly furnished.

Nice little amphibious armoured car whose name escapes me. Lou? Henrik?

A trio of Shermans, the workhorse of Patton's Third Army and the most iconic American tank of WWII.

The miscellaneous ordnance section...bombs, missiles, rocket launchers, torpedoes, and marine mines.

The landing craft and marine section, with the family. Gretchen taking another sample of the absolute exquisite El Monte dirt!

Patton tanks, an M48 and some later models.

The working quarters of a very large self-propelled howitzer piece.

...and the rest of the same.

A Bofors emplacement! Probably from a scrapped battleship or similar vessel, definately a naval emplacement from a ship likely of the WWII era. Quad 40mm autocannons for anti-aircraft.

I don't recall the details on this similar anti-aircraft naval emplacement but it looks like twin 30mm autocannons, and I love the fact that its enclosed and has windshield wipers on the front. I wonder if the replacement blades for the wipers are a standard size they can get at an automotive shop. More likely they are contract made for $300 each!

Pretty substantive fixed gun nestled into the corner of a museum.

The Priests lined up.

Another Bofors!

And a northward pointing big fella waiting to shell El Monte Proper, apparently.

Bren Carrier and my daughter. A bit smaller and it be perfect size for her!

An old 30's era "Combat Car" and a Chi-Ha mockup.

M50 Ontos, without its characteristic array of recoilless rifle tubes.

The M5 Stuart, a capable American light tank that served in WWII, and probably beyond.

M551 Sheridan, an interesting vehicle with a missile launching tube, essentially, for a main gun, and mostly aluminum armour for lighter weight, designed to be airdropped, seeing some service in Viet Nam.

Daughter satisfied with face-applicated soil samples.

Pak36, a German anti-tank gun in 37mm. Small little unit, probably easily transported, though outclassed by heavier, later tanks.

Motorcycle and a row of Willys jeeps and other trucks.

What EVERYONE needs! A MORTAR SHED!

Long suffering fam in front of a nice, I think British, armoured car on the way out.

Day Ten: San Simeon, California

Yesterday after bidding fond farewells and heartfelt yet insufficient thanks to our hosts/relatives in Diamond Bar, we drove up the coast. Up being in a northerly direction, I should probably specify. But we took a brief stop in Solvang, where we discovered the place has been increasingly o'erwhelmed by tourists such that the wait for a plate of pancakes has become somewhat ludicrous. I grant that Solvang has always existed for no higher purpose than tourism and pancakes, but still, we gave it a miss this time, and I vowed instead to learn how to make my own sodding Danish pancakes.

We landed, so to speak, in our usual haunt on the central coast, the San Simeon Pines resort. It was spitting in a weird Californian way all day, a totally different sort of rain than we are used to in Missouri, where it either is raining or isn't, but a limbo-esque rain that leaves you perpetually neither quite wet nor quite dry. Across the street for a brief walk to the ocean:

It's quite nice there even in worse weather. The sun peeking out over on the left; the rays shooting through had a very nice effect.

Playing the "throw a rock towards the ocean and then panic when the waves come up to get your precious rock" game. We're still learning the precise rules of this game.

On the boardwalk by the sea.

Playing in the largest sandbox she has ever seen. Hopefully with less cat poop.

The pines for which the place is named are quite interesting in shape.

This morning we went to what is the coolest playground I've ever seen. A few feet to the beach!

She (Gretchen, I should specify) loves getting close to the waves and then running away. Although she will occasionally insist on being carried for extra safety.

Sand sampling!

The "puppy" was less able to quickly move away from incoming waves.

Back at the resort, we stayed at a little vending machine lobby while folks finished cleaning our room, and Gretchen took it upon herself to correct the egregious errors made by the folks in charge of decorating. If you can imagine, they had placed the three flower pots on three SEPARATE tables! Hah! And hadn't even so much as placed a plastic bead necklace over the pots! Amateurs.

Then after grabbing a pizza in town we went up the coast to see the elephant seals.

Day Eleven: Barstow, California

So today's travel blog is a bit of a mixed bag. Relatively boring day, driving through the central part of California from the coast, but will get to that later. First, some few remaining pictures from San Simeon yesterday.

At sunset the trees were well illuminated:

This cluster of trees caught my eye:

We were working on tiring Gretchen out by having her play outside, so we spent some time in this gazebo.

Where she took on as her task the predation, decapitation, and dismemberment of dandelion flowers.

Another walk by the beach:

The surf at dusk:

Signs are posted everywhere about not feeding the wildlife but something tells me the surprisingly tame squirrels have sorted out how to game the system.

And here is the same fellow leaping for the jugular vein in rage as he learns I have been coaxing him near with a proferred hand of naught more than pebbles. Gretchen follows my lead, in her less subtle way, by picking up pebbles and throwing them at the squirrel who wisely decides to make acquaintance with tourists more amenable to breaking the posted rule.

OK, back to the trip. We passed a delightful night that evening until about 2AM when Gretchen decided that WOW she was sure AWAKE! and wanted to do anything but keep quiet and go back to sleep. We eventually went on a drive which at long last put her to sleep again, and we got some more sleep. It was nice to see the ocean under a full moon, very entrancing, particularly when one is yearning for sleep anyway.

So this morning we got off and passed inland towards Paso Robles, Bakersfield, and Barstow. Paso Robles is a nice area dominated by vineyards, and we noted a large quantity of "report drunk driving!" signs which became a bit funnier when interspersed with the dozens/hundreds of "Wine Tasting Next Right!" signs put out by the vineyards.

Bakersfield is a nice enough town, it's a decent size and seems to have lots of the accoutrements of a medium-sized city, such as a Trader Joe's, which we gave our patronage, but try as it might to be cosmopolitan, the air smells of cattle manure. Not an altogether bad thing, it is likely better smelling than vast swathes of New York or Paris. At least there is the sense of old-fashioned farming and ranching there.

Tehachapi was cute, particularly the huge hills of the Tehachapi Wind Farm and the hundreds of windmills, precious few of which were turning. I wonder what it cost the Californian taxpayer to put in. I wonder how much each year the bill is for maintenance. I like to amuse myself with the thought that when proposing the initiative, none of the dingbat lawmakers responsible bothered to consider much in regards to ongoing maintenance costs, but I could be wrong.

Finally, we passed Barstow and went on a dozen miles to Calico, a ghost town/theme park I remember from many years ago. We didn't actually spend a lot of time there. Strangely there were mostly foreigners there, like at the Grand Canyon. Whole busses full of Japanese, and a number of German and French visitors were audible. It's a quaint sort of thing because you pay for admission, and then most everything inside is a shop where you can buy things. If you can work out paid admission to a shopping mall and get busloads of foreign folks eager to deplete travellers checks in your retail stores you've got on to a good thing.

The famous CALICO written in the hillside:

Walking up to the rock shop to buy a piece of amethyst:

Very interesting rock formations, layers of sedimentary rock obviously contorted and squeezed:

Day Twelve: Zion National Park, Utah

This morning we departed Barstow, after pillaging and ransacking their delightful breakfasting area, replete with all manner of upscale hotel breakfast fodder, of a decidedly non-continental nature. We ran straight into a surprisingly vicious desert rainstorm. Impressive winds and quite a downpour, but we were heading east and in no mood to remain perpetually in bad weather so we powered through. Once out of the rain, driving was a bit less tense, but the clouds were treacherously low and brooding. Took a picture or two of the yucca trees and the low-lying clouds:

And the clouds over this mesa were interesting:

We finally crossed out of California, that beloved, though ape-shit crazy state of my nativity, and passed into Nevada. Nevada is the sort of state that would be a bland, uninteresting ranching state like Idaho without gambling, and one can spot any highway border with Nevada by the unspeakably garish gambling settlement planted inches from the actual state line. No, I didn't take any pictures.

But we drove through Vegas, which I've never been profoundly fond of, and the traffic and omnipresent advertising did little to win me over, but we had one last In-N-Out burger there and enjoyed the less-expensive-than-California gasoline. Cheers to Angle, though!

Next up, the corner of Arizona, a state I've come to be rather fond of. Not much of it to see when chipping the northwest corner on I-15, but the Virgin River Gorge is impressive. We took copious photos while passing through but none really display the massiveness one observes, deep in this rather narrow chasm, hurtling through at 55mph. Here's one such insignificant shot.

Then into Utah, home of the Momos! On highway 9, getting close to Zion:

Beautiful ridges on the outskirts:

So we checked into our hotel, and after unpacking, I took my laptop onto the balcony to work on my work emails. This was the view from my "desk":

Also from the balcony:

The family went for a swim. Nice view from a swimming pool:

Gretchen loves swimming, need to start this girl on swimming lessons.

Sun starts to set...

Gretchen loved the horses next door!

I decided to grill, so we picked up some italian sausages and peppers to cook, and I headed back towards the picnic area. They had a little spot right next to the river:

Nice backdrop to cook by.

Day Thirteen: Zion National Park, Utah

Still in Zion, a somewhat simple day that doesn't lend itself to a lot of commentary, in that all we've really done is sort of wander around and look at things, which is the proper and expected activity in a place like this. We were expecting rain all day but it has been sunny and cool all day, with no signs of oncoming storms as of this afternoon.

Here was a shot at the entrance to the park, where the morning sun brightly illuminated the top of the canyon walls, wreathed in clouds.

We rode the shuttle to the Temple of Sinawava, which sounds like it belongs in a role playing game from the nineties, and we walked along the "Riverside" trail.

I know I'm fast becoming cliche-sodden when I insufferably trot out that old "pictures can't express blah blah blah" line, but, well, it is sort of applicable.

Gretchen was, of course, most interested in playing in the sandy dirt.

The canyon floor and river:

Me trying, again, in vain to show the scale of these walls:

One of the great things about Zion is the vibrance of the colour...plenty of green, in comparison to the Grand Canyon, contrasting with the very rich red of the earth and rock.

The river:

Thought that this strange cutout in the canyon wall was interesting. Many stories tall. I wonder if the rock just fell away at some point.

The shelf halfway up on this cliff had a carpet of trees and vegetation that give a semblance of scale.

Angel's Landing, seen through the window of the bus. The first time we came to Zion I was ignorant and thought "hey why don't we hike this?" I learned more about it and wised up.

The Patriarchs, shrouded in clouds. Shooting through bus windows doesn't really help the image quality, sorry.

Back in town we realized, much though I had vowed not to, we would in fact eat lunch at the fusion Thai/Chinese place that charges way, way too much for food that I would barely pay McDonalds prices for in Kansas City. I mean, it isn't terrible, but it's not that great, and certainly doesn't deserve the insane prices it commands. However, what I vow in Kansas City is different than in Springdale, for the alternatives were even more expensive and less impressive. This is not a good town to save money on food in.

The horses at least have a fairly readily available source of food:

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the final stretch, three days of driving and we're back in KC.

Day Fourteen: Glenwood Springs, Colorado

We left Zion National Park, or rather entered it, as our means of egress was actually to drive into and across the park to exit on the opposite side, this morning. Before going I got one last shot of the place from our balcony after the sunrise:

Once through the park, driving extremely slowly on winding mountain roads, we stopped for gas, and I'm not sure if this local eatery was getting at some sort of double meaning with their advertising. Perhaps eliminating unnecessary letters to save on electricity?

The fall colors are quite nice in the area.

We entered the Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest:

Had a couple of the tunnel roads...they made you wonder, was it really easier to bore through the rock more than shift the road to the right a few yards?

We entered Bryce Canyon National Park, and did not stay long, but went to three of the observation points. I would say something grandiose, like, "there are no words to describe Bryce Canyon!" but there demonstrably are, unfortunately: "Bryce", and "Canyon". That semantic niggle aside, I am looking forward to returning here to spend more time. It kicks the pantalones off the Grand Canyon in some ways. I'm going to just post all the pictures we took and not belabor you with forced commentary:

So with mild reluctance, but an eager spirit to make miles to our west, we departed, and continued north and then east across the stunning landscape of Utah. Many of these pictures are somewhat underwhelming in that driving at 70mph in frequent rain, a majority of pictures had to be discarded regardless so only a subset are available. Here is a typical roadscape with beautiful trees on each side.

Lots of these rock formations about.

The San Rafael Reef, I believe, from my map. Shrouded in mists, rather ominously!

Impressive bit of natural architecture. What is amazing is these are not in a National Park. Not in a National Monument, National Forest, or state park, even. I assume the government owns the land. If these were located in Missouri or anywhere east where we consider a minor hill a mountain, they would hands down be a full-fledged National Park!

Good sport in the back seat:

Into Colorado, I kept trying to get a good shot of the river by the interstate, and this was the meager best I could get while at speed:

Tomorrow will be an interesting day, regardless. The plan has long been to drive through Colorado and stay in western Kansas, driving back on Sunday to KC. We shall see. On the road, a sense of general vacation fatigue settled onto us at long last, and we considered the semi-maniacal task of driving straight through tomorrow. But, there's the question of the weather, where a first major snowstorm is expected here overnight. We'll see if this vacation ends officially tomorrow, or Sunday, or who-knows-when if the Colorado weather gods get really nasty with us.

Day Fifteen: Kansas City.

This is a bit of a short-circuiting of my plans...today, my plan, formulated, quite honestly, over a year in advance, was to take this day and travel from western Colorado to western Kansas, giving us a modest drive home on Sunday. However, a growing dislike for living out of suitcases and a yearning for home, not to mention the lack of any glorious aesthetic wonders of staying in a small town in western Kansas, made us succumb to the temptation to do foolish things, such as drive from Glenwood Springs to Kansas City.

In late October.

Yes, all was hunky and not a little dory as we ambled away from the picturesque town and started through the mountains on the western slope. We had heard of some potential snow issues at higher elevation, but hey, shouldn't be any trouble for us, right? We got up to Vail, and all it was doing was spitting semi-freezing rain at us. No sweat. Here's a pic of the pleasant little surroundings.

And as you can see, the roads look fine! No worries!

It was rather beautiful...apparently the first major snowstorm of the season in the area.

Then we started to gain in elevation and the fun began at Vail Pass. I've driven in a lot of snow and ice in Missouri, but to be stopped in a traffic jam for about an hour on an incline slope full of very, very slippery icy snow should be out of bounds for the relaxing vacation itinerary. We were on the knife edge of getting hopelessly stuck and/or colliding with other struggling motorists more times than I can count, and the constant stoppage of traffic (for hapless motorists foolishly bringing their rear wheel drive Jaguars into the mountains...stupid rich gits!) meant it was not so much driving, as the constant spinning of wheels in icy snow directed carefully to effect forward momentum. Good God (and He is good, and we made many prayers to that effect afterward, not a few of which apologetic for our many coarse invocations during), that was the most intense driving experience I've encountered. We found out that they had closed I-70 eastbound, but we had gotten through before the closure. It eased up later and the other high elevation points were not so challenging...the pass around the Eisenhower tunnel was a bit slushy but nothing too hair-raising after the first experience.

Then into Denver, and we never exulted so much in the act of leaving the mountains behind as at that point. The eastern Colorado plains were terrifically boring, but we made it across them and into our neighbor state of Kansas. I could have kissed the earth.

Something peculiarly sweet about our daughter when she is asleep. Perhaps because she is at her quietest? Except when she has "doggy dreams" and barks in her sleep.

So yes, at long last, we are back in Kansas City, and aside from the fact that the Kansas turnpike from Lawrence to Kansas City is under construction and to charge for the passing there-through is larcenous and akin to...wait for it...highway robbery, and aside from the fact that I-70 eastbound is so comically pretzelled that motorists passing through from other states must be still trying to find their way through, years later, subsisting on crumbs from the cracks in the seat cushions of their Chevy Luminas, and aside from the fact that we had a great time seeing the West, we are very, very glad to be home.

2010-10-23T23:52:00.004-05:00

Day Fifteen: Kansas City.

This is a bit of a short-circuiting of my plans...today, my plan, formulated, quite honestly, over a year in advance, was to take this day and travel from western Colorado to western Kansas, giving us a modest drive home on Sunday. However, a growing dislike for living out of suitcases and a yearning for home, not to mention the lack of any glorious aesthetic wonders of staying in a small town in western Kansas, made us succumb to the temptation to do foolish things, such as drive from Glenwood Springs to Kansas City.

In late October.

Yes, all was hunky and not a little dory as we ambled away from the picturesque town and started through the mountains on the western slope. We had heard of some potential snow issues at higher elevation, but hey, shouldn't be any trouble for us, right? We got up to Vail, and all it was doing was spitting semi-freezing rain at us. No sweat. Here's a pic of the pleasant little surroundings.

And as you can see, the roads look fine! No worries!

It was rather beautiful...apparently the first major snowstorm of the season in the area.

Then we started to gain in elevation and the fun began at Vail Pass. I've driven in a lot of snow and ice in Missouri, but to be stopped in a traffic jam for about an hour on an incline slope full of very, very slippery icy snow should be out of bounds for the relaxing vacation itinerary. We were on the knife edge of getting hopelessly stuck and/or colliding with other struggling motorists more times than I can count, and the constant stoppage of traffic (for hapless motorists foolishly bringing their rear wheel drive Jaguars into the mountains...stupid rich gits!) meant it was not so much driving, as the constant spinning of wheels in icy snow directed carefully to effect forward momentum. Good God (and He is good, and we made many prayers to that effect afterward, not a few of which apologetic for our many coarse invocations during), that was the most intense driving experience I've encountered. We found out that they had closed I-70 eastbound, but we had gotten through before the closure. It eased up later and the other high elevation points were not so challenging...the pass around the Eisenhower tunnel was a bit slushy but nothing too hair-raising after the first experience.

Then into Denver, and we never exulted so much in the act of leaving the mountains behind as at that point. The eastern Colorado plains were terrifically boring, but we made it across them and into our neighbor state of Kansas. I could have kissed the earth.

Something peculiarly sweet about our daughter when she is asleep. Perhaps because she is at her quietest? Except when she has "doggy dreams" and barks in her sleep.

So yes, at long last, we are back in Kansas City, and aside from the fact that the Kansas turnpike from Lawrence to Kansas City is under construction and to charge for the passing there-through is larcenous and akin to...wait for it...highway robbery, and aside from the fact that I-70 eastbound is so comically pretzelled that motorists passing through from other states must be still trying to find their way through, years later, subsisting on crumbs from the cracks in the seat cushions of their Chevy Luminas, and aside from the fact that we had a great time seeing the West, we are very, very glad to be home.

2010-10-22T21:25:00.001-05:00

Day Fourteen: Glenwood Springs, Colorado

We left Zion National Park, or rather entered it, as our means of egress was actually to drive into and across the park to exit on the opposite side, this morning. Before going I got one last shot of the place from our balcony after the sunrise:

Once through the park, driving extremely slowly on winding mountain roads, we stopped for gas, and I'm not sure if this local eatery was getting at some sort of double meaning with their advertising. Perhaps eliminating unnecessary letters to save on electricity?

The fall colors are quite nice in the area.

We entered the Red Canyon in Dixie National Forest:

Had a couple of the tunnel roads...they made you wonder, was it really easier to bore through the rock more than shift the road to the right a few yards?

We entered Bryce Canyon National Park, and did not stay long, but went to three of the observation points. I would say something grandiose, like, "there are no words to describe Bryce Canyon!" but there demonstrably are, unfortunately: "Bryce", and "Canyon". That semantic niggle aside, I am looking forward to returning here to spend more time. It kicks the pantalones off the Grand Canyon in some ways. I'm going to just post all the pictures we took and not belabor you with forced commentary:

So with mild reluctance, but an eager spirit to make miles to our west, we departed, and continued north and then east across the stunning landscape of Utah. Many of these pictures are somewhat underwhelming in that driving at 70mph in frequent rain, a majority of pictures had to be discarded regardless so only a subset are available. Here is a typical roadscape with beautiful trees on each side.

Lots of these rock formations about.

The San Rafael Reef, I believe, from my map. Shrouded in mists, rather ominously!

Impressive bit of natural architecture. What is amazing is these are not in a National Park. Not in a National Monument, National Forest, or state park, even. I assume the government owns the land. If these were located in Missouri or anywhere east where we consider a minor hill a mountain, they would hands down be a full-fledged National Park!

Good sport in the back seat:

Into Colorado, I kept trying to get a good shot of the river by the interstate, and this was the meager best I could get while at speed:

Tomorrow will be an interesting day, regardless. The plan has long been to drive through Colorado and stay in western Kansas, driving back on Sunday to KC. We shall see. On the road, a sense of general vacation fatigue settled onto us at long last, and we considered the semi-maniacal task of driving straight through tomorrow. But, there's the question of the weather, where a first major snowstorm is expected here overnight. We'll see if this vacation ends officially tomorrow, or Sunday, or who-knows-when if the Colorado weather gods get really nasty with us.

2010-10-21T16:29:00.000-05:00

Day Thirteen: Zion National Park, Utah

Still in Zion, a somewhat simple day that doesn't lend itself to a lot of commentary, in that all we've really done is sort of wander around and look at things, which is the proper and expected activity in a place like this. We were expecting rain all day but it has been sunny and cool all day, with no signs of oncoming storms as of this afternoon.

Here was a shot at the entrance to the park, where the morning sun brightly illuminated the top of the canyon walls, wreathed in clouds.

We rode the shuttle to the Temple of Sinawava, which sounds like it belongs in a role playing game from the nineties, and we walked along the "Riverside" trail.

I know I'm fast becoming cliche-sodden when I insufferably trot out that old "pictures can't express blah blah blah" line, but, well, it is sort of applicable.

Gretchen was, of course, most interested in playing in the sandy dirt.

