Metamorphosism

Good way to catch tortoises

• Learn to play the harp
• Put harp out where you think tortoises might be
• Play
• Tortoises will crawl out of their hiding places and come in close to listen
• Catch as many as you need before they can run away

It's still too cold to put our tortoise outside, so she spends the days in our kitchen, usually hiding under the bench when she isn't wandering around underfoot pretending to be a hockey puck. When my daughter practices, she (tortoise) crawls out from under the kitchen bench, through the living room towards the library, where aforementioned daughter is practicing. It's sort of a Hallmark moment every time, if Hallmark were cooler.

E-voting

How e-voting threatens democracy.

Harris discovered that she could enter the vote database using Microsoft Access -- a standard program often bundled with Microsoft Office -- and change votes without leaving a trace.

On being a fool

The rising sun was big and orange, divided horizontally into a brighter upper half and a darker lower half that shrank and melted into the brighter upper half as it rose over the hills until, finally, you couldn't look at it straight-on anymore.

Four magpies flew across the bridge, and perched briefly on a streetlight before flying on. The streetlight flickered off as if the magpies had stolen its light.

At breakfast he said, that was the best five euro I ever spent. That fortune teller reminding me that I have a happy life did me more good than a month of therapy.

How would you know, she said, you've never had therapy.

No idea why she's trying to get me to a therapist. I like my nightmares, insomnia and being depressed now and then. Part of me fears that if that suffering were to end, something really nasty would happen. I have a happy life, I don't want to jinx it.

I have a happy life. I'm a happy guy.

They say, though, as long as you fear you're crazy, you're not crazy. So if you think you don't need therapy, maybe you do.

Magpies were a Leitmotif in Parcival. The version I read, anyway.

I'm a big Parcival fan. Der reine Tor. The pure fool. Listen, I don't recommend being a fool, not to anyone. The word does have a negative connotation, after all.

Still: maybe being a fool is not the same thing as being stupid. It's just not being wise, or conventionally wise.

Maybe it's stepping outside this big social construct and looking at things honestly. Court jesters were fools, after all. Their job was telling the truth, after all. Nothing funnier than the truth.

After all.

Man, I could use a fu*king cigarette.

It is foolish to look behind the curtain, at the man behind the curtain. It is foolish to look behind the mirror. It is foolish to look at things from the outside. It is foolish to trade your only cow to a stranger for magic beans. OTOH: gold! A giant woman (in one version)! Golden eggs! Singing harp!

It is foolish to make eye contact with someone from beyond the pale. OTOH: I don't care about money. I am happy.
I am happy.

(And if I had a smoke, I'd be really f*cking happy.)

Gosh, quitting smoking is hard

Somehow, I was cranky yesterday.
I was deciding to quit smoking, once and for all, and that always makes me cranky.
So, sorry if I said anything snarky to you or insulted your moustache.
Or anything like that.
Today, I have no cigarettes, and the guy who gives me cigarettes is out of town, so things look good there. Don't bother to wish me success or anything, though, cause, eh, you know.
Anyway. Brace yourselves for really nasty, snarky posts for like the coming twenty years if I manage to find the will to really quit this time.

This was supposed to just be the lead in to a funny post about something, but I suddenly had to duck out of the office to pick a guy up somewhere (unlike yesterday, I didn't turn on the wipers while trying to turn on the headlights, doh, sorry, this isn't usually my job; although the clutch on Mercedes vans? Sensitive little suckers, man; got a little rubber at a couple traffic lights) and while trying to navigate my way to passenger's destination (imagine a map constructed out of a ball of hibernating copperheads: the airport would be at the mouth of one of the copperheads, and the person's destination would be at the anus of another copperhead, over at the other side of the ball) stuck in quite rapid freeway traffic behind a flatbed full of a zillion tons of concrete and steel pipes, with all these kinky on-ramps and off-ramps and shit all over, and some really fucking crazy Mercedes limousine drivers zooming past on the left, my wife calls me on my cell phone and says honey? You remember that bathroom furniture we liked so much at the furniture store? And said if only it cost only five-hundred fiscal units instead of two thousand? Well the furniture store is remodeling everything and guess what, they only want five hundred for the display model? But you know the marble surface of the one part [ARBLEGARBLEBARGLE mobilephoneinterference GRABGLE] okay? And I'm all, sure honey, sounds good to me, can I call you back in a min?

So I forgot what the funny post was supposed to be. Sorry. I'll post it in ten minutes when I remember again.

How to have a popular blog

I highly recommend this article, if only for the snazzy graph, and the moustache. Reading that, I had the same feeling of envy and wonder I had a couple years ago when that Peter Pan guy's site was so popular.

This is what the article says about how to improve your blog: 1. provide something unique; 2. provide something valuable; 3. be first; 4. do your research; and 5. learn to write very well.

Not just well, but very well. If you just write well, you're f*cked, in a nutshell.

What great and unique ideas, you say. Why didn't someone else think of that already, you ask. Why is your blog so popular, Mig, since you don't do any of that stuff, you also ask.

Because, I say, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about, while I do, obviously. Here is the secret formula:

Mig's top-secret formula i.e. How to Really have a Popular Blog:

1. Use ordered lists alot, or unordered lists for that matter, to appear organized.
2. Write wistfully about deer now and then.
3. Or tortoises.
4. Post like a m*therf*cker, several times a day.
5. Send Eeksypeeksy free shit so he comments on your blog, this attracts intellectuals.
6. Give away buttons.
7. Have limerick poetry contests. And neologism contests.
8. Start a bunch of projects that peter out, or take off once you give them to someone else.
9. Get a pig shave.
10. I'm forgetting something. Not sure what.

Garlic only makes you tasty

A necrodefiled vampire walks into a bar...

I have an enemy. No, I have two enemies.

She stopped in front of the crafts shop, examining something in a display basket out in front of the store. I wondered if she planned to swipe it. I walked around her.

