Meg and I went to high school together (along with about 300 other kids in our class, I think), and we used to lament to each other about how The System seemed geared toward Conformity. The System was designed to squash all creativity and individuality, turning out cookie cutter people who thought and acted in the same way.

We hated it.

Recently, I've been reading over old journals (a few of my characters in The Do Over are school-aged, and I'm trying to get their voices right), and it's stunning to realize just how seriously I (and, I asssume, we all) took everything. Jeez, kiddo! Lighten up!

Except, on a day like today, as I ponder issues with my job and with my quality of life, I wonder: were we really so far off the mark back then? I don't think the fear of becoming another cog in the wheel ever left, but we certainly don't articulate it much these days.

Hey, Meg. Did you ever find any answers? I could sure use them right now.

Hi, gang. This is an open letter from me to you.

What do you want for Christmas? Give me some ideas. My family used to put together little starter lists to give people hints as to the kinds of gifts that might go over particularly well. (Of course, I always listed a new supercomputer, but noone ever got me one. Oh, well.)

So, it's getting to be that time of year again, and my Mom (hi, Mom!) recently sent out a request for suggestions again. Lucky me, I've been building such a list all this time. The wish list I've been putting together on my Amazon account happens to double as a handy dandy "here are gift ideas!" list. When I see something I'd like to buy for myself down the road, I add it to the wish list. And, those handy little things can be set to be viewable by others.

Why do I mention this? No, it's not *just* a shameless plug for presents. (although, no reasonable presents will be refused.) Rather, I'm motivated by one simple thing:

YOU PEOPLE ARE HARD TO SHOP FOR!

There's nothing selfish about giving me a hint as to what kinds of things you might like, you know. Help me out, here! Lemme know what you want for Christmas. Amazon, CDNow, and I'm sure many other on-line stores have excellent little "wish list" features. Use 'em!

Yours,
Santa Allan

I was tooling around the "Friends and Family" portion of the Amazon site when I chanced upon Jehan Semper's entry. (Jehan created the software that enables me to easily update this website, so be nice to her.)

It turns out that she's posted one product review, which has received a few postive responses, and then the site gave her "review ranking." I then flipped back to my page, noticed that I'd posted four reviews, got twice as many positive responses as she had, but my review ranking was way lower! Unfair!

Too bad I'm so competitive. Now, I'm going to have to go ahead and review more products, just to try to up my review score.

I was once told that I would do the most amount of work for the least amount of money, given the chance. Here, Amazon has me writing reviews for free, all because of that silly ranking system. Sheesh.

Remember how the commie pinko liberals among us call or have called the '80's the Decade of Greed. Well, my friends, allow me to set the record straight.

The 90's will ultimately be remembered as the decade of greed. While philanthropy (both as an absolute dollar value and as a percentage of income) was up in the 80's, the 90's marked a particularly dark corner in the American psyche. This is nowhere more apparent than in the high tech sector, where young "players" in the stock market speculated wildly on the dot com stocks and college grads with comp. sci. degrees hopped from job to job based solely upon the salary and -- more importantly -- the all-important stock option grant.

When I write my book called "Dot Com", it will feature these catch-phrases that typify life in the high tech industry in the waning days of the 20th century:

"Yes, but how'd the stock do?"

"But, how'd the stock do?"

"They did what? How'd the stock do?"

As the market continues to correct itself, and the day traders are losing their shirts, it becomes all the more obvious just how much the "gimme" attitudes of the 90's are leading us (as a nation) into some hard times ahead.

And, more to the point, I didn't get to participate in any of that ephemeral success. Bummer.

Wanna see what I'm up to these days? Check out the Wireless Store at Amazon.com.

In other news, the novel is flailing. Flail, goes the novel. See the novel flail? Flail, novel, flail.

Oh, and there's one more thing I needed to mention. A bunch of us at work went out for dinner a couple nights ago, and one of the gang mentioned that he used to work as a chef at a restaurant. Turns out that if a steak is somehow not quite up to snuff, it gets thrown into a pile called "save for well done." The "save for well done" pile is the skankiest steak that they have that may still be fit to serve humans, because they figure (correctly) that less-than-choice meat will be less noticeable once it's charred, and very very noticeable if it's served less-so. People who really enjoy their steak tend to order it medium rare or so.

So, if you order your steak well done... you're getting skanky meat. Just thought you'd like to know.

:)

So, on the first Saturday of every month there's a little event at Victor's Coffee House in quaint downtown Redmond called RASP: the Redmond Assosiation of SPokenword. With spelling like that, you can understand why they favor the spoken word.

As a general rule, each month's proceedings feature a guest reader (always a poet of one kind or another), and then there's also an open mike before and afterward. However, three times a year, RASP hosts an "Island Style Slam", which is a special kind of poetry slam. Here's how it works:

Each participant puts in a couple bucks and receives three words in exchange. The participants then have twenty minutes to compose a poem using those three words. You may trade *sets* of words with others, but not individual words. The participants are called up in random order to read their work. Three judges score the performers on creative use of the words, composition of the poem, and delivery style. After everyone's done, the scores are tabulated and the top five get up to do it again. From these five, the top three winners are determined; the top three split the money.

Since I'm known for overdoing it, I decided this month to try for all nine words from the three different sets that were handed out, and I tried to compose a poem that used all nine words in two three-line stanzas. It was a fun experiment.

The nine words: mirror, lean, savage, wrinkle, machine, hallelujah, cusp, adjacent, and motor.

The poem was inspired by teenage angst (which tends to pervade poetry slams). I dedicated it to the teens in the audience, and told them that it represents something they have to look forward to.

Note: For the first time ever (okay, okay... out of two tries), I placed in the top five. Must have been the delivery. :)

...but, no, I did not walk home with the money.

As I lean into the mirror Another savage wrinkle Hallelujah, I'm a cog in the machine

At the cusp of understanding
Gotta keep that motor running
Adjecent to, but never reach my dream

Just a little observation today, as I have much else to do, but have you noticed that being picked as Time's "Person of the Year" is not usually a harbinger of good things to come?

Example: Ted Turner, President of Turner Communications and Ted Turner Industries, was Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" in 1991. You know what happened after that? His company got onto shaky ground and he had to be bought out. By whom? Time Warner. Ted Turner became an employee of Time Warner four years after being Person of the Year.

Last year's "Person of the Year" was Jeff Bezos, the founder and President of Amazon.com. Copies of that cover can be seen all along the hallways of Amazon's various corporate headquarter buildings. This creates a spooky "Jeff is Watching You" feeling reminiscent of a certain George Orwell novel. One year later, Amazon's stock is worth about one tenth what it was a year ago, and Jeff's not laughing as much as he used to. (For those of you who don't know, Mr. Bezos is famous for his laugh. Just like Bill Gates is famous for rocking back and forth on the edge of his seat like a nervous first-grader who has to go to the bathroom.)

Anyway, this year's "Person of the Year" is President Elect George W. Bush. I'm not quite sure why... I mean, what has he done this year that was so compelling? He won an election. Presidential elections happen every four years, and sooner or later, someone is declared the winner for each of them. This year, it was Bush. Would Vice President Gore be gracing the cover if *he* had won? I don't get it.

So, the President-elect graces the cover of Time Magazine with a very dubious honor. Let us hope that President Bush does better with his administration than President Bezos has done with Amazon. Or, for that matter, better than President Turner has done with his own organization. I'd hate for the US government to be taken over by the guys at Time Warner.

Just today, I had to wrap up writing a scene from The Do Over for tonight's writing class. In the scene, it's a pleasant family Christmas event, and I wanted to convey how everybody is happy and jolly and ignorant and at the same time indicate that that happiness and jolliness and ignorance are all about to be shattered.

Brian, the main character, has given his father a t-shirt. The t-shirt reads "If ignorance is bliss, this must be Eden."

We first see the t-shirt at the same time as Brian puts one of his own Christmas gifts on the record player: the Beatles album, "Help!"

("When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody's help in any way...")

Anyway, we'll find out at tonight's critique whether I successfully manage to do this foreshadowing thing effectively. In the meantime, though, I was very surprised to find that one of my teammates at work had left a coaster on my desk that they had picked up at a local restaurant. There's a quote on the coaster that reads: "If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?"

I know that *she* was commenting on the happiness factor at work (...well, not "the" happiness factor; *my* happiness factor... or, possibly, my *ignorance* factor...), but I thought it was funny how it also so directly related to the scene I've been writing. Thus is the synchronicity I encounter in my life on a daily basis.

National Politics is a sport, and popularity points are the tally by which we determine the winners. At least, that's the case presented by the national media, which continues to sink to depths even lower than those described in James Fallow's excellent book, Breaking the News.

Former President Ronald Reagan recently fell and broke his hip, requiring surgery. This 'news' article recounts the details of his hip replacement surgery in fairly straightforward mannger before it gives us the score update:

According to an ABCNEWS.com poll taken last year, 64 percent of Americans now approve of Reagan's performance while he was in office. That's eight points better than Reagan's average job approval rating while he was in office, 56 percent.

Reagan's career average lands him at the center of the pack of postwar presidents, behind John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Bush, and tied with Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. His ratings ranged from a low of 42 percent in early 1983, several months after unemployment soared to heights unseen since 1940, to a high of 73 in 1981, just after John Hinckley Jr. shot him.

Reads like a sports column, no? It's like they are talking about how a team fared over the years in the standings of its league.

What is up with that?