The canyon floor and river:

Me trying, again, in vain to show the scale of these walls:

One of the great things about Zion is the vibrance of the colour...plenty of green, in comparison to the Grand Canyon, contrasting with the very rich red of the earth and rock.

The river:

Thought that this strange cutout in the canyon wall was interesting. Many stories tall. I wonder if the rock just fell away at some point.

The shelf halfway up on this cliff had a carpet of trees and vegetation that give a semblance of scale.

Angel's Landing, seen through the window of the bus. The first time we came to Zion I was ignorant and thought "hey why don't we hike this?" I learned more about it and wised up.

The Patriarchs, shrouded in clouds. Shooting through bus windows doesn't really help the image quality, sorry.

Back in town we realized, much though I had vowed not to, we would in fact eat lunch at the fusion Thai/Chinese place that charges way, way too much for food that I would barely pay McDonalds prices for in Kansas City. I mean, it isn't terrible, but it's not that great, and certainly doesn't deserve the insane prices it commands. However, what I vow in Kansas City is different than in Springdale, for the alternatives were even more expensive and less impressive. This is not a good town to save money on food in.

The horses at least have a fairly readily available source of food:

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the final stretch, three days of driving and we're back in KC.

2010-10-20T22:45:00.001-05:00

Day Twelve: Zion National Park, Utah

This morning we departed Barstow, after pillaging and ransacking their delightful breakfasting area, replete with all manner of upscale hotel breakfast fodder, of a decidedly non-continental nature. We ran straight into a surprisingly vicious desert rainstorm. Impressive winds and quite a downpour, but we were heading east and in no mood to remain perpetually in bad weather so we powered through. Once out of the rain, driving was a bit less tense, but the clouds were treacherously low and brooding. Took a picture or two of the yucca trees and the low-lying clouds:

And the clouds over this mesa were interesting:

We finally crossed out of California, that beloved, though ape-shit crazy state of my nativity, and passed into Nevada. Nevada is the sort of state that would be a bland, uninteresting ranching state like Idaho without gambling, and one can spot any highway border with Nevada by the unspeakably garish gambling settlement planted inches from the actual state line. No, I didn't take any pictures.

But we drove through Vegas, which I've never been profoundly fond of, and the traffic and omnipresent advertising did little to win me over, but we had one last In-N-Out burger there and enjoyed the less-expensive-than-California gasoline. Cheers to Angle, though!

Next up, the corner of Arizona, a state I've come to be rather fond of. Not much of it to see when chipping the northwest corner on I-15, but the Virgin River Gorge is impressive. We took copious photos while passing through but none really display the massiveness one observes, deep in this rather narrow chasm, hurtling through at 55mph. Here's one such insignificant shot.

Then into Utah, home of the Momos! On highway 9, getting close to Zion:

Beautiful ridges on the outskirts:

So we checked into our hotel, and after unpacking, I took my laptop onto the balcony to work on my work emails. This was the view from my "desk":

Also from the balcony:

The family went for a swim. Nice view from a swimming pool:

Gretchen loves swimming, need to start this girl on swimming lessons.

Sun starts to set...

Gretchen loved the horses next door!

I decided to grill, so we picked up some italian sausages and peppers to cook, and I headed back towards the picnic area. They had a little spot right next to the river:

Nice backdrop to cook by.

2010-10-19T18:09:00.000-05:00

Day Eleven: Barstow, California

So today's travel blog is a bit of a mixed bag. Relatively boring day, driving through the central part of California from the coast, but will get to that later. First, some few remaining pictures from San Simeon yesterday.

At sunset the trees were well illuminated:

This cluster of trees caught my eye:

We were working on tiring Gretchen out by having her play outside, so we spent some time in this gazebo.

Where she took on as her task the predation, decapitation, and dismemberment of dandelion flowers.

Another walk by the beach:

The surf at dusk:

Signs are posted everywhere about not feeding the wildlife but something tells me the surprisingly tame squirrels have sorted out how to game the system.

And here is the same fellow leaping for the jugular vein in rage as he learns I have been coaxing him near with a proferred hand of naught more than pebbles. Gretchen follows my lead, in her less subtle way, by picking up pebbles and throwing them at the squirrel who wisely decides to make acquaintance with tourists more amenable to breaking the posted rule.

OK, back to the trip. We passed a delightful night that evening until about 2AM when Gretchen decided that WOW she was sure AWAKE! and wanted to do anything but keep quiet and go back to sleep. We eventually went on a drive which at long last put her to sleep again, and we got some more sleep. It was nice to see the ocean under a full moon, very entrancing, particularly when one is yearning for sleep anyway.

So this morning we got off and passed inland towards Paso Robles, Bakersfield, and Barstow. Paso Robles is a nice area dominated by vineyards, and we noted a large quantity of "report drunk driving!" signs which became a bit funnier when interspersed with the dozens/hundreds of "Wine Tasting Next Right!" signs put out by the vineyards.

Bakersfield is a nice enough town, it's a decent size and seems to have lots of the accoutrements of a medium-sized city, such as a Trader Joe's, which we gave our patronage, but try as it might to be cosmopolitan, the air smells of cattle manure. Not an altogether bad thing, it is likely better smelling than vast swathes of New York or Paris. At least there is the sense of old-fashioned farming and ranching there.

Tehachapi was cute, particularly the huge hills of the Tehachapi Wind Farm and the hundreds of windmills, precious few of which were turning. I wonder what it cost the Californian taxpayer to put in. I wonder how much each year the bill is for maintenance. I like to amuse myself with the thought that when proposing the initiative, none of the dingbat lawmakers responsible bothered to consider much in regards to ongoing maintenance costs, but I could be wrong.

Finally, we passed Barstow and went on a dozen miles to Calico, a ghost town/theme park I remember from many years ago. We didn't actually spend a lot of time there. Strangely there were mostly foreigners there, like at the Grand Canyon. Whole busses full of Japanese, and a number of German and French visitors were audible. It's a quaint sort of thing because you pay for admission, and then most everything inside is a shop where you can buy things. If you can work out paid admission to a shopping mall and get busloads of foreign folks eager to deplete travellers checks in your retail stores you've got on to a good thing.

The famous CALICO written in the hillside:

Walking up to the rock shop to buy a piece of amethyst:

Very interesting rock formations, layers of sedimentary rock obviously contorted and squeezed:

2010-10-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

Day Ten: San Simeon, California

Yesterday after bidding fond farewells and heartfelt yet insignificant thanks to our hosts/relatives in Diamond Bar, we drove up the coast. Up being in a northerly direction, I should probably specify. But we took a brief stop in Solvang, where we discovered the place has been increasingly o'erwhelmed by tourists such that the wait for a plate of pancakes has become somewhat ludicrous. I grant that Solvang has always existed for no higher purpose than tourism and pancakes, but still, we gave it a miss this time, and I vowed instead to learn how to make my own sodding Danish pancakes.

We landed, so to speak, in our usual haunt on the central coast, the San Simeon Pines resort. It was spitting in a weird Californian way all day, a totally different sort of rain than we are used to in Missouri, where it either is raining or isn't, but a limbo-esque rain that leaves you perpetually neither quite wet nor quite dry. Across the street for a brief walk to the ocean:

It's quite nice there even in worse weather. The sun peeking out over on the left; the rays shooting through had a very nice effect.

Playing the "throw a rock towards the ocean and then panic when the waves come up to get your precious rock" game. We're still learning the precise rules of this game.

On the boardwalk by the sea.

Playing in the largest sandbox she has ever seen. Hopefully with less cat poop.

The pines for which the place is named are quite interesting in shape.

This morning we went to what is the coolest playground I've ever seen. A few feet to the beach!

She (Gretchen, I should specify) loves getting close to the waves and then running away. Although she will occasionally insist on being carried for extra safety.

Sand sampling!

The "puppy" was less able to quickly move away from incoming waves.

Back at the resort, we stayed at a little vending machine lobby while folks finished cleaning our room, and Gretchen took it upon herself to correct the egregious errors made by the folks in charge of decorating. If you can imagine, they had placed the three flower pots on three SEPARATE tables! Hah! And hadn't even so much as placed a plastic bead necklace over the pots! Amateurs.

Then after grabbing a pizza in town we went up the coast to see the elephant seals.

2010-10-16T21:45:00.002-05:00

Day Eight: TANKLAND

We drove out to visit some more family in sunny Rancho Cucamonga today, which is just a fun thing to say, and Gretchen was much pleased to see and somewhat harass a pair of large labradors. From there, the 210 and the 57/60 led us past South El Monte and........TANKLAND!

The American Military Museum (as far as I can tell that is its official name, generic though it may be) is a wunderland for those few of us geeky enough to seek out armoured vehicle museums in their travels. As a child I wanted our family to head east to visit the US Army Ordnance Museum in at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds. But this is a good first step.

I was on, if not Cloud Nine, then one of the Clouds at least above level Four, conservatively speaking.

The family very sportingly came with. Gretchen was particularly fascinated with the quality and grading of the rocks, gravel, and dirt with which the outdoor museum was lavishly furnished.

Nice little amphibious armoured car whose name escapes me. Lou? Henrik?

A trio of Shermans, the workhorse of Patton's Third Army and the most iconic American tank of WWII.

The miscellaneous ordnance section...bombs, missiles, rocket launchers, torpedoes, and marine mines.

The landing craft and marine section, with the family. Gretchen taking another sample of the absolute exquisite El Monte dirt!

Patton tanks, an M48 and some later models.

The working quarters of a very large self-propelled howitzer piece.

...and the rest of the same.

A Bofors emplacement! Probably from a scrapped battleship or similar vessel, definately a naval emplacement from a ship likely of the WWII era. Quad 40mm autocannons for anti-aircraft.

I don't recall the details on this similar anti-aircraft naval emplacement but it looks like twin 30mm autocannons, and I love the fact that its enclosed and has windshield wipers on the front. I wonder if the replacement blades for the wipers are a standard size they can get at an automotive shop. More likely they are contract made for $300 each!

Pretty substantive fixed gun nestled into the corner of a museum.

The Priests lined up.

Another Bofors!

And a northward pointing big fella waiting to shell El Monte Proper, apparently.

Bren Carrier and my daughter. A bit smaller and it be perfect size for her!

An old 30's era "Combat Car" and a Chi-Ha mockup.

M50 Ontos, without its characteristic array of recoilless rifle tubes.

The M5 Stuart, a capable American light tank that served in WWII, and probably beyond.

M551 Sheridan, an interesting vehicle with a missile launching tube, essentially, for a main gun, and mostly aluminum armour for lighter weight, designed to be airdropped, seeing some service in Viet Nam.

Daughter satisfied with face-applicated soil samples.

Pak36, a German anti-tank gun in 37mm. Small little unit, probably easily transported, though outclassed by heavier, later tanks.

Motorcycle and a row of Willys jeeps and other trucks.

What EVERYONE needs! A MORTAR SHED!

Long suffering fam in front of a nice, I think British, armoured car on the way out.

2010-10-16T20:49:00.001-05:00

Day Seven: North Hollywood, California

Pleasantly restful day, excepting the homicidal intensity of Los Angeles freeway transit. We galloped, galavanted, and generally gallopvanted off to a place of my youth, "Travel Town" in Griffith Park. Basically, a train museum.

Here I am assuring her it will be more fun than she is at the time thinking:

Off and running!

Up in the locomotive:

And one of the empty passenger cars was fun:

...because you can run around like mad in it.

Racing to catch up to mommy and grandma:

But the highlight of the trip was of course getting the plastic toy train whistle, which was mastered within SECONDS! This child is a train whistle prodigy!

Then it was off to North Hollywood, to visit with Gretchen's great-grandad. Fine old chap and a gentleman. I raise my icewater to his health and long[er] life! The girls out front:

2010-10-14T16:17:00.001-05:00

Day Five: Disneyland

So Day Four is missing, you say. No, in case your mind is swirling with all sorts of improbable astrophysical explanations for a missing day, I must ask you to apply the Razor that that bloke Ockham bunged about the place. No need to overcomplicate, the simplest explanation is that we simply didn't blog about it. Due to some great fun at the Grand Canyon involving sleep, or particularly, the inability of our daughter to get to the same, we ended up leaving quite early in the morning, about 3:30AM, and made an early start to our trip to Los Angeles. I would say that the scenery is beautiful in Western Arizona, and indeed I remember it to be, but the pitch black night did not favour me with a refreshment of the memory. Breakfast in Kingman, AZ, with a LOT of coffee, and we were in Diamond Bar by midday. The rest of the day was spent recuperating and spending time with family, and I've got no further pictures. Bit of an adventure, and the stars finally aligned that night for Gretchen to get a full amount of good sleep. And us as well!

The next day, of course, was our long-awaited Disneyland trip, Gretchen's first. Debra has been excited for this for ages. Gretchen too, although she scarcely understood the meaning...she'll happily prattle about Dih-Nee-LAND! but I think she assumed we were going somewhere to watch Disney movies.

And...we're there! Disney frigging Land!

Gretchen in line for the Peter Pan ride:

She's excited!

Blowing kisses to her fans (her old man, and grandma) from the carousel:

A look of boredom while waiting for it to commence...

Followed by some growing panic as it moved a bit faster than carousels of her previous acquaintance!

The horticulture here is incredible.

Looking out on the Casey Jr's train ride:

And sacked out after a morning of lines and rides.

She did snag one of the requisite mouse ear hats, embroidered with her name.

Waiting in line for a million psychotic, probably murderous dolls to shriek repetitive platitudes at us...in air conditioning...at the "It's a Small World" ride. Replete with CHURROS!!!

Gretchen, Mom (in keeping with her independent streak, Mommy is now "Mom" now often), and Grandma on the way out. Good times had by all. Bed time was no problem.

2010-10-14T15:28:00.002-05:00

Day Three: Grand Canyon, Arizona

This morning, we left Gallup, and rather shortly, New Mexico, around 8AM. Right at the Arizona border is one of those kitschy "Indian Settlements" that sell blankets, jewelry, and a lot of other classic southwest gift shop things with lots of gaudy signs, so we stopped and visited the "Largest Teepee in the Southwest" which actually was a nice little shop, but as mentioned, completely the same as all of these genre of souvenir shops. Got a decent price for some turquoise jewelry.

Another hour or so and we were at the Petrified Forest National Park. We bought our annual park pass and intended only to make a cursory run around part of the park (Gretchen was asleep anyway). But the northern "Painted Desert" section was stunning in person. Now that we're in a cabin on the rim of the Grand Canyon, these pictures make it look a bit weak and uninteresting but after driving through KansasTexhomamexico flatness it was quite cool.

Further south in the park were the "Teepees", strange cones of rock. Here were a few of the whiter ones, most of them were a dark grey, almost black.

In the far south of the park is the actual petrified forest section:

There was an entire field of these logs:

Up close:

Here's some more of the somewhat lunar scenery on the way out:

Back on the road, we approached what is the city of our eventual intended dwelling, Flagstaff. Located quite high in altitude with a generally mild climate, I just need to be offered a good CIO position there or become independently wealthy. We'll see what happens first. Once through Flagstaff and driving north, the Cococino Forest was quite beautiful, but we only really found out that when we frantically pulled over believing Gretchen to be in the initial throes of carsickness. We took a walk.

Lovely crisp clean air, pine trees, I think I'm love. Mountain just behind us:

But we got back in the car and hurtled on towards the south rim. You'd never guess, well, you might, or you might know from actual experience, but the mass of humanity clustered round this particular tourist attraction is particularly diverse, in the sense of being made up of mostly non-Americans. The sheer ubiquity of Germans would have been sufficient, one would think, to make the also-prevalent Frenchies a bit nervous in a way reminiscent of 1940. It took rather a long time to sort out where to park; it really was packed out. But we reserved a nice little cabin room about 50 feet from the rim, perhaps. Here is Gretchen in front of it as we're preparing to go see the canyon:

Don't fall in!

Pictures are a rather lame way of showing this:

Towards the canyon floor...

To prove she was there!

The canyon just after sunset.

2010-10-10T18:24:00.002-05:00

Day Two: Gallup, New Mexico

Slightly longer day today, started out with an actually quite decent "continental" breakfast. Continental in what sense? The European sense, as in prone to smelly cheeses and world wars? Or as in the Continental US? Do they serve these cold free breakfasts in Alaska and Hawaii?

But anyway, it stormed fairly heavily out of Liberal and most the way through the OK panhandle, but that didn't deter us from a quick stop for this photograph in Hooker, OK:

I'm not sure but it seems like they are playing off of some kind of double meaning here, or something like that. Maybe it's just my imagination.

Crossing into Texas, the enormous windmills. Texas pretending to be green by putting windmills right on their borders. Sort of like a meat market putting soy chicken substitute in its front window.

One of the things I have noticed is that the comic fodder on this trip has been significantly picked over...amusing, I hope, observations I would otherwise be prone to make have already yet been made, the last time we traversed this particular path three years ago. Ah well. The road signs are still amusing. In New Mexico:

Lights On For Safety! It's a fantastic little motto, like Hats Off For Cancer Awareness, or Knees Bent For Organic Farming.

As we sowed McNuggets, so did we reap. The semi-mountainous roads just outside Albequerque were a bit much for Gretchen and the poor girl offered up her stomach contents in oblation. So we had to stop in Albequerque and figure out how to clean up our daughter and our vehicle. Again, this is all part of the challenge that makes this "fun"! We're settled in Gallup, NM, on the other side of the state, and tomorrow should be a bit more fun with the Petrified Forest National Park and then the Grand Canyon.

Pretty country though!

2010-10-09T19:57:00.003-05:00

Road Trip

Day One: Liberal, Kansas

So we're off on another roadtrip. We like roadtrips...they are expensive, sometimes monotonous, and challenging, and who doesn't like such things? We decided to increase the challenge a bit and take along a 2 1/2 year old.

Oh, and I also decided to invoke a beardomorphosis. Purely temporary, mind you, but you can see the varied stages below. I am fond of the "ear-tethered fu manchu" but Debra was not.

A road trip would be bland and pedestrian without last minute car troubles! First, we remembered at 10:30PM on Friday that the gas cap was reported stuck, so I went out to see...turns out it was cross threaded, and a locking wrench was necessary to get it free. One challenge past, we got some sleep, got up at 5AM and got off on our way, only to find our tire pressure low. Then we found out that a nail had damaged the valve stem and low pressure sensor, so we had to postpone departure and get this little bugger, pictured below, replaced at Walmart. After a healthy round of shaking my fist in futile rage at whatever goddam sumbitches conspired to lay nails across the road, we got off a couple hours later.

We had planned to have breakfast at the Matfield Green reststop McDonalds on the Turnpike, but we had lunch instead.

Gretchen discovered the virtue of ketchup used in concert with chicken nuggets.

Knute Rockne! ....died here apparently. Sad, that. Ah well. Knute! Knute! Knute!

Stopped for gas in Greensburg, Kansas, made famous by the movie "Twister". Some still-damaged trees around.

The Mid-America Air Museum in Liberal, Kansas:

This was an interesting exhibit of rubble from the Twin Towers. One could examine it up close. Nothing special, of course, but it almost has the feel of sacred relics or something.

An F-104 Starfighter:

One of the choppers they show on the intro to M*A*S*H, but they couldn't afford to actually record on set in the actual show.

Family in the HueyCobra:

Gretchen was not as impressed as I hoped but then again, she is a submariner at heart.

Actually she is a "doggie" at heart. Barking and crawling around in front of the SBD Avenger.

It's a fantastic museum.

One of the side effects of bringing along a small one is that bed times are rather soon in arrival, so I'd best wrap this up. Cheers, and shall likely post again tomorrow.

2010-06-24T14:18:00.001-05:00

haikus are easy
in poetry they are the
special olympics

2010-06-18T13:44:00.002-05:00

Hat tip to John Derbyshire for introducing me to the following poem. Pleasantly cynical, and almost comic in its portrayal of trite little schoolboy maxims as inevitable, vengeful gods of judgement. Derb does a good reading of it on his site.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
By Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper protestations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn,
That water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision, and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

The the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

---------------------------------------------------------

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

2010-05-24T09:32:00.002-05:00

Words like "fairness", "equality", and "diversity" are not the words springing to mind for most people when one talks about border fencing and immigration law enforcement, but I intend to make a brief case for them. Those in favor of stricter border policing are often accused of racism, xenophobia, paranoia, possibly bad personal hygiene, who knows what all. However, the reason I would support an enforced border fence is because I love the whole idea of America as a melting pot...unfettered and unregulated immigration from our southern border (or our northern border, should it come to that!) actually does a lot more to quench diversity in America. Nations all around the world have citizens eager to come to the US, and it is unfair to these citizens that they do not have the major advantage of living in a country sharing an unpoliced land border with the US. By securing the border and stopping the flow of unregulated immigration, the actual regulated immigration could likely be increased, allowing in a huge diversity of new immigrants from every country and culture in the world: Vietnamese, Bangaladeshi, Zambian, Albanian, Samoan, Portuguese, Korean, Moroccan, Uruguayan, Mongolian, Uzbek, et cetera. A spirit of fairness and equality would ensure that immigrants from these countries are given similar opportunity than those from Mexico.

Maybe my interest is purely selfish...I was disheartened to note that Kansas City, while its establishments of a tacolitic nature are nearly innumerable, has scant or no real Eastern European restaurants. So while I do like the idea of diverse immigration from a cultural integration level, I also selfishly want a larger variety of cultures to bring their cultures to Kansas City and start up restaurants. I love Mexican food as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is the FREETO BANDEETO!), but I also want to try authentic pirozhki sometime.