Before that: "No thanks," I said. "Is powerful talisman," she said. "Will protect you from your enemies, who caused your traffic accidents with their bad wishes." "Seriously, no thanks," I said. She shrugged and walked off, not really in a huff, but I wondered if now I had made a third enemy, a fortune-teller who was going to curse me now.

Before that: She extracted a little embroidered coin purse from her larger purse and removed a pinch of herbs, held them up for me to smell. I smelled nothing. "See, smell that? Powerful herbs, brother" she said. I nodded. "Powerful, okay," I said. She put the herbs into the little square of paper she had begged from the cleaner and folded it up into a tiny package. "You add a little salt and a little bread. You don't eat it, just carry it in your pocket to protect you." She took out a little wooden rosary, asked me my name and said a long prayer over the package, including my name. "Here," she gave me the package. "How much do you want to give me for it? It will protect you." I shook my head. "I already gave you five Euro," I said. "That was for the palm reading," she said.

Before that: She didn't let go of my hand. "There's more. You are happy now, but you have enemies. No, you have two enemies. Intriguing against you, wishing you ill." "No fooling?" I said. "Wishing you and your family ill. You need protection."

Before that: Over her shoulder, I saw the dry cleaner cashier wore a bemused expression on her face. We both ignored her. The fortune-teller took my hand. Her hands were warm. "Don't worry, my color won't come off on you, my hands are clean," she said. "Same here," I said. "My hands are clean too." "You have a happy life," she said. "You don't have a lot of money, but you don't care about money. Family, happiness are more important to you." "That's correct," I said. "How do you know that?" "It's all in your hand," she said. "You are not too worried. You don't have worries. Your forehead is smooth." I can tell your fortune too, I thought. You are an outcast, I thought. You have had a run-in with the police -- I had seen her picture in the newspaper a couple years ago, when she (or someone a lot like her) and an accomplice had been arrested for bilking a woman out of thousands of Euro with a protection-from-bad-luck scam. You have lost children, I thought, to death, or to life. You are very short, and very old, and very scary-looking, I thought. "You have a scar," she said. "Is it on the left side or the right side?" "Amazing, dude, I have scars all over," I said. "You have had a traffic accident. No injuries, only damage to the car." "Twice," I said. "My fault both times." She nodded sagely. "You are married, but not to your great love." Wrong, I thought, but I played along. "Why not? Divorce? Something else?" she asked. "Just didn't work out," I said. She nodded some more. "You had worries about your children. Health, or school." Boy, right there, I thought. They were both tiny preemies. "They're fine now, though," I said. "You have golden hands, you can do anything with your hands." "Thanks," I said. I sure hoped she was right about that, I had to make a bunch of sushi later in the day for guests who were coming over. And gyoza, and yakisoba, etc etc. My turn came and I picked up my suits, paid, palmed a five Euro bill from the change. "Here, come outside, I'll read your palm some more," she said. I gave her the money.

Before that: I went into the dry cleaners to pick up my suits. I was third in line, two ladies were in there before me, a sixtyish Austrian woman who picked something up, and a tiny old Gypsy. The Gypsy was taking sweets out of an Easter basket on the counter. "That's enough, now," the cashier said. "Just a couple more," she said with a thick Eastern-European accent. "I have kids, kids have to eat sugar," she continued shoveling chocolate eggs and bunnies into her purse until the cashier removed the basket. "Could I have a bag for the candy?" the old woman asked. No one was looking at the old woman. We all avoided eye-contact. This I found crappy, so I stopped avoiding eye-contact. "We don't have any bags." "Give me a piece of paper, then." The cashier gave her a tiny square of note paper. The old woman turned to go, then approached me. "Give me your hand," she said. Alright, I thought. Gypsy palm-reader.

Before that: "Your eyebrows are turning white," my hair stylist said. "I noticed," I said. She held up a big hand mirror so I could see my hair all over. I nodded sagely. Big deal, a pig shave is a pig shave, even if it takes forty-five minutes and includes a soporific scalp massage and is called a styling. Main thing is: it's short because Gamma loves to run her hands over it when it's good and short. Nothing like a six-year-old girl running her hands over your scalp with an expression of glee on her face, is there? (Later when I got home and she did it, she said, "Now the hair on your head is shorter than the hair on your back." A couple minutes after that, I had my wife shave my back.) My cell phone rang. It was my wife. She told me to go here and there to get some stuff; "and you could pick up the drycleaning too," she said. "But hurry, we have a lot of cooking to do."

Before that: She wasn't happy I was leaving to get a haircut, because we had guests coming over later in the day. "It will only take a jiffy," I said. She looked skeptical. As if she thought something unusual would happen if she let me go out by myself.

Weekend of the deer

• Friday: herd of thirty young velvety-antlerered bucks in field next to the freeway on my way home.
• Sunday: dropping Gamma at the grandparents on our way to work out, had to stop because a young buck was standing in the street in front of their house. Walked fairly close with Gamma before he turned and ran into the elderberry bushes. Later, picking Gamma up, there he was again. Stopped the car and sat still until he dashed around us and ran up the hill into the woods.
• This morning, driving Beta to the station: six young bucks in a frosty field.
• This morning: two does in another field next to the freeway.

Made me wonder what deer symbolize for me, if waking symbology is as important as dream symbology. Not necessarily what deer are doing in my life, but why do I notice them? And not, say, the debris along the median strip of the freeway?

This then made me notice the median debris all the way to work. Does it have its seasonal patterns too, like the deer? Along with fast-food restaurant napkins, for example, it included chunks of ice fallen from trucks this morning.

Sorry to people who come here looking for actual information

Heh.

Suits

Pass him on the street and if you notice him at all, he's just an average guy, forties, grey hair, likely as not in a dark suit, ambling along somewhere, in no hurry because he left at least half an hour early to get where he's going and has plenty of time.

But he has a secret.

After 44 years, he discovered something when his wife asked him which suits he needed cleaned at the cleaners and he said how should I know none of them are very wrinkled and she said smell them, which ones smell like they need to be cleaned and so he smelled them and you know what he did he fell in love with the smell of his suits.