This is ABCNews! This is the Associated Press! These are the pinacle sources of 'news' in this country! And, they're reporting on national statesmen as if they were athletes vying for the record books with their accumulation and averages of popularity points!

So, here's the question to make you stay up at night: is the alleged 'news' media cynically reporting on politicians like this because they believe that Americans are that stupid, are they doing this because *they* (the reporters and editors themselves) are that stupid, or is the American public, in generally, really that stupid? Perhaps the national contest for the White House really is nothing more than a pageant and the results have no more meaning in our daily lives than who wins the Miss America contest. I don't know.

Either way, I'm very unhappy about this. Grrrr.

So, back when I was self-employed or worked for small companies, I would often be confronted by economic choices. For example, if I or someone on my team wanted or needed a new piece of equipment -- let us say, hypothetically, a new monitor -- the decision to purchase would often boil down to the business.

For example, I might ask "How many more widgets must I/we sell to offset the cost of this monitor?" There's also the quintessential "What would it cost me if I *don't* purchase this item?" Even though the second question is more important, the first question always helped to put things into perspective that helped to create incentive. Usually, it would cause me or the member of my team to think in terms of "What can I do today that will help to drive up sales by X widgets?"

But.

What if you work for a company that loses money on every sale? What if you work for a dot com? THEN what do you do? It's like being in a bizarro world. Selling more means... losing more. So, if you want to clear the cost of a piece of equipment, do you try to sell more? Or, do you try to sell less?

Are you better off encouraging your friends to shop with your employer when you know that every dollar they spend brings your employer closer to bankruptcy? I don't get it. I just don't get it.

I think I'm beginning to understand why my essays are getting dumber and dumber. It's because *I'M* getting dumber. Spending time in the land of dot coms is hurting my brain. Decision making here has absolutely no basis in reality. This must be what it's like to work for the government.

Some people get the flu. I get headaches.

I know I'm actually a lucky guy, insofar as my headaches tend to miss the "migraine" category. Which is to say, if your definition of migraine is "head hurts so bad, you literally throw up and can't move for days because moving would make your head explode", I don't get migranes because I don't get the nausea bit.

When I was younger (so much younger than today), I used to get these killer headaches every couple months or so. Sometimes more frequently than that. They clamp on for days at a time, sometimes going longer than a week. Lately, it's been much less frequent, but the duration has been every bit as long.

So, for the first time in maybe half a year or so, a major mother of a headache has wrapped my brain in a vice. Sudden changes in light and turning my head from side to side makes the lower part of my face want to run away from the timebomb in my cranial cavity. Moving my eyes too quickly has the same effect. Sleep is hard to come by and, well, I'm just not a big fan of pain as it is.

My current bout has gotten so bad that I've taken one of the only 'sick days' I've ever taken in my adult life. Taking a sick day doesn't make my headache any better; it simply allows me to be miserable in the discomfort of my own home. Alas, work had to call me for yet another "short fuse" item. "Short fuse" or "fire drill" is a common high tech euphamism for "we decided this morning that the deadline for this major project that we've never even warned you about is this afternoon, and if it isn't done, heads are going to roll. Probably yours."

I'm actually glad that my boss called me about this particular "short fuse" item. It was directly pertinant (pertinent? I'm not looking it up today. My eyes hurt.) to my team, and the most important thing I can do right now is to keep my team happy and productive. I had a once in a long while opportunity to make sure we do the right thing, and I'm grateful to have been given that opportunity, even though it meant I got to be miserable at work and miserable at home all at the same time.

So, why do I bring this up? Here's why. Boss guy: "So, Allan, how are you? What's keeping you down today?"

Me: "I have a headache."

Weh, weh, weh. I can count the number of sick days I've taken in my adult life on *one hand*. And, on this fine occasion, I'm not only miserable, but I sound even more pathetic than I am.

"I have a headache." For crying out loud. He pointed out -- correctly -- that I had a headache yesterday. (I know this is funny. I'll be sure to laugh about it as soon as it stops hurting to move my head.) I guess I needed a new excuse today. Like PMS.

Whatever.

Oh, one more thing. Raging headaches and sleep deprivation combine to make me a little more emotional than I usually tend to get. So, the scene I wrote this week for The Do Over is one wherein the hero breaks down. It was easier for me to get in touch with those sort of emotions, so I'm hoping the scene is therefore all the more empathetic. When life hands me lemons, by golly, I'm making lemonade.

Just a quickie anecdote here.

I was talking to this dude regarding work stuff a few days ago, and he mentioned big snows where he was. I asked for his location, and he told me that he was in Valley Forge, PA. I mentioned that I used to live near there, and he correctly deduced I had gone to UPenn, which is his alma mater.

In a follow-up e-mail, he mentioned something about how cool it was to be dealing with a fellow Quaker. For those of you who don't know, the teams at Penn are called the Quakers, as in "The Fighting Quakers". Ha, ha. I don't think about being a "Quaker" much, as I have never had much affinity for my grad school days at Penn.

Nonetheless, after last week's 6.8-on-the-Richter-Scale event here, I guess I truly am a Quaker.

We all train each other on how to behave. Every day.

Habits form at the outset of any relationship, and they tend to reinforce each other and evolve each other over time.

Take the customer/vendor relationship. Customers say they want good service, but when it comes to putting their money on the table, they often grant their patronage to stores with bad service because, well, it's cheaper. So, the cheaper-but-you-get-bad-service behavior is rewarded, and it gets reinforced.

When you visit sites on the web, they sometimes send instructions to your browser to open up a new window with some advertisement or another. This is very irritating. One major online retailer has also discovered that when *they* pop up a window promoting a special sale, more people end up buying.

The result is that now this online retailer pretty much *always* puts up that annoying pop-up. It won't be long before the other major online retailers do the same. We, the customers, are rewarding them for their bad behavior.

Now, I should also point out that the major online retailers track where you come into the site and at what point you leave. They do this to find out what's working and what isn't.

If, like me, you are annoyed by unsolicited advertisement windows popping open on your browser whenever you visit an online retailer, my advice for you is to simply close all of your windows related to that store and wait a few minutes before reentering. If enough people do this, then the stores will stop this behavior. I know this for a fact: I (so far, at least) still work for one.

Just a quick thought for the day.

I vaguely recall taking a psychology class my freshman year at college where we were told about how the average young male thinks about sex at least every fifteen minutes. (Or, was it every 15 seconds? Hmmm.) This was based upon one of those Johnson & Johnson or Kinsey reports. Something along those lines.

As the men get older, we were told, they don't think about sex quite so much (whereas, the lesson continued, women became more sexually interested as time went on), and I think I know why. As men get older, thoughts about how exiting sex can be are replaced by how pathetic their working lives really are, and how much better things would be if their bosses would just listen to them for a change.

:-)

I know several folks who love their jobs. These are very fortunate people. At the very least, they are not plagued by the nagging self-doubt that comes with realizing that one's life is being wasted on a meaningless endeavor. Better still, they have something more pleasant to think about every fifteen minutes.

So, I have learned something recently. A little distinction that I think is both interesting and important. I've, uh, been doing research at work and have noticed something about what happens when you put good people into awkward situations for too long....

A person with what we typically identify as "a bad attitude" is not necessarily grumpy all the time. This person is not necessarily always negative. Quite the contrary, the Bad Attitude person can still identify and enjoy good times and funny things every bit as often -- even more frequently -- than he or she did before catching this contagious condition.

The difference between the Bad Attitude and the Normal Guy (or Normal Gal) is the suppression of the safety switch that would otherwise know when to cut the connection to one's vocal chords at a crucial moment.

In a relationship, this may be best expressed by the following example:

Relationship partner says, "Do these pants make me look fat?"

Normal Person replies, "Not at all."

Bad Attitude person, you might think, would reply, "Yes, they do." But, that is a misconception. The Bad Attitude person is not a negative person, and does not seek out to deliberately be mean. Bad Attitude person simply fails to filter out the last part of "the whole truth" part of his/her testimony.

So, in response to the question, "Do these pants make me look fat?" Bad Attitude person replies, "Not at all. It's your butt that makes you look fat."

Now, why does the Bad Attitude compel this kind of truth-saying? Why? And, what is the cure?

I had recently suffered a bout with this dreaded disease, and it seems to be coming under control. This is the first time I've contracted this condition without having to take radical measures (like quitting my job) to be free of it. What's with that? Am I maturing? Growing complacent? What?

I don't know, and I'm not sure if it's good. But, I certainly find it interesting.

I am suffering from a mild case of allergies right now. Runny nose; stuffy sinuses; mild headache. Low level stuff. My eyes haven't started itching at least, yet. I haven't shown these symptoms since my previous visit to the East Coast.

Today I am writing to you from Philadelphia, PA. I've spent the last few days travelling all over the mid-Atlantic region of the US: New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. I've had low-level allergy symptoms throughout the visit. At first, I'd thought it might be an allergy to pets (we stayed with a very good friend who has a very pleasant dog), but the last couple of days have been pet free, and I'm still sneezing. Those who know me well have pointed out that I don't show these symptoms on the West Coast; only on the East.

The operating theory is that I'm allergic to the East Coast. I'm beginning to agree.

But, how does one treat such an allergy? Do they offer allergy shots to ward against the East Coast? Is there a patch? A pill? How does one protect oneself? How might a hypnotherapist attack this kind of problem?

