Out of sorts

Eh. I'm in a mood. It will pass.

Maybe it's related to the retirement party last night. So many Physics and Electronics Engineering alumni in one place. I can't say for certain that every one of them is more successful than I am, or was more successful at my age than I am, but I'm seriously questioning what I can do to get myself out of the pit I'm in. Right now I'm thinking that the best most of us can hope for is to stand our ground until things pass. But when the stock market crashes that same day that the oil market makes it abundantly clear that it is not fluctuating according to simple laws of supply and demand, I'm not sure standing our ground will soon be an option for many of us.

I'm having car problems. Stupid car problems. My right rear tire is losing air. I had these tires installed at Sam's Club back in April. This is where I have had every set of tires on this car installed. A few weeks ago, after the problem was first brought to my attention, I reinflated the tire using my handy portable air compressor and took my car to one location to have them look at the tire and check it for leaks. They told me that the tire was losing air around the bead and that the problem appears to be with the rim itself, and showed me a large lump on the rim that looked like a welding mark. They reinflated the tire and reinstalled the wheel. The tire held air for two days after that, and then lost enough that I had to refill it again with my portable compressor. (These tires were installed in the beginning of April, and the problem first became apparent as of mid-May.) I took the car for a second opinion to another Sam's Club, the one where I had the tires installed, and they told me the same thing, but also applied some sealant along the bead where the leak was happening. That held for about two weeks. But today I had to reinflate the tire again. At some point I may have to bite the bullet and take another day off so I can get this dealt with. Since some 90% of the miles I put on this car are for commuting to and from work, all these expenses - repairs, maintenance, even gas - should be partly deductible on my taxes. Shouldn't they?

I wanted to do some planting today, but the weather was just so insanely hot. Then it was insanely stormy. Now it's just wet.

I gave blood today. Three weeks of getting extra Iron paid off, and my donation went off almost without a hitch, except for some confusion with the PalmPilots that are used to streamline the donation process. Someday I should look into the question of why my Iron has been low-ish for the past few years. As with many things, I'm worried I might not like the answer I get.

I opted out of the Belmont Stakes gathering today. But I heard that Big Brown, the horse who was not only favored to win the Belmont and, consequently, the Triple Crown, but also was as much out of the league of the other horses as Tiger Woods was out of the league of other golfers when he was playing at his peak, didn't simply fail to win, but actually came in last. If Big Brown's victory over Eight Belles in the Kentucky Derby could be viewed as an omen of Barack Obama's eventual triumph over Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, then the outcome of the Belmont Stakes is a very bad omen for Obama indeed.

On a positive note: My nephews were over and - I have to wipe a tear from my eye when I say this - have recently turned into Star Wars junkies. Having burned through all of the movies, today they contented themselves with the documentaries and featurettes on the Special Features disc from the Special Edition Trilogy boxed set, as well as some DK visual guides I've had tucked away for a few years. My younger nephew drew and colored a lightsaber on a legal pad my mom gave him as drawing paper. I then turned his drawing into a three-dimensional object with the help of a paper towel tube and some tape. (I even tapered the tip with some folds and tape, so it comes to a point like the lightsabers in Revenge of the Sith.) He then drew a Boba Fett-style jetpack for himself. I designed an alternate jetpack for him out of three sheets of scrap paper: two rolled up loosely and taped to form two 8.5" cylinders, and one rolled up more tightly and taped to form an 11" cylinder. I then lashed the three cylinders together with tape, and affixed the assembly to his back with two more pieces of tape, and then he was all ready to hunt for bounties until the day that some blind guy with a stick accidentally launches him into a Sarlacc Pit.

Retirement party

I just got home from spending a few hours at the University of Scranton at a retirement party for one of my old professors from the Department of Physics and Electronics Engineering.

It was a good time. I got to meet several interesting people, got to refamiliarize myself with a lot of old friends and acquaintances, and passed out a bunch of copies of my blog card.

I would write more, but I'm very tired and need to go to bed soon. I have a blood donation tomorrow morning, and then I need to plant a replacement cherry tree and two blueberry bushes.

Time for bed. More later.

New and Improved Blog Links!

Well, new and revised, at least. The "improved" part will have to wait for a while.

First the revised links:

SuperG has remodeled and relaunched his blog. It's now called This Modern Age and is part of a new, comprehensive website called Super G World.

