I spent most of yesterday afternoon getting new tires.
It rained pretty hard this week as I was driving up to Not Quite So Far Away Campus, and at one point I noticed that while my objective speed relative to the road had not changed my speedometer had accelerated considerably. This – along with some quick math involving the odometer and some rather vague memories of when the last time I had purchased tires – led me to suspect that perhaps new tires were in order.
Getting new tires is not my favorite way to spend time. Really, any time devoted to automobile maintenance is pretty far down on my list of things I’d like to spend time doing. I’m just funny that way. When I was a kid my dad spent many weekends tinkering around on the various cars we had at one time or another – a vast and quickly shifting collection of second-hand vehicles that came pre-loaded with things upon which tinkering had to be done – and while it wasn’t perhaps his favorite way to spend a Saturday I still think he rather enjoyed it. Me? No.
And then you add in the fact that I took another shot at the Giant Megastore’s tire service area, since they had treated us rather well in July when we had little choice but to go there, and it just compounds things. They seem to have done a nice job with the tires, don’t get me wrong. But sitting there waiting for the incessant yet somehow still inaudible paging system to call my name and then spending twenty minutes trying to find a live body I could ask once I decided they must have paged me by now is an enthusiasm-sucking way to end an otherwise reasonably pleasant retail encounter.
But for all that, I’m still thankful.
When I was in graduate school I remember asking myself, in an abstract sort of way, at what point could I reasonably say that I had “made it.” That I was doing okay for myself. Bear in mind that one of the first things I learned once I got to graduate school was that the stipend paid to TAs was below what the department itself considered to be the poverty line for one person in that city. While I had the kind of family support network that meant I would never really be in danger of starving, it was still a rather frugal existence I led.
So I thought about that for a while, and eventually I decided that I would consider myself doing well financially when I could walk into a grocery store and buy whatever I wanted for the week’s meals without counting the costs.
That was all. Just the ability to provide basic necessities and perhaps even nicer versions of those necessities for myself without worrying.
I never said I was ambitious.
Yet there are a great many people on this planet and in this country who cannot do that very thing, and despite the clear economic lessons of the impact of poverty on society at large, the religious exhortations to provide for those who have not, and the political cautions of what happens when society lets the rich steal from the poor without remorse, it does not look like this problem is likely to be addressed, let alone solved, anytime soon in the US.
I have reached the point in my life where I can decide that I need new tires in order to get to work safely, and I can just go out and get them without really worrying about whether this means I will eat next week.
This is doing okay, really.
Sunday, September 22, 2013
Friday, September 20, 2013
Honey? The Terminator's On the Fritz Again!
When the machines finally do take over, I’m not sure anyone will notice the difference.
The problem with the Robot Apocalypse as it is usually presented in novels and films is that it rests on the notion that these machines are somehow better than us. In some ways, perhaps they are. It’s easy to make a machine that can go faster or hit harder or carry around more information than a human being, and if you extrapolate from there you can imagine a world of perfectly coordinated machines running things in icy lockstep.
But then you smack into the brick wall that says, “Wait a minute – who programmed these things, anyway?” And suddenly the Robot Apocalypse moves from tragedy to farce, because the answer is, of course, “The same people who brought you Windows 8.”
Really, all we’ll have to do is sit quietly, reading our hardbound books and playing with wooden toys, until the machines end up charging madly into the river with their laser guns set to “massage.”
This thought occurred to me yesterday as I was listening to the fifth robo-called message in less than an hour from a major airline announcing that a flight boarding a thousand miles away was going to be delayed a further twelve minutes, a bit of information which – while perhaps not welcome, as it meant that Kim was going to be late getting back from her conference – was completely useless to me.
I don’t really get computers, or any technology more complicated than a ballpoint pen. Oh, I can use it, given enough time to figure it out, but it’s all just magic boxes to me. I hit a few keys, mumble the proper incantations, and something gets produced at the other end. I could no more explain the intervening steps than I could tell you what the color blue smells like.
And sometimes I’m not all that convinced that anyone else gets it either.
We live in a world of increasing complexity, speed, and interdependence. We offload more and more of our tasks onto the things we create, and we trust that those things will do what we tell them to do. Mostly they do, which is sort of the problem, since few people have any real idea of how to give directions carefully. And then they don’t, which is the other part of the problem.