No big surprise you'll say, someone who blogs for years on end, posting several times a day primarily about himself and his immediate surroundings is obviously in love with his own reflection but you'd be wrong, he's just crazy about his voice, maybe, or his surroundings or likes to type. This smell thing is something different.

None of the suits stank. He had to pick out a couple so his wife wouldn't find him odd, but none of them smelled bad. They all smelled great. They smelled the way his father's plaid Pendelton wool shirts smelled when our man was a small boy and his dad got home from work driving the lumberyard delivery truck or the logging truck or the other truck. His small wiry dad with arms so big women he had never seen bought him beers at bars, sending them over to him at his table, saying, I've always liked men with big arms.

A smell of wool, and man, with a little tobacco smoke - less than his dad's maybe, but still there, alas. He had never expected this. A dozen dark suits lined up there on their hangers, all smelling this great. It was like a door he had never noticed opening onto a big room in his life full of something he liked.

Know a good counter?

All of a sudden, I'm getting pr0n popups when I check my Sitemeter stats, what's with that? So I'll be changing to another counter immediately. Which do you recommend? A free one, I mean?

Maybe he was at the dentist

Whiskey Bar on Clarke.

"We cannot find evidence that this conversation between Mr. Clarke and the president ever occurred."

I know from my dental hygienist (long story) that there are many powerful Republicans who are not happy with Bush, and I have long been wondering whether they would crawl out of the woodwork before the election. Some are, apparently. While Clarke does not sound like a guy I would like to hang out with, he sounds credible on this issue, and the White House denials don't.

And, since I was talking about it earlier, here's Orcinus on the Madrid bombings, making more sense than I did.

[both links via peggy]

It's got a danceable beat, I'll give it a nine.

Last night I asked someone in the United States whether Bush was electable, as having failed on every issue he is now depending on the pseudo-issue of being tough on terrorism. On the one hand, he is in a nice position on it - if there are terrorist attacks in the United States, everyone rallies behind their President in times of trouble. And if there are no attacks, Look! No attacks! Success! On the other hand, though, he must prove sell the impression that he will be more successful in that fight than another candidate.

This morning, I voiced the hope to someone else that if that issue ever fails him, his candidacy will crumble collapse like a house of cards. (It was very early in the morning, and a better metaphor did not occur to me.)

And also this morning, a man named Dick Clarke who has been around forever (but has more realistic hair than the other Dick Clark that came to mind) was all over the news. All over Blogdex, anyway. And the Republican/Bushite attacks on him are all about character, not content, and spurious. And Rumsfeld is, as of this moment, top story on CNN doing his "twin cobra hands of death" thing and saying, even if they had caught Bin Laden before 9/11, it wouldn't have changed anything, which is first of all backpedaling and second of all has little to do with anything.

So, will this change anything? Or are voters really, really fucking stupid?

Also, about the terrorist attack in Spain allegedly affecting the outcome of the elections there, has it been reported in the American media that support for Spain's involvement in the Iraq "war" hovered around 10% the whole time, and that the conservative government lied about the Madrid attacks, blaming it on the Basques when they knew otherwise because they feared it would get them voted out of office if it came out, and when it finally did come out prior to the election, the fact that they had lied got them voted out? Because people were already mad at them for lying about a tanker catastrophe earlier? Or was it totally spun as giving in to the terrorists? Who were not Iraqis?

?

Where'd RileyDog go?

Time

Writing down a date just now, today's, I look at my watch and notice it's three days slow.

And when I come to the year, I'm thinking, "1989? No, later than that... 1994? Something with a 4...".

N*tes fr*m teh dr*gs c*nf3Renc3

For obvious reasons, I would never ever p*st anything ab*ut w*rk here, because it w*uld require the use of t** many 4st3r15k5.

S0, 54y, w3r3 1 3v3R 2 4tt3nd 4n 1nt3rn4ti0n4L c0nf3r*nc3 on n4rc0t1x 4nD h3R3 50m3th1nG L1k3 +H3 f0LL0w1nG, 1 w0uLdn+ B 4BL3 T0 bL0g 1+:

C*nf3r3nc3 PR351d3nT: Teh h0n*ur4bL3 D3L3g4+3 fr0m teh R3p*bl1C 0F Blah-blah h45 teh fl00R.

D3L3g4t3: 1 Th4nk t3h pr351d3N+ 4 teh fl00R. 1 j*5+ W4Nt3D 2 r3M1Nd t3h 0Th3R d3L3g4t35 tH4+ W3'R3 53rv1nG Dr1nK5 4fT3R teh M33t1nG.

& tH3y w3r3. M05tly w1ne. 1 h4d 0r4ng3 ju1c3, b3(4us3 1 w45 SL33py 4Lr34dY.

4L50, teh sm0k1nG 4R34 w45 P4(k3D.

How to change a wiper blade

1. Get lost three times on way to car dealer, who has blades, unlike every gas station in 20-mile radius.
2. Park.
3. When spare parts man asks what year the car is (you were proud you remembered the make) say, "eh, not sure." In response to funny look: "It's my wife's car."
4. "Where's it parked?" he asks. Point it out. Notice you've parked wrong, and in an absurd place, as if you were on drugs. You're not. That's the problem: you're not on drugs. It's seven in the morning and no coffee yet.
5. He changes blades. Pay and leave.
6. Drink coffee.
7. Blog.
8. Walk kid to school.
9. Go into town with wife, to shop for clothes and Japanese food and maybe look at a hotel or two for upcoming visitors. If there is time. And it's not raining too hard.

Thank you for your patience

Humor, the really good kind, has been thin on the ground here lately, I realize that. So you will understand my sigh of relief when my turtle woke up a few days ago. Funny turtle posts are just a matter of time.

Nothing funnier than a turtle, is there.

She'll do something funny soon, and I'll post it immediately.

Even without the humor aspect, I'm always relieved when she emerges from hibernation, because not being accustomed to pets that hibernate, I'm never really convinced she's not dead only sleeping.

