Saturday, April 14, 2007

When the Sixties turn Sixty



So, I was born in the second year of the massive wave of Baby Boomers who flodded U.S. society in the years following World War II. Our Dads came home from the war, and moved in with our Moms in the cities and suburbs of a newly ascendant global power.

The spoils of victory in war fueled our economy. Everything cheap was "Made in Japan." Germany's folk car showed up on our streets, and it was so cheap that it quickly became ubiquitous.



My generation stressed and strained every social institution we encountered, especially the schools. Yesterday, cleaning out a closet, some old papers fell into my view. Yellowed sheets of poems I wrote as a teenager! Some were so classically bad as to be publishable as parodies, only I'm afraid I didn't create them with that in mind.

Others were, well, passably odd. These I shall re-evaluate and perhaps publish here later on.

Among the other relics spilling out of my closet was an envelope containing my sister Kathy's report cards from 2nd and 3rd grade. She was a good student and a good citizen, clearly. I have scanned in the documents and will mail them back to her in Michigan.



Many of the apple blossoms, even as some scatter before the wind, hang gracefully overhead against our bluest sky. Proof of life and rebirth, the promise of spring. So many of us have spring birthdays, which always seem like the most natural of birthdays. I suspect that earlier in our evolution, when we lived and died more like other animals, our spring babies were the ones most successful at survival, especially in the colder climates.



My little girl and I took a walk yesterday, seeking wildflowers.



In my eyes, she is more beautiful than any flower, though in just as natural a way.



Pinks and purples, yellows, and whites, we saw them all.



The arts of babies. I purchased these in the fall of 2001.

***

The photo at the top of this post is one I snapped many years ago, out at the end of a dock that stretched far out into the bay, looking back in at the cottage where my tender family sat, reading, after dark. Even now, I know the feeling from that moment: The outsider looking in.

I have always felt uncontainable love for those in my life. But sometimes the only way I can express it is in a photo like this, as if from space. As if I were a visitor from another planet, a temporary witness...

-30-

Now and Onward



Gameday. This one was played in the rain at the park at the end of my street, just three blocks from here.



The diehard parent fans had coffee and umbrellas.



This lovely pattern on my birthday T-shirt is the work of Third Moon Design in Montreal, where a special artist who is a friend of a special friend of mine designed it just for me!

Thank you both!



Here in the city with the panoramic skyline, the rains have stopped, and a brisk wind is blowing blossoms from the fruit trees hither and yon.



My young daughter plays keyboard for me.



Ghoastie, our younger cat. She was saved by Aidan after she was abandoned in Golden Gate Park as a tiny kitten roughly six years ago.

That was one tenth of my life ago now.

-30-

Now and Then



This was before I grew into my teeth.



This birthday present was designed and producedd for me! The story will follow.



Pumpkin.

-30-

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Lost highway of love

Bossy Betty, that's what my younger kids call the automobile route finder that my older kids have just given me for my (ugh) birthday. I love this gadget. It comes pre-programmed with many maps and GPS technology. It can guide me wherever I wish to go, supposedly in Betty's "soothing" voice.

The one we used in Portland, which the kids had gotten for their mother, had a voice that we thought might better be described as stern as opposed to soothing. We'll hook it up tomorrow, and I'll report back about Betty's current speaking style, and whether she can alleviate my pronounced tendency to lose my way.

***

Remember the Mud Lake Mafia? The lake in my fantasy baseball team's name is the source of many of my best life memories from my youth in Michigan. It is also where some of my father's ashes reside. So, the name of this team, which may sound modest or comical without this background, has a kind of sacred ring to me.

One thing my father instilled in me is a competitive spirit. Although I've moderated much of my competitiveness over the years, I still play to win, not to just have fun. Winning is more fun than the alternative.

Fantasy baseball depends on conducting a fairly vast amount of research about the hundreds of players in Major League Baseball, including each crop of young hopefuls who break into the big leagues every season.

As a manager, you have a 24-man roster and you have to field nine hitters and a staff of pitchers every day of the baseball season. There are 162 games in the regular season, and whatever happens on the field in Milwaukee, Boston, San Diego or Pittsburg and the rest, determines what happens in different ways to the sixteen teams in our fantasy league, including my beloved MLM.

Here we will get a bit technical. At the moment, we hold down 11th place, which is quite good, actually, because our hitters have not gotten hot yet. (It's too cold for hitting, actually.) My batters cumulatively are hitting .252, which is about 30 points lower than I need them to hit. Their power numbers are way down, but if the past is a guide, we should put up lots of power numbers.