"You are not really in Philadelphia. Imagine you are in Portland. It is a pleasant, rainy afternoon...." Probably wouldn't work. There's a Portland on the East Coast, too.

We've been spending time in the major cities and in the countryside. No difference. I'm curious as to whether the symptoms will go away upon my return to the West Coast. Hmmmm.

---

On a completely different topic, I received a wonderful suggestion tonight for an alternate title for the novel I'm working on. I'm going to start collecting suggestions, and then I'll put up a new poll to see which ones y'all think might work better than "The Do Over". Please keep the suggestions coming in!

Thanks,

--Allan

So, this week and a couple of weeks ago, I was party to the live television broadcast of a local station's afternoon chatfest called "Northwest Afternoon". I attended as a member of the "live studio audience" so as to pay off a favor. They run our PSA's (that's a "public service announcement", and they're pretty much required to run a number of these every day as a community service) in exchange for us putting some butts in seats for their daily afternoon talk show.

It was fun to watch people who are good at their jobs do what they do well. It was also fun to see first-hand exactly how plastic and phoney everything is in the world of television. Examples:

* applause is not only handled through the use of applause signs (well, okay, a twenty-two year old blonde chick who raises her hands when she wants us to clap), but said pre-arranged applause is also augmented by canned applause.

* the star of the show is returning from getting a face-lift. She was very funny and witty about it, but the reality remains that she got a facelift... almost certainly because either she is that vain or the industry let her know that they'd can her butt if she didn't do the deed.

* the stars enthusiastically read the teleprompters as if they're making up the words right off the top of their heads.

There were other things, but you get the gist. Nothing here that surprises you, I'm sure... it was simply the totality of it all that I found amazing.

That said, these were also very fun and engaging people. They seem to like their jobs, and they were very good at getting the audience involved (for live Q&A of the guests, etc.).

On today's show, the guests were co-authors of some lame book about love and romance. Blah, blah, blah. But, one of the members of the audience said something that I found very interesting.

She told the story about how, before she got married, she surveyed everyone she knew about marriage... what makes it work, or why it fails. She said that of those who had stayed in long lasting relationships, every single one of them said that the single most important thing to making their relationships work was *compromise*.

When she asked people who had been divorced what the single most important thing missing was, they said it was *communication*. The woman said that pretty much every divorced person she asked attributed the break-up to "a lack of communication". Whereas, those who stayed together credited "the art of compromise."

I found that interesting.

As it so happens, the others in the audience also found that interesting. So, naturally, the hosts sidestepped her point and went on to talk about other things. :-)

--me

(I'll resume on the feminism and science fiction track tomorrow. No, really!)

I just finished reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie. It took me a little while to get into the book, but once I got a feel for the cadence, this collection of interrelated short stories definitely engaged me. I highly recommend it.

There's a great dialog in the book between one character, a Spokane Indian and die-hard Hendrix fan who believes he was the only Indian to hear Jimi Hendrix play the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock, and his wife. The Hendrix fan lamented Jimi's passing:

Back in the old days, when I was a "Sovietologist," I learned an interesting use of the word "rehabilitate." When spoken in terms of communist political history, the word was used to describe the reintroduction of a political figure who had previously been made into an "unperson."

It worked like this: if the Communist Party decided that Tovarshch Gorky was a bad guy, then he disappeared, all reference to him disappeared, and you didn't read anything about him in the papers ever again. His image would be airbrushed out of photos of pivotal events. George Orwell called this kind of persona-non-grata an "unperson."

But, later on, it might happen that the powers that be would decide that maybe Tovarshch Gorky was actually an okay guy. Maybe he wasn't counterrevolutionary after all. And suddenly, his image would be no longer airbrushed out of crucial photos. It was okay to talk about him again in the papers. Just as if a light switch had been flipped, he re-appeared.

This reappearance was known as "rehabilitation."

It is the term that has been running through my head ever since George Harrison died. All of a sudden, radio stations have decided that it's okay to play the Beatles again. I hadn't even noticed that the Beatles disappeared from most radio stations until they reappeared.

Quite frankly, I'm happy to know that it's okay to play the Beatles again. I'm glad they're okay to listen to.

But I've also noticed an interesting and disturbing trend in the movies to rehabilitate music in a very bizarre way. I finally had an opportunity to watch Stephen King's Rose Red in its entirety a couple of weeks ago. Never mind how bad it was -- that's a topic for another discussion. I found it fascinating how Glen Miller tunes were used as the harbinger of doom. As soon as you heard Glen Miller, you knew someone was about to die.

This is becoming a new trope in horror movies. (Another vocabulary lesson: genre writers use the term "trope" to refer to a common paradigm or plot device found within their genre.) Bring back some music that has no horrific associations and then play it every time something horrific is about to happen. Pretty soon, the audience picks up on it, and the rehabilitated song develops a new association for the viewers.

Stephen King may have started this trope with his novel Christine, wherein classic '50's rock 'n' roll streamed out of the car radio of a haunted (possessed?) Plymouth Fury as it mowed down the high-schoolers that got in its way. I don't think music was a key element of horror novels until the big SK began this trick.

But now everybody's doing it. The movie Final Destination from a couple years ago (which, by the way, is about to have a sequel -- be afraid) would play John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High" every time Death was about to pay a visit. The way the music was worked in was one of the few clever things about this otherwise non-clever flick.

I, for one, wish they'd cut it out. Stop rehabilitating good music like that! If you're going to bring back good music, bring it back goodly! You can even give it the "Ghost" treatment if you must (The movie Ghost revived a popular fifties tune called "Unchained Melody"), but stop equating good music with bad things.

So, there.

Yeah, I'm going to babble about semantics again.

This woman in Texas drowned her five children because she thought she heard Satan's voice telling her to kill them. Now she's on trial for the crime.

(Note to readers: if you ever hear the voice of Satan telling you to do something, you may wish to seriously consider declining. If you think the voice is Satan's, the advice is probably suspect. You know?)

Neither the defense nor the prosecution are disputing the fact that she murdered her children. Rather, the point of the trial is to determine whether she was, technically speaking, sane when she committed the acts. The prosecution maintains that the killings were premeditated, and therefore show a rational mind at work. The accused had allegedly told people that she was planning to use a knife, but decided in the end to drown her children in the tub, instead, because that would be less bloody. Hence, premeditation.

The defense maintains that she had had urges to kill her first child shortly after he was born (she heard voices, she has allegedly told her psychiatrist, advising her to use a knife), and then again after later children were born. Thus, contends the defense, we see a pattern of schizophrenia. (Seems to me that this argument also supports the premeditation argument, but I won't go there for now.)

I am not a lawyer, and I do not claim to know all of the legal aspects involved in the case. I'm pretty sure that if she is found "Innocent by reason of insanity", she'll be committed to a psychiatric hospital for the rest of her life. Not quite the same as being acquitted. If she is found guilty, however, the prosecution plans to ask for the death penalty. So, there *is* something at stake here, beyond semantics.

Quite frankly, the evidence seems pretty compelling to me: the mother was guilty of premeditated murder, and *of course* she was insane. Murdering your five children is not the activity of a healthy mind.

Dennis Miller, in one of his recently published rants about coddling, suggests that we change the "Innocent by Reason of Insanity" plea to "Guilty by Reason of Insanity." Sounds like a great idea to me. The fundamental result of a successful plea -- being committed to a psychiatric ward -- doesn't need to be changed. But let's get off this politically correct bandwagon that somehow equates insanity with innocence. The insane are not always innocent... even if the innocent *are* always insane.

On Wednesday mornings, I attend a business networking meeting. This past week, one of the visitors to this meeting said that she is a personal trainer.

I mentioned the personal trainer to Paulette, and she asked what that was. She asked if that was anything like what is currently known by the term "coach" (as in, someone to help you achieve your goals in life by developing a plan and putting into action, etc., etc.). Ah-ha, I said, no... a personal trainer is someone who focuses on your physical training.

So -- we both realized this at the same time -- a personal trainer these days is what we used to call a "coach." And, a coach these days is someone who does personal, er, training.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big deal. And you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway, blah, blah, blah. I just happened to find it funny at the time.

I like to eat. Eating is fun. Food comes in so many wonderful flavors. Sugar. Fat. Salt. Garlic. Tomato. Cheese. Chocolate. Mmmm, chocolate. Beef. Onion. Banana. Cilantro. Strawberry. Lemon. Gimme tangy. Gimme bitter. Gimme sweet. Gimme meaty.

My favorite drinks are Pepsi and Dr Pepper. All the caffeine, baby, and bring on the sugar! Nothing quenches my thirst like a Pepsi or a Dr Pepper.

Our bodies are equipped with such wonderful taste mechanisms. Enjoy! Food is for enjoyment.

Alas, I have bit of a problem that is related to this. I haven't been moving around much these past few years. Most of my working life has involved sitting in a chair, typing. In my free time (ha!), I like to play cards, or read, or occasionally catch a movie (haven't done that in a while). There's talking. Talking in a group. Talking on the phone. And, of course, there's cooking and eating.

Not much moving around, however. Oh sure, when the weather's nice, I might go biking for an hour along the river. I'll do that for a few days a week for a couple of months, even. I don't walk around much; everything is either in *very* short walking distance, or involves driving. I gave up Tae Kwon Do for various reasons, and swimming -- my exercise of choice in my younger days -- is just awful. The smell of chlorine makes me sick.

Not moving much + eating lots --> gaining weight.

