Dr. Speg's Miracle a Month Club

Corny Lines: Number One Cause of Spousal Eye-Rolling for Over 10 Years

2012-01-02T22:29:00.001-05:00

Over the years I have managed to come up with a few choice lines that I can use in social situations to mask my social phobia(s); In this case, my fear of talking to/with strangers.

Unfortunately, my wife has heard them all; Over and over again. So it occurred to me that I could list these out so others can annoy their own spouses with them as well!

Surely I've missed a few of my suave "des phrases intelligentes" but the ones below will certainly be sufficient for you to begin your stroll down the same dark path I've trampled for you.

I've provided some context for these since it occurred to me while I was writing down the ones I could remember that they may be a bit too ripe for the double entendre treatment without context. So if you like, please look them over again with one eye closed and throw in a couple of that's-what-she-said's for a different reading.

One final important note here too is that I in no way mean to imply anything disparaging about my wife. She is wonderful to put up with me for as long as she has and the behaviors listed below only scratch the surface of the torments I put her through. Eye-rolling is better than I'd expect from anyone else and certainly better than I deserve!

Out to Eat (for the most part - some of these work elsewhere, too)

When asked by the server, "Would you care for anything else?" I pause for a couple of beats and look straight in their eyes then say, "No, nothing else. Is that ok?" The usual response is something like, "Of course! But let me know if you change your mind."
Upon arrival a few moments later of the check, I don't allow it. "Excuse me, but, I think we agreed just a few seconds ago that I didn't want anything else." This is where the wife usually swats me on the arm and takes over the conversation with, "Thank you!" followed by the eye-roll.

Ok, this one is actually really cool. But it really wears a bit thin on people who have to endure it from me time and time again at every damn restaurant I go to! But so what?! It's really cool! To do this, you need to make sure that your server actually has a few minutes to spend at your table. Also, you need to have a cloth napkin or a paper napkin that is rolled diagonally to make the longest paper tube you can make with that napkin. In other words, if you don't have something to measure about a foot and a half or so (under half a meter), don't try this.
Place your soda glass in the center of the table. Then ask your server to estimate which distance is greater, once around the circumference of the glass or the distance from the edge of the glass to the table. It doesn't matter what they say at this point. You can even suggest that they might be about the same. Whatever the answer, grab the salt shaker and put it under the glass. You may need to hold the glass there to keep it from spilling. Ask the same question again. Of course now the distance from the lip of the glass to the table looks to be WAY more than the circumference of the glass. This is where the napkin comes in handy as a measuring tool. Have the server do the measuring. Specifically, have them find the circumference with the napkin and then use that length to see if it is greater than the distance from the table to the rim of the glass (i.e., including the distance added by the salt shaker). Unless it is an unusually small drink glass and/or an unusually tall salt shaker, the circumference is going to be greater than the distance of the glass and salt-shaker! Isn't that awesome?! Try it out and see for yourself! Too cool! You'll have your friends rolling their eyes in no time with this one alone!

General Shopping (grocery store, Wal-Mart, etc.)

When I am at the register to pay, the cashier will usually quote a price like, "That will be $17.12 please?" Note that this only works if paying with cash.
As I count out my money, I will hand over the $17 and then say, "Is that close enough? Or do you really need the rest of it?" Ha ha ha! We share a moment until my wife's giant sigh followed by her opening her pocketbook to add her 12 cents worth of eye rolling.
Actually, you can't blame my wife's eye-rolling here since people don't really like to joke about money - for example, I've opened myself up to the same line if I hand over a dollar to cover the $0.12 and expect change back - the cashier can say, "Well, that's close enough isn't it? You don't need any change back, right?" Where's the humor there?!

My wife really hates this one. Practically every single time I get to the checkout the cashier will automatically ask, "How are you today?" Although I could go with, "How am I what?" (see below) I prefer to go another route that has gotten smiles every time I've used it (except from my wife and anyone else who has heard me do this multiple times before).
After a really big sigh, I will answer, "Well, I'm old, fat, out of shape, balding, I have bad knees, my teeth are crooked, my hearing is going and I will never get rid of these glasses." Plus whatever else occurs to me. Then I ask it back at them. Usually they say they are fine. To which I say, "Yeah, oh yeah, that's what I meant to say, I'm fine too." Cue the spousal eye-rolling!

Usually this works best at a restaurant when the manager comes around to the tables, but I find that cashiers at Wal-Mart and such ask something similar. They will greet you and then say something along the lines of, "Did you find everything ok? Or "Did everything taste ok?
Wow, talk about a great setup line! Take them literally. "My gosh, it would have taken us forever if we were looking for everything!" Or, "Yikes! We only had the fish! We couldn't possibly have eaten everything!" Smile and look at your spouse to see the eyes start their obligatory rolling!

Anywhere Else (can include the above places)

Upon noticing that a person is left-handed.
"Excuse me. Perhaps you can answer an important question I have?" They say "Yes?" and then I ask very earnestly and innocently, "Is it true that left-handed people are more intelligent than right-handed people?" Commence eye-rolling. Note too that I happen to be left-handed. When that fact comes out, I simply state that I am trying to get unbiased data from people who would be in the best position to know the answer: Other left-handers. (More eye-rolling.)

This one is used any time that a salesperson (or whatever) is dealing with us and has to leave. So this would be for a server at a restaurant or a salesperson at Lowes, your aunt who leaves you in the living room to go to the bathroom, etc. You'll get the idea.
With a slightly worried or confused look on my face I ask, "So, do you want us to wait here?" This actually causes people to stumble a bit sometimes. You can see them working it out in their heads why I would think otherwise.
The more obvious the situation, the more fun it is to say. Imagine getting pulled over by the police. They'll come up and ask for registration and license then want to go back to their cruiser. Try to catch them before they leave your window, "So, do you want me to wait here?" Or when you visit the doctor's office and the nurse gets you into the paper half-robe in that little examination room with the butcher-paper on the cold leather couch. "The doctor will be with you shortly." This is ripe for, "So, do you want me to wait here, then?" I think you get the idea.

These last two are usually inflicted on my students. My wife has long ago burned these set-ups from her linguistic repertoire. A few times each semester I will get a student to wave me over and make the mistake of saying, "Can I ask you a question?"
My now automatic response is, "You just did!" This is followed about 80 percent of the time with, "Can I ask you another question?" Which gets the same awesome answer! After a few moments of rusty gears turning in their noggin's they will finally get to, "Can I ask you two more questions?" This is often delivered with a bit of a smug, "gotcha now" grin. At this point I will tell them that I have a three-question limit and then I walk away. Surely they find this particularly endearing (especially when exam-time is upon them).

As noted above, this last one is often triggered by a student on Mondays. They will ask something like, "How was your weekend?" or more generally, "How are you?"
My response is to fall into an Asperger's-like semi-fugue-state and ask back, "How was my weekend what?" or, "How am I what?" They will come back with something they think is more specific, like, "How are you doing?" (etc.).

Oops, I just remembered another eye-roller (but this one isn't ever from my wife as I never have the chance to use it on her). Mainly this is for my students or the occasional cashier, etc. and can be used for best effect only on Monday or Tuesday.
As I or they leave, I will say, "Have a nice weekend!" Which gets me about a 90 percent hit with, "You too!" Followed moments later by them stopping in their tracks and saying, "Wait, it's only Monday…" Or, "Does that mean we don't have class the rest of the week?" I explain that it's never too early to wish someone a nice weekend; and yes, classes will be meeting.

Alright, that's what I can recall for now. Maybe if I remember some more I will add them in. But truthfully, probably not since I seem to be pretty lazy about this whole blog thing. On the other hand, maybe you know of a few more that you, a spouse, a significant other, a friend, a parent, etc. has used and you can send them to me?! I'd be happy to add them to my list!

The Airplane Lottery Hospital Crash

2011-09-05T08:29:00.004-05:00

This month is just a short rant.

I love probability statistics - not that I'm great at calculating them, but because of the paradoxes that they seem to support.

Example: Air travel is safer than driving.

Is this true? Well... yes, but also no.

It is "safer" than driving if you calculate number of deaths per passenger-mile traveled.

Hm? What's this? What's "passenger mile?"

If a car has two people in it and travels 100 miles, you get two statistics. (1) Vehicle miles (1 vehicle x 100 miles = 100 vMiles). Then there's (2) Passenger miles (2 passengers x 100 miles = 200 pMiles). So compare the car trip to the airplane that travels 1,000 miles and has 100 passengers.

(1) Vehicle miles: 1 vehicle x 1,000 miles = 1,000 vehicle miles.

(2) Passenger miles: 100 passengers x 1,000 miles = 100,000 passenger miles.

BUT, imagine the car tops a hill (at its 100 mile mark) just as the plane flies over (at its 1,000 mile mark) and they collide in a spectacular display of light, color, and noise (i.e., all dead)!

Probability of Death
CAR	PLANE
2.0%/vMile	10.0%/vMile
1.0%/pMile	0.1%/pMile

Yeah, ok, you don't like math. So instead of figuring out what I did in the table, look at it this way: If "safety" is determined by looking at number of deaths per something (miles, accident, whatever), then you can twist the numbers to suit your needs.

Where's the most dangerous place to be in the world? A hospital! Look at how many people die there! I wonder what the statistics are? Hm, calculating the number of deaths per type of building will surely reveal that hospitals are the most deadly. Probably worse than bathrooms, kitchens, and that married person's bedroom when their spouse comes home all combined!

So you might say something like, "Yeah, sure, if you look at it THAT way, then it seems bad, but people who are sick or are more likely to die usually go to a hospital. So it isn't fair to say that it is the most dangerous place to be."

Good, got that out of your system. But you've missed my point. The point is that NO comparison of apples to oranges is "fair" to make.

People don't treat airplane travel the same way as car travel. How much do you feel threatened by an engine failure if you are driving a car? Is it scary enough that you do a complete check of the engine before every trip? What about engine failure on your plane? Don't you think there is a little more attention given to equipment in one scenario compared with the other?

Also, most fatal accidents are due to human error. Where is human error more common? Wherever there are more humans. How many humans are flying planes at any given moment? Compare that to the number of humans driving cars.

So in terms of the above two cases, would you rather be in a car or a plane if there is complete engine failure? (I'm going to go ahead and assume you picked CAR.) I'd bet that there are WAY more fatalities due to engine (equipment) failure in aircraft than in cars.

Then we switch to human error. If you fall asleep driving a car, you don't get to sleep long before you crash. But in most aircraft, there are backup and safety features to decrease the chances that a brief nap will result in death. (Frankly, though, I doubt that the car or plane option seems too good when human error is involved.)

Up to here then, I hope you can see that these sort of things depend on how you look at them, right? So next time someone throws out some little statistical factoid, you should ask, "Compared to what, exactly?"

Which brings me to the smug idiotards who spout off about how the lottery is a "tax on stupid people." Yikes! Are they WAY behind on their lottery tickets, then!

Their "argument" is based on the premise that all a person get's from their $1 (or whatever) outlay is a virtually sure loss of that money. Not much different from rolling down your car window and throwing your cash into the street. In other words, if I may extrapolate the view: Nothing is of value unless it is tangible.

Wow, that seems more materialistic than the people who can't wait to spend the money they hope to win playing the lottery.

Must all transactions result in a tangible exchange? Are these people demanding to take home fragments of the movie screen when they visit the cinema? Should all roller coasters and Ferris wheels be dismantled because they don't provide tangible gains? When these people go on a date, do they insist on taking souvenirs? (Ok, that one sounds good to me, somehow…) Should every sex act result in a baby?! (Please, nooooooooooooooooooo!)

The idea that people who play the lottery are getting absolutely nothing for their $1 seems farfetched to me. They get something similar to what people get when they go to a movie or to an amusement park.

So would it be fair to say that amusement parks are playgrounds designed for stupid people? Or that movies are ways to keep stupid people in one spot for about two hours?

Ok, I've seen the quality of most of the movies lately, so maybe the argument breaks down here...

A Love Story

2011-08-10T20:36:00.001-05:00

In my naïveté, I had deluded myself into believing that to survive the great tragedies in my life it would only take the endurance to last the painfully slow process of an "emotional healing." Certainly, there would be the scars... always there to remind me of my pains... and, if I ever became careless enough, always there to be opened slightly. A renewal or rather, a reminder of the original pain.

This isn't true at all.

I find that great tragedy; loss; do not rip open gaping ragged edged wounds that slowly heal back up. No. Nothing at all like that. Instead I find that there is no "healing process" whatsoever. No such thing as "emotional scars." The wound persists. I think that all that will ever happen is that I will learn to avoid that particular spot in my soul. Find ways around the pain.

Often I find myself suddenly at the edge. Looming over the abyss trying not to fall inside again. Sometimes I can pull myself away. Sometimes not. There is some perverse pleasure, I admit, to sometimes falling in and succumbing to the pain, but for the most part it seems more of a relief to put distance between me and her.

It was a day in the later part of a New England summer when we first met. She was the boisterous orange/yellow pup in a tiny cage of the animal shelter's. Her reaction to us (although in retrospect, probably to all who passed her) was that of a joyous reunion between close friends tragically separated years before, never truly expecting to meet again. We could not resist. The drive home was an adventure. She squirmed and fidgeted all through the car. From under the gas peddle to the back seat, to Cindy's lap to the back seat again and then to my lap! We laughed, sometimes nervously, as we contemplated the potential of this four-legged dynamo.

The puppy was supposed to be for my father. My mother, though, simply stated that either the dog goes or she does. To my father's credit, the ultimate decision involved my taking her (the dog, not my mother) to college with me. There, Elizabeth Freedom (as she was eventually named) squirmed her way into my heart as well as numerous garbage pails and other troublesome spots.

Very briefly, Elizabeth began her dog's life with me and my undergraduate years at Plymouth State College (now university). She would ride with me in my navy blue 1975 Ford Maverick (no seatbelts) from Plaistow New Hampshire to visit my someday-to-be wife in Portsmouth. With each trip Elizabeth made it about two miles further before vomiting. Finally, she was able to hold her biscuits for entire car trips and going "bye-bye" became one of the phrases most certain to wag her tail and excite her sparkling eyes.

When home in Plaistow, we would walk in the trails behind my parents' house. With Elizabeth along it sometimes became a surrealistic experience. She would race ahead of us along the pathway until we'd lose sight of her. After a brief while she would shoot across the path in front of us left-to-right. Moments later she'd be passing us on the trail again to race ahead, while in a very short interval after that, she'd pass us again and race ahead as if she'd just lapped us on a race track or was an identical pup chasing her twin up the trail. We never could tell from which direction she'd appear!

After a while, I graduated from college, worked for a year and then married and moved to Kansas for graduate study. Of course Elizabeth came with us. She shared the passenger seat (built only for one I might add) of a Ryder truck one-way rental. The trip was memorable for us all.

I was six years at Kansas. We lived in three different apartments while there. Elizabeth tolerated each move with the easy-going good natured fatalism of a true companion. Wherever her "mom" and "dad" were (or maybe just her food bowl) was home to Elizabeth. And that was ok.

The University of Kansas campus included quite a large park filled with green grass and hills for rolling, trees, water, and most importantly, squirrels. As soon as the door of the car was opened the golden streak flamed into the woods. Elizabeth was like a locomotive charging from tree to tree with the unwavering determination of a guided missile. Many a squirrel no doubt traded red for grey coats because of Elizabeth. When she tired of the chase (that is, when all the squirrels were safely back in their trees), Elizabeth would nose-dive into a plush pile of green grass and squirm onto her back and kick her legs skyward. A sort of "Snoopy-dance" we called it. Her best trick was to find a slight hill and surf down it like an upside-down wiggling dog-torpedo.

Elizabeth was not fond of water. I've wondered why that might be from the day it first became obvious. Did someone try to drown her as an unwanted pup? The best we could get was a little wading until water touched her belly. Then it would be a few licks and maybe, if it was a warm day, a brief rest on the mud perhaps a tail's length from the shoreline into the water.

The six years ended and we moved a half-day closer to New England, Elizabeth's birthplace. This meant we had made it as far East from Kansas as St. Louis. I spent a mere four years there as a post-doc at Washington University. St. Louis was not as dog-friendly as Lawrence, Kansas. The closest running grounds never really compared with the University of Kansas campus nor were the squirrels as friendly or abundant. Our apartment was on the second floor of a converted house which meant quite a number of stairs to climb. This became more and more problematic for Elizabeth given her attraction to food and food-like things as well as her advancing years (she was nearly 13 years old when we finished up in St. Louis).

For the most part, Elizabeth had retired her serious squirrel chasing legs for a more stealthy approach to squirrel hunting. And, truth be known, squirrel hunting wasn't nearly as rewarding anymore as gum or tid-bit hunting. We did manage a few trips to a distant park where we would occasionally mosey along a trail. But it was clear that Elizabeth would never again amaze us with her limitless racing energy.

I finally took a "real" job in Mississippi and moved there June of 1996. For the first time in our lives we lived in a house by ourselves. No more apartments, and best of all for Elizabeth, only four steps to get inside! We stayed in this house for just over one year. This would be Elizabeth's last move. Her last home.

We traveled north during the Winter months of 1997. Cindy's father was quite ill and it seemed that he was declining fast. Elizabeth weathered this trip as any other. With calm interest and a keen eye for snacks. Once in New Hampshire, she stayed with my parents who naturally adored her. My father would kick me out of his chair, but if Elizabeth were in it, he'd hook a fanny-cheek on the edge of the cushion and share rather than disturb her highness. After a great deal of sadness, our reasons for coming to New Hampshire were laid to rest. We drove back to Mississippi and Elizabeth would never be close to her place of birth again.

She lasted until August of 1997. We made a number of tearful trips to the veterinarian's office and were given an assortment of pills. It was clear now that Elizabeth was not in very good shape. Congestive heart failure imminent, she still wagged her tail and seemed to smile pleasantly at us whenever we'd walk into the room. Her looks were always expectant, "Are we going 'bye-bye'?" or "Is it time to eat/play/cuddle?" I honestly don't think that in her heart she understood that she was old and failing. Maybe she lived each day with the expectation that whatever her ills, they would eventually pass and she'd once again run like a rabbit through the woods behind our house.

We've since bought two houses. Elizabeth would truly have loved our first house. Not even a single step to get inside. Plenty of cool spots to lie down. Sun spots to warm her belly in every room. And, a fireplace. She never knew a fireplace. I sometimes look wistfully at the flames and imagine how well she would have looked stretched in front of its warmth. I miss her. I always will.

My good girl has been gone now for as long as she'd lived. While it pains me even to write these few words, I hope that maybe when Elizabeth died beneath my caresses fourteen years ago today, somehow all that she was and knew of us passed back to that fidgety pup in that small cage so few years ago. Perhaps that was why she was so happy to see us. Perhaps she knew us already. Maybe we were the long lost friends she longed to see again. Her happiness was that she could do it all again.

SPAM Baiting

2011-04-30T20:10:00.003-05:00

This month's entry is pretty lame. It is just an experiment to see if I can get as much spam as possible in my "comments" section for this month. I fairly regularly get crap "comments" sent to a couple of earlier posts which are obviously spambot created based on some combination of words I'd used. I have always filtered them out. BUT THIS TIME my plan is to allow them in for this posting to see what I can collect. So the next few paragraphs are going to use sets of words that I believe might lure spambots into spamming me. These will of course be written innocently (and will probably read like boring drivel) so as to better demonstrate the lack of context needed to attract this sort of attention. Maybe this will fail, but I am curious to see what will happen.

So I was thinking about stuff in my past, you know, sort of dating myself in my mind, but it wasn't so much the date that I was focusing on, as what girls and boys of that day might look like today as men and women. How these groups might look today… In this regard, and regardless of their sex, I wondered if they exercise their imaginations. If they also think back to their past, feeling the weight of the years pressing down on them. Did they make the right decisions, did they experience loss and gain in equal amounts. Did they follow the recipe of their life in ways that allowed each ingredient to play its part? So much food for thought, I suppose. It was too much for my brain to eat in a single sitting, though. So I switched topics.

I wanted to invest some time to speculate on futures. By that I mean, of course, spend some energy on what tomorrow would bring. But to do that, I would have to buy into the whole "today predicts tomorrow" way of thinking that doesn't really hold the same currency with young people today. Young people today seem to me to save their free time mostly for digital media rather than interacting with actual people.

That line of thought depressed me a bit because it seems like nowadays, people my age can't relate as well to the blossoming generation. I would practically need to be psychic to have half a chance to figure out what kids today are feeling. And frankly, it just isn't in the stars for me to be a psychic - nor would I consult an astrologer for that matter… surely they possess no viable alternative to understanding the digital generation. Besides, our cultures barely overlap enough to share that common ground needed for communication. Just the differences in health situations insures a communication gap that no medicine can cure. I don't need a graduate degree to figure that out. Life is education enough, my friend!

Speaking of education, I cannot help but be reminded of my job before I decided to go to college. I worked at a company that built the Patriot Missile, if that rings a bell? Spending so many days of my life at that job made me realize the importance of variety. Day in and day out, the same work, the same faces. The days slipped by - and I wasn't even drinking alcohol! Although if I were still there, I'd no doubt have a beer gut by now. Seems like that is one of the paths to the "American Way" I've heard about. With the other extreme becoming president, like Obama. Seriously, though, I doubt that path was as possible as the beer gut path. Besides, I'm more of a video game kind of guy.

Games that I enjoy tend to be the first person shooters. They suck you in like movies. I even own an old Vectrex game (look it up) that needs some repair. But it was awesome! You'd think with my interest I'd have considered a career in programming. Nope. Too lazy and not quite a good enough thinker or problem solver to do well in that field. Dammit! There's money to be had there, though!

Oh, but I got off the track of health up above. Which reminds me that if I plan to do some traveling next month, I might want to get checked out. Maybe get a shot to protect me from an exotic virus. Hm. Just thinking about health care today makes me wonder about people of the past, like the Trojans who battled across the lands. They never worried about shots. But on the other hand, they probably didn't live as long… Ok, I won't talk myself out of the shot. I will have to download the list of local clinics where my insurance will pay for at least a tetanus booster. Better to be illness free on any trips I take. Don't want to lose my stamina on those long treks through the ruins of Greece or up the steep trails along the Grand Canyon.

Whatever. Maybe I should just be satisfied that I am healthy enough to consider travel, rather than whine about the past. Let's just see where things take us?

I will give this some time and actually ALLOW whatever "anonymous" posts I get to be listed. Any bets as to how many?

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Ok, so I gave it 8 months and I was able to attract 27 spam-bot posts. That's more than 3 per month (although I haven't gotten any for the past two-three months). Compare that to the maybe 1 I get per post otherwise. So clearly I was able to catch some spam-fish! Whoop-de-doo!

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This Is Why I Hate Winter!

2011-02-28T00:07:00.003-05:00

The wind that day was gray. Dark swirling maniac gusts that tugged and pushed with clearly evil intent. I tried to pull my coat tighter around my body, hands deep in leaky pockets. My flannel pajama bottoms snapped and rippled as I tried to keep from slipping on invisible ice. As I passed beneath the tree in the back yard clumps of snow broke from the branches and disintegrated into tiny cold pellet-bombs. Plops of snow tapped my head warning me too late that kamikaze ice was about to drop between the back of my jacket and neck. Every step I took, icy wads of heel-squashed snow flipped out of my slippers as the backs of my feet emerged like swimmers gasping for air between strokes. Fresh downy snow puffs cascaded into my inadequate footwear with each step, machine-like, preparing a new pancake of ice to eject on the next step. My legs cranked and my feet punched ahead into deeper and deeper drifts of cold white powder.

Each numbing step I took away from the warmth of my house became more resentful. Stomp… Stomp! STOMP!

My back was cold and yet also oddly sweaty. I snorted an irritated puff of air at this ridiculous thought. Steam rose to my eyes then split and drifted to either side of my head. The inner edges of my glasses clouded slowly from my nose and I knew it wouldn't be long before they'd be entirely fogged. "What the hell am I doing?"

I stopped to look back at the house, which was now hidden behind the gray wind. The turn dislodged a dribble of half-melted snow from the back of my neck and down my back to wedge into the elastic waistband of my pajamas. "Christ, that's cold!" I actually yelled this while I did a quick twisty-dance to dislodge snow from flannel.

Carefully I turned back to consider the tree line I had been walking toward. Again, "What the hell am I doing? This is stupid." Yet my feet resumed their mechanical trudge despite my growing doubts.

After about twenty more ice-cake wads were processed through my assembly-line march, I finally arrived at the trees bordering the back of my yard. I couldn't see much. The spindly tree branches formed a black haphazard spider web against the impenetrable milky soup. Behind this shifting gray backdrop I could see nothing but imagination.

It had taken a great deal of nerve to push me out into the yard this distance. Now that I was here, my nerves were reversing polarity. I had left the back door unlocked. Maybe what I thought I had seen through the window had circled around and was now waiting in my warm house? I was beginning to feel safer in this cold cocoon of dense gray. Well, I couldn't stay here, so I peered as bravely as I could into the wooded fog. I hoped that who- or what- ever was there would see the warrior in me instead of the shivering sweaty overweight boob I was feeling like.

With as a cruel a sneer as I could manage, I turned to head back toward my house. I hadn't taken four steps when the skin and hair on my neck began to prickle with anticipation of an attack from behind. Although I knew that the footsteps I heard were my own, my imagination overrode my intellect and I ran as fast as I could toward that back door. My first step in this sprint toward safety exposed my entire right foot to the raw elements, leaving behind a wet leather slipper. The other slipper was never more than half on my foot all the way back to my house.

I felt foolish as I fumbled the door open and slammed it shut behind me. My fat chest heaved with joy and exertion at the successful finish to my race with whatever imaginary fiend had been chasing me. Truly my smile at this point was one of mild embarrassment. Shaking my head I turned around and twisted the bolt to lock the door. As an afterthought, I pushed the blinds up a bit to see if I could see the tree line. Instead, through the glass I saw the red eyes and yellowed fangs of what looked like a giant man-wolf staring back at me just inches from my face.

If I hadn't lost one slipper outside, I might have pissed myself. I could feel my bladder twinge a bit as if to say it was ready to give it a try.

The truth of the matter, though, is that a man cannot pee if his feet are uneven or if one big-toe is cold and the other warm. The whatever part of my brain responsible for laying down the man-laws issued a military "NO" to my bladder's tentative twinge. That was enough to lock my plumbing. It also had the side effect of clenching my sphincter. I hadn't even been aware of how close I was to shitting myself. I guess it's just another type of man-law: "Focus on one, two will follow."