I’m sure the airline felt that they were doing a service by leaving these messages for me, and really they were so, so close to providing useful information that it’s almost heartbreaking. I have decided to see this as a positive thing, because I need more positive vibes in my world these days.
I am safe from the Robot Apocalypse, because the robots don’t know what they’re doing either.
The problem with the Robot Apocalypse as it is usually presented in novels and films is that it rests on the notion that these machines are somehow better than us. In some ways, perhaps they are. It’s easy to make a machine that can go faster or hit harder or carry around more information than a human being, and if you extrapolate from there you can imagine a world of perfectly coordinated machines running things in icy lockstep.
But then you smack into the brick wall that says, “Wait a minute – who programmed these things, anyway?” And suddenly the Robot Apocalypse moves from tragedy to farce, because the answer is, of course, “The same people who brought you Windows 8.”
Really, all we’ll have to do is sit quietly, reading our hardbound books and playing with wooden toys, until the machines end up charging madly into the river with their laser guns set to “massage.”
This thought occurred to me yesterday as I was listening to the fifth robo-called message in less than an hour from a major airline announcing that a flight boarding a thousand miles away was going to be delayed a further twelve minutes, a bit of information which – while perhaps not welcome, as it meant that Kim was going to be late getting back from her conference – was completely useless to me.
I don’t really get computers, or any technology more complicated than a ballpoint pen. Oh, I can use it, given enough time to figure it out, but it’s all just magic boxes to me. I hit a few keys, mumble the proper incantations, and something gets produced at the other end. I could no more explain the intervening steps than I could tell you what the color blue smells like.
And sometimes I’m not all that convinced that anyone else gets it either.
We live in a world of increasing complexity, speed, and interdependence. We offload more and more of our tasks onto the things we create, and we trust that those things will do what we tell them to do. Mostly they do, which is sort of the problem, since few people have any real idea of how to give directions carefully. And then they don’t, which is the other part of the problem.
I’m sure the airline felt that they were doing a service by leaving these messages for me, and really they were so, so close to providing useful information that it’s almost heartbreaking. I have decided to see this as a positive thing, because I need more positive vibes in my world these days.
I am safe from the Robot Apocalypse, because the robots don’t know what they’re doing either.
Friday, September 13, 2013
Observations from a Tired Mind
1. Tonight I introduced my daughters to the cheesiest song ever written, the absolute greatest piece of music for belting out at the top of one’s lungs while stumbling drunkenly down the middle of a street at a thoroughly unreasonable hour: MacArthur Park. I feel I deserve some kind of parenting award for this.
2. On Wednesday it was cooler inside my body than it was outside my body, here in our little town. Today was sweatshirt weather. All told, I’d rather have the sweatshirts.
3. There is a special kind of hell reserved for people with big dumb loud aggressive dogs who do nothing whatever to discipline or train said big dumb loud aggressive dogs. I am absolutely sure that this hell involves fire ants, honey, and strategic nudity.
4. You always go to the funeral if you can. Even if, like me, you hate funerals. It’s a matter of respect and support.
5. At some point scientists are just going to come out and declare that everything you can possibly eat will kill you, and then we will just eat the things we like and not worry about it. That point may come as early as Tuesday.
6. Our machines get smarter, and our ability to use those machines gets less and less. Eventually the machines won’t even bother to conquer us – they’ll just set us gently in a corner and go about their business while we stare blankly at the walls.
7. Someone should take the greeting card industry aside and let them know that there are more card-giving occasions than just birthdays. Sometimes there isn’t even an occasion at all.
8. When I am in charge of the universe, there will be a strict enforcement of the negative correlation between how loud your vehicle is and how big your genitals are so that nobody will even have to guess anymore. You want a glass-packed 4x4? Prepare to advertise your shortcomings openly.
9. Students never quite get how much their teachers simply choose not to see.
2. On Wednesday it was cooler inside my body than it was outside my body, here in our little town. Today was sweatshirt weather. All told, I’d rather have the sweatshirts.
3. There is a special kind of hell reserved for people with big dumb loud aggressive dogs who do nothing whatever to discipline or train said big dumb loud aggressive dogs. I am absolutely sure that this hell involves fire ants, honey, and strategic nudity.
