evolving dogs and offspring

My Moment of Zen turned rapidly from calming to something different. I was watching my dog lazily walk along the fence, sniffing for remnants of summer, when he humped up and grunted out a dump. Now, another person might find such an act to utterly lack inspiration. Instead, I wonder … if we humans are so evolved, how come we need to wipe our ass? The dog doesn’t. If I don’t, it gets personal real quick, both for me and most around me (except for the olfactory challenged). The chaffing can last for days. Do people with hairy asses chaff less? Is there research out there? How much hair is enough to significantly alter chaffing? Can we derive a formula and use hair plugs?

But wait, it can’t be just the presence of hair, it has to be the make-up of the material being passed, too. There’s a real evolution v. creation argument here. Did our ancestors develop a colon that required Charmin because it knew we would invent it, and bunny rabbits do these little pellets because its colon knew Charmin would never be? That is clearly a creationist view. If cavemen had to wipe to their ass else they got chaffed, one would think the body would evolve into a non-chaff producing form, but it did not. In fact, if cavemen had the intensely hairy asses that the pictures claim, then as the hair evolved away, so the dump material should have become less chaff producing. There is a huge disconnect in the evolutionary theory here. Do monkeys wipe there ass?

OK, back to my dogs. It’s odd – I got used to my female dog, then the male dog showed up. The female is so, well, female. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her rip one. She must leave the room or do some seat shift so she can defuse the sound wave. The male dog could not care less. Scared me, actually, the first time he let loose. The hair on the back of my head stood straight. My dad’s been dead five years or so – I really thought I was going to hear, “get any on you?” in that voice and facial expression he reserved for such statements. The dog burps, too. I don’t get it.

I can’t get this evolutionary contradiction out of my mind. What else is out there? How come I have to pick my nose and produce ear wax like I’m constructing honeycombs for the winter supply of food? Did Cro-Magnon Clyde say, “Q-Tips and Kleenex on the horizon – just another couple million years. Let’s focus on standing erect and developing speech?” It all seems so implausible. At this stage of development, I should be dumping out sand or something, with the rest being recycled somehow. My ears should be pretty, not some mess of yellow-orange gook with hairs growing in all different directions. Snot should not be so gross – or so salty when you eat it. That could be sand, too – you could sneeze and say, “get any on you?”

Just think, if everything we expelled from out of our body were like sand, we could have beaches instead of landfills. You could save not just your kid’s first teeth – but there first excrement, too. You could make family sand castles. Isn’t glass made from sand?

Evolution is stupid. Not very well thought through.

Here’s another google hack to find mp3’s … {-inurl:(htm|html|php) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wma|mp3) "hank williams"}. In the last quotes, where I have hank williams, you put in the target of your search. Works good. Remember, right click – Save Target As – and be sure it comes back as an mp3. If it does, save it and enjoy.

One more hack, seems more simple, but what would I know. I did get more hits with it … -inurl:htm -inurl:html intitle:"index of" mp3 "hank williams"

I don’t actually use these google hacks to download music, mind you. I think that would be infringing on someone’s copyright somewhere. That would not be good. I just use them to remind myself of how open the net is, and sometimes I think about trying to figure out how to write the site owners to tell them that their stuff is not secure. Sometimes, too, I go into the parent directory and down into another subdirectory and explore the … I, um, I … nevermind.

I didn’t know Hank Jr. had a box collection out. Very cool. I wonder if it’s the Bocephus Box. $35 on Amazon. Hunh. That’s a lot of money. Hunh.

I grew up listening to his dad. Listened all the time. When Jr. came along, I accepted his music without question. He did have to prove himself, however, which he did from the start. Quite unlike Sean Lennon. I’ve got two CDs by Sean. Listened to one of them one time; the second has never been opened.

Jr. is good. You have to like the solid country foundation. I don’t know much about that MNF bit he sings – that is just commercial crap made for the manufacturers of happy. But listen to All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down or Family Tradition or A Country Boy Can Survive. Just classics both in lyrics and music. There not too many videos released by him on you tube, but some, plus some decent concert footage.

I’m gonna do something else. Later.

cosmic dancer

I was looking up at the sky and idly thinking what would happen if, say, some space-originated hunk of iron (with a typical density of, say, 8000 kg/m3) with a diameter of something like 100 meters, crossed into the atmosphere at, like, a 45 degree angle at a speed of roughly 50 miles/second, and then slammed into some sedimentary rock (with a density of something like 2500 kg/m3) about ten miles or so from where I sit. Would I be safe?

When in doubt, go to the internet. It just so happens that there is a Earth Impact Effects Program just waiting for your variable inputs – and mine!

If you just want the math behind the results, go here. Otherwise, read on – looks like I’ll be ok. Maybe. Wait, no. I think. Not sure. Sounds bad, actually.