All of this happened in a matter of milliseconds. My brain had yet to process even a little of it, really. Instead, the moment was dominated by the high-pitched and very girlish sounding scream that I gave as I threw my whole body back from the door. While flying away from the door, a small part of me was only beginning to process the realization that the face I thought I had seen outside the window had really been a reflection of what was behind me.

The Future Me Is AWESOME!

2011-01-24T21:48:00.003-05:00

Sitting next to my diet coke and headless chocolate reindeer, I marvel at how heavy I've become. Guilt seasons each mouthful and I assure myself that things will change. They must!

Yes, tomorrow, I will collect my willpower and resolve.

Tomorrow I will eat only healthy foods and avoid all the garbage that has stuck to my ribs (well actually, more than just the ribs… let's go with all 206 of the bones - yeah, I have chocolate reindeer and other junk foods stuck to ALL of my skeletal system; plus maybe also stuck on some tendons, blood vessel walls, surely; brain, liver… ok let's say I have gobs of fat stuck everywhere and leave it at that).

To feel better now, I tell myself about what I will do tomorrow. In addition to a better diet, I will of course also be heading back to the fitness center! Despite not having the knees to run… or apparently to walk now, too… I can start swimming! I love to swim! The downside of smelling like chlorine every day for the rest of my life is a small price to pay for health!

As soon as I am done fitnessing, I will do some health-eating. Then I will NOT turn to my game computer and visit the vast wastelands of Fallout 3 (or other exotic and exciting locales waiting for me to double-click on their welcoming icons). And while that's on the chopping block, it would probably be for the best if I just canceled the satellite service too. No need to be wasting time watching Fringe and The Mentalist. Instead, I will use that time to get all the chores around the house done. There's lots of stuff in need of being sorted and thrown out or donated! Not to mention the painting, sanding, and minor repairs that need to be done here and there. Oh yeah, the cellar could REALLY use a makeover! So that's what I will do starting tomorrow!

Well, at least some of that tomorrow. I can't do everything in one day.

So, then... probably this weekend I will get that other stuff done. That really makes the most sense. The weekend is better for big jobs like cellars. Then in the afternoon, when I finish those bigger jobs, I can settle in and work on getting lectures tweaked. New material worked into the PowerPoints. Look over alternate texts for future classes. Get my next research project panned out. You know... Whatever else needs attention.

It is a great relief to me to know that Tomorrow-Me and Weekend-Me have everything under control. So for now, I can sit back, finish my reindeer and 0-calorie carbonated beverage and hope that Today-Me doesn't get in the way of any of the Awesome-Me's of the future!

I really can't wait to meet them! They are soooo cooler than me. Unlike Yesterday-Me who ruined my chances of being Tomorrow-Me, today…

Haunted By...

2010-12-21T11:18:00.006-05:00

When I was a lot younger, I recall a conversation I had with my mother. I don't actually remember much of the conversation; how it started; what it was mostly about. But what I do remember was what she said regarding people of strong faith. She said how much she envied that part of some people who were able to believe so strongly in something without proof (such as God - but that's not at all my point here).

I think that she craved something of that blind certainty. To have an unshakable belief that withstands the onslaughts of others' beliefs, conflicting evidence, and oftentimes even logic or reason.

At the time, I was able to understand that craving. But it wasn't quite the same. My craving derived from a desire to know. For the most part, I didn't know a lot, and knew that I didn't know a lot. The idea of truly knowing an answer to some BIG question really appealed to me. That was what I thought she meant.

In hindsight, though, I think she envied the concept of faith in an "ignorance is bliss" sort of way. I'd like to think, though, that if she had the choice to slip into a state of faith based on ignorance, she would not.

For myself at the time, I naïvely expected a direct positive relationship between education and a strong sense of knowing. Yet, after 30 or so years, I still find myself wistful for that strong sense of knowing. In fact, my sense is that the more I know, the more I doubt.

Looking around me, I see people who have strong beliefs, nonetheless. It makes me feel as though I am doing something wrong. So I examine these people's beliefs more closely - hoping to see whatever it is that they see that makes them so certain. They may point to the "evidence" for their strong beliefs, but all I see are fractures, weak or missing supports, misunderstanding, ignorance, irrelevance, or loud smoke.

What I mean by "loud smoke" comes from the way my father would occasionally argue his points. He would simply raise his voice and wave his arms around while smoking a cigarette. So he would literally become a loud puff of smoke that just kept repeating his viewpoint without any obvious justification. So to me, "loud smoke" is just a belief that is yelled really loudly and is about as solid as smoke.

Going to school and learning about psychology has shorn away many of the supports I would otherwise imagine myself relying upon to justify beliefs. On the one hand, it is depressing for me because I feel less and less confident that I will ever hold a strong belief, but on the other hand I find it really fascinating how people's minds work that allows them to hold strong beliefs. In other words, it is amazing all the tools we have, use, and develop to sustain our beliefs! So at least I am able to replace my loss with the gain of learning about some pretty cool stuff!

So anyway, here is a PARTIAL list of reasons why I don't believe anything too strongly:

False Memory: There are all sorts of memory problems revealed in psychology (reconstruction effects, implantation effects, degradation effects, etc.). My first experience with the fallibility of memory came when I was walking around the streets of Haverhill with my cousins and their friends. I must have been in sixth or seventh grade at the time. We came upon another group of kids across the street. For some reason, one of the guys in our group thought that someone on the other side deserved to have a rock thrown at them. He picked up a stone and hurled it across the street and nailed one of the guys over there. We all took off running. (No, it was not me throwing rocks - trust me; I couldn't hit the ground if I aimed at it.)

Later (months) I was in school and some kid came up to me and started yelling that I had thrown a rock at him and he was going to get me back! At first I had no idea what the hell he was yelling about, but after a bit, I realized he was the boy that had been hit by the rock a while back. I tried to explain that it wasn't me that had thrown the rock, but he was adamant that it WAS me because he never forgets a face and he would certainly never forget such a mean thing that was done to him nor who had done it.

At the time, I shared with him the same naïve view of memory. We both apparently believed that memory was a biological recorder of events. What people stored in memory was perfectly accurate, although it could have holes (like when we forget something - it's just missing information). Therefore, I assumed this kid was lying about what happened because he had no idea who the real rock-thrower person was, and never would. BUT, he remembered seeing ME there and was therefore only going to be able to exact revenge on the next best person; someone who had been part of the enemy group of rock-throwers; me!

Nowadays, I know he wasn't deliberately lying. He probably truly believed I was the rock-thrower. His memory was inaccurate, but he believed his memory was flawless. He held a strong belief based on corrupted data. But unlike a computer that can potentially analyze a memory drive and determine that it is bad, with human memory, we have no way of knowing what memories are good and which are bad. It ALL feels like GOOD memory! DOUBT.
Sensory Events: Having learned a pretty good amount about how the senses work, and especially how perception occurs, I know that even direct experiences with the world can be misleading. Just off the top of my head, here are some things that contribute to my doubts about what I see, hear, taste, touch, or smell about the world around me:

(1) Expectancy effects. (2) Constancy effects. (3) Phantosmia (and I'd include parosmia here too). (4 & 5) Hypnagogia and hypnopompia (accompanied by sleep paralysis). (6) Exploding head syndrome. (7+) Tactile hallucinations (e.g., feeling of bugs crawling on our skin, called formication; inability to locate an itchy spot; also what I call the voodoo effect - when you suddenly feel as though you are being poked by a needle for no apparent reason [a nociceptive illusion]; etc.). (8) Migraine aura (fortification illusion, photopsia, and scintillating scotoma). (9) Sleep paralysis. (10) Peduncular hallucinosis (I have a friend who experiences this - he is visited by Death, you know, cloaked and hooded skeleton carrying a scythe). (11) Synesthesia. (12) Tinnitus (hearing a [usually] high-pitched sound even though no sound is present). (13) Apophenia (and of course, pareidolia). (14) Autokinetic effect (perception of movement when there is no anchoring/orienting information, e.g., a small dot of light in an otherwise dark environment will appear to bounce and float around - it's really just our eyes moving, but we can't tell that because there is not enough visual information available to lock our eyes onto.) (15) Ideomotor effect (unconscious physical movements that affect objects in our vicinity that we then attribute to outside or paranormal sources - instead of to ourselves). (16) Pupil response (can make us think we see shadows). (17) Entoptic Phenomena (e.g., scratches on our corneas or junk in our eyes (the vitreous), can be seen under the right conditions and confused for objects and events in the world around us [cf. blue field entopic phenomenon]). (18+) Not to mention all of the ways our sensory world gets messed up when we drink, are over-tired, experiment with drugs, etc.

Of course, I'm not even listing here the possible (1) chronoceptive (losing track of time; feeling as though time is going slower or faster than usual; stopped; etc.), (2) equilibrioceptive (shifts in sense of balance that can not only make one feel dizzy, but also that they were pushed, or that gravity has shifted, etc.), (3) proprioceptive (Oliver Sack's writes about this in A Leg to Stand On - e.g., when our body parts feel foreign; like they do not belong to us), and (4) thermoceptive (temperature based) illusions people can experience (we don't really sense temperature, but shifts in thermal conductivity - when heat is drawn from our skin, we sense cold; when heat enters our tissue, we sense warmth. It's all relative.).
Psychological Illusions: We fool ourselves all the time with our little cognitive tricks. Sometimes we do so to protect our ego (see Social Psychology texts for more of these); sometimes to protect a belief; sometimes just to make it easier to process our complex world; and sometimes without even realizing it - out of habit.

(1) Confirmation bias (e.g., focus on "hits" and ignore "misses"). (2) Hindsight bias. (3) Availability heuristic. (4) Representativeness heuristic. (5) Assuming causation from correlation. (6) Need for certainty. (7) Change blindness & Inattention blindness. (8) Repetition blindness. (9) Dissociation (in this case we see people apparently doing this whilst "channeling" or exhibiting "demonic possession" [epilepsy?]). (10) And so on.
Less Common Psychological Issues: Although these are much less common than the above (since the above can occur to everyone, whereas these are specific to only a subset), they are still possibilities that come to mind when I hear people I don't know talk about their strong beliefs or the strong beliefs of folks they know. That is, I cannot rule out these issues as contributing to others' beliefs.

(1) Schizophrenia (the biggest one in this list, as well as any other psychotic disorders that can contribute to paracusia, etc.). (2) Delirium tremens. (3) Lewy body dementia (via Parkinson's disease). (4) Alzheimer's disease. (5) Epilepsy. (6) Narcolepsy. (7) Fever induced hallucinations. (8) ETC.!

So many mundane possibilities to account for the many strange beliefs we may form... and this is only a partial list! It's enough to make one's head spin! (Call an exorcist!) I haven't even listed the effects of deliberate lies people tell, hoaxes perpetrated, misunderstandings generated by poor language choices, and so on.

With so many possible competing sources of why we might believe something, you may wonder why we should believe anything! But we do. Our daily survival depends on believing potentially faulty information. Our confidence is increased whenever multiple sources of information converge on a single possibility (or a limited number of them). The more likely our survival depends on forming a good (accurate/true) belief, the more careful we are in considering the sources (usually).

On the other hand, when safety and survival are not directly affected by our particular choice of beliefs, THEN we seem to chigger into any old belief regardless of the evidence.

Ultimately, I think that people simply are unaware of how many ways we can be misled into trusting information used to support a particular belief (especially paranormal beliefs). In a way, then, I suspect that many people are enjoying the bliss of ignorance as they sustain their strong beliefs.

These are the cases that interest me from a psychological standpoint. These are the cases of strong belief that part of me yearns after, but a much larger part of me cannot accept; simply because I am haunted by all of these doubts.

Aren't you?

Can't Stand Idiots

2010-11-30T22:31:00.004-05:00

Because this is clearly a last-minute entry, I will be making this brief - just to "jump through the hoop" of getting a blog written this month. Makes me wonder if I should continue to do this. Obviously I'm not making the most of this whole blog thingy. Probably I am just suffering from endofthesemesteritis. Having a whole week off just before the end of the semester isn't doing anyone's motivation levels much good.

Recently bought a few t-shirts from JCP that I like. One has the ghost-buster's logo on it which is nice because it is helping me to think about the group I am hoping to help put together with the Pittsburgh CFI. The aim will be to provide a rational counterpoint to the CRAP that gets into the newspapers from so-called "paranormal investigators" in the area. So if anyone is interested, let me know. ALSO, if you can think of a good name for the group, THAT would be helpful, too. I was thinking along the lines of SIPP (Scientific Investigations of Paranormal Phenomena) but I don't know if I really want the word "paranormal" in there. Anyway, let me know. Please.

The second shirt has an image of the cat-in-the hat character and says something like, "Trust me, I'm a doctor." The last one has big initials: CSI. Then beneath these it states, "Can't Stand Idiots." So that's my brief topic for this month's entry.

What I really cannot stand is when I am an idiot. In fact, the whole idea for this entry was "given" to me when I overheard a student mention her own seeming proclivity for self-idiocy. It reminded me of an early memory of being an idiot. This would be first grade.

R. L. Wood School (Haverhill Massachusetts) was where I was introduced to my potential for idiocy. It only contained grade one through four (if memory serves); and it is now closed for good I've heard. Anyway…

Every day we broke for lunch as soon as the hot-lunch delivery was completed. We filed out of the classroom door in the back of the room and walked past a table stacked with Styrofoam containers of steaming yet ultimately lukewarm foods covered with condensation. We were given a tray and a container then toward the end of the table, napkins, plastic-ware, paper straw, and a small carton of milk. Then we continued back through a doorway at the front of the classroom to sit at our desks and eat like adults.

Let me stop here and tell you how awesome those desks were! They were the chair-attached kind that had a slightly angled top that lifted to reveal a chamber underneath. Here we stored our small pot of paste (yum), box of over-sized crayons, a wooden ruler, a giant red eraser, some pencils, as well as graded papers (the ones that didn't earn the right to go home to the parents - yes, I mean the F's), and books about Dick and Jane. At the front edge of the desk was an old ink-well hole (mostly useless except that it was a good place to chuck bits of trash and what-nots during the day).

Ok, so I was an exceptionally shy child who tried not to move, talk, or otherwise become noticed. I had zero friends - unless you count the kid who chased my when I got off the bus every morning. He loved doing this in the winter because he'd catch up to me by grabbing my hood and yanking it backward and then use it to whip me around to the ground.

I also remember that there was a girl who really liked me and one day she walked over to me, grabbed me and gave me a big kiss on the cheek. I probably looked at her with a mixture of shock (that never happened to me before - or since, actually) mixed with horror (can you say COOTIES?!). I quickly wiped away the wet remains of her affections with my hand which made her burst into tears and run away crying, "He wiped off my kiss!"

Turns out that signaled the beginning of quite the dry spell for me… lasted at least a decade before I got any other girl to kiss me.

BEING that I was shy, that didn't mean I was immune to the attentions of the teacher (Mrs. Hansbury). She was always very generous with her foil stars and praise whenever a student did something amazingly wonderful… like pick up the chalk that had fallen from the tray, or let her know there was someone at the door, or raise a hand to answer a question.

It was during lunch one afternoon that I suddenly had a craving for some attention. I had eaten my meal and was sipping milk through my straw reflecting on how nice it would be to get a gold star on my forehead. The milk carton was resting on my desk next to my elbow which was supporting the hand I was using to balance my idiot head. Sipping through this soggy paper straw, I scanned the floor for errant chunks of chalk, or maybe an eraser to pick up. Nothing there. Then I remembered that noticing a visitor at the door was worth points, but nobody was outside the front door (most likely spot for visitors). But then again, maybe the person was outside the BACK door?! Nobody would even SEE that door window because we all were facing forwards! Maybe there's somebody there RIGHT NOW!

I twisted my head and body to the right so I could check. Now, turning one's head means that one's face goes too. Turning the face means eyes, nose, and mouth turn. Since the mouth was turning, that meant that the soggy straw was going for a ride, too. Because the straw was going, that meant the milk was going to try and tag along as well.

Just FYI, you should never invite milk cartons on short trips because of all the members of the traveling party mentioned above, they are the WORST at keeping up.

The milk carton just tipped over and started to chortle its contents onto my pants. I didn't want to make a big scene, so I just watched as the milk emptied out. It was supposed to be less than a pint of milk, but somehow I think the dairy had overfilled it because it was about a gallon or two that eventually made its way onto my clothes.

This may not seem like a big deal to anyone - but you have to remember that a little boy with a wet crotch in first grade doesn't exactly radiate maturity or mental wherewithal to either the teacher, or the little boy's merciless classmates. And no, there was nobody at the door.

For some reason lunch was a bad time for me in first grade at Wood School. I remember one day we had corn in our lunch cartons. I was innocently eating when I noticed the guy next to me placing a single kernel on his spoon, then bending the spoon back and then releasing it at another kid a few seats over.

I watched as it seemed to rocket across the room like it was shot from a gun. That was amazing!

Never in my experience had I ever come across anything like this. The lad was a genius to invent such a device! I watched him do it again and decided it was time to see if I could recreate this agricultural weaponry on my own. I held my spoon just so… Looking over at my neighbor to see if I'd set it up correctly. Then I plopped a chunk of corn into the bowl of the spoon. Yes, mine seemed to look about like his. Now let's see, you simply push down the edge of the spoon? As I did so, I looked over to see if it was really that simple… Yes, it… WHOOPS! The weapon fired before I was ready! I hadn't had a chance to aim it anywhere. Actually, to be honest, I don't think I'd even planned on firing the weapon… I just wanted to see if I could set it up!

I'd been holding the spoon-weapon so that it was facing the front of the room. Watching in horror, the little yellow projectile sailed beautifully upward toward the front of the classroom following a mathematically perfect arc! Glancing ahead at its likely target, I saw the lunch monitor. She was standing up front, arms folded in a military stance while scanning the desks for unruly behavior. She never saw it coming. The corn kernel bounced exactly off the tip of her nose perfectly. If I'd been aiming for it, I'd have missed her completely.

It was a very light morsel of food, so the resulting head bounce she gave had to be pure reflex. She had merely been startled - not physically wounded in ANY way. Nonetheless, despite the benign nature of the event, she stomped to the middle of the classroom demanding to know, "Who did that?!"

As you know, children, especially first graders, are a socially cohesive bunch. They stick together in solidarity. So as a unit, every single child in the classroom (and I think even some who happened to be passing by in the hall) pointed their finger at me and yelled, "HE DID IT!"

The monitor was clearly shocked and made me feel even worse by saying, "Little Stevie Paul?! I never would have thought you capable of such behavior!" No punishment. It was just that sentence of disbelief and disappointment.

It was that very day that I vowed never again to partake of any culinary warfare. I hung up my plastic spoons for good. So be warned. If ever we find ourselves together in a cafeteria and a food skirmish breaks out. My role will never exceed that of conscientious objector.

Tums, or Rolaids, or Whatever...

2010-10-29T19:59:00.002-05:00

My first full time job (40-hour week) was at a company called Raytheon (the very plant pictured above). I was hired as a clerk. It was the beginning of the year as I had recently failed out of college after a miserable first semester in the pre-med program at my state university. My highest grade was, I think, a "C" in my psychology course - calculus, physiology, chemistry, and physics didn't fare so well. (My misguided plan was to eventually become a psychiatrist.) Orientation and registration at the university had been a whirlwind and I was "advised" to take all these classes merely because they fit into a weekly schedule (two additional slots were needed for chemistry and physiology labs). Anyway, that experience was, as they say, an epic fail.

Despite the "epic fail," I admit to having been pretty relieved. I hated college. My only motivation for even attending college in the first place was that everyone had expected me to go. To make things worse, near the end of the semester my girlfriend had dumped me (pre-email days = letter). Well actually, to be accurate, she'd dumped me LONG before then, it was just that she didn't let me know until about this time. Anyway, just after the holidays, an official letter arrived inviting me not return to school. Once the family shock and disappointment in me waned, I was able to settle into a pretty happy contentment. The future and all its untapped opportunities lay before me!

My dad already worked at Raytheon, so that probably helped to get me that clerk position. Maybe, maybe not. But I recall the human resources lady doing my entry interview and finishing up with, "Be sure that you do a good job, Stephen." To which I sincerely and honestly replied, "I'll do my best." Apparently that wasn't a satisfactory response as she got a little huffy and said, "I expect that you will do better than that!"

Being young and accustomed to submitting to authority (i.e., anyone older than me), I didn't "talk back" or anything, but I did leave with an uncomfortable feeling that I'd screwed something up, AND that the woman I'd just spoken to was a blazing idiot. How can I do better than my best? Was I supposed to have LIED and said I'd give 110% or something? Cripes, it's impossible to do either! Although I didn't recognize it at the time, this was the first little hairline crack in my perfect post-college eggshell bubble I was trying to settle into.

Other fractures to my world were soon to follow (all of which finally got me the proper motivation to go to college again). Basically, my mind was too active for the job I was placed into. Exceptional pay and benefits are not enough to compensate for sitting nine hours a day (one for lunch) doing a stupid, inane, job. My job was to keep files on the parts that were stored in a cage next to my open-floor office and submit reorder requests when appropriate. That's it. It was a position that would be easily replaced by a computer program if anyone wanted to spend four hours to write it.

All the records were on stiff manila cards filed in rows of cabinets. Reaching into these day after day gave me endless paper cuts and bright red and bloody cuticles. I could finish my work in less than six hours. So I had to learn to take my time or I'd be bored silly looking for stuff to do.

Anyway, two embarrassing things happened to me on this job. I will tell you about the lesser of the two. The other one I still haven't fully recovered from yet.

The office area that I worked in contained about six or so desks. My desk was next to an old World War II vet's desk. He was in a wheelchair and had been a paratrooper during the war. Then there was the desk my boss (Sal) used. Then behind me were desks for the three ladies to work at (no idea what their jobs were). I only remember two of their names, Mona and Vickie. Let's call the other one, Sheila. Anyway, I flirted madly with Sheila and Vickie who were both married, but flirted and teased with me as good as I gave. Anyway, one day Sheila wasn't feeling well. She complained that her stomach was bothering her. Well, I told her to go to the nurse's office. You have to understand that this Raytheon was (is) HUGE. People got around on little carts that looked like motorized skateboards as well as golf carts. There was an actual little hospital area in there that had a nurse 24-7 and probably a doctor for some set times.

Ok, so I told her simply to go see the nurse and get some Tums or Rolaids or something. Amazingly, she said, "No way!" You see, she was afraid of hospitals and any of the related trappings thereof. I'd never met someone with such a strange thing to be afraid of, so naturally, I teased the crap out of her about it. That didn't last long because it isn't really much fun to tease people who are sick. They just don't give very good reactions, nor do they play back very well (or very nicely). She wouldn't smile whatsoever. So I gave up and went -slowly- back to my work.

After a while of listening to her little sighs and uncomfortable chair shuffle noises, I started feeling a little guilty which then turned to a little bit of sympathy. Maybe I could do something to cheer her up? So, I asked if she'd be willing to got to the nurse's office if I went with her?

No.

That turned into me suggesting that we could go and she would brief me on her symptoms and I would pretend it was MY tummy ache? She wouldn't have to say anything, and I would just sneak her the Tums or Rolaids or whatever when I got them.

No.

It wasn't much of a stretch to finally just say that I would go myself and get her something and bring it back.

Yes!

Fine. I had plenty of free time anyway. We briefed Sal about the plan so I could get permission to leave. He gave us a crooked look, but said fine-whatever. Off I went on my 15 minute walk to the nurse's station. My position was too lowly to allow the use of a motorized sled. I had to hike the full distance despite my tummy ache. It was actually a good thing to walk because I needed to get into character. How should I walk in? Holding my stomach while barely dragging myself in? No, don't over-act, Steve. What should I say? Should I try to cry? No, again, I had to remind myself not to over play the role.

I finally got there and the place was deserted. It looked like a chunk of a hospital plunked into the middle of a factory. After a bit, the nurse showed up and was very professional looking (white dress and hat and everything). This intimidated me a bit. I almost chickened out because I thought for sure she would know I was fibbing about my tummy pains. So I had to be sure to sell it. Holding my belly and bending a bit at the waist, I explained the terrible pain and how I knew everything would be ok if I could just have some Tums or Rolaids or something.

She escorted me to a small examination room and checked me out (blood pressure, etc.) and asked how long it had been hurting. Only this morning. Really, I think I just had a bad bit of breakfast. Tums… Rolaids, whatever you have, then I'll go. Please, I really have to get back to work, I barely have enough time to finish it all.

The nurse left me in the little examination room for a bit. Just enough time for me to start to feel a little guilty - maybe she knew I was fibbing. She'd gotten all my information, name, what department I worked in, the name of my boss. Gulp. Maybe she was talking on the phone reporting me right now! I was on the verge of sneaking out, but she already knew who I was and exactly where I worked, so I couldn't really get away.

When I had originally volunteered for this mission, I'd felt like a hero: A secret agent off to scam the "enemy" out of needed medical supplies. But now! Right now I was feeling like a naughty little boy who was waiting outside of the principal's office for my parents to show up so we could all talk about what a perfect criminal I was going to turn out to be.

Eventually she returned with a little paper cup in her hand! Yay! Success! The tablets must be in that little cup! My spirits soared a bit because I wasn't in trouble! I could get back into my spy fantasy!

Then the other hand came up with a very medicinal-looking bottle. Umm…?!

She poured from this bottle a murky watery greenish swampy juice. It plopped and dribbled from the mouth of this ominous brown bottle to fill the cup about a third of the way up. I literally had stopped breathing for the moment in order to let the consequences of my lies finally catch up with me.

So… umm, what is that?

It's called Tincture of Belladonna.

I was a college flunky, but I knew that Belladonna was the less scary term for Deadly Nightshade, a very toxic (extremely poisonous, hence the name) plant. As absurd as it may have been, I thought that I had actually been caught out in my lies and the company was going to kill me; make an example of me. I could keep my spy fantasy because I was like a spy about to be defeated unexpectedly by a beautiful woman (anyone get the joke there?).

Seeing my trepidation, the nurse assured me that it was a TINCTURE of belladonna. Not strong enough to poison me. Just enough to numb the tummy. Give me some relief to the obvious discomfort I was in. So, go ahead and drink it up! You'll feel better in no time!

Actually, I just wanted some Tums… or Rolaids… or something like that.

This is something like that, only better. Go ahead, drink.

Umm….