2010-05-21T14:12:00.002-05:00

I occasionally grow a little tired of this overdone cause célèbre among the university Left and the Muslim political community that keeps throwing out the word "apartheid" in regard to Israel and Palestine. First off, it is a cheap debating point to simply glom onto an Afrikaner word (not as though many of these folks have any interest in Boer culture and language) that was popularly and almost universally villified a couple decades ago; like reductio ad Hitlerum, it is making a point chiefly by associating Israel with something generally considered evil. But what really rankles me is the flaming hypocrisy involved.

Years ago, my boss who has travelled extensively in the Middle East and particularly the U.A.E. relayed the same basic information as is in this article. It's lengthy but well worth a read; the caste system of the Emirates is much more analogous to apartheid in my opinion than the interaction between Israel and the Palestinean authority.

2010-05-18T09:55:00.002-05:00

I'm all hepped up and crunked out on diphenhydramine right now, so you'll have to excuse the flagging quality of today's post. I have an old Army survival field manual. I thought I'd share a couple pictures.

The first speaks (volumes!) for itself:

And the second:

Thank God our brave men of the US armed forces are equipped with inflating pants.

2010-05-01T07:53:00.001-05:00

So, to "Don't Ask" and "Don't Tell" it appears we might need to add "Don't Broadcast Around the Globe Via Viral Internet Video":

2010-04-26T15:00:00.003-05:00

This coming October we have a long planned roadtrip to California, so yesterday we thought we might give the whole driving-eight-hours-with-an-almost-two-year-old thing a bit of a bash, and see how well it works. So leaving KC around 6AM, we made rather a large batch of haste nor'nor'west to Nebraska, to visit the Strategic Air and Space Museum, formerly known as the SAC Museum as I recall. There's always something about road trips with us...the most mundane bits of humour become elevated to side-splitting, uproarious things when you've been on the road for hours. I can't recall all the things we saw that we found (possibly disproportionately) hilarious, although I do recall a small filling station in the backwoods of eastern Nebraska proudly displaying on the marquee sign the following three words:

WE GOT WORMS

I started to try and explain why this was so funny to us, but I do realize the inherent futility of such an attempt so I'll leave it at that; needless to say variations on the theme kept us entertained for longer than it probably warranted. There was also a large flatbed truck carrying hundreds of sacks of something called "HOLEPLUG" which we found a little bit amusing for various off-colour reasons. Found out later it is a Halliburton product used in the field of...errr, drilling. Oh, and close to home, we saw a sign saying "Auto Repair $29.99" which struck us as perhaps maybe a good deal, if anyone is in need of automotive repair, ANY automotive repair...always $29.99!

Enough of this silly reminiscing of our roadtrippery, on to the museum:

Out front they had what I had assumed were NASA rockets, but I was rather amazed to see were ballistic missiles, the largest a true ICBM (intercontinental range), from the Atlas series. The sheer imposing bulk of the Atlas was stunning, like a monstrous flying tower. The idea that these gargantuan rockets were ready to launch into suborbital space, traverse the globe, and rain nuclear hell upon our old adversaries is something often lost to memory decades after the Cold War. Here's another picture of them from inside the building:

In the main lobby, they have a uniquely artistic display of a decommissioned SR-71 Blackbird, a somewhat wicked looking spy plane whose primary anti-missile defense was to simply hit the gas and outrun the missiles. Fastest production jet, ever. Size here is hard to gather from a picture, but suffice to say that this is a sizable aircraft!

Here is the view of the first hangar. A B-17 Flying Fortress has the honored position in the foreground center, somewhat dwarfed by the B-52 in the background. At the very back is the B-36, with six rear facing prop engines.

Forgive the poor quality of some of these shots, the somewhat low lighting required longer exposures and blurrier image quality. This is a U-2 spy plane, made famous when the Rooskies shot down Gary Powers in one in 1960. It's amazing that there are still 35 of these in active duty with the USAF.

The B-17, the workhorse of the Army Air Corps in bombing the excrement out of Nazi Germany, is a beautiful plane. Bristling with .50 caliber machine guns in every direction, and generally a stable and trusted plane.

My grandfather manned the waist gunner position, shown here, during many missions over Europe.

The B-36 was one of our first nuke-ferriers comprising our nuclear deterrent after WWII. As I recall it has the widest wingspan of any combat aircraft. Despite the goofy bug-like looks of the cockpit it is an impressive looking plane. I stood in one of the bomb bays and took a picture, but the low light didn't convey how cavernous it actually was. I would love to do a walkthrough of such an aircraft someday.

The B-47 was a precursor to the B-52, giving us a serious jet bomber that could penetrate Russian air defenses in the early Cold War. Another bug-like cupola ensures this one won't win any beauty competitions...not that you could tell anyway due to the poor quality photo!

The B-25 Mitchell was a sort of all-purpose utility bomber in WWII, not the big, unmanouverable heavy bomber sort like the B-17 and B-29 (the latter was not on exhibit but was undergoing restoration in the second hangar). This was a nice one on exhibit here:

The A-26 is similar sort of "attack" aircraft used for light bombing roles.

Here's my daughter straining to approach a B-57, a Korean War era light bomber.

Hiding in the corner, a reconnoissance-tasked RB-45; the B-45 was America's first operational jet bomber.

A supersonic strategic bomber variant of the F-111 fighter, this swept-wing beauty didn't come out well in the photos.

An F-4 Phantom adapted for recon work:

Now this one was well worth the trip...one of two XF-85 prototypes ever built. A clever idea that was probably a bit too clever, it was designed to fit in one of the bomb bays of the slow, giant B-36 bombers, and be dispatched to deal with interceptors in the same way Imperial Star Destroyers launch TIE fighters, since fighter escorts could not easily accompany a heavy bomber over intercontinental ranges. The thing is quite funny to look at, and is quite small. The problems that led to its cancellation was a difficulty in reconnecting to the carrier craft (see the hook in the nose).

"Now then Dimitri. You know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb." And here one is:

What I found particularly amusing was the writing on the bomb itself. First off, this is a nuclear bomb. You would think they might proofread the instructions they stamp on it for typos, or at least make an "ATTEMP" at doing so. And then the inherent vagueness. "FOR STRIKE" followed with two steps. For strike? Can't we use complete sentences? You don't need to skimp for pennies by using less ink, I mean, really! Happily I can report that I refrained from ATTEMPING to remove the arming rods.

On to the other hangar! First a couple early model helicopters, an H-19:

And a CH-21 which looks like a precursor to the CH-47 Chinook (and from some reading it sounds like the same designers were involved):

Gretchen had fun with this thing:

They had an Avro Vulcan there, basically a flying triangle. One of Britain's nuclear deterrant bombers.

Quite a beautiful (and large) bird:

The highlight of this hangar is the B-1A on display. A supersonic swept wing bomber, I just have to say this thing is huger than one expects.

Another fun bit were some of the inert nuclear warheads and the ballistic missile control systems on display. These are some seriously antiquated machines!

Look, it's Eddie the Shipboard Computer!

These systems are thoroughly hardware based. I would love to get a screwdriver and peek around at their innards.

This is an ICBM control panel. There are a few too many buttons for malfunctions on it for my comfort! They should add "TROUBLE TEST" as a key for standard QWERTY keyboards.

The DC-3 was probably the primary ferrier for paratroopers in WWII. Analagous to the UH-1 Huey in Vietnam, it was a troop mover.

On one side of this door was the interior of a transport plane and on the other side was the flak-filled air thousands of feet over France, amazing how these men just jumped through there. A moving account, if you can find it, is "Those Devils in Baggy Pants", of which I've read a number of excerpts.

Gretchen, of course, rode 200 miles for soft blocks. I love how they make a toddler area complete with an open electrical socket at the perfect height for them!

But alas it was nearing meltdown time. This last shot was taken with Gretchen straining in my arms and rather upset. Came out well though.

2010-03-12T08:58:00.000-06:00

In a few days...

...beware the Ides of March.

2009-11-17T19:37:00.000-06:00

You can have Watergate.

2009-11-16T23:36:00.002-06:00

Just learned Edward Woodward has passed on today. He was fairly up in years, but still.

His classic...rule three-oh-three.

2009-11-04T08:33:00.002-06:00

So I've been annoying my lovely wife lately with some inordinately long term plans for a vacation. Over a year in advance I turned in a form to HR requesting vacation time for October 2010. Yes, another roadtrip is in the works. This time we will be accompanied by someone small and less patient, so we are planning shorter legs of each journey than last time, but all should go well we think.

Here's the route as planned:

Leaving from Kansas City, we'll make our first stop in Liberal, Kansas. A short visit to the Liberal Air Museum, and then on the next day to Tucumcari, New Mexico. A long day of driving follows landing us on the south rim of the Grand Canyon for an evening, and then straight on to Los Angeles the next day. A few days with family, and of course, the requisite Disneyland stopover, and then on up the coast, a Danish breakfast in Solvang, and then a couple nights on the coast in San Simeon. Then we start trudging back, first making a short trip across central California and stopping in less-than-aesthetically-exemplary Barstow, California. Then, on to some cabins in Zion National Park where we'll enjoy a scenic couple of days. We travel then across Utah, and stop in Glenwood Springs at a hotel on the banks of the Colorado River, on the western side of the Rockies. The next day we cut our return journey in half by stopping in Hays, Kansas after crossing the Rockies and the vast plains of eastern Colorado, and finally make it home after a short drive from Hays.

Yep, this should keep me going for another year. Perhaps vacation savings would be better in a Roth IRA or with some other Irish nationalist faction or group, but we do like our road trip vacations.

2009-10-26T08:05:00.001-05:00

As a commenter in the previous thread deftly points out:

HAPPY BOOTSY DAY!

2009-10-25T14:12:00.000-05:00

Happy Saint Crispin's Day!

2009-10-14T16:07:00.003-05:00

From Paul Hudson, a "climate correspondent" for the far-from-right-wing BBC News, an unusually frank admittance of fairly uncontested facts:

What Happened To Global Warming?

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

Mark Steyn writing along these lines, a bit earlier in July:

If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None. Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in.

2009-09-25T08:11:00.003-05:00

A couple Douglas Adams quotes today, both from Mostly Harmless. First, a rather endearing passage that sums up how certain personalities (to great extent my own) can find joy in doing the simplest of tasks to a level of excellence. There is a touch of utopian ideal to the thought of being Sandwich Maker on Lamuella; but for the intrusion of the usual suspects (Ford, Trillian, Random, and of course The Guide) one could envision Arthur Dent spending the rest of his days there in unaccustomed contentment.

There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh.

There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.

The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker's forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth.

Three knives altogether were required. First there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread.

The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife; it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would be accomplished.

The Sandwich Maker would pass what he had made to his assistant who would then add a few slices of newcumber and fladish and a touch of splagberry sauce, and then apply the topmost layer of bread and cut the sandwich with a fourth and altogether plainer knife. It was not that these were not also skilful operations, but they were lesser skills to be performed by a dedicated apprentice who would one day, when the Sandwich Maker finally laid down his tools, take over from him. It was an exalted position and that apprentice, Drimple, was the envy of his fellows. There were those in the village who were happy chopping wood, those who were content carrying water, but to be the Sandwich Maker was very heaven.

And so the Sandwich Maker sang as he worked.

Another somewhat less profound and more comic bit of dialogue, made funnier by this being the culmination of these two characters' mutual exasperation and annoyance in their relationship.

"You don't understand how important this is,' [Ford] said.

"What? You mean my daughter out there all alone in the Galaxy? You think I don't...'

"Can we feel sorry for the Galaxy later?" said Ford. "This is very, very serious indeed. The Guide has been taken over. It's been bought out.'

Arthur leapt up. "Oh very serious," he shouted. "Please fill me in straight away on some corporate publishing politics! I can't tell you how much it's been on my mind of late!'

"You don't understand! There's a whole new Guide!'

"Oh!" shouted Arthur again. "Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm incoherent with excitement! I can hardly wait for it to come out to find out which are the most exciting spaceports to get bored hanging about in in some globular cluster I've never heard of. Please, can we rush to a store that's got it right this very instant?'

Ford narrowed his eyes.

"This is that thing you call sarcasm, isn't it?'

"Do you know," bellowed Arthur, "I think it is? I really think it might just be a crazy little thing called sarcasm seeping in at the edges of my manner of speech! Ford, I have had a f[ed. use your imagination]ing bad night! Will you please try and take that into account while you consider what fascinating bits of badger-sputumly inconsequential trivia to assail me with next?"

2009-09-04T13:47:00.002-05:00

Much Belated Concert Review - Yes/Asia at The Uptown Theater

So on the evening of July 14th, as we basked in the afterglow of our good fortune for not having to pay for parking as we expected we might, we shuffled into the Uptown Theater for the Yes and Asia concert. We had decent but not exceptional seats near the back of the venue on the first floor, and as we entered we noted that it being extremely dark, decorated in a gaudy faux-historical sort of way, and somewhat dank and humid, the place took us straight back to Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. No, not the movie.

Anyway, I'm not a particularly big fan of Asia, other than loving the Eric Cartman adaptation of "Heat of the Moment." But I actually quite enjoyed their set. The lineup was the original, with Steve Howe (of Yes) on guitar, John Wetton (of King Crimson) on bass and lead vocals, Carl Palmer (of Emerson, Lake, and hisself) on drums, and Geoff Downes (former Buggle and Yesman) on keys. They have a fairly accessible sound that blends 80s pop-rock with progressive elements. They kicked it off with "Wildest Dreams", and then "Only Time Will Tell". Then a recently written tune with terribly cheesy lyrics, "An Extraordinary Life" which was mainly memorable for Howe's delicate slide acoustic guitar work.

"Video Killed the Radio Star", Geoff Downes' famous little tune from his Buggle days, was next and actually was grooved pretty hard, the song being what it was. Nothing could beat the ridiculous stage antics of Carl Palmer on this song, throwing his sticks up in the air and putting four-to-the-floor. The man seemed to channel Rainn Wilson in "The Rocker". Perhaps it was the other way round? "In The Court of the Crimson King" was the homage to Wetton's King Crimson past, and while a bit repetitive, the thunderous Mellotron on the chorus section was awesome. They followed with a couple acoustic pieces "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes" and "Don't Cry", which, nigh on a month later, are completely forgotten and thus were forgettable.

"Fanfare for the Common Man" came next, of Palmer's ELP catalog, and I must give credit to Geoff Downes. A Buggle...a pop-song guy...doing Keith Emerson organ parts. He tore it up! But of course, as expected, Carl Palmer took the occasion to do a fantastic drum solo...perhaps not one as finessed as other drummers might do, but in the realm of loud, showy rock drummers, Palmer is no slouch. The set started cranking up again with "Sole Survivor" which does tend to get stuck in your head, and then, as expected...

It was the heat........of...the moment...

Yes, it was of course time for their signature tune, which they were going to milk to death, naturally! The phrase "milk to death" conjures up a very painful sort of image for a dairy cow one might imagine, but I digress from the main point. Midway through the song, Wetton called for everyone to stand up and sing along. Embarrassingly only about 20-40 folks near the front (house left) stood up. You might think this would be disheartening. But you would be wrong. Asia is a clever, tricksy band. What did they do?

They did a false ending. Yes, a false ending...they seemed to end the song...and with the dying strains of Heat of the Moment in our ears, the crowd obligingly stood to their feet to applaud as one might expect.

Ha-ha! They had fooled us! Back into the song!!!! And everyone standing up now! See, they would get us standing up for Heat of the Moment one way or another. Geoff Downes thought this was a perfect time to whip out the keytar. Seriously, a keytar, dude? Complete with poses leaning up back to back with the other guitar or bass playing members. At least when Donald Fagen did it it was ironic/amusing.

So Asia having fooled us into appreciation was content to then get off stage. The wait began for the next act, which was the reason most of us were there.

The lineup had a few "fill ins" this time. Squire, White, and Howe were there, but filling in (quite admirably I must say) for his father was Oliver Wakeman, and Benoit David was filling in for Jon Anderson, who is unable to tour due to a respiratory condition. Benoit David is a younger French-Canadian with a voice that sounds a lot more like Jon Anderson did in the 70s than Anderson does now, and he did an excellent job, even if not exactly the genuine article.

I should point out at this point there was a young lady sitting next to my wife. This lady was, you might say, of uncommonly high spirits, emphasis on spirits. Perhaps I am guilty of understatement; it was my initial belief that I was witnessing a live-action "this is your brain on drugs" public service announcement. It does stand to reason, of course, in that it has always been my assumption that the only explanation for a female under the age of 25 liking Yes would be just shy of all the opium in Central Asia. However, it turns out she was with her parents, and was partaking with them in oft-repeated trips to the refreshment stand for mixed drinks of some sort. "Drunk off her posterior" is, I believe, the sanitized version of the state of her mental condition. The dancing was particularly hazardous, and as one might imagine Yes and Asia are not particularly dance-oriented, so accidents were bound to occur, occasionally involving my wife not having inched far enough away from the action. She also at one point, right before Yes came on, grabbed my wife, stuck her face an inch away from hers, and screamed "aren't you excited? WOOOOOOOOOO!"

The classic prerecorded "Firebird Suite" intro brought the band members out, and "Siberian Khatru", a very common first song for Yes, got us started from the B-side of Close to the Edge. "I've Seen All Good People" came next, and Drunk Crazy Girl got particularly animated in the "All Good People" section which has an old rocknroll groove to it. Then, as suspected, the band started inching towards less common material, particularly in the absence of Anderson. "Tempus Fugit" from Drama was well done, and I was almost sorry to see that Geoff Downes wasn't asked to join the band for the Drama numbers, in that he was Yes' keyboard man for that album. To this day I have a hard time not playing that bass riff when I pick up a bright sounding bass like a Rickenbacker.

"Astral Traveller", my favorite from Time and a Word, came next, and it was sad to note that the only member who had played on that song or album was Squire. Howe was to come one album later, and there were three more albums with Bill Bruford (Yes Album, Fragile, Close to the Edge) before Alan White came on board. Still, they did it well and B. David's voice was appropriately fed through a rotary speaker effect. "And You and I" was a highlight in its execution, although marred only slightly by the failure to have the steel guitar working...whether that is the fault of the sound guys, Steve Howe, or the failure of his old vintage gear, I don't know. But they got it working.

Steve did a few numbers solo on acoustic, and the crowd-pleasing "Clap" reminds me as always that there is in fact such a thing as "God-given talent". Probably the most challenging acoustic guitar piece I've ever heard! Follow that with the even more crowd-pleasing standby, "Owner of a Lonely Heart". Oliver Wakeman appeared to work a bit harder than his father would at that...Rick Wakeman was hardly faithful to his own recordings when playing live, much less some git named Tony Kaye or Patrick whats-his-name. Howe didn't exactly sound as fluidly natural with the part as Trevor Rabin but he did sound much, much better than he has in live performances of it years ago.

"Machine Messiah", the second from Drama, came next, and it was nice hearing it live. I've never cared for the Pink Floyd imitation section but the whole song went well. Then ramping out, "Roundabout" built up steam, and as they started "Heart of the Sunrise" we headed for the exit to avoid the drunk driving in the parking lot. I've heard Squire do that song at least twice live before, I know it backwards and forwards. I found out later that was not their closer as I suspected, they encore'd with "Starship Trooper", which would have been good, but again, these are standbys that I sacrificed hearing to allow me to get out of the parking lot alive.

Oh, one last thing...we had noticed Squire (who is as big a ham as ever tromped across stage) had his golden locks blowing back like he had a fan on him. Very shampoo-commercial sort of thing. It became more amusing during one song, I forget which, where they started the fog machines. The fog billowed out across the stage, and as it got to Squire it shot the fog straight up into his face in a column of smoke. Oh that was funny.

All in all, great show.

2009-08-02T21:14:00.002-05:00

In my continuing quest to put off the Asia/Yes concert review blog post that I fully intend to do, I thought I'd post a pic of our dinner tonight.

Tonight I cooked what might be classed as sort of Norwegian food. Sirloin steak seasoned with juniper, fennel, salt and pepper, seared and grilled over charcoal to medium rare, then topped with a unique sauce of beef stock, flour, juniper berries, salt, pepper, sour cream, akvavit, and last but not least, Norwegian gjetost cheese. This is a delightful cheese made by boiling the milk until it caramelizes, for a sort of sweet brown goat cheese.

Plated up, we've got the steak with gjetost sauce, boiled potatoes with fresh dill and butter, lingonberries, and a few slices of extra gjetost. Accompanying, the only aquavit I could find locally at this time, a pretty straight-ahead caraway-to-the-forefront akvavit from Aalborg in Denmark. Delicious, regardless.

2009-07-31T09:56:00.002-05:00

My blog has never been averse to shameless plugs (and no, I am not referring to a vice-presidential form of cosmetic surgery) so I will gladly hawk our first gig. The Steve Phillips Quartet, for which nigh unto a thousand more colourful names have been suggested and none yet agreed upon, will be playing next Thursday, the 6th of August, at Jardine's in Kansas City.

The band is Steve Phillips (tenor/soprano sax), Arturo LaCruz (piano/keys), myself (fretless bass), and David Hoffman (drums). We've only managed to have one full band practice yet, with another couple next week hopefully, so it should be especially entertaining to come watch me fall flat on my face on probably not a few tunes. It'll be a blend of contemporary jazz, some more modern stuff, some older stuff, and as much funk as I can pack in there (alas, no Bootsy at this first gig), and there is no cover. We're playing 5:30 to 7:30, the early set.

Come out after work if you like, have a snooty mixed drink or an appetizer, and enjoy!

(PS. I will continue investigating the feasibility of the yazz flute mixed drink blowtorch effect..."I'm not even prepared...")