That's because I have more certifiable power hitters (Jason Bay, Andruw Jones, Adam LaRouche, Chipper Jones, Moises Alou, and Sammy Sosa) than ever before. Still, in the first ten days or so of this season, it is a rather obscure second-baseman, Orlando Hudson of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who is carrying my team offensively.

I picked this guy out of the mist last season, as he emerged as a strong hitter. He has started out this year hot as jalapeƱo sauce. He is personally responsible for 33.5 of my team’s 93.5 hitting points, more than twice as many as my #2 guy, Chipper Jones (16).

The reason the Mafia is 56.5 points ahead of the last place team and only 62.5 points out of second place so far is our pitching staff is blisteringly hot. Cold weather can be good for pitchers. Mine are 6-3 and have ten saves in ten chances. Their combined ERA is only 3.11.

The pitching staff has generated 138.5 pitching points; with five starters led by Dontrelle Willis (24 points in two starts). Two of my three relief pitchers have generated at least 17 points in ~5 innings each with 8 saves. I do have one questionable starter and one questionable reliever, but they can be exchanged for others if they don't come around.

Among the hitters on my bench are some young guys who seem capable of slamming the ball. They could be our future. Meanwhile, we've amassed 232 points so far and by my calculations, we haven't even approached our potential. My goal for this season is 8th place or higher.

My top draft choices the past two seasons (Willis and Bay) are superstars in the making, still young. If I can add another one next season, and hold the core of this pitching staff together, I may creep up to 6th or even 4th place.

I apologize if all this inside-baseball talk is boring for those who don't follow the sport and probably think those of us who play the fantasy version hopeless nerds. Well, you may well be right, but if so, I am happy to be a certified MLB nerd blogger!

***

Today is the 19th month anniversary to the day I have held my current position at an online content aggregator. Saturday is my birthday. Next Monday, our no-longer fresh startup will transform itself into a new entity, with a new name, a new design, a new user interface, and the potential for many new features (called functionalities in the web world.)

My small team of editors, and I, will finally have a platform on which to demonstrate what kind of value human editors can bring to what is at heart an automated system. To say we are excited, as a group, would be understatement.

Over the next few months, the gamble we are taking is that by creating some cool new types of content packages we can help make our company successful. We've worked and waited a long time for this opportunity.

***

Every day that passes is at least partially a lost opportunity now. There's so much to say and do, so many things to write, not to mention so many more to try and just remember. Feelings left unspoken evaporate into nothingness. Feelings expressed, when unwanted, trigger negative reactions.

Numbers captures none of this, which is why I retreat to my fantasy baseball league. There, my drive to win against the odds is rewarded gradually and punished severely, whenever I make an unwise choice. I develop a kind of instinct about "my" players, aided by studying their history against certain opponents on various fields in multiple situations.

It's always a gamble, but once I've absorbed as much information as I can handle, I let something else take over: My intuition.

Finally, this post is about one question and one only. And that is this: Why can't I trust my intuition in love? If I can guess right in something as remote and complex as fantasy baseball, where no warm human being is in the room, why is it that I can have amassed a bad record of making the right intuitive choices in love?

Anyone who can explain that one to me gets the MLB team baseball hat of his or her choice. It's the least I can do...

-30-

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

My tormenters



I have an admittedly bad record with computers, but what justifies these machines quitting on me before I even have a chance to wreck them?

Recently, I vowed to my kids that I would obtain a PC, so they could have a machine in my flat besides my Mac. I'm often online, working, blogging, searching, connecting, Skyping, and so on and so forth.

They have school projects, games, and their other activities.

We all ventured out to Best Buy, where I was so overwhelmed by choices that I froze, unable to yield my credit card to a purchase of $800 or so for a machine I do not understand, nor trust.

Then, my buddy Dave at work told me about a program whereby we can purchase old Compaq laptops for $75, so I chose that option. The only problem? When I got the box home last night, it failed, yielded the dreaded error message known as BSOD (Blue Screen of Death).

Tonight, it is showing BSOD again.

I feel defeated. I'm not gifted technically, so whenever this kind of thing happens, my first impulse is that I must have done something wrong. But, maybe not. Maybe the tech gods are arrayed against me.

In any event, I am Internetless in the PC realm. Luckily, my Mac is substantially more reliable.

***
Machines, as frustrating as they may be, can't compete when it comes to the pain humans inflict on each other. Think about it. How are any of us to interpret people we thought were friends when they turn on us, suddenly and viciously? Or, when they suddenly choose to go silent, as if our voices can no longer be heard?