Lauren has once again changed blogging platforms and established a new site. The new version of Things I Carry is the fifth site of hers that I've linked to, each of which has replaced the previous one. And I never got around to linking to her dog Sammy Oscar's I Am Sam, which has since been replaced by Two Dogs Blogging, featuring Sam and his sister Jasmine!

Now the new (and not-so-new) links:

First off, I finally surrendered to a design bug in Blogger. When you add links to a link list, you have two options for sorting them: alphabetically, or newest first. My habit has always been to add the newest last. This can be done, but it requires that you manually move the link, one step at a time: from the first position to the second position to the third position...after your list of links gets long, this becomes very tedious.

So I did a workaround. "Blog Links" on the sidebar is now followed by "More Blog Links", which is where you'll find these links.

First off is Webster's webster107.com. He's half of the Rock 107 morning team of Daniels & Webster, the funniest and (I think) longest-running morning team in all of Northeastern Pennsylvania. His announcement in January of 2006 that he was starting a blog was, in part, the inspiration for creating NEPA Blogs. (Unenlightened self-interest was another part of the inspiration. Remind me to tell you about it sometime.) And I'm finally getting around to linking him from Another Monkey!

Next is Melissa Auf der Maur's Lightning Is My Girl. I've been reading her for quite some time. If you think you don't know who Melissa Auf der Maur is, you possibly do, if you're familiar with the final albums of Hole and Smashing Pumpkins. (Well, Machina was the Pumpkins' final album until recently.)

I didn't get any photos of the gorgeous woman in a belly-dancing costume who happened to be walking around at the 2007 Sideshow Gathering, partly because I wasn't sure if she was a performer, or just one of the attendees. Some detective work after the fact revealed her as Sal the Cinch, a.k.a. Sally the Cinch, a.k.a. . . . several other things, really. Notably faeriemage of Procrastination Landfill.

I've had MaryRuth's Where's The Bubbler? on my Blog Links Favorites in Internet Explorer for quite some time, but haven't visited often enough, as I realized recently when I didn't even recognize her name in a comment. Having her blog easily accessible from my sidebar will remind me to visit more often.

Finally, two from MerelyMe, who is in my "Friends of Whim" subcategory on my Favorites list. She's a great blogger and a wonderful photographer, and if you know me, you know the fact that she's a gorgeous woman didn't escape my notice. Her blog that I've been reading off-and-on by way of linking from comments she leaves on Whim's blog is called Multiple Sychronicities (and Sclerosis). On a recent visit I discovered she has a spinoff blog called Morning Writer, showcasing her poetry and photography. Check it out!

As for the "improved" part:

While I was poking around my template trying to remember how to add new blogs I noticed that Blogger has finally added a "Blog List" element to its list of page elements. I'm not sure how it works, but it promises to let you know when one of the blogs on your blog list has been updated. This is very useful - "Live Links" was one of my favorite features of FireFox - but I don't know if it would only work with blogs that support RSS feeds or whatever. Maybe, someday, I'll consider adding that, if it isn't more trouble than it's worth.

Shoo Fly Cake

I'm giving blood on Saturday, so I need to make sure I have adequate Iron in my system. I've been eating a lot more red meat than usual (usual is "none at all"). I've been taking Iron supplements. And now I'm about to get my Iron from the most delicious source: Shoo Fly Cake.

Shoo Fly Cake was always a special treat when my grandmother made it. It looked like chocolate, but it didn't taste like chocolate. Still, it was delicious. I hadn't had Shoo Fly Cake in decades when someone at the Red Cross suggested molasses as a source of Iron. She specified Blackstrap molasses, which is higher in Iron, but I used up all my Blackstrap on my last cake a few weeks ago. So I'm making do with what I have.

There are a lot of recipes for Shoo Fly Cake on the internet, but the one I'm using today is from Recipezaar.com. In the interest of proliferating this delicious cake, I'm reprinting it here.

The recipe was originally posted by a Recipezaar.com member named kzmom. Here is the recipe she posted, which is indexed as Recipezaar recipe #110423 :


Shoofly Crumb Cake Recipe
If you like molasses, you will love this rich, moist cake. The recipe comes from a Pennsylvania Dutch restauranteur named Betty Groff and is published in an old book by her called Good Earth and Country Cooking.
by kzmom

1¼ hours 10 min prep SERVES 15

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

4 cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
1 cup table molasses
2 cups boiling water
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugars, salt and butter to crumbs using a pastry blender or your fingers.

Reserve one cup of the crumbs for topping.