I have become the Pilsbury Doughboy.

In an effort to lose some of that weight, I've recently started to move more. It's amazing how out-of-shape I've become. I used to be able to bench press my own weight. Now it's a struggle for me to bench press Calista Flockhart's weight.

But I've also been making some other changes, including changes to my diet. That's been a little trickier. I've started to get over the caffeine withdrawal, and the cravings for a Pepsi or a Dr Pepper are starting to lessen, at least a little. Thank goodness. And while I haven't *radically* changed my diet, the simple sugars are definitely out. Instead of my beloved Super Sugar Puffs for breakfast, I'm having eggs on wheat toast.

Wheat toast! Blech. But no more white bread for me.

My body's complaining. "Where's my sugar?! Gimme that instant energy!" And yet, I don't feel that I have less energy. I just feel... differently energied.

And I feel full all the time, lately. I hate that. I don't enjoy eating. (Especially wheat toast.) Now I'm eating for the sake of fuel, and not for the sake of enjoyment. Where's the fun in that?

I think I understand, now, those people who say they eat for fuel and not for enjoyment. It makes sense to me now, because if you limit yourself to unprocessed, non-sugary foods, there's nothing there to enjoy. Eating becomes a chore. And since you feel fuller longer, you're not constantly snacking. Anyone who snacks knows that snacking is fun.

I'm sacrificing the joy of eating in the hopes of once again experiencing the joy of being thinner than Jabba the Hutt. I know that this will be good for me in the long run. I'll be reducing the likelihood of certain health risks, etc., etc. I'll look better, move lighter, and feel more comfortable in my clothes. All good things.

...all assuming that I can keep this up, of course.

For reasons unknown to me, I've never found myself interested in drink or drugs. I've never been tempted by tobacco, pot, alcohol, or the smell of airplane glue. Like those who have disdained eating for enjoyment, I've never seen the point of those kinds of gratification.

But sugar! It's a drug in its own right -- it chemically affects mood, balance, and behavior -- and I'm an addict. It's gone beyond simple enjoyment. I need it. I crave it. Even to my own detriment; even as I watch its deleterious effects upon me.

My name is Allan R., and I like sugar.

I have many addictions, and they prevent me from accomplishing (or averting) certain things.

As I mentioned earlier, there's sugar. I've been in a crappy mood for the past couple of days, and today I relented and had a big, tall bottle of Dr Pepper. And then, as if that weren't enough, I enjoyed a tall glass of chocolate milk. That wasn't enough, either, so I went to Cold Stone Creamery and had an ice cream. With hot fudge.

Truth be told, I feel *much* better now. So, get off my back.

Other addictions that get in my way?

E-mail. As you know, if you've sent me any lately, I don't actually *write* e-mail. I'm too busy reading it! I loves to read my e-mail. It's a great time-waster.

Web surfing. Another great time waster.

Doing more e-mail, followed by more web surfing. Because, gosh durn it, writing a novel is hard, but reading just one more piece of e-mail or clicking on just one more link, well... that's easy! And, it won't take but a second...

Pacing.

Moping.

Sleep. Now, *that's* a time waster, if ever there was one. But, I'm addicted to that, too.

Worrying about all the work I need to do.

Reading more e-mail. Surfing more web sites.

Those are the big addictions that are getting in my way right now. Those and, as I mentioned earlier, sugar.

You might expect me, at this point, to make some pithy remark about writing this #@$% blog. But, nope. Writing entries for my on-line journal is not an addiction, at all. Like writing scenes for my novel, writing entries for my weblog involves a little more effort. It's not the effortless trap that surfing, e-mail reading, or junk food eating are. Rather, it's a job.

But I do it, because -- in the words of Eric Cartman -- "I love you guys."

Had some folks over for dinner yesterday. We talked about writing and we talked about kids and we talked about politics.

Mmmm. Politics.

I haven't had my ass whupped so much in a conversation about politics in a long time. It's not that my sparring partner set out to destroy me (nor did he), it was rather that he demanded intellectual honesty. Something that has been missing from a lot of political conversations I've been having lately. This has led, in turn, to atrophy in certain essential critical thinking skills.

In other words, I've *been* having conversations about politics, but I've been able to get by with surface observations and bumpersticker rebuttals. I had a conversation last night with someone who had actually thought a little bit more about the issues than your average bear (so to speak... his last name is Bear) and, in order to keep up, I had to dig a bit deeper than I've had to in a while.

And, we weren't even really covering the Big Issues.

I'm out of shape, intellectually. I need to resume sparring again. Need to sharpen my wit and keep it honed. Need to surround myself with people whose brains are not in idle. I had a good time last night. Need to do that more often.

I always sit down to write a quick note, and then it becomes a long note. Let's see if I can make this quick:

True story. I've been reading a novel called Vitals by Greg Bear, which is a tour de paranoia about how bacteria relate to each other and to their hosts and how they could conceivably be used 1) to increase longevity, and/or 2) induce "mind control." It's a lot of fun and more than a little creepy.

A few mornings ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine named Eric. We go way back. He was pointing out to me a current paranoid theory about the September 11th plane crash at the Pentagon. The theory goes that a 757 never actually crashed into the building. (My favorite part of the site that espouses this theory is where they overlay an outline of a 757 against the Pentagon, and the outline of the plane is *much* bigger than it would be, had it been drawn to scale... but, I digress.)

The fun thing about getting caught up in such conversations is that the paranoia becomes catchy. The more you look for clues of foul play, the more likely they are to seem almost plausible. So, here we were, kvetching about conspiracy theories, and me in a paranoid mindset already because the book I've been reading is a thriller about a conspiracy. My wife comes downstairs in the middle of the conversation. "Do you know why the FBI are outside?"

"What?!?!

"Uh, Eric, I have to go."

I headed upstairs and looked out the window and, sure enough, there was a city cop and an FBI guy strolling around outside. Paulette said that they seemed to be looking for our next door neighbor. (We are in a townhouse, and are therefore *immediately* next door to our next door neighbor.) I wondered if they had eavesdropping devices in their cruiser. (My conversation with Eric had been on a cell phone.) I wondered, if they're looking for Neighbor, why they don't already know he's out of town until Tuesday. I mean, they know everything, right?

Well, the FBI drives away after a bit. BTW, here's how you can tell if a guy outside your house is an FBI guy: he wears an overcoat that says, in BIG BOLD LETTERS: FBI.

As I recounted this part of the story over dinner the next day, the first response by one of our guests was "Well, he works at [a former employer of mine in the high tech industry] and he has a Middle-Eastern sounding name. They're probably just doing a background check." Very plausible, and it puts my mind at ease. I like our neighbor, and I hope that nothing serious is afoot.

And, of course, I'm also glad that the Conspiracy isn't out to get me, after all, either.

So, what we have here thus far is nothing more than an amusing little anecdote about coincidence and paranoia. Something to chuckle about over dinner.

Until the FBI came back yesterday. And the news crews. And no, I'm not kidding. My wife called me (I was out running errands) and told me what was up. I came right home...

More on that in my next entry. I have to get the phone.

They say a man with no past has no future. No, wait. A man who does not know history is condemned to repeat it. Yeah, that's it.

When I first put up this new engine to manage my online journal, I quickly perused the titles of my previous entries and assigned many of them categories so that visitors could look at entries by subject and not just have to wade through them chronologically. (Since there are several folks who visit the site to peruse my Clarion West Journal from last year, I desire to keep the customers satisfied. :-)

Anyway, I've started going through my entries more closely and making more thoughtful choices about what categories to use for each one. Some entries will appear in more than one category, which is also requiring a bit of consideration.

This means I've been reading through every entry in my blog in chronological order from, oh, November or so of 2000 to June of last year (so far). It's amazing the patterns you can see when you pull up and look at these high-level synopses (sp?) of what was on your mind that you *can't* see when you're too busy living it.

While it was clear that there were good and bad things about working for my previous employer, for example, it becomes obvious very quickly from my journal entries at the time that I wasn't going to stay there very long.

I've had concrete plans to finish my novel within a month for, oh, about 16 months now. (BTW, my current plan is to send out the first three chapters to my agent of choice in about four weeks. Go figure. More on that soon, I promise!)

I've been whining publicly about how bad I am at returning people's e-mail for over a year now, at least. That hasn't changed.

But, yeah, it's been interesting to tour my public journal and see the face I've been putting on events and observations in my life... and how obvious certain eventualities are when you read the journal, and yet how oblivious I had been while writing it.

I wonder if I should dare to read my private journal, too. Ack!

So, this past weekend some friends came over for a monthly get-together called "The Mutinous Video Club", wherein we take turns picking a movie to rent and then we watch and critique it as a group. This past weekend, one of the gang chose a movie I'd never seen called "Hackers." An enjoyably awful movie.

In the movie, the Secret Service/FBI goes around busting down doors, barging in as a large group, and sticking machine guns into people's faces within hours of some poor high school slob hacking into a computer system. Shortly thereafter, some corporate weasel (usually in the form of a hacker who is employed by a big corporation) plants evidence to frame the poor high school schmoley for crimes he, the corporate weasel, is committing, and then the FBI/Secret Service stupidly goes around doing the corporation's bidding. Thus, in this movie, students who go in and ruin computer systems for banks and television stations are the "heroes" and "victims", and the corporations and the cops who try to stop them are the "bad guys." But, I digress.

The point is, in this movie and others, law enforcement barges in with guns and shouting, willy nilly, to nab computer-related boogie-men.