4. You always go to the funeral if you can. Even if, like me, you hate funerals. It’s a matter of respect and support.
5. At some point scientists are just going to come out and declare that everything you can possibly eat will kill you, and then we will just eat the things we like and not worry about it. That point may come as early as Tuesday.
6. Our machines get smarter, and our ability to use those machines gets less and less. Eventually the machines won’t even bother to conquer us – they’ll just set us gently in a corner and go about their business while we stare blankly at the walls.
7. Someone should take the greeting card industry aside and let them know that there are more card-giving occasions than just birthdays. Sometimes there isn’t even an occasion at all.
8. When I am in charge of the universe, there will be a strict enforcement of the negative correlation between how loud your vehicle is and how big your genitals are so that nobody will even have to guess anymore. You want a glass-packed 4x4? Prepare to advertise your shortcomings openly.
9. Students never quite get how much their teachers simply choose not to see.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Hitting the Links with Clubs and Other Blunt Objects
I'm still working my way through the various things we got up to this summer. It was a busy summer, but a good one.
---
Sometime in July we went golfing.
You have to understand the sheer weirdness of this fact. My grandfather enjoyed golfing – it was one of the things that kept him busy and happy after he retired – but I’ve never actually gone a whole round of golf in my life.
A few years ago a friend invited me to play half a round with his friends one weekend morning – I’m not sure if it was the front nine, the back nine, or perhaps the middle nine with some left over on either end. In any case there was grass and there were holes and we spent most of the morning trudging across the one to get to the other. He even lent me some clubs, and over the course of the morning I eventually noticed that they were different, though what precisely those differences meant in practice I never did work out. I knew this was going to be my last time with doing this with him when, about halfway through, he paused and slowly asked, “You played a lot of softball in your life, didn’t you?”
Apparently it’s not supposed to be the same swing. Who knew?
So, we’re not golfers. None of us. Unless you count courses that have windmills and mermaids in them – those we’re pretty good at.
But our Swedish friends were visiting this year, and we had gone up to see them in northern Wisconsin while they were staying with other friends – Joe, Rachel and their family – and Joe golfs. His daughter Monica golfs. So we tried it.
It went about as well as you’d expect, really. We had a good time, but the PGA Tour will likely not be calling us with invitations. I’m still not sure what the various clubs are supposed to do that you would need such a variety. It all seems profligate that way.
It was a hot and sunny day when we showed up to the golf course, and if there is one thing that is true about pretty much any golf course you’d care to name it is that there are very few trees in the middle of it. They get pretty fussy about that, actually. There were some on the edges for those who wished to stand by and observe, but if you wanted to hit the ball you were pretty much out there with no tree cover. So there we ended up, in the sun, swatting away.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
We didn’t actually try to hit anything into any holes – Joe understood that this would just be an invitation to disaster and likely one slow-moving enough to require our grandchildren to finish it – so instead we bought several buckets of practice balls and headed over to a hill overlooking a large field. We spread out across the crest of the hill and began hitting the balls as far as we could.
There was a certain amount of earth removal in this process, but most of the balls managed to end up in the field most of the time and I count that as a success
It turned out that among the four of us under my roof, by far the best at it was Lauren. Granted this was not hard, but she actually did manage to get a few good drives off. Tabitha and Kim were fairly game about it.
I struck out.
I think I’ll stick to windmills and mermaids.
---
Sometime in July we went golfing.
You have to understand the sheer weirdness of this fact. My grandfather enjoyed golfing – it was one of the things that kept him busy and happy after he retired – but I’ve never actually gone a whole round of golf in my life.
A few years ago a friend invited me to play half a round with his friends one weekend morning – I’m not sure if it was the front nine, the back nine, or perhaps the middle nine with some left over on either end. In any case there was grass and there were holes and we spent most of the morning trudging across the one to get to the other. He even lent me some clubs, and over the course of the morning I eventually noticed that they were different, though what precisely those differences meant in practice I never did work out. I knew this was going to be my last time with doing this with him when, about halfway through, he paused and slowly asked, “You played a lot of softball in your life, didn’t you?”