Mix the molasses, boiling water, and baking soda and gradually add to the major part of the crumbs until well blended.

Pour this mixture into a greased 9 x 13 inch baking pan.

Sprinkle the reserved 1 cup of crumbs on top.

Bake in a 350 F oven for 55 minutes.


I made mine in two non-stick loaf pans. I recommend reducing the heat to 300 degrees after the first 40 minutes or so. But ovens will vary, so my oven may run hotter than yours.

My cakes are out of the oven now. If you'll excuse me, I have to go get ready for Saturday's blood donation.

Note: With its crumb topping, this might make a nice base for a Poop Cake. Just add Tootsie Rolls!

Nanticoke Musicfest 2008, June 6, 7, and 8

This is a repost from A Blog Of Nanticoke.

From the official website:

Party In The Park

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

June 6th, 7th, and 8th, 2008

Party hours and information:

Friday - June 6th

From Harrisburg, Pa.- Brad Crum as "Elvis"

5pm to 8pm

Meets

From Philadelphia, Pa. -"Shattered" a "Rolling Stones" tribute band

8pm to 10pm

Saturday - June 7th

From Pittsburgh, Pa. - Lee Alverson's tribute to "Elton John/Billy Joel"

5pm to 7pm

and dance to

"The Original Starfires with Eddie Day"

7pm to 11pm

Sunday - June 8th

Dance to the oldies with "The Cadillacs"

3pm to 6pm

Get ready to PARTY with "M-80"

6pm to 9pm

Come party in the park with us and win prizes at our hula hoop and jitterbug contest, and bring your appetite for our pierogie eating contest!

Featuring: Rides, games, Pat Ward (Magician extrodinaire and all around balloon guy), refreshments and fun for the whole family.

Sponsored by The City of Nanticoke.

Where: Patriot Park - Broad and Market Sts., Nanticoke, Pa.

~ Free admission ~

Depressing numbers

I ran some numbers today that I really wish I hadn't.

Not that it's anything I didn't already know. I calculated the amount of money I'm making now [($n/hour)x(40 hours/week)x(52 weeks/year)] and compared it to what I was making before I lost my job on February 27, 2007. This isn't the first time I've done this, but most of the time I've reduced the difference to an abstraction: a percentage difference, or a dollars per hour difference. Not a dollars per year difference.

In dollars per year, it's quite a staggering figure.

I should be proud of that in some perverse way. How many people can take a shot like that and still be standing? I've cut back - way back. But it's not enough. And the price of everything keeps going up. The cost of getting to work, especially. I'm not in dire straits, not yet. But it's coming. If something doesn't happen soon...

But on the other hand, I know I'm better off than a lot of other people. Fact is, I'm earning as much as or more than a lot of people where I work. And I know several people who are skilled but simply out of work. Two of them lost their jobs and are struggling with looking for work. The third nearly lost her life, and her hands, and her health, and her sanity. That she didn't is a testimony to who she is, and a clarion call for me to shut the hell up and do something about my own life already.

But it's not easy. This area...in order to get a better job, I would have to leave this area. Simple as that. And since I am committed to stay in this area for several reasons, I am stuck with the job opportunities that I have.

Unless something new comes along, some new company moves to the area. And who is going to make that happen? I have some thoughts on that topic, but they would best be left for another time.

Another Monkey: The Band

Maryruth from Where's the Bubbler? sent me this photo yesterday. Another Monkey gets top billing at The Lighthouse Café! I asked her for some details of this photo, and she sent me this:

It was taken in Hermosa Beach, California on Pier Avenue, on May 31. A BrettFavre throw from the beach. Here's a webcam of the area: http://www.hermosawave.net/webcam/ The webcam is about 100 ft west of my photo. The scaffolding you see in the web cam is going up for next weekend's Pro Beach Volleyball thingy. (It is usually not there.)

Hermosa Beach is one of the few places I've actually been in California! I was on a business trip there in 1995 or 1996, and after the successful completion of our goals my partner and I decided to play tourists for an afternoon, cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway and stopping at every beach we could. Hermosa, if I recall correctly, was a little odd: the beach was sharply sloped and very shallow, so waves crashing against it easily swamped unsuspecting visitors walking along the shore. Good thing the weather was warm. I dried off pretty quickly.