She's still not firing on all cylinders yet, so she's still moping around being serious. But it's only a matter of time.

"She", I say. I'm just guessing. We read in the turtle book that you could sex them by looking at the shape of the shell around their tail. Her's is distinctly female-shaped.

She was eating a little today. Lettuce and turtle sausages, little pellet things. So it may be a while before that works its way thru her system and she defecates and walks in it and the kitchen floor looks like something by Jackson Pollack.

She was definitely more alert today, though, than yesterday.

Day before yesterday, it was warm so they put her outside and then couldn't find her, although she was in her habitat. That's escape-proof, man, I made sure of that. But they went out for her (it was after dark) and couldn't find her. Called me at *work* to report it, as if I could do anything.

They thought she'd burrowed down. She was hiding behind her birdhouse when I looked for her the next morning.

Is that funny? Not especially...

Just wait, though.

lamgs

Lambs, I mean.

Makeover

When I was young you knew who was special because they had the special haircut and wore the special outfit. Not like now, where sitting in traffic I have to wonder whether the young man bopping down the sidewalk singing inanely to his Walkman is brain-damaged, has severe mental retardation, a mild learning disability or is just a fucking dork. Or is maybe cool, and that's the way cool guys maybe dress now.

When I was young all the Downs Syndrome sufferers, and the fellow who'd suffered oxygen deprivation during birth and stood outside the supermarket drinking Nehi orange pop all day and reciting the weather report at great speed, and without interruption, and the mental hospital outpatients all went to the local Barber College to get their hair cut.

This I know for a fact because I saw them there when my mother took me in for my haircuts.

So, you knew. When someone struck up a conversation with you in the street, or on the bus, or waiting in line somewhere, one look at his haircut and you knew not to be shocked when he started petting your hair or reciting average daily temperatures day-by-day back into the fifties.

You may recall the look. More or less what you expect Dick Cheney dressed like as a kid, back before he discovered patriotism and his company started bilking the military out of billions of dollars.

Now, my cousin who has Downs is the best-dressed guy in the family.

***

Sleep deprivation diminishes creativity, they say...

I read something someone said, along the lines of, People wonder how the Germans could have let the Holocaust happen: well, here's your answer (referring to the Patriot Act Bill, etc etc.).

Okay, Rickie Lee Jones was saying that in an interview. But just because she's beautiful and has a fine voice doesn't mean she can't be right about things.

I was also wondering, does Kerry's election hinge on his ability to convince people he could handle terrorism as well as or better than Bush? Because Bush has failed on pretty much everything else. I think he's failed on security as well, but some people don't seem to agree.

Work ethic

This 18-hour workday stuff is for the birds.

Look on the bright side, there's an Irish pub across the street.

Grrreat, we thought. We'll make a nice little weekend outing of it.

Leave Gamma with her grandma to watch more quiz shows while we drive around the country, first to fetch Beta from her ski course, then to drop her in another town for some sort of information weekend about something.

It was the sort of complicated logistical arrangement that overwhelms me, and on which my wife thrives. In constant telephone contact, we arrived at the arranged gas station/rest stop where our daughter waited with her classmates, only to discover it was the wrong gas station/rest stop. Somehow we had to get across the freeway to the other one, which turned out to be easier than it originally looked.

Then we got her, got her stuff, said "bye," etc etc and headed to the other place. First we went to the bed and breakfast we had booked via this techological miracle known as the Internet. I'm not going to link their website, but when I saw the pictures of the rooms I originally thought, "they could use a graphics program to spruce those up a bit." I thought, rooms can't look that bad, you know?

So we got there. Good location. The town was practically a ghost town; you'll find isolated towns like that throughout Austria that are just dying out. Lots of empty storefronts and For Rent signs; you half expect Pink to come riding in on a black horse and beat everyone up. All the roofs covered in snow, but the weather was warming up and now and then there would be what are called in Austria "roof avalanches" where a massive load of heavy, wet snow and ice would suddenly slide off the roof with a roar and crash down onto the sidewalk.

Do I have a nosebleed? My nose is threatening to bleed. Hay fever, dang. Hazelnut season right now.

Pink. Where was I. Good location, right next to the main town square. We rang the doorbell, and Satan's ex-wife answered. My first thought: ex-hooker. This is why: slender woman in her forties, perhaps, or younger and just very burnt-out. Long hair dyed black as can be. Cheeks a bit fallen in from the partying life. Tight otherwise non-descript clothes. Very much mascara around the eyeballs. But that is not really why. Why is the look she gave me: it took her less than a second to look me over from head to toe and know what kind of person I was. It was like getting a CAT scan and an MRT at the same time, only faster and without crawling into that noisy tube. Then she turned her attention to my wife and daughter and spent most of the rest of the time talking to them.

The place was a bit run-down. We climbed the stairs to our room.

"Watch the top step, it's a bit higher than the others," she said. Right, I thought, and stumbled over it.

The floor going into our room was slanted. It was not level. It was a bit lower at one end than at the other. The room... have you ever walked into a place you ordered on the Internet because your wife told you to be a man and make arrangements this time and just been crestfallen? We were beyond that. We were speechless. The room was freezing cold and dusty. There were skanky prints on the walls of pastel paintings of young women in various states of undress. Nipple here, shapely naked back there. There was a TV. Small, like 6"x6" but a TV. There was an old uncomfortable-looking bed. She obviously had tweaked the Internet images in a graphics program.

I bet she rents this out by the hour, I thought.

How do you like it? She asked. Everything okay? We were speechless. Neither of us said anything. I looked out the window: someone here was a collector; there were glass cases on the walls of the walk around the courtyard containing stuff. Various stuff. Prizes from kids chocolate surprise eggs. Garage-sale stuff. Crockery. A model sailing ship. Just stuff.

She asked us which breakfast we wanted brought to our room, normal Continental or expanded Continental, and when. Normal Continental, I said. At least the place was cheap. On the other hand you get what you pay for.

