It has been many months, I missed the summer on LJ, but there wasn't much of one in meat space.

I tried twitter and continue to insist that as much as people may want to tweet, the root of twitter remains twit.

Facebook continues to insist on suggesting friends who I really don't want to see. Please dear algorithm, heed my attempts to X people out.

So I'm back here. Sipping whiskey in hand.

My sister broke her arm a week or so ago and takes public transport home and works odd hours so I've offered to drive her sometimes when she gets out around 11pm. The problem is she isn't very good with directions and tells me to pick her up on streets that don't exist. Tonight's adventure involved an Armenian Anesthesiologist who shipped his coat to LA as he'll be moving their in July. I drove him home on account of it being 14 degrees. He declared (in his short sleeved shirt) that it really isn't "cold at all." I had taxi driver conversation with him about the area, answered questions about lay-out, demographics, and events, discussed the weather and my love snow being the common enemy that binds us all together.

Watched the Obamarama Spectacular last evening and the GOP response.

One thing I don't get is this entirely fictitious GOP complaint about the train from Disneyland to Las Vegas... there is absolutely nothing in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 specifying this link (skip to p. 237 for the section). If anything it sends money to the Dept of Transporation for use at identified high speed corridors which has nothing to do with that leg. My bet is most of it ends-up in the northeast where high speed trains are needed and will succeed immediately and also in the midwest where I high speed trains could work. (I'll admit I love trains and would prefer a reliable 4 hour train ride to Chicago over 45 minute flight with all the hassle of airports.)

The Governor of Lousiana with his official GOP response was entirely tone deaf and railed against this imagined train connecting imaginary places. I'm pleased right wing folks like David Brooks agree.

“You buy the house with the white picket fence. You buy one Bloomin Onion a week and when you feel too much pressure at work you go on your roof with a bottle of Jameson and have a good cry while shooting pigeons. Those are the rules.”

with this astonishing new invention. this changes everything.

I am not a superstitious person, and although I think we don't understand a lot about our world and overestimate our knowledge, I still think most surprising things are just coincidence. That said. I occasionally am taken aback by intuitive or strangely predictive thoughts.

The last time a bird crapped on me or one of my belongings was probably ten years ago. I don't give much thought to the feces/urine combo that birds drop on us from above. However, about five minutes ago I started to think about it and covered my coffee because I had this feeling and within three minutes plop! My laptop was transformed!

Too bad my secret intuitive super power is predicting when a bird will crap on me.

I can't wait to stand in line for the next hour or so [amended] 0 minutes. I just walked in, probably three times the amount of voting stations from 2004. Back then, it was about an hour wait and there were cookies and I then went to work for a group monitoring the elections and I had nothing on some of the poor folks further east who were averaging 3 hour waits.

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My prediction is that Ohio will not be the poster child for election shenanigans, my guess is that if (shockingly) this is close, the honor we picked-up from Florida will be handed off to Missouri. That state's legislators has been working harder than any other to disenfranchise voters this year.

My sister has waited a long time in Kansas City and she got to the polls at 6am or so. I can only guess if Kansas City has that kind of mess, what must be going on in St. Louis. (Is this where Ken Blackwell, our illustrious former Secretary of State, moved to after getting trounced by Nice Guy Ted Strickland in '06?)

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After voting, I'm pleased to announce that I did not meet this fate... boy am I glad we don't use Diebold in Cuyahoga County.

1) i received a settlement offer for my car crash 16 months ago. it is about 60% of what i want, i'll push for a bit more, and probably accept it. it amazes me that this crap insurance company of the guy who hit me, first acceptance auto insurance, took so long to do this. the first six months was spent trying to convince them that because they had me on tape saying "i was going the speed limit, 25 mph" that i was not driving recklessly, this was only accomplished by handing it off to my attorney. over the next six months, the adjusters on the case were either getting laid off or leaving, i went through FOUR contacts during that period. then first acceptance played a game called, "we never saw the car so how can you prove it was totaled?" fortunately after being hit, my car was forced into an unmarked police car, so the entire cleveland force showed-up as an officer was injured. part of the force includes a professional photo team that does a very good job taking photos at midnight. after a month or two of wading through the city bureaucracy, i got the photos, my attorney forwarded them on and now there is a settlement. part of me doesn't mind dragging it out in principle, but it sounds like it will be a hassle and the attorney doesn't seem keen on it and i respect his opinion. so, after 15 months, at least i have an offer to work from. first acceptance seems like a scam operation, in ohio, they're in the bottom five when it comes to most consumer complaints

2) the tree that i declared war on within months of moving into my house was cut down. yes, the tree was on my neighbors property, but again, we did all the legal footwork and cut it down today. good riddance to the ailanthus. tree of heaven? what the hell!