DRINK.

ok…. Gulp. Choke. Gag. Thanks… Gotta go back to work… feel better already… thanks… cough… see ya…

I staggered back to my work station. I have no memory of the walk back. Just a memory of leaving the nurse's station then next arriving back at my work area. I felt really sick. The partially strained swamp juice I'd allowed to drop into my stomach was having the exact opposite effect than described. Of course, I never had a tummy ache to begin with.

I went straight to my desk and Sheila asked where the Tums or Rolaids or whatever was. I explained that the nurse had made me drink the whatever. That was the only thing that made her smile that day. Actually, I don't remember that she actually smiled. It was more like she was laughing hysterically the rest of the day along with everyone else in the area she could tell it to. I had inadvertently made her feel better even in my failure to secure Tums or Rolaids, or whatever.

For the rest of my employ, there would be occasional mysterious deliveries of Tums or Rolaids to my desk when I wasn't looking. Nice.

Life and Living

2010-09-30T22:06:00.008-05:00

http://www.nzimpressions.com/
An Alternative To Suicide

Of mossy green
and shining treats
With golden yellow
grimy teeth

I could blankly
sit and stare
Then slip my shoes
from off my feet

Into this
I'd slowly sink
From wading in
much too deep

Then I'd splash
my face and drink
From this stagnant pool
of boiling stink

The Long Shot

2010-08-31T22:25:00.003-05:00

NPR has (had?) a segment called, "What I Believe" that would air every so often. I haven't listened for at least a year, so nobody try to guilt me into donating to NPR. Anyway, the few essays I listened to were interesting and got me to wondering what I'd say. So for lack of another topic for this month (I have a mere 1 hour and 40 minutes to get something in), here's a brief and probably poorly written ramble of something that I think I believe.

Growing up, I was pretty quiet and allowed others to pick on me without fighting back. I hated it, but never wanted to make things worse (which is what I assumed would be the result). So I think that as a result of that, I have a soft-spot for the underdog.

By "underdog" I mean a person or group (or animal, etc.) that seems to be the minority or hold the weaker stance in any conflict. So I am probably a sucker for the long-shot bet.

Another consequence of this bias is that I seem to have an automatic problem with authority figures. I can get over that problem as long as I can see the justification of that authority. If I think a person in charge is an idiot, I look for ways to avoid that person or thwart them in any way I can (without risking conflict that would result in escalation - because I am a wimp, after all).

I have enough experience to know that often the majority is right, and that the weaker position is weak for good reason. But it isn't always this way. So when I believe that a weaker person or group (etc.) is on the receiving end of abuse, it fires me up.

The word "belief" tends to conjure religious associations. For good reason, as religion is just belief adorned with bizarre ceremonies, costumes, trinkets of wood, plaster, paint, glass, gold, and too often, blood.

I am tired of religion. I am tired of hearing that all the good is thanks to God, while all the bad is our own fault. I cringe when I hear people say they will pray for this and that - like a cure for cancer. If (or when) such a cure arrives, its arrival will be credited to God by many. Not so much the people who lived and died working toward that cure. Losing sleep, some losing loved ones to the very cancers they were working to cure. This actually pisses me off because we (humans) are the underdogs.

Before anyone's nose gets out of joint, don't think that my point here is an atheistic one. I think it is a psychological one.

If this world was made for us, then we should be able to do with it as we will (which is what we've been doing). Surely God will step in before we ruin things too much, right? If someone were to calculate the man-hours spent praying in a given year, imagine how much time that would be?! What a waste of time! If you were on a slowly sinking boat, would it be a good idea to sit and pray, or bail water?

Here is what I believe. Until people can come to put their faith entirely in people, and just people, we will be a doomed race. Humans must come to believe in themselves. Children grow up and become self-sufficient - that doesn't mean they never had parents. So if you must continue to believe in a God, then fine - but you should believe more in people. There's more evidence that there are people on this planet than there is evidence of any particular god.

We seem to be a race of middle-aged children who have yet to leave our parents' basement bedroom! It's as though we expect that some guiding force will protect us from ourselves.

Why do we have to rely on that? Why can't we believe in ourselves?

So again, I find myself rooting for the underdog. In this case, us. Belief in a god seems to be an obstacle to our growth as a race. God is the abusive domineering partner in our relationship. But, like is too often the case in such relationships, we make excuses for the abuse, we come back to the abuser time-and-time again. We refuse the restraining order, we won't press charges. We think the abuse is our own fault (mostly true) and if we just behave better, we'll be taken care of (never true).

We call ourselves "civilized" but, as Inigo Montoya once said, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

ACME: Chapter Four

2010-07-08T16:47:00.003-05:00

Wake-up Call

Senator Card stood patiently behind the technician. He was staring in suppressed amazement at the display in front of them both. There, as if it were yesterday, stood the house in which his best friend and partner had lived over 30 years ago. The assistant was twiddling with the computer controls and the view began to corkscrew drunkenly closer to the dirty yellow two-story house. The constantly shifting view made the senator feel a bit queasy.

After almost losing his balance for the third time, he relented and reached to his side a bit to press a palm against the metal wall beside the console. Eventually the view on the display had completed its gyrating path toward the kitchen window. The screen darkened for a moment as the view passed through the wall just beside the window. The technician glanced nervously over his shoulder toward the senator and mumbled, "Sorry, I was aiming for the window." He was new at this, after all. Hell, he was also the most experienced at "this."

The view steadied and Card could see the old Formica table with the burns and scratches. There was a nearly empty pot of coffee and three dirty cups and assorted dishes scattered elsewhere on the table. The sink across the floor near the refrigerator was stacked half full with pots, pans, and a broken pot of soil. The senator smiled as the sudden memory returned. The plant should be in the pot on the stove, if he remembered everything correctly.

The technician tightened a few knobs and snapped a few toggle switches to fix the image. With a squeaky turn of his chair, he informed the senator that the computer was locked onto the appropriate coordinates. This was received with a grunt from the senator who stepped through the doorway out of the control booth toward the over-sized plywood shack sitting in the middle of the warehouse floor.

From a first glance, it appeared to be an absurdly gigantic warehouse. But it was necessarily so as it rested on top of more than sixty stories of densely packed technology. The shack was the only part of ACME that didn't need so much space.

As he walked toward the wooden crate that temporarily served as a step up to the only door on the ludicrously rustic looking shanty, he could feel his knees getting weaker. He found that he had to consciously herd his thoughts away from what he was doing. Or, more precisely, what he was about to do.

As a consequence of blocking out these thoughts, the senator felt as though he were walking in a dream. The simple and normal act of walking toward a doorway had suddenly taken on a strange surrealistic quality. Perspiration had begun to form at the top of his brow. Annoyingly, sweat beads were clinging to the front edge of his toupee. Each step brought about a tiny wiggle from the moisture-dots. Each tiny wiggle of sweat became an insect trying to squirm under his hairpiece. This helped him to not think about what was happening… what was about to happen.

Within this haphazardly built wooden box existed the face of the ACME. It contained the ACME emitter. Or, to be more precise and less poetic: sixteen orange-peel slices of curved metal that, when put together, formed a gigantic metal sphere. The outer shell of the metal sphere was actually only about a half foot thick. It was completely studded with what appeared to be giant bolts of metal and neon piping. Beneath the sphere, and leaking around various supports, was an ominous red glow. Most of the base of the metal sphere was actually the top of the ACME pad. The sixty stories of technology beneath the pad extended nearly eighteen stories beneath ground level.

The emitter of the ACME projected all the way up from the seventh sub level like a spinal cord accessing and projecting to floors of crystalline computer circuits and dense slabs of virtually infinite storage. This spine of ACME projected here at the 39th floor to form the floor, walls and ceiling of this relatively tiny metal orb. In fact, significant portions of the metal sphere were actually the beta and beta-prime data encoders. The actual emitter was a wire mesh spheroid inside the center of this technological disco-ball Senator Card was about to enter.

Layered, and fully integrated within the spherical emitter were seven crystalline shells, each capable of presenting data in almost any format and in any of over two million shades of color. Everywhere things were spherical except for the giant crate built around the ACME ball. He'd forgotten to ask why they decided to put a round peg in a square hole. Stupid scientists.

As the senator stepped up to the wooden crate, his foot caught the edge causing it to squeak on the floor like a metallic fart. The fart-echo resonated and reverberated much longer than it should have for such a dignified moment. Hand on doorknob, the senator glanced back at the control booth. There, the technician was leaning in the doorframe watching pensively.

With a deep breath, a sharp twist and pull of the doorknob, the senator swung the door open and launched himself inside the outermost portion of the orb. From here he could see the glowing red and metallic sheen of the primary ACME sphere. Someone had left behind a small yellow toolbox just beside the secondary entrance to the sphere. "Sloppy," he thought. There was no door to open into the ball; the entry was a gaping black portal barely big enough to step through. He could see nothing but swirling black.

"Are you sure this thing is on?" He yelled back through the doorway of the shed.

The small intercom next to his head crackled, startling Card enough that he almost fainted. "Yeah, you won't see anything until you step through the entry field. Just push through it; and whatever you do, don't touch the metal on your way through!" The technician smirked, feeling safe in his control room. There was no reason why the Senator should avoid touching the metal, but he knew it would be a bit of a squeeze for the portly old man.

Senator Card stood for a moment sizing up the portal. Slowly and carefully he poked his right leg slowly through the black swirling entryway. His toe bumped something solid on the other side, but his foot did find a surface to stand on. Still moving slowly, he added weight to the right leg and surfer-like squatted and pushed his right hand forward into the darkness as though pushing a curtain aside. Ducking a bit, he leaned into the portal and without thinking, held his breath and plunged through the hole.

Card was totally unprepared for the extent of the detail suddenly revealed. In response, his legs began to melt beneath him. Almost windmill-like, Card grabbed at the nearest kitchen chair and yanked it under him. The slack-jawed senator fell ballistically into the chair with a jolt that caused his jaw to close with a snap. Like a balloon popping, he exhaled and stared. It was all truly unbelievable.

The Senator fumbled a barely functioning hand forward to the table to grab at something - he got the saltshaker. He hefted its weight. He shook some salt into his hand, which then moved to his mouth. It tasted like salt! A smile began to spread across the senator's darkening face.

Years ago, on the advice of his closest but now deceased friend, the senator had stopped smiling; certainly never in public, anyway. By all outward appearances, the senator appeared at worst as a harmless but serious looking old man. When he smiled, though, a subliminal evil essence oozed from every nook, dent, and clogged pore in the man's face. The lines around his eyes and mouth sharpened to dagger points with smiles that had trapped children in their beds. Fearful of this waking nightmare, children would fear to sleep lest a smiling Card visit them in their nightmares.

Senator Card lifted a dinner plate and felt the chipped edge with his thumb. There were dried splotches of ketchup and baked beans here and there. Jesus it felt so real! He tapped the plate with a fingernail and heard the slight chime of the china. On impulse, he dropped it suddenly. With satisfaction, it bounced off of the table to smash onto the floor.

The crash was answered by a male voice from a room down the hall, much further away than the diameter of the sphere he was in could allow for. "Norm? Is that you, you rotten bastard? You shitin' up my kitchen again?" After a moment, his thirty-years-dead partner and closest friend stepped into the kitchen and immediately paled at the sight of the decrepit old man sitting at the table. From his partner's point of view, Card had become a bloated senior-citizen overnight.

"Christ! Who the hell… Norm…? Are you…? Is that you? What the hell happened to your face? Jesus, Norm!"

Senator Card had mentally rehearsed this meeting, hell, fantasized about this meeting thousands of times over the past seventeen years. What he'd say, how he'd be standing when he said it, and even what aftershave he'd have on. Hell, he'd even practiced in front of the mirror a few times. Now that he was actually here, the first and only word that croaked from between his two sweaty lips to this long-dead old friend was, "Incredible!"

* * *

That morning… I was reading the newspaper in my "library" when Norm helped himself to my kitchen. The crash nearly made me spill my coffee. I yelled to him while I tidied up my "office" with a flush. He tended to ruin the things he touched and Mary was plenty mad enough at me already because of Norm.

I remember shuffling down the hall to the kitchen. What I saw really shocked hell out of me. "Jesus Christ Norm, what the hell are you doing?" He looked sheepishly at me. And did his 'asshole' smirk at me. He looked like hell. Real hell. I even told him so.

"Norman, you really look like hell. I mean, more than usual."

Norm crunched across the plate-fragments on the floor and luckily fell, or sat, in the chair in front of me. He had the smirk going full blast. I knew this was bad, but it was spooky bad. He held my saltshaker in his hands and kept toying with the damn thing. "Incredible" was the last thing I thought he was going to start with, but oddly enough, it was the word on my mind when he said it. I just couldn't believe his face. He was ugly enough last night, but now… It was like he had someone stretch all the flesh on his face out and it just hadn't snapped back into place right. I figured he knew how he looked, so I stopped kicking him while he was down.

He had something on his mind; I could wait. There was a lot occupying my mind just then anyway. The newspaper headlines occupied my professional thoughts. The Fence was making news again. Not front page every day, but he was there today. The bastard. I was sure he had something to do with the body we found last week. It was disgusting. Nobody had ever seen such a thing. It was as if the guy had instantly turned into a sponge. Blood and guts, or whatever it was, had leaked out and hardened into a kind of shell around the body. The coroner upchucked on that one and I'd never seen that happen before. I figured that somehow Fence got hold of some kind of acid or maybe it was radiation? I dunno. I needed to check out a few sources downtown. Most of my thoughts, though, were tied up replaying the fight I had with Mary last night. My mind started working on that problem while my vulture eyes feasted on Norm's carcass of a face. It was truly an incredible sight.

Norm turned back to the table. He unscrewed the salt, spilling little irritating sprinkles on my jelly donut. "What's up Norm? You look like you were caught with the chief's wife or something." The look he gave me made the hair on my neck stand up, but I kept it to myself. I hate it when I hit close to home without trying. My partner put the salt shaker down precisely. He stared at his hand and blew out a breath I didn't realize he was holding.

"I never would have thought this could be so hard." He said to someone other than me it seemed. My hairy-neck began to prickle a little more. He lifted the back of his hand to his mouth and absently licked off the few grains of salt. He seemed about to say something but stopped to look at his hand. "My god. It really tastes like salt!" I was beginning to feel like I was in a Twilight Zone episode.

"Eddie," he began. "Look, I gotta get something off my chest." I waited. This must have been tough on him. He really looked shitty. In fact, as I looked at him, besides the face-wreck, it seemed like he hadn't slept in a week. He seemed bulky or bloated. I was getting that crawly sick feeling in my gut like he was gonna tell me he was going to die, or that he's been screwing my wife, or that he's been working for Fence and now he's got to kill me. I always try to get together a quick list of worst-case scenarios before I hear what sounds like bad news. It's never as bad as the real thing. I find it to be a helpful coping strategy.

"I can't tell you until I make something else clear to you first. This is probably going to sound crazy to you, Eddie, but, the truth is, you aren't really who you think you are." All that I could think of to say was "Mmmm?" I hadn't considered the possibility that an insane guy named Norm would be in my kitchen. I made a note to add this to my list next time.

He sighed impatiently and tried again. This time he had paperwork or something. He had removed a shiny blue business card out of his pocket. It read, "Atomic Chrono-Momentum Extrapolation (ACME), New Pasadena, California, Access code: International Operator, 40014001" I looked at Norm dead-on in the eyes. He was straight with this. "I'd always wondered where Coyote got his stuff."

"Ok, ok. Here then, look." Norm fished out his wallet. Things were feeling real weird, but weird got weirder when Ab-Norm (as I was thinking of him just then) pulled out a few hundred-dollar bills and without breaking eye-contact with me, placed one at random into my hand.

"Look at the bill, Eddie, is it real?"

I was always ready for Norm's little pop-quizzes. I checked it. It seemed ok to me. I was really having to concentrate, though. Norm was acting as if this were really important. I must be missing something. After a bit I gave it back.

"Yeah, it look's real to me," was the best I could do.

I held the bill out to him so he could show me what was wrong. Show me what I was missing. Norm didn't take the bill. Very slowly and deliberately, like he was ready to spring a surprise party, or a trap, he said, "Look at the date, Ed. What's up with that?"

I took the bill and stared at it again, this time with particular emphasis on the date. It had been printed in 2002. "I give up Norm, what's wrong with 2002? Did the government not print any in 2002?" Clearly I was failing this quiz. Norm's reaction wasn't what I'd expected though.

"What? 2002?" He snatched the bill back and looked at. "Christ!" He fumbled at his cabbage wad again and pulled a few out. "Here, check these..."

The hair at the base of my neck was starting to prickle. Where the hell did Norm get all these hundred dollar bills? Were the rumors true? Was he on the take? I never would have given that a second thought if it hadn't been for the money. So much, too much, of it for Norm to have so casually in his wallet.

* * *

The senator could see that his old friend was merely humoring him. It was infuriating. He'd worried so much about how his friend would react to the wonders of science, and there was simply no easy way to get through to him.

"Wait a second. Step back a bit to the hallway. Now watch." Card stood, turned, and stepped carefully to the front of the kitchen where he'd first come in. Sweeping his arm to reach just above and below his head, the senator inched forward feeling for the now invisible edge of the sphere's entrance. As he neared the far end of the sphere he began to crouch over so as to keep from hitting his head. Finally he could feel the smooth inner shell and the rim of the sphere entrance just above his forehead. He turned back to look at Eddie, leaned awkwardly back to wedge the top of his head against the otherwise invisible entry-portal. The senator folded his arms across his chest and grinned awfully at Eddie.

To Eddie, this performance looked like a bad mime act. Norm was really looking like a decrepit. No; he was looking like a senile old man. Although, he had to admit, the angle Norm was leaning at made it appear as though he was about a foot or so away from the front door. He really looked like he was leaning on thin air!

"OK Norm, nice trick. Now stop before you pop a hernia or something."

"Damn it, Eddie! This is not a fucking trick!" The senator's eyes blazed like they do before someone gets hurt. It had been a very long time since anyone had failed to take him seriously. There was also some strained frustration. He seemed unable to communicate his ideas to his old partner. It was essential that Eddie understand what was going on. He had to see the reaction or he would never buy into the ACME effect.

Besides, this little test meant that he was putting off dealing with some critical topics. Very critical topics. Topics that were getting more expensive as this program kept running and the ACME kept draining power resources.

"Come over here and feel this. It's the wall of the projection room we're in."

Eddie paused to consider this bizarre request. He wasn't really in the mood for this stupid-ass game playing. But things were not normal. Maybe Norman was "sick" and should be humored? He frowned and walked over to his partner.

"Here, put your hand right here, you'll feel it!"

Eddie looked blankly at Norman for a moment, then swung his hand up to the point in space indicated. There was nothing there, of course. His palm smacked nothing but thin air. But he patted at the air a bit without much enthusiasm. Humoring him, Eddie said, "Yeah, I feel that, kinda hard but soft, right?"

"Shit. You're part of the damn program, you can't feel it. Hang on let me think. Of course! The tools! Now we can get somewhere, Edster!" Eddie hated being called "Edster." He didn't actually like "Eddie" too much either. He sometimes felt that it made him sound too soft, or too friendly.

Card practically danced as he circled his large frame back toward the entry portal. He dragged the chair over to support his weight on one arm. Then he crouched a bit and with the other with the other arm, started patting at the air again.

Eddie was becoming less concerned about his friend and also less patient. He watched again as the world's worst mime started act two. But suddenly he saw Norman's hands disappear into nothing.

"Norm! What the hell… how did you do that?" Eddie whispered fiercely.

Card looked back over his shoulder with a strained grin then ducked forward and suddenly his head disappeared, followed by his arms up to his shoulders and then his waist.

"Norm! Jesus Christ, what are you doing?"

Eddie bent down and grabbed Norman by the belt and pulled. Both flew back toward the sink in a heap. Something dark flew from Norman's hands. Instinctively Eddie grabbed at it but wasn't able to hold it for long. Its weight and metallic bulk slipped from his fingers just before it clattered loudly against the kitchen sink and then slid along the floor to Card's feet, spilling things along the way. It was a small toolbox now opened with a few tools marking its path haphazardly like discarded children's toys. Looking at his friend with some amazement, Eddie could see that Norman's face had purpled and was sweating from the minimal exertion.

"How did you do that Norm? It was a great trick! Better than that mime shit!"

The senator began to reply as he plucked the tools from the floor and arranged them back into the box, but stopped suddenly. He frowned a bit at the army-green toolbox and its contents. "Funny," he thought, "I coulda sworn this had been a yellow toolbox." Then the senator's arm began that familiar aching. "Shit! Not now. Not now for Christ sake." he thought.

"Eddie, just sit tight for a while, ok? I need to go take care of something." The pain was beginning to numb his shoulder and spread hotly to his wrist and fingers. "I'll be back, partner. I need to think this through a little better. I'll try again real soon, promise!"

Card felt old, out of shape, and very foolish. This was mixed together with a frustrated impatience with himself that he hadn't endured since his rookie days. But, he had realized that this wasn't really a live performance. All he had to do was reset the program and try it again. His old partner would have no memory. This entire conversation would be erased the moment the ACME was powered down. He could have a do-over.

The throbbing in his arm had begun to dissipate and the tingle in his fingers signaled the false alarm. Nitro pills in his briefcase back in the control room were no longer important. All the Senator cared about now was getting the hell out of the machine. Forget about the sincerely concerned looks his ex-partner had given him. This needs to be done better. And it will be.

Senator Card turned his back on Eddie and ducked down toward where he thought the opening or exit should be. He had completely forgotten about not touching the sides of the doorway. Pressing his hands along the inner surface of the sphere he waved around feebly until he saw his hands disappear in front of him. He'd located the exit. He spread his hands out to find either side of the round portal so he could center himself and step through. He paused briefly to consider turning around and saying goodbye to his dead partner. But what the hell did it matter? As soon as they turned the machine off this would all be gone. His partner would be dead again anyway. Besides, fatigue was taking root. He had seen what he needed so now the automatic parts of his mind were taking over and gearing up for a nap. His muscles were getting numb and as excited as all this was, he had to admit that he was too much an old fart to do any more. He still had to get back to his office and organize his thoughts.

With a sigh, Card reached between his feet and grabbed the toolbox. With his free hand, he pulled himself through the hole. Instantly it felt as though there were firecrackers going off in his mouth, throat, chest, and belly. Dropping the toolbox, he yelled clutching and slapping at his chest and stomach. Card's initial and panicked thoughts were that he was having that heart attack anyway. That was quickly changed to a paranoid certainty that he had been betrayed and some malfunction in the ACME was causing his death. He'd had heart attacks before and they never felt like this.

* * *

After he watched his friend disappear into thin air carrying the toolbox, a sick dread moved through Eddie's gut. "What was it he said?" Glancing at the table he saw the saltshaker. "Right, he said, 'It really tastes like salt!'" Eddie shook a bit of the salt onto the back of his hand. With only slight hesitation he stuck his tongue into the little white patch of crystals. It tasted like salt.

He gave a deep sigh and stared at the floor to think about his partner. What was this going to do to their ability to work together as detectives? What was he going to tell Mary? Should he just forget this ever happened? What happened to Norm's body? His face? Then he finally noticed what his eyes had been fixed on while he'd been spacing out. It was a small screwdriver; one of the tools that had skittered out of the toolbox and under the table earlier. He bent a knee and reached through the legs of the chair and grabbed the tool. It was the only thing he had to prove to himself that it hadn't all been just a hallucination. But what proof? A screwdriver? What does that prove?

Pressing the tip of the screwdriver into his chin he tried to identify the spot where his friend had vanished. On a sudden whim, and feeling foolish the moment he did it, Eddie tossed the screwdriver at the space Card had disappeared into. It vanished before ever hitting the floor.

Eyes wide, and blood pounding through his ears, Eddie felt like a ghost had just walked across his grave. And then that ghost cried faintly into the wind. It almost sounded like Norm crying out, but it had to be Eddie's mental expression of the concern he felt for his clearly troubled partner. Not to mention the growing concern he suddenly felt for his own, apparently failing, sanity.

Slowly, Eddie walked closer to the spot where the screwdriver had ceased to exist. Tentatively he felt the air with some concern that he might lose a finger or worse. Much worse.

* * *

The technician happened to be watching the monitor when Eddie was swatting around looking for Card's exit hole. He had been about ready to initiate the shutdown sequence when, at the sound of the senator's cry, he leaped from the control booth and ran to the wooden shanty doorway where Card lay half out of the small building breathing heavily. Assorted tools were scattered all around his body. The senator had bruised his shoulder falling out onto the wooden crate that had farted at him earlier. As if foreshadowed, Card could not contain the sudden pressure in his bowels and let loose with an explosive release. At the sound, the operator skidded to a stop a few feet before the heaving senator's supine body.

Card looked up at the technician and snarled, "What the hell did you do to me?" He'd forgotten the tech's name, which was probably a good thing at the moment.

Icy-cold terror seized the technician's own bowls at the menacing tone of the senator's voice. "What do you mean? I didn't do anything! What happened?"

"It felt like my chest and stomach was exploding! God damn it! You had to have done something!" The senator's chest, stomach, and bowels were feeling better now and so he started to roll himself around to a sitting position. It would not do to be in such an undignified position when he screamed at this little puke asshole.

Had the senator been looking at the technician's face, he'd have seen the light go on, but he was instead looking at the scratch on his watch crystal. "You must have eaten something in there. Did you?"

"Eh? What? Eat anything? No, of course not, there wasn't any food in there at all! Just dirty damn dishes everywhere. As usual!"

"Well, it could have been anything, like water or even a bug. Did a bug fly into your mouth?"

"What the fuck are you talking about? A bug! A bug? Jesus, I'm gonna fly a bug up your ass in a minute! Make some sense you snot!"

"Senator, the ACME sphere's operational parameters require a fair balance between energy and matter going in and energy and matter going out. If you went in with less than when you came out the extra mass is automatically reclaimed at the portal. You must have put something in a pocket or more likely ingested something that put you 'off balance' during exit."

Slowly the senator's light went on… the damn salt. "Oh Christ, the salt. I tasted the salt. Will I get fried if I go take a piss?"

After a moment of scrotal introspection, the humming of the ACME brought Card back to the moment. To the silent and fearfully immobile technician he tilted his head a bit and purred, "Is this thing still running? Am I spending a million dollars a second of the tax payers' money for no fucking reason? Should we be keeping track so that we can take it out of your pay?"

"No sir, I mean, yes sir, the ACME is still operational, but I'll go shut it down right now. No, you shouldn't have any problem taking a… I mean, going to the… well… there shouldn't be any more side effects, sir." Shane scampered away to slam the emergency shutdown.