First, there is some garbage about, “Energy before atmospheric entry” being 1.36 x 1019 Joules = 3.24 x 103 MegaTons TNT. I could not care less what happened before entry. I want to know about the impact on my ass where it sits – and I may not be a math or science or space guy, but I do know that energy before entry won’t blow down my walls.

We next learn that one of these things will slam into whatever I said it slammed into about once in every 56,000 years. That is not comforting. I checked the records. Ain’t nothing hit about ten miles up the road in the last 56,000 years. I know the probability is calculated as “average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth,” but that is stupid – how am I supposed to figure that out? If it ain’t local, it didn’t happen – a true Appalachian attitude. Got a problem with that? Wanna squeal like a pig? Here piggy, piggy! So adjust the 1:56,000 for the proportion of the Earth’s surface up the road those ten miles. Something-a-helluva-lot-bigger-than-56,000 – still didn’t happen. So there.

There is a spot of good news in that the thing that’s gonna hit will start to break up about 128,000 feet away. That’s like over by Hazleton, a couple two three miles away. No problem. That’s the town that hates illegals. Good thing Jerry Farewell is dead else he’d be screaming, “God’s revenge!” That’s the guy that whacked off in front of prostitutes, right? Bet he’s already bought his season pass to the porn drive-in in Hell. All forty foot penises and sweaty asses – he forgot all about Heaven by the second half of the first double feature. He’s hooked up with some sleazy pharmacist already and is popping Viagra like they’re Tic Tacs. “If your erection lasts more than four hours, seek prompt medical attention”? Hell, no – he’ll be counting on it! Probably trying to negotiate a lifetime movie pass for him and his 12-year-old, um, son (that boy over there in the dress and pink bow – the one that knows the true meaning of Hell).

Here’s the best news. The resulting complex crater will have a transient diameter of 2.83 miles with a depth of one mile, and a final diameter of 3.47 miles and depth of 0.309 miles. With a decent rainy season, I may have another fishing spot pretty close. The volume of the target melted or vaporized is 0.0159 miles, and roughly half the melt remains in the crater, where its average thickness is 13.3 feet. Fishing may not be too good for a millennium or so until the iron content fades, but I’m patient. Also, tain’t no hole close to ten miles. I could not care less what happens over there.

So what do we see? Visible fireball radius of 2.71 miles, with the fireball appearing 61.6 times larger than the sun. We’ll see it for 56.9 seconds. That’s long enough to get a video camera and say all sorts of stupid things like, “Wow, do you see that? Thelma, go get me a beer! Shut-the-fuck-up-and-get-me-a-beer! I’m taping it, dumbass, you can just watch the tape!”

What’s really cool is the effects of the thermal radiation: Clothing ignites, much of the body suffers third degree burns, newspaper ignites, plywood flames, deciduous trees ignite, and grass ignites. Very cool! When! When! When!?! 0.0618 seconds after impact. Wow! Sucks to be them. Distance, as in ten miles, does make the heart grow fonder, eh? No, wait, the thermal radiation effects can’t be for ground zero – that would be a hole. This affects me? This sucks! You mean their hole is going to become my problem? WTF? At least I don’t read newspapers, so I don’t have to worry about that part. Won’t have to badger the boy to cut the subsequently non-existent grass, either. One less thing to worry about. That’s good. Wait. In 6/100s of a second it will get to me? That’s kinda fast. Could that really be ten miles away? But if like this thing slams into the back of your head and leaves a hole about three miles wide, what the hell is someone calculating that the newspaper would combust? Gotta be ten miles away. This really sucks. Let me try some math to see if I can figure this out. If a train leave the station traveling northbound for 6/100s of second and travels ten miles, toasting all the grass and newspapers along the way, how fast is it going in MPH? Damn. Um. Wait, I know this one. Um. Let’s see. If I take miles/hour, and substitute 10 for miles, and the fractional hour in that lower thingey on the other side of the slash. No wait. I don’t know. Gimme a minute! Um. OK, I think I’m right. 6/100s of a second, figuring 3,600 seconds in an hour is 0.00001667 hours or something like that. OK. 10/that number I just said is 600,000 MPH. But the speed of light is the theoretical maximum speed, and that’s 186,282.397 MP--, MP--. Damn! Miles per SECOND. OK, if a train leaves the station traveling northbound at 600,000 MPH, toasting clothes and trees in its wake, how many miles will it travel in a second? Um. 600,000 miles divided by the number of seconds in an hour, right? This seems familiar. Um. 600,000 / 3,600 = 166.67 MPS. Is that right? If I take 6 times 16, that’s 96, close enough to 100 (being one second) and then 10 times 16 is 160 … OK. Rough check correct. So the, what were we talking about? Thermal radiation, right – yeah, in less than a second it would fry everything around me. Damn. “On second thought, Thelma, here, you hold the camera. I’ll get my own beer.”