3) a painting i picked-up in high school of a cow contently eating a bed of flowers was framed today and i picked it up. the title is bad bessie. i am quite pleased with it. the cow made my sister very angry then when i purchased it as she shares its name. she still harbors ill will towards the painting twenty years later. i really like the painting.

4) i have launched a campaign against all the GOP bozos in the state who prevented municipalities from enacted laws to protect against predatory lenders four years ago. half of them are up for re-election this year and i've assembled a small machine that writes to small town newspapers about how crummy their incumbent reps are. four years ago i felt like these guys were untouchable, but not anymore. look for me in the Zanesville Times Recorder!

5) last month i started volunteering at a mens homeless shelter. it sleeps 400. i have to say when i go there it is intimidating. the weight of the problem seizes me up. 400! anyhow, i volunteer there once a week to teach computer skills to guys looking for jobs. sometimes it is kind of a waste of time, but sometimes it is great! today it was great! it is pretty exciting when you teach people to start writing on wikipedia or understanding how to do baseballs stats analysis in open office.

in summation: progress from the year of unexpected collisions, my neighbor may kill me when she comes over to scream about her missing overgrown weed that was crushing my sewer (and i will respond, "what tree?"), bad bessie still gets a reaction, crank letters sent to zanesville, and the homeless will be the end of Britannica.

My mother sparked my genealogy interest again by putting together an expedition to Detroit to meet distant relatives connected several generations back-- nobody was from the area, so we convened at an airport hotel and I immediately realized that these people were much more hardcore than I was. I wasn't sure how this was going to work out.

One of them had arrived from Minneapolis on Tuesday and had been doing research the entire time. All sorts of adventures were recounted including tales of: hostile archivists (who knew they were out there), underfunded libraries (Detroit is still having major problems keeping their libraries open, the main branch remains closed on Sundays and Mondays, but that's better than when I visited in 2004), and spelling creativity (Schloff = Schlaff = Schlaf / Freidel = Fredel = Fridell = Freidell).

The trip was successful, yielding three key findings so far:

1) We found a two hour taped interview from 1969 with the brother of my great grandfather reminiscing about the family farm (now a park in Dearborn Heights, Michigan), diphtheria outbreaks, Henry Ford, that sort of stuff. He lamented the death of trains (he managed the main station in Detroit for awhile) and said "HOLY CATS!" and spoke with a little bit of that Minnesotan accent.

2) I learned a lot about cemeteries from a former seminarian who administers a number of 100-200 year old cemeteries in Detroit. I love experts who love what they do. You wouldn't think sitting in the office of some overly formal cemetery administrator for two hours talking about the history of mortuary science and various methods for mapping poorly documented cemeteries would be a fun, but it is. He also made some jokes about the local hostile archivists and the politics of it all. I figured he was probably just five years older than I was, but boy was he serious... so sincere though.

3) There has been a family legend that each of these disparate parts of the family knew and that is that my great great grandfather died in a snowstorm, leaving eleven children behind on the farm. I'd been going crazy searching newspaper accounts and we'd located death certificates but there wasn't anything about the cause of death. I'd been searching for weather records also and no sign of a snow storm. Anyhow... we're at their parish with the aforementioned expert and he digs through the records from the parish priest and finds:

Anno dmi 1887 die 17 Feb. sepultum est corpus Petri Schloff, mariti Catherinae Schloff, actatis 38 annorum, erat vis insanus et suicidium

So we thought, what does that mean? Did he freeze to death and it was deemed a suicide by the parish? He did die on his 37th birthday, what are the odds of that? The aforementioned cemetery expert pointed us to some local records, including the daily journal of the township mortician and sure enough, that settled it. From the Diary of E. D. Howe, February 15, 1887:

Rained some last night. Cloudy day. Peter Schloff, 4 miles s.e. of here cut his throat and died last night. Merritt and Mary came 4:27 this P.M. to stop over till tomorrow. Mr. and Mrs. Brown called this evening.