Senator Norman Card could feel the system shutting down around him. In fact, it was difficult to not notice the sparking between power conduits as energy expenditures were being rebalanced. Eventually the subliminal vibrations of the machine faded making them noticeable only by their sudden absence. One of the tools on the floor in front of him was a mini flashlight. Curiosity tickled him and he bent down to grab the light. Turning, he re-entered the small ACME sphere, now dark. He shined the flashlight around at the very reflective curved walls. Turning, he glanced down and froze. At his feet was that damned saltshaker from Eddie's kitchen table.

JulNoWriMo 2010

2010-06-30T17:32:00.004-05:00

For the first time ever, I will be trying to creatively write a complete something. The something in this case will be a novel.

OMG, NFW!

A crass statement, but to the abbreviated point.

For those of you who have never heard of JulNoWriMo, and don't know what it is, you would presumably, then, also not know NaNoWriMo (perhaps also referred to by some as NoNoWriMo), or what ANY ??NoWriMo would be. These are months that are "set aside" for people to write novels. So starting tomorrow (first day of July), the 31 days of the month are to be used for writing a 50,000 word novel. Hence: July Novel Writing Month 2010.

To write 50,000 words in a month means writing about 1600 words a day. This translates into (roughly) about six pages a day. A commitment I have always WANTED to be able to make to writing, but never have. Hell, I don't think I've committed to ANY personal goal for that long!

If you are interested in trying this out, go to julnowrimo.com and register a username in the forum section. Then, starting as soon as midnight tonight, write your ass off and post your daily wordcount in your profile. See? Easy! You can write about ANYTHING you want. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever.

I plan to write a science fiction story. One I've been thinking about for a long time. I only know some basic things about it. The title: ACME (the reason for the image above). A few plot-points. A main character who isn't alive (or "real"). A protagonist who is a major SOB, but who doesn't really want to be an SOB... anymore. A kick-ass ass-kicker! And, of course, the MacGuffin around which everything revolves.

What I do NOT know is where the story goes, how it ends, or whether I will be able to follow-through with this task. It is a scary commitment for me. I think because if I finish it, I might not like it. Then all those years thinking about it as something that could be good will feel wasted. My false belief(s) will be exposed.

I may post excerpts from it throughout the month if anyone is interested. Not many people I know are into science fiction... but I will try to make it an interesting read. By that I mean, something that I would have wanted to read.

Ok, that's it for now... don't want to waste all my creative juices on this virtually pointless blog.

Sprink Leaning

2010-05-18T06:56:00.003-05:00

This weekend we spent cleaning the house. NOT one of the things I look forward to doing because of the level of thoroughness involved. But, a needed evil.

Anyway, because I am a lazy man, I tend to drift off-task here and there by reading the labels of the items I am passing judgment over. Normally I base the live-or-die (keep-or-toss) decision based on how the item looks, how much use is left in it, etc. Well, a new criterion was established recently. See if you can figure it out...

Suave Deep Cleaning Shampoo FOR MEN, "The right tool to thoroughly clean and remove build-up - for less than the more expensive brands."
Total Body Foot Powder (I think the name makes my point all by itself).
Bath & Body Works: Cucumber Melon Soap, "FRESH FROM AMERICA'S HEARTLAND" but "Made in Guatemala."
Plackers Stop Grinding^TM DENTAL NIGHT PROTECTOR, but under WARNING: Do Not Use, "if you are currently experiencing pain in the mouth or jaw because of tooth clenching or grinding."

Clearly, all of the above are keepers.

Epic Evil Dream-Ghost Attack FAIL!

2010-04-28T20:52:00.002-05:00

I recently read a book titled, "Walking in on mum and dad: Adventures in embarrassment" by Brian King. Before I say anything else, let me tell you that I am one of the lucky kids NEVER to have walked in on ANYONE doing anything that would scar my psyche. However, during one of my nostalgic trips to the past, I did have a sudden realization (as follows).

When I was little... let's say around three years old or so, I had nightmares. Because I have always wanted to try and make sense out of the world, I naturally assumed that nightmares were coming from OUTSIDE me. This is because there's no way that I would have inflicted them on myself. So, they had to be like evil ghosts that floated around the world, swimming in the ocean of night-time... along with other types of sleep-ghosts, like good dreams, neutral dreams, strange dreams, pee-pee dreams... you get the idea.

So, a sleeping brain, like a baited hook, drifts into the nightly ocean realm to bob about until it "catches" one of these dream-ghosts. Sometimes you catch a good one, sometimes not. My goal at night was to figure out how to keep from catching the wrong type of dream. At first, I thought it was just a random catch. But over time, because I seemed to be having so many bad dreams, I started to think they were out to get me. Yes. I knew that the evil dream-ghosts were hunting me.

One night, while I pondered this problem, I decided to picture what it must be like for these evil-hunter-dream-ghosts in their dark sleep-realm. My tiny brain was not really up to the task of logical thinking, but fortunately for me, it was also too young to know how bad it was at thinking. So here are some of my "deductions" that guided me to a solution (some relevant to that deduction, some not):

Because it is ONLY POSSIBLE for ghost-dreams to attack AT NIGHT, I figured they couldn't see very well. Hey, who CAN see well in the dark, right?! (Totally missing the point that night was when I slept...)
Because the bad dreams really never bothered me until recently, I figured that the first bad-dream ghost must have found me by accident and because my juicy young veal-brain was so delicious, it alerted its sibling bad-dream ghosts to let them know how to find me. Sort-of like the honey-bee dance... but for evil bad-dream ghosts.
I never had the same bad dream twice, so when my brain "ate" the bad-dream, it must make one less bad dream out there for someone else to have.
Once a dream is dreamt, it doesn't leave my brain to swim around in the dream ocean. I know this because I can still remember the dream... so it's still inside my head, only not as scary since it's gotta live with me now.
If the bad-dream ghosts cannot see very well, and it's only a one-way trip into my head, they must know only one path to get to me.
There must be a way that the bad dreams get into my head from the outside. So this is got to be a path that is always open. Obviously, then, it has to be my nose. Think about it. My eyes are closed, so no dreams can get in that way. I can sleep with my mouth in the pillow or on my arm. My ears are easy to cover because one is usually in the pillow, while the other is covered with a blanket. (To this day, I can't sleep without even a light sheet covering my ear.) The only entry is my nose because I keep it out of the covers like a snorkel.
I sleep on my right side for the most part. This means that the ghost dreams found a specific way into my head. This way MUST be from my left, since that's the direction my nostrils open up to.. AHA! I was like Sherlock Holmes figuring these suckers out! I was about to beat them completely!
Because I am not asleep right away when I get to bed, the dreams must have to time their arrival just right. The world is big, so they probably have to start swimming toward my nose early in the day to get to my nose when it is open to them (i.e., when I am sleeping).
SOLUTION: Start my sleep as usual, on my right ear. But, just at the last minute, flip over and face the other way! HAH! Epic Evil Dream-Ghost Attack FAIL! Now they can't find a way in because all they will do is bonk against the back of my head! Hahahahahahahahah!
FATAL FLAW: Just because it's a one-way street to my brain, that doesn't mean they can't go in the exact opposite direction. Yes, it occurred to me that maybe they could just turn around and go in a straight line the other way - around the Earth - to get in the other way! Not to worry! Because the Earth is so big, I knew it would take them MORE time to go around the other way than I would be asleep. Besides, half-way through the night, I could just turn over and look back the other way. They wouldn't know this, and if there were any speedy evil ghost-dream swimmers, they'd just end up hitting the back of my head again!

Surprisingly, this actually worked! No more bad dreams! I was such a monkey-tard. But at least now that you know about little Stevie's baby-logic, I can get to my point.

A few years ago I was pondering those early days of crisp logical feats of deduction and wondered about what it must have been to set me off on these nightmares. I think I figured it out! It was a four-stage sequence of revelations that made me wish I hadn't been so nostalgic that day.

In this stage, I recalled that when I went to bed, I would like to stare up at the window in my bedroom because either the moonlight (streetlight?) usually brought in a good amount of light. My bedroom window also faced out to a street that wasn't used much at night (Kingsbury Avenue). But occasionally, a car would drive by and I could hear its engine as well as its tires on the road as it passed by.
Recalling that, it suddenly popped into my head that the road my window faced was a hill that dropped down into a dark scary wooded area. It was scary especially because we hardly ever drove that way. It was leading away from everything we would need (stores, school, relatives, etc.). And when I was a kid, that was enough information for me to know that if a witch or a unicorn or a dragon, or whatever were to pass by, it would have to come from THAT direction.
The previous revelation reminded me about the gypsy wagon that used to pass by my house at night! It was probably right after watching the movie Pinocchio that I started to imagine gypsies traveling the streets at night with their wagons of possessions hunting mis-behaving little boys (remember when Pinocchio gets captured in the wagon?). That, plus my grandmother's occasional threats of what would happen if I didn't behave ("If you don't behave, I'm going to sell you back to the gypsies!" - nice huh?).
My final train of thinking brought me to wonder what the hell could it have been that would work its way slowly up the road at night sounding like a gypsy wagon with bouncing tins and clomping hoof-stomps, and squeaking springs, and... well right about here, I also recalled that my parents' bedroom was right next to mine. It is easy to understand how a kid with his ears under the covers could mistake the origins of these sounds.

So, while I never walked IN on anything... the gypsies apparently took me for a ride BY something.

There is no blowtorch powerful enough to burn the memory of gypsy wagons from my mind now. What was once, up until a few short years ago, a pleasant childhood reminiscence of a silly fear... has taught me that those damn evil dream-ghosts CAN get you when you are awake!

Can you smell that...?

2010-03-31T18:02:00.006-05:00

You may have heard about a website called "Rate My Professors"? It is a handy way for students to complain or praise their professors for others to read. Did you ever hear about the one called "Rate My Students"? Well I understand the domain is for sale, but there is no actual content there. Hmm, why could that be?

Students like to whine more than professors? No, I do not think THAT'S true (trust me).
Maybe professors just haven't THOUGHT about it? Well, maybe, but I doubt it. Really, most know that it would be ILLEGAL to post such information about students in a public setting like that without student consent... and would students consent to that? Doubt it.
Professors do not NEED a web-presence to bitch and complain about students? Well, I will stop with this one as it is closest to what I believe may be true.

There is an element of frustration when someone else has YOUR fate in their hands. Especially when you believe they may be manipulating your fate in ways you do not like. So, one outlet is to complain anonymously (i.e., safely) on the web; knowing that other members of your cohort AND possibly even the professor, will get to read about it.

True, some students justify their online complaints by also posting favorable reviews of OTHER professors as well. This probably makes them feel as though their complaints are "balanced" or "justified" rather than biased. After all, if all students did was complain about professors, then that would seem like a personal problem. But by giving positive reviews (sometimes), it helps to make a person feel that their complaints are more valid/honest/etc.

Ok, whatever... this page isn't about all THAT stuff, though. Instead, I'd like to direct you attention to the idea that most professors have been doing the teaching gig for a LOT longer than you have been a student. They also SEE a lot more students than you see professors. For example, in the years that I've been here, I see an average of about 100 brand-new student faces in my classrooms EVERY semester!

Believe me, we have SEEN it all, we have HEARD it all... You might THINK you are fooling your professor with some excuse. You see them smile warmly and sympathetically, and give you that extension, or accept this excuse... But most likely, they don't care. Teaching is a lot of work. If a student is THAT committed to a lie (or exaggeration) in order to "get away with" missing class or getting an extension, then fine. We can turn our attention to the students who are there for an education (rather than waste extra time on those who are there just for their degree).

BUT KEEP IN MIND, someday, if ANY student thinks that he or she might need a letter of recommendation for graduate school, or for a job, they should keep in mind that professors are under NO obligation to LIE about you in their letter!

MOST professors will probably avoid the ugly truth, though, merely by omitting those from the letter. The result being a very brief letter along the following lines:

To whom it may concern,

I have been asked to write a letter of support for STUDENT who I have known since ________ as I have had STUDENT in ________ classes. These classes included, CLASS-1, ..., CLASS-n, and STUDENT performed adequately in MOST/ALL of them earning a mean grade of about ________ on a 4.0 scale.

If you should require any additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Professor Name

Not much to say, really. But that was a student who really didn't say much in class anyway. The professor clearly does not really know the student. This is unfortunate. Most of the places (graduate schools or potential employers) are looking for information about reliability, aptitude, ability to take on challenging tasks, potential for success, communication skills, etc. These can sometimes be extracted from course work, but only rarely and probably never ALL qualities needed to write a good letter. So obviously one point that could be taken from this is to get the professor to know you AND demonstrate the skills and qualities that can be written about you in a strong letter.

BUT MY REAL POINT ONLY BEGINS NOW!

Imagine what the professor COULD (should?) have said if the student engaged in ANY of the following classroom behaviors:

Often arrives late to class. ("Often" as in: I noticed it a couple of times.) How do you imagine this behavior would look to a potential employer? As far as your professor is concerned, this is the type of employee you would likely be. As far as your professor is concerned, this means you won't take graduate school that seriously either.
Often packs-up and/or leaves class early. So... why should I hire you (or accept you into my program) again?
Text-messages, or reads/studies-for an unrelated book/class, talks to neighboring students, (etc.) during my class. Um, yeah, THIS is a good person to hire. THIS person reflects the qualities I'd want from a graduate student... This student would surely be trusted to stay focused on the job, finish a task, pay close attention to detail, etc.
Only does the bad behaviors (or has a bad attitude) in OTHER classes. The ones that don't matter, right? Yeah, like professors never talk... they NEVER go to a colleague and ask, "Hey, do you know this student? How does this student do in YOUR class?" Yeah, being selective about what classes you slack off in is a REAL good strategy. Best of luck with that! So really, that type of student is NOT to be relied on. Apparently, if they think they can get away with crappy behaviors, they WILL try to behave that way.

BOTTOM LINE: Your professors are NOT likely to be your employers or the people who make the final decision as to whether you get into a graduate program or not. However, they ARE key elements to that process. Your letters of reference are not based solely on your grades but can also include the impressions you give to them while you are taking their classes. Should you be worried? Not at all if you would behave the same way in class as you would if your boss or graduate mentor were watching you. Or, think of it the other way, would you want to spend money on employees or give scholarships to graduate students who behaved similarly?

Curing Our Ails!

2010-02-21T20:56:00.003-05:00

I am currently in the midst of a semester in which I am "teaching" a course called Psychology of Paranormal Beliefs every Monday evening. Well, we missed one and a half evenings so far due to the weather.

Anyway, it is probably the sixth or seventh time I've taught the class, and I can honestly say I haven't been too thrilled with the way any of them have gone so far. I keep trying new things and ditching old things, and so-few things end up filtering through to be used again next time. But maybe by the 25th teaching I will get the hang of it.

So, what is my "problem" with the course? I wonder about that each time I teach it. I think it has something to do with the above photo. It is a photo of a product (ok, two products, a liquid and a pill) sold in a large-chain supermarket mixed in willy-nilly with an entire bank of cold/flu medicinals. It is expensive... but not seemingly more so than neighboring products. So what's the big deal? Unfortunately, the image may be a bit small and maybe a bit too blurry to identify the TYPE of product it is. On the left, it is described as "homeopathic cough syrup" while on the right, it is described as a "homeopathic medicine".

One of these is certainly a more accurate description than the other. Briefly, the idea of homeopathic "medicine" is that cures require exposure to extremely dilute quantities of substances that mimic the symptoms of whatever it is you want fixed. Indeed, where our traditional medicinal experience is that MORE medicine means MORE of an effect, with homeopathic "medicine" it is the opposite. Yes, the LESS of the critical substance, the MORE of an effect it has. So, roughly, the above pictured "medicines" contain not even a single molecule of the critical substance that is supposed to be helpful. Yes indeed, it must be some mighty powerful stuff!

Oh, want to know what the "critical substance" is that was diluted OUT of the product altogether? It's basically extract of duck liver and heart. Sound kinda like a gross thing to ingest when ill? Again, no big deal since there ISN'T any to be found in the product! So what does between $6.79 and $11.99 buy you? Well, as I said above, the description on the left is more accurate. The only ingredients you will find in THAT one is sucrose, lactose, honey, and water. Yes, in other words, you would be spending more than six bucks on a four-ounce shot of sugar-water! Not thirsty? Well then please feel free to purchase the "medicine" version which comes out to about two bucks a sugar-pill-dosage.

It really bothers me to think that people are throwing away their money on this crap - some knowingly, but SURELY many do so UNKNOWINGLY. If you want to believe that sugar water "remembers" that some duck-liver molecules brushed up against them in the past and will therefore CURE (or in ANY way TREAT) your illness, then FINE! Spend your foolish money! But because this garbage is stuck in the middle of all the other VERY WELL PROVEN treatments, people are going to pick up the box in their stuffy-nosed bleary-eyed quest for relief, see the outrageous CLAIMS on the box, ASSUME they are rigorously and scientifically proven, and throw away their money.

Please, would ALL of the folks who ever end up reading this (if any do), the folks who have a spare $12 that they can discard without a care, PLEASE just send it to me? Actually, just send me half! How's that? Does ANYONE really feel that they can piffle away cash... ever?!

When I have taught the class in the past, I have tried to maintain control over my biases because I really didn't want my students to feel that I was just PUSHING my bias down their eyes and ears. So by the end of the semester, I guess I just wondered if any of the messages really got through. I probably feel that they didn't because stupidity continues to reign in this world. It seems worse every day. Maybe it's always been this bad - but I am only sensitized to it the more I learn about it? Who knows. THIS semester, though, I think I will try being a little more assertive with my "biases" (but I will happily identify them as such when I do - for now).

For those of you who might be offended by my apparent lack of "open-mindedness" let me be blunt: Too f-ing bad! I challenge YOU to demonstrate YOUR open-mindedness! I will gladly accept the homeopathic claims when the testing of and resulting evidence is as good as that supporting scientifically based medical cures. What would it take to change YOUR mind? If you cannot imagine any evidence that would change your mind, then it is clearly already a closed mind.

How do you FIX something like THIS?!

2009-12-29T21:45:00.003-05:00

So here I find myself. Ending the much-too-short break between semesters. Rushing to put together the new and improved versions of classes (plus figure out how best to revive a really old one).

Dear Diary,

How are you? I am fine (-ish). Last semester was pretty disappointing (lame) for various reasons. I really really really really really hope that this coming one will be better. It is the SPRING semester and warmer weather is thereby implied. Days are already getting longer and surely those swirls of powdery cold dust will evaporate by morning's light! Or, maybe by next day's morning light? Please?

There must be something in me that is similar to the loss of pain memory that mothers experience after each birth. Ask them within the last few minutes (or hours) of labor, and you will likely hear, "No f%&*ing way will I ever do THAT again!" But after some time passes, they forget the pain (having survived it) and start planning for the next brat-poop.

Lately, each semester seems to end similarly with me having strong negative feelings. So much effort put into the classes, so little apparent gain. Why bother? Then a mere few days passes when the "ideas" start trickling in again... "Maybe if I were to do this next time?" Or, "I should try saying this next time..." And I start getting all geared up for another mother-load of classes. Until by the first quarter of the semester I realize I am doing it again. Teaching is a cruel bitch of a task-master for me. Or maybe I am just a masochist? Or maybe both?

Anyway - here I am, complaining about the end of a break when I still have more than 10 days of it left! I guess that's because I feel that I have so much to do before then. And my motivation? Hmm, that must be around here somewhere... Let's see... where did I leave that?

Good Riddance to 2009!

2009-12-29T21:33:00.008-05:00

Not the best of years. Glad to see it go, but I will miss what it takes with it. Unfortunately, I half expect that 2010 might hold additional losses.

My sister wrote a wonderful obituary for my father. Here it is for posterity:

Wed, Dec 02 2009

Gene V. Paul
PLAISTOW, N.H. — Gene Vincent Paul, adoring husband of Jacquelyn (Hill) (Miller) Paul, dedicated father of Dr. Stephen T. Paul, Pittsburgh, and Jennifer J. (Paul) Perreault, and doting grandfather of Gabrielle J. and Derrek G. Perreault, all of Danville, N.H., died peacefully Sunday night, Nov. 29, 2009 in the comfort of his home with his loving wife by his side.

Gene, longtime resident of Plaistow, and formerly of Newton, was born in Haverhill on March 6, 1941 to the late Clarence V. and Jane H. (Fyfe) Paul. Gene attended Haverhill Public Schools and graduated from Haverhill Trade School. Gene was a proud Mason affiliated with Star of Bethlehem AF&AM, Wakefield, who at one time served as a police officer with the Haverhill Auxiliary Police and the Plaistow Police Department. Prior to developing heart and lung disease, Gene was employed for several years as Lieutenant of Security at Raytheon in West Andover.

Gene, known for his kindness, generosity and storytelling, enjoyed researching his family genealogy, bowling with his league at Academy Lanes in Bradford, fishing with and caring for his grandchildren, watching westerns, crime dramas, and programs about the spirit world. Preferring to listen to country and spiritual music, Gene was an avid collector of Native American decor and memorabilia. Prior to his declining health, Gene enjoyed traveling to Nova Scotia to visit his uncle, and to Pittsburgh to visit his son and daughter-in-law. Gene's greatest joy in the past two years was spending quality time with his wife, Jackie.

In addition to his parents, Gene was predeceased by his first wife of 39 years, Sarah (Sally) A. (Tenney) Paul; and brother, David Paul. Survivors include sisters, Claire (Paul) Hutchinson, Plaistow; Audrey (Paul) McGowen, Dover; and Mary Ellen (Paul) Petit and her husband, Paul, Merrimac; brothers, Redmond (Reggie) Paul and his wife, Sandra, Haverhill; and Donald Paul and his wife, Linda, North Carolina. Additional survivors include daughter-in-law, Cynthia (Kecy) Paul, Pittsburgh; son-in-law, Gary Perreault, Danville; stepchildren, Michael Miller, Exeter, and Terrie (Miller) Clarke and her husband, Leo, Groveland; step-grandchildren, Dr. Lia (Clarke) Sprague and her husband, Matthew, Fremont; Pamela Clarke and Amy Clarke of Groveland; step-great-grandchildren, Kagen Clarke, Groveland, Landon Sprague and Aislinn Sprague, Fremont. Gene also leaves several nieces, nephews, cousins, and dear and devoted friends, including Tom and Ann Hansen, Newton; Ray and Rose Guilmet, Salem; and Sandra and Walter Brown, Haverhill; as well as all of his caring friends in his bowling league.

ARRANGEMENTS: Relatives and friends are respectfully invited to his funeral Saturday, Dec. 5, at 11 a.m. at the H.L. Farmer & Sons Funeral Home, 106 Summer St., Haverhill. Calling hours are from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, 2009. Burial will be private at the convience of the family. The family respectfully requests that flowers be omitted in consideration of making a donation in Gene's memory to The American Heart Association (www.americanheart.org), The American Lung Association (www.lungusa.org), The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (www.leukemia.org), local fire emergency rescue departments in Plaistow, Newton, Hampstead, or Danville, N.H., or to the charity of one's choice. Condolences to his family may be made at www.farmerfuneralhomes.com.

Mixed Messages

2009-10-18T21:03:00.004-05:00

I have been reading two very interesting books. I recommend BOTH very much. They are both very easy to read and contain very interesting material that applies to a very wide range of psychological fields; especially cognitive psychology. (I could not think of a way to fit "very" in any more times than that without becoming less artful.)

Here is the information for both books (note that the hardcover of "Brain Rules" includes a DVD, but the less expensive soft-cover edition only supplies links to on-line videos; no DVD):

Medina, J. (2008). Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School. Seattle, WA: Pear Press.
Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Ruscio, J., & Beyerstein, B. L. (2010). 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior. Wiley-Blackwell.

My problem has to do with what is widely known as the "Ten Percent Myth" regarding human mental potential. I would be surprised if you hadn't heard about it already. It goes something like, "Humans only use ten percent of their brains. Imagine what we could do if we could harness the power of the remaining 90 percent?!"

When this myth comes up in class, I have always used the ladder analogy as a means of explaining why it is a misleading claim. Imagine you had a ladder with ten rungs on it. You place this ladder against your house to clean the gutters. You climb the ladder and start to work. As it turns out, you are only standing on one rung. Does that mean you are using only ten percent of the ladder? Can you see any benefit to more actively using all of the other rungs for gutter-cleaning? No, and no.

In the "50 myths" book mentioned above, the authors start with this very myth (which they refer to as the "most people only use ten percent of their brain power" myth). Unfortunately, it seems that in their discussion, they (actually, the section is written by Beyerstein, I believe, who passed away before the book was published) have slightly altered my sense of what the myth seems to suggest. Basically, they have interpreted the claim to mean that humans only use ten percent of their brain. This is quickly and clearly revealed to be a silly claim. If it were true that we really only used ten percent of our brains, then that makes 90 percent of our brains nothing more than gooey insulation! Taking an ice-pick (or whatever) to our brains would only cause us harm 10 percent of the time! Clearly not true. It seems like any little brain damage we incur results in hefty mental and/or behavioral fines!

While the Beyerstein approach to attacking the myth is a good one, it attacks a pretty limited interpretation of the claim. My interpretation of the claim is that we are never able to use more than 10-percent of our brain at any given time. Hence, this seems more closely aligned with the way the authors titled the claim themselves (i.e., "brain power" rather than just "brains").

My first argument against this variation of the claim is based on the "how long is a piece of string" analogy. In other words, how can we know what ten percent of the brain is when it comes to processing capacity?! Perhaps based on electrical activity? Imagine what your brain would be like if ALL neurons fired at the same time, and all the time?! Isn't that pretty much a grand description of a grand-daddy of grand mal epileptic seizures? Well zero-percent seems easy enough to measure (DEAD!), but since we can't really know what would really represent 100 percent FUNCTIONAL capacity, how can we know that we are using only 10 percent?! See the problem? It pretty much demonstrates that the claim is just grabbing some arbitrary percentage number out of someone's arbitrary butt-hole.

BUT NOW comes the mixed message.

In Medina's "Brain Rules" book, a portion of my world-view was bitch-slapped by the claim that, "In fact, the human brain cannot simultaneously activate more than 2 percent of its neurons at any one time. More than this, and the glucose supply becomes so quickly exhausted that you will faint." (page 20).

Wow!

Ok, so does that mean that the ten percent myth is wrong because it is really the case that humans can only use TWO percent of their brain at any given time?!

FNA!

NOW it makes me wonder if thinking (brain power) really couldn't be improved by somehow finding a way to artificially increase the blood flow and glucose supply to our skulls!