There would be a touch of seismic activity, of course, but I’ve ridden out a 7+ before. Let’s see what this would do in light of being 10 miles from the epicenter. I would feel it at 3.22 seconds after impact. Not bad. Would still be locked into the drop-and-roll thing to put my clothes out – or laughing my ass off as Thelma did it as I watched comfortably from inside with cold beer in hand. Richter 6.9 – pussy strength. What does Mercalli say about damage here? Damage negligible in buildings of good design and construction; slight to moderate in well-built ordinary structures; considerable damage in poorly built or badly designed structures; some chimneys broken. Damage slight in specially designed structures; considerable damage in ordinary substantial buildings with partial collapse. Damage great in poorly built structures. Fall of chimneys, factory stacks, columns, monuments, walls. Heavy furniture overturned. Piece of cake. Except that it followed the radiation thingey. This is beginning to suck. For Thelma.

There will be an air blast, too. Good – time to cool off. Get to me about in 48.8 seconds at 69.2 psi and a maximum velocity of 1,130 mph. Ouch! Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse. Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse. Multistory steel-framed office-type buildings will suffer extreme frame distortion, incipient collapse. Highway truss bridges will collapse. Highway girder bridges will collapse. Glass windows will shatter. Cars and trucks will be largely displaced and grossly distorted and will require rebuilding before use. Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves. OK, this really sucks big time.

Before we get too depressed, we have to remember that ejecta is going to come. When? Approximately 57.4 seconds after the impact. So Thelma cooks in situ, add a little shake to the bake, turn on the cosmic-sized hairdryer, and then I have to dodge shit?!? How big? Average thickness of 36.5 inches and mean fragment diameter of 14.4 feet. That could hurt. Better go inside – Thelma can take care of herself. Are her clothes off yet? Didn’t mess up my hair, did it? I’m trying to grow it out. Damn!

This really blows. Maybe I should move about ten more miles away.

¿Dónde está el cuarto de baño?

Alright, let’s try this. I am still quite cranked, but it has nothing to do with you all – well, most of you at least.

Regardless of writing much of my personal feelings for net publication, I am at heart a private person. Intensely private. I’ve left enough stories in my wake for people to talk for the rest of their lives in some diminishing increment of their pathetic existence. In fact, I’ve faced the wall of blowing my brains all over the forest floor and decided not to because I didn’t want to give the vermin yet another story which either began or ended with, “I knew it would happen.” Talk about pathetic, eh?

I don’t mind being tagged as a vacationing carny. I love that some people tune in just to see if the train wrecked yet. I chuckle when I check my SiteMeter and see locales threaded through my history. I do mind, however, when those given a crow’s nest view of my life abuse the privilege. It is a privilege to be so perched in anyone’s life – there is no aspect of a “right” to it. Privileges, quite by design, can be revoked or, in the alternative, made painfully uncomfortable.

Intensely private. The privilege of the crow’s nest. Painfully uncomfortable. We on the same page? Glad we had this conversation.

Alright. Done. Onward.

New bumper sticker: “Your honor student initiated sex with my dog.”

Found this in my travels: Since light travels faster than sound, is that why
some people appear bright until you hear them speak?

Orlando was good. It was all work – never left the grounds of the conference center. Twelve hundred attendees with a handful of fun folks. Disney dominates that town like something out of Brave New World. It’s frightening. Bus after bus at the airport transported visitors on their pilgrimage to the Land of Manufactured Happy. You gotta know that the Queen of Hearts (or whoever that cranky one is) is a dominatrix in her second job, and that the testosterone-driven unspoken contest each year is to see who can nail the new Alice or Cinderella or Snow White first. Is it a trifecta if you get all three? There is a dark side to Disney, and it is not limited to the frozen cells between Uncle Walt’s ears.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worthy of sharing again … you can get a lot of free music through Papaiti. It is nothing more than a specialized google search for indices of mp3s. I just put in an artist name and rarely bother with song titles. Not all hits return music – when you get to a site and within a directory so that you have apparent mp3 files, right click and do “Save As.” If it returns a save as “mp3” you are ready – sometimes it comes back as an html file. Move on to another site. Also, be sure to move up the line on a site by hitting the “parent directory.” Sometimes you tap into the mother lode. I’ve found some good bootleg as well as released music.

I was over on futility closet, and noticed a November 11, 2007 post (tagged, “death”) wherein he lists some “unfortunate grave inscriptions.” I have always enjoyed graveyards. I cannot remember a time when I was not moved to silence as I walked through the resting places. I always notice fresh dirt or flowers as I drive by. I used to wonder what inscription I would want, and I finally realized a few years ago why I could never come up with even a phrase: I am not going to have a gravesite. I want nothing left behind but stories and fading memories. I toyed with the idea of having my ashes made into Christmas ornaments for a few folks that I loved deeply, but that, too, has receded. A few stories, traversing good and bad, a few pics that lose their depth over time and become a two-dimensional rendering of a person the viewer once knew – that is appropriate methinks. “Fade to black, and … cut! On-set break for lunch.”