2009-07-15T07:05:00.000-05:00

What may be my new favourite music video:

2009-07-02T09:32:00.001-05:00

Thought I'd do a little review of last Friday's concert at Starlight.

We arrived there a bit early, and queued with the rest of the crowd in the summer heat, and I hesitate to admit I was one of the approximately 2,000 people who thought themselves insanely witty upon remarking that he might play songs from his album "Hotter Than July". My wife is a tolerant woman.

So we get in and find our seats, and with 10 minutes before show time we sit down and await the arrival of Stevie and company. Eventually the cast of characters in our particular section of terrace 3 assembles: most notably, the two loud-mouthed but affable hooligans directly behind us, and the hopelessly drunk big dude a few seats to my left. Hooligan A directly behind me was the Chief of Hooliganery, and he enjoyed himself immensely belting out toneless (but surprisingly accurate, lyrically) renditions of the varied Police and Bob Marley tunes playing over the PA before the main act got started. He deftly defused any potential avenues for us to complain about this (or any other behavior of his) by indignantly exclaiming to no one in particular, "I paid my money, I'm gon' enjoy myself!" Other interesting topics of discussion were the fact that they could only procure two beers per journey to and from the many varied alcohol vendors at the back of the theatre. This was apparently a tremendous handicap to their stated intent of having a good time, but put your hearts at ease; I can assure you that they did indeed have a good time.

Hopelessly Drunk Big Dude was the other character of note, and he and his lady friend were, as you might suspect, full to the backteeth of the right stuff. He had a wonderfully amusing habit of screaming, at inappropriately soft/tender/introspective moments in the concert, either "woooooooooooo!" or "yyyyeaaaaahhhrrgghhh!" or "herrrre we goooooo!", throwing his arms up in the air in elation, and then planting a drunken mouth gesture (one hesitates to call it a kiss, as such) on his lady friend. I think it could be said that he, too, was having a good time.

So we're waiting (YEARRGGHH!) for the concert to begin (HERE WE GO!). And waiting...and I catch myself seconds before actually mentioning CP time. Anyway, the concert finally gets under way at 8:55, almost an hour behind schedule, but at least by this point the sun has started to fade and it is cooling off. Mr. Wonder himself is led out on stage by his daughter (Aisha Morris, who performs as a backup singer with him). Stevie addresses the crowd, and is notably upset regarding the previous day's events. He gathers some steam and starts all but preaching a sermon against the news media and others that criticise and snipe at Michael Jackson. The crowd laps it in, and I think this may be where Hooligan B started his (also wonderfully amusing) habit of screaming at strangely inappropriate times, at the top of his lungs, a woeful "MICHAEL!!!!!". Time to get down to business though...Stevie sets down and starts up a soft, piano based version of "Love's in Need of Love Today". Hooligans A and B had been making guesses on what the opener song would be, and in my mind I had forecasted this very song, but had sadly not voiced this guess to the Hooligans and so I had to content myself with private celebration of this substantial victory. Stevie then segues into a rendition of "Kansas City", with the band I think taken by surprise but professional in their ability to catch back up. Then into a Latin-tinged "Bird of Beauty". The band really took off with the less well known but thoroughly smoking "As If You Read My Mind", which stuck in my head as a possible cover tune for future musical projects. However, all these songs were not exceptionally well known to the crowd, and so when the thumping bass line of "Master Blaster (Jammin')" kicked out next, the crowd erupted and rose to their feet. After that, Stevie mused a bit on his fallen comrade-in-funk (Hooligan B: "MICHAELLLL!"), and invited the crowd to sing the vocals on an instrumental version of "Billie Jean". A joyfully groovy rendition of "Did I Hear You Say You Love Me" jolted the crowd (and I suspect the band leader himself) out of the melancholy mood, and "All I Do" got the crowd excited and into it. Also, the last three songs (outside of the MJ reference) had been indeed from "Hotter Than July", which of course made the aforementioned 2,000 people think themselves now both witty AND clairvoyant.

Things went down a few notches on the intensity scale, and with the band grooving mildly, Stevie started using what appeared to be a talkbox (different from the vocoder which is more common among keyboardists). Not only did he give Peter Frampton a run for his money with his ability to clearly enunciate with the talkbox, he actually launched back into his sermon about Michael's eternal destiny, and the overall naughtiness of folks that criticise him and such like. Frampton just wanted to know if we felt like he did, but Stevie was delivering a full-blown philisophical treatise via talkbox!

Collectively the crowd felt embarrassed as Stevie mentioned a song he wrote for Michael Jackson ("I Can't Help It") that meant a lot to him, and when he asked the crowd to sing the vocals we all just sat around mumbling, without any real clue as to the lyrics. There was a mild fear he was going to get pissed and berate us for our lack of faithfulness to the lyrics of the King of Pop, but thankfully he was gracious in that regard to our ignorance. Then into "Never Can Say Goodbye" by the Jackson 5, which of course elicited not a small amount of mournful exclamations from Hooligan B.

"Higher Ground" brought the funky momentum back to the show, which was followed by Chick Corea's "Spain", which is their usual band showcase tune, including fantastic solos from each member of the band; the excellence of the band cannot be understated, this is every bit as professional a groove outfit as Steely Dan. "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing" followed, and I'm reasonably sure the band played the whole song but I couldn't say that with certainty, in that Hooligans A and B had found their favorite song and were singing (or, something akin to singing) with eardrum-busting intensity. At one point, I believe Hooligan A drunk-dialed his mom of all people to say "Hi Mom! I'm at Stevie Wonder! They're playing our song!" The song finished...and of course, a seemingly random "MICHAEL!!!!" punctuated the silence that followed. Which was actually fitting in that Stevie sitting at the piano started writing an improvised song of sorts, along the same theme of people criticising people, how that's bad, and how someone is with the Father now, et cetera. The mood remained soft for a beautiful performance of "You and I" from Talking Book. Hopeless Drunk Big Dude thought the soft piano ballad was a great time to fling his arms violently in the air and bellow "HEERRRE WE GOOO! WOOOOO!". Then, another one of those well-known-to-the-crowd songs got everyone else on their feet with "Living for the City", followed with his old Motown standard "Signed, Sealed, Delivered". Here Hooligan B tried a variant of his previous formula, shouting (I swear by Almighty God!) "OBAMA!" instead of his usual vocal tic.

At this point Stevie announced he needed a break for some tea, so they played a pop R&B song over the PA. What I found so interesting was Stevie didn't exit the stage for his break. He sat happily at the front of the stage. I suppose since he couldn't see the crowd, it isn't as if he especially needed to be off stage to take a break. After the break Aisha Morris sang a soft jazz sort of song ("I'm Going to Laugh You Out of My Life") with her father, and the band ratcheted things up for the final sprint to the end of the set, first with "Sir Duke", and then with the song I took to be the final song of the set, "Superstition". Halfway through the song, looking around at the absolutely marinated, sodden, drunk-beyond-belief state of our fellow concert-goers, we decided to be fair weather fans and make a break for the exit. As we exited the gates we heard them finish the song and go into "As", a fantastic song, but getting out of the parking lot alive and on time was more than worth missing that tune.

All in all a fantastic show, if it was a bit of a memorial service. I may seem a bit harsh in my discussion of that aspect of it, but I don't really mean it with regard to Stevie Wonder, at least. There is a difference between his grief, having lost a personal friend who (as they both were child prodigies from the Motown label) must have seemed a bit like a kid brother to him, and the celebrity-adoring grief of the average fan, or the crocodile tears of other celebrities that rush their publicists out to make statements of how distraught they are (that they have to take time away from filming their movie which will be out in September! Previews available online!).

I did mention that this would be a "little" review, my apologies for the false advertising.

"MICHAELLL!!!!"

2009-06-20T09:44:00.002-05:00

As of yesterday, we are pet-less...the inimitable Mrs. Reagan has gone on to Valhalla, after a couple years of living with diabetes and then a final expensive (!!!) week of treatment for something or other (heart disease or cancer) that ended when she passed away under a shot of anaesthesia. Still, she had a good run. We took pictures because we thought we might have to put her down yesterday, it turns out she did the job for us! Great cat, possibly part Maine Coon (she was pushing 18 lbs and had a friendly dog-like disposition).

With our 1 year old, who could probably take a bit of credit for stress on the poor animal's heart:

Here she is getting suited up for her voyage to the Halls of Asgard, driven on by the Valkyries, there to reunite with her forbears again in Valhalla, toasting her fellow slain with great mazers of Mjød, awaiting Ragnarök:

In Memory:
Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother,and my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people,
Back to the beginning!
Lo, they do call to me.
They bid me take my place among them,
In the halls of Valhalla!
Where the brave may live
Forever!

2009-06-14T21:01:00.003-05:00

Nathan Watts has earned another fan. I love the very slight bit of warm, fuzzy grit to his tone...not the hi-fi, ultra-modern tones most R&B bassists nowadays go for. But it's that pulsing, incendiary line he grooves on that propels this tune to the point that a 10min running length doesn't feel quite sufficient:

Stevie Wonder - Do I Do

Should be more palatable to those for whom Bootsy presents massive, catastrophic phunk-overload. Get down wit' yo funky selves.

EDIT: BONUS!

2009-06-11T07:19:00.000-05:00

"I have never courted popularity."

2009-05-19T19:49:00.004-05:00

So my wife, for a preemptive and utterly awesome Father's Day gift, suggests tickets, in June, to one of the High Council Groovemasters of the Known World, playing at Starlight Theatre. I've since been checking out a bit more of his albums, and from Talking Book, I've had this in my head walking home from work:

Stevie Wonder - Tuesday Heartbreak

I am fully prepared, mind you, to see a huge banner of our sitting President unfurled to the strains of "Isn't He Lovely". One is generally prepared to accommodate such ridiculosity for the sake of such funkilious groovicitude.

2009-05-01T19:15:00.002-05:00

Of the many musical excesses of the Eighties, this one I find particularly wonderful and amusing. Steve Howe, particularly as he goes into his solo at about the three minute mark, is probably one of the greatest and most creative guitarists to do such cheesy claptrap. But he does it so well. When 99% of other guitarists would do power chords, Howe does arpeggios.

Yes and Asia will share a stage this July in KC. Will have to see it...Howe playing guitar for both. To give you a perspective on the contrast...

2009-04-20T16:23:00.003-05:00

A passage from Doogie Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency:

Well, he's one of those people who can only think when he's talking. When he has ideas, he has to talk them out to whoever will listen. Or, if the people themselves are not available, which is increasingly the case, their answering machines will do just as well. He just phones them up and talks at them. He has one secretary whose sole job is to collect tapes from people he might have phoned, transcribe them, sort them and give him the edited text the next day in a blue folder.

I swear I work with two or three of these types. It's my own fault for being such a blasted good listener.

2009-04-09T08:43:00.003-05:00

Review - Stretchin' Out in Bootsy's Rubber Band

Yes, strap on your funk goggles my friends, I'm doing an unsolicited quick track by track review of the first Bootsy Collins solo album, released in 1976.

1. Stretchin' Out (In a Rubber Band)
A good intro to Mr. Collins' particularly atypical approach to basslines, this was a live classic. Casper is introduced, and the band keeps a nice locked groove.

2. Psychoticbumpschool
Probably my favorite track of the album, this one starts out with some great guitar rhythm licks from Catfish. The first part of the song has a lot of complex turns, and then (after some cheesy introductions) it settles on a groove with a single note, envelope filtered bass line. Live performances amp up this groove quite a bit, but I somewhat enjoy the simplicity of the groove that sits on top of the bass. The Horny Horns here have a great part that carries through to the end of the song.

3. Another Point of View
Highlight of this song is a razor sharp guitar riff. Crisp, taut, and doubled perfectly by the Space Bass.

4. I'd Rather Be With You
One of his most famous songs, with a slow melodic groove. Note the melodica used for the high background melody.

5. Love Vibes
Cheesy as all get out, Mr. Collins puts a female vocalist doing a decent if uninspired lead on a hippie-love soul song. Skippable.

6. Physical Love
Awful lyrics (but, well, they've been awful up to here anyway...lyrical content is not what brings you to P-Funk family albums), but a pretty solid groove.

7. Vanish in Our Sleep
A perfect ending to the album, a slow groove of simple drums, bass, and an interwoven blend of effected guitar melody and rich Rhodes piano. There are some effects employed on this song that remind me of effects used for transitions on Radiohead's OK Computer album. Nothing new under the sun, eh?

2009-04-06T16:21:00.003-05:00

So I guess I need to post lest this blog go completely stale.

Talking with my younger brother yesterday, I recalled a guitar of his that ended up getting stolen, a cheap Telecaster copy, in which I had installed a set of pickups designed by Bill Lawrence (the L-280TN and L-290TL, I believe), and I rather liked that guitar. Humfree with tons of chirpy high-end and clarity. Bill Lawrence is a wizard of pickupology.

And also, he's not the worst guitarist in the world, either.

[Sits around, looks at watch, and waits for EZ Wajcman to comment on the thread accusing me of libel...]

Yes, only recovering guitar gear nerds such as I will follow that...

2009-03-03T08:33:00.000-06:00

Time to turn this mother out...

2009-02-26T07:15:00.001-06:00

Well, not that I didn't expect this, but now, it's official.

2009-02-16T19:40:00.002-06:00

Courtesy Steven Raichlen: Saigon Chicken.

I started with a whole chicken and made up a basic marinade using soy sauce, cooking wine (actually a honey mead I have on tap), Chinese five-spice powder, cinnamon, coriander, garlic, and Asian sesame oil. Marinated overnight, and smoke-roasted on the ol' Weber until in the 170+ range. Here it is, crackling crisp skin and all:

I "pulled" the chicken and chopped up the skin, all mixed together. Below are the ingredients, clockwise from the top: chicken, rice noodles, romaine lettuce leaves, cucumber spears, peanut sauce, grilled green onions, and raw ginger spears. The peanut sauce is around 1/3 cup hoisin sauce, 1/3 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup Thai sweet chile sauce, and a dose of Tabasco habanero sauce and ginger soy sauce to thin the mixture.

Now all put together, a refreshingly healthy way to eat barbeque:

2009-02-11T13:04:00.002-06:00

I noticed something today that indicates what a total rip-off the 14th of February is.

Last week at our local Hy-Vee grocery store, one of the specials was a pound of strawberries for $1.88. Not a bad price, I bought a carton of them.

This morning I received the weekly specials email from Hy-Vee, and looking through it, I noticed a page that had Valentine's Day themed items on sale.

The same exact strawberries.

$6.88 a pound.

And people will buy them!!!

2009-02-02T19:52:00.002-06:00

For those that love "Yazz Flute".

Seriously, that bass tone, when he starts kicking in around 1:30, it's all I can do but avoid saving my pennies for a pair of star-shaped sunglasses and a Space Bass.

2009-01-27T08:12:00.002-06:00

I'm reading a couple books on the Emergies right now. First up was a book that I have not the heart to criticise, at least in a public sphere...my wife has had to hear all about its fallacies at length, and I won't belabour the point to you all. "A New Kind of Christian", by Emergie-in-Chief Brian McLaren. Read it if you must. I still have the final bit at the end to get through, but I'm suffering from an overdose of Postmodern-Hyper-Introspection, I had to put it down.

As an antidote, I am now reading the very humorous and insightful Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be, by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck. I'm only about 60 pages in, but so far they do a good job expressing criticisms that I would have expressed in a much more ham-fisted way, and besides, they are more well read on the Emergie conversation than I.

I also just watched a documentary entitled The Weather Underground. It was a fairly balanced view that gave these domestic terrorists a pretty fair hearing. I find it thoroughly baffling not only that these people are not locked up in jail, but that people like Ayers and Dohrn are actually respected members of the educational establishment, not to mention personal friends of the President and First Lady.

I suppose there is a common thread to this post:

"Hippies! They're everywhere. They wanna save the earth, but all they do is smoke pot and smell bad. I hate hippies! I mean, the way they always talk about "protectin' the earth" and then drive around in cars that get poor gas mileage and wear those stupid bracelets - I hate 'em! I wanna kick 'em in the nuts!" - Eric Cartman

2009-01-16T12:50:00.003-06:00

It's fairly normal for me to go in phases of, well, renaissance, if you will (I sure as spit wouldn't!) as regards music. Right now I'm somewhat back in a Steely Dan phase.

Someone finally uploaded this tune, a song never released because some idiot in the recording studio erased the final version, and the band was either too discouraged or too stoned to attempt it again. It is in low quality, but the playing and writing are great.

Steely Dan - The Second Arrangement

Here's another great one from their most recent album Everything Must Go, a much better album than Two Against Nature. This song was described as a metaphor for addiction...not by me, so don't point those pretense-accusing fingers at me! The weird, distorted keyboard solo at the end is worth price of admission alone.

Steely Dan - Lunch with Gina

2008-12-30T15:37:00.003-06:00

Delving briefly back into the culinary...

First, a nice little invention I made during my highly-productive time off from work. My wife has been getting over a cold/flu/plague, and to get enough vitamins she was drinking juice. We only had grape juice on hand, which was too sweet, and you can't drink enough of it to stay hydrated easily. We tried watering it down...I was told this was gross. Then I somewhat accidentally came across something that tasted like Kool-Aid. Here's what it is:

Ingredients:
1 orange
1 lime (optional)
Cold water
Grape juice

First, take an orange and a peeler and peel off a good bit of the outer zest layer of the rind, maybe 2/3 of the orange, in large pieces. Try not to get a lot of the inner white pith. Put the large pieces of orange zest in a gallon container. Juice the orange; add the strained juice to the aforementioned container. Fill to 1 gallon with cold water. I later discovered doing the same with a lime, as well, enhanced the taste, but the orange is all that is required.

Then let this citrus water sit in the refrigerator for some time...fill a glass 3/4 full with it, and top it off with 1/4 of grape juice. For some reason we both really liked it. A lot less sugar than straight juice, but full of flavor, with no added sugar or flavorings other than natural fruit. If you prefer it sweeter or less sweet, vary the ratio of water to grape juice accordingly.

Also, on Boxing Day I got to use my Christmas gift, a Swiss-made 12" Forschner slicing knife. Got up before dawn to get a full packer brisket on the smoker, 12 pounds of good smoking beef. I used a wet rub marinade on it (all the usual ingredients of a dry rub, paprika, brown sugar, salt, chili powder, cayenne, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, etc., plus a few tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco Habanero sauce) the night before, and here it is before the sun has risen:

After 9 hours in the smoker and 2-3 in a slightly higher temp oven to finish, it was ready. In this picture I've shown only about half of the flat, maybe a quarter of the whole brisket, sliced up in a bowl. The Forschner knife was superb, and with some practice my ability to slice meat thinly is likely to improve. With the food is my first draft homebrew, an Oktoberfest Maerzen.

2008-12-25T18:28:00.002-06:00

This left me in awe. Stick through the first two minutes of weirdness, and there's some fantastic horn breakdowns by Fred and The Horny Horns.

Here's one of the more disturbing Christmas remixes, but still amusing and relevant today.

2008-12-23T11:00:00.002-06:00

For your amusement, a section from Life, the Universe, and Everything. I was particularly reminded of climate change hysteria by the observation of man's insatiable need to interpret everything around him as a sign.

One night, he said, a spaceship appeared in the sky of a planet which had never seen one before. The planet was Dalforsas, the ship was this one. It appeared as a brilliant new star moving silently across the heavens.

Primitive tribesmen who were sitting huddled on the Cold Hillsides looked up from their steaming night-drinks and pointed with trembling fingers, swearing that they had seen a sign, a sign from their gods which meant that they must now arise at last and go and slay the evil Princes of the Plains.

In the high turrets of their palaces, the Princes of the Plains looked up and saw the shining star, and received it unmistakably as a sign from their gods that they must now go and set about the accursed Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides.

And between them, the Dwellers in the Forest looked up into the sky and saw the sigh of the new star, and saw it with fear and apprehension, for though they had never seen anything like it before, they too knew precisely what it foreshadowed, and they bowed their heads in despair.

They knew that when the rains came, it was a sign.

When the rains departed, it was a sign.

When the winds rose, it was a sign.

When the winds fell, it was a sign.

When in the land there was born at midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign.

When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications at all, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that too would often be taken as a sign.

So there was no doubt at all that a new star in the sky was a sign of a particularly spectacular order.

And each new sign signified the same thing — that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides were about to beat the hell out of each other again.

This in itself wouldn't be so bad, except that the Princes of the Plains and the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides always elected to beat the hell out of each other in the Forest, and it was always the Dwellers in the Forest who came off worst in these exchanges, though as far as they could see it never had anything to do with them.

And sometimes, after some of the worst of these outrages, the Dwellers in the Forest would send a messenger to either the leader of the Princes of the Plains or the leader of the Tribesmen of the Cold Hillsides and demand to know the reason for this intolerable behaviour.

And the leader, whichever one it was, would take the messenger aside and explain the Reason to him, slowly and carefully and with great attention to the considerable detail involved.

And the terrible thing was, it was a very good one. It was very clear, very rational, and tough. The messenger would hang his head and feel sad and foolish that he had not realized what a tough and complex place the real world was, and what difficulties and paradoxes had to be embraced if one was to live in it.

"Now do you understand?" the leader would say.

The messenger would nod dumbly.

"And you see these battles have to take place?"

Another dumb nod.

"And why they have to take place in the forest, and why it is in everybody's best interest, the Forest Dwellers included, that they should?"

"Er ..."

"In the long run."

"Er, yes."