Would an increase in glucose supply capable of supporting a mere FOUR percent of my brain at any given time DOUBLE my thinking ability?!

I'm going to have to see about getting some clarification here. PLEASE, in the mean time, if anyone out there has some clarifying insight into this… let me know!

Crossing the line

2009-09-05T23:16:00.002-05:00

Being a guy married to the same woman for 20+ years would NOT make one an expert in women. However, you'd think it might make a person an expert in that woman. It does not. Rather, it is a constant learning process. Nonetheless, here is a lesson learned that should generalize.

Today I made the interesting observation regarding two argument scenarios. They are similar, but results are not. Scenario one: I tell my wife she is wrong about something and she knows she is right. Scenario two: I tell my wife she is wrong about something and she knows she is wrong, It may seem counter-intuitive (to me alone, perhaps) but scenario one is far better for the relationship than scenario two.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone willing to take the other's perspective. I know how much I hate it when my wife (hell, ANYONE) tells me I am wrong and I suddenly realize that they are correct that I am wrong. That really sucks. So the observation isn't so much about women, but about arguments.

The most important concept in research?

2009-05-21T17:59:00.001-05:00

This is going to start boring, but I need to build the foundation so you understand why I bring up blackouts, violent rage, drug-use and whatnot.

Another semester ends. Hallelujah! Now my mind can rest for a bit. However, I cannot help but start thinking about next semester already. I will be teaching research methods. As the number of Applied Psychology majors increases, so does the demand for the class. This is both a good and a bad thing. Good is boring though, so I will skip that for why it's bad.

BAD, because this class isn't as effective as numbers increase. Individual attention is really important and students tend to need a lot of it in this class. It requires a more disciplined way of thinking than is typical. In fact, I've had students complain to me later that the way they view the world isn't the same anymore. (It's a joy to hear them add, "But I wouldn't want to go back to my old way of thinking.")

A big deal in the class is when I get to the "most important concept in research" lecture. The answer is "CONTROL!" The methods class is really important to me because I think it contains some of the most valuable learning lessons in college. But maybe I also have a bias…

There were two "incidents" that happened when I was a kid. The first was in kindergarten. (Yes, I was really that young once.) The second was when I was maybe a year or two older. Together they made me afraid of myself. One event was scary, the other was the eye-opener.

The first "incident" occurred when I was waiting in line with the other students to be led out to the waiting vehicles to go home for the day. I had a really really bad crush on a girl who was in line just ahead of me. I probably arranged myself to be there so I could look at her. She had no idea in the world that I even existed. By the way, that's my whole "mating dance" or, as I call it, the Three 'L' approach: I like; I look (not a pervert); I leave. Being way too shy to even talk to her or in any way indicate my interest, I was just waiting for her to read my mind or something. Ok, anyway, "the incident" was that this other little boy (let's call him "Rat-bastard") also apparently liked her, plus Prick-turd (or whatever his name was) seemed very willing to cross the line and even TALK to her! To make things worse, she TALKED BACK to Dinkus (or whatever his name was)! Seeing them carry on like that enraged me! I wasn't mad at her (oddly) but way mad at Fart-face (or whatever his name was). Literally, the next thing I knew, I was sitting on Zit-head (or whatever his name was) and looking at my hand and there was a drop of blood on my fingernail (I must have accidentally scratched the bastard).

I had no idea how I got to where I was. Totally a blank. But while I was wondering about that, little Piss-Pants was crying on the floor underneath me, while the love of my life was looking at me in horror and screaming, "You're crazy!" So much for that love story. At least she now knew that I existed. I guess. To make matters worse, my parents got a phone call from… not Doofus-boy's parents but from HER parents! Apparently, she was so upset that HER parents had to call my parents and rat me out. Very humiliating. Thank goodness the rest of my life would be free of embarrassment, drama, and pain.

Incident number 2, about the same time (actually a few years later), was that I was playing in my room and banged my head on the edge of the bed. It hurt so bad that I wished I knew some really good swear words other than "poop" or "kaka". My blood boiled ("Hulk no like pain") and my first thought was to go find my sister and hit her as though she were at fault for my boo-boo. Instantly, when I became aware of the stupidity of that line of reasoning my anger disappeared and I realized that I was being like my dad (or at least what I thought of was him back then).

My father worked two jobs and didn't really spend much time with us. When he got angry he would explode in rage. Really scary, but he never took it out on us physically - but things would get broken, thrown, smashed, stomped, etc. in the house when he was on his rampage. I didn't like it (nobody seemed to) and I really didn't want to be like that. SO I decided (with throbbing head) to try to NOT be that way.

It occurred to me recently, that ever since these little-kid incidents, I have tried to avoid any situation that would put me at risk of losing control. I never drink alcohol, have never done drugs, try not to make myself noticeable to others so they won't instigate a reaction, and so forth. If I have a task to accomplish, I hate relying on others because that means portions of MY task are no longer under MY control! Gosh! I live in fear that I might start sleepwalking some day! Yikes! Who knows what I might do!? That's my fear. Loss of control.

So, it is no wonder that I cherish this upcoming research methods class. The scientific method thrives on control. It's what I try to live by! CONTROL!

Oh, yeah! Also, just to give you a real glimpse of my juvenile mind! There was a phase I went through when I really believed that all a person needed to do was really focus and practice their psychic talents to get them to work. So the "talent" I was trying to develop was teleportation! Wouldn't that be cool! (There's even a great book about that: "Jumper" by Steven Gould - the movie sucked.) Anyway, I stopped trying to develop that skill all of a sudden when a thought occurred to me in the shower one day. I realized that such a skill could mean that I might teleport somewhere by accident. You know how sometimes you do something without thinking, well what if, while I was soaking wet in a pool (or in the shower) I thought about being at the north or south pole and suddenly teleported there?! I'd freeze to death in seconds! Or worse, imagine that you were in the middle of answering nature's call and BAM, you thought about being at the mall?! See? This would be a very dangerous or embarrassing loss of control.

So the reason I am not a super-hero teleporter today is because of my fear of losing CONTROL!

Body Language, or, Pagliacci's Lament

2009-04-08T20:38:00.003-05:00

So . . . here I am. Actually, that's me on the left (age 5 or so), the "ghost" on the right is my sister (probably around age 3). Don't be fooled by the smiles on our faces, they masked a pathos beyond our years. Actually, I believe my sister expresses our feelings pretty well in her body language. You can see the fatalism symbolized in her sad little hands resting on her tiny lap.

I suppose it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We were dressed for a Halloween outing. Imagine if my mother liked dressing us up this way on other days.

Despite our deep yearning for real costumes (you know, those store-bought kinds with the plastic masks that instantly slicken and stick against the mouth and face with excited breath-moisture), they were years away when this photo was taken.

At this point, I have a terrible -shameful- secret to reveal. I was the type of kid who, when tired, hungry, insulted, or slighted by my mother, I would resort to outbursts of crying in the hopes of publicly humiliating her. Not dad, though. He would have had no problem publicly humiliating me with a spank-around-the posy. That's the one where he holds you by one hand, high over your head, while trying to swat your butt with the other. It looks a bit like an impromptu merry-go-round interpretive dance; spinning slowly in a circle while you try to run away from the spanking; jumping and leaping.

Because society tends not to tolerate displays of violence practiced on brat-children (except perhaps in private), mom had to find her own clever solution. Her approach was to take away what little remaining dignity and power a small crying child has in this situation.

The whole point of crying is to attack the person you are targeting. The attack is supposed to go one of two ways. One way is to make the adult feel terrible for having caused such a precious angel to cry; a universal success whenever blood is present. In the absence of blood, this technique only really works on strangers or relatives who don't know you so well. It will fail when used against parents. So, with parents, that only leaves the second attack strategy. In this case, crying only has a chance to work in very limited settings. Specifically, you need settings where it is really embarrassing to have a crying and screaming child present. Such as, church, supermarkets, check-out lines, airplanes, and so on. Basically, anyplace public that has lots of adults.

My clever mother found a way to defuse this second attack. Effectively. Permanently. This was the "Fat Man" or "Little Boy" of the parent-child war of the wills. She simply placed her hand over my mouth, then removed it; and . . . repeat. The effect is instantaneous. The most annoying sound in the world (crying brat) converted into a ridiculous bleat is enough to make the most stern bank manager you can imagine bust a gut. Playing the crying-child-bagpipe will stop a crying child from crying. The child sees his or her attack flipped judo-like back on them and turned into an entertainment for adults. Their only move is to retreat; withhold the entertainment by shutting down the crying so the adult cannot "play the pipes" any more.

So, that's my mother. How does this relate to the photo? Well, being a kid, one has very little power over the situation. Every Halloween I had a choice. I could either let my mother shove my head into a ridiculous pillowcase and go get free candy, or, I could stay home. You see my (our) choice above.

One consolation we had, though, was that we were allowed to pick out our own Halloween bags. Sadly, and despite our yearly optimism, they were never more than 10-15 percent filled by the end of the evening.

My Cat Thinks That I Am Mentally Retarded

2009-01-23T20:21:00.003-05:00

Way back in August of 1996, we went to an animal shelter in Starkville Mississippi. The goal was to select a kitten to join our family (which was my wife, two dogs, and me at the time). The shelter was unimpressive and a bit run down. Probably true of any no-kill shelter trying to maintain a workable budget. Nonetheless, they had the usual assortment of puppies and kittens, cats and dogs. We had to shield our eyes from the sight of any puppy or dog as we were already at the limit there, and we wouldn't want to see any "must-haves" in that department.

There was a good-sized cage against the wall that had a BUNCH of kittens of every size and color. Some were sleeping head beneath haunch of others. There were some little gray, yellow, and white long-hair kittens trying to teach themselves hunting skills. Four kittens were sitting sphinx-style looking cool. One was (mostly) on a small ledge with head and paws hanging over the edges trying to look tough, and I think there was a little tiger-kitty in the back smoking.

Cute though they all may have been, there was only ONE kitten that was CLEARLY looking to get sprung. This was a yellow-and-white striped, big-eyed scrawny puff of a kitten. He was meowing like he knew us from somewhere and had jumped onto the front of the cage grabbing it with three paws so he could reeeeeach out with his front left paw at us and beg that we would PLEASE take him away! The desperation of his meows made it very clear to us that he already loved us and never wanted to be separated from us like this again. Very, very cute.

Ok, so we asked if we could hold the cute little tiger kitty please. Although I didn't notice it then, the workers seemed to fall over each other to get to the cage door and let this one out for adoption. Like a coat hung on the closet door, his little body swung out on the cage door he had been clinging to. To make things even cuter, he looked over his shoulder in surprise (now that I know him better, it was probably confusion) by the whole concept of what had happened. A moment ago, his prison was behind him. Now, behind him was freedom. It was his golden opportunity to escape, but, the wheels are a little slow in a kitten, so he was easily pried from the cage (still meowing, though - THAT never stopped).

We held him and he held us. (Still meowing.)

Hmm, noisy isn't he? Well, it must be that he's in kitty-jail. Once he gets a proper home, surely he'll simmer down.

As we were pondering this yellow and white striped mouth of a kitten, our eyes happened upon a medium sized all-black short hair cat hiding in the back of another cage. She was so timid and wide-eyed-silent that we couldn't resist the contrast with the little yellow fire-siren we were holding. Fools that we were (are?), we decided to adopt both.

We got them home in good time because the meows from our little bundle of auditory joy sounded like an ambulance and all the traffic pulled over for us. (That was only a slight exaggeration, by the way.) Once released into the wilderness of our humble domicile, "Serena" (the quiet sweet noiseless little hushed black silent kitty) scurried to a hiding spot somewhere. Our motor-mouth kitty, on the other hand, immediately started checking out the new digs. He went from room to room, meowing continuously. After a few days, this constant noise concerned us enough to check with the vet. Apparently, he's just a "talker".

Living in Mississippi, we had a greater-than-usual potential for sudden and violent storms. So, the community had multiple tornado-sirens that were tested every week. This was scary when we first moved there because it sounded like an air-raid alarm but we didn't really know what it was. These alarms have an urgency to them that easily sounds like the alarm that people would chose to signal that the world was about to come to an end.

Based on our new kitten's vocalization talents, we decided to name him "Tornado-Siren" (my wife's idea, actually - but I think she was just joking at first). We call him "Tony" for short (if you want the long version, he'll yell it at you).

Tony's curiosity and timing have become legend in our house. Somehow, this one knows when there is a new or freshly opened container, box, bag, suitcase, toolbox, package, closet, drawer, window, or door (even if it is only open for three seconds). I haven't known what it is like to wear clothes that don't have hair on them for years. Little yellow hairs materialize INSIDE packages that have never even been OPENED yet! When I wake up in the morning, I have at least one kitty-hair in at least one of my nostrils, eyes, ears, or in my mouth.

Did I mention that Tony is a talker? It's been over ten years and he STILL has something to say about everything. He's always on the wrong side of any closed door. When it comes to a closing door, he rushes to get TO the door, but then dilly-dallies just at the edge (meowing, of course) so you don't know if he really wanted to go through or come out or whatever.

I've heard people say that, "Oh, I once had a cat that liked to talk. You get used to it, it's not that bad." But when they come to visit, they pull me aside to ask, "Is everything alright with your cat? He's been doing an awful lot of crying." Actually, because there's company, that tends to distract Tony and he's usually more quiet than normal. So all I can reply is, "Welcome to my world." NOBODY really understand the NOISE this cat puts out until they've lived with him for a week. You will NOT sleep well, I promise. We figure that Tony likes the sound of his own voice. That much is clear. But let me tell you why Tony must think I'm mentally deficient.

There are two things that Tony wants very badly. (1) Food with gravy. (2) To go outside. (Ok, three things, if you count hearing himself sing.) We can handle the diet part of his crying (sometimes we can distract him with some kitty-weed [aka catnip]). But the "outside" issue is not to be resolved. He is too stupid (my opinion, not my wife's) and submissive to last out there. He will NOT protect himself. The dogs have their way with him and he has lost tufts of fur and received little punctures but has NEVER hissed or scratched to defend himself. Occasionally, our neighbor (the little lady who you see in the Tweety-Bird cartoons) will leash him up and take him out for a walk. Otherwise, he's an indoor kitty for life. But I digress…

Tony will walk the house complaining that he isn't eating or isn't outside (even though nobody is around to listen). When he catches me in the kitchen, though, he punches up his meows. I know that he is saying, "Gravy! Gravy! Gravy!" Over and over. Now, in my example, I am just in there to do something else (not to feed the furball). His normal meow is set to "loud" as it is, BUT, if Tony catches my eye - if he SEES that I am looking at him, then he kicks things up to, "GRAVY, GRAVY, GRAVY!" To me, this is the stereotypical stupid American trick of talking to someone who doesn't speak the language. The trick is to simply say the same thing louder. In neither case, stupid-American or Tony, does the talker realize that they are not communicating. Instead, the failure to understand is put on the recipient of the message. So in Tony's mind, he cannot believe how stupid I am that I cannot understand the simple request for GRAVY! Or, if I'm by the entryway, why can't I understand "OUTSIDE!"?

Believe it or not, I haven't scratched the surface yet of how annoying the little guy is. If you corner me sometime and if you have a sympathetic enough face, you can probably get me to break down and give you all the horrible details of what it's like to live with Satan's cat. Please bring tissues and a lint-brush.

Are you playing with yours now?

2008-11-07T22:52:00.002-05:00

There is a lot of concern over privacy issues. It seems that as technology becomes more advanced, the threat to privacy becomes greater. Rest assured that this will change in the future. Actually, it will change as a result of one of two possible paths.

The obvious reduction to the threat is the elimination of technology altogether. This would be some global catastrophe (whether man-made or not is moot). That's the boring, predictable, outcome. The one depicted in comic books and bad science fiction movies where haggard old men live in the ruins of once great cities (or under bridges) and guard the "sacred texts" which they have forgotten even how to read. Yawn.

The second path is actually pretty interesting because it seems almost counter-intuitive. Privacy concerns will be reduced as a result of all the access. To understand why, consider an analogy with memory. An important part of our ability to remember is that we can (and must) be able to forget. Actually, we forget way more than we will probably ever remember. This is a blessing. Imagine the alternative. Remembering, in excruciating detail, every piece of sensory input and random thought you've ever had. Imagine that the memory for all that is equally accessible. It would be nearly impossible to sift through memory to find some specific detail. In fact, you would only be adding to the problem because you would also have a memory of your search through memory to add to your memories every time you searched memory!

The technology for my prediction is mostly here already. One pesky little problem stands in the way of a revolution to humankind that will eclipse anything previously (except maybe language itself). The problem has to do with data storage. Once the introduction of very cheap and very vast data storage occurs, the world will change forever.

The invention of all time will make a great deal of current technology obsolete. This invention is simply called, the pder ("pee-der"). It is an acronym of course, which stands for, "Personal Digital Event Recorder." Doesn't really sound like much for what it is, though. Very humble. But here is how it works.

You will carry around a device (on or around your head, like a hat, or headphones at first, but eventually all sorts of variations will emerge). This device records everything. It records everything in high-definition. It also both receives from and sends to other pders.

Everything is recorded everywhere. Not only that, but you can get special devices to interact more effectively with the data collected from your (or another's) pder. For example, the pder-box. Imagine simply receiving a transmission (not for free of course) from the museum. The pder-box generates a virtual image of whatever artifact you want to examine. This image is complete and highly defined. Zoom in to examine every tiny brushstroke of any painting. Rotate and examine ancient sculptures. In some cases, the data may be dense enough to literally turn your pder-box into a macro-micro scope.

Because of the transmission capability, imagine going to see a play. There is no longer a bad seat in the house. You drop down the pder-vision glasses and get a 3D projection of whatever other pder transmission you prefer. For a fee, you can have a front-row seat. Turn your head and the image shifts to match. You will forget you are wearing someone else's eyes.

There will be so much information being transmitted across so many pders that it would be almost impossible to target any one pder with precision. Not that you will have assured privacy, but with so many "channels" to pick from, there won't be many eyes on you.

Of course you can turn on/off the transmit feature of your pder. But, what if you forget? What if you get home and decide to get busy doing something. . . private? Yes, there is a chance someone might be "visiting" you if you are still transmitting. Fear not, though! You simply install a home pder-defeater! Industrial strength versions will certainly be installed in some areas in public as well as paid arenas. After all, you don't want people getting free pay-per-pder!

The commercial opportunities are virtually limitless here. Most electronic entertainment venues as well as communication devices will become pder-compatible. That is to say, cell phones and TVs will become obsolete. Your personal pder will double as your cell phone and TV will be sent to your pder-box. You can go to the theater or concert, etc. but stay home. You will be able to subscribe to all sorts of educational and entertainment delivery systems. Imagine a pder attached to a robot designed to explore the depths of the ocean; search and rescue operations; rove the moon and planets, etc.

Although the technology will have some clunky aspects at first, these problems will be "solved" in good time (workarounds will be developed and sold). The biggest problem will be to develop an efficient search and retrieval tool given the density of information stored.

Someday, then, either we will all be playing with our pders, or, just looking at the pretty pictures in the musty old books under a partially collapsed bridge outside a radioactive city.

The annoyance of bad feet.

2008-07-19T01:26:00.007-05:00

Am I annoying? Well, yeah, I guess I can be. I try not to be; and sometimes it can be a real struggle to hold back.

When I was in high school, I ran cross-country track my last two years. Probably at my best, I was only mediocre. After school, I tried to keep up the running because I actually really enjoyed it. There were days when I felt as though I could just keep running forever without getting tired.

The summer after graduation, I was running along the road about 2-3 miles from home when my left knee SUDDENLY (and I mean that literally – there was no warning) felt as though someone was trying to pop it off with an invisible screwdriver.

This effectively ended my running days.

For a while, I tried various tricks. Extra stretching; creams; very tight ace bandage wraps; cutting back on my running; sneaking to a doctor to get an orthotic (specially fitted support insert) for my shoe which I got into trouble for when my parents got THAT bill!

The ace bandage wrap worked the best but it was unreliable because it wouldn’t always stay wrapped. My last run was pretty much a race in which the bandage loosened up and my kneecap wouldn’t let me do more than hobble to the ambulance tracking the last runners.

Particularly annoying were the old guys running past me with their encouraging “Walk it out, kid!” as if I was simply out of breath. They meant well, I guess. But boy did I hate them.

Over the years, I’ve tried working back into running. Never works. After about a mile and a half, I can feel the knee starting to pop. Even the other knee has started acting up. This can be a problem even if I walk too much. No doubt the extra poundage wrapped around my mid-section isn’t helping.

The desire to run is never far from my thoughts, so imagine my hopefulness at hearing a commercial about this place; let’s call it “Great Foot” so I don’t maybe get anyone in trouble. All I had to do was find one of their many stores, stop in without even setting up an appointment, and have a custom analysis of my feet (for free!) followed by a custom selected orthotic support (which of course would not be free)!

Here’s a portion of a press release: “By taking each customer through a personal biomechanical balancing and foot-printing process, arch supports and cushions are custom-fitted to ensure ultimate comfort.”

Wow, huh?!

So, I entered the store and was immediately greeted by, oh, let’s call her Francis.

I have purchased supports from Walmart in the past, but they didn’t do much to help my running. So I was probably starting off a bit skeptical. Nonetheless, I really WANTED to believe that this could work. I would love to run again.

Right away I got the sales pitch (see summarized version above in the press release quote). Then Francis did an amazing demonstration! She had me hold my fists out, one above the other in front of my bellybutton (it’s an innie, so it didn’t get in the way), then she pushed down on them and I lost my balance. She then had me put my hands behind me, did the same push down and I started to fall over backwards.

Yikes! Apparently my feet were a real mess! It was amazing I was able to stay upright! She clearly demonstrated to me that my footing was not stable. This was certainly alarming.

Next, she pulled out this cool platform thingy with paper in it. I was to walk on it once for each foot so that it could create an ink footprint. Cool! Here’s my right foot (I messed up and had to re-do it, so this was my bad step which Francis let me keep).

With all my “data” (that would include verbal information, the footprints, plus the miserably failed balance test), Francis went into the back of the store to figure out the best type of support for my particular foot problems. As she was gone, I started to worry that they wouldn’t be able to find something to fit my particular foot needs. Maybe I would have to place the order and they would send out to the main facility to custom fabricate orthotics to meet my unique arch support system needs. I was getting more and more worried the longer she was gone. I didn’t want to have to come back a week later, I wanted better support NOW!

Imagine my relief when Francis came back with a handful of plastic baggies each containing different types of supports! She smiled and it was clear to me that she was able to cobble together a solution to my problems.

In my relief, I related to Francis my visit to the clinic when I was a teenager. The excruciating wait resulting from having had a model of my foot constructed and then the almost two months before the doctors were able to create my custom orthotic!

Francis smiled wider because she too knows what a wonderful futuristic world we live in today! Where even custom eye-glasses can be cut and fitted to our heads in less than an hour! What a beautiful day this was turning out to be! I hummed a bit as Francis tore each individually wrapped orthotic out of its sterile packaging, then took my sneakers and ripped out the old sole cushions. I wouldn’t be needing those any more!

Actually, Francis was talking through this, and it was only just starting to penetrate what she was saying. Let me summarize the most important point: These inserts cost $285 dollars.

As Francis started pressing the $upport$ into their new homes, I couldn’t help but to wonder as to what specific foot support my particular case warranted the $285 price tag. I examined the crumpled little baggie that had contained my left support. I was prepared to have to memorize had a unique designator label like XKZ-26-L-RW2-64C. Fortunately, it was easy to memorize. The code printed on the baggie was only a few letters long. The code was “LARGE”.

Hmmm. Maybe you are wondering if perhaps it was “XKZ-26-L-RW2-64C – LARGE”? No, it was simply, “LARGE” on the wrapper.

Fine. Whatever. The $285 cost at least got me to thinking that maybe they would still be better than the ones I got at Walmart. (Coincidently, the code on the ones I got from Walmart were the same as the ones at Great Foot: “LARGE”.)

Francis gave me my shoes and had me put them on. Time for a re-visit of the balancing test. With my hands in front again, Francis was unable to tip me over (she even gave a little grunt of effort so that I knew she was really trying to tip my balance). Even with my hands behind my back, she was unable to tip me over (she did the little “effort-grunt” again, by the way). I was standing on a bedrock of arch supports.

Here is where I began to struggle with the annoying part of me. Even my wife could see my struggle. Both asked what was the matter (with that tone in their voices that made me think they believed I was late for an appointment in the bathroom).

I said, “Nothing” but my wife wouldn’t let it alone (another reason why I love her). So I suggested that perhaps this “balance test” was biased. That is, maybe the salesperson was helping me with the outcomes of each test. Francis was clearly shocked at the idea. This made me feel bad for seeming to doubt her. She had been very nice and helpful. I quickly explained that I didn’t think it was deliberate! This sort of thing happens all the time in research, which is why the good researchers use blind (or “double-blind”) procedures. Unconscious bias can affect test outcomes.

Wanting to end the matter, I again tried to pass it off as a side-effect of my being an idiot. However, the damage had been done. I had thrown down a gauntlet and Francis was ready to do battle. She insisted on the blind test. So, ok. I told her we would do two tests - one with and one without the supports, only she would not know when they were in or not for the balancing tests. For the first test, I decided to leave them in.

After a while of feeling guilty for being annoying, we called Francis back in and I stood up for the test. With hands in front, she pushed (no effort grunt) and I started to tip over. This was NOT what I wanted. Although, I was skeptical about the demonstration, I would have been glad to spend the money on supports if it meant I might be able to run again. This little tip instantly crushed my dreams. Francis, on the other hand, smiled and said, “I think I know that the supports are out of your shoes!”

We did the behind-my-back test and I tipped over even quicker. With obvious confidence in the test, Francis stated that I was NOT wearing the supports.

Now, I was feeling pretty bad already now that I had lost faith in the supports. I wasn’t looking forward to being a real ass and showing her that I still had them on. She was really shocked to see them in my shoes. Right away, she proposed the hypothesis that I must not have had them in correctly. If they are out of position by even the littlest smidge, they are apparently worthless.

Well, if that were true, they were REALLY not going to be very helpful. They had felt ok in my shoes, and if I can’t tell whether they are fitting correctly or not, why buy them? I decided to terminate the study (no second test) to avoid further turmoil. We left with the, “We should really check with the doctor first to see if our insurance might be useful” excuse.