Then she gave us our key, gave us a registration form to fill out, which we did as we were in shock and her eyes were also hypnotic due to all the mascara around them. "We have to go get our bags," we said.

"She looks a bit like an old hooker," I said. "How would you know?" my wife asked. "Just guessing," I said. I described her CAT scan/MRT look.

My wife said the placed looked like a bordello. "How would you..." I started, but some things you're better off not asking if you don't want to hear the answer sometimes. It was a good location for one, right off the main square, discreet entrance.

We dropped our kid off at her place, which was a 2 minute walk down the street (good location, as I said). She was staying at a youth hostel. Clean place, even had a sauna. We were a bit jealous.

Bye mom, bye, dad, she said. There was a castle in town too. A bit out of town, big castle, rented rooms. But we didn't even go look at it. It was the pension (B&B gives the wrong impression, I think) or nothing.

The town was really depressing. But there was an Irish pub directly across the street from our pension. "Hey!" I said. I think this was a greater plus in my opinion than in my wife's, but she's a really good sport. This trip reminded me of that. We put our bags in our room. I noticed a cupboard with a sign reading "Glasses" on it. Curious, I opened the door. It contained two drinking glasses and nothing else.

I laughed about that for a good five minutes. Then I pointed it out to my wife, and we laughed for another five minutes.

Then we explored the town. It was a nice little medieval town, thick walls, all that medieval charm, not so much at the knights in armor and maidens in castles end of the scale, more at the garbage-and-chamber-pots-flying-out of upper-story windows end of the scale, and public executions and stuff. Black plague and stuff.

It was lunch time. We decided to pass on the seafood restaurant. Seafood in a Central European ghost town somehow failed to get us enthusiastic. The pizzeria, in between a boarded-up shoe store and an empty drug store, had gone broke. We ended up at a rustic restaurant on the town square and it was like stepping into a different world. This town was like that: a town of contrasts. Here Mrs. Satan, there a friendly efficient waitress in a clean, charming restaurant with good food and fast service.

We went shopping after that, bought running stuff we'd needed for a long time, then went out to this place in the woods the sales lady recommended for us to run but just took a walk as there was no place to change and the ground was still partly covered in snow. Then we went back to town and had dinner in the same place.

And so on. Watched TV that night. Eventually the heat came on and we stopped freezing in time to go to sleep. Having a pint in the pub across the street helped too. Very smoky place, very very crowded. Maybe the only pub in town, who knows, although we did see a couple very seedy ones on our walks... scary dark places with gambling.

Yeah. Had lunch at the same place the next day. No, wait, no we didn't. We thought that would be overdoing it. We drove around looking for somewhere else to eat in a nearby town. The castle looked too ritzy so we didn't go there. We saw a big sign for one place, got lost looking for it, then when we gave up we found it. It wasn't bad. Nothing funny happened there except there was a lamp hanging low over our table and my wife bumped her head on it. Then when the waitress came, she bumped her head on it as well. Two times.

Then we got our kid and drove home. Gamma was happy to see us. So were her grandparents. They had been to the circus. Gamma saved us some popcorn.

Cheese.

#1 was off skiing with her school and #2 we sent to her grandparents because she preferred watching quiz shows with her grandmother to attending a rock concert with her parents; attitude like that and she's only 6. But we swallowed our pride and let her go and, once her grandfather had picked her up and the front door had closed behind them, did that manic dance parents do when they have the house to themselves for the evening (any kids reading this just ignore that last bit, I'm sure your parents are different).

Prior to attending the concert, which featured the band of friends of ours, we went to an Italian restaurant for a couple glasses of wine and some food. My wife had the pizza bread and... no wait, she had the mixed appetizers plate and we shared the pizza bread, which in fact turned into sort of a m*tually-assured d*struction arms r*ce only with garlic instead of *ranium and we ended up ordering a second plate of it. You know how it is when you're on a date and one of you eats garlic, then the other one has to eat garlic too?

I had a hunger for cheese. Little did I know my appetite would be satiated and then some that evening.

I went through the menu and ordered a cheese thing, "blah-blah FORMAGGIO blah-blah". It arrived along with our wine etc and turned out to be a sort of Italian nouvelle cuisine crucifix of young parmesan cheese with thinly-sliced fruit (apple, melon, kiwi, strawberry and some other fancy orangish thing) on top instead of a guy.

Thanks a load, Mel, for hammering that image into my brain. And I haven't even seen the movie.

Anyway, ate, drank, went to the concert. Accidentally snuck in without buying tickets. Went back out and bought tickets. You're all thinking, doh! What'd you do that for? But as I said, the band was run by a friend of ours, and another guy my wife went to school with was in it so, hate to rip them off.

Came to regret that decision, though.

Started off good, maybe.

You know those situations where everything is perfect? Your mood, the weather, and say you're at a concert, so the band, their musicianship and choice of songs are perfect too, as is the audience? And you have good seats?

And then there are other situations, where you don't know if they're serious or pulling your leg?

We had good seats. And the musicians in the band were good. But as the concert proceeded, we gradually came to wonder whether they were playing an elaborate joke on their home town, including their guest musicians.

A local politician opened the show with a short introductory speech. The band's technician failed to turn on the spotlight, so she spoke in the dark.

They had a hyperactive fog machine, that teetered on the edge of serious irony.

But they were good. Great solos. Keyboards, bass, drums, guitar and theremin.

Guest musicians played, they were very good. I won't say what they played. You have to be so damn careful, one never knows who's going to stumble across a libelous blog post, you know?

Then the famous Hungarian vocalists climbed onto the stage. That's how they were introduced. From Hungary! Where they are very famous! [Name] and [name].

Think figure skaters.

You know how female figure skaters used really have it in the booty department? Until this new generation of skinny ice dancers kicked them out of the rink? Like I went to school with this girl who looked... oh never mind. She had a big ass and thighs that could probably squat 500 pounds, 12 reps. She was a figure skater. The female vocalist looked like that: slender upper half, then bootybootybooty. And the guy had big ice dancer hair and tossed it around a lot. He looked like he had just been canned from a Wham! revival band. They wore their ice dancer costumes as well, except for skates: lots of sequins.