When I was thinking about a name for this blog back in 2004 I did a little research to make sure no one else already had it. I had a reason for wanting to use "Another Monkey", but it turned out I was not at all original with the name. Several people were using permutations of anothermonkey as usernames on various sites. The website anothermonkey.com did not yet exist, but the band Have Another Monkey did. I've never visited their website before (or their MySpace page, for that matter!), but a quick look at their schedule shows that they play regularly at The Lighthouse Café in Hermosa Beach. (They arrived at the name from a completely different direction.)

If I ever find myself at Hermosa Beach again, I'll have to look them up! I'll just have to make a note to keep my distance from the waves breaking on the beach.

Is this what it takes to get people's attention?

Anyone care to take a guess at the ratio of American TV viewers who know we just put a lander on Mars last Sunday to the number of American TV viewers who know that the toilet on the Space Station is currently broken?

I’m thinking it’s about 1 to 100. Maybe it’s closer to 1 to 1000.

It’s not just TV. Radio, newspapers…all have dedicated considerably more time and space to the “broken toilet” story than to the “WE’RE ON ANOTHER PLANET!!!!” story.

Maybe NASA should have put a toilet on the Phoenix lander, and then announced it was broken. Just for the extra coverage.

Please help

I feel so lame at this moment. Not for doing what I'm about to do, in the half-assed way I'm about to do it. No, I feel lame because, until I read about this in this post by Ashley, I didn't know a damned thing about this...even though Tiffany has written about this in the past, and has just written about it again.

Cancer is something folks here in Northeastern Pennsylvania are familiar with. Maybe it's our diet. Maybe it's our lifestyle. Maybe it's a consequence of living amidst Anthracite coal mines. Everybody here knows somebody who has died of cancer. Maybe several somebodies. I do.

I cannot tell Leanne Weinshenker's story. I just learned her name as I copied it to paste it here. But Tiffany and Ashley have been following it. You can read it in her husband Daniel's blog here.

Or you can just read this:

Going Around Again
As many of you may or may not know, my wife was diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma a year ago. She was also five months pregnant. We lost the baby, but we won Leanne's life. And while she was going through chemo, I needed to do something other than care for her and our 3-year old.

So I biked.

I think, along with our friends who encouraged me to do the ride in Leanne's honor, we raised somewhere around $35k. It was incredible.

This year, thankfully, Leanne's in remission.

But I have a new mission: To keep riding and to keep raising money, this time in honor of someone else. And so while I look for someone else going through what we went through last year, I'll be pedaling in preparation for a 100 mile 1-day ride through Moab, UT.

Help me and help give someone the life that Leanne was given.

much,

Daniel
Daniel Weinshenker

Do more than just read that. Please. Go here and donate. Whatever you can. However much you can. As Tiffany says,

sure, there are buttons there that ask you to donate certain amounts–the majority of them are FAR out of my budget–but there’s also a little button that says ‘other,’ and it allows you to enter in your own donation amount.

please don’t NOT donate because you think it’s stupid to give one dollar.

it’s not stupid. rather, it’s beautiful.

Do what you can. And please do me a favor? Pass this on. Post it on your blog. Send it to your friends. Mention the link in a comment on other blogs you visit.

Please help.

A brief interruption

I like to blog. I try to blog every day. If I don't post something every day, you can assume I'm traveling, or dead, or busy, or in jail, or in the hospital, or am having a computer problem.

Like, say, a dead power supply.

I came home today and immediately went to turn on the computer. This isn't that unusual, but today I had a purpose. And I was thwarted.

The computer refused to power up.

After a lot of pressing of buttons and flicking of switches and unplugging of plugs and one tech support phone call to the friend who built (and rebuilt) this computer, I was pretty sure I had a dead power supply. At about 8:00 tonight I trundled the PC off to Best Buy to let the Geek Squad see if they could fix it. As it was, they were very slow tonight, and the guy I dealt with was super helpful, and he was able to replace the power supply while I waited. It was all fixed just after 9:00.

It wasn't cheap, but I'm back online just a few hours after discovering that my computer was kaput. And for the opportunity to spend time with my friends in the blogosphere, it was worth the price.

Unity Is...

I was inspired to do a little satirical copyright infringement by today's Love Is... How many people can make that claim?

I hope you'll forgive the image of the two aspiring Democratic nominees as naked midget adult children, as I hope the strip's copyright holder will forgive my trespass. Despite its being in turn silly, irrelevant, treacly, morose, and occasionally erotic, I still read Love Is... every day in the Citizens' Voice.