I have nothing more to say right now. I’ll be your clown later. Have a good day …

The Doctor is In

I went through my old e’s and found that I have almost 20 of these case studies. So I have some catch up to do. I sure hope none of my patients died in the interim. That would be bad. I think.

Today we have, “Altered Mental Status in a Homeless Man.” Let’s start, as we always do, with the photographic evidence.

This here thing-a-ma-bob with the squiggly lines is called an “electrocardiogram.” It’s called that because of a little known story. It's a good story. Let me tell it to you.

It seems that a clerk in a Western Union office in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in or about 1884, was sending a telegraph message.

. .- - | -- .
.. | .- -- | ... . .-. .. --- ..- ...
. .- - | -- .

(If you're out of pratice with Morse Code - you have to do one line at a time.)

A bandit rushed! He was a particularly cruel bandit with yellow teeth and small feet. He told the clerk to give him all the money – he said, “Give me all the money!” The clerk said he didn’t have any money, except the few bits people paid for telegrams to be sent. “Well then,” said the bandit, “send one of them there electric telegrams and tell somebody to bring money here! Now!” The clerk agreed:

--. --- - | ... --- -- . | .-- .... .- -.-. -.- | .--- --- -... | .... . .-. .
... -- . .-.. .-.. ... | .-.. .. -.- . | .... --- .-. ... . | -.-. ..- --
-.-. --- .-- .--. --- -.- . | .. ... | .- | ...- . .-. -... | - --- | - .... .. ... | --. ..- -.—
... . -. -.. | - .... . | ... .... . .-. .. ..-. ..-. | --..-- | | .--. .-.. . .- ... .
- .... .. ... | --. ..- -.-- | -- .- -.- . ... | -- -.-- | .- ... ... | - .-- .. - -.-. .... | ..--.. | | | .... ..- .-. .-. -.-- | ..--.. |

“You be typing a lot, little man,” said the bandit.

“I am telling them to bring a lot of money. That takes extra words,” said the clerk.

“Oh,” said the bandit.

Soon the sheriff could be seen in the distance with his posse and the bandit knew he had been duped.

“Why, I oughta send YOU as a telegram!” he spit through his cracked lips with breath that smelled like he had sex with his horse in lieu of breakfast.

Then the bad bandit smiled a terrible smile. He tied the clerk to his chair – arms, legs, and neck – and gagged him with a dirty oil rag. He took out his Bowie knife and CUT the clerk’s shirt open with a flourish. He did a pirouette and clasped his hands together as his pants got tight across the middle section. He paused for a moment. His eyes glossed over. He looked at the clerk intently. "You married? Involved?" Drool leaked out of his mouth.

With a snap of his head, his eyes cleared. “You got a needle and thread?” he asked the clerk. The clerk nodded towards the cabinet on the far side of the wall. “Thanks,” said the bandit.

The bandit rummaged through the cabinet and found what he needed. He went to the desk, took the telegram button thingey that you hit to make that tap-tap-tap sound, and then sat in front of the clerk.

“This is gonna hurt. Sorry,” said the bandit. He threaded his needle. The clerk’s eye was wide open (he lost the other in a terrible accident that the family refers to simply as, “The Baking Soda Incident,” then they all lower there heads and they shift uncomfortably in their seats). With the swiftness of a mule on crack chasing the candy delivery cart, the bandit disconnected the wires from the telegram button thingey, tied them a few inches apart on the thread, made an incision with his Bowie knife just below the clerk’s rib cage, and reached up in there with the needle in hand.

He sewed the wires to the clerk’s beating heart in mere seconds, then used a blanket stitch to close the wound.

“Now, I want you stay in this chair for a few days. Drink lots of fluids, and come see me if it isn’t healing properly, OK?” said the bandit.

With his eye as round as a dollar coin and face as pale as a bucket of chalk dust, the clerk, through his gagged mouth said, “Hhm-uh.”

The bandit stood still, tilted his head, and listened intently. “Can you hear it? Can you?” he said.

“Hrmph vtoph,” the clerk seemed to say.

“You. You’re an electrical-heart-telegram! I made a fun—”

Before the bandit could finish his sentence, ”Zing” came a .50 caliber slug into the back of his head. The sheriff had saved the day! Unfortunately, the posse opened fire at the same time, and the clerk took no less than three pounds of lead from his belt up.

A little over 50 miles away in Laramie, Wyoming, a clerk was hunched over his desk. He was transcribing the dots and dashes he was receiving from Cheyenne.