Apparently it’s not supposed to be the same swing. Who knew?
So, we’re not golfers. None of us. Unless you count courses that have windmills and mermaids in them – those we’re pretty good at.
But our Swedish friends were visiting this year, and we had gone up to see them in northern Wisconsin while they were staying with other friends – Joe, Rachel and their family – and Joe golfs. His daughter Monica golfs. So we tried it.
It went about as well as you’d expect, really. We had a good time, but the PGA Tour will likely not be calling us with invitations. I’m still not sure what the various clubs are supposed to do that you would need such a variety. It all seems profligate that way.
It was a hot and sunny day when we showed up to the golf course, and if there is one thing that is true about pretty much any golf course you’d care to name it is that there are very few trees in the middle of it. They get pretty fussy about that, actually. There were some on the edges for those who wished to stand by and observe, but if you wanted to hit the ball you were pretty much out there with no tree cover. So there we ended up, in the sun, swatting away.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
We didn’t actually try to hit anything into any holes – Joe understood that this would just be an invitation to disaster and likely one slow-moving enough to require our grandchildren to finish it – so instead we bought several buckets of practice balls and headed over to a hill overlooking a large field. We spread out across the crest of the hill and began hitting the balls as far as we could.
There was a certain amount of earth removal in this process, but most of the balls managed to end up in the field most of the time and I count that as a success
It turned out that among the four of us under my roof, by far the best at it was Lauren. Granted this was not hard, but she actually did manage to get a few good drives off. Tabitha and Kim were fairly game about it.
I struck out.
I think I’ll stick to windmills and mermaids.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Five Years On
So apparently I’ve been doing this for five years now.
I started this blog five years ago today, in 2008, mostly as a way to record things I wanted to remember. I’d had a sort of a blog before, which ran from 1999 to 2004, but life had intervened and there were just too many things that were falling by the wayside. So when I found myself with time on my hands, I started writing this. Five years seems to be how long I write these things, though I'm hoping to better the last run.
And here I am, still going.
It’s been a good run. If I have less time than I did, I still manage to get things posted on a semi-regular basis. I miss it when I don’t. Far more people have found their way here than I ever thought would, which is a nice thing. I’ve met some good people through this blog.
I don’t have any particular plans other than to keep doing what I’ve been doing, as time and circumstance permit. We are creatures of stories, we humans, and telling stories is an important part of maintaining that humanity in the face of a world that often does not seem to value it.
So I tell stories. I post photos. I record things I want to remember.
Happy birthday to 4Q10D.
I started this blog five years ago today, in 2008, mostly as a way to record things I wanted to remember. I’d had a sort of a blog before, which ran from 1999 to 2004, but life had intervened and there were just too many things that were falling by the wayside. So when I found myself with time on my hands, I started writing this. Five years seems to be how long I write these things, though I'm hoping to better the last run.
And here I am, still going.
It’s been a good run. If I have less time than I did, I still manage to get things posted on a semi-regular basis. I miss it when I don’t. Far more people have found their way here than I ever thought would, which is a nice thing. I’ve met some good people through this blog.
I don’t have any particular plans other than to keep doing what I’ve been doing, as time and circumstance permit. We are creatures of stories, we humans, and telling stories is an important part of maintaining that humanity in the face of a world that often does not seem to value it.
So I tell stories. I post photos. I record things I want to remember.
Happy birthday to 4Q10D.
Off to High Heights, Yet Again
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, that summer went by quickly. I still have things I want to write about that haven’t made it up here, and yet Labor Day has flown by and the semester has started over at Home Campus, Not Quite So Far Away Campus, and The Campus Way Way Over There. Already I’m behind. Who knew?
And on top of that, today is the first real day of school for Tabitha and Lauren.
They had meetings yesterday, just like the rest of us. It’s kind of nice, actually – rather than spending an entire day just standing around introducing themselves, they go in for a short conference with their teachers and then get the rest of the day to themselves. It eases them into it, which is a good thing. You should be able to do that for your job after any vacation longer than three days, I think. Be sure to mention that next time you see your boss. Let me know how it goes.
But today Tabitha and Lauren go in for real. No more meetings. No coming home. The Minecraft is put away, the alarm clocks have gone off, and the educational train is leaving the station.