The battle will end soon, and I think we are seeing the true nature of the Superdelegates. As many of them are still active in politics and are (by definition) members of the Democratic Party, I believe they are seeing which way the wind is blowing and doing their best to get in the good graces of the person who will very likely be the next President.*

But Hillary slogs on, in what has amounted to the greatest voter registration drive in recent history. As both candidates are forced to campaign in every state, voters of every state are having the spotlight turned on them in turn.

Unless he screws up to a degree far worse than he has so far, Obama will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. The question then will be, who will he choose as a running mate? If you want to see a diehard Obama supporter's mood suddenly turn dark, suggest that Hillary would make a good Vice President. One questioner suggested just that to Barack Obama at a recent event, and the air was instantly filled with raucous laughter. Hillary as VP will be a harder sell for the Obamanites, who have been feeding on Hillary Hate for months, than it will be for the Clinton supporters.

If Obama chooses Hillary Clinton as a running mate I believe they will form an unbeatable ticket, with enthusiastic support across a broad range of voters who will be happy to see their candidate in office. If Obama chooses anyone else, he will have two tough sells ahead of him: first, he will need to work that much harder to get the most ardent Hillary Clinton supporters on board, the ones who, like many ardent Obamanites, are supporting the candidate but not necessarily the party; and then, he will have to sell his VP choice to all of the voters. It would be a much more difficult, time-consuming, and risky enterprise than going with the woman he has been trying to convince for so long to give up.


*Thanks to this past weekend's opening skit on Saturday Night Live for making this clear. It was a parody of General Petraeus's latest report to whichever Congressional committee he's been reporting to. The funniest part: the chair calmly announces "And we will now be interrupted for fifteen seconds by two Code Pink demonstrators," at which point two women in pink T-shirts holding a banner rise up and begin to shout semi-incoherently. After ten seconds they stop, and one asks the chair if they still have time. He responds that yes, they still have five seconds, and they proceed to shout for five more seconds. (Turns out this was a rerun from last month.)

Michelle Malkin: Completely nuts

I try not to wander over to the paranoid, delusional, and hypocritical world of the hate-mongering loonies on the far right. Bad for my blood pressure, and the intellectual equivalent of walking into a bar.* Let them play in their little echo chamber, as long as they leave the rest of us alone.

That's a very bad attitude, of course, because leaving the rest of us alone is the last thing they intend to do. Still, I avoid them whenever possible.

Then I came across this article on MSNBC about Dunkin' Donuts pulling an ad with Rachel Ray - at Michelle Malkin's insistence - because she is wearing a scarf.

Ummm, WTF?

Now, I've dipped my toe into the open sewer that is Michelle Malkin's stream-of-consciousness a couple of times before, notably during the John Edwards bloggers incident (which was primarily about Bill Donohue and his phony "Catholic League", which does not represent and never has represented Catholics in any official capacity, but was driven in large part by Michelle Malkin), and, thanks to this post on Adam Felber's site, her quest to prove the non-existence of "Jamil Hussein." (I forget the details - I think he was an Iraqi critic of the U.S. occupation of Iraq who claimed first-hand knowledge of certain things which in other contexts might be considered "war crimes" - but it turns out that he did exist after all. If you're feeling brave, wade into her archives and see what you can find out.)

The scarf thing. It's allegedly a scarf in an Arabic style that is (or resembles) something called a keffiyeh. Similar to one worn by millions of people in the Middle East, an item currently popular among the dedicated followers of fashion (or so I hear), and clearly a sign of hatred and anti-Semitism.

Oh, wait. You missed that last part? Go here for a discussion that will clear matters up immensely. (Be sure to read the comments, too.)

So, obviously, the ad had to go. I mean, really, what was Dunkin' Donuts thinking?

Take this vow with me, please: I refuse to let insane people dictate my actions.

Too bad Dunkin' Donuts does. I guess Michelle Malkin has a lot of pull with the donut-eating demographic.


Phil Plait has an entry on this ridiculousness here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/05/28/dunkin-donutsoid/


UPDATE: For the record, I think it's pretty well established that Sharon Stone is also nuts. At least her apology for her "bad karma" comment about the earthquake in China was a bit more timely (and, seemingly, more sincere) than apologies from the nutcases on the far right who made similar comments about 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina . . . when those apologies have, in fact, been offered. Which isn't that often.


*As in, "Two guys walk into a bar. The third one ducks."

Cinco para la cuesta de dos

Tuesdays I take my mom grocery shopping after work. It's Senior Citizens' day, and she gets a 5% discount on her bill, which is pretty significant when the economy is in the crapper and every penny counts.