“What the fuck is that?” his boss said over his shoulder.

“Can’t make sense of it, sir. Sometimes I think it says … wait … it just stopped.”

“Must’ve been rats chewing the line. Throw it away.”

“Yes, sir.”

The story spread to the universities on the east coast. Collectively, they thought it was rather amusing, but may also hold scientific value. So they got some government money and perfected the technique on prisoners.

The name of the procedure was changed to reflect the Latin base more illustrative of the seriousness with which they viewed themselves – electro-cardio-gram, or “ECG,” for short.

OK. Where was I? Oh, yeah, this guy’s ECG:


Notice how the lines kinda go up, and then down, with flat spots in between. Might be important. Note, “Lots of flat spots on the telegram thingey.”

See those little rises? Those are called “P waves.” You can calculate the Atrial rate from the distance between them. Them big spikes are called “R waves,” and have something to do with Ventricular rate. I have no skills with which to apply such knowledge, but I am pretty sure it has something to do with his heart.

Note, “Patient has a heart.”

OK, enough with the pictures. Let’s go interview the guy!

BACKGROUND. A 38-year-old man is brought by ambulance to the emergency department. The patient was found lying near the stoop of an apartment building (he was asleep? Why are you bothering the dude? Let him relax?). The paramedics were unable to obtain any history from the patient en route because the patient has an altered mental status (maybe because his “altered mental status” was REM sleep?!?).

On arrival, the patient’s vital signs are an oral temperature of 95.72°F (35.4°C) (a little cool), a blood pressure of 88/40 mm Hg (relaxed), a heart rate of 38 bpm (very relaxed), and a respiratory rate of 24 breaths/min (deep sleep, ok?). His oxygen saturation could not be obtained. The patient appears to be a homeless, disheveled man and looks older than his chronologic age, with a faint smell of alcohol on his breath (so he had a beers, found a nice doorway, and went to sleep. You people running low on patients or high on residents? Can’t you just let the poor man sleep?). He can be aroused but does not follow simple commands (neither do you, numbnuts, until your first cup of coffee. Did you give him a cup of coffee?). He has intact gag and corneal reflexes (“gag reflexes” WTF did you people do? You crammed something down his throat, he gags, you write “normal” on the chart? WTF?). His pupils are equal and reactive to light. No obvious signs of head trauma are noted, and the examination of his oropharynx is unremarkable (so … nothing wrong with the guy? I reiterate – why did you drag his ass in here? He was sleeping!!). The results of his cardiac examination are significant for marked bradycardia (smoker, lived outside – got a problem with that?). A lung examination reveals rhonchi in the right lower lung field. The patient’s skin is cold, and his blood glucose level is 104 mg/dL.

An electrocardiogram (ECG) was performed before the physical examination (see Image).

What is the diagnosis and treatment? (Drunk, asleep, no coffee.)

HINT. The patient’s rectal temperature is 87.7°F (31°C). (Here we go with the rectal again. You drag this guy out of bed, cram something down his throat to make him gag, and now you stick something up his ass to check his temperature?!? What is wrong with you people?!? But, hey, we have something here. Several degrees lower. Think, Dr. Clyde, think. Seems familiar. Think. New Hampshire. Snow bank. 1981. Drunk. I GOT IT! He has “Cold Ass.” Used to get it all the time when I got drunk and slept in doorways. What’s the problem here? Just give him a cup of coffee and maybe a hot shower.)

ANSWER. Hypothermia secondary to alcohol use and environmental exposure: The patient’s ECG demonstrates the classic abnormalities associated with hypothermia, the most evident being profound sinus bradycardia. … (We’re done here. Cold Ass. Drunk and asleep. Move on.)

(Only because I like you people, I’ll leave the rest of the text intact. Remember – Cold Ass.). In addition, all leads show classic Osborn waves (J waves seen at the junction of the QRS complex and the ST segment). As always, the ECG must be interpreted within the clinical context; in this case, the apparent elevations of the ST segment should not be misinterpreted as evidence of myocardial injury. Other common ECG findings associated with hypothermia that are not seen on this tracing include atrial and ventricular dysrhythmias, as well as prolongation of the PR, QRS, and QT intervals.

This case features the most common etiology of hypothermia (ie, environmental exposure or accidental hypothermia). Other conditions often coexist, such as infection, metabolic abnormalities (eg, hypoglycemia), drug or alcohol overdose, and endocrine problems (eg, hypothyroidism); on occasion, any one or a combination of these conditions may also be the etiology.