Listen: they sang a gospel song at the end.

Before the gospel song, the woman sang something that showed off her voice advantageously; she was good. I don't want to be unfair. And then the guy sang something very, very weird that showed off his voice as well. But let me tell you something about Central European audiences in small towns: at least in Austria -- it wouldn't be fair to claim this applies to other Central European countries, since I don't know -- it's really, really hard to get the old gospel shout and response thing going, the dancing and clapping hands and raising arms and so on, because the audience is typically quite stiff and not used to that sort of thing under the best of circumstances. And then, if you're a couple of Hungarian lounge singers you're really handicapped.

My mind started to wander. The male half of the vocal team chastized the audience. He encouraged us to snap our fingers, then chastized us for not snapping. What's wrong? You're not snapping! [He demonstrated once again, ad nauseum, infinitum et absurdum, how to snap]. What's wrong? Snapping doesn't cost anything extra! Then he tried clapping. A "journalist" from the local paper (whom my eldest daughter despises because said "reporter" is a moron in her opinion) approached the stage and snapped a couple pictures. My mind wandered and I imagined approaching the stage myself and doing an interpretive dance.

I am a hot-air balloon, I thought. Floating peacefully through a bright summer sky as figure skaters sip champagne in my basket and clink their crystal glasses together in a happy toast. Cheers! Uh-oh! I'm on fire! Too bad for you skater guys that we're 2,000 feet up! Mayday! Oh, no! The figure skaters' hair is on fire! Too much hairspray!

Clap, clap. The guy next to me was half a beat off and kept throwing me off so the audience were clapping on, say, the beat and two guys -- us -- were clapping on the off-beat. Until I figured out what was happening and corrected myself.

Through all this the guest musicians, who I'm not going to tell you what they played instrument-wise but they are very good take my word for it, they stood there on the stage, since they were not playing in this song, and looked as though they were fairly sure this whole thing was a joke, on the audience and on them, but wanted to be cool about it.

Then the song ended, the stage cleared, the audience demanded an encore, they returned to the stage (sans guest musicians) and repeated the gospel song! And then they cleared the stage again, vanished into the night leaving the local politician standing there in the dark with several bouquets in her hands that she'd meant to present to the musicians. Gradually, the last of the fog from the fog machine settled to the ground around her, and we all went home.

Hiatus

Of all the gin joints in all the seedy, little, run-down, jerkwater towns quietly disintegrating into their constituent elements all around the world, she walks into my kitchen, wearing a black satin bra that could stop a .22 short and not much else. Well, except for pants, shoes, underwear etc.

"Hi, honey, how'd the business trip go?" I say.

"I was the only woman at the meeting," she says.

"You make them all cry again?" I ask.

She nods and unhooks the bra. "Sheesh, this thing might look good, but it's totally airtight." She tosses it onto the table. At rest, it looks as though it fell off a space shuttle, except it's black, not white, so maybe the Death Star.

Etc etc. I'm really busy today, so I can't develop this, sorry. Also, going out of town this weekend, so no posting. And next week looks like it'll be totally freaking busy as well, work-wise, so posting may be intermittent, rather than obsessive.

Perfection

I was thinking, anybody, you, me, is perfect. Just because you're fallible doesn't mean you're not perfect.

Then I was thinking, wonder if I could sell that one to Hallmark?

Have a nice day

It was one of those nice days you remember. One of the ones that are nice from the beginning, where you're walking into a building and notice the "PULL" sign on the door in time to avoid pushing and crashing into the glass.

My youngest daughter and I both woke up in good moods (my wife being away on business and the eldest kid on a trip with school), ate, got dressed and I got her off to school in plenty of time with no friction or backtalk. The cats were both well-behaved. One did smell strongly of pee, but that's his problem.

The weather is changing here. It had snowed again all night, and was still below freezing in the morning but I could tell it was about to change because as I drove to work through the frozen countryside a fog was rising from the creek along the freeway and the snow-covered fields and woods gave up their usual heaviness and dissolved mysteriously into the mist.

Then, just like that, my Doblo was on its roof in said snowy, foggy field.

Cindi What a Voice Lauper was still playing on the CD player. I turned it off in the middle of She-Bop (how much longer until Britney Spears covers that one? I can't wait, seriously. It would be a great video. "Toxic" is alright, but the video, eh, except for the stewardess outfit. And, be honest, it's a stewardess outfit, isn't it, and not flight-attendant.)

I climbed out and stood in the snow counting my extremities. All there. At that moment, my cellphone alarm beeped, warning me that the battery was dead. I got it out of my pocket just in time to see the display fade to nothing. I did something I had always wanted to do: I ground the little fucker into the mud with the heel of my boot.

Feeling a little better, I began trudging through the snowy field. In the distance what looked like a house faded in and out of the fog.

Of course, before I reached the house I was hopelessly lost in the woods. I was dressed warmly, so was okay on that front. I just hoped I didn't run into any wild boar. I had just passed a huge wallow near the stream, where I had seen the tracks of what must have been dozens that had torn up the half-muddy, half-frozen ground with their sharp hooves and razor-like tusks. I was wearing a suit, and really didn't look forward to being chased through the woods by a herd of wild boars.

As I walked into the woods, the sounds of the freeway faded until all I could hear were my footsteps, my breathing and my heart pounding. I kept expecting horrible pains to shoot down my left arm. What a way to die, I thought, out in the middle of the woods somewhere, of a heart attack. They'd never find me. I would decompose and small animals, foxes and squirrels, always squirrels, would scatter my remains over ten acres. Carnivorous squirrels, seriously, wearing my watch and wedding ring.

Then: voices. At first I thought they were scraps of traffic sound from the road, but they had a conversational rhythm and as I got closer I could almost make out words. A man's voice, high-pitched but clearly a man's, and a woman's.