I’d like to think that maybe Francis has been given some food for thought regarding the validity of her test, but I’m skeptical. She was pretty quick to come up with an excuse to protect her belief in the validity of the test. So, I imagine her using the same routine on her customers still. Only I doubt that she would allow anyone to test her again.

Sometimes being annoying can save you money and might even be educational to others (if they are open-minded enough to learn from it). But, it's still annoying to have the foot problem.

The MONTY PAUL Dilemma: How to get a free "six-pack" of Dr. Paul's favorite beer

2008-05-08T19:57:00.007-05:00

Exhibit A

On Tuesday, April 15, 2008 I attended a lecture by Arie Maharshak that presented some research he had done with David Pundak. There were three things that got my mind whirring (my wife would say it was “clanking”). First, and among other things, Arie reviewed the Monty Hall dilemma, which I will describe in a moment. Second, how well attended the presentation was by faculty and administrators, including our president! And finally, the conspicuous absence of students.

There are approximately 4500 students at Robert Morris University. None of which found the time to attend the Rooney Scholar lecture. By the way, there was a fantastic spread of delicious snacks, all free for the gobbling, but no students. Why? I have a few thoughts, but first, the Monty Hall dilemma.

There are lots of website discussions and simulations about this puzzle on the web, so I invite the reader to go find some and play around if you do not believe (or understand) my telling. Essentially, it goes like this: Imagine three doors, each leading to a free prize. However, only one prize behind one of the three doors is worthwhile (e.g., a six-pack of Dr. Paul’s favorite beer). The other two doors each hide something worthless (e.g., empty bottles of Dr. Paul’s favorite beer). You get to pick one of the doors. Let’s say you select door number three. Now, before that door is opened, I show you that behind door number one, there is a worthless prize (empty bottle). Now, here is the puzzle: If you like, you may switch your choice to door number two, or you can keep your original door number three. Is it a good idea to switch, a bad idea to switch, or does it matter?

The answer is that you should switch. Door number two is twice as likely to hide the prize than door number three.

All this writing is making me thirsty. There is now only five bottles left of Dr. Paul’s six-pack of favorite beer. Sorry.

Exhibit B

Over the years, I have asked students to write little papers for class. Unfortunately, it seems that the educational value of this sort of assignment has diminished. Instead of doing what I’d hoped; actually putting some thought into the paper topic, students have turned the assignments into scavenger hunts. They pop onto the internet, locate a search engine, type in a few key words, skim some resulting pages for choice paragraphs or sentences to cut and paste into “their” paper. Of course, I do not mean to lump all students into this characterization. So, those of you reading this who actually follow through as intended, nice job!

To combat this plagiaristic trend, I have modified my paper assignments so that they require only self-reflection, personal opinion, and/or basic brainpower. Despite that, I still get scavenger hunt students who turn in papers plagiarized from the internet. Some students, if they cannot find information about the topic on the internet, simply give up! All that they needed to do was spend the same amount of time they wasted searching the internet just thinking about the topic. However, because the internet knew nothing about the topic, neither did the student.

Hm! I see that I’ve downed another bottle and I don’t even recall opening that second one! Ok, a four-pack is better than nothing, right?

Exhibit A

One of the points of Arie’s talk was that students (people, really) tended to rely on naïve intuition to understand the world. Or, put another way, we tend to be lazy thinkers who prefer to derive speedy answers to questions rather than try to think through them using scientific reasoning.

This is, of course, an over-simplification of Dr. Maharshak’s talk. However, in that, there is another point to be made: We prefer over-simplification to complex answers. The trend and general advice is to try to present “sound bite” education. Keep the students’ attention! Entertain! Keep It Simple Stupid! I’ve had students who defended their poor grades by explaining that the class was too “boring” for them to do well in.

As it turned out, though, as much of the attention was focused on student thinking (or lack thereof) I was a bit surprised when the president of the university made a comment. He was referring to a semi-popular book (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell), in which it appears that intuitive thinking among those with plenty of life -or business- experience is actually pretty good. This point was reinforced by an administrator from the nursing program who claimed that research has shown that seasoned doctors are able to intuit diagnoses with great accuracy (i.e., the “educated guess” effect).

So, what was the point of these comments? To me, they seemed to defend the use of intuition. Or, at least attempt to put “intuition” into a more favorable light by indicating that, under the right conditions, a “lazy” (my bias) approach to thinking might actually be ok.

An obvious fallacy here, and one that seems to illustrate the trouble educators have in trying to bring critical thinking to the masses, is that there is no guideline for when a person has enough experience and knowledge to be able to justify an intuitive approach to thinking. Any defense of lazy thinking reinforces the whole line of thinkers, from novice to experienced, to simply rely on their gut. Lazy thinking wins again!

To make matters worse, because of other biases in thinking (such as the confirmation bias), people are much less likely to seek out anything but confirmatory evidence for their beliefs. They will even go so far as to ignore, outright reject, reinterpret, or even overlook evidence that conflicts with their view.

So, when a seasoned doctor uses intuition to make a diagnosis, or a cigar-saturated CEO makes an important business decision, they may be much less willing to consider additional sources of evidence… especially evidence that might be contrary to their gut reasoning.

People should always strive to make use of the best information available. Sometimes the best we have is intuition. In which case, gamble with the experts. However, unless time is critical, it is rare that intuition is the best information from which to work. So, beware the person who contrives to waste time so that intuition is the only viable option left!

So, how to get my beers? Learn and practice systematic thinking strategies. Familiarize yourself with the “scientific method” and challenge your thinking. It’s better to point to the data as an excuse for failure than everyone pointing at you and your stupid gut. So, to start, work out an explanation for my variation to the Monty Hall puzzle described below. With my apologies to the scavengers, I’ve done my best to come up with a variation that is NOT to be found elsewhere on the web. Please think about it.

I just burped. That bottle went down too fast! There’s not a lot of things more gross than a beer burp. Clearly I cannot give away three beers. That would be an odd number. So, let’s just make it two bottles, ok?

Exhibit C: The Monty Paul Dilemma

Imagine four doors (A, B, C, D). Each door hides a prize. Only one prize is worthwhile (beer). The other doors hide crappy prizes (empty bottles).

You now select a door, let’s go with “D”.

Before I open the door, I show you that door “B” had an empty bottle behind it.

This means that three doors remain (A, C, and your choice: D).

Question: Is it worth your while to switch (i.e., pick either Door-A or Door-C), is it a bad idea to switch (i.e., you should keep Door-D), or does it matter?

Ultimately, it isn't a matter of having to learn anything new so much as making a choice to try. Reason it out. List what you know, list what you don't know but could learn, and list the stuff that is irrelevant but distracting. Those last few items are your gut talking. Ignore the gut, at least for now.

I have one bottle of my favorite beer left! I promise I will not drink it. In fact, I will keep it chilled in my little office refrigerator until someone comes to claim the prize with a correct answer (with defense) to this dilemma.

Professor Holds Students Hostage: Forces Class Participation

2008-02-27T23:29:00.002-05:00

Authorities were notified Wednesday that Professor P., a faculty member in the psychology department at a small private university in Pennsylvania, actually attempted to force his students to participate in class activities. Some witnesses reported that Dr. P. even attempted to get some students to answer a question out loud during lecture.

“I wasn’t really scared,” stated Melissa T., a student of Dr. P’s, “That is, not until he tried to make eye contact with me after asking a question about the chapter we were supposed to have read. Then things really started to get out of control. It was like he expected us to have really read it!”

Other victims from the class reported similar odd behaviors from Dr. P. as the early calm of class quickly turned into the ugly hostage crisis.

“I paid a lot of money for this course,” said Scott M. “If I want to talk to my friend about alcohol and sports during class, that’s my right! I’ll pay better attention as soon as the class gets interesting. As I see it, there’s no point in learning something if it isn’t interesting.” Other victims of Dr. P.’s class agreed.

“What’s the big deal if I’m texting my friends during class?” asked James D. “That’s no reason for the professor to pick on me! He should just mind his own business during class and try not to bother the students while he’s lecturing.”

Probably the most stunning report from among the hostages came from Jocelyn G. who was in the room almost by mistake. Apparently, a “friend” had tricked her into taking Dr. P. “It was, like, the worst experience of my life!” Jocelyn explained. “College isn’t about students talking to professors; it’s about the professors talking to the students! Dr. P. was acting all like, ‘you guys need to put some effort into learning this material’ but it’s like he’s the one getting paid to teach us! The whole idea of tuition is that the students are paying the professors to teach. I wouldn’t hire a car mechanic and then expect to fix the car myself!”

Many of the hostage victims reported similar views, but what may be the saddest tale came from poor Nicole A. who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. “Normally, like, I skip this class, but, like, today my dorm room was just too cold to sleep in, so, like, I decided to see if I could take a nap during the lecture. I’ve done it, like, many times before, so I never suspected that the day would turn out this way! There wasn’t more than fifteen minutes of good nap time the whole fifty minutes we were in there!”

Fortunately, students were able to “talk Dr. P. down” at about 1:49pm after a heroic attempt was made to locate a copy of the course syllabus. The hostages were able to remind Dr. P. that he had office hours starting at 2:00pm.

Campus authorities finally caught up to Dr. P. in his office a few hours later. They were relieved to find that he was alone. The fear had been that students seeking extra help outside of class might have been in danger of being required to think while in Dr. P.’s office. However, the security team had no reason to worry. As usual, Dr. P. was left alone the entire one hundred and fifty minutes of his scheduled office hours. Police report that when they asked Dr. P. why he was still in his office even after his official office hours had elapsed, he naively replied, “In case students need help, but couldn’t make my posted hours.”

Professor B., who has an office next to Dr. P., provided this insightful comment regarding the possible cause of Dr. P's breakdown: "He was probably unable to accept the paradox that most students today don't come to college to learn. They come here to get their degrees."

Calls to Dr. P. for his side of this bizarre story were not made. Although his contact information is on the course syllabus. The only student who had kept a copy of the syllabus had to drive home early because her roommate’s grandmother had a sick neighbor.

The boy who cried "Small aquatic bird of the Anatidae family!” (instead of “Duck!”)

2008-01-27T17:55:00.001-05:00

Ok, I just figured out that I fell for an internet hoax. Damn! I hate that I did that. At least it wasn’t the one where I send thousands of dollars to Nigeria, or that one where I cash checks for people. Actually, it’s just the one where I thought I could turn Mountain Dew into glow-in-the-dark juice. No real harm done to my wallet, just some loss of self-respect.

This month’s blahg is about something that crossed my mind recently. I’ve been noticing a few things. For example, I was at an all-day faculty event that killed a Friday (so my class got cancelled which instantly put me behind by one day). Anyway, I was trying to tell someone about a gift idea and was almost immediately not taken seriously. At another meeting, I made a suggestion which was brought up later in the conversation and credited to someone else. But at the end of the meeting, I was teased for not having made any more contribution to the group than a joke or two.

Now, am I being a whiny-butt? No. In fact, it makes sense to me. Most of my interactions in these sorts of settings is driven by my insecurity. That is, I really don’t feel comfortable in groups and really hate having to talk. So, two things happen. One, I start feeling worse because I’m being so quiet, which makes me feel like I have to say SOMETHING – anything! Second, my coping mechanisms kick-in.

When I was in high school, I never EVER talked in class unless I was directly called on. My response to being called on was to turn bright red, slouch in my chair, look down, and mumble. Most of the time that got the heat off me. When I eventually got into graduate school (having done my best to navigate through college by taking classes that minimized any class presence) I found out that I’d have to give hour-long presentations to faculty and students. They were pretty awful. Find one of my graduate-student brothers or sisters and they’ll confirm that.

I needed a way to cope with the stress and I quickly learned (through observation – I wasn’t the only person who dreaded these presentations) that being uncomfortable in front of people only made a presenter look worse! So, from then on, 98 percent of my attention was directed toward NOT appearing nervous. What is the opposite of nervous? Well, you might think “calmness” but I wasn’t able to pull that off. Instead, I noticed that people who were calm tended to feel comfortable joking around. When people in the audience laughed, you could see that everyone was everyone’s friend. That helped reduce anxiety! So, over time, I worked at using some of that 98 percent to find humor; get the audience “on my side” in a way. That was over 15 years ago. So, now I can use more than 2 percent of my energy to focus on content (probably close to 60 percent).

Now, do I think that I am funny? Not so much. Actually, most of the jokes I make nowadays are to make ME laugh (if others laugh, great). To be honest, I think my sister has a way better sense of humor than I do. She can make any story hilarious if she wants to. She could be making more money as a humorist than a teacher.

OK, so back to ME.

Do I really really really care if I’m taken seriously or not? Maybe a little. Can I change my department meeting persona to one of less humor? Yeah. Probably. Will I? No. Why? Those things are too boring and of too little real substance and rarely important at all. Plus, I still get nervous talking in groups. What would my coping strategy be? (A) Turning bright red, slouching in my chair, looking down, and mumbling. Or (2) Finding something funny about the moment so the next moment is less painful? Yeah… sorry about that bump on the head… (Ok, that was a vague reference [“call-back”] to the blahg title. It made ME laugh, anyway…)

OBEY!

2007-12-26T00:07:00.001-05:00

It’s the end of a year. Again. They keep coming (and ending). I suppose I shouldn’t complain, right? But… well, what’s up with this bald spot I’m growing? Oh, yeah, and that belly that’s getting bigger… AND, since we’re on the topic of complaints, why is the distance I need to see things clearly starting to change too?

I’ve noticed that in the past six-or-so years, I was getting pretty nostalgic. My thoughts would often wander back to my younger days. (See my June 2007 entry, for example!) I’d start to play that, “what if” game where I try to imagine “what if” I’d made different decisions in my life. For instance, what if I’d accepted that faculty position right out of graduate school. I’d probably still be living in Charleston! What students would I have bored with my lectures? I’d probably have been a full professor for years by now! What friends would I have had? Would the weather have ruined my house? You get the idea.

These past few months, though, I’ve not been so reminiscent. Maybe because I had my worst semester EVER. Or, maybe I (finally) got bored with that going-nowhere game. I’m looking more toward the future for now.

But, enough of this “dear diary” dribble!

I’ve been getting swept up by my “psychology of belief” interests lately. This coming semester I’ll be teaching a course on this topic (I’ve been toiling away making dowsing rods for my students to use – and keep – to illustrate aspects of belief formation). It’s been two years since the last time I started this course. I got REALLY burned out on the topic AND the apparent futility of it all.

It’s fascinating to see how cleverly people hold on to stupid beliefs, inconsistent beliefs, clearly-wrong beliefs, and bad beliefs. Hell, people are even pretty good at exchanging perfectly good beliefs for terrible beliefs if the idiotic beliefs are presented just the right way!

It burns me out to see how easily human thinking careens out of control (yes, even my OWN thinking – I’m not trying to climb any damn pedestals).

Imagine being a driving instructor. You tell the new student to turn left at the next intersection. “Watch out for that truck!” The student turns and avoids the truck. “OK, go straight through the next light and then take the right turn at the stop sign, but watch out for that bus!” The student seems to follow all your instructions just fine. Eventually, you end up back at the driving school. “Watch out for that motorcycle!” They watch out and park just fine. Yippie, a new driver!

After they pocket their shiny new license, you watch them drive away – and immediately crash into oncoming traffic. How depressing.

Anyway… maybe this semester will be different? Maybe this time I will do something right and actually reach a few more?

Dulcet drips of tenacious time

2007-11-28T21:10:00.000-05:00

The year’s end draws closer and I missed my second chance to get a photo of the banner that was hung in Coraopolis this month. It was there last year (for the first time, I think), but I missed that photo-op as well. The Pittsburgh Veterans take a trip to the WWII memorial in DC close to veteran’s day. A very nice idea. The slogan, however, leaves something to be desired in my book.

Here are two links about the “project”:

(1) Pittsburgh WWII Veterans Memorial Trip homepage

(2) Post-Gazette Article from last year

It’s bad enough that I ruminate so much about mortality as it is. I can only imagine what it will be like when I hit my 80’s (assuming I get that far). In fact, I don’t even like those life insurance commercials that try to guilt me into buying or upping my insurance as soon as possible so that my loved ones will enjoy greater comfort once I’m gone! There’s too much of a sense of URGENCY to those commercials. It takes me back to when I was a kid and I thought people in the TV could see me, or knew about me. Remember the birthday list on Romper Room!? Well, when I see that guy dressed in his ready-to-go-to-my-funeral-suit telling me that I could go AT ANY TIME, my paranoia thoughts start churning, “Is he talking to ME? Does he know something I should know?” You get the idea.

So, to think that someday someone might start a slogan to get ME to do something or see something or go somewhere or whatever, (BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!) makes me a bit uncomfortable. That sounds like a fun bus-trip, for sure. Every time I’d look up at the guy in the seat next to mine, I’d wonder, “Hey, that guy looks pretty old; wonder how much longer he’s got?” Of course, that guy’s looking my way and is probably thinking very similar thoughts about my raggedy face.

My neighbor is a WWII veteran (Leo). He loves to tell his war stories. He jumped out of airplanes as a member of the 101^st Airborne. Also known as the “Screaming Eagles”. Leo loves to tell his war stories, and Leo was well decorated. In addition to his love of telling war stories, he has a Screaming Eagles baseball cap and it’s decorated with miniatures of his medals (including the Purple Heart). He loves to tell his war stories. Whenever he is in public, the cap goes with him. You can rest assured, Leo will be telling some war stories. I’ve never seen him wear the cap and be ignored. There’s always someone who comments on it, or, thanks him for his service. And Leo is ready with stories to tell. Leo really loves to tell his war stories.

Leo lives right next door with his sister Anne, and they have become like family to us. It’s a nice feeling to see them there, and it’s a comfort to us that we can count on them to check in on our dogs if we need them to do so. I really think that Leo (and maybe his sister) would appreciate a trip to the memorial. We’ll have to set it up for them next year.

Before it’s too late.

Satanic Apples

2007-10-31T21:07:00.001-05:00

Happy Halloween.

I’ve been very busy this month (and still am, frankly). But, I thought I’d take a few minutes to share a brief experience.

At the beginning of the month, I went to the John Edward presentation (or “event”) at the Sheraton Station Square in Pittsburgh.

Cost was around $200 per ticket.

He’s easy to listen to, and, I’d say that he has a nice sense of humor. Let’s just say he’s able to charm a crowd.

My father is very much “in to” the psychic scene (people such as John Edward, Rosemary Altea, etc.). We got him a ticket to the show (which is something he’s wanted for quite some time) and I got one for me, so he wouldn’t be there alone. Plus, I admit that I was interested to see how it worked.

We had a nice dinner before the show, then walked to the hotel where the seating would no-doubt be limited. There, we stood in line for about 45 minutes.

I’d wondered if he might have “plants” in the line trying to find information secretly to pass on to John before his show. There was a lone woman about in her late 30’s to early 40’s who stood behind my father and I. She was attentive and had her cell phone out frantically text-messaging while the three ladies behind her chatted about the tragedies they’ve endured in their lives. Loved ones lost, and so on.

“Ah-HA!” Was my thinking… I decided to stroll up and down the line to see if there were other “texters” who might be feeding info to the so-called psychic. There were maybe two others.

I decided to keep an eye on our texter and see where she sat, etc. I also wanted to follow the locations of the women we could all overhear talking about the dead relatives they were hoping to hear from. It would be interesting to see if they ended up as “targets” for Mr. Edward’s show.

We eventually got inside and sat knee-to-knee with other foolish-with-their-money folks. I lost track of our texter-lady… As I suspected might happen (but then later I saw that she’s sat a ways back behind us, oh well).

John showed up, to the obvious adoration of the many fans (mostly women, by the way). Probably there were 90 women for every five males in the audience. He never used any of the information I’d have guessed he’d use from secret text-messagers. So, probably there were none. I was just being super-suspicious.

Nonetheless, I was not impressed by his performance. It was all-to-clearly (to me) a cold-reading performance.

There were a lot of people there, and he would pick an area and “stab” with something like, “Is there someone here who has a father-figure who passed that missed a graduation?” He’d narrow to a small group and keep drilling for a hit. His approach is to ALWAYS try to make a “hit” in the sense that even if the person standing kept saying “no” he’d probe and push around until he could find some type of match. Occasionally to the delight of the audience.

In the above example, a small family stood and the younger adult male was answering “no” about his high school and college graduations. Dad made it to both. After a while of pushing, Edward finally got the guy to remember that, “Oh, wait, I got two degrees in college, and dad missed one of the ceremonies.”

OK, people, the hits are there if we can just open up to them.

Sure, that was a cool hit. But then later, a similar setup with a, “Your mother is saying something about New York?” Followed by nothing from the family. This went on and on, and even I could think of possible hits having to do with New York. Then out of desperation, a family member offered, “Well, sometimes when I drive to work, I think I go past a little restaurant called the New York Deli…?”

This was instantly taken as another one of those “Come on people, open up, the hits are there!” But really, despite the supportive laughter about another bone-head who can’t open up to the obvious hits, I wasn’t impressed by that one.

John is really slick in being able to tease out likely bits of general information, and the audience (or targets) embellish some details that can then be reworked into more specific-sounding hits. As another example, he picked a section and asked, “What’s the association with Gilligan’s Island?” It took a while, but someone was able to say that, in the country they are from, there is a little beach-island nearby that is called Gilligan’s Island, although she’d never been there. Again, I could probably have matched that also because my mother hated that show, even though we (my sister and I) watched it quite a bit growing up. I really think that would that have been close enough to match John’s probe.

My main sense, and what I did mostly, was watch people melt under the spotlight of having loved-ones let them know they are doing fine. Tears a-many were shed. Heads nodded at almost every morsel Edward blurbled out. It was a sort of rapture. It really made me sad.

If I wasn’t a pessimist before the show, I am certainly one now. The ease with which people seem to fall for this smoke paints a dim view of humanity’s future in my mind. Imagine taking the Jetson’s out of their cartoon and putting Fred and Wilma into it as replacements. We are a modern society with such superstitious and mystical beliefs being constantly recycled and perpetuated that I fear for humanity.

Actually, I fear for the world! Not because of what humans will do to it in their fiery spiral toward destiny, but because I doubt that we’ll be even good enough at doom to completely wipe ourselves out. The scourge will probably rise again to torture the planet and its non-human (and human) inhabitants some more.

Wow. How’s that for a downer of a blog-entry?

Techno-RANT!

2007-09-29T18:25:00.001-05:00

WARNING: This blog-entry has displaced another blog-entry I’d planned to write. However, for the sake of the breakables around me during times of frustration such as this, it’s better I get the anger out of my system this way for now.

I am so alarmingly tired of the “technology experts” at my school.

Currently, once I press the power button to my work computer, it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes before it becomes as close to reasonable to use as it’s going to get. Sadly, that's NOT even an exaggeration. On the bright side, I’ve been promised a replacement computer. (But then again, I remember getting promised a pony when I was a kid.)

So, essentially, I cannot work effectively at school. But at least I have the equipment to work at home! All I need to do is access a program called Citrix and I can access what’s called my “H-Drive” at school (wasn’t there a bomb similarly named?). This H-Drive is where I diligently back-up my work every day in case my laptop dies (which it doesn’t have the decency to do; since laptop-death is pretty much the only way to get a replacement faster).

Oops, sorry Steve. The brilliant folks in IT (which I think is just the last two letters of their full acronym) have “upgraded” our access channels. NOW, the Citrix I used to use won’t allow me access to my H-Drive. In fact, now it only lets me use the school software from off-campus… of course, that means that I have to carry that stuff with me if I want to work on it away from school. See? That’s called “convenience” at my school!

So then, how do I access my H-Drive from home? The brilliant folks in IT have provided us a handy link on the web to a program called Netstorage. This program allows us to SEE what’s on our H-Drive, but that’s about it. The interface allows you to THINK that you can do stuff, but, like pressing the elevator key multiple times in succession, or, like moving the temperature dial up or down in a classroom, nothing really useful results.

All I can seem to download are files containing “links” to the information I want, except that the links do not really work. Of course, there is a trick where you can select multiple files to download, which then are packaged into a “zip-file” that is downloaded. This is particularly neat for Vista users who may run into trouble with zip-files, but ultimately there is little actual risk since the zip-file that is downloaded contains nothing anyway.

Before signing off, let me grudgingly apologize to the GOOD folks in the IT department who are subjected to the wrath of irate users (and abusers) when the decisions to make such brilliant changes to the system are out of their actual control. They do the best they can with what they have to work with (and in spite of their brilliant leaders who make such brilliant decisions).

Finally, although I hope it is redundant of me, I guess I should explain that when I used the word “brilliant” up above, I was using it in the same way I’d describe the thinking behind installing screen-doors on submarines. THAT kind of “brilliant”.

...and so it begins again...

2007-08-31T19:27:00.000-05:00

The first week of classes has zipped by pretty fast for me. Maybe because I felt as though I was only just barely prepared for each class. Time really seems to fly when you feel like you don't have enough time to finish everything you want to finish.

Next week is a short week (Monday being a holiday). HOWEVER, as it turns out, my subjective feelings of short weeks depends on the way they are shortened: When Monday is dropped, the week seems LONGER than a regular week to me. BUT, when Friday is dropped, then it feels like a pretty short week.

I think the reason the Monday-off makes my week longer is because it screws me up. See if you can follow the "logic"...

Tuesday feels like Monday. But I have to keep telling myself, "No, Monday was yesterday, we are a day deeper into the week than you think!"

Wednesday feels like Tuesday, but not as much as Tuesday felt like Monday (I'm catching up, you see). Nonetheless, I still have to tell myself that, "No, Tuesday was yesterday, we are a day deeper into the week than you think!"

By Thursday, it actually feels like Thursday to me. BUT, that part of me that was trying to keep track starts in anyway with, "No, we had Monday off, so you are a day off. Thursday must have been yesterday, we are a day deeper into the week than you think! So it is really Friday"

But then there's STILL Friday waiting after Thursday. So, when I go to work on Friday, it feels like it should be Saturday because of the one-day-off logic. Therefore, I feel like I had to go an extra day which makes me feel like it was an extra-long week, even though it was short.

Don't even get me started on middle-of-the-week days-off! (That can end up feeling like TWO WHOLE WORK-WEEKS of work!)

Work-weeks should ONLY be shortened by taking off Fridays.

Portly Foreverglades

2007-07-21T15:08:00.001-05:00

Summer is slipping too quickly through my fingers... So much to do, so little motivation, oh, yeah, and time... that too.

On the bright side, I am planning to go on a cruise in January!