Lost in a metaphorical storm, perhaps.

Earlier today I observed a Google Maps vehicle turning off of Madison in Lakewood. The driver appeared to be following local laws. I contemplated skipping out on a meeting and trading my business suit for a rented polar bear outfit and to follow the car around. Alas, I couldn't.

Today, I had to work all day, in a data center, with a deafening hum, with a group of co-workers and contractors to move a racks and racks of servers and routers and switches and sans and fiber and whatnot from one place to another. It didn't go well, rather than lasting from 6am-noon, it lasted until 10pm-- I don't think I delegated the plans to the right people. As I was leaving the building, some guy I fired two years ago walked in the front door to visit another data center. We acknowledged one another.

Due to the poor reception my phone lost its charge due to excessive roaming, I missed my chance to visit with unscrambled.

I started re-charging in the car. Noticed I was out of cash, visited an ATM, it was out of order. Noticed something else. Car ran out of gasoline. I must have been distracted this week. Crud.

[Blah, blah... common every day complaint.]

Then, talked to my friend who said, "that writer you really liked... he was on metafilter today!" I wondered, and we played a guessing game of who the author was and guessed David Foster Wallace and she told me that he hanged himself on Friday. I don't think she quite understands that I credit Infinite Jest with keeping me alive during time where I spent a lot of time staring into the abyss. Although I don't know the guy, I think of him as a Good Midwestern type who knows what is going on, has a view that deeply resonates with me re: authenticity, irony, giving oneself away, the horror things... and I have always been grateful for that book, really grateful, that probably seems a bit weird, dear reader, I know.

A few weeks ago, I started shambling through The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and while flying back to Phoenix last week hit the all ink page that follows the headstone (from Hamlet) that declares: ALAS, POOR YORICK! (Yorick is also a beloved character in Shandy.) Shandy is one of the few instances where I've read something hundreds of years old and laughed out loud repeatedly. Yorkick reminded me of Hamlet, the black page reminded me of something Barthelme would play and again to that fellow of Infinite Jest. As I walked eight miles in the infernal 100+ heat of Phoenix and thought about that first part of the novel which is one of the most profoundly disturbing scenes in literature for me.

I remember the furor around his short story The Depressed Person and people thinking it was funny or a cruel joke on self-involvement, I saw it as something right on, a description simply.

Whether 2008 is the Year of Dairy Products from the American Heartland or the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, it doesn't matter, and we'll never know. It is worse than that. I lack the words.

When you read something awful that happened to your friend and former neighbor in the sensationalistic styling of the local paper, you kind of just want to punch the press in the face. (This is coming from a nonviolent someone who prefers to move bugs in my house to the outdoors via cup rather than smash them.)

It is very strange for me to read, a story in the PD, about some friends who really don't want to talk about it at all, let alone see it in the local paper.

The story is stale. It all happened about a year ago, the conviction a month or so ago, and I don't understand why the paper is rehashing it. The PD only ran one article about this case during the last year and it was last month, part of a snippet in their fluff Monday section that could be titled: trivia to chuckle with/at your elected officials, bureaucrats, and judges. The three paragraphs were about how the assailant in this rape and assault case knew a lot about history and this surprised the judge. Hilarious, right? (The Monday feature, with examples like that, is a yawn fest.)

Maybe they needed time to do some real deep research on this to come up with a headline like: Ohio City neighborhood terrified by string of sexual assaults - Attacks terrorized neighbors in Ohio City.

This morning I walked out to my car, unlocked the doors and a skunk scurried out in a panic in my direction. I walked backwards, he paused, we both stood looking at each, fortunately I must have looked fairly harmless as nothing happened after that as he waddled away.

Surprisingly, I had never seen Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise. This is noteworthy because I've enjoyed his other movies, I'm all about the hometown boosterism, enjoy bleak but amusing deadpan entertainment, and I can spend hours beholding the beauty of a painfully frozen lake. The film is noteworthy because the camera never seems to move and it captures how I imagine/recall the looks of the mid-late 70's in Cleveland and Florida (although the film was released in '84.)