In general, the life-threatening cardiovascular complications of hypothermia are cardiogenic shock and malignant dysrhythmias. Typically, rewarming the patient is sufficient to restore normal myocardial contractility and cardiac rhythm. For patients in shock who do not respond to resuscitation with warmed intravenous fluid and other passive and active rewarming techniques, low-dose dopamine is the recommended agent because of its inotropic and peripheral vasoconstrictive effects. Atrial dysrhythmias are generally associated with a slow ventricular response; therefore, treatment with digoxin or calcium channel blockers is not warranted. Bretylium has long been recommended for the treatment and prevention of ventricular dysrhythmias, though little evidence supports this practice. The use of amiodarone has increased in recent years as a result of shortages in the world supply of bretylium. For refractory bradydysrhythmia, external noninvasive pacing is recommended in favor of transvenous pacing because insertion of pacing wires into a hypothermic ventricle can potentially cause a fatal dysrhythmia.

Hypothermia is often diagnosed before an ECG is performed; however, the ECG can provide important clues to the diagnosis and yields critical information regarding the overall severity of the patient’s condition, from an electrophysiologic standpoint.

Woodstock, NY

I went to Woodstock this weekend. Is it a pilgrimage for hippies, like Mecca for Christian-haters, er, Muslims? (You see, I always get confused when books fundamental to a religion reads, “Now when you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks until you overcome them fully...” (Qur’an 47:4).)(Continued digression – what is wrong with you people? “Smite”? “Smite” them? That’s a little extreme, ain’t it? And just because we are “unbelievers” in your version of the afterlife? Can’t we – can’t we al – [I can never get this phrase out without bursting out laughing][focus, Clyde][breath deep, stretch toes (it works!)][OK] Can’t we all just get along?)(Full Disclosure: I had a Muslim guy make some crack to me Saturday morning when I was pumping my own gas. Seems it was a semi-full service gas station. The Muslim guys running it were wandering around helping people pump their gas. I was mid-pump before he got there. He walks up to me and says, “Ah, typical American! You think you can do everything!” I said with a smile, “Not everything, but I can pump gas.” He did this good natured laugh and walked away. I looked at the back of his turban thinking, “WTF was that?”).

Whew, man, where was I? Woodstock! Oh, yeah. I went to Woodstock, NY, this weekend. It was, um, interesting. Screaming liberals caught in a 40-year time warp. I am so incredibly happy for them that we are fighting a war in Iraq – it gives them the perfect parallel for Johnson and Vietnam (well, let’s be fair, they still think it was Nixon, but that’s absurd to anyone who wasn’t tripping their brains out constantly from 1963 through 1973 … oh yeah! Nevermind – Nixon’s war. Got it.)

Everywhere you look you see condemnation of President Bush and the war: Store fronts, telephone poles, car bumpers. Surprisingly, there completely lacked any innovation slogans. The most common, which also made appearances on yard signs, read simply, “Impeach.” OK. Whatever. Free country, free speech (thanks to President Bush’s appointment of conservatives to SCOTUS). Isn’t “impeach” a transitive verb? It needs an object, right? I understand sentences in a continuum where the subject can be understood to avoid redundancy, but I never saw an object-understood sentence. I also did not see any of the bumper stickers popular with liberals down here: “I support the troops. Bring them home.” (Ah, you support them as long as they don’t have to do what they are trained to do. Yeah, OK. Whatever.) So in Woodstock, they support neither the war nor the military. Funny how some things don’t change.

So what does Woodstock look like? Here’s the “Corner Cupboard.” The red cans out front read, “Butts.” I think they are port-a-potties. See the paper-laden telephone poles? The white paper facing the road reads, “Lost dog today.” Funny. The sign outdates itself in less than 24 hours. There’s foresight! “Ah, Flower, you need to tell them when you lost the dog, so they know how long ago.” “Um, yeah, I guess you’re right, Moonbeam. What day is it?” “Today.” “OK, I’ll put that.”

So I got up at 630 or 700 this morning. The place was putting out coffee at 900. 900? You run this place and you sleep in? People staying there are, like, tourists. Tourists get up and, well, tour. Coffee is a staple. Tourists get cranky without coffee, and me in particular having to wait until 900. Had to walk three blocks to find the first open place. Here’s where I eventually had coffee this morning. Yeah, this pic was taken in 1969. That’s Bob Dylan in the doorway. Same place, still there. They keep the coffee pots in the walk-in freezer. Still can’t figure that out. Maybe it has something to do with making iced coffee. How do you make iced coffee if the pot is warm? Makes sense on some stoned-out-for-decades basis, I guess.