Both girls are now at the top of their respective school ladders.
Over at Mighty Clever Guy Middle School, Tabitha is entering 8th grade.
And down at Not Bad President Elementary, Lauren is going into 5th grade.
It’s going to be a long year, and with any luck a good one. They know their schools, they have their friends, and they will be learning all sorts of new things. They’ll be fine.
Me? I’m just getting older, watching them grow up. It’s nice, actually.
Next year they will learn one of the great lessons of life – that the top of one ladder is just the bottom of the next one. They will go off to new schools and do new things with new people, and it will be an adjustment but it will work out fine. But for this year, they rule.
Good luck to you, ladies. I’m proud of you.
And on top of that, today is the first real day of school for Tabitha and Lauren.
They had meetings yesterday, just like the rest of us. It’s kind of nice, actually – rather than spending an entire day just standing around introducing themselves, they go in for a short conference with their teachers and then get the rest of the day to themselves. It eases them into it, which is a good thing. You should be able to do that for your job after any vacation longer than three days, I think. Be sure to mention that next time you see your boss. Let me know how it goes.
But today Tabitha and Lauren go in for real. No more meetings. No coming home. The Minecraft is put away, the alarm clocks have gone off, and the educational train is leaving the station.
Both girls are now at the top of their respective school ladders.
Over at Mighty Clever Guy Middle School, Tabitha is entering 8th grade.
And down at Not Bad President Elementary, Lauren is going into 5th grade.
It’s going to be a long year, and with any luck a good one. They know their schools, they have their friends, and they will be learning all sorts of new things. They’ll be fine.
Me? I’m just getting older, watching them grow up. It’s nice, actually.
Next year they will learn one of the great lessons of life – that the top of one ladder is just the bottom of the next one. They will go off to new schools and do new things with new people, and it will be an adjustment but it will work out fine. But for this year, they rule.
Good luck to you, ladies. I’m proud of you.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Of Decals and Misplaced Pride
So yesterday we went over to the Thresheree, that annual celebration of anything farm-related that has an internal combustion engine attached to it somewhere. There are century-old tractors, some of which are the size (and shape) of railroad locomotives. There are any number of categories of antique machines whose function remains opaque to this city boy, many of which ingest things at one end and spit out other things from another. Most shake and rattle. They may or may not roll. There is a steam-driven pile driver that spends the weekend randomly pounding telephone poles into the ground, which is about as productive as anything you’ll get out of Congress between now and the midterm elections, really. And this year they had a classic car area with everything from a 1924 pickup truck (with a wooden chassis) to a 1980 El Camino – in my opinion perhaps the silliest car ever invented, even if you include the Yugo, though Kim would disagree.
There is also a flea market.
Now, normally I like flea markets. They are vast collections of useless junk advertised by signs sporting purely random apostrophes and spellings from an earlier, more democratic age, and that’s normally enough to keep me amused for hours.
And then I walked over to a booth and saw a decal for sale, the sort of thing designed to fit in the rear window of a pickup truck. It had the Confederate battle flag prominently displayed – not an unusual sight in this day and age, sadly enough, as it appeals to people who claim to value their freedom without having to go through the ache of trying to figure out what that freedom actually means or where the real threats to it lie. You’d be shocked at how many people there are like that running about unmedicated on the streets. Or not, I suppose. So it wasn’t the Confederate battle flag per se that struck me as the single most stupid thing I have seen in months. It was the caption under it:
“Proud to be an American.”
Okay, then.
The sheer historical ignorance that would be required to display this particular combination of logo and sentiment is mind-boggling. Did they not get the memo about the Civil War? Are they unaware that this flag was carried into battle by the wrong side in an organized rebellion against the United States? Or do they simply not care?
I am not sure how the flag of traitors is supposed to make someone feel patriotic, really. Or proud. Perhaps it is supposed to remind us that the United States triumphed over the treason of the South, eradicating the misbegotten wretchedness of the Confederacy from the earth – and in that context, I suppose it would make me proud to be an American, yes it would.
I’m thinking this is not what they were aiming at, though.
So, once more unto the breach dear friends, once more. Say it with me:
The South committed treason in 1861 when it illegally tried to secede from the Union and then waged war upon the United States in furtherance of this goal.