For those who have never tasted the cruise, my advice is to not EVER go on a cruise. I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m pretty sure that “CRUISE” is Italian (or Greek?) for “OCEAN-COCAINE”. The problem, though, is that I’ll have to fly to get to the port down in Ft. Lauderdale.

I’m really not afraid of flying, really; it’s just that I’m really just afraid of crashing, really.

What’s that? Statistically it is SAFER to fly than to drive the car? Really? Wow. Well, did you know that “statistically” it is safer to be driving (riding) in a car when the engine fails than it is to be flying when the engine fails? Also, since we’re on “statistics”, did you know that “statistically” more people die in hospitals than out of them. So, does that mean it’s “safer” to stay away from hospitals? Hmm, actually... maybe so:

Deaths in the U.S. as a result of preventable adverse medical events (i.e., doctor and nurse mistakes) EXCEED those of motor vehicle accidents AND breast cancer COMBINED? [Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., & Donaldson, M. S. (2000). To err is human: Building a safer healthcare system. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.]

Ok, that’s what you get for bringing up the “it’s safer to fly than it is to drive” crap.

Since I’m already on the subjects of death, I’ve been looking in the mirror lately and haven’t liked what I’ve been seeing. BUT, guess what I figured out?

Stop ffffffricking looking in the frickingggg mirror!

Since I’ve stopped looking at the (contrary) evidence, I’ve been feeling a lot younger, healthier, slimmer, and handsomer! I prefer it that way. Besides, if God had wanted us to be looking in mirrors, he’d have put eyes in the front of our heads and given people the smarts enough to invent mirrors to hang on walls in the places we live, and... oh... wait...

Ahhhhhh... frickkkkking God!

Change Strange

2007-06-10T22:22:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across this website: http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/str.html and MAN did it bring back some memories AND remind me of how different the world has become since I was a tyke! Take a minute and check out the toy. Then come back.

I do not recall ever asking for this toy, it just showed up one christmas morning. My parents knew that I was a science fiction dork and they probably figured I'd like the toy. Chaa! Try LOVE it!

It had SOOOOO much additional potential as a toy. Now, there's NO WAY any kid could get a toy like this today. In fact, other than giving a child a blowtorch in their christmas stocking, no other toy would be as dangerous, either... but hey, I was a responsible (for the most part) child.

Basically (for those of you who decided to just keep reading even THOUGH you were told to take a look at the website above first), the toy was a single-burner electric stove. There was a plastic dome to "protect" youngsters from inadvertent fingerprint meltage. Not to worry, the dome of protection could be popped off without a fuss.

Now frankly, a single burner stove-top in the bedroom SHOULD be toy enough for ANY eight year old (or older) kid. BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE! There was a little crusher machine that, when you put stuff into it, you could... umm, CRUSH it! Just crank the crush-o-matic wheel and SPLOOSH, whatever was in the "danger chamber" (as I like to think of it) was squished!

Now, of course, some things that were DESIGNED to be used with the toy came with it. Little plastic dinosaurs that you were supposed to heat on the "burner" and then throw into the crusher and squish into flat little plastic squares. Later, putting the squares on the burner would allow them to spring back into their dino-shapes. Yeah, that WAS cool. But think of all the OTHER stuff in a little boy's bedroom that DIDN'T come with the toy... but that could still... interact with it!

I'm really tempted to try and recapture my youth by finding one on eBay... [sigh] Why couldn't my "mid-life crisis" be the one where I get the red convertible sports-car and the beautiful young model(s)? Oh... I remember... my wife would be the one to get the Strange Change machine and guess who'd be looking out of the "danger chamber"?

What did I see you eating under there?

2007-05-30T22:05:00.001-05:00

There’s a new movie coming out that I fully expect I’ll hate. (Can you guess what it is?) Apparently, I’ve now pretty much aged myself out of the primary target demographic for movies. They mostly all suck. Of course, that’s probably always been true. But, what’s worse is that the number of sucky movies that I’m willing to see is getting smaller. Reminds me of when cable TV showed up. We went from four or five channels to over 100, but worthwhile (to me) programming all but vanished.

To be honest, the movie I’m looking forward to see can suck all it wants as long as the theme song is faithful to the original, except longer (not necessarily in terms of lyrics; maybe just the instrumentals).

FAT CHANCE!

It will probably be some kind of (in honor of the president) “C-grade” rap bastardization. Or, what I like to call, “Crap” for short.

On the bright side, summer has arrived to caress my face and shoulders with her loving touch. Pass the sunscreen!

Unfortunately, in looking into making plans to travel north to help my father pack up his house for a big move, I’ve ended up filling all my summer break with “things to do”. That makes me feel like summer’s almost over already! I can feel Fall Classes breathing down my neck and I still have 64 hours of teaching left to do before then! (Yes, I keep track of how many hours I have left to teach.)

I’m starting to hyperventilate.

So, here’s where I stand:

1) Summer is almost over already.
2) I can’t look forward to (and enjoy) movies anymore.
3) My blog has become a crazy-person’s rant-space.

What to do, what to do. . . Maybe I need a new philosophy? OK, I pick the “Philosophy of niece” which is summed up by her phrase (following a deep sigh): “What-ev.”

Bad Days and Bad Ways

2007-04-27T07:21:00.000-05:00

I’m not a big fan of Winter. Maybe the idea was good back when someone thought it up, “This will get people to appreciate Summer!” But, I don’t need it; I already and always appreciate Summer. Winter, to me, is a long five months (November through March). And don’t give me any of that solstice-equinox crap. Winter is when it’s COLD. I’m only allowed 365 days a year, and Winter takes about 150 days of them! So, that leaves me with a mere 215 (at best).

Why am I complaining when Spring is already here? Why complain when I can hear Summer upstairs dressing for breakfast? Because despite my love of Summer, I’m an idiot like the rest of you.

Winter days are strings of “bad days” in my book. Sure, not everything is bad every day, but overall, more bad than good. So, now that my so-called “good days” are coming, I will still be paying a “good day tax” which whittles into my remaining 215 days. The “good day tax” is paid on a random cycle. It is paid with bad days. Bad days can be bold, or worse, they can be sneaky.

Sneaky bad days are really betrayals because I usually cause the misery. They are sneaky because, like straws on the proverbial camel’s back, no single ingredient is enough to justify calling it a bad day. It happens out of accumulated irritating experiences. So you never know you’re having one until it’s too late. Below are just some of the ingredients to my sneaky bad days:

A hangnail.
Spontaneous public coughing spasms caused by breathing in my spit when I should have been swallowing it. Usually people make it worse by offering me something to drink when this happens.
Driving past the exit I wanted and having to drive another 5 miles just to get to an exit that will let me drive 5 miles back to the one I missed.
Losing my page because my finger slips or I drop the book.
Just finishing getting dressed when I’m nearly late for something only to have the last button on my shirt just pop off.
Blowing my nose but never being able to get the passages completely clear.
When tipping a glass to drink the last bit and the ice at the bottom suddenly collapses (avalanches) down onto my entire face.
Getting halfway through cooking a meal before finding out that an important ingredient (like chicken) I though was in the fridge, isn’t.
Throwing trash at the waste basket only to have it catch an outside edge, or worse, bounce OUT.
When the last tasty bite of a great meal or dessert falls off the fork and onto the floor.
Forgetting to completely rinse off and finding that soapy patch when drying.
Forgetting to completely dry off and getting that cold wet patch of shirt clinging to my back once I’m dressed.
Pulling a hair out (from ANY-damn-where) by accident; caught in watch or eyeglasses.
Being really tired but can’t sleep once in bed.
Bending a fingernail back on itself.
When my hand spasms for no apparent reason while drinking and I splash my own face (and/or shirt).
Getting an eyelash floating around on my eyeball while I’m driving.
Using scissors on some project, but halfway through I can’t find them any more because I somehow just hid them on myself.
Feeling that I have an itch on my shoulder or back or arm... but not being able to find it.
When the soap falls on the tub and it’s so thin that it won’t let me pick it up without squishing my fingernails into its sides.
Sometimes, reaching to adjust my glasses, I accidentally poke myself in the nose (or eye).
When I put something away before I’m done using it.
Missing the light switch more than two times when I’m walking by and I have to actually walk back to the wall to turn it on/off.
Get distracted when I walk into a room and forget the real reason I originally went in there. Then I have to come back again when I remember that I forgot.
Parking on a slight hill so that the door slams into my back or my leg when I’m not looking.
Reach up to my face to adjust my glasses only I’m not wearing them.

I think you get the idea.

Of Guilts and Fears

2007-03-31T18:07:00.000-05:00

I have been feeling guilty about my blubber-ness. Guilt is not a very productive response. I find that it makes me hungry. Fortunately, I have discovered the REAL underlying problems. My weight isn’t really MY fault at all! The blame actually belongs (in alphabetical order) to: Asian Grill, Bahama Breeze, Bravos, Cadbury, Damons, Don Pablos, Jackson’s, Johnny Carino’s, Mmm Mmm Pizza, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Red Lobster, Sapporo, and the Sharp Edge Restaurant. The weight of guilt has FINALLY been shifted from my shoulders (to my gut).

Tomorrow is April Fool’s day. That’s no big deal when it happens on a weekend. However, what is a big deal is that I am going to be presenting awards to two students. This will take place in front of their families. If you haven’t been keeping up with my rapid-pace blog entries, then you don’t know how much I fear public speaking. It’s taken me about a decade to learn how to appear relaxed in front of a classroom full of students. When I see them on campus (or worse… OFF campus), I find myself feeling the way I did in junior high when I’d get tongue-tied if a pretty girl spoke to me (actually I still get this way).

I have been trying to stay awake until I can barely keep my eyes open so that when I hit the pillow, I go right to sleep before my mind can start thinking things like, “Steve… what are you going to say?” Or, “You know, you’ll be talking about these students in front of their FAMILIES… in front of their PARENTS. What will you look like if you stutter or say something IDIOTIC?” (By the way, the chances of my saying something idiotic are actually really high. KNOWING this doesn’t make it any easier to cope.) I am only allowed two minutes per student. So, knowing that I have a 2-minute limit will make me fearful of going over. THAT will make me probably try to rush through whatever I come up with. (T-minus 20 hours to come up with something.)

Last night I slept like a baby. That is, a baby with a tooth ache that’s also being bit by the jealous dog and has a toy under his back and an ear ache. Yeah. I slept like a baby. Maybe if I go find something to eat I’ll feel better.

Phabulously Phlavorful Flegm: The Conspiracy!

2007-02-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

I thought I was doing well. I thought I was keeping my fingers out of my mouth, eyes, and nose (at least until after I washed them). I thought I was covering my mouth and holding my breath whenever a student snarkelflarted in my vicinity. Alas, no. Somewhere, somehow, from someone I was phlegmed.

The past week I went from breathing clearly to gurgling and wheezing out of 3/7 of the holes in my head.

If “they” can’t cure the cold, at least someone could come up with a way to make the disgusting parts more tolerable. A simple phlegm-flavoring shot, for example. Wouldn’t it be easy enough to find a way to inject (or swallow) a chemical into our system that would convert snot-flavored phlegm into, say, strawberry-flavored phlegm?

Frankly, I cannot believe that the technology isn’t already available. Somewhere, there’s a government or big-industry person walking around with a cold and periodically swallowing a backflow of booger-drainage that tastes as sweet as fresh picked strawberries; Or cherries; Or chocolate.

Why are they keeping this from the masses? Well THAT’S obvious! It’s for exactly the SAME damn reason that we don’t have “fart scenting patches” to stick on our skin somewhere. That’s right, “fart-scenters” convert the foul poopie flatulence smells we normally make into flower-fresh scents that would drive women crazy! OK, if you’re not the flowery type, how about other pleasant smells like chocolate chip cookie dough? Or pizza? You get the idea.

Yes, that’s two fantastic ideas in one blog entry. “Tasty-phlegms” and “Fart-scenters” should have been placed into widespread use years ago. Why haven’t they?

Consider: Imagine meeting your future in-laws (or fill in a suitable visitation scenario on your own) for the very first time. As you are walking into their house you catch that playful whiff of PIZZA! With delight, your eyes widen and a big saliva smile wraps around the words, “MMmmm, is that PIZZA I smell? I love pizza! If I was to be stranded on an island and could only have one thing to eat there for the rest of my life, pizza it would be!”

Here is where you notice that your future mother-in-law has started to blush and avoid eye-contact. There’s an uncomfortable silence filling air already thick with pizza-smells. It finally dawns on you that “someone” has been using the patch!

For the rest of your life, whenever you go into a pizza joint (or wherever there’s legitimate pizza going on) you’ll think back to how you almost got married and how good your almost-mother-in-law’s farts smelled. In fact, you’ll never be sure again if it’s really pizza that you’re smelling. Perhaps it might even happen that whenever you smell pizza, your lips will curl in disgust as you choke back a dry-heave.

Who’s going to allow THAT to happen to an American dining staple? Would you eat a cookie that smelled like poop? Well how about a chocolate-chip cookie that smelled exactly like a chocolate-chip cookie fart thanks to “Fart-scenters?”

So, the same would be true of “Phlegm-flavors.” Would you open a jar of phlegm and spread it on toast? No? OK, then how about a jar of strawberry jam that tastes like phlegm? No? How about strawberry jam that tasted exactly like strawberry jam that tasted like strawberry flavored phlegm? If you swallowed something that TASTED like strawberries, wouldn’t you wonder, “Hey, did I just swallow someone’s strawberry flavored phlegm instead of strawberry flavored strawberries?”

The food industries would oppose our flavoring and scenting of these nasty, disgusting excretions.

Besides, what would ever taste or smell good to us again if these phabulous products really did hit the shelves one day?

We should all just be thankful that our flegm and pharts have the phlavors and perphumes they have. Be thankful that the government suppresses some technologies for our own good.

Apologies to Eric and Julianne or RTFM

2007-01-31T21:27:00.000-05:00

I’ve been doing a crappy job on my blog since November of 2006. What started in my head never made it to the blog. BEFORE my blog was started, I’d imagined all the sorts of amazing rants and profound blurbles I’d be writing about. Then, I found a host for my blog and set it up (as best as I could figure out... it promised me at the time that I could change the look of the page, but it was never clear to me how, so I just used a selectable format – which is fine).

After about ONE entry, I became really resentful with the idea that I’d have to keep up with my writing EVERY damn day. I consider myself to be a super-introvert. By that I mean that I’d prefer to be so by myself that I’m often not alone enough with my own thoughts. (I crowd myself?) So, writing my thoughts was like having to entertain myself as a guest, when I’d really rather just be left alone thank you.

ALSO, when I fantasized about writing a blog, part of that fantasy included the idea that thousands of people would read it and leave commen-ta-toes (as I say in class). I think I only ever got ONE comment from a passer-by who also had a blog. (Someone named “ice” which is a cool name, huh?)

Ahem, well, recently the blog hosting site changed (something) and I had to click on some buttons and enter some passwords (for some reason). As a result, I came across a note that said I had, like, 30-something comments to moderate. Huh? Ohhhh, well apparently all that time I was supposed to click on a link to check for comments left by others every so often. Once I approve them THEN they appear in the blog. The only reason Ice showed up was that Ice was a registered blog person. Everyone else (including stupid web-bot comments like “Hey drspeg, check out this cool site, it reminds me of your blog!” that I deleted) went into the awaiting moderation purgatory.

An old (let’s say WICKED old – yes, boy is HE old, like probably WAY older than ME now since I never aged over the past years) friend of mine [Eric] had left a message and his email address. OK, after a year apparently the people hosting his email realized how old he was and just cancelled his email address because it didn’t work when I finally discovered it and tried to send a message back. PMO.

ALSO, a previous student of mine [Julianne] who I’ve wondered about from time to time because she had apparently forgotten all about how critical to her past, current, and future successes I was; seeing as I was her favorite college teacher EVER, and all. (I don’t think that was very grammatical – especially for a college teacher.) Anyway, she dropped me a message bragging about all of the great things she’s done since she last had dinner at our house and NEGLECTED to put in two things: (1) thanks to me for her successes, and (2) a way to email her back – since I either lost her email, or, she never gave me her most recent email address.

So, here we are. Now I’ve wasted a blog entry on this sweet apology.

Ineligant Design

2006-12-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

My reasoning (to reduce guilt) is that locking our kids in the house by themselves when we go out to the movies or to work or... oh, wait.. "kids" means our two dogs and our cat. Ahem, let me begin again.

My reasoning (to reduce guilt) is that locking our PETS in the house alone during our outings only means that they sleep on the blanket down cellar (where it is probably warmest) while we are away, rather than sleeping under foot while we are home. So, really, there's not much difference. They're just going to sleep and bark at noises wherever we are (home or away).

REALLY, my guilt is that we leave the radio on for them while we are gone. Because I think that they would rather hear voices (and music) than static, I've tried to find a station that remains stable while we are away. There have been many times when I've left a nice clear station going only to come home to a now static-laced channel.

As it turns out, the best (most stable) station I've found is a very anti-science station (some people would call it a religious station).

I cringe hearing the non-scientific arguments against evolution and pseudo-scientific arguments for intelligent design. Part of me worries that SOMEHOW the animals understand and that it would be driving them insane like it would me if I had to listen to that drivel all day. But they cannot... right? To them it's just non-sensical human vocalizations (hmm, I mean that literally for THEM - I understand the words, but it's still nonsense to me).

Last night, or I should say, this morning when I wasn't able to sleep (I'm getting the pre-semester jitters), I was mulling over one of the "arguments" in support of intelligent design and it occurred to me that it was such a perfect example of non-scientific reasoning. BUT, if you've read this far and HATE my bias, then you may be thinking at this point something like, "Well science isn't the ONLY way to think about things!" I'd agree. (Although as "flawed" as scientific reasoning might be, what is BETTER? I haven't heard of it yet.)

Rather than argue, I'll make a comparison:

(1) The argument I overheard had to do with the "obvious" complexity of some things (like eyes) and how "random chance" (a straw-man attack against evolution in and of itself) couldn't possibly account for it. Therefore its appearance MUST have been guided by some intelligent force.

(2) When I was a kid, my father once made a wager with me (the details of which I've forgotten). He took out a coin and, in my eagerness to win a simple 50-50 toss, I agreed to his terms whilst the coin spun in the air, "Heads I win, tails you lose!" Guess who won/lost...

Now, I hope you see that (2) isn't really fair. Then how does (1) = (2)? Think about it. If I were to accept the ID argument that complexity supports the idea of an intelligent guiding force, then what about the simple stuff? Can I hold that up and say, "Here's an example of where no intelligence was guiding?" Doubtful. ID arguments MUST hold that BOTH simple AND complex are the result of intelligent design. Otherwise they begin down the slippery slope of finding the dividing line between what makes something "simple" (or truly random) and what makes something "complex" (non-random). Heads they are right, tails everyone else is wrong.

The reason this argument is non-scientific is because it cannot be articulated in a way that would allow it to be potentially falsified. That is, it is untestable because no matter what evidence you hold up, it must still support the ID bias.

Maybe I should spend that can't-sleep time either finding a new radio station (static MIGHT be preferable) or sitting down with the kids and trying to de-program them.

Those Bastards at Coke

2006-11-30T17:32:00.000-05:00

My drinking life growing up was different from that of many kids I see running around today. In particular, my nieces’ and nephew’s beverages of choice have been essentially inflicted upon them by over dominating regime-loving parents (i.e., my sister and in-laws). That sounds bad, but it’s only because I wanted to be the one to push a beverage choice on them. Naturally, that beverage would be COKE^TM.

I cannot recall a time in my life when I wasn’t drinking a Coke^TM. I remember the frantic buying frenzy I went through when the BAC (Bastards At Coke^TM) forced Bill Cosby to push that vile Pepsi^TM-wannabe piss-drink called “New Coke^TM” back in the whatever it was… 70’s? 80’s? I wasn’t old enough to have much of an income, so my supplies weren’t going to last very long.

Since I wasn’t going to drink brown carbonated piss-water, there were NO cola options left for me once my supplies ran out. Fortunately, though, after losing zillions of dollars, and a great deal of face, not to mention the support of Bill Cosby, Coke^TM flushed the remainder of its CPW (carbonated piss-water) and brought back the original recipe: Classic Coke^TM.

Then I went to grad school and thus began my lethargic trek into obesity. As a compromising strategy to slightly slow the weight-gain, my wife talked me into trying the switch to Diet Coke^TM. Frankly, this was only barely better than CPW, but I persisted (perhaps because of the drugs they put into their sodas to create brand loyalty).

Eventually, I became a Diet Coke^TM drinker. This ruined me on regular Coke^TM because now THAT tastes only two steps up from CPW. (Note: So you can get an idea of the scale I’m using here, Pepsi^TM would fall six steps below CPW.)

After a while, I realized that I’d need to make an additional transition from the caffeinated beverage to the de-caf version. It took a couple of weeks (withdrawal headaches, crankiness, sneaking into the closet to drink my blues away, etc.), but I finally managed.

Now I’m running into the problem of FINDING restaurants that serve my Coke^TM! I don’t really care if it has caffeine or not… I can handle THAT. Now, I’m starting to get hooked on (unsweetened when it arrives) iced tea. My strategy was that by first asking if they serve Coke^TM and hearing that they do not, my obvious disdain and snobby reply, “Well then I’ll have Iced Tea instead – NO lemon” would highlight the error of their ways and NEXT time they’d have that beverage problem worked out.

That’s not working too swell. Maybe I should switch to, “Well then, please take my glass and scoop out some water from your cleanest toilet for me because Pepsi^TM only nauseates.” No, I’d be too worried that they’d just spit in my glass to get me back for having better taste than them.

Those BAC need to get their asses out here and push out the competition. I cannot do it by myself.

Path of Least Resistance

2006-10-31T18:30:00.000-05:00

It’s Halloween and it’s raining. This is the first crappy Halloween we’ve seen since moving to Pittsburgh. It seems fitting, though, in a way. We also bought crappy candy to give out. Part of me hopes that not many kids come by, but another part wants them to ALL come by so that they’ll take all that crappy candy out of our house. We’ll see what happens…

Anyway. The idea of wearing masks got me to think about the ones I’ve worn. I really do not feel like the same person who was the “me” in high school. Not so much because of any traumatic life event or any conscious decision on my part to change. Rather, it just seems that the masks I’ve put on in order to get through life have gotten stuck.

Frankly, the idea of pretending (what I mean by wearing a mask) in order to cope with situations or events has never had any great appeal to me. I’d rather just avoid situations that tend to put me in that position. Yeah, I guess I’m just a pretty passive person. FINALLY, I’m getting to the title of this essay!

When I was in junior high (I think?), I took a career interest test and it revealed that my ideal job would be something in the sciences. NOT that I had any special aptitude for science (it doesn’t measure that), just that the idea of discovery and knowledge was appealing to me. Let me say right now that I WAS NOT A NERD. Not that I didn’t want to be one, but I really didn’t want to put the effort into becoming one. Maybe I’d describe myself as a quasi-nerd.

When I graduated high school, I signed yearbooks by saying I would someday be a psychiatrist. That would be a person with a medical degree who later specialized in mental health. There were not a lot of yearbooks for me to sign (fortunately) and as it turned out, my first semester in college (pre-med) was a disaster. I was not advised about what to take or avoid, so I ended up overloading myself and doing poorly. [If I remember correctly, my schedule was something like: General Psychology, Calculus, Zoology with a lab, Chemistry with a lab, and Physics with a lab.] I was a severely introverted mediocre student; one of three students sharing a dorm room designed for only two people. By the end of the semester I was invited to find an alternative educational/career path.

So much for pre-med. So much for college. (I was the first in my family to go to college, by the way.) I got a job and started working 40+ hours a week. The time FLEW by. My job was inane (and it’s probably obsolete now since even THEN I could see how a computer could be made to easily do my job). The people around me, I noticed, were fixated on the lottery. It appeared that all of them had dug themselves into their current lives so deeply that all they could hope for was a big win. That scared me a little, but not as much as how quickly and effortlessly eight months had flown by. I could all too easily see myself 10, 20, 30 years later in the same job but much older and checking my lottery stub against the latest drawing. I decided to re-apply to college (I was accepted) and take a more educated approach to education.

Despite my apparent explosion of motivation, it only lasted a short time. Much like how when you are driving at night and feel your eyes close slowly and then your head nods off. The sudden burst of fear and adrenaline fools me into thinking that there’s no way I could fall. . . asleep . . . againnnnn . . . YIKES!

In college, I took a proficiency exam to get out of the math requirement and stuck to courses that interested me, but that I was sure I could pass. This began the path of least resistance. I ended up majoring in psychology because I didn’t need to worry about those terrible science classes (even though the quasi-nerd in me wished I would take them). From the bachelor’s degree to the doctoral degree, it was psychology. Although I appeased my science urges a bit by shifting away from clinical psychology to experimental psychology, I think I will always wonder what would have happened if I’d taken my interests more seriously and traveled down the physics path.

Now I am second thinking myself. Maybe I’m still that same high school quasi-nerd.

What's that question on my mind?

2006-09-30T22:14:00.000-05:00

And so. The so-called pseudo-blogger tries again to meet the LAZY-ASS deadline of just ONE blog entry per month.

I was a lot more fired up with this when it all began. But, even then, there wasn’t a great deal of written glorp from me.

What happened to me? I ask myself that every time I look in the mirror. I ask that when I’m outside in my undies looking at the stars at 3:30 in the morning because Brisco needs to pee (Brisco is one of my dogs). I ask it when I don’t find certain movies funny. (Apparently, I am moving out of the target demographic.)

This is going to be a downer if I keep going. I’m guessing that part of my mood is tied into the changes in the season. I really don’t look forward to winter - except that I can start wearing my heavy corduroy shirts. (MY GOD what's happened to me?!)

I’m Immortal I Chortled

2006-08-31T18:27:00.000-05:00

When I was a teen, I was pretty confident that I couldn’t easily be hurt too badly in an accident (like a car crash or a plane crash). I was reckless. (Illusion of invulnerability.)

When I graduated from high school, I had been running cross country track for about two years (maybe less). During that first summer I was jogging about two miles from home when my right knee “exploded” all of a sudden. I couldn’t put weight on it and it felt as though someone were trying to ply my kneecap off with a flat-head screwdriver. Apparently, I have flat feet.

I gave up the idea of running any more and thankfully, computer games were about to become much more sophisticated than Pong.

Over the (many) years I’ve had ample opportunity to experience the failings of my body. Tripping is my main facilitator toward these opportunities.