This picture of the waterfalls is from 1900 or thereabouts. Same falls, still there. Nothing changes in Woodstock, it seems, except the inventory of the consumables: Weed, acid, mushrooms, coffee, guitar strings, hair dye. The things that stay the same include waterfalls, coffee shops, late risers, glossy eyes, mindless stares, clothes now threadbare, publicly accessible port-a-potties. Even the people are the same people that have been there since 1969. You see, when you come into town from the NYS Thruway on Route 212, the road bends to the left and becomes Tinker Street. OK, no problem. But when you go back there’s like this other road that you don’t see when you come in. So if you travel back down Tinker, the 212 thing is, like, other there, but then in front of you is this road. It, um, well, it’s freaky, cuz, like, if you go out that road then, like, it isn’t 212. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t that 212 thing. So, I think we’d better turn around. Now, if you walk, it’s cool. The 212 thing comes up, and, hey, there’s “Not Fade Way”! Let’s go in! Maybe the new Janis shirt came in, or some new Jimi stuff. Then, like, before we know it, we’re on 212. But in a car, it just doesn’t work that way. Must be Bush's fault. So, well, may as well find a place to live, eh?

Doubt me? Compare these pics. See the guy in the BW, the one sitting up front? Same dude in color, just now he’s wearing a dress. Looks like the place he got to live is town square. Nice TV.



Woodstock, NY. Remarkable town.

watering holes

I like to wander in and through data sometimes. It’s like a digital skinny-dipping session.

To show you how much my mind is going, I couldn’t come up with “skinny dipping,” although it was a very common term growing up in the country. Lots of people did it, or so they claimed. I never did. Too vivid an imagination, I guess. I always envisioned everything turning into some teenage orgy all asses and elbows and neighbors with flashlights and pregnancies and repentance and girls going to nun factories and boys to boot camp (none of which happened); or night sea creatures no bigger than four- or five-foot eels or water moccasins snatching innocent feet, wrapping around legs, performing colonoscopies, boys crying for help, girls giggling, dead bodies found the following day, sleepless nights, and prolonged silences followed by memorizing books from Tibet, shaving all body hair, and moving to LA to sell flowers at the airport (none of which, to my knowledge, happened). No, nothing good could come from skinny dipping.

To grasp the term within my present mind again (and all the horrors of yesteryear), I googled “swimming nude night.” There it was up top. But also lurking at about 3d, I learned that Hibiscus Coast Sun Club has such fun events as nude volleyball, nude swimming, and nude pizza.

Nude pizza. D’ja’ever get hot cheese or sauce on a body part? Why for a split second would I expose my ankle spanker to hot food? Makes no sense. And think about it – we’re all sitting around here naked, “hey, nice tits,” “yeah, you said that ten times already,” sex has got to crop into it somewhere. So how do we build up sexual tension? With pizza? Tomato sauce? WTF, that’s gross! Although I can just hear the naturalists – “It isn’t sex, you pervert, it’s all about freedom” – freedom, my ass, Nat-boy, you’re either gay or pounding as many women as you can (for real or through your right hand alone in your bed at night).

Oh, I get it! Maybe the pizza is like a designed “turn off” thingey. Like a decompression chamber. You fear getting bobo scalded with hot cheese, she drips sauce and looks like instant menstruation. I get it. OK, makes sense.

So I back the URL away from the calendar of events to the HBSC homepage. I’ve got this picture in my head of teenage-years venues: lakes with beaches, moonlight shimmering on rippling water, dark woods with defined paths. Man, was I wrong. This pic is not a joke. Just go to the link above.

WTF? Your “nude swimming” nights are in rather close quarters, eh Nat-boy? So Nat-girl rips one and everyone giggles? You with your quick wit and care-to-wind attitude add, “Somebody had pizza!”

Go to the “About Us” page. It reads, in part, “There are bush walks and glow worms at night.” I think its code. Perverts. Put your pants on. No, animals are not nude – they got body hair. You don’t. Get dressed. Your mother know you’re doing this? That’s her over there? Oh, gross. “Ma’am, excuse me, you should be ashamed of yourself … OMG! Lady! You’re an octogenarian – matching nipple and clit rings?!? I’m gonna throw up.”

How’d I get on this topic? Let me backtrack in my mind … ah, somehow or another I was City-Data.com for Lutherville-Timonium, MD. I found it to be an odd name and was curious. Must be a merger of two towns, but, c’mon, no one could come up with a better name than stitching together the old ones like some Bride of Frankenstein?

So anyway, the map was a bit misleading on scale. Seemed to be further away from Baltimore than it actually is. Quite close, actually. Towson right there. Lots of higher ed. Older population. Maybe a nice bedroom community. Then to my initial shock and horror, I see this entry:

Likely homosexual households (counted as self-reported same-sex unmarried-partner households). Lesbian couples: 0.4% of all households; Gay men: 0.2% of all households.