So, getting back to my true story: a couple of weeks ago, Paulette had pointed out to me that an FBI guy (she saw a couple, but I ended up only seeing one) and a local cop were kinda walking around our building, knocking on a door or two, and just generally poking around. Just another day on the job. They didn't knock on our door, which was fine by me, but they certainly raised my curiousity.

As I left off the last installment, Paulette phoned me a few days later to tell me that a television news crew was sniffing around. They had, it turns out, rung *our* doorbell. The news crew had told Paulette that the FBI was cracking down on some big alleged internet nastiness, and had confiscated a computer or two from one of our neighbors, and would she care to comment?

Having worked in the news media, I wish I'd been the one who'd answered the door so that I could have closed the door in their faces. Paulette had no such prior experience, however. She did talk to them, but at least she was very, very vague. While this allowed them, during the "news" broadcast later in the day, to say something like "Neighbors are shocked and alarmed" before showing a cut of her saying "You never think it'll happen here" (how deliciously vague!), at least they didn't actually get someone to say something nasy on the air.

Why am I so concerned about this? Well, for a few reasons, but it mostly has to do with my belief that 1) making snap judgements on the basis of what a *news crew* tells you is, generally speaking, a bad idea, 2) we have good neighbors and, unless and until a court says otherwise, we're going to continue to expect that they are good neighbors. News crews can (and have) ruined a few lives along the way with accidental misreportings, and I won't be a party to it.

Anyway, after Paulette called, I came home (I was walking around the neighborhood, wrapping up some errands) and the news crew had left by then. She never saw any FBI on that particular day, despite the news reporter's claim. And, with the exception of our fierce curiousity, it became pretty much a day just like any other. (Although, other news crews came by later.)

My paranoia was just starting to calm down when I received a phone call a couple days later from an friend of mine at the Department of Justice (I'm not making this up). Back when my friend applied for his job with the DoJ, he had put me down as a reference for his background check. Anyway, he called me to say that the guy at the FBI with whom he'd spoken during the background check process had traced back to him because the FBI were looking at me and a neighbor of mine regarding some current case they're working on.

And I'm thinking, WHAT?!

Then I thought about the fact that I have a wireless network that's not encrypted, and maybe someone's been using my network for something nefarious, or who knows what, and my friend at the DoJ says that the FBI told him they'd already spoken with somebody at my house, and he thought it must have been me but maybe it was Paulette, and my brain is racing trying to recall if Paulette had mentioned anything about acutally talking to the FBI, because she might have.

While I'm puzzling all this out, my friend mentions that I was named during an arrest, but that the Feds were becoming a little skeptical of my involvement, because the source was pretty much trying to name anyone he could think of....

Another true story.

I flew across the country recently on Delta Airlines. My first time on Delta in years. Arrived at my destination, rented a car, and drove a couple of hours to get where I was going. Later that night, I discovered that I didn't have my book with me anymore.

I'd left it on the plane.

The book is called "Who Moved My Cheese?" It's a rather short book (and a thin book, which would explain why I didn't realize I'd left it in the seat pocket on the plane... unlike the Stephen King tomes I usually carry with me), and it was a gift from this past Christmas. A special, pre-publication edition. For those of you who are up on such things, I haven't finished reading it yet, so I have no idea as to the quality of the content, so there. The book itself is easily replaced, but there is that sentimental value attached (being a special edition, and a gift).

So, contrary to my typical nature, I called Delta in the hopes of tracking down their Lost & Found. (Rather than just assuming it was lost, and going out and buying another copy.)

Oddly enough, it only took one call to find the L&F at the airport for Delta, and only one call to them to find out if they had my book. Okay, it took three calls to Lost and Found, but I don't count those as three seperate calls because it was simply a case of my cel phone was in a bad cell area, and the calls kept getting dropped. Go AT&T!

In one call I established that, indeed, they had just found "Who Moved My Cheese?" from a recent flight, and they would have it waiting for me at the Will Call of the Baggage Claim office when I went to the airport for my return flight.

A few hours later, I found my copy of the book. Turns out I had misplaced it in my carry-on (it being so thin, the book ended up in a pouch that offered no obvious signs of its extra contents). Who moved my cheese? Me, that's who.

But, that means somebody else out there has lost their cheese. And, you know what? I think I'm going to go to Lost and Found and liberate it. Having moved my cheese, I'm about to end up with *extra* cheese. I think I'll lend out that second copy to my friends. I'm going to share the cheese. Second-hand cheese.

Anyone out there want a copy of "Who Moved My Cheese?"

Next up: maybe I should call USAir's Lost and Found and see if they have a copy of that new Stephen King book I want....

There was no cheese waiting for me at the airport (see previous entry). Perhaps the cheese they told me about was imaginary cheese. They thought they saw it, but it wasn't really there. And since I had found my cheese, the fact that they didn't have cheese supports the "Conservation of Cheese" theory that cheese can be neither created nor destroyed.

Connie Willis is the author of numerous award-winning books, novellas, and short stories. She has won more Hugo and Nebula awards for writing than any other author. And she's going to be speaking at the Write Out Loud! kick-off event in Redmond, WA on Saturday, April 20th. That's just a week away.

Why am I bothering to mention this on my website?

Well, a few reasons. First of all, I've seen Connie at a reading once before last summer, and she was amazing. Very funny, very entertaining. Anyone who has a chance to catch this performance on the 20th should make a point of being there.

The other reason for mentioning it is that Connie was one of my instructors at Clarion West last summer. She taught during the infamous "Week 4", notorious for being the week that breaks so many Clarionites in two unless there's a good instructor to hold it all together. :-)

The other other reason I menion this is that I am emceeing the event. This is certainly the highest profile public speaking gig I've had since I was the marching band announcer for a Buffalo Bills game in 1990. (Of course, that's going to be tough to top.)

Now, admittedly, I'm one of the organizers of this event (the other, other, other reason I mention it), so I guess there isn't that much mystery about how I became the emcee this time. (Whereas, I *wasn't* one of the organizers of the Buffalo Bills.) Still, I'm excited by the prospect. Connie is just a joy to listen to, and Nisi Shawl, the guest interviewer, is also excellent at making a Q & A session come alive.

If you're anywhere in the greater Seattle area and are interested in attending, you can visit www.rasp.cc to purchase tickets, or you can get the tickets at the door. Show starts at 7pm, so you may want to get there a little early if you plan to buy tickets at the door.

There will be a reception and book signing after the talk. Hope to see you there!

The complaint is that I haven't been writing here terribly often... and/or, that what I've been writing lately is L-A-M-E. I must plead guilty on both counts. I shall post more meatiness here shortly.

As it is, for the time being, I'm off to the doctor's office. I am not a fan of doctor's offices, esp. as my medical insurance people keep switching my "Primary Care Physician"... presumablly because each succeeding doctor keeps dropping them as a health insurance company that they deal with. Getting to know new doctors is a royal pain, and it keeps you from developing any sense of rapport or trust with your physician.

This past week or so, I've been experiencing vertigo whenever I change the position of my head relative to the ground. Although I've encountered these symptoms from time to time over the past ten years, this is the worst I've had it since the first time I experienced them, back when I was in grad school. There, I was treated by the worst that student health services could provide, where the doctor (attending? intern? whatever) essentially shrugged, said "um, I dunno", opined that maybe I had a virus, and then prescribed me antibiotics and sent me on my way.

Antibiotics, I am given to understand, are not useful for treating virii.

Anyway, the symptoms did eventually go away that time, and they've only recurred a couple times since, and only mildly. Now, they're back in full force. This began while I was planning this big event featuring Connie Willis here in town. Connie, like others, suggested that I see a doctor. So, I'm seeing a doctor. This one doesn't know for sure the cause either, but at least he doesn't shrug and say, "I dunno," and give me a prescription.

Perhaps this dizziness is just a mild side-effect of being blonde.

I remember how, a few years ago, friends would whine about the amount of junk e-mail they received. They hated spammers. HATED them. And I'd be thinking, what's the big deal? One or two messages a day -- just delete 'em.

Well, now I get more than my own share of spam, and I understand the problem. When the signal to noise ratio falls below a certain point, one just wants to scream. I receive a great many legit e-mail every day which have to be answered (and, as I've noted here before, I don't answer it, anyway) and twice as much junk e-mail. So, like many others, I've started creating a set of spam filters to presort as much of it out of my e-mail box as possible.

The rules vary from keywords (is the word 'Viagra' in the subject line?) to IP address blocking to phrase matching (is there anything in the body about how the e-mail is sent in strict compliance with US Senate resolution blahbitty blah, blah, blah?). Some days, my spam filter manages to keep the load pretty manageable. Other days, I have to thwart the spammers filter thwarting.

Recently, however, I added a rule quite by mistake. I'd intended to block a certain overused phrase that only appears in spam, but due to an error (a short between the keyboard and the chair), the rule came out as: any e-mail with the word "click" in it is to be treated as spam.

As it so happens, the word "click" doesn't actually appear all that often in non-spam e-mail... except when it's appended to the end of the message by certain web-based e-mail hosts (msnmessenger, hotmail, yahoo). The word is often included in messages from web hosting affiliates of mine, as well. As a result, I'd been missing a few key e-mails these past few weeks. Then again, the number of spam e-mails that actually made it to my Inbox was tiny, tiny, tiny. That, alone, should have tipped me off that there was a problem, but so many other legit messages made it through, it simply didn't occur to me to check.