Let me ask you this. When you have cared for somebody, but fallen away from him or her, and you know it was mainly your choice to withdraw, how do you feel when you find out one dark day they have died?

Good? Bad? Guilty?

I suggest it is never safe to leave someone who thought (s)he was your friend dangling out there, unattended, when you knew (s)he needed you. You might just suffer an unwanted and unneeded shock one of these mornings. Better to connect. Just connect; in fact, just keep connecting.

That will never be a mistake. The alternative, however, could bring you endless pain.

-30-

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The backend of emotions



Yesterday, I watched them walking ahead of me at BestBuy as we shopped for Dylan's birthday present. They had their arms around each other. Brothers, aged 12 and 11, and undoubtedly each other's best friend.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a brother. The closest I've come is my various brothers-in-law -- eleven by my count -- and my best male friends at different stages of life.

The comforts of being around men include not having to censor yourself about your unbridled passion for sports, gadgets, cars, guns, computers, drinking, politics, and other subjects. The comforts of women are what most of are seeking, but we know we're not really very good at getting what we want.

Why?

Besides all the biology, i.e., our hard-wiring, there is such a wide gap between the emotional maturing process of females compared to males. And nothing can change that. Many may treat emotions as the software running on our hard discs, but they are misguided.

Our synapses fire inside our brains until we die. (After, they keep firing through the words we've written. I have a transcript of my Canadian grandmother's partial memoir, which I will scan and post here presently, which illustrates my point.) Her inimitable voice comes through.

However, our hearts have no such electrical wiring system. The heart may be the seat of emotion, a home for our feelings, but it doesn't seem to have developed any kind of reliable infrastructure mimicking the brain's.

Thinking about this, I have re-examined that phrase ("the seat of emotion") and speculated that maybe, just maybe, our language has brought this odd insight down through the ages for a reason. Maybe we are looking for our emotional center in all the wrong places.

After all, the heart is just a pumping mechanism, essentially, not all that different from a water well. It's probably so busy at its blood-circulating work, which regulates everything else our bodies do, that it may not have the extra bandwith to handle our messiness -- our emotions.

You may know where I am going with this.

What if the actual seat of our emotions is our, ahem, seat?

You heard me: Our bottom, butt, ass, arse, what have you. It makes sense to me, does it make sense to you? Our (pick your favorite word) doesn't really have all that much to do, most of the time, except anchor us in place. Of course, it also hosts other essential functions, but let's ignore those for a moment. Though urgent when the call comes, there is lots of downtime for the average ass.

That's why I believe our emotions live behind us, under us, in our anchoring place. I may be entirely alone in this analysis; if so, it wouldn't be the first time. But, as a special treat tonight, I have obtained the official list of banned words that most websites use to filter user-generated comments.

This list, be warned, is not for the faint of heart. But it does contain a surprisingly large number of words that suggest my hypothesis about the home for emotions may be valid.

Of course, there are the usual collection of words that can be considered sacreligious, hateful (the worst words, in my mind), sexual, or scatological. But there also are others.

Enjoy!

-30-

p.s. Rude Word List:

ahole
asholes
ass lick
asses
Assface
asshole
assholes
assholz
asskisser
asswipe
azzhole
belly whacker
Biatch
bitch
bitcher
bitchers
bitches
blow job
blowjob
blowjobs
boffing
boner
browntown
bucket cunt
bull shit
bullshit
bung hole
butch
butt breath
butt fucker
butt hair
buttface
buttfuck
buttfucker
butthead
butthole
buttpicker
buttwipe
Carpet Muncher
chink
circle jerk
clit
cnts
cntz
cobia
cock
cockbiter
cock-biter
cockbiters
cock-biters
cockhead
cock-head
cocks
cocksuck
cocksucked
CockSucker
cocksucker
cock-sucker
cocksucking
cocksucks
cooter
crap
cum
cummer
cumming
cums
cumshot
cunilingus
cunillingus
cunnilingus
cunt
cuntlick
cuntlicker
cuntlicking
cunts
cuntz
cyberfuc
cyberfuck
cyberfucked
cyberfucker
cyberfuckers
cyberfucking
dickwad
dike
dildo
dildos
dipshit
dong
douche bag
dumbass
dyke
ejaculate
ejaculated
ejaculates
ejaculating
ejaculatings
ejaculation
enema
f u c k
f u c k e r
fag
fag1t
faget
fagg1t
fagget
fagging
faggit
faggot
faggs
fagit
fagot
fagots
fags
fagz
felatio
fellatio
fingerfuck
fingerfucked
fingerfucker
fingerfuckers
fingerfucking
fingerfucks
fistfuck
fistfucked
fistfucker
fistfuckers
fistfucking
fistfuckings
fistfucks
fuck
fucked
fucker
fuckers
fuckin
fucking
fuckings
fuckme
fucks
Fudge Packer
fuker
fuks
furburger
gangbang
gangbanged
gangbangs
gazongers
goddamn
God-damned
gonads
gook
guinne
hard on
hardcoresex
homo
horniest
horny
hotsex
hussy
jack off
jackass
jacking off
jackoff
jack-off
jap
japs
jerk
jerk-off
jisim
jism
jiss
jiz
jizm
jizz
kike
knob
knobs
knobz
kock
kum
kums
kunilingus
kunt
kunts
kuntz
masterbaiter
masterbate
masterbates
merde
Motha Fucker
mothafuck
mothafucka
mothafuckas
mothafuckaz
mothafucked
mothafucker
mothafuckers
mothafuckin
mothafucking
mothafuckings
mothafucks
Mother Fucker
motherfuck
motherfucked
motherfucker
mother-fucker
motherfuckers
motherfuckin
motherfucking
motherfuckings
motherfucks
nigger
niggers
orgasim
orgasims
orgasm
orgasms
orgasum
pecker
pen1s
penis
penis-breath
penus
phonesex
pissoff
polack
poonani
pussies
pussy
pussys
rectum
retard
sadist
scank
schlong
screwing
semen
sheister
shit
shitfull
shiting
shitings
shits
shitted
shitter
shitters
shitting
shittings
shitty
skank
skanks
skanky
slag
sleaze
slut
sluts
sluts
slutty
snatch
son-of-a-bitch
spunk
tit
turd
twat
vagina
vulva
wetback
whore
wop

-30-

Monday, April 09, 2007

Just Say No to Zealotry

Reading books about Islam, trying to piece together histories never taught in school. Somewhere around 25-30 books are under my belt now, but I'm not sure I'm making much progress. The latest was The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, by Amin Maalouf, which left me marveling at the wanton bloodshed caused by both sides during that inglorious era.

Did you know that some of the Crusaders acted as cannibals, and hunted Arab villagers down for food? Do you know how the Cult of the Assassins came about? This book documents those and other atrocities.

I often find myself speculating how the pools of Jews, Christians, and Moslems persisted side by side in the Middle East for millenia, albeit with major pogroms launched against Jews, and wars between the other two now and again. But, still, in the in-between times, the regular times when there was no great war, how did they get along?

The Jew, the Christian, the Moslem, each with his holy book, all originating in the same cradle of civilization. And now very much at war, in our time, with an idiot king, I mean President, who summoned the awful cry of the Crusaders in his call to action following 9/11, not even knowing how his words would reverberate throughout an Islamic world that has not forgotten the stains of that past.

That political leaders of both major parties in the U.S. cannot summon the courage to admit this country has made a major mistake by invading Iraq is frightening evidence that the war was never about anything more than securing our addictive supply of oil, rationalized as a mission to "democratize," (read: "Christianize") the heathens (the "Believers.") Bush the Decider is utterly clueless about the Middle East.

His coterie of advisors, however, knew exactly what they were doing. Now they are getting desperate, never a good thing in geopolitics. Expect something horrific to happen before next year's elections. Something too awful for words.

Something much like a thousand years ago, when Crusaders entered Jerusalem, massacred all the Moslems, burned the Jews alive in their synagogue, and killed even the indigenous Christians (!) in their quest for economic conquest under the cover of missionary zeal.

Know why I hate religion?

Because I love life and I love being alive and I love people. I had a button in the Sixties (many did) that said simply: God is Love.

I worship the God of Love, but no other. And I never will.

-30-

21st century man



A big party was had here in the Mission for a very special fellow.



He's not your usual 11-year-old. Few people know that he was a cover baby by age six months. His particular skill was remaining happy and smiling long after the other babies grew fussy.



Not Dylan. Thus his nickname, "Sunshine."



On the other hand, he has grown into a sardonic, ironic, wry observer of this weird world. He worries about global warming, even as he has become a childish expert on German history from WW1 through WW2.



I don't remember a time in the past few years that he agreed to go through a night without his Russian Red Army hat, but tonight he did.



He's an easy guy to love, even as he becomes a complicated young man before our eyes. Something tells me he'll turn out to be an important part of his century...

Happy Birthday, Dylan!

-30-