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I purchased the Sufjan Stevens album, filled up the cooler, and explored our neighbor to the northwest. I never realized how wonderful the west coast of Michigan really is-- some of the best beaches around. In fact, I'd take it to most of my beach experiences in Florida as the features are more varied (dunes) and there are no troublesome Portuguese Man O'Wars to be concerned about.

The Warren Dunes State Park wasn't too crowded and yield the challenge of a 240 foot dune. Although it started raining we climbed up the steepest part, with about 80 feet to go, the weather worsened with gusts of wind and I stopped and admitted rather matter-of-factly that I was scared. There were some shrubs nearby overtaking a fallen tree, which we scurried to which protected us from most of the rain and I declared this formation to be known as Wuss's Hollow.

Progressing further up the coast, the National Blueberry Festival in South Haven was underwhelming, nobody was dressed as a blueberry and there was not one sign of a blueberry eating contest. Perhaps they should be celebrating their accomplishments in peach cultivation instead?

Further north the Saugutuck Dunes where not as spectacular, but so much more unspoiled and nearly empty-- to get to the lake we hiked a mile or two, which probably keeps many (the lazy) away. In this instance, it might have kept me away as my fellow explorer was in higher heeled shoe and I in off-white linen pants and long-sleeved starched dress shirt. The other hikers seemed entertained by us, which is a pleasure in itself.

There were many other noteworthy beaches, but you get the point.

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Finally, before returning to Clevo, I visited a place from my childhood. Every summer from 1979 to 1986 my family (including some aunts, uncles, cousins) would travel to Berrien Springs, Michigan to a low-key rustic resort: Pennellwood. My dad was the accountant for the owner so the kids of the owner who lived there for most of the summer had the inside track on all the interesting features of the place, such as: where the crayfish are, access to abandoned and closed portions of the resort, how to cheat at Tron.

The place was an American Plan resort with 20 or so rustic cabins that you'd rent for a week, planned activities for kids, small boats, tennis courts, archery ranges, and more shuffleboard than I could imagine. Everyone would gather for meals in a mid-19th century farm house and before the meals, kids would race to ring the bell to announce meals.

Maybe in '84 or so, Muhammad Ali came over for dinner and I sat next to him and we both had barley soup, the Parkinson's was apparent. After the meal, he did impromptu magic tricks which included standing on his toes and trying to convince kids that he was floating. He lived down the street and left an impression as being such a gentle person, I couldn't imagine him as a boxer.

Time passed. Either the place fell on rough times or the owners miscalculated and got greedy with the idea of rebuilding the cabins and selling them at $300k a pop (which I find difficult to fathom), they razed place and, save a rebuilt banquet hall, the resort is closed.

I wasn't sure if I really wanted to visit concrete slabs in the middle of nowhere, but decided to go a bit out of my way and visit. You know, I'm a sentimental person.

If anything it was worth it because immediately all my memories of childhood flooded forwarded, crashing and swerving, as the true scale of the place collided with those of my childhood memories. It smelled exactly the same though, the verdant damp almost mossy scent. One of the original owners was there moving something and was excited to encounter someone from the past, his daughter taught horse-riding and was the recreation director for a few summers. I wandered around for twenty minutes and was grateful for a childhood that included places like that.

I always enjoy hearing how others imagine me in their dreams.

Someone in my group at work noted that I had appeared in two separate instances of dreams this week:

1) We were in Buffalo, we had a taxi cab, the driver started threatening us, and I somehow got him into the trunk of the cab. We continued driving, something went terribly wrong, we drove into the Niagara Falls. Apparently, it was all my idea.

2) We were in the desert camping and early in the morning a swarm of giant flying scorpions descended upon us, stinging, they had glowing evil yellow eyes. Everyone was horrified, except for me. I was on the ground rolling around laughing at how ridiculous it all was.

YES!

Odds are 1 in 1 that everyone will die. During a lifetime, your odds of dying in some sort of automobile accident is about 1 in 84. (The only items higher are stroke, cancer, and heart disease-- which is the winner at 1 in 5. Its neighbors in probability are self-harm at 1 in 116, assault at 1 in 217, and falling at 1 in 218.)