And the messenger did understand the Reason, and he returned to his people in the Forest. But as he approached them, as he walked through the Forest and amongst the trees, he found that all he could remember of the Reason was how terribly clear the argument had seemed. What it actually was he couldn't remember at all.

And this, of course, was a great comfort when next the Tribesmen and the Princes came hacking and burning their way through the Forest, killing every Forest Dweller in their way.

2008-12-22T11:52:00.001-06:00

So help me this just amused me. The Longbow Apache is quite a bird. Take note, rule-bending cyclists! Muahahahahahaha!

2008-12-11T10:02:00.003-06:00

I've meant to write a little blog entry about this subject for a while. A week or two ago my wife and I watched the "Expelled" documentary starring Ben Stein. While I started from a very sympathetic viewpoint (I subscribe to the concept of Creation and I have truckloads of cynicism towards the commonly held scientific pronouncements on the origin of species, ie. primordial soup + lightning), by the end of the movie I had the peculiar feeling of fratricide, or friendly fire. As if I was positioned in opposition or conflict to something (the subject of the documentary, the institutional bias against those who question party line on Darwin, is something I've witnessed personally, albeit on small levels), and then someone yells from over my shoulder, "don't worry, I got your back buddy!" And then shoots me in the back. It is better to leave an argument uncontested than to challenge it with dishonest or exaggerated propoganda, thus undermining valid points!

It feels like Focus on the Family hired Michael Moore as a mercenary. As a Christian, it is a somewhat uncomfortable thing when the illogic emanating from one section of my side forces me to take sides with Richard Dawkins and other atheists!

For instance, this review, which I noted was from an atheist blog, is sadly full of valid criticisms.

The filmmakers also plant a very interesting quote from Darwin's "The Descent of Man". However, it is explicitly edited to imply support for the later horrors of eugenics and genocide, which Darwin clearly distances himself from in the immediate context...conveniently edited out. Why do this?! Is Darwinian theory not full enough of holes that it can't be criticised without taking things out of context and misrepresenting them? Evolution is more than just Darwin; the documentary oversimplified the entire question by distilling a huge debate containing multiple schools of evolutionary theory into the seminal work of one man, which has evolved over time by the work of his successors. Again, if we are going to engage the rabid proponents of evolution-as-gospel, let us do so intelligently, calmly, and without sensationalism or misinformation.

I think Dawkins is a bit of a prat, who probably thinks much too highly of his own intellect, and I disagree with him on, well, a great lot of things, but there I was, sitting on his side, agreeing with him, or at least sympathizing with him. Stein's questions were repetitive and typically meaningless. When he was slowly asked if he believes in the Hebrew God, the Trinity, the Hindu gods, Allah, etc., I felt his exasperation at the pointless, rhetorical, stupid questions. Yes, we know he is an atheist! Who doesn't? Do we go to Billy Graham and slowly ask if he believes the words in the Gospel of Matthew? Mark? Luke? John? The Book of Acts? The letter to the Romans? First Corinthians? Second Corinthians? It was a cheap and useless gimmick because his beliefs regarding the existence or inexistence of God mean a bowl of warm spit in regards to the evolution debate. Dawkins is an atheist. Fine! We really do understand what that word means, and most of us know Dawkins is probably the preeminent popular atheist author, with the notable exception of Oolon Colluphid. His personal beliefs in that respect have no clear logical bearing to the scientific merits of evolution. Besides, why would Dawkins' atheism be more important to examine than the religious beliefs of Darwin, the theory's founder? Not that it would be, anyway.

The film gets very, very close to making valid points, but ends up vastly overreaching and shooting itself in the foot, every time. When Dawkins admits the possibility of the "seed theory" but denies "intelligent design" the potential contradiction ought to have been seized upon, not in a "gotcha" way, but in a careful, methodical, and courteous way. Likewise, the influence of evolutionary theory on many of the great blunders of the early 20th century could have been explored in a more logical way, with more actual information, and less touring of prison camps with Ben Stein looking reproachfully morose. Simply saying "Hitler was a Darwinist" and then touring emotionally impactful sites is insufficient, and no argument at all. They could have actually made good and valid points on this, but they glossed over details and went straight for what appears to be only reductio ad hitlerum, nullifying some very good points in that regard.

All of the other criticisms have been put forth much more thoroughly in other places on the web. Some of them I feel are valid, some of them I disagree with, and of course a lot of the reaction to this film is extremely hostile and motivated by partisan evolution-is-infallible rancor (which this film was intended to explore and expose).

To summarize, I think (I hope, I pray) we can do better than this. It has some strong points, not least of which was its effect of getting me to do some more research and reading on evolution and Darwin.

Speaking of Dawkins and Darwinism, this episode of South Park is quite funny. "I'm a MONKEY!"

2008-12-09T18:15:00.005-06:00

I've never had anything personal against Michael Bolton. I've never much liked him, though, and now, tonight, I find out the reason why.

For those that prefer a studio version, here you go.

2008-12-05T08:35:00.002-06:00

GO NAVY!

BEAT ARMY!

2008-11-26T08:42:00.002-06:00

If I had my druthers...

Druther druther druther.

And still this is probably in the upper percentile of worthwhile blog posts in the universe today.

2008-11-21T08:30:00.002-06:00

I've been mercilessly skewered.

But the biggest role that Jazz plays in white culture is in the white fantasy of leisure. All white people believe that they prefer listening to jazz over watching television. This is not true. Every few a months, a white person will put on some Jazz and pour themselves a glass of wine or scotch and tell themselves how nice it is. Then they will get bored and watch television or write emails to other white people about how nice it was to listen to Jazz at home. "Last night, I poured myself a glass of Shiraz and put Charlie Parker on the Bose. It was so relaxing, I wish I had a fireplace."

I considered digging through the backlog of my blog and citing examples of the above, but the exercise would simply be too humiliating. Also:

Along with Jazz, white people have also taken quite a shine to The Blues, an art form that captured the pain of the black experience in America. Then, in the 1960s, a bunch of British bands started to play their own version of the music and white people have been loving it ever since. It makes sense considering that the British were the ones who created The Blues in the 17th Century.

Likewise, all over my blog. Can I help it that Bruce/Clapton/Baker tore it up?

2008-11-11T16:17:00.002-06:00

ALL YOUR ROFLCOPTERS ARE BELONG TO US!

2008-11-07T23:50:00.002-06:00

Over 5 years ago you were informed of the slated release date for "Eustace Lufgren Welcomes You to Funkytown". Fall 2007, Fall 2008, does it really matter? Eustace has delivered.

Eustace Lufgren Welcomes You to Funkytown

1. Gorgonzola

2. Dance of the Glitterati

3. Romani Ite Domum

4. Naught but an Skelington

5. Tears in Eastchester

2008-11-06T22:42:00.002-06:00

Robin Gibb to be the new White House Press Secretary!!!

2008-10-30T08:16:00.002-05:00

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst creative work in the Universe.

The second worst is that of the Azagoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode To A Small Lump of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst creative work of all was an ill-advised Hollywood adaptation of "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" in AD 2005 on the planet Earth, but it has blessedly passed out of all knowledge with the recent demolition of the same planet.
(with apologies to Douglas Adams)

So I went against my better judgment, the imploring pleas of friends, and a general prescient sense of foreboding, and I moved the movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the top of my Netflix queue, and we watched it last night. Or rather, a more than sufficient quantity of it.

My expectations were low; I had watched and actually rather enjoyed the 1981 BBC television adaptation, which had low budget sets and even lower budget acting. Still, in its cheesy awful way I loved it, and Debra (who has not read the books) enjoyed it as well. I figured, might as well try the movie. We expect it to be bad, even worse than these, but it might be at least moderately entertaining.

I can't put into words how unspeakably awful this movie was. Obviously, you observe, I am attempting to do so, but mere words are insufficient and can never fully represent the depth of awfulness attained by Garth Jennings.

I am staring into the blank white void of a Blogger text window and I find it hard to come to grips with it, hard to find where to begin. The conclusion is inescapable. This was in fact the worst movie I have ever seen. It is possible that I have seen worse ones and they are simply unable to rise through my memory banks for recollection, but I have been contemplating this and I cannot think of a worse motion picture. There is a possibility that I will see one in the future that represents a lower nadir of supreme awfulness than even this, but that seems unlikely in that I don't own one of these.

I like Martin Freeman as an actor...I've always been fond of his character Tim from The Office, even if that is the only character he is capable of playing. However, his modern lower-class British was immensely skewed from the Arthur of the book, played to perfection by Simon Jones, and on the whole he was profoundly lame. Much of this wasn't his fault, in that the dialogue was nothing short of raped, but still, he was playing his usual Tim Canterbury character, not Arthur Dent.

Trillian/Tricia McMillan could have been worse. Admittedly she was a better actress than the one who played Trillian in the 1981 series, and was more believably intelligent, which is appropriate, but the horrendous, unnecessary romantic subplot, and the extra non-Adams dialogue...if Zoolander Deschawhatever could have simply played the part from the 1981 series, she would have done fine I think, but the absolutely vomit-inducing "romantic interest" subplot and related dialogue completely ruined her character.

Ford Prefect. Now, don't call me a racist ("racist!!!"); I was thoroughly open to Ford being of whatever race. In fact it could have added to the humor, particularly if Ford had assumed a race very unlikely to have come from Guildford. However, why in the world did they have to get someone who acted like Tracy Morgan's stand-in on 30 Rock? Again, if the man had a proper English accent and had stuck with the lines in the book, he would have done rather well possibly (well, as good as Tracy Morgan would have done). As it stands, he was bloody awful. When he starts referring to "people of Earth" in the first scene it is so out of character, he was henceforth lost to me as a character. That was the moment I knew the game was up, the movie was rubbish.

Zaphod Beeblebrox had a few good lines (most of the good ones taken straight from the book) and was perhaps the least awful adaptation of characters. I never heard him with an American accent, of course (Adams was likely hardly capable of writing dialogue from a non-British perspective), but the character was about right. His failing was outside of his control as an actor...in the awful extraneous dialog handed to him by the bastard writer-rapists, and in the stupid "creative" interpretation of the multiple heads. While the 1981 BBC Zaphod did look terribly awkward and reminiscent of Michael Scott in the Halloween version of NBC's The Office, I still preferred that more literal interpretation, because guess what, that is how EVERYONE that reads the book pictures his two heads. Nobody thinks he's got a hidden chin face.

Marvin was acceptable, and while the actor who voiced him is one of whom I think decently, I preferred the original Marvin voice from the '81 series, again. Also, his physical design looked too much like a playful, cheery Japanese toy robot. Bad design.

I am a huge Stephen Fry fan, but after V for Vendetta I realized that everything he does does not in fact turn to gold, so I can readily admit that I preferred the original narrator. Fry did fine, but his voice was just wrong. Also, the original lo-fi graphics were much better than the cartoon animated graphics in the new Guide, and it seemed to have less comic punch.

Whoever scored the movie either didn't read the books or didn't "get" the books. The playful incidental comic music thrown in throughout the movie was just horrid, and felt like it would be more appropriate in a Julia Roberts romantic comedy. Then, when Good Lord, they tried to make an ExcitingAdventurePlot! the music got even worse. Adams wrote an adventure comedy, that is, a comedy written with a background of a space adventure, whereas these script molesters turned it into a comic adventure, that is, a space adventure with humor sporadically sprinkled throughout it. Not realizing that the plot is the least interesting and worthwhile part of Adams' books. And also gutting and neutering the humor that they did manage to port over from the original.

Yes, the plot was abysmal. Why in the sodding arse did they have to go to Vogsphere? To establish an awful and awkward romantic adventure rescue? What Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh did to Tolkien's work is mild and completely acceptable in comparison to the awful plot liberties executed on this one. I grant, Adams may have had some role in rewriting parts of the plot before his death, and we will probably never know how much of the crap was his, and how much was put in later to make it more sellable to Hollywood. But the wanton abandonment of Adams' dialogue was the worst of it. Like Wodehouse, Adams excels at writing comic dialogue, inestimably more than the screenwriter on this film. Imagine a Wodehouse adaptation with Alan Alda as Jeeves and Ben Stiller as Bertie Wooster. IMAGINE IT!

We stopped it after the Vogsphere scene just as they had gotten to Magrathea. Neither of us could take any more. Debra had fallen asleep through the Viltvodle/Vogsphere section, which was her good luck, but I was transfixed by its awfulness and remained unable to avert my eyes until Debra, bless her, finally insisted that we turn it off.

I suppose I will continue to heal, coping with this, my burden, one day at a time. One day at a time.

2008-10-29T08:48:00.002-05:00

So the last month or so I've been getting fantastic prices on spare ribs, and I've been doing a lot of rib smoking on the weekends. Without further ADO:

Indian tandoori ribs, with a blended marinade of plain yoghurt, jalapenos, cilantro, and fresh ginger root, with added spices of cumin, coriander, mustard seeds (brought back from Zanzibar from Mister D. Gibb) and turmeric. Smoked for 3 hours, foiled for another hour at higher temps, then finished off with a slathering of a prepared tandoori marinade that had a nice mild pepper flavor. Served with jasmine rice (I know, not Indian) flavored with cilantro and ginger and a bit of the original reserved yoghurt marinade, and fresh cucumber.

The Thai ribs (kra duk mu yang) were marinated in a thick paste of cilantro, peanuts, dried chilies, garlic, lime juice and lime zest, and a few other ingredients that escape my memory. Smoked for 4-5 hours, which isn't authentic, but I prefer it, and then finished up with a slathering of the thick sweet Thai chili sauce, Mae Ploy as pictured, and grilled until the sauce was thickened up on the surface. Sprinkled with crushed peanuts, and served with a meatless phad thai with egg, cilantro, and peanuts. Served with fresh lime slices, and Unibroue La Fin du Monde, which seemed to match up nicely.

A couple racks of beef back ribs, dry rubbed with a Texas style rub heavy on chilies and garlic with no added sugar. Finished them up sauced with Gates Extra Hot sauce, which is fittingly not particularly sweet or rich. Served up with pickles, extra sauce, homebrewed hefeweizen, and three sweet potatoes that I smoked along with the ribs until soft, then mashed them up with brown sugar, milk, brown sugar, butter, and more brown sugar.

Pork spare ribs with a Carribean twist...the marinade is a blended green puree of citrus zest, fresh orange juice, scallions, parsley, a habanero, soy, vinegar, oil, allspice, and a mango. After resting overnight in the marinade, I smoked it for about 5 hours, and then basted them with a sweet rum BBQ sauce that used lots of brown sugar, blackstrap rum, orange zest, a bit of soy, some honey. A glass of the blackstrap rum (Cruzan) used with it shown to the side.

Chinese style sweet BBQ ribs...marinated with a thick mixture of hoisin sauce, sugar, soy sauce, rice wine, grated ginger, and garlic. Half of the marinade is reserved as a sauce. Smoked 4 hours, then foiled for tenderness. I cooked down about a cup of reserved marinade into a thick, sticky glaze. I cut the slab into individual ribs, and coated each rib on all sides with the sauce/marinade/glaze, and grilled until a nice candy-like glaze developed. Topped them with scallions and served.

2008-10-16T10:13:00.001-05:00

Some interesting quotes:

"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." -Barack Obama

"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." -Karl Marx

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." -Barack Obama

"Democracy is the road to socialism." -Karl Marx

2008-10-12T18:43:00.002-05:00

So, after much deliberation, I decided that the Pants were simply just too wonderful to keep to myself, and I have published some videos of their last reunion concert on YouTube. In the interest of the fragile egos of Dugald, Nigel, Angus, and Quentin, I have disabled comments and ratings for these videos. In chronological order:

Flashpants - The Immigrant Song, Just What I Needed
Bloody Vikings! Get a load of that costly fog. We had no synth player for the Cars song so we decided to approximate it with out of tune unison falsetto.

Flashpants - Back in Black, With or Without You
A bit of AC/DC jarringly juxtaposed with U2's classic ballad. I whipped out the EBow and delay pedal on that one. Although, a couple minutes into the video, one should note a certain head-banging head pastor of a prominent Midtown church.

Flashpants - Crazy Train
I cannot vouch for the family friendliness of this video, thanks to a certain old friend (and bandmate, incidentally) of mine who felt the need to demonstrate his stripper pants with altogether too much ease and finesse.

Flashpants - Panama, You Really Got Me
Van Halen, with a healthy dose of Pants flavour.

2008-10-08T08:52:00.002-05:00

So there's this guy on a Japanese-style motorcycle that goes screaming up our street, at thoroughly unsafe speeds and surprisingly high decibel levels, at times like 6AM and 10PM. To give some perspective, our neighbors ride loud, rumbley Harleys and that has never bothered us...this guy is getting his RPMs up so high it sounds like a jet has just flown by over the house.

So, with that in mind, do you remember that classic scene in "The Great Escape" where Steve McQueen steals a motorcycle?

Remember how he got the motorcycle in question? A long thin wire?

Well, maybe that's not the way a Good Citizen would handle this, but hey, it was an idea...

2008-10-05T15:16:00.004-05:00

Range Report!

So we got back from visiting Debra's parents and spending a few nights down in Stover, Missouri. The weather was great, as we managed to visit during the brief fortnight of not-hot-but-also-not-cold weather Missouri enjoys in the autumn. Didn't do much except spend time with family, cook some food, and of course, perforate some paper. Here's the cabin we stayed at, my father-in-law built this one as a guest house on newly acquired property fairly recently:

I think he did a bangup job. Here's the kitchen:

So, I promised a range report, so we'll get on with that. Debra's dad had a few targets we set up on his informal range and unfortunately I didn't have the camera handy until later. Here is what remained of the target after putting the handguns through their paces. Some of those shots out to the sides aren't wildly off aim; we were trying to sight in on areas off the main target.

On to the individual firearms in question. First the Tanfoglio Witness Compact in 10mm Auto:

The Witness, back from the factory, did decently but had a number of easily resolved failures to feed. I think further shooting will help break it in in this regard, and I used a bit of grease on the rails and feed ramp when I cleaned and reassembled it. Nothing that couldn't be quickly rectified with a "sling shot" of the slide, though. The trigger pull is nice in single action, but the gun is still shooting low. The adjustable sight that was installed by the factory when it was in for service came loose, no doubt from the substantive recoil produced by the full-power 10mm loads I fed it. Still, the gun is ergonomically designed and has enough weight that the recoil is not uncomfortable. I'll have to contact the importer about the issue with the sight coming loose.

Next up, the Kel-Tec PF-9, in 9mm Parabellum.

The PF-9 ran quite well, chewing through 50 or so rounds. No ejection/extraction issues, indicating that the new extractor and extractor spring that I installed are doing the job. This is a light weight gun, barely clearing 12 ounces unloaded, and the +P ammunition, well, you feel it, like lighting off a firecracker in your hand. Even standard pressure 9mm, the majority of what I fed the gun, is somewhat sharp into the webbing of your hand. Still, it did well.

Next, the Bersa Thunder in .380 ACP:

As always this is an enormously fun gun to shoot. Great ergonomics for a small gun, reliable (at least now, after being broken in), and low recoil, with nice sights and a great trigger. Outside of my Ruger MkII, which I didn't bother to uncase to shoot this time, I shoot most accurately with this out of all my pistols. This by the way being officially Debra's gun, but hey, she lets me tinker with it.

Lastly, the mousegun, a Kel-Tec P-3AT in .380 ACP:

The micro Kel-Tec is not designed for ergonomics or for comfortable range duty...its sole purpose is to cram as much .380 ACP into as small and light a package as possible. I shared a bit over a box of .380 between this and the Bersa, and while the Bersa was easier to shoot, this one didn't jam and put lead on target. The miles-long trigger pull and non-existant sights take getting used to, but it is actually capable of decent accuracy despite its diminutive size.

So you guys are of course saying, "all very nice, but bring on the long guns!". I know my blog-audience like the intricate workings of a Kalashnikov action (meaning, I look at them somewhat mystified, spray them with a bit of CLR cleaner/lubricant, and hope for the best). Here are two lovely long arms that my father-in-law lent me to dirty up with some cheap Wolf ammunition:

On top is his Winchester 1300 Defender, a nice 18" pump 12-gauge. I ran a half box of target shells through this, simply because I've not used anything but autoloaders before and wanted to practice with a pump gun. Me likey!

Below that is a US M1 Carbine. More on that beauty later!

So let's crack out the Saiga 12!

This is one of my favorites, converted with US-made internal parts to comply with the ATF's 922(r) regulations to allow the use of my US-made 10-shell stick magazine.

I decided to check the pattern at (I think) somewhere around 10 yards, with a full magazine of 9-pellet 00 buckshot:

It was a serviceable pattern with some flyers over to the left near the outside of the 7 ring. It should be noted that the large holes in the paper up at the top and down at the bottom are not lead pellets but from the felt wad that flies out of the barrel with the shot. It flies at enough speed that even felt has no problem slicing through paper, at least.

Getting back to that carbine...

After putting around 75 shells through both shotguns, my shoulder was starting to dread the recoil from another rifle. But hey, I really wanted to shoot that carbine. I loaded it up with a 15-round mag and fired some rounds off from about 25 yards. Surprise! No recoil. Nothing like a full size, full power rifle round like .30-06, 7.92mmx57, 7.62mmx54R, .303 British, etc.

I didn't have a good rest, so the grouping wasn't great, but it was informal, anyway.

I was aiming for the line right above "7", and the holes above are buckshot leftovers, but the group from the carbine is to the right...the sight adjustment would have been simple and easy with the adjustable aperture on the carbine, but I left that for another day when I had more ammo to run through the gun.