They were standing beneath a raised hunter's blind. The man, dressed in green with curious buckles on his shoes and a tall felt hat, was leaning against a feed-box the hunters set out for the deer. It was empty but for a bit of straw. The woman looked exactly like Monica Bellucci, was bare naked and stood beside a salt lick. There was a round, black cast-iron container roughly the size of a basketball on the ground between them. It was full of gold coins.

"Hi," I said.

They had not heard me approach, clearly, judging from their reactions. The man, no taller than a child, wheeled around in shock. The woman was calmer, but also surprised.

"Feck, feck, feck," said the man. "I suppose ye'll be wanting the gold."

The woman snorted derisively. "You leprechauns have such one-track minds."

My head didn't hurt. I felt my skull for bumps, but found none. That didn't necessarily mean anything, but I still scoured my brain trying to remember what to do, and what to avoid, when you meet a leprechaun. Just in case this was really happening. Don't break eye contact, I remembered.

"What're you doing in Austria?" I asked.

He pointed at something behind me. "Look out! Could be wild boars about!"

But I held his gaze. "Nice try. Now answer my question."

"Damn. It's like this. Where there are Irish, leprechauns can be found. Specially around this time of year." He shivered. "Fecking cold in Austria."

"I'm not Irish," I said.

"Yer part Irish, right? Ye play the tin whistle, right?" He turned to the woman, who showed no signs of discomfort at the cold, despite her nudity. "Yer man is more Irish than them modern jackeen gobshites in Dublin, workin' for Microsoft and drinking white wine."

This was not an opinion I happen to share, but that looked like at least fifty pounds of gold on the ground and I had just wrecked my car, so I didn't want to press the point too strongly.

"Well, of course they don't play the whistle, they're all forced to play it in elementary school," I said. "Crappy Generation-D whistles, out of tune and too much chiff."

"All they listen to now is Robbie Fecking Williams," he said. His eyes twinkled. "Although, I'll let you in on a secret. He's one of us, Robbie is."

"He's Irish?"

"He's a leprechaun. Shite music, great success story. Yer man's got more women than you can shake a stick at and a fecking mansion in Hollywood somewhere. Whereas I'm stuck here in the woods freezing with this argumentative banshee."

"She looks like Monica Bellucci," I said.

"She is Monica Bellucci," he said.

"Shut yer gob," she hissed at him, but it was too late.

"What do you want me to do, he's obviously heard about the eye-contact thing, I have to give him honest answers."

"He didn't ask, he just made an observation. You're supposed to split hairs more finely than a politician, you failure."

Not knowing any banshee protocol, I concentrated on him and his gold. I cleared my throat. "About the gold," I said.

"Well," he started. "It's obviously way too much to carry home right now, trudging them miles through the snow and mud and so on, so why don't we bury it here and you come back for it when you have a wheelbarrow?"

I shook my head. "None of that. I can carry it."

"Seriously, ye'll throw out your back."

"I'll risk it."

He was desperate. "Take her instead."

She was fine-looking. But she was a banshee. I pointed this out. "What would I do with a banshee? I thought all they did was show up when someone dies."

"All I can do is give you my gold. And fix your shoes. I see a sole is coming loose on your left boot there. She can grant you a wish."

She hissed at him again. "You worthless culchie twat. You are so going to regret this, little man." Then she turned to me and smiled sweetly.

"I'll make a deal. Take her, leave me my gold, I'll fix yer boot for free."

"What sort of wish?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Up to you. It's your wish. Just one, though. No wishing for more wishes."

"So I could, like, wish for his gold?" I asked.

"Gah!" he groaned.

"Just kidding," I said. I decided to keep it simple. I've read too many stories about people who make fancy wishes and then regret it. "I want a happy life," I said.

"Done," she said.

"Thanks," I said. I walked back to my car. It was right-side up on the access road that ran parallel to the freeway. Without a single dent, not even the mysterious dent in the front fender it's had for months since my wife borrowed it but was not her fault.

I turned the key and it started right up. I noticed the tank was full, the car clock was correct and not three minutes slow and the new Rasputina album was in the CD player. A cell phone rang and I found it on the passenger seat -- some fancy-schmancy new cell phone with a built-in camera and a long-lasting battery. It was my boss telling me I had the day off while they installed a fancy new computer for me at work.

So I drove home. My in-laws were not there. I took out my key to unlock the front door but it was opened by a young woman who looked like Gwen Stefani would look if she were Chinese and had a big white stripe in her hair.

"Hi," she said, perkily. "I'm Bing Crosby, your new au pair who also cooks and cleans. Would you like a massage?"

"Sounds okay," I said. "Nice to meet you Bing... Wait a minute. Crosby?"

"It was an Irish wish, okay? You have a problem with that?"

"No, none at all."

The cat walked past. He no longer smelled of pee.

I went into the kitchen to make a sandwich but one was already on the table. Roast beef. I opened the refrigerator to see if we had any pickles. There were three different kinds. It was also half full of cans of beer I hadn't seen before. "What are these?" I asked.

"Magic beer," she said. "It only makes you funny and charming, not drunk, and doesn't give you a headache."

"I think I'll have one," I said. She started to get me a glass but I shook my head. "I'll just drink it straight out of the can if you don't mind," I said.

"That's how I like my beer too," she said. I took out another can and handed it to Bing. "Oh, before I forget," she said, "your wife called and she's coming home early. She said to get a vase ready because she's bringing you tulips."

"Mmm, tulips," I said.

Bing reached over and clinked her beer can against mine. "Cheers," she said.

"Cheers," I said.

Weather

Sometimes a witty, or moving, post pops into my head as I drive to work. Not that it stops me from posting on the days it doesn't happen. It didn't happen today and here I am. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Sometimes one just has nothing to say. So it's snowing. Here's a webcam. It's said to be located atop the Vienna Burgtheater, on the Ring. Right now, melting snow is running down the lens.