So I've gotten that problem all sorted out. But now I'm wondering, is there anything similar I can do to filter out unwanted telemarketing calls? (Sorry, that's redundant. "Unwanted telemarketing," I mean.) Anonymous CallID blocking isn't enough.

Any thoughts? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Can someone please explain to me how an individual working as a firefighter -- a forest fire fighter -- for eighteen years can make the mistake of burning a letter from her ex in the $#@! forest during one of the worst droughts in years?

Hello! Stupid person! You're going to jail now!

Too bad Colorado had to go up in flames, first.

In the upcoming movie Minority Report, the justice system apprehends and convicts people of "future murder" before they commit the crime, thereby serving justice and sparing the victims. An interesting idea (from the mind of sci-fi author Philip K. Dick). Now, wouldn't it be cool if we could to the same thing with just plain stupid people? Like this firefighter and accidental arsonist stupid person? Imagine how much less traffic there would be congesting our nation's highways....

"All lies and jest
still a man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest."
--Paul Simon, The Boxer

The President of the United States gave a speech on Monday regarding the prospects for peace in the Palestine region of the Middle East. I am amazed at how the speech appears to have been received by leaders in that part of the world. (See this article.)

Palestinian leadership, for example, praise the speech because it mentions the United States' call for the eventual creation of an independent Palestinian state... although they also seem to be scoffing at the idea that Yasser Arafat should step down (also mentioned in the speech) as being ludicrous.

Meanwhile, leadership in Israel praises the speech because it calls for new leadership in Palestine, while the Israeli leadership scoffs at the idea that there could ever be an independent Palestinian state along their border.

And, then, beyond the leadership, the people of the region are quoted by the aforementioned news article as condemning the speech because the listeners hear the message of compromise and they say words to the effect of, "This will never happen. The U. S. expects us to actually back down on 'X'? Not gonna happen."

The article is almost comical. The whole situation is almost comical. The way these people hear only what they want to hear and disregard the rest has all the makings for a Shakespearean comedy.

Except, of course, this isn't a comedy. Both sides are intent upon exterminating the other. The lessons of the Holocaust, forgotten. It's really quite sickening.

...then this one cost about four to six bucks per word:

More on the story soon.

The baby is past due.

The "due date" for the baby was July 4th, but "Dependence Day" came and went and there's been no change in status. Paulette is still pregnant.

In other news...

* My stories keep coming back rejected. Haven't written anything new in a couple weeks.

* My Passat is still broken, and is likely to take about a month before it can get back on the road again.

* I've been doing a lot of research lately on certain aspects of philosophy and religion in general, the Bible and Judeo-Christianity in particular, rhetoric, and history. Much of this research is for my next novel, and much of it is simple intellectual curiosity. Alas, research shouldn't take the place of actual writing. However, I've been enjoying the thinking that goes with the research....

* A friend from Clarion West had an excellent story recently published in Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. Another friend, from Cornell, had a novella recently published in Analog. Yet another friend, from my high school days (although she didn't go to my high school), was also published in Analog a few months ago. I think this is all great. And/but I'm ready to join their ranks, durnit!

The weather is beautiful. Wish you were here.

No, the baby hasn't been born yet.

So, here's what happened with the car. As many of you know, we've been a two car family ever since we've been a family. She brought her car to the marriage, and I brought mine. Alas, alack, her car died recently of natural causes. Old age. The head gasket went bye-bye, and fixing it was going to cost more than the worth of the car (even if the car were running perfectly). And so we went from being a two car family to a one car family just like that.

We started to think about whether we should get a second car and, if so, what kind the second vehicle should be. We want something safe, something to haul around the kid in, etc., etc. Boring grown-up stuff. Of course, that didn't stop us from test driving a Subaru WRX which, I must say, we both enjoyed mightily. Lots of vroooooom in that one.

Anyway, we started looking at possible contenders, but the big obstacle was money, insofar as we need money to get a second car. Money we don't have. The recurring advice from some quarters was, "Well, *we* used to be a one car family, and that was with two kids, and it worked out just fine for us!" And, of course, it's true that we should be able to get by with one car if we have no alternative. We're resourceful people.

But then again, if we're so resourceful, why can't we figure out a way to handle bringing on board a car payment?

This is what writers in the biz refer to as "back story." The set up. The story before the story. Now here's the story:

I got into an accident with my car just a few weeks after her car gave up the ghost. Very simply: while I was executing a left turn, a car in the oncoming lane executed a collision. His car was driveable after the accident; mine was not. (And, no, we didn't have rental car coverage as part of our insurance package.)

Nobody was injured (although my pride and pocketbook aren't doing so well), and my car has about a month or so worth of repair work to look forward to before I get it back. There was no ticket issued at the scene. Fault was not assessed at the scene, either, but should be soon.

Ironically, the fellows in the other car were Mormons who were in town doing missionary work. My insurance agent happens to also be a Mormon. I haven't asked yet if this qualifies as an act of God.

My passenger was a friend named Tom. He likes to embellish the story a little, and I like his version even though it's not entirely true:

"In my version I was knocked out unconscious, and came to, saw the two guys in the white shirts and name tags, and freaked out because I had picked the wrong religion."

Thus, we were rendered a no-car family.

Being a no-car family when you are about to have a baby is very interesting. For example, if we were to take a cab to the hospital and then take another cab back home from the hospital, we would legally have to have a car seat installed in the cab before the hospital police could let us go home. Or, we could simply hop on a transit bus with our little one in a carrier and no seat belts or car seats would be required. Go figure.

As you might imagine, we'll be taking on a car payment, instead.

My Passat didn't passat very well. I hope our new Dodge does a better job of living up to its name.

Road trippin' from Seattle to San Jose, my first drive along the West Coast like this. Paulette, baby Alexander, and I makin' our way down I-5 through Washington State, Oregon, and Northern California.

Northern California is on fire.

We drive past a fire where some kind of large fuel tanks near the highway are blazing; many firemen and fire trucks are on the scene hosing down the flames. There are also several grass fires, and most of them appear to be deliberately set by officials who are on the scene. Traffic continues to drive through the smoke, and I am surprised to find that we can feel the brutal heat from one particular fire even inside our vehicle. Those fires are hot!

Paulette and I are guessing that these short patches of grass are being set now so as to contain any major fire that might head this way later... containment that should result from using up the fuel that could keep such a fire going. Nonetheless, with temperatures in the triple digits even without the aid of the fires, it's amazing to see California burn. Something we would have missed had we simply flown in.

Okay, I realize that my little entry for today will really only ring a bell with fellow Gen-Xers, but I hope all y'all will play along just for the hell of it.

I've been playing the soundtrack to The Muppet Movie a bit lately, and a couple of lines in particular from one song, "The Rainbow Connection," keep nagging at me.

In the first line of the song, Kermit asks, "Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?"

I can only come up with one song about rainbows and what's on the other side: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," from The Wizard of Oz. That's it. Are there any others?

Kermit also asks, "Who said that every wish would be heard and answered, when wished on a falling star?" Again, I come up with one obvious answer: Jiminey Cricket. ("When You Wish Upon a Star")

Go ahead. Think about it. How many other songs about rainbows are there?

Sleep deprivedly yours,
--Allan

It's a quarter past midnight as I write this. 'tis been a very long day at work for me on September 10th. The 11th doesn't look to be any less hectic.

Nonetheless, the 11th will clearly not be a "business as usual" day. How could it be, for any of us?

I send you all my warmest regards and best wishes.

Be good to each other.

Been spending most of today trying to catch up on e-mail. After a couple of hours, I've caught up with most of my e-mail from this week.

I still have yet to reply to e-mail from folks who have been waiting for months to hear back.

Before Alexander was born (he's currently lying on a play mat in my office, playing quietly as he discovers that his hands can grab things around him), I had no excuse for being such a bad correspondent. Now, I can say, "Well, the kid has been taking a lot of energy, time, and effort out of my day."

He's a regular excusinator!

And, yes, there will be more pictures posted soon. So there.

I'm pleased to report, however, that I've finally resumed real writing this week. I polished up and sent out a story on Monday that has not been in circulation before, and I hope to get another one into circulation by the end of the week.

Still no takers on my novel, but I'm still sending it out.

I have set a personal goal of at least one professional sale by Labor Day of next year (2003). Not much of a goal, but one needs to start somewhere. I'm confident that one of my short stories currently in the works will snag a slot in a professional publication.

The weather is here. Wish you were beautiful.

Let's see, what else is there to report...

Oh, yeah, I have to make a political observation. Now, I don't have a live television feed (no cable, no satellite, and the rabbit ears hardly work out here in mountain country), so I've missed any television coverage, but I've been reading from time to time about the recent arrests in Washington DC of protesters. These are the folks protesting the IMF and the World Bank and all that.

The protesters were complaining that they are being arrested in violation of their constitutional rights. And yet, as I look at my copy of the constitution, the bill of rights provides that Congress shall make no law abridging "... the right of the people to peaceably assemble...." Where is there a problem here? The protesters were not peaceably assembling. Assembling with the purpose of disruption is not peaceable. It is disruptive.

And yet, there are even legal provisions for the kind of disruptive behavior the protestors were engaged in, in the form of permits for that kind of massive assembly. By filing such a permit, you enable the authorities to better accommodate and mitigate the disruptiveness of your assembly. The protesters were not interested in being accommodated. They wanted disruption, not peaceable assembly. Their Constitution rights were not violated. QED.