Most recently, I broke my left elbow and now I can’t completely straighten out my arm. It still POPS out of joint and grinds a bit every once and a while. Oh, also I slipped on my back stairs and jerked my right hand out like a karate jab to balance myself. I swear, had a person been in the path of that deadly blow, I’d have blood spatter on my forehead. As it turned out, the corner of the HOUSE was in the path of that deadly blow. Now I can’t form a good fist with that hand; plus when I use those fingers to indicate three of something, my ring finger splays weirdly too far from the other two fingers. My house pretty much “shook it off.”

I’ve never liked the idea of someday dying. But it seems more real to me today than it did when I was in high school. Two weeks ago my father’s girlfriend died. We weren’t close, but the closeness of that loss is disconcerting.

Now I’m into a brand new school year. In front of me in each class I see youthful life-filled faces. Then, when I step outside to go to my office or another class, I have to forge a path through their swirls of smoke.

My father-in-law died of lung cancer. I was there when he died. My mother lost her “battle” with cancer most likely because she was weakened by years of smoking. My father gave up smoking about a year ago (hopefully for good this time). His main motivations were that he was winded from doing mundane tasks: just getting dressed; walking from the driveway to the house; shopping. He has emphysema due to smoking.

I try not to be preachy to my students who I see smoking away their lives, wrinkling their faces (corners of their lips and eyes), burning away their lungs. (Hell, I freely admit to having an eating disorder!) But frankly it is offensive to me that they would squander themselves that way, so openly, and with apparent disregard.

If it were just a behavior, then they could probably just choose to stop. But there’s the addiction part of it that makes it so difficult for them to stop. Part of them knows it, I think. I’d like to see them prove to themselves that they have the willpower to stop… just quit for a month (lent?) and see if they can do it. Ultimately, what I hear, and expect to continue to hear, are their rationalizations. Things like, “Yeah, as soon as I graduate.”

“Riiiiight,” I think to myself. I’ll start holding my breath.

FATTY FAT FAT FAT FAT

2006-07-31T20:36:00.000-05:00

Blubber-boy, obese, chunky, chubby, overweight, gravitationally enhanced, fatty-boombalatty.

When I was (much) younger, I had a real stubborn streak. My aunt thought that it was remarkable that a kid would turn down dessert in order to not have to finish his liver and onions (or whatever). There was a time when I actually didn’t eat unless I was HUNGRY. Nowadays, I eat lunch and supper whether I’m hungry or not.

There is also the possibly generational thing where it was drilled into my head that I had to clean my plate. I feel guilty whenever I leave food on my plate. But I try to reason it out to myself. If I could scoop all the fat off my body and throw it away, I would do it. So, why not throw it away before it becomes fat? Better to let it go to waste than to let it go to my waist, right?

OK. So, how to get rid of the waist I have?

I’ve tried lots of stuff: Diets, exercise, Weight Watchers, public humiliation (with the more-than-willing help of my father), etc. I just don’t seem to have retained that stubborn streak I had as a kid. I give in to my desires and all too willingly allow myself to eat meals when I don’t need them.

I think I will try a new-ish approach. The Weight Watchers program did ok for me, until I fell off that wagon. But, I remember that when I did start to go back to my old habits, my system had become used to less food. I found it difficult to “clean my plate” when they were easy to clean before the program.

Bottom line: I need to commit to a lifestyle change.

But dammit! I love to eat! I love food! It’s wonderful! I could live off that stuff!

20th Anniversary

2006-06-19T19:51:00.000-05:00

In a few short weeks I will be celebrating my 20th wedding anniversary (August 10). So, I’ve been reflecting a bit on things.

I can honestly say that the roughest time in our marriage was while I was going to graduate school. You see, our “honeymoon” was pretty much packing up a truck and driving to Kansas (away from our families in New Hampshire) so I could start my graduate education.

Once there (University of Kansas), I found that the relatively LAZY approach I’d since taken in school was NOT going to work. My mentor (Dr. George Kellas) was the best person to serve as my advisor as he was pretty no-nonsense when it came to educating his students. He expected us to be there no later than 10:00 am (earlier was better) and to pack it up for dinner only AFTER he left for the day (maybe around 6:00). Then of course we were to be back in the lab ASAP to work on research stuff, homework, etc. until maybe 11:00. Actually, we were usually there until closer to 1:00 or 2:00 (but not EVERY night).

Saturday was a work day. Sunday was probably a work day as well, but George rarely showed up to see who was/wasn’t working.

He has a distinctive “ka-clop ka-clop” footfall on the tiles in the halls leading to our (his graduate students’) offices. So we’d hear him coming about 4-7 seconds before he’d appear in the doorway… usually enough time to be certain that we were busy working on something by the time he could see us.

My parents would call each weekend and ask about when we were going to come home to visit. Meanwhile my wife busied herself at home (Jayhawk West Apartments). We didn’t know anyone in Kansas and her life was essentially work, home, bed. Neither of us really felt all that confident being so far from the support of our families. We were truly “on our own” which was very scary at times. We didn’t have the luxury of a parent to call when we got in a jam (broken down car, etc.).

The “rough times” came about because my old self was going through some death-throws. I felt trapped and claustrophobic by my life. It seemed that ALL my time was split between school (98%) and home (2%). I couldn’t sleep and all I ever thought about was school. I needed escape… but I didn’t know from what. I started taking to the campus at night… skulking around exploring places I probably shouldn’t have been exploring. Abandoned buildings, buildings that were supposed to be locked up…etc. I’d drive on the long flat roads with the tape-player blaring and see how fast I could get… how far away from campus I could go in the shortest time… I was snippy and irritable. Probably a real A-Hole.

I remember standing outside the apartments at night (watering the dogs) and looking at the stars and wondering, “What the hell am I doing out here in KANSAS?!”

I was naive in that I’d gotten into this Ph.D. thing figuring that once I was done, I’d go back home to New Hampshire and get a job there… Ahem… unfortunately, you are pretty much at the whim of wherever the jobs are.

My first decision, once I was a Ph.D. was whether to take a “real job” in Charleston or a relatively temporary position (a post-doc) at Washington University in fabulous St. Louis. I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now had I taken the job in South Carolina.

After the Post-Doc, I was offered a job in Mississippi, so off we went. Now, after almost 15 years, we are in Pittsburgh. Only eleven hours away (by speed-limit) from family. Or, what’s left of family. My mother passed away in 1999 and Cindy lost her father a few years before that. I really wish we’d gone home more than we did.

So, how does a marriage last 20 plus years?

Going into it, I knew SOME things would be different married versus single (e.g., I really didn’t like that if I bought some snack-thing and put it in the fridge… my “roommate” might help herself to it… BUT, even though I didn’t like it, I knew it was part of that marriage deal, so I coped). But, there really is more “settling” of options than most people expect. There’s going to be compromise… in other words, you are going to have to give up some things that were part of the single-you. BUT, you gain stuff you’d not have without the married-you. How much you emphasize the lost things over the gained things probably correlates with your marital happiness… and also how many anniversaries you get to celebrate.

What Planet IS That?!

2006-05-11T15:25:00.000-05:00

I’m having trouble deciding how to work this blog-thing out… Do I want to be “political” do I want to be creative… what?

For example, I planned to come back and fill in the details of the last entry… tell you about the two neat-o things I learned. (1) The reason US Currency (actually this applies to ALL world currencies eventually… e.g., the Euro) is so colorful, and (2) My plans to make a killing in the paranormal field of “alternative energy” for cars.

However, I’ve become less interested in filling in all that stuff as each day passes. I think about it; then lose interest as soon as something else comes up. The most recent “up” deals with the mild embarrassment I feel at my school’s university banner. I’ll get to that below. For now, and just for closure’s sake, though, here goes the rest of my earlier blog-thoughts:

(1) Currency is colorful in order to make it LESS easy to use when you travel back in time. Yup. The color of money is all based on government time-travel fears. (I had a while lot more defense of this, but now don’t feel like elaborating on the joke.) My interest in this waned when a check-out clerk drew a brown streak across my brand new colorful ten-dollar bill. I told her that it’s just an iodine pen that is basically a scam to make money for two parties. One of course being the makers of these more-expensive-than-they-should-be pens, and the other group being the serious counterfeiters. She condescended to me that “Oh no, these have already caught a few fake bills.” Sure. Take a new ten or twenty dollar bill and spray it with spray-starch. Now go try to spend it at a store that uses those pens. The iodine reacts to starch which was in the crappy paper that counterfeiters USED to use all the time for fake cash printing. The problem now is that all these cashiers will NOT see a fake bill if the iodine pen streaks brown. Too much reliance on a scammed pen.

(2) I’m sickened by all the money being spent on alternative medicines. Partly because it makes me feel that humans are stupid. (I know, some are just desperate.) But also partly because I’m not getting any of that cash from stupid people. So, with gas prices soaring… what we need are alternative approaches to improving gas mileage! I have a bunch of crystals and will eventually be putting together a photo gallery of ways that the “healing properties of crystals” may be used on your car to improve gas consumption, reduce pollution, etc.! Wouldn’t it be worth it to spend a measly hundred bucks… no, wait, a measly five hundred bucks on a set of crystals to make your car work better and use less gas?! Of course it would! I will work on the photos and testimonials to PROVE they work and then get back to you.

Anyway, the real blog-content for this month starts below.

The University I work at had its 82nd Commencement ceremony. At the back of the stage hangs a banner to represent each of the university schools (i.e., School of Adult and Continuing Education; School of Business; School of Education and Social Sciences; School of Communications and Information Systems; School of Engineering, Mathematics and Science; School of Nursing and Allied Health). Each banner has a symbol like three keys, a quill, an open book, etc.

Well the School of Nursing and Allied Health has a pretty good emblem of the Earth (stylized a bit, but recognizable) with two pairs of hands reaching across them… I think they are two versions of Michael Jackson, though, because each has a single gold glove on one hand.

MY school is the School of Education and Social Sciences. It too has a planet depicted on it… but it is NOT the planet Earth. Maybe it is a secret planet that some of the administrators originally came from? Was this their sneaky way of getting some home-planet recognition? I don’t know. BUT, you’d think that the school containing EDUCATION would have a banner containing a more widely recognized planet on it. Otherwise, I think the symbolism gets lost. HOW does the planet Fermelagg fit into the themes of Social Science and Education?

I Almost Died Over One Thousand Years From Now

2006-04-08T21:54:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I actually made it back...

Maybe I'm NOT back... Jesus, that would be a kick in the head. Maybe I'm still there... caught, "drugged" (or whatever they call that stuff they do to people... or maybe I should say "people" instead...?

My mistake was buying the time machine instructions off the web and going FOREWARD in time on my first trip, rather than BACKWARD. If I'd gone backwards, I would have had a chance to figure out how to navigate better.

Wow... look at how long I was gone... I missed weeks of classes... I'm going to have to go back and teach those classes... I don't want to lose my job.

Anyway... where do I start? It was AMAZING... I didn't mean to go so far ahead... HECK, I've always figured humanity would be long dead before 1000 years go by. I just wanted to slip ahead about 10 years to see what was going on. Ten years should have been a safe bet. Surely the world wouldn't end in 10!

Damn, like I said, I should have practised that time-travel thing a bit.

Anyway... I'll tell you about what's going on there... then, I mean...

But first, like I said, I need to go back and teach those classes. Plus, that will be good practice.

Not a super-hero...

2006-03-09T21:05:00.000-05:00

OK... It's been over 40 years now and I'm STILL not a super hero.

What's the deal? How patient does a guy hafta be? Does ANYONE know of any 40+ old people who've been turned into super heroes?

No.

None of the comic books I've EVER come across have them.

I've been more than obliging in making myself available for scientific accidents to happen. I've been out quite a number of nights just wandering around waiting for the glowing meteor event, or the dying alien hero, or the alien abduction slash augmentation experiment... No black van has stopped to throw me into an illegal but desperate genetic manipulation experiment...

The sun doesn't do much to me except burn my skin. My parents weren't killed in front of my eyes as a child... (plus they were never rich enough to have a butler).

I'm really getting nervous that this might not happen. You know, I can only wait SO long before... well, you know... before I DIE OF OLD AGE!

So, this is just a general alert to the powers that be... a little little tug on their shirt sleeves that perhaps they've left a customer waiting a bit too long...

OK.

You know, as soon as you can... when you get the chance...

THanks.

BLAHg

2006-02-12T20:54:00.000-05:00

It seems this has become less a BLOG and more of a BLAH + g.

Here's my problem... I find myself really busy during the day (12-14+ hours of work, etc. the usual sort of crappy excuses...), but when I get a chance to daydream I think about the rants I'd want to post on my blog. Daydream-time usually comes during important department or university meetings of course, and NOT when I'd have an opportunity to actually write anything. So, by the time I actually FIND any time to write my blog, I sorta feel like I got the issue off my chest already during daydream-time and it seems redundant to write it in my blog.

March will bring with it some extra time for me to attend more vigilantly to this shirked responsibility of blogging.

An alternative is for me to wax a little fictional... Like the previous entry, I always seem full of stuff like that. OOH! Maybe a POEM?!?!? Yeah! What about that?! Maybe I can work up some poetry juices and spit them out here?!

Let's see... My taste is not for the mundane... so howsabout I START something, and see if anyone out there can help me fini sh it...? (Bernard, the space in "finish" was intended so that it would be a bit ambiguous as to where it SHOULD be attached... the preceding word fragment, or the following one "it" But of course you knew that.)

There was a sweet rain
upon my window pane
which trickled down
to where the body had lain.

The pools of blood
thinned in to the mud and

There... what comes next?

Time Terror

2006-01-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

Tell me, my wealthy friend... do you lose sleep at night wondering for your personal safety?

Have you become more concerned about he potential for terrorism? Hell, do you wonder if the next terrorist attack might come from your very own neighbor?!

How will they get you? WHEN will they get you?

Homeland security measures are up. Inspections at airports and train stations are up. Why, it's getting where a "respectable terrorist" can't make a decent killing in America ANYMORE...

Well don't get too snug in your rug, friend... it's only a matter of TIME before the terrorists figure out the one door America and Homeland Security has left wide open!

What door you ask? Why the door to the past. More specifically, the door to YOUR past!

For less than $100 dollars ANYONE can buy the plans for all sorts of time travel devices! Check it out! http://www.futurehorizons.net/time.htm

What is going to stop terrorists from acquiring these plans, building their own time machines, and going back to kill you when you were just a child... or worse, killing your parents, etc.?!

This route isn't just open to terrorists, but also to the guy you cut off on the highway, or the jerk who thinks it's not fair that you have a better job then he does. ANYONE could sneak into the past and harm you, your family, friends, lovers... or, they could do worse than just harm you...

The TIME for protection, the TIME for action, the TIME for somebody to do something about this is NOW! Don't wait a moment more! Someone could be firing up their freshly built time machine at this very moment!

WHAT can we do, you ask? Why protect our time-lines of course!

Drspeg Industries, Inc. has made a critical breakthrough in temporal distortion attenuation fields. They have discovered a method by which your personal time line can be isolated from the time stream flux. Simply by placing a sample of your DNA into the isolation and extraction chamber of the Temporal Distortion Attenuator (TDA), it is able to encapsulate the chronopath of your DNA back to the moment you were conceived.

Until researchers at the Drspeg Institute for Advanced Theoretical Metaphasic Physics developed the newest branch of chrono-quantum physics, this technology was considered mere science fiction at best!

How did they do it? Well, to make a complex story simple, they developed an extrapolated set of Fourier based retro-chronological calculus formulas that proved DNA timestream encapsulation was POSSIBLE! From these calculations, the TDA was born!

And not a moment too soon!

For a mere $8,500 you can purchase a TDA for your own personal use.

Only $8,500 as a one-TIME payment for a lifeTIME of security.

NOTE: Once calibrated for use by a single person's DNA sample, the TDA CANNOT be used for another individual. However, additional or replacement isolation and extraction chambers may be purchased for $750 each. This is especially recommended for protecting loved ones who may not (yet) be able to afford their own personal protection TDA.

Currently, there is only the personal model. Drspeg Industries, Inc. in conjunction with Drspeg Institute is hard at work attempting to develop TDA’s that can accommodate one's entire family tree (retroactively, of course).

Prepare yourself. The future of terrorism is the past!

Belief

2006-01-06T21:28:00.000-05:00

This is probably going to be much less lengthy than it should be to convey my thoughts clearly. However, I find that I don't actually start to think about what I want to blog until I'm in bed TRYING to fall asleep at 2:00 am. Yep. School's about to start and so, naturally, I am losing sleep.

Right now (in my life) I am interested in the idea of BELIEF. Specifically, I am fascinated by the dynamic underlying belief formation, maintenance, and change. Truthfully, I am mostly interested in the "change" part, but the other two interest me as well. Actually I have a hunch that belief maintenance and belief change are the most closely related of the three possible pairings.

Let me quickly add that I'm not picky about what type of "belief" exactly, although I can appreciate the religious baggage (strong association) that seems to come with that word.
Almost everything that we are and that we deal with is essentially belief-based. So unfortunately, the term "belief" is too broad to be studied to everyone's satisfaction. For this entry, though, rather than elaborate on my definition/specific interests, I wanted to jot down my insomniac thoughts from last night (this morning).

First, the basic concept of "belief" cannot be what differentiates humans from other creatures. Clearly all creatures that interact with (respond to, etc.) their environments must maintain or form beliefs. That is, concrete beliefs: "That thing hurts/causes pleasure/etc." And, "That animal is a threat" and "That animal is somehow depriving me, or threatening to deprive me of something valuable like food, etc." (not that I think my dogs are articulating their beliefs... I'm just using words to convey the basic sense of what I mean by "concrete beliefs").

It occurred to me last night, though, that humans are likely to be the only critters that form abstract beliefs and act on them as fiercely as if they were concrete. That is, I can imagine a wild animal defending its turf/food/mate/etc. -all concrete things- when it believes that turf (etc.) may be taken by some competitor (another wild animal). We, on the other hand, are capable of just making up some shit in our heads that has NO CONCRETE SUBSTANTIVE MANIFESTATION (like belief in a particular god) and defending that belief aggressively if we perceive a threat to it.

By the way, I'm NOT trying to make a particular religious statement. The same kind of reaction happens when we make up our minds about a loved one, or an adored celebrity, etc. If another person mocks our belief (e.g., one my wife hates is when I refer to Barry Manilow with the same term I might use to describe something the dog did in the yard: BM), or disagrees with it, etc. we take offense, get angry, punch, kick, scream, make fun of one of their beliefs. For some reason the threat against an abstract belief is treated the same (nearly? sometimes more so?) as a threat against a concrete belief.

Take away my food and I die. Take away (change) my belief and what...? NOT die... technically, I've just been "educated." But look at how people react! We kill others who don't go along with our views (ok, another shot at religion... but it's true of other beliefs as well).

How do we justify this strange approach? We tie the abstract beliefs to concrete ones. If I believe that being gay is wrong, what's the big deal if someone tries to change my mind?

Well, if I want to get people to really defend (maintain) such a belief, I need to tie it to something that results in a concrete threat: So, obviously, if we let gays marry, then that pure fresh clean strong moral fabric of society will be torn and people will start raping each other and taking away their kids to force them to become sex-slaves and then I'll lose my job, be unable to pay bills, become homeless and have to buy a gun to rob people so I won't starve.

OK, clearly I'm too tired to make my points clear. Sorry. I'll stop. Good night.

Introverted Monkeytard

2005-12-19T21:36:00.000-05:00

Not to trivialize horrible diseases, but, sometimes it seems as though being an introvert is like having something incurable and smelly. I've seen people (extroverts, of course) actually pause and then, after a moment of thinking about what it must be like to be introverted, convulse slightly. The same type of convulse I'd expect to make if I watched a child slowly pull a long wet slug-noodle out of their nostril and then eat it.

THAT'S what it must be like to be shy... huh... imagine.

So, what does a maximum intorvert do in life (besides spell introvert wrong)? I stand in front of groups of strangers for about 12 hours a week and lecture to them.

Public speaking.

"Then you must NOT be an introvert!"

Mustn't I?

When I am forced into social situations I find myself becoming incredibly interested in digital hygiene... my cuticles are beginning to grow over my finger tips (not really, but you can imagine). I am relieved to be left to myself and will simply become autistic. The more social pressure there is to interact, the more autistic I appear.

My students generally peg me as an extroverted party-person. Until the horror that is graduation and they corner me into forced civil exchanges with their parents. It isn't that I don't ever smile, but WOW... my fear of making idle chit-chat coupled with a complete inability to come up with comments related to anything OTHER than the weather puts me into perma-grin mode which begins to hurt my smiler muscles. "If you can't say anyhing, Steve, at least you can look friendly while not saying it. " At least so says my inner voice.

So when I get cornered, I try... After five minutes of what I imagine must be awkard silences deflated with occasional odd remarks... "So, are you here for the graduation ceremony?" "I see that you noticed the sky was blue today." "Did you visit the restrooms while on campus? They have fancy motion-activated paper towel dispensers." ...we part ways and I feel terrible for a week thinking about how stupid I must have sounded.

How can I teach to a bunch of strangers? At first (10 years ago), I couldn't.

I was so afraid of what the audience must be thinking about me ("Did he say 'um' again?" "Why is he touching his nose?" "Did you hear that warble in his voice?") that I started really to focus on the cues I was afraid they could pick on. Content suffered a bit back then, but I needed to make strides that meant the most to me first. I learned to fake that I wasn't scared peepee-less to talk in front of a group.

BUT, once I got rid of the danger-cues I started to imagine that the audience was hostile... or at least waiting for some excuse to become hostile. So I needed to find a way to befriend the audience.

Step 2 for me wasn't to improve the content of my talk, but to add humor. Nervour humor of course. But if I could SEE a smile, I felt a lot more comfortable. Basically I guess because I felt that I was in control of the smiles. There are a lot of reasons why your audience could laugh at you. Best to make it mostly purposeful... then those occasional times you really do mess up won't sting so much.

Even after 10+ years, the start of a new semester brings the tummy-aches of anticipation. The first few lectures every time are the hardest to get over for me. But I doubt the students notice.

===End Ramble===

Spring!

2005-12-13T05:56:00.000-05:00

It's coming! Slowly but surely! Spring is creeping closer. Why, in just 8 short days we'll hit December 21 and THAT means that the days will begin to get longer! Yes indeed, I can almost feel that warm weather already!
I'd best prepare by washing all of my shorts! Musn't bring in the new Spring with dirty shorts!

Holiday Spirit

2005-12-04T21:26:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, both Christmas and my birthday were the two BIGGEST days of the year! My mother made sure that as many of our (sister and me) wishes came true as possible. Especially festive was December 25. She spent a lot of time decorating the house (I'll have to tell you about the evil elves someday...). Lights in every window, mistletoe, wreaths, tinsel on the tree, etc. If you were in my house at night, it glowed warmly and softly with the various candles (electric and flame). Very cozy.
Even four feet of snow didn't bother us much. Although we had to shovel the driveway, it usually meant a day off from school and sledding in the back woods. We couldn't WAIT until Christmas morning!
My sister and I tried almost every year to go to bed early so that the morning would seem to come extra-fast. My parents wised up, though. They made Christmas eve our delivery day. We loaded presents in the car and visited all the relatives to drop off their gifts. (And pick some up!) We'd be pretty tired by the time we finally got home. No more Christmas mornings that started at 4:00 AM!
The rule of the house was that NOBODY was allowed into the living room (where Santa had presumably visited while we slept) until after breakfast. We weren't even allowed to peek. Every year my parents would sit and try to have a second cup of coffee at the table as part of their breakfast. I can't imagine a worse torture for a kid.
After enough snotty whining from us kids, my parents would allow that breakfast was over. My father got to enter the living room first to turn on the tree lights. Then the parade! We filed in and were always almost speechless at the sight of so many gifts. "Santa" had a way with artfully stacking boxes under the tree to make it look like hundreds of gifts.
As much as we would have liked to tear into the presents like sharks at a feeding frenzy, we were only allowed to go one person at a time. This was excruciating, but also nice as it made the wonderful morning last longer.
In 1999 my mother died of cancer (lymphoma). She took Christmas and birthdays with her. My sister does her best at holding it together for her family. She tries to make it as wondrous for her children as our mother did for us. Deep down, though, I know it isn't really Christmas for her without our mother. It's a show she puts on for her kids.
As it turns out, this will be the first year her oldest experiences the holiday knowing who Santa really is. She was devastated at learning the truth and decided she wanted nothing more to do with the day ever again. THAT won't last. The magic of seeing the decorations, the music (inescapable isn't it?), the TV shows, the shopping, the crowds, the presents... She'll come around to appreciating it again. Not quite the same, but it's still there for her.
We don't have kids, so it's been over five years since we've made any real effort to get into the holiday spirit. Maybe this year will be different.
Miss you mom.

Effort

2005-12-01T19:50:00.000-05:00

It seems to me that a blog should contain more than just an introductory blurb. Although blurbs SOUND like they should be part of blogs, just blurbs in blogs could get pretty shallow.

So this brings me to effort. When I had the idea to begin this, there were so many ideas flipping around in my mind that they kept bumping into the things I was trying to think about (like work, getting the car fixed, etc.). I couldn't sleep that night trying to figure out what my first real entry would cover. Then a day went by... I got busy. I shared some ideas with my wife. Time passed some more. Finally, today, I spent 3 hours at the mall waiting for my car to be fixed, then rushed to school to get ready for a meeting (buying snacks, making copies, readying my powerpoint slides for NO reason since it turned out that there was no technology in the presentation room, etc.), stopped at the library on the way home... made dinner, checked email... then almost logged off for the night. [If students are reading this, note that the previous sentence was TOO LONG and you should not emulate my creative writing styles in your own scientific or professional writing.]
I really don't feel like writing anything.
Instead, let me list the topic ideas I wanted to rant about:

Course outcomes assessment (Woohoo, there's a fascinating one!)
Paranormal beliefs (Better...)
What I'd do if I was really really rich (Yeah, like anyone'd care...)
Introversion and insecurity (Huh?)
My eating disorder (Yawn.)
How to build a temporal distortion attenuator for personal use or to sell for less than $8,000.00 (Ooooooh!)
The story behind the title for this blog site (OK, maybe interesting...)
Status on my plans to become an actual superhero (Isthey erson'spay azycray...)

That's good for now. I look forward to seeing whether I actually get to these topics or become distracted by others.

Introduction

2005-11-29T23:45:00.000-05:00

So... I've developed enough ego to start a blog.

Clearly I'm finally living up to my over-educated/under-paid self-image.

Why do this? I guess just to air my gripes and concerns like most others.

We'll see how this goes.