Last but not least, the inevitable and long, drawn out process of post-shooting cleaning. Rather nice to be able to do that in perfect 70 degree weather on a screened-in porch outside, it prevents the permeating smell of Hoppe's No. 9 Solvent from filling the living quarters.

2008-09-23T15:53:00.003-05:00

In Memoriam

The qxcrhf family of files (qxcrhf.dll, qxcrhf32.dll, and the qxcrhf registry entries) appear to have been a unique creation of a common viral infection on a client's computer.

After hour after fruitless hour of battle, using every tool at my disposal, I finally found the chink in its armor. And no, that is not a racial slur. Shame on you for such thoughts!

Anyway, FileASSASSIN gets my heartfelt endorsement!

Goodbye qxcrhf, you will not be missed. May you rot in the infernal regions with all of the other random character strings created by various forms of malware. I wish I could say what trojan this was exactly, but there were at least three separate ones infecting this computer and I have a feeling that qxcrhf was a different one.

2008-09-13T18:47:00.002-05:00

So we finally, after a year, got a pair of cheapo disposable cameras developed from our vacation last year to California. I've also taken the liberty of reorganizing our "road trip log" into a much more readable order in a single post, which you can read here.

So this is day one at the air museum in Liberal, Kansas. Lots of 50s, 60s era early jets, although there was a rustbucket F-14 falling to pieces out there too!

Nothing like seeing one's wife behind the controls of a AH-1 Cobra to quicken the pulse...

Believe this is New Mexico.

If I recall, this was taken after passing into Arizona.

The first In'N'Out that we found. Not in California, but tasty nonetheless.

From the cockpit of the Neufmobile, traversing AZ.

Same...

Here's Debra on the ship used for the movie "Master and Commander" in San Diego. Upon these very same decks walked the inimitable Russell Crowe, of "Makin Movies, Makin Songs, and Foightin Round the World!" fame!

So comrade, what exactly happens when I turn this crank next to the rear torpedo tub[FWOOSH]...oops I hope that didn't just do something ba[BOOOOOM]...hmmm wasn't the USS Enterprise parked behind this submarine? Maybe we should get going.

Yet another reason the submarine service would have been a bad idea for me.

Saying g'bye to our diesel commie sub friend.

...gestures pointedly at a bird in San Diego.

...gestures pointedly at a seemingly invisible bird in Solvang.

Amidst all the Danish/Disney cuteness of Solvang there is a Subway. What has to be the fanciest, most dressed up Subway in existence.

...smiles knowingly...a flock of birds on the central coast.

The pier at San Simeon, which is a nice walk out over the ocean.
...and a bird.

...gestures pointedly at a group of birds in San Simeon.

The water is quite beautiful there. This is at the base of the hill/mountain upon which Hearst Castle is built.

...gestures pointedly at a bird of a different color.

With charcoal hauled in our car all the way from Missouri, we're going to grill at the beach, gosh darn it. No matter how cruddy and unappetizing the grill looks.

This was a LARGE steak. A bit thicker than we usually like, the center was borderline cool and surprisingly bland. But the scenery was nice.

...gestures pointedly at a mooching bird.

Next day at the beach. Bird.

...gestures pointedly at a bird that got a bit too full of himself and was asking for a lesson in manners.

Debra climbing on the rocks at San Simeon...tide coming I think...

...yep, this is her making a swift egress after coming close to getting drenched.

The traditional "we're too cheap to hire a photographer and too standoffish to bother one of the old rich hippies that come here to paint seascapes to take it" picture.

This is the Californian housefly. Seriously, precious few insects, but tons of lizards. I would take the lizards.

Giant ants...or oil rigs? I defy anyone to tell me, for certain.

In the valley at Zion Nat'l Park in Utah. A crappy disposable camera cannot come close to capturing the beauty of this place.

On the Emerald Pools trail.

The sheer face of the canyon.

The lovely and gracious Mrs. Neufeld posing with what mentally negligible hippies left...stacks of rocks. Someone started it and everyone apparently decided they should do it too, for some reason. Maybe if I left a McDonalds styrofoam coffee cup on top of a rock, I could come back a year later and see a 10 foot high pile of styrofoam coffee cups.

This was from the medium or the upper pools, not certain which. Tellingly there is a faded inscription in the lower left, saying "DANGER BEYOND THIS POINT". Apparently to some people this is not an obvious thing. But if someone is either blind enough or stupid enough to not notice the sheer dropoff of the cliff and associate that with danger, do we expect them to actually read and comprehend the little plaque that warns of "DANGER BEYOND THIS POINT"?

Absolutely beautiful there.

Back at the hotel, this is what we could see from our balcony. There was a friendly llama that amused us for a while.

Went out and took some closeups. Nice animal.

2008-09-10T13:37:00.002-05:00

Camille Paglia, a shall-we-say controversial form of a feminist liberal author and columnist (a quote from whom has been gracing the upper right corner of my blog since its inception over four years ago), is the sort of thinker I greatly respect.

Her views on a number of political and moral issues are often nearly polarized from mine, but over the past few years I've been reading her columns and I have to admire the open-mindedness she exhibits. Her article from today is interesting, and makes a jarring contrast to the "party line":

Article Link

It would be simple-minded of me to only celebrate the "mavericks" that rebel from an opposing side...calling Lieberman a hero and, well, the whole great lot of RINOs traitors, or what-have-you. I certainly have my qualms with a great deal of what parades under the banner of conservatism, particularly "social conservatism", which is often at great odds with liberty and my generally libertarian philosophy, and most definitely "compassionate conservatism" which in the past eight years we have come to understand is nothing more than a mild escalation into Western socialism with a GOP-branded cover. In fact it is my libertarian tendencies at which I find the most common ground with Paglia, with the distinct difference what sort of libertarianism we prefer; Paglia seems wedded to social/moral libertarianism, which I accede to in most instances but do not as keenly embrace, and I lean more heavily towards economic libertarianism. But still, almost every article she writes, if she can pull herself away from her mindnumbingly-dull pet topics of feminist art, Madonna, and Daniella Mercury, I am quite impressed by her honesty and clarity of critical thought. Put it this way...I want to be as clear of a thinker in support of my ideological beliefs as she is of hers. The sort of "enemy" (and I use that term with a comic glint in the eye, I have no malice towards those whose beliefs differ from mine) that one admires and respects.

Again, on many issues I disagree heartily with her, but her respectfulness of the other positions (even having kind words for that bogeyman of the Left, Rush Limbaugh!) and her insightful criticism divorced from emotion and dogma make her the sort of liberal from which our country benefits. Likewise for conservative thinkers; give me William F. Buckley Jr. over, say, Sean Hannity or Ann Coulter, any day.

2008-09-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

OK, here's some pics from dinner tonight...essentially a variation on the Philly cheesesteak.

Here are the ingredients prepped before I got the grill fired up. Two medium-quality steaks (nothing too fancy) slathered in extra virgin olive oil and then coated with coarse salt and cracked pepper, with a few other spices thrown in. One big red bell pepper, and 2 "Hatch" green chilies. The Hatch chilies, as I understand, are from a particular town in New Mexico, and while they come in many heat levels, I can tell you after the fact that these were mild ones, but very delicious. Also a yellow sweet onion, sliced into slabs, and then secured with two water-soaked toothpicks, so they could be easily maneuvered on the grill without falling apart.

Built a hot fire of charcoal and a handful of hickory and apple chunks. Grilled the steaks first, to what I would call medium to medium well (again, not exceptional steaks). Then on went the peppers and onions. I closed the lid several times to let the aromatic smoke seep into the meat and veg a bit, as well as keep the fire under control. I kept the onions mostly in the medium/cool parts of the grill, because I wanted to blister/burn the pepper skin, but just wanted to cook and caramelize the onions.

Here's everything back inside. As you see, I also grilled up a half dozen fresh peach halves...we needed to eat them before they started to go bad, and there was the fire, so it seemed like a worthy experiment. They were fantastic and were gone before I could even get everything ready for the sandwiches. Kind of like a very natural sort of fresh peach pie.

I peeled the burnt skins off the peppers, diced them up with the onions, and then thinly sliced the two steaks. All went into a skillet which I briefly cranked up over some heat again, to reheat everything and meld the flavors a bit.

Here it is assembled, with a mild provolone cheese on top. Good stuff. Served with a homebrewed blackcurrant cider.

2008-09-02T19:59:00.004-05:00

I give you...

M A S H F E I N E

Licht von der Welt

This first photo is a study in the tragic unpredictability of modern thought; sheer volatility expressed in a hot beverage and root vegetable medium. The coffee, representing (among at least a dozen other things) the universal theme of flawed nature entering into a higher state, burst forth from the encompassing bounds of potato in a vivid expression of new thought that I leave only for your own private interpretation.

But we are not done; art is never destroyed, it is merely reborn. Behold MASHFEINE:

Viewing from another angle highlights our need as a society to approach multi-faceted social problems from multiple angles. Words fail me! Such things should not be narrated, excuse me, simply look on and wonder...perhaps dream, as I have?

Lastly, the inevitable decay. Ashes to ashes, sculpture to mush on a plate.

Meanwhile, outside the rain was pounding down, with the sun shining through our tree's foliage. Watching the September rain beat down on the street illuminated by sunlight was rather interesting.

2008-09-02T08:44:00.002-05:00

My wife was chiding me for my recent lack of blog-output. Unfortunately today's post will be doubly boring for her...not just about beer, but about the beer industry in particular.

Anheuser Busch is brewing a new offering called "Budweiser American Ale". It is being marketed like many of their spinoff attempts to crack into the craft brew arena (all of which have failed miserably), but with a few extra twists. First of all, it is the first to carry the Budweiser label. Secondly, they are wisely marketing this as the "American Ale", brewed with ingredients grown only in America, a wise counterpoint to the popular perception that their acquisition by Belguim's Inbev has stripped them of their All-American nature. Early samplings posted on the internet seem to indicate it is a decent amber ale, perhaps a bit mild for some tastes but by no means bad.

Where AB could really hit this out of the park, is in changing their objectives with this beer. Instead of targeting the craft beer industry, which never fails to spank them soundly and send them running back to St Louis with their tails between their legs, they should target a new market, somewhere between craft beer aficionados and Bud Light drinkers. By pricing this "American Ale" somewhere around the same as Budweiser's lager, and packaging it in the cheaper and generally-better-for-beer method of cans, they would have a unique product that really could compete with the craft beer market. An inexpensive session ale bridging the gap between light lager down-the-gullet beers, and expensively packaged high-overhead craft beer. Craft beer types would still potentially buy it because it is a cheap, but tasty alternative to the 6-7 dollar sixpacks of craft beer, and Bud Light drinkers would try it too, because it tastes generally mild and is packaged in a familiar way with a familiar brand.

ABInbev can contact me with an email for address information on where to ship my check for this freelance consulting.

2008-08-15T09:59:00.002-05:00

God (and His servants, the writers of the Microsoft Dynamics GP accounting/MRP system) has been particularly gracious to me today.

El Presidente here and the accounting department have been struggling with our MRP system's Sales Forecasting module, because it would import the previous year's sales history properly, but there was no way to copy that data into the next year's forecast as a default value. It was then put to me to figure out a way to do so. I found the following tables to be relevant to the MRP Sales Forecasting module:

dbo.SC020030
dbo.SC020130
dbo.SC020230
dbo.SC020330
dbo.SC020430
dbo.SC020530
dbo.SC020630
dbo.SC020730

That's a good start, and I noted that ...230 contained the forecast data, while ...630 contained line item sales history, albeit not summarized per each configured date period in the forecast. I was getting ready to wade into an enormously complex SQL script drawing from several of these tables that would compute the sales history for each period and write it over to the ...230 table, but then I looked at the ...230 table again and saw that it had a field QTYTORDR. Oh sweet heavens, do my eyes deceive me...no, it was indeed the sales history quantity for each period, summed up and ready to go!

One quick SQL statement later:

UPDATE SC020230
SET QTYTOFORECOST_I = QTYTORDR
WHERE PLANNAME_I = '[plan name to be updated]'

...and problem solved. I celebrated with my third cup of coffee.

2008-08-08T09:49:00.002-05:00

Drudge has a link to a story regarding Hillary's continued shenanigans that he titled on his page "WHAT'S SHE UP TO?". Every time I've seen it I immediately think of Stephen Fry in "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", during the Peter and John sketches, particularly his dealings with the off-screen Marjorie, wondering "WHAT IS SHE AFTER?" for example.

It makes me think of Obama and his advisors...wouldn't it be great if his inner camp used "Marjorie" as a code word for Senator Clinton? Something sort of like this:

B: Dammit Michelle.
M: Barry?
B: Dammit four times round the car park and back in for another dammit.
M: Do I get the feeling that something's on your mind, Barry?
B: Come on, Michelle, you know what the hell I'm talking about.
M: At a guess I'd say that this had something to do with the DNC Enterprises takeover bid?
B: You know it's funny, Michelle. Four years. Four hard years I've put into building up this campaign. And now I'm supposed to stand by and let a bunch of wet-arsed college kids take it all away from me.
M: I know, Barry.
B: If only Hillary hadn't left us the way she did...
M: Hillary? Hell Barry, you can't go blaming yourself for that. You and Hillary had...
B: Had what, Michelle? A post-primary truce that was nothing more than a bad joke, and not even a very good one?
M: You made some mistakes, Barry, that's all. You and Hillary had different ideas about where the party was headed. End of story.
B: But dammit, Hillary was good, Michelle.
M: As an opponent, or as a vice president?
B: Is there a difference, Michelle?
M: I hope so, Barry.
B: And now, while we're up to our arses in a major takeover scrap, she's sunning herself in the South of France.
M: South of Wales actually, Barry.
B: Well, wherever the blue-rinsed hell she is. Oh what a damned fool I've been.
M: Barry, listen to me, this is no time for you to start feeling sorry for yourself.
B: But dammit every which way but one, Michelle...
M: Barry. Do something for me. Take a look out of this window.
B: What is this, Michelle? Some sort of game?
M: No game, Barry. Look out there and tell me what you see.
B: I see a parking lot.
M: Well that's funny, Barry. Because the last time you looked out of that window, you saw an idea. Don't you remember?
B: Yes. I remember.
M: I thought so.
B: I remember thinking that that would be the best place for the parking lot.
M: Dammit Barry, I'm talking about the big idea. The dream that you and I shared. The dream of an administration that would put South Chicago on the goddamned map once and for all.
B: Yeah, well maybe...
M: Maybe? Maybe? I don't believe I'm hearing this. What the hell's happened to the old Barry?
B: Michelle I...
M: Don't Michelle I me! We've got that close. And you're going to lie down and just walk away?
B: Michelle, don't harassle me. I'm tired.
M: Tired be damned!
B: A man's got to know when he's licked, Michelle. And I know the feeling. I've been licked before.
M: The Lord's Saints preserve us.
B: Did I ever tell you about the time Hillary licked me? Licked me good and proper? Well I've got the same feeling now, Michelle, and it's sore. Maybe it's time to move on.
M: Barry. I'm going to tell you what I see out of this window.
B: Is this another of your games, Michelle?
M: Same game, Barry. Different rules. (Looking out) I see Tom and Sally and Debbie...
B: I thought Sally was off with the flu...
M: Exactly, Barry! Exactly! But she's come in today because she believes in you! God knows why! She believes in what you're trying to do here in Washington. And you're going to just turn your back on those kids? You're going to walk away from...dammit, I make no apology, a vision?
B: Dammit Michelle, maybe you're right.
M: You're damn right maybe I'm right.
B: Damn, double damn, and an extra pint of damn for the weekend.
M: Daaaaamn!
B: Right, Michelle.
M: Damn?
B: Get a fax over to Rezko. Extraordinary General Meeting, 3.00p.m. today. Call Howard Dean, and see if we can pull Pelosi in from...where the hell is Pelosi?
M: Havana.
B: And get Reid in here. We've got an agenda to work up.
M: Welcome back to the fight, Barry. Sorry if I was a little rough on you back there.
B: Hell, Michelle, I deserved it. I was acting like a damned amateur.
M: And if Hillary calls...?
B: If Hillary calls...(Pause) Tell her I'm busy.
M: DAAAAAAMN!

2008-08-07T16:18:00.002-05:00

The World Wide Interweb is a wonderful thing.

For the past year or so I have been somewhat annoyed that my local grocery store charges through the veritable nose for either loin back ribs or St. Louis cut ribs. But I never really liked the untrimmed, but much cheaper spare ribs. Spare ribs run almost half the price by weight.

But a Google search and a quick skimming later, and now I understand how to properly trim spare ribs into St. Louis cut ribs, reserving the skirt and brisket for other things (probably meat to add to beans or other dishes).

This probably means nothing to anyone, but it is rather nice to know I don't really need to pay for the ridiculously overpriced loin back ribs when I feel the need for BBQ.

2008-08-05T21:05:00.003-05:00

For those of you who may think I have a short attention span...

Proposed setlist:

Chic - Sea Lions (Good Times)

Bee Gees - You're a Chimpanzee (You Should be Dancing)

Bee Gees - With a Squirrel Monkay (Nights on Broadway)

Bee Gees - Wallaby (Tragedy)

Luther Ingram - If Loving You is Binturong (I Don't Want to Be Binturight)

David Bowie - Crane (Fame)

Stevie Wonder - All I Do (is feed the cockatoo)

2008-08-04T10:27:00.002-05:00

So I smoked the apple ribs yesterday, they came out pretty well!

First on Saturday, I prepped the spice mix, using cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Reserved a bit less than 1 tablespoon of it, for use with the glaze. I found a jar that had just a bit of apple sauce left in it, and used that (maybe 1/4 or 1/3 cup) to mix up the spices, with an unmeasured handful of brown sugar for sweetness. I stirred it up into a thick brown spice paste. The allspice and the paste consistency reminded me of jerk seasoning:

Then after removing the membrane, rinsing, and drying the ribs, I rubbed the paste on. I wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and stuck it back in the fridge.

Here it is on the Weber/Smokenator, using hickory for smoke. Forgot to get apple wood at the store, but I wouldn't probably notice the difference anyway. I also had a tin of beans mixed with some leftover brisket burnt ends, diced up.

After three and a half hours I pulled it off and wrapped it in heavy foil. As you can see they are getting pretty close to done, even at this stage. Simply because I didn't want to keep feeding charcoal to my Weber in the blazing heat, I cheated and set the oven at 250 degrees. Does the job! I also poured on a few ounces of my fermented apple cider to steam it nicely.

After an hour and a half, I started cooking down the can of apple juice concentrate. I added in the remaining reserved spices, and got it cooking pretty good. Here it is about half way through, but I think I overdid it, and turned it essentially into caramel. When it was done it was a dark brown thick caramel sludge, with the apple flavor a bit muted by the caramelisation process. Still, caramel ribs are tasty...

So after it had steamed in foil for almost 2 hours, I pulled the ribs out, and they were, at least by Steven Raichlen's standards, a bit TOO done, and were definitely falling off the bone. I brushed on the thick apple glaze and stuck them back in the oven, really for only about 5-10 minutes or so. I took them out, cut them up, and drizzled the remaining apple glaze on top. Served with the smoked BBQ beans and a glass of the aforementioned cider. Reminded me of the sweet glazed pork ribs you sometimes get at chain restaurants, except the pork isn't bland, it is smoky and flavorful.

To change next time:

Perhaps use a little more apple sauce, or perhaps apple butter, for a thicker coating of the spice marinade.
Lessen the length of time in foil, so the ribs at least stay on the bone.
Boil the glaze for less time, to decrease the caramel flavor and leave more apple flavor in.

2008-07-31T14:49:00.003-05:00

Slightly odd recipe idea that I may try this weekend:

Apple Pie Glazed Ribs

Pork and apple is one of God's most blessed unions, like beer and pizza, and Bon Jovi and vomit bags. With that in mind comes this experimental recipe, creating a singularly sweet barbeque food that fuses smoked back ribs with the spice and sweetness of apple pie.

First, start by making a small spice blend:

1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 Tbsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves

This should yield a bit over 2 Tbsp. Mix 1 Tbsp of this spice mix into, I don't know, maybe a 1/4 cup of brown sugar; not too much sugar, just enough to stretch the spice rub across the rack of ribs. Reserve the remaining Tbsp, and rub the sugar/spice rub all across 1 rack of loin back ribs, with the membrane removed.

The next part is traditional; smoke the rack of ribs over apple wood for several hours, then wrap in foil for another hour or two...possibly with a bit of apple cider added to the foil. This varies with different people and different equipment, but the general basic steps are there, cook it low and slow until done, with lots of woodsmoke.

Meanwhile, take a 12oz frozen can of apple juice concentrate, and start heating it up in a sauce pan. Add in the Tbsp of reserved spices, and cook this down until very, very thick, and starting to caramelize a bit.

When the ribs are done, baste the spiced apple "syrup" on liberally and cook over heat until the ribs are more sticky than wet, adding more if necessary. Because the syrup is already been cooked down to basically just apple flavor and sugar, it should form a candy-like crust, but care should be taken not to burn it, as it will burn quickly with all of that sugar. As soon as it is done serve it up, with a bit more of the glaze on the side if you like.

So that's dessert...no main course required! I will advise if it turns out to be worth the effort.

2008-07-31T13:18:00.003-05:00

Yes, I did end up having it made. Behold it in all its glory, surrounded by all the junk that inhabits my desk space on a regular basis:

2008-07-31T09:21:00.003-05:00

Time for some music from Moughton!

Yes, it's time for British rock bands doing songs from female Motown groups.