Just some food for thought.

We put the rabbit ears on the ol' tele to tune in NBC so as to see a grainy rendition of this year's Macy's parade. During a local station break, our crack news team broke in to tell us:

"Pickpockets on the streets of Seattle, Friday at 7."

So, naturally, we've decided not to go shopping in Seattle on Friday anytime near seven (in the morning *or* evening). I'm glad they warned us. If we hadn't tuned in, we wouldn't have known.

Hopefully, this tip from the local news will make it easier for the cops to catch them!

Today is Thanksgiving Day, as celebrated in the U.S. What are you thankful for?

I'm thankful for the things I am so often able to take for granted: my excellent health, a comfortable place to live, and plenty of food, clothing, and other essentials to go around.

I'm thankful for my family: wife and baby son, mom and dad, sister and brother-in-law, maternal grandparents who are still living, memories of paternal grandparents, so many wonderful aunts (including one who lives nearby) and uncles and cousins, brothers-in-law, parents-in-law, aunt- and uncle-in-law, second cousins and first cousins-once-removed. I love my family. I am also thankful that *they* enjoy good health, ample food and clothing, and shelter.

When my healthy baby boy smiles up at me... that's just magic.

I'm thankful for so many wonderful friends of so many different kinds: friends from high school days, college days, grad school days, continuing education classes, writing workshops, martial arts schools, workplaces, political organizations, social clubs, and writing groups, plus friends I've met through other friends, online, at conventions and conferences, and who knows where else. I am truly blessed to have such wonderful friends, and I love them all.

I'm thankful for my talents (be they real or self-delusions!) and interests, and the occasional opportunity to find fulfillment within them. For example, I love to work out ideas in public (being somewhat of a social animal), and it's gratifying to occasionally hear back from people (new people, old friends) who stumble upon my essays here on my website. As a story-teller, I love having so many wonderful adventures that I always have an ample collection of stories to tell!

I'm thankful that I can enjoy many of the blessings of both liberty and safety in a world where both are at a premium. Where I live, people don't generally shoot each other in an effort to express their religious and political views.

And while we're at it, I am also thankful for the natural beauty of the land in which I live. The mountains and lakes are breathtaking, the trees majestic, and the architecture a joy to see, every day. I'm thankful for the cultural richness of my environment: the poetry, the paintings, the sculptures that fill my world.

I'm thankful for humor in all its many forms. And the ability to laugh.

I'm thankful for tasty food and melodious music.

I am grudgingly thankful (ha!) for those challenges that continue to push me forward when I'd rather just sit down and read.

I'm thankful for good books to read.

All in all, life is very good to me and those in my life, and I think it's worthwhile to stop from time to time to take stock of life's blessings. Of course, there's always room for improvement, and I'm thankful for *that*, as well. It's good to have things to work toward. I guess we traditionally take stock of our goals around New Year's Eve. But as tradition dictates, I'm currently taking stock of what I have to be thankful for now.

Thank *you* for indulging me this public declaration! I wish you, my friends -- whether we've met before or not -- a most wonderful day of thanks and joy.

I'm so bummed.

CDNow.com is no more. It has been swallowed up by former competitor Amazon.com. I already have a wish list at Amazon.com, and it was completely different from my wish list at CDNow. [sigh] Now I'll have to recreate my wish list from CDNow on Amazon.com. Life is so hard.

My own desire for you all to go out and buy me gifts aside, I am disheartened by the way my favorite unprofitable companies unite to form bigger, clumsier unprofitable companies. CDNow had some wonderful innovations in user interface that made searching for albums and songs much more pleasant than the UI on it's brand new "partnered" site. Amazon.com, likewise, enjoys a number of great UI breakthroughs... that simply don't translate well to their music store. Sadly, the advantages of CDNow's UI are lost, and we are left with one dominant e-tailer of music CDs on the web. Well, okay, Barnes & Noble also sells music, so there is a Pepsi to Amazon.com's Coke. But, still. What's life without Dr Pepper?

Sad days, indeed.

Mourners should feel free to spend money buying me stuff from my wish list at Amazon.com.

Warning! Warning! Blatant commercial plug here!

If you're at a loss for gift giving this holiday season, allow me to recommend the gift of a magnifying mirror from The Mirror Place. Quality mirrors are a great gift. After all, how many people do you know who *don't* use a mirror? And not only does The Mirror Place carry a fine selection of high quality mirrors, but they also ship quickly for the holidays. They are also one of my favoritest clients. :-)

In fact, if you place an order with them for over $50 worth of merchandise, you are eligible for 10% off the price of your order by simply saying "I'm a close personal friend of Allan's" to the person who takes your order (if you call) or type it into the comments field (if you order online). This discount is valid for any order placed in 2002.

Do your part to keep America strong. Buy from The Mirror Place this holiday season.

On the morning of Friday the 13th, I had the pleasure of undergoing some rather urgent oral surgery. I'll spare you the gruesome the details, other than to say it was a "gum graft" to transplant some of the gum material from my upper palette to the front of my lower jaw where my gums had sustained a nasty injury.

Now, I say I had "the pleasure" of having this surgery done because, quite frankly, I'm glad I had the opportunity to have it done. Dental surgery is much less unpleasant these days than it was when I was younger, and I consider myself fortunate to have this sudden problem addressed with such a quick and relatively painless procedure. Perhaps its the echoes of Thanksgiving Day still rolling around in my head, but I'm not taking such things for granted.

While the procedure itself was relatively painless, the recovery is a bit uncomfortable. Talking is uncomfortable (and if you know me, you know what a drag that must be), and eating is even more so. The periodontist prescribed sleep, milk shakes to wash down the pain medication, and restful activity for a day or two while I get over the worst of it. "Watch a movie at home," she said. "Definitely don't go to work if you can at all avoid it."

Well, I work from home. And as it so happens, I had a major deadline for one of my projects on Friday. While I found it necessary to avoid talking on the phone on Friday (as a part of my job), other work still had to be attended to. So, other than the prescribed milkshake and meds, plus a soft dinner (pasta in creme sauce), I didn't really follow doctor's orders. I worked long hours, got to bed by around 1 in the morning, and then got up at 5 in the morning in order to prepare for an annual meeting that I very much wanted to be a part of.

There is a short list of what I am advised to eat while I'm recovering, and three of the eight listed items are ice cream. I'm not kidding. Here's the menu:

1) Broth and soup
2) Baby foods (no thank you!)
3) Milk Shakes (ice cream number one)
4) Custards (ice cream number two)
5) Eggs
6) Ice Cream (ahem)
7) Chopped or ground meats (how finely chopped?)
8) Puddings

I was also told that overcooked pasta might work out well, but that I should also eat sauces or soups lukewarm for the first couple days, as warmer foods would expand the blood vessels, which could lead to bleeding, yadda, yadda, yadda.

The doctor says I must eat. "Maintaining an adequate diet after surgery is essential," says my little instruction booklet they gave me. After a couple of days, I'll start reintroducing real food. In the meantime, though, ice cream can get a little boring after a while.

After my meeting this morning (which lasted until two in the afternoon, or so), I finally had a chance to rest. I was to meet Paulette and Alexander at the home of friends, but I wasn't up to it. I napped. I ate lukewarm soup. And then, finally, I followed the other advice of my periodontist and went to see a movie.

The cool thing about getting lost in a film is that it's possible to forget one's physical ailments. In this case, I even managed to stop constantly feeling for the stitches in my mouth with my tongue.

The movie I went to see was Die Another Day.

It had possibly the darkest montage at the beginning of any James Bond film. In fact, it was thematically about as dark as any Bond film has ever managed. There were some cool stunts, and the absolute best fight sequences were the fencing scenes throughout the movie. One of the babes in the film ("Mirand Frost") was perfectly cast, and the other ("Jinx") was a decent choice, as well. The plot was the most outlandish we've seen since Brosnon took over the series, and many of the special effects were downright awful. Bond's escape from the glacier looked more fake than footage from a video game would have. But the fight scenes were fun, as I mentioned, and there were unusually nice touches with the permanent cast (Q, Moneypenny, M).

How's this for outrageous: North Korea has enough money to develop a super weapon that nobody in the West suspects. A weapon that works flawlessly the first time. Oh, and the bad North Koreans drive cars that are as well equipped as Bond's. It's hard enough to imagine that Britain still has any sort of real espionage capabilities as it is, let alone trying to imagine North Korea as a military superpower.

Having had a nap, some food, and a distracting movie, I'm feeling much better. It was just what the doctor ordered.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I had some oral surgery a few weeks ago called a "gingiva graft."

If you are easily grossed out and if you do not wish to be grossed out, don't read the rest of this post.

Anyway, one of the first things they tell you not to do right after the surgery is pull out your lower lip to look at your gums. Naturally, the patient's first inclination is to do exactly that, and having a warning label that says "Don't Do It" only makes the draw that much stronger. I resisted... for a little while. But there is a minor loophole. You are still expected to brush the rest of your teeth (ie, the teeth not immediately next to where the graft took place), so while brushing my teeth that first evening I took a peek as a natural part of my routine and, well, it didn't look good.

I don't mean it looked nasty (and, believe me, it *did* look nasty), but rather, it looked like it wasn't right. Like certain parts weren't properly attached to certain other parts.