Cars are dangerous things, even at 35mph. Wear your seatbelt. 2/3 of auto fatalities involve people who are not wearing seat belts. Your brains belong in the skull conveniently made available to you, not on the street.

I ran across that statistic recently and as today is the anniversary date of my car destroying, skull banging, brain jostling accident, thought it was worth noting. Had I not been wearing a seatbelt, I'm not sure what state I would find myself in today.

I have decided to go on an adventure this weekend, an adventure to Michigan. Along the way, I'll make sure to wave to Carty Finkbeiner and look for tell-tale signs of the Toledo War.

My plan thus far involves the state of Michigan and a desire to observe large bodies of water. I won't make it to the top portions (though I will be tempted... too much driving.) I think I'll aim for east coast (maybe the thumb) or west coast.

If anyone has made any treks into this territory, I would appreciate any suggestions or observations.

I do know from my research that Cereal City USA is closed.

"Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House and turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders opposed the motion to adjourn the House, arguing that Pelosi's refusal to schedule a vote allowing offshore drilling is hurting the American economy. They have refused to leave the floor after the adjournment motion passed [...]

At one point, the lights went off in the House and the microphones were turned off in the chamber, meaning Republicans were talking in the dark. [...]

But C-SPAN, which has no control over the cameras in the chamber, has stopped broadcasting the House floor, meaning no one was witnessing this except the assembled Republicans, their aides, and one Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who has now left."

From: Politico

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You can always count on Dennis.

This morning I stumbled down the stairs later than usual for a Sunday, hair in its craziest and for sake of humor, preferred, eraserhead form... wandered around my front "yard" to find where the NYTimes landed. (There is a 1 in 5 chance that it will not be delivered and I will file my complaint online and receive my credit. Part of this ritual encourages me to consider switching to an Economist subscription, but I prefer the feel of a Sunday newspaper to share over coffee with friends.)

I pay attention to all sorts of semi-obscure government reports on the economic state of affairs, but I evidently haven't been paying much attention lately to household debt. Fortunately, the NYTimes had some useful graphs on this matter which could not escape my attention.


Overall, the article consists of two sections: one anecdotal about someone losing their house after making some poor decisions, experiencing a health emergency, and making some much worse decisions (ho-hum) and a second one showing adjusted savings to debt rates going back to the '20s... worth poking through the shockwave.

You can read the full deal here, but this front page graphic caught my attention.

This is what the average looks like from the "decent times" of 2004, as we're hitting some bleak economic territory in 2008? Outside of mortgages, the average household has about $33,041 in debt. I knew the unsecured debt (credit cards) figure, but the lines of credit average $10k? That car/education debt too, cripes!

I knew the savings rate was anemic for the last few years, but these debt numbers dumbfounded me. Time to bury precious metals in the backyard.

to celebrate bastille day, i put out my french flag and decided to do some cooking. i think the most noteworthy thing (as i've gone on before about my new found appreciation for the Lentilles de Puy, the best lentil around hands down) was that i made quiche for the first time. i really haven't made forays in french cooking adventures and i thought i'd start with something simple like quiche lorraine.

i dug out James Beard and his 1978 James Beard’s Theory & Practice of Good Cooking. made my pie crust (lemon is key), got my bacon all set, threw the custard together and voila, quiche like i'd never had it before. it really is a custard! it isn't something that solidifies into some cold (but admittedly tasty) strata-like beast, it is meant to be something entirely different. (NO CHEESE!) i've bored my friends and coworkers with the epiphany, and now it is your turn, you've all been mislead, quiche isn't what you think it is!

as a kid, i remember James Beard sponsored my family's first microwave's cookbook, he probably needed the money or something. my parents won it at a raffle in 1979. as i was infatuated by the device, i obsessed through the book that came with it, and recall a few years later when he died, and feeling sad, having his inspiration for my family experiments in microwaving (some very ill-conceived, some good, and some on my part where the theme was just trying to explode things).

i was glad to revisit James Beard, as he resides in my library with julia child and m. f. k. fisher in my parthenon of dead food writers who give me a warm fuzzy feeling.