There wasn't much that we needed, or wanted, or couldn't do without this week. Milk, eggs, a few other things. But there was one thing in the flyer we figured had to be a typo.

Twelve can "refrigerator packs" of Pepsi and Pepsi products are on sale: buy two, get three free. Huh? Five for the price of two? "It must be a typo," I said, but sure enough, the in-store display confirmed: Buy two, get three free! With club card, that is.

We stocked up at an end cap. The sale is limited to two offers per customer, but our need for soda is not that great - cans are mostly for road trips or outdoor activities. So we only bought five twelve-packs. Enough to last us, say, a year or two.

We made our way down the aisle. Snack foods and beverages. Potato chips, pretzels, cheese curls, then more soda. I was grabbing some house-brand two liter bottles of diet soda off the shelves when a hispanic woman came by, pushing a cart with a little boy in the child seat. Maybe one, one and a half years old. My mom and I both gave him smiles, and he smiled back. That's one of the most amazing reflexes built into children, and a good one to practice whenever possible.

The woman stopped at the end of the aisle where the Pepsi products are normally displayed. She pulled a twelve-pack off the shelf and put it in her cart. Then another. Then she made to move on.

The Cosmic All demanded that I inform her of a great savings opportunity.

"You know, you can get five for the price of two," I said, smiling helpfully.

"Eh?" she responded.

"Five cases. For the price of two . Buy two, get three free," I said. And then I added, "With club card."

"If I have club card?" she responded. Then she smiled and moved on.

"She has no idea what you just said," my mom observed.

Aw, crap.

A few minutes later I recalled enough of my High School Spanish to cobble together something that sounded right that I should have said to her. "Five"...cinco. "Two"...dos. "For"...para. "The price"...er, cost...la cuesta? "Cinco para la cuesta de dos!" I should have said, throwing in an inverted exclamation point at the beginning for emphasis.

Too late. The woman and her bambino had moved on, and I never got a chance to say "Five for the hill of two!" to her.

Oh well. Así es la vida.


FYI: "The cost" = el coste. La cuesta = "the hill".

Memorial. Day.

When my grandmother was in the nursing home I visited her every day, if I could help it. Just brief visits after work, mostly, and longer stopovers on Saturdays. But every Sunday we would get together and go to Mass at the chapel that used to be in the nursing home. Afterwards I would linger for a while, taking her to lunch at the dining hall and then maybe going outside for a while if the weather was nice.

A lot of the time it was just me and a handful of other regulars making their visits. Occasionally a new face would show up, looking confused and embarrassed as they tried to figure out what was where in the corridors of the nursing home. But most of the time most of the residents were alone, attended to only by the staff.

Most of the time.

Mother's Day, Easter, Christmas, and other major holidays, you couldn't find a parking space in the lot. The halls were crammed with visitors there to do their duty and assuage their guilty consciences for abandoning their relatives to the care of strangers the other 364 (or 363, or 362, depending on the visitor) days of the year.

Yesterday the "special intention" of the 11:30 Mass was for my uncle who died three years ago this week. I took my Mom there. Afterwards we decided we would go to the cemetery, as we have been doing after Mass every week since my aunt died. We made a few stops, before and after the cemetery, and maybe I'll tell you about those later.*

At the cemetery we could barely make it down the narrow roads that thread through the gravesites. Cars, cars, and more cars were everywhere. Graves that had been neglected all year were being tended to by people who probably had a hard time locating them. Traffic through the cemetery was suddenly a major issue.

OK. I'm not complaining about the fact that these people were there. It's a wonderful thing, going out to pay respect to your beloved dead, particularly those who gave their lives in service to their country. It's a wonderful thing to remember your Mother one day each year. Your Father. Veterans. To give thanks once a year.

But what about the rest of the year? Is it such an effort to acknowledge these things one day each year that we spend the rest of the year recovering?

Yes, I know. Busy. Things to do, places to go, people to see. What's the profit in stopping at a gravesite, visiting some senile old codger in a nursing home, acknowledging the sacrifices made by Veterans both living and deceased?

Today is Memorial Day. Today give a thought to those who gave their lives because the United States of America told them to, and they said "yes." Today remember those who made that ultimate sacrifice to keep our nation free. To keep America from collapsing from the chaos and anarchy that would rise if they were to turn their backs and say "I know I pledged to serve, but I choose not to." Remember them today.