I'm a little gloomy because my wife is away on a business trip, too. I always get like this when she's away. Don't tell her or she'll get cocky. Ditto one of my kids is away skiing. I do have the little one, still, and we're getting in some quality time, learning about volcanoes.

I swept snow again. I made sure to wear sweatpants with livelier elastic this time. Ice on the roads made driving to work more interesting than yesterday.

I'm going to eat some of those round puffed-rice things for lunch, and cottage cheese, which is called "Cottage Cheese" in German (der Cottage Cheese), at least here in Austria. I've heard it called "Hüttenkäse" which can also be spelled "Huettenkaese" if your browser can't handle umlauts, but that's just a cheesy literal translation.

And that's that.

Syndication question

I found this in my referrers and was all set to get all "what's up with this xml syndication thing anyway" but then I noticed I supply an xml syndication link down at the bottom of my right column there.

What is xml syndication, though, and what is the point of it? What is the advantage for me?

Also, while we're on the topic of syndication, I just wanted to say to the person with the blogspot blog who's hotlinking a strip of Bug comics without informing me, or asking permission, or giving me credit, and who does unfortunately not have any contact information on their blog (that I can find) and no comments: That is bad manners. I dig it when people post the Bug on their sites, don't misunderstand me. But hotlinking is, if you want to get anal retentive about it, theft of bandwidth; and posting content without giving credit is copyright violation.

Good night.

[Note: Okay, I've gone and changed the images on her site. This is a pain, because when I do that I have to re-name the original images, and change the links in the original post, and boo-hoo-hoo...]

Happy Monday, everyone

They say 4 days of snow starting today so I got up early and swept the walk, which was bad enough because the snow was the wet kind that stuck to the push broom so it was two sweeps followed by a knocking of the broom on the sidewalk to remove caked snow.

sweepsweepknock/sweepsweepknock

Insert Queen hit here

Plus I was wearing my comfortable baggy slept-in (by me) sweatpants that kept sliding down my ass and were on the verge of falling down around my ankles, so I had to keep reaching back and pulling them up. Sweepsweep/knock/sweepsweepknock/ reachpull/sweepsweepknock/reachpull. So the neighbors think I have St. Vitus' dance, big deal.

But the walk is clean. Cars too. Driving to work was uneventful, slow but no spinouts.

Big kid away with school for a week skiing. Wife leaves today on a shortish business trip, leaving Gamma and I me alone until Wednesday night. Alone except for the inlaws, and various animals.

Gamma, who is six for the moment, is now interested in volcanos. So we have been surfing the internet before bed, gazing upon live volcanocams around the world (so far have not found any volcanocamgirls hi im leilani if i get to close to the magma my grass skirt lites on fire do u want 2 c my bikini? lol!!1! ), and talking about how close one can be to an eruption without dying, and men in Indonesia who climb down into caldera and carry out sulfur 80kg at a time for $3/day, and other men in aluminum suits who climb down to permanent lakes of molten lava for some reason, and a cable car station in Sicily they keep rebuilding and Etna keeps destroying with new flows of lava. Gamma's dreams must totally rock.

Sweepsweep. Knock.

Philatelophilia

I hereby claim this new word.

Iron pyrite?

"You have a heart of stone"

What is your heart made of?

Belief system

They used to say the world was flat and stacked on turtles. Now they say it's a ball, without understanding the math. Their worldview has changed without affecting their knowledge.

You mellow with age: Now I only argue the world is flat when I've been drinking and feel whimsical.

I don't understand microwaves either, yet stand back from the microwave oven when warming my meal. Nor do I understand love, yet believe I love you.

Absolut Mig

If you were absolute ruler of the entire world, what would you do? Besides mounting a big gun on the roof of your car, "Rat Patrol"-style, for slow pokes and maniacs?

Dating tips for guys

1. Women are not turned on when you grope them in the subway, this has been empirically established.
   
2. Since yesterday we also know that jacking off in front of them on the train likewise fails to enhance your attractiveness or create an aura of mystery.

Yes! It's true! My kid inherited the weirdo-magnet gene from her dad!

We're all so happy.

Being a 14-y*ar-*ld gril, of course, she's currently specializing in gr*pers and p*rverts, but it can be only a matter of time until the psychotics, schizos and messiahs start showing up on our doorstep or calling late at night from the top of the water tower or the drunk tank.

Mmm-mmm good

Buttered wife.

Subway groper

A guy my daughter describes as fat, old and ugly groped her in a crowded subway yesterday and she noticed and told him off, and he stopped.

As the parent, one hears a story like this and fantasizes about being there, putting the perp in a sleeper hold and stuffing him into the nearest vending machine thru the coin-return slot, but life has other ideas, so we do other things: send our daughters, and sons, to self-defense classes; instill confidence in them rather than a sense of victimhood. And all that good stuff.

I am amazed and proud that Beta's first thought when she realized what was happening (she gave me permission to write this post) was not "ick" or "help" it was "get your hands off me you pedo jerk or I'll press charges" even if she ended up saying just, "stop that immediately."

Someone else I know was groped on a train when she was about Beta's age and was paralyzed with fear and has been burdened by the memory for a very long time, unable to ever tell her parents the story. So it was also a relief that my kid was able to tell me, as soon as I picked her up at the station, "geeze, you know what happened today?"

One worries, at least I do, about other situations. What if the subway car had been empty but for them. What about dark alleys. You drive them to the station, they climb out of the car and head for school, and you say just, "be careful," and mean it.

Passion Bloopers

Awful, awful, awful.

Illegal piano teacher deported

"I wish it was foggy,'' she said. "It wouldn't be so hard to leave."

[Via Vex, who knows her.]

Win-win

The woman in the little white car wants to merge so he lets her. He tries to let people merge whenever feasible, especially trucks - just working guys, he figures, trying to do a job; the guy in the dump truck waved his thanks. The woman in the white car waves her thanks, as well. He waves back. Don't mention it, he thinks, I can use the karma, and that semi in front of you is losing ice off the top in chunks like a cross between Frisbees and Louisville Sluggers.