They did this to perpetuate their ability to hold human slaves – a fact that they were eager to declare in their own manifestos and which did not become embarrassing to them until well after the Civil War, which is when the whole “states’ rights” nonsense starts to become popular among apologists for treason. It still is.
The Confederacy was then destroyed – thoroughly, completely, and without contradiction – and humanity is better off because of this fact.
While that destruction served to advance the cause of liberty and freedom as well as to preserve the nation that had been created by the Founding Fathers, the fact that this had to be done at all – that such treason had even been attempted – remains a black mark on this nation’s history.
None of this should make anyone proud as an American to fly that flag.
I do not understand the need to glorify the traitors of 1861, to buy decals with their flags and pretend they were engaged in something that wasn’t vile. I do not see any need to celebrate their deeds, their history, or their views – particularly not in Wisconsin, a state that sent more than its share of men to put down that evil.
To the extent that anyone can take pride in an ancestor’s actions – they’re not my actions, after all – I take pride in the fact that when the call came at least one of my ancestors fought to preserve the Union against those who would destroy liberty in the name of slavery.
If you’re really proud to be an American, be proud that the Confederacy failed. Be proud that this nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, triumphed over those who would destroy it in order to perpetuate a caste system of slavery.
Put a Stars and Stripes on that decal, and maybe we’ll talk.
There is also a flea market.
Now, normally I like flea markets. They are vast collections of useless junk advertised by signs sporting purely random apostrophes and spellings from an earlier, more democratic age, and that’s normally enough to keep me amused for hours.
And then I walked over to a booth and saw a decal for sale, the sort of thing designed to fit in the rear window of a pickup truck. It had the Confederate battle flag prominently displayed – not an unusual sight in this day and age, sadly enough, as it appeals to people who claim to value their freedom without having to go through the ache of trying to figure out what that freedom actually means or where the real threats to it lie. You’d be shocked at how many people there are like that running about unmedicated on the streets. Or not, I suppose. So it wasn’t the Confederate battle flag per se that struck me as the single most stupid thing I have seen in months. It was the caption under it:
“Proud to be an American.”
Okay, then.
The sheer historical ignorance that would be required to display this particular combination of logo and sentiment is mind-boggling. Did they not get the memo about the Civil War? Are they unaware that this flag was carried into battle by the wrong side in an organized rebellion against the United States? Or do they simply not care?
I am not sure how the flag of traitors is supposed to make someone feel patriotic, really. Or proud. Perhaps it is supposed to remind us that the United States triumphed over the treason of the South, eradicating the misbegotten wretchedness of the Confederacy from the earth – and in that context, I suppose it would make me proud to be an American, yes it would.
I’m thinking this is not what they were aiming at, though.
So, once more unto the breach dear friends, once more. Say it with me:
The South committed treason in 1861 when it illegally tried to secede from the Union and then waged war upon the United States in furtherance of this goal.
They did this to perpetuate their ability to hold human slaves – a fact that they were eager to declare in their own manifestos and which did not become embarrassing to them until well after the Civil War, which is when the whole “states’ rights” nonsense starts to become popular among apologists for treason. It still is.
The Confederacy was then destroyed – thoroughly, completely, and without contradiction – and humanity is better off because of this fact.
While that destruction served to advance the cause of liberty and freedom as well as to preserve the nation that had been created by the Founding Fathers, the fact that this had to be done at all – that such treason had even been attempted – remains a black mark on this nation’s history.
None of this should make anyone proud as an American to fly that flag.
I do not understand the need to glorify the traitors of 1861, to buy decals with their flags and pretend they were engaged in something that wasn’t vile. I do not see any need to celebrate their deeds, their history, or their views – particularly not in Wisconsin, a state that sent more than its share of men to put down that evil.
To the extent that anyone can take pride in an ancestor’s actions – they’re not my actions, after all – I take pride in the fact that when the call came at least one of my ancestors fought to preserve the Union against those who would destroy liberty in the name of slavery.
If you’re really proud to be an American, be proud that the Confederacy failed. Be proud that this nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, triumphed over those who would destroy it in order to perpetuate a caste system of slavery.
Put a Stars and Stripes on that decal, and maybe we’ll talk.
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