I was struck because the first thing I thought of was Nazis and Communists and lions and tigers and bears, oh no! The word “likely” really threw me. Felt like “round up the usual suspects.” Had I wandered onto some secret webpage being used by deep-cover algore types who preach tolerance and inclusion by day but target for torture and assassination social nonconformists by night? I had to test my theory. First, in Lutherville-Timonium, MD, having twice as many dykes as stick-boys just didn’t ring true; also, collectively 0.6% on a population of 15,814 is 95 “alternative people.” Ninety-five sounds made up – afterall, being the paranoid social defect that I am, it is not lost upon me that Interstate 95 is amazingly close to the target area. Maybe Lu-Tim is just flying under the RADAR of the Social Deviance Police. Let’s go to a place we know is replete with gay men and see if the SDP has it in its sights …

San Francisco: Lesbians, 0.7%; Gay men, 2.0%. Now that’s funny! I knew more gay men in SF than the 2.0%, and I never even went to the bath houses! Well, except that one time … to pick up a friend … I don’t mean “pick up” like that … gee, it’s not like I’m gay or anything like that … he needed a ride, a-hole, that’s all … IN MY CAR! A RIDE IN MY CAR! … well, yeah, I stayed for a while … NO! I did NOT lay down in a little room with a jar of Vaseline next to me! … well, yeah, I saw the glory holes – NO! I did not! This conversation is OVER!

corpses

I was thinking about the sun as I sat outside with my dogs. Its surface is about 11 million degrees. We’re about 93 million miles away (mean distance because, duh, we are an elliptical orbit). Absolute zero is about 459 degrees F. Electromagnetic waves toss energy under our tropopause. Gravity holds us through the curvature of space in this pocket. All that stuff – heat loss traveling through space, the troposphere holding what gets here, gravity making sure we maintain a livable distance – all lead to a narrow band of temperatures that means my dogs don’t fry like two really large corndogs. I hoped they enjoyed chasing butterflies and pissing on my yard.

Had Stouffer’s Mac & Cheese tonight. One of those big frozen ones that is dubbed “family size.” I think “impacted colon” and “enough sodium to stroke out three otherwise healthy adults” are more accurate labels. If I wasn’t about to go hypo I would have thrown up the first bite and thrown away both the remaining portion and the bowl that held it. Just the thought of it processing through my intestines is enough to make my hands shake. Good thing I work at home – tomorrow morning’s movement will rival the worst of the Baroque period, something akin to Peter Paul Rubens on bad mushrooms.

Have you ever been to one of those living museums? Where people dress up and make brooms? I often wonder if there is someone there that everyone stays away from because he is “too into it.” Like he’s a Nazi about the people that use Charmin, insisting that only leaves and newspaper (post-Gutenberg) could be used to wipe your ass. If you hung along long enough, I bet you could smell him in a crowd. See how he walked funny from perpetual Pimple Ass.

One thing I enjoy about visiting old settlements is how low the doors are. I am 5’10” (or used to be – 5’9” now?). I would have been a giant. I could have walked around and … well, I would never have walked around. My childhood disease would not have been cured. I would have been a footnote in one of those families – 17 kids, 8 died before maturity, 1 of which died in infancy.

I sat in a restaurant in Chicago this past Wednesday night. My coworker stayed at some dumb hotel that messed up their shuttle so he was late. I waited an hour, but that was fine. For a while, I sat on a bench just inside the door. It was interesting to watch people come and go. This woman walked out of the eating area. A man was several feet behind her. She left the restaurant, and did not hold the door open for him. There was a vestibule, and she blew through those doors as well. They went to the same SUV, and she got behind the wheel. He was whipped; she was just a bitch. All sorts of people ignored old people approaching the doors. Not everyone, of course, but just an incredible amount of people was absorbed in their own worlds. Does not play well with others: Check. Needs to be more aware of those around him: Check. Needs to be less of an asshole: Check.

I shaved for the first time today in almost two weeks. Took my first shower since Thursday. Did I say that out loud? Damn.

Did you ever wonder who was the first person to think about frying an egg and eating it? I suspect one fell on a rock in some god-forsaken furnace of a locale. Sounds logical. But then who thought about using uncooked egg whites and oil to make mayonnaise? And then to take that white slime and put it on bread with decaying animal flesh? And people wonder why they have loose stools – go figure. The colon is just saying, “I’m not even going to bother firming this stuff up, just – get – it – out – of – me – now!”

I’ll be driving to Virginia this week. I hope the weather is a few degrees warmer than it is here. We have frosts just north of us. I wore sweatpants and sweatshirt today. Undershirt for the first time in months. Last time I went, I had two dozen raw oysters for dinner. Will probably do the same this time. I actually dislike eating in restaurants. I am much more comfortable with my pots and pans, my spice rack, and groceries that I bought. I was out once and ordered some soup that would up having dead pig in it – couldn’t believe it. Talk about truth in advertising. It was a personal dinner, not business. I vaguely remember being yelled at for making my point to the waitress that not everyone eats corpses. Even more vague to me was when I was reminded that I ordered the same thing at the same restaurant and made the same complaint. I have learned, I do believe, to just eat what I order and always smile. It is so hard for me to learn manners.

I need to do some things …