And try not to forget them the other 364 days of the year.


*How the hell does one gas station justify charging $4.05 for gas when the place across the street is selling it for $3.95 and the two places a mile down the road are selling it for $3.89?

Mars, baby! RED ROCKS!

Images from NASA Phoenix
Mission page, May 25, 2008.
Images are from MARS!

The Phoenix lander has begun relaying images from its landing site in the North Polar region of Mars. This is exciting stuff! So many Mars missions have failed, one way or another, that there's an added sense of accomplishment on top of the fact that we are currently looking at images from ANOTHER! FREAKING! PLANET!

All this for the low, low cost of $420,000,000. What's that, you say? $420,000,000 is a lot of money? Nonsense! Conservative estimates put the cost of George Bush's Discretionary War at twenty million dollars an hour. So the cost of this mission amounts to twenty-one hours of the "War On Terror." We spend more money each day on war than we did on this entire freaking mission.

So, yes. $420,000,000? Totally, totally worth it.

ANOTHER! FREAKING! PLANET!


Also see:
NASA's Phoenix Mission page
University of Arizona's Phoenix Mars Mission page
Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy
- First light pictures from Phoenix
- Phoenix has landed!
The Planetary Society Weblog
Title reference: Paraphrase from Dave Chappelle's "Black Bush" skit.

Some dreams; and Sunrise, sunset

Let's see: I had a dream last night that featured the Geico Cavemen, or maybe the variants from the Cavemen TV series. It was apparently part of a Perry Mason-style lawyer show, where one of the Cavemen was on trial for something, and the other two Cavemen, one of them himself a lawyer (though not Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer), were among the spectators. At the climax of the story the two of them rose out of their church pew-style seats to interrupt the trial, at which point everyone else in the courtroom was shocked to discover that there had been two other Cavemen in the courtroom in addition to the defendant. They then proceeded to do a series of poses for a model shoot, and their clothing - both had been well-dressed, and the lawyer Caveman had been dressed appropriately for a lawyer in a courtroom - was transformed to gray bodysuits with black squiggly designs on them. This may or may not have been influenced by me seeing a few minutes of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes before I went to bed.

Which reminds me of a dream I had several weeks ago that has somehow managed to not get washed away just yet. This was a dream about vampires - not a frequent dream topic for me. In it, vampires were something like the Mafia: everybody knew they existed, everybody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew one, but nobody wanted to acknowledge their existence lest they attract unwanted attention. So everybody just looked the other way while the vampires preyed on the edges of society. Most of the vampires in the dream had a thuggish, ganster-ish appearance about them, and were generally pretty scuzzy - unwashed hair, stubbly whiskers, their clothing occasionally looking a little shabby. One part of the dream that stands out was a vampire larder - a room where badly-beaten, half-dead humans were kept, to be pulled out whenever the vampires felt a bit peckish. And there wasn't a sense that these vampires were simply sucking blood; they were pretty much just tearing living people apart and eating them. Fun stuff.

Okay. Enough. As a reward for getting through all that, why not enjoy some photos?

Here is the sky shortly before sunrise on Tuesday. In this first photo, the sky has that glowing-ember quality it sometimes gets when the clouds are just right.

The sky started to lighten pretty quickly, the deep red-orange lightening to an orange-yellow.

One effect I especially liked - and I'm glad my camera was able to see it, too - was the gray/pink mottling throughout the sky. The ornamental weather vane on the peak of my neighbor's roof gives you a good idea of what part of the sky I'm looking at compared to the other photos.

So that was Tuesday morning. On Sunday evening I was over at my house across town shortly before sunset, and I got this image of the steeple of St. Mary's church rising above the rooftops of the neighborhood.

There's something very poignant about this view of the old church with its forward-bent cross on top, situated at the highest point in the city.* This is my church; my family has always belonged to this Parish. But like so many other Parishes in Northeastern Pennsylvania it is in constant danger of closing. This is partly due to a shortage of new priests, partly due to a contraction in the number of parishioners in local Parishes, but mostly due to a massive reallocation of Diocesan resources to the parts of the Diocese that have seen a population explosion thanks to the post-9/11 relocation of thousands and thousands of New Yorkers to the border regions in the Poconos, some of which are technically still part of the Scranton Diocese. Capturing this as the setting sun casts shadows of houses upon other houses and lights up one face of the steeple as the others remain in relative darkness just adds to the poignancy.

Also, that cloud is pretty cool.