First the original:

The Marvellettes - Please Mister Postman

Then the classic remake:

The Beatles - Please Mister Postman

Another original:

Martha and the Vandellas - Heat Wave

And a smoking live cover rendition:

The Who - Heat Wave

I do have to say, the Who was one of the profoundly ugly bands of the British Invasion. I mean, they look like they could win contests for homeliness. But then, most of my favourite bands are somewhat along those lines. I suppose they have to work harder musically. The band Yes certainly won't win any awards along those lines, although Rick Wakeman could probably have been in a shampoo commercial with his long straight blonde hair. Actually, that would have been funny...start with the classic shampoo advertising cliche of cascading long hair falling in slow motion, then pan around to Wakeman's stubbly bearded face. Might not sell product, though. There goes my brilliant marketing idea of the week.

Another good example of the above would be "Ain't Too Proud to Beg", by the Temptations and later the Stones.

To round up this random music-focused blog entry, I rediscovered an old band of my teen years this week, listening to a CD driving to-and-from the hospital, containing both Weezer's eponymous debut album and their second release, Pinkerton. I never cared much for their later stuff, but the first two albums were good stuff...basic garage band rock, with a simple appeal. They are sort of the AC/DC of my generation, a band that churns out simple yet appealing guitar rock, and basically releases the same album every few years. Nothing complex, nothing masterful, but solid. As a beginning guitarist in the mid-90s they were a heavy influence, although now I have a hard time moving back to that model of guitar playing.

2008-07-28T12:41:00.002-05:00

Following The Percussed Pensioner's lead, I am posting a segment of one of my favorite authors. This would be the first chapter of P.G. Wodehouse's Right Ho, Jeeves. It exemplifies the way that Wodehouse uses narration for comic effect. And no worries, its reproduction here in such large measure is not a problem, as the book is old enough for there to be no copyright on it any more, and it is all freely available at Project Gutenberg.

"Jeeves," I said, "may I speak frankly?"

"Certainly, sir."

"What I have to say may wound you."

"Not at all, sir."

"Well, then——"

No—wait. Hold the line a minute. I've gone off the rails.

I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere, as they call it, and all that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you.

Get off the mark, on the other hand, like a scalded cat, and your public is at a loss. It simply raises its eyebrows, and can't make out what you're talking about.

And in opening my report of the complex case of Gussie Fink-Nottle, Madeline Bassett, my Cousin Angela, my Aunt Dahlia, my Uncle Thomas, young Tuppy Glossop and the cook, Anatole, with the above spot of dialogue, I see that I have made the second of these two floaters.

I shall have to hark back a bit. And taking it for all in all and weighing this against that, I suppose the affair may be said to have had its inception, if inception is the word I want, with that visit of mine to Cannes. If I hadn't gone to Cannes, I shouldn't have met the Bassett or bought that white mess jacket, and Angela wouldn't have met her shark, and Aunt Dahlia wouldn't have played baccarat.

Yes, most decidedly, Cannes was the point d'appui.

Right ho, then. Let me marshal my facts.

I went to Cannes—leaving Jeeves behind, he having intimated that he did not wish to miss Ascot—round about the beginning of June. With me travelled my Aunt Dahlia and her daughter Angela. Tuppy Glossop, Angela's betrothed, was to have been of the party, but at the last moment couldn't get away. Uncle Tom, Aunt Dahlia's husband, remained at home, because he can't stick the South of France at any price.

So there you have the layout—Aunt Dahlia, Cousin Angela and self off to Cannes round about the beginning of June.

All pretty clear so far, what?

We stayed at Cannes about two months, and except for the fact that Aunt Dahlia lost her shirt at baccarat and Angela nearly got inhaled by a shark while aquaplaning, a pleasant time was had by all.

On July the twenty-fifth, looking bronzed and fit, I accompanied aunt and child back to London. At seven p.m. on July the twenty-sixth we alighted at Victoria. And at seven-twenty or thereabouts we parted with mutual expressions of esteem—they to shove off in Aunt Dahlia's car to Brinkley Court, her place in Worcestershire, where they were expecting to entertain Tuppy in a day or two; I to go to the flat, drop my luggage, clean up a bit, and put on the soup and fish preparatory to pushing round to the Drones for a bite of dinner.

And it was while I was at the flat, towelling the torso after a much-needed rinse, that Jeeves, as we chatted of this and that—picking up the threads, as it were—suddenly brought the name of Gussie Fink-Nottle into the conversation.

As I recall it, the dialogue ran something as follows:

SELF: Well, Jeeves, here we are, what?

JEEVES: Yes, sir.

SELF: I mean to say, home again.

JEEVES: Precisely, sir.

SELF: Seems ages since I went away.

JEEVES: Yes, sir.

SELF: Have a good time at Ascot?

JEEVES: Most agreeable, sir.

SELF: Win anything?

JEEVES: Quite a satisfactory sum, thank you, sir.

SELF: Good. Well, Jeeves, what news on the Rialto? Anybody been phoning or calling or anything during my abs.?

JEEVES: Mr. Fink-Nottle, sir, has been a frequent caller.

I stared. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that I gaped.

"Mr. Fink-Nottle?"

"Yes, sir."

"You don't mean Mr. Fink-Nottle?"

"Yes, sir."

"But Mr. Fink-Nottle's not in London?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I'm blowed."

And I'll tell you why I was blowed. I found it scarcely possible to give credence to his statement. This Fink-Nottle, you see, was one of those freaks you come across from time to time during life's journey who can't stand London. He lived year in and year out, covered with moss, in a remote village down in Lincolnshire, never coming up even for the Eton and Harrow match. And when I asked him once if he didn't find the time hang a bit heavy on his hands, he said, no, because he had a pond in his garden and studied the habits of newts.

I couldn't imagine what could have brought the chap up to the great city. I would have been prepared to bet that as long as the supply of newts didn't give out, nothing could have shifted him from that village of his.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir."

"You got the name correctly? Fink-Nottle?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, it's the most extraordinary thing. It must be five years since he was in London. He makes no secret of the fact that the place gives him the pip. Until now, he has always stayed glued to the country, completely surrounded by newts."

"Sir?"

"Newts, Jeeves. Mr. Fink-Nottle has a strong newt complex. You must have heard of newts. Those little sort of lizard things that charge about in ponds."

"Oh, yes, sir. The aquatic members of the family Salamandridae which constitute the genus Molge."

"That's right. Well, Gussie has always been a slave to them. He used to keep them at school."

"I believe young gentlemen frequently do, sir."

"He kept them in his study in a kind of glass-tank arrangement, and pretty niffy the whole thing was, I recall. I suppose one ought to have been able to see what the end would be even then, but you know what boys are. Careless, heedless, busy about our own affairs, we scarcely gave this kink in Gussie's character a thought. We may have exchanged an occasional remark about it taking all sorts to make a world, but nothing more. You can guess the sequel. The trouble spread,"

"Indeed, sir?"

"Absolutely, Jeeves. The craving grew upon him. The newts got him. Arrived at man's estate, he retired to the depths of the country and gave his life up to these dumb chums. I suppose he used to tell himself that he could take them or leave them alone, and then found—too late—that he couldn't."

"It is often the way, sir."

"Too true, Jeeves. At any rate, for the last five years he has been living at this place of his down in Lincolnshire, as confirmed a species-shunning hermit as ever put fresh water in the tank every second day and refused to see a soul. That's why I was so amazed when you told me he had suddenly risen to the surface like this. I still can't believe it. I am inclined to think that there must be some mistake, and that this bird who has been calling here is some different variety of Fink-Nottle. The chap I know wears horn-rimmed spectacles and has a face like a fish. How does that check up with your data?"

"The gentleman who came to the flat wore horn-rimmed spectacles, sir."

"And looked like something on a slab?"

"Possibly there was a certain suggestion of the piscine, sir."

"Then it must be Gussie, I suppose. But what on earth can have brought him up to London?"

"I am in a position to explain that, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle confided to me his motive in visiting the metropolis. He came because the young lady is here."

"Young lady?"

"Yes, sir."

"You don't mean he's in love?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I'm dashed. I'm really dashed. I positively am dashed, Jeeves."

And I was too. I mean to say, a joke's a joke, but there are limits.

Then I found my mind turning to another aspect of this rummy affair. Conceding the fact that Gussie Fink-Nottle, against all the ruling of the form book, might have fallen in love, why should he have been haunting my flat like this? No doubt the occasion was one of those when a fellow needs a friend, but I couldn't see what had made him pick on me.

It wasn't as if he and I were in any way bosom. We had seen a lot of each other at one time, of course, but in the last two years I hadn't had so much as a post card from him.

I put all this to Jeeves:

"Odd, his coming to me. Still, if he did, he did. No argument about that. It must have been a nasty jar for the poor perisher when he found I wasn't here."

"No, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle did not call to see you, sir."

"Pull yourself together, Jeeves. You've just told me that this is what he has been doing, and assiduously, at that."

"It was I with whom he was desirous of establishing communication, sir."

"You? But I didn't know you had ever met him."

"I had not had that pleasure until he called here, sir. But it appears that Mr. Sipperley, a fellow student of whom Mr. Fink-Nottle had been at the university, recommended him to place his affairs in my hands."

The mystery had conked. I saw all. As I dare say you know, Jeeves's reputation as a counsellor has long been established among the cognoscenti, and the first move of any of my little circle on discovering themselves in any form of soup is always to roll round and put the thing up to him. And when he's got A out of a bad spot, A puts B on to him. And then, when he has fixed up B, B sends C along. And so on, if you get my drift, and so forth.

That's how these big consulting practices like Jeeves's grow. Old Sippy, I knew, had been deeply impressed by the man's efforts on his behalf at the time when he was trying to get engaged to Elizabeth Moon, so it was not to be wondered at that he should have advised Gussie to apply. Pure routine, you might say.

"Oh, you're acting for him, are you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now I follow. Now I understand. And what is Gussie's trouble?"

"Oddly enough, sir, precisely the same as that of Mr. Sipperley when I was enabled to be of assistance to him. No doubt you recall Mr. Sipperley's predicament, sir. Deeply attached to Miss Moon, he suffered from a rooted diffidence which made it impossible for him to speak."

I nodded.

"I remember. Yes, I recall the Sipperley case. He couldn't bring himself to the scratch. A marked coldness of the feet, was there not? I recollect you saying he was letting—what was it?—letting something do something. Cats entered into it, if I am not mistaken."

"Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would', sir."

"That's right. But how about the cats?"

"Like the poor cat i' the adage, sir."

"Exactly. It beats me how you think up these things. And Gussie, you say, is in the same posish?"

"Yes, sir. Each time he endeavours to formulate a proposal of marriage, his courage fails him."

"And yet, if he wants this female to be his wife, he's got to say so, what? I mean, only civil to mention it."

"Precisely, sir."

I mused.

"Well, I suppose this was inevitable, Jeeves. I wouldn't have thought that this Fink-Nottle would ever have fallen a victim to the divine p, but, if he has, no wonder he finds the going sticky."

"Yes, sir."

"Look at the life he's led."

"Yes, sir."

"I don't suppose he has spoken to a girl for years. What a lesson this is to us, Jeeves, not to shut ourselves up in country houses and stare into glass tanks. You can't be the dominant male if you do that sort of thing. In this life, you can choose between two courses. You can either shut yourself up in a country house and stare into tanks, or you can be a dasher with the sex. You can't do both."

"No, sir."

I mused once more. Gussie and I, as I say, had rather lost touch, but all the same I was exercised about the poor fish, as I am about all my pals, close or distant, who find themselves treading upon Life's banana skins. It seemed to me that he was up against it.

I threw my mind back to the last time I had seen him. About two years ago, it had been. I had looked in at his place while on a motor trip, and he had put me right off my feed by bringing a couple of green things with legs to the luncheon table, crooning over them like a young mother and eventually losing one of them in the salad. That picture, rising before my eyes, didn't give me much confidence in the unfortunate goof's ability to woo and win, I must say. Especially if the girl he had earmarked was one of these tough modern thugs, all lipstick and cool, hard, sardonic eyes, as she probably was.

"Tell me, Jeeves," I said, wishing to know the worst, "what sort of a girl is this girl of Gussie's?"

"I have not met the young lady, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle speaks highly of her attractions."

"Seemed to like her, did he?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did he mention her name? Perhaps I know her."

"She is a Miss Bassett, sir. Miss Madeline Bassett."

"What?"

"Yes, sir."

I was deeply intrigued.

"Egad, Jeeves! Fancy that. It's a small world, isn't it, what?"

"The young lady is an acquaintance of yours, sir?"

"I know her well. Your news has relieved my mind, Jeeves. It makes the whole thing begin to seem far more like a practical working proposition."

"Indeed, sir?"

"Absolutely. I confess that until you supplied this information I was feeling profoundly dubious about poor old Gussie's chances of inducing any spinster of any parish to join him in the saunter down the aisle. You will agree with me that he is not everybody's money."

"There may be something in what you say, sir."

"Cleopatra wouldn't have liked him."

"Possibly not, sir."

"And I doubt if he would go any too well with Tallulah Bankhead."

"No, sir."

"But when you tell me that the object of his affections is Miss Bassett, why, then, Jeeves, hope begins to dawn a bit. He's just the sort of chap a girl like Madeline Bassett might scoop in with relish."

This Bassett, I must explain, had been a fellow visitor of ours at Cannes; and as she and Angela had struck up one of those effervescent friendships which girls do strike up, I had seen quite a bit of her. Indeed, in my moodier moments it sometimes seemed to me that I could not move a step without stubbing my toe on the woman.

And what made it all so painful and distressing was that the more we met, the less did I seem able to find to say to her.

You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents of the brain to cauliflower. It was like that with this Bassett and me; so much so that I have known occasions when for minutes at a stretch Bertram Wooster might have been observed fumbling with the tie, shuffling the feet, and behaving in all other respects in her presence like the complete dumb brick. When, therefore, she took her departure some two weeks before we did, you may readily imagine that, in Bertram's opinion, it was not a day too soon.

It was not her beauty, mark you, that thus numbed me. She was a pretty enough girl in a droopy, blonde, saucer-eyed way, but not the sort of breath-taker that takes the breath.

No, what caused this disintegration in a usually fairly fluent prattler with the sex was her whole mental attitude. I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don't sometimes feel that the stars are God's daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.

As regards the fusing of her soul and mine, therefore, there was nothing doing. But with Gussie, the posish was entirely different. The thing that had stymied me—viz. that this girl was obviously all loaded down with ideals and sentiment and what not—was quite in order as far as he was concerned.

Gussie had always been one of those dreamy, soulful birds—you can't shut yourself up in the country and live only for newts, if you're not—and I could see no reason why, if he could somehow be induced to get the low, burning words off his chest, he and the Bassett shouldn't hit it off like ham and eggs.

"She's just the type for him," I said.

"I am most gratified to hear it, sir."

"And he's just the type for her. In fine, a good thing and one to be pushed along with the utmost energy. Strain every nerve, Jeeves."

"Very good, sir," replied the honest fellow. "I will attend to the matter at once."

Now up to this point, as you will doubtless agree, what you might call a perfect harmony had prevailed. Friendly gossip between employer and employed, and everything as sweet as a nut. But at this juncture, I regret to say, there was an unpleasant switch. The atmosphere suddenly changed, the storm clouds began to gather, and before we knew where we were, the jarring note had come bounding on the scene. I have known this to happen before in the Wooster home.

The first intimation I had that things were about to hot up was a pained and disapproving cough from the neighbourhood of the carpet. For, during the above exchanges, I should explain, while I, having dried the frame, had been dressing in a leisurely manner, donning here a sock, there a shoe, and gradually climbing into the vest, the shirt, the tie, and the knee-length, Jeeves had been down on the lower level, unpacking my effects.

He now rose, holding a white object. And at the sight of it, I realized that another of our domestic crises had arrived, another of those unfortunate clashes of will between two strong men, and that Bertram, unless he remembered his fighting ancestors and stood up for his rights, was about to be put upon.

I don't know if you were at Cannes this summer. If you were, you will recall that anybody with any pretensions to being the life and soul of the party was accustomed to attend binges at the Casino in the ordinary evening-wear trouserings topped to the north by a white mess-jacket with brass buttons. And ever since I had stepped aboard the Blue Train at Cannes station, I had been wondering on and off how mine would go with Jeeves.

In the matter of evening costume, you see, Jeeves is hidebound and reactionary. I had had trouble with him before about soft-bosomed shirts. And while these mess-jackets had, as I say, been all the rage—tout ce qu'il y a de chic—on the Côte d'Azur, I had never concealed it from myself, even when treading the measure at the Palm Beach Casino in the one I had hastened to buy, that there might be something of an upheaval about it on my return.

I prepared to be firm.

"Yes, Jeeves?" I said. And though my voice was suave, a close observer in a position to watch my eyes would have noticed a steely glint. Nobody has a greater respect for Jeeves's intellect than I have, but this disposition of his to dictate to the hand that fed him had got, I felt, to be checked. This mess-jacket was very near to my heart, and I jolly well intended to fight for it with all the vim of grand old Sieur de Wooster at the Battle of Agincourt.

"Yes, Jeeves?" I said. "Something on your mind, Jeeves?"

"I fear that you inadvertently left Cannes in the possession of a coat belonging to some other gentleman, sir."

I switched on the steely a bit more.

"No, Jeeves," I said, in a level tone, "the object under advisement is mine. I bought it out there."

"You wore it, sir?"

"Every night."

"But surely you are not proposing to wear it in England, sir?"

I saw that we had arrived at the nub.

"Yes, Jeeves."

"But, sir——"

"You were saying, Jeeves?"

"It is quite unsuitable, sir."

"I do not agree with you, Jeeves. I anticipate a great popular success for this jacket. It is my intention to spring it on the public tomorrow at Pongo Twistleton's birthday party, where I confidently expect it to be one long scream from start to finish. No argument, Jeeves. No discussion. Whatever fantastic objection you may have taken to it, I wear this jacket."

"Very good, sir."

He went on with his unpacking. I said no more on the subject. I had won the victory, and we Woosters do not triumph over a beaten foe. Presently, having completed my toilet, I bade the man a cheery farewell and in generous mood suggested that, as I was dining out, why didn't he take the evening off and go to some improving picture or something. Sort of olive branch, if you see what I mean.

He didn't seem to think much of it.

"Thank you, sir, I will remain in."

I surveyed him narrowly.

"Is this dudgeon, Jeeves?"

"No, sir, I am obliged to remain on the premises. Mr. Fink-Nottle informed me he would be calling to see me this evening."

"Oh, Gussie's coming, is he? Well, give him my love."

"Very good, sir."

"Yes, sir."

"And a whisky and soda, and so forth."

"Very good, sir."

"Right ho, Jeeves."

I then set off for the Drones.

At the Drones I ran into Pongo Twistleton, and he talked so much about his forthcoming merry-making of his, of which good reports had already reached me through my correspondents, that it was nearing eleven when I got home again.

And scarcely had I opened the door when I heard voices in the sitting-room, and scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found that these proceeded from Jeeves and what appeared at first sight to be the Devil.

A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles.

Continued here...

2008-07-25T11:21:00.002-05:00

Hooray!

Gas prices are falling at last!

What do we have to thank for this?

Why, our hard-working Senators, that fearlessly and selflessly hauled the Fat Cat Evil Windfall Profiteers that head up Big Oil companies onto Capitol Hill, to give them a good tongue-lashing. Yes, their courageous tenacity and willingness to go on camera asking "the hard questions" of these fiscally-obese, greediferous oilmongers was what saved the day!

No doubt, the CEOs of Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, and Conoco all had a change of heart, thanks to the powerful rebukes laid upon them by our politicians. They probably called up their HR department and said, "Put my paycheck on hold for a while. I want the company to use that money to bring prices down, because Dick Durbin wanted to know how I explained our windfall profits, and I couldn't answer him without being overcome with shame."

Thank you Senators!
[slow, sarcastic clap]

2008-07-24T12:22:00.002-05:00

When comedy starts to depend entirely on catchphrases, it's time to hang it up. I've been watching a couple British comedy shows lately on Netflix; Extras does a good job (particularly in the second season) of horribly maligning catchphrase comedy, while Little Britain is arguably the epitome thereof. I wanted to like Little Britain, I really did. It was recommended by a friend with good taste, it's sodding British to the core, and it's a sketch comedy; all good reasons for me to enjoy it. But strip away the catchphrases, and there is nothing but silly costumes. Take the following catchphrases as examples:

"No but yeah but no but yeah but no but..."

"That'd be a right kerfuffle."

"I WANT THAT ONE."

"I DON'T LIKE IT."

"Yesssssssssss!"

"I'm a LADY!"

"Look into my eyes", etc.

"Computer says 'no'."

"Eh-eh-ehhhh."

"Margeret! Margaret!"

And, what apparently was voted the best catchphrase of all time, for some inexplicable reason:

"I'm the only gay in the village."

I doubt any one of those, on their own, are making you all reel over in painful, medically hazardous bouts of laughter. Have them uttered in virtually every single episode of a show, by a pair of predominantly cross-dressed comics, and it becomes a wildly popular thing. Beats me as to why. Ricky Gervais in the second season of Extras did a wonderful job parodying the catchphrase comedy genre, with his show-within-a-show, When the Whistle Blows, with the horribly annoying "Is he havin' a laugh...is he havin' a laugh? He's havin' a laugh!!!".