*I think this is the highest point. There may actually be a point a few blocks away that is technically higher.

Youtube Weekend: Lemonheads, It's A Shame About Ray

Last month I posted about a McDonald's commercial that used a theme that sounded an awful lot like The Raconteurs "Steady, As She Goes." Now Chrysler Chevrolet is running ads for a Memorial Day sale that use a whistling theme that sounds an awful lot like The Lemonheads' "It's A Shame About Ray." While I can't find the Chrysler Chevy commercial online, the video by The Lemonheads is on YouTube:



And how cool is this? It's an embeddable version of the video...posted by Rhino Entertainment! Way to go, Rhino!

UPDATE: Someone else got a video of the Chevy commercial the hard way. Listen for the music under the announcer. Here it is:


Assuming this sampling wasn't done with the blessing of the band and/or the copyright holder, this wouldn't be the first time this song has been...ummm, treated to an homage. Listen to the opening notes of Foo Fighters' "Big Me" to see if you can hear a resemblance.


Note: This post was referenced by Will Bunch's Attytood blog from the Philadelphia Daily News Online on Tuesday, May 27, 2008.
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Its_a_shame_about_Ray_becoming_a_whisrling_Chevy_commercial.html

Rainbow over Nanticoke, May 22 2008

It's been raining off and on the past few days. Yesterday it was off long enough that I was able to mow my entire lawn across town, but today conditions were unstable enough that I didn't even bother to start on my mom's.

As I drive home each day I get a brief panoramic view of the Southern Wyoming Valley, courtesy of the removal of several large culm banks a few years ago. This afternoon I saw knots of clouds and rain dotted throughout the valley with the sun shining through from the other side. Somebody's getting a rainbow, I thought.

An hour ago, that somebody was me.

This rainbow was huge and unbroken, and featured a nearly-unbroken and very visible secondary rainbow, with the dark Alexander's Band between them. I happened to take a closer shot of the brightest part of the right side of the rainbow. In this closeup view you can see the interior or supernumerary rainbows - additional bands of color below the "innermost" violet.
You can see the secondary rainbow more clearly in the close-up view below. Note that the order of colors is reversed with respect to the primary rainbow.

I can tell you that the raindrops that formed this rainbow were closer than the mountain in the distance, which is the Southern border of the Wyoming Valley...
...but behind the house in the background. Note that the apparent location of a rainbow is dependent on the position of the observer, and a resident of that house would not be seeing an extreme close-up of the rainbow, but rather a different rainbow with a right "end" in the forest beyond her house. (I actually ran into her as she walked her dog past my house. She also got photos of this rainbow.)
(By the way, there is no pot of gold in that house. I checked.)

What not to play for customers on hold

A few years ago I had to call the IRS to get a little error straightened out. Turned out the reason my tax refund had not arrived yet, a month after I had filed, was because they had mistakenly applied my entire refund for that year as a pre-payment for the next year's taxes.

I didn't have much trouble getting that resolved, though I did get put on hold at one point. While I was on hold I heard one of the worst possible bits of hold music: "In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg, from Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt .



Not that this is a bad song. It's a good song. A great song. A stirring, frenetic, fist-pumping bit of music that was once anthologized on a disc called "Classical Thunder." It's just not the sort of thing to put people in a relaxed, patient, happy-to-be-on-hold state of mind. Especially when they're on hold with the IRS.

Crank x 3, and a Graffiti followup

My most recent letter to the editor was published (in its entirety!) today in the Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice. Now the good people of this area know that I am not only the sort of person who writes letters to the editor, but also that the contents of the funny pages figure high on my list of things to write letters about.

My Graffiti post prefigured an article in today's Times-Leader about some playgrounds in Wilkes-Barre being vandalized to the point that members of the local Crime Watch are recommending that they be shut down.

“And the filthy stuff written on (the equipment) is unbelievable,” Raup said. “We couldn’t get it off. We used acetone stuff, and ripped our hands apart, and it wouldn’t take it off.” Raup said the graffiti, which includes drawings of male genitals and explicit four-letter words, is written in marker.

Of course this article includes photos of the vandalism, including some of the graffiti - mostly just tags. But I'm sure that has the perpetrators bursting with pride. They're probably running around their schools going "Look at this! I did that! My work is in the paper!"

I hope the bastards boast a little too loudly and get caught. When their parents are paying to replace the playground equipment and repair the damage, maybe they'll have a chance to reflect on mistakes they made raising their children.