I'm not averse to catchphrase comedy, or numb to its effects. Some might call the NBC Office classic "That's what she said" an example of catchphrase comedy, and to some extent it is, but as the show progresses, the laughs are not resulting from the catchphrase itself, but from the increasingly strange contexts in which it is used...culminating in its use (alongside "yesh" and "abso-fruitly") in a legal deposition. One could analyse this further than it warrants by saying that Michael's use of "that's what she said" is a biting criticism of catchphrase comedy itself, since Michael, who tries perpetually to be seen as funny by those around him, is depending on a silly catchphrase joke himself. But the show never depends on a catchphrase, as Little Britain does to the extreme. The Office thrives comedically for the opposite reason; the viewer is never quite sure what weirdness is going to come out of the mouths of Dwight or Michael or Andy, and the shock value is there when they say something absurdly inappropriate. If they were reduced to flat characters focused around a catchphrase or two, the show would have become immensely boring halfway into the first season.

I will admit, I like Blackadder. I will be the first to admit it is a bit thick with catchphrases...from the formulaic "the something-est something since somebody somethinged something" bits, as well as "I have a cunning plan". And other shows seem to sometimes use catchphrases in an ironic way. I realize I should be smitten down by the gods for the pretentious phrasing of that last sentence, but take A Bit of Fry and Laurie, for example. The weird, unexplained, recurring vox pops ("I wouldn't suck it!" in season 1, and "Oh Christ I've left the iron on!" in season 2) are more there for a surreal bit of silly weirdness than to cash in on catchphrase humour, and the recurring characters of Peter and John overuse the word "damn" in diverse and strange ways, not because the lines they repeat are particularly funny on their own. They're not even really catchphrases.

Where was I? But there are classics like Oliver Hardy's "Here's Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Me Into". Even there, the comedy of Laurel and Hardy was entirely independent of the appeal of such a catchphrase; the catchphrase existed just to tie a bit of familiarity and continuity between their different movies and shows. They couldn't walk onto a stage, say that line, and that be the crux of their humour. But for the shallow catchphrase-dependent comedies, that is essentially all they do!

Is he havin' a laugh? Is he havin' a laugh?

...He's havin' a laugh!!!

2008-07-22T09:09:00.002-05:00

Going to try to keep the politicking to a minimum today.

Had the tele on last night, and would you believe the fawning the major network news people are doing over Obama's Excellent Adventure? It was non-stop, apparently with every major journalist at ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN getting on planes, boats, hot air balloons, what-have-you, to try and follow His Grace on a trip overseas. I mean, how are they going to get any shots of adulation and worship from the Germans or French, when He is surrounded constantly by an adulating mass of journalists?

It strikes me as borderline offensive. No one cares when Bush, McCain, or even the heretofore unflappable Senator Clinton take trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. McCain went to Iraq eight times before now, I believe, and I'm unsure how many times he's been to Afghanistan.

But take a lawyer/alderman from Chicago, let Him serve for the grand sum of 143 days in the Senate, put Him on the ground for a few hours in Iraq or Afghanistan, and you will soon witness an adoring press corps fawning over His every suggestion, as the voice of Wisdom and Experience. Boggles the mind.

Limbaugh had a comical analogy for the behavior of the news networks; he called them helicopter parents, like Obama is their well beloved son going off to summer camp, with his doting, well-wishing parents hovering just behind, watching his every move and hoping he succeeds.

2008-07-21T10:30:00.002-05:00

The Kansas City Zoo is having a photo contest, of zoo photography taken by visitors in the last year. Well by crikey, I'm going to have to enter a few shots! I narrowed it down to a large handful that I will print out and submit. Anyone care to vote on these, which ones you like, which ones would be better off not submitted?

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2008-07-16T08:50:00.002-05:00

I am reasonably sure the rest of the world has had sufficiently good taste in humor to abstain from making such an apparently not-that-funny joke, but for some reason I find the idea of this so maddeningly funny (I know, beats me as to why, exactly) that I had to have it made, to serve as my coffee drinking vessel at work. The below is a mockup of what the final mug will be:

2008-07-11T13:44:00.002-05:00

I may not be enormously giddy about the prospect of voting for a big-government liberal, but reading this makes me at the least admire his fortitude. Very good reading.

2008-07-10T10:37:00.007-05:00

LONGEST ZOO BLOG EVER!

So last Saturday, we cracked out the stroller and took ~~Master~~ Baby for her first zoo trip. As usual, I make no pretense of having any background in biology, or even the remedial mental skills sufficient to read and remember anything from the signs, so I do not know the scientific or common names of half of these animals. Sue me. We stuck to the Australia exhibit, which is good, since I took far too many pictures as it was.

First up, a monkey. They swapped these guys out for the red pandas, who apparently occupy the outdoor exhibit in winter (assumedly due to their fur).

And beholding the monkey, is yet another little monkey (to say nothing of the shaved ape behind the camera).

The red panda, back indoors.

I call them toucans, you call them hornbills. We can compromise on "funny looking birds".

The binturong was kind enough to raise his head and acknowledge us, his greatest of great fans.

A great lot of kangaroo photos in this blog. Something about the overgrown field, they just looked very photogenic out there!

A pair of kangaroos had been on the opposite side of the pond and decided to move back over with the main group. Here they are on their way, stopping to look back:

One of my favorite shots, the camera managed to catch this one in mid-hop as it galloped/ran/hopped/etc. across the field towards the main group.

A bit fuzzy, but I liked the layout of this shot, with the kangaroo proceeding in towards the group in the background.

A pair of outliers:

Again, looking back at the weird human family:

...and bounding back in to join the group.

Now this was a lucky shot! Loud little bird it was, too.

This fellow reminds me distinctly of my budgerigar, Edmund (later Edwina following a gender confirmation).

The happy seagull family, there as always. Left to right, grousing mother-in-law, combative wife, and hen-pecked husband.

A pic of that earlier noisy bird with headgear in a slightly more modest positioning.

And the profile...

This seagull has rather piercing eyes.

Another weird bird. I'm sounding rather like Karl Pilkington.

One more weird bird.

And lastly a whole collection of weird birds on a stick nest. Weird, innut? [ceasing the Karl Pilkington voice now]

I took a whole bunch of photos of this next kangaroo, who was very sociable and stood right up next to the path.

I'm going to run out of captions.

A moose once bit my sister...

Mind you, moose bites can be pretty nasty...

Last one of this fellow:

Got some of my better pictures of the wallabies this time, which are decidedly NOT social and tend to congregate at the very back of their pen. Note the young one on the left.

Mother and baby here...the baby is quite cute (an old enough marsupial to not look like a cocktail shrimp, thank goodness).

I particularly liked this shot because of the way the trees perfectly wreathed the kangaroo mob.

Closer up from that same angle:

And one more shot before Baby decides to take us home.

On the way out, saying hello to the walking slab of BBQ:

2008-07-09T08:10:00.002-05:00

The Prodigal Yesfan: Coming to Grips with 90125

I'm probably not divulging anything too earth-shattering in acknowledging that I am a consummate fan of the band Yes. I'm nearly a bass disciple of Chris Squire, and have equal admiration for Steve Howe's impeccable guitartistry, if that is a word. Same to be said for Bill Bruford and Rick Wakeman. I have a general affection for the first two albums which were more psychedelic folk-rock than true progressive, but I generally consider the golden age of Yes to span from 1971 with the release of The Yes Album to 1977 with the release of Going for the One. Later albums either fell apart into a messy, half-hearted shambles or dissolved into commercial 80s pop mush.

Thus my general resentment for that album for which Yes is so widely known....90125. It has a crisp, well-produced sound, catchy 4 minute pop tunes, and a wide general appeal. A far cry from anything Yes had done previously. But I've been listening to it more lately. When Chris Squire and Jon Anderson formed the group in the late 60s, they were huge fans of folk music, and started the band with the desired goal of combining great, technical musicianship with excellent harmonies and vocals. In a sense that is what they got back to on 90125. The music is still well written and technically interesting, but with a much greater emphasis on traditional vocal hooks and pop songs. Here is a great example:

Yes - Changes

While few things are quite as laughable as a pushing-middle-age Chris Squire dancing and preening about the stage, finally contented to find that he is a POP STAR!, the musicianship, even live, is very evident in that clip.

And also, continuing on the vein of 90125 apologetics, compare it to the previous two Yes albums. While Going for the One represented one of the high points, with the hugely epic and ethereal "Awaken" closing the album as well as that period of the band's history, the next album, Tormato, had a few standout tracks but generally felt listless, drab, and uncreative. It should be noted that the album still retained the classic Yes lineup: Howe, Anderson, Squire, Wakeman, and White. This lineup recorded Going for the One and Tales from Topographic Oceans, and Relayer, Close to the Edge, and Fragile were all recorded with just one personnel change (Patrick Moraz for Wakeman in Relayer, and Bill Bruford for Alan White in the latter two). But Tormato was uninspired and flat-sounding on the whole. "Release, Release" and "Arriving UFO" had some interesting moments, particularly at the end of the latter song, as the keys continue an ascending pattern of chords, with Squire continuing his interesting pattern of root-fifth-root-fifth in the background, Anderson's "look out!" admonition layered above. "On the Silent Wings of Freedom" is a wonderful song and probably the best on the album, with the scattered, busy intro coming together in a very cool way with Howe's somewhat victorious sounding guitar riff pulls it all together right before the vocals start. But even the sound of Tormato is rough and unvarnished. Wakeman sounds like he's playing a Casio, and it feels like you are listening to an old worn out tape of demo recordings, nothing like the glistening airiness of Going for the One, the sparse alien wildness of Relayer and Tales, or the earthy, warm presence of Fragile and Close to the Edge.

Then things got even worse. Apparently disillusioned by the band's musical faltering along with the fall of prog rock to the musical blights of punk and disco, Anderson and Wakeman left. Things got a bit strange here...Squire, who is the only musician to appear on every Yes album, kept the group going. Do you remember a group called Buggles? I don't. But apparently they are the ones we have to blame for the song "Video Killed the Radio Star". Wait for it. And so Squire invites the two main members, Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, to join Yes as singer and keyboardist respectively. The resulting album was Drama. There were a few interesting bits on the album; "Tempus Fugit" and "Machine Messiah" were both complex and musical songs, but in comparison, this was the sound of prog rock dying a slow and painful death. The band broke up.

So when 1983 rolled around, they reformed without Steve Howe, and the lineup was White-Squire-Anderson-Kaye-Rabin, with Trevor Rabin being the fresh blood in the group (Tony Kaye reemerging, being the group's original keyboardist before being dumped for the more virtuosic Wakeman). Realistically speaking, I have to confess, the resulting album 90125 was the right and best album for the group to make at that point. Continuing to attempt to produce progressive rock in the vein of their 70s material would have just produced another (likely worse) version of Tormato/Drama. Evidence of this can be seen when looking at the later albums Yes has done recently, such as The Ladder and Magnification. I bought both of these albums and tried to like them. They were obviously trying to revisit their prog roots (having given up on pop in the early 90s, thank God), but it just came out awful, bland, and forced. For one thing, Jon Anderson is likely off of the herbal recreation nowadays, and it is apparent from his lyrics. In the 70s he would write strange, seemingly meaningless lyrics that were interesting and exotic, but ostensibly lacking the layer of obscurity and randomness provided by the drugs, his lyrics became clearer, and revealed a silly, artless sort of mystic New Age feel-the-love gibberish.

I draw the line at later Yes attempts at pop though. Big Generator was crap, with songs like "Rhythm of Love" and "Love Will Find a Way". To those songs, I say PHHHHBBBBSSSSSHHHH.

2008-07-08T08:08:00.002-05:00

Cyclist Rage.

Yes, my biking amigos (there are a surprisingly numerous lot of you), let's talk about it. It is a strange phenomenon. Stories like the following, for example:

Car/Cyclist Conflicts

Indeed it would appear that there is something uniquely enraging about a cyclist on the road. You don't hear much about Motorcycle Rage, perhaps because of the still pervasive notion that people on motorcycles (especially Harleys) are tough biker-types (when in fact most of them are 50 year old accountants finally letting their "wild side" out). So what causes cyclist rage? Let's examine this objectively; I am not justifying this rage, just examining some possible causes.

First of course, there is the gear. Ludicrous looking (albeit practical) bike shorts and the rest of the gear might induce some mockery, but this should produce no actual rage in all but the most unbalanced of individuals. It does however play a cumulative role in the larger rage-provoker of pretentiousness: the perception of cyclists as a smug, insular, self-righteous group like Prius drivers, which can exacerbate other forms of rage. Cycling has some loose connections to environmental tree-hugging smugness, which does nothing to temper the perception of pretentiousness, unfortunately.

Then of course, the obvious speed factor. Let's face it, except for the really physically fit specimens like myself, most cyclists cannot pedal fast enough to keep up with the flow of traffic. This is probably the core of the rage that is produced. To understand the mind of these enraged individuals, consider other similar scenarios:

Driving a car at 40mph on a runway in front of a plane wanting to take off
Groups of pedestrians walking slowly on a bicycle trail, impeding the flow of bike traffic
Pedestrians walking in the middle of a lane on a busy street

These are not identical comparisons, of course, but they serve to hint at one of the causes of anti-cyclist rage. To the enraged motorist, the roads were designed and built for motor vehicles. Not for pedestrians, not for Radio Flyer wagons, not for Power Wheels, not for wheelchairs, and not for bicycles...only for vehicles that can maintain an acceptable rate of speed. This is not true in a legal sense of course, as it is perfectly legal to travel via bicycle on our municipal roads, but the enraged individual is not considering this, they are only feeling wrath and indignation that you are impeding their travel, with a vehicle that in their mind does not belong there.

Another potential cause is the "bad eggs" of cycling. Allow me to relate a personal example. On Volker Boulevard, down by UMKC, a cyclist was in the lane, moving slowly. As a mild-mannered and wrath-free "Share the Road" sort of motorist, I gave him a nice wide berth, and due to flow of traffic could not drive around him. We reached a stoplight, and he tooled around in a circle, up onto the sidewalk and back down into the road, and then decided to mosey on, running the red light. I watched him do this twice, and when he turned, he did not use the hand gestures motorists would be required to do were their turn signals not functional.

That is one of the other sources of friction between the cyclist and motorist communities; when cyclists (surely a minority of them) ride their bicycles like the laws of the road do not apply to them. The attitude that cyclists are owed equal treatment on the road, and have as much right to be on the road as motorists, clashes jarringly with the occasionally witnessed attitude that they don't have to stop at red lights and signal their turns. Granted, logical and rational folks like myself understand that a few bad cyclists don't spoil the bunch any more than the numerous bad motorists do, but for those with eyes dimmed with "hard-favour'd rage", it could engender further resentment and indignation.

Lastly, it could simply be that cyclists present the easiest target on the road, and thus become frequent victims of road rage. Compared to another motor vehicle, it is harder to effect egress on a bicycle, there is no way to roll up the windows and lock the doors, so to speak, and there is unlikely to be a group of four unseen homies in the backseat to back up the cyclist in case of an altercation. So they present a target of opportunity, unfortunately.

With all that in mind, I'd be keen to hear from the cycling members of the Reading Audience. Are there other causes that I may have missed? It is indeed a strange phenomenon.

2008-07-02T14:55:00.002-05:00

It's time again for another installment of the Snotty Art Film Hour's Foreign Cinema Roundtable Snootfest!

If you missed our last episode, chronicling my opinions on what I would say are the more common and well-known Akira Kurosawa movies, click here to get caught up. Now on to the new Kurosawa movies, in order of production!

Ikiru - 1952 - Ikiru was a sad, somber movie. A pathetic main character facing a terminal illness realizes how meaningless and mundane his life (centered around the drudgery of an bureaucratic office job) has been up to that point, making his impending death that much more awful. Not really a fun movie, but a well made one. The scene at the end where Takashi Shimura (playing the lead) sings a song while sitting on a swingset is eery and creepy, probably due to Kurosawa's love for slowing down the pitch of recorded singing for effect (also used in the witch scene in Throne of Blood).

The Lower Depths - 1957 - A depressing little vignette of Japanese poverty, based on a Russian play of the same name by Maxim Gorky. Very Shakespearean, and remains comic in tone in spite of the worst of circumstances. Not a favourite, but not that bad.

The Hidden Fortress - 1958 - This should be called Star Wars, Episode 3.9, The Original Hope. There are so many overt influences on Lucas in this, as well as a number of subtle, stylistic influences. This is a good action/adventure film, at least for Japanese movies, and it does fairly well in that regard. But this is the film that inspired Star Wars, and for that it gets a bit of extra distinction.

The Bad Sleep Well - 1960 - Ahh, the corporate subterfuge movies. This is "Hamlet" updated to post-war industrial Japan, with the main character seeking to discover and expose his father's murderers.

Red Beard - 1965 - A young, ambitious doctor gets a very poor assignment working under a wise but harsh older doctor in a rural hospital. This is an amalgam of many smaller stories (of individual patients) held together by the central story, which worked fairly well, but its a bit long at three hours.

Ran - 1985 - Strange to see these movies in colour; this is a good adaptation of King Lear to feudal Japan, but honestly doesn't have the (for lack of a better word) punch of some of the earlier movies. It seems a bit stilted and forced, and wearying to the viewer after a while. Still, what it does, it does well.

2008-07-01T14:17:00.002-05:00

There is a silly South Park joke about how Canadians argue, from one of their recent episodes...in short, the arguments go like this:

Person A: [Says something argumentative], friend!
Person B: I'm not your friend, buddy!
Person A: I'm not your buddy, guy!
Person B: I'm not your guy, friend!
Person A: I'm not your friend, buddy!
Et cetera.

Feeling a bit on the tired side, my mind is prone to strange ideas, and so as a bit of an exercise I thought I'd replicate the above in some sort of computer language.

Say you start with a simple string array. I'm going to do the string() class instead of the character array approach just to keep it simple. Say you have n number of epiphets:


string epithet[ n ];
epithet[ 1 ] = "friend";
epithet[ 2 ] = "buddy";
epithet[ 3 ] = "guy";
epithet[ 4 ] = "mister";
....
epithet[ n ] = "man";

Then after they are declared as above, you enter into a loop:


int i;
//n is total number of epithets in array epithet[]
while (true)
{
 for (i = 1; i <= n; i++)
 {
  if (i == n)
  {
   cout << "I'm not your " << epithet[i] << ", " << epithet[1] << "." << endl;
  }
  else
  {  
   cout << "I'm not your " << epithet[i] << ", " << epithet[i+1] << "." << endl;
  }
 }
}

I'd wager not many people have given that much thought. Digital Canadianity.

2008-06-26T10:32:00.002-05:00

The Heller case ruling was announced today.

Needless to say I am elated.

If I had a Third World understanding (or lack thereof) of gravitational pull on projectiles, I'd go out and rattle off a 30 round magazine into the air to celebrate.

COME AND TAKE IT.

2008-06-25T11:01:00.003-05:00

First, as promised, the Heil Baby photo. Gretchen has a peculiar habit of extending her arm outward in the fashion of the old Roman (later Nazi) salute. Please forgive the moustache.

And on the subject of the Hitlerian brush moustache, I feel rather like posting a video clip of another person that sported the style, long before a bloody world war made it symbolic of maniacal evil. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Way Out West, singing "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine"...their comedy was a favourite of mine growing up, and remains so.

The Duet

2008-06-24T08:26:00.002-05:00

You know sometimes, when you start to think things in this country are going really well, and the ways of prejudice and ignorance are dying out, finally? When you start to become genuinely hopeful and optimistic that a brighter, more tolerant day is dawning, and that Dr. King's dream may have been more a prophetic vision than transient dream? When you begin to let yourself believe that the old ways of intolerance have moved aside and that people can finally start to coexist?

Then it hits you in the face. Intolerance alive and well. See below.

2008-06-24T08:09:00.003-05:00

Sometime in the last several weeks, my wife was taken off bedrest for a period of three days...after which she was abruptly (perhaps a poor choice of words) put back on. But we did manage to take a trip to the zoo, thanks to a wheelchair we borrowed. Owing to my huffing and puffing behind said wheelchair, I didn't take as many pictures, but here are a handful.

First, the red panda, with a somewhat amusing amount of fur sticking through the bars.

Another one curled up on the ground below.

The orangutan adult, nearly as interested in the exhibit of humans clustering about as the humans were in him or her.

And a juvenile orangutan.

Some sort of Asian deer...

"...I don't want to be binturight."

The kangaroos seem to "park" at a distance away from the paths and viewing areas that is directly proportional to how many visitors are at the zoo that day.

And some geese and ducks in the Australia exhibit, assumedly visiting from the Africa/Canada exhibit.

I believe this is a monitor lizard. First time I've ever seen him out.

One from the top angle:

And lastly, some specimen of African barbeque:

2008-06-20T15:36:00.002-05:00

I was struck with a thought as I went to get my final cup of coffee of the day, at 3:30PM. Would I quit my job if they took away the coffee maker?

Frightening thought. The answer of course is no, but the intermittent cups of coffee throughout the day are quite the benefit. Sometimes I feel like I am working for the coffee, like an elephant for peanuts.

Hmmm. Peanut coffee?

No, never mind. Back to the drawing board.

2008-06-13T22:17:00.002-05:00

Just watched the requisite "NEVER SHAKE A BABY!" video here at the hospital. While the subject matter is serious and warranted, the cheese factor was through the roof. My favourite part? When the narrator solemnly intones:

Most experts agree that a person does not wake up in the morning and plan to shake a baby.
Most experts? Meaning a consensus or majority? I'd like to hear from the minority opinion. Who are these "experts" anyway? Baby shaker experts? Apparently some of those experts actually do believe that baby shakers wake up in the morning, brush their teeth, gaze at themselves in the mirror, and with a gleam in the eye they lustily exclaim, "today is a great day for shaking a baby!"

2008-06-12T12:21:00.002-05:00

Future marksmanship champion Gretchen Jane Neufeld is with us! Now I have to find a good "Daughter's First .22".