A few days later I called the periodontist's office and mentioned my concerns. Apparently, this must be a common situation. "Just come in at your first scheduled check-up, and we'll determine the situation then," I was told in a calm, practiced voice. (Or, words to that effect.)

I went in for my first scheduled check-up. Turns out, certain parts weren't properly attached to certain other parts.

Ready for the gross part?

As you'll recall from my earlier post, what the periodonist did was to cut out some gum material from the roof of my mouth and graft it onto the gums at the base of my teeth on my lower jaw. Grafting, in this case, involves making an incision to form a pocket where the new gum material can go, then pulling up the outer later to make a pouch that holds it all in. This is all then sewn up with stiches to hold everything in place.

As the periodontist's able assistant (the assistant is more than a traditional dental hygenist, insofar as she was an active part of the surgical team, but I don't know what the correct term is these days for periodontal assistants) worded it, some of the gum material "squirted up out of the pocket." Without being held in the warm, protective glow of the outer layer, these exposed transplanted gum parts just... died.

She clipped away the lumpy, white, dead tissue, leaving behind a lumpy, purplish mass of gums behind that still didn't look quite right to me. "Well," she said, "We'll see how that heals up. You might have enough material still there, and it looks like there's still a recession, but that might heal up." (Or words to that effect.)

Now, the healing process is mildly annoying. There are certain foods I can't eat (I am not supposed to chew with my front teeth, which means if I want pizza or a sandwich, I have to cut it with a fork and knife, etc.) and then there's the mild achy pain, and so on. But that was all simply a matter of inconvenience to me. I had my drugs, and I had my ice cream, so I was prepared to cope with all that. The worst part was me worrying about whether this surgery was all going to work out, or if it would have to be redone. In short, the worst part was not the actual healing or anything *real*, but only imagined possible outcomes.

As you might expect, things were not as bad as I'd imagined, nor as perfect as I might have hoped. After I went in for my second check-up (three weeks after the surgery, and two weeks after that first check-up), I was told that it looked like we would have excellent coverage (Yippee) but that there were a couple of tears ("clefts") that would have to be repaired.

This is my favorite part of the story:

Repairing the clefts involves something that the periodontist's assisstant called "freshening." I love that term. "Freshening."

To "freshen" the edges of the clefts means to take a diamond-tipped drill/grinder and scrape/cut the ends that need to be joined. Once these parts are freshly gaping wounds, they are then stitched to each other in the expectation that they will heal together instead of to themselves. Much as the original surgery should have worked.

I love it because it sounds so dramatic. The reality, I expect, will be much like the reality of the first procedure. They'll numb up my mouth with novacaine (sp?), drill and sew, and a half hour to an hour later, I'll walk out of there, drive to Dairy Queen and get my prescribed milkshake, and life will continue.

I will, however, follow the periodontist's advice this time and take the day off. I don't want to risk doing *anything* to jeopardize the success of this second round of surgery.

:-]

I'm taking the day off. This morning, I'm going in for gum surgery, and when I'm done with that, my schedule is wiiiide open. Not going to work. Not going to talk on the phone. Maybe I'll catch a movie. Maybe I'll catch a nap. Maybe I'll catch up on my reading. Or writing. Or my e-mail. Or... maybe not.

Ah. A day off. And all I had to do to get my day off is go in to the periodontist to have her "freshen up" my gums with a diamond-bit drill and sew what's left back together. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

A few days ago, some high ranking official (hmm... where to put the hyphen?) of the North Korean government said that North Korea could launch a preemptive strike against the United States by launching a nuclear bomb aimed at... Seattle.

Now, I hope that someone has pointed out to the North Korean powers-that-be that taking out Seattle will not, in and of itself, eliminate the nuclear arsenal of the United States government. A preemptive strike only works when your attack disarms your opponent. If you don't successfully disarm your opponent, then it isn't much of a preemptive strike. See: Japan v. U.S., 1941.

In the case of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were at least *trying* to disarm the American government by crippling the nation's Pacific fleet. Why North Korea thinks that taking out Seattle will prevent the United States from fighting back, I do not know. I think that's why our current administration has stated that they don't take North Korea's sabre rattling seriously. And while I agree with this sentiment, I'm not sure that telling the North Korean government "you lie" is a particularly face-saving gesture. Maybe, someday, the administration of the United States government will ask for my advice concerning diplomacy.

But I digress. You see, I didn't want to comment on foreign policy so much as discuss personal ramifications if Seattle were to be hit by a nuclear bomb.

I currently live in a suburb of Seattle called Redmond. If downtown Seattle were to be hit by a reasonably-sized nuclear detonation, either in the air or at ground level, then my neighborhood would quickly become a radioactive fallout zone. Our buildings would probably remain standing, but the quality of life (short though it may be) would decrease dramatically. If I read the charts correctly, the radiation would likely kill the healthy adults in my neighborhood within an hour or two. Of course, this assumes that the bomb is on target, and doesn't accidentally hit Everett or Renton by mistake (in which case we might actually escape with our lives).

The point being, it's hard for me to conceive of a more lame, albeit newsworthy, way to end my concerns than to have a nuclear bomb detonated near my neighborhood. I mean, I've got a mortgage to pay off, a business I'm trying to get off the ground, a child to raise, and a marriage to tend, let alone a writing career I'm trying to develop... I've got issues I'm working on. With each passing year, I manage to make a little headway here, experience some setbacks there. I hope to reach the end of my life able to say that, all things told, I done okay.

Speaking purely from a personal point of view, I would be profoundly disappointed to have my life end in the middle of all this tension (I'm talking about my own personal struggles here, not international diplomatic tension) with simply some bolt from the blue. I mean, a random death would be annoying, but *this* kind of random death would be doubly annoying.

Can you imagine reading a big, thick novel with dozens and dozens of interesting characters, all with their own story arcs and intersecting in fascinating ways, with various plot reversals and complications and funny anecdotes, when halfway through the story -]BAM[- there's a nuclear explosion and nothing but blank pages for the rest of the book? *That's* what I'm talking about. No denouement, no nothing. If you read a novel like that, you'd say, "What was the point?"

And that's my point.

Nuking Seattle would be annoying. So, North Korea, if you're listening: please allow me to recommend bombing Paris, instead.

I received an e-mail today saying, "Where'd your site go?" This happened once before, for the same reason:

The front page of this site shows the last two weeks or so of entries. I haven't posted anything since, oh, February 12th, so that means that none of my essays are up on the front page anymore.

Until now. :-)

This past week and a half has been a bad one for me and technology. The two biggest issues have been 1) my computer and 2) my car. My computer went senile. After four years, it experienced the onset of dementia and couldn't remember anything. It kept shutting down for no reason. Like a Florida pensioner whose driver's license should have been revoked years ago, it kept crashing. I made the sad decision to fire the old computer, but hiring the replacement took some time. In the meantime, there was much woe to be had. And no time to post here, I'm afraid.

In the meantime, I took my car in to have the "coil pack" replaced. A coil pack, I'm told, does the job that a distributor cap used to do. Costs about $600 to replace, too. Well, $400, but then the shop finds out there's problems with the wires, and the spark plugs need to be replaced, etc., etc.

Except, when I got the thing home, the check engine light came on again and it was running rough and, oh yeah, something was burning in the engine compartment. Took it back to the shop. Later that day, I had it back. They said the computer reported that it was two of the (brand new) spark plugs. Two days later, same symptoms. Took it back. This time, they said it must have been a bad coil pack that was causing the problems both times. (And, no, the shop didn't charge me for the last two visits. They are expensive, but they stand by their work. I like them.)

The net result was that, as with the computer, I spent a great deal of time either without the car or attending to the car, and little time actually using the car. Unlike the computer, though, my car didn't keep crashing. That's good.

As I told Paulette when I drove home from the shop the third time, "Feels like driving a new car. Again."

And as for the replacement computer, well... there are some nice things about having a new machine. Since Paulette and I run a combo Mac/PC shop, and it was my Mac that died, the new machine is a Mac that runs OS X. As with Windows XP -- the first Windows operating system that has surprised me in a *pleasant* way -- OS X is the first Mac OS in a long time that I've enjoyed using. It's much more reliable than the OS 9's or the late 8's were, and it has a bunch of nice little touches that have made my computing experience just... pleasant. XP and OS X are, in a word, "nice." Not a word I like to use, but preferable to the words I used to use to describe my work-environment operating systems.

So, yeah, this past week or two have been pretty bad for me technology-wise, but now it looks like smooth driving ahead. For at least a little while. :-)

A couple of entries ago, I mentioned how I'd had a bad technology week, but that everything should be smooth driving ahead. Well, I guess we all could have predicted what happened afterward.

The car? It died *again*, in exactly the same manner. I took it to the shop yesterday morning for the *fourth time* to deal with this problem.

The "Mattress Fund" website? The Windows Media movie apparently won't play, as currently configured, on Windows XP (although it works fine on Mac). Ack! We're still tracking that bug down.

Another web site I've been working on took me an entire week to do what I'd planned on being able to do in one day.

The new computer is great... except the software I need on a daily basis isn't working so well on the new machine. I need OS X versions of the software, which means more upgrading. Etc., etc., etc.

Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? My old 1966 Rambler Classic never had the kind of problems that my 1996 Passat is having... and, hell, I could fix that old car *myself* without the aid of a computer diagnostic kit that keeps lying about what the problem is.

And computers! Why, I never had to upgrade from a number two pencil to a number three pencil because Paper 6.5 didn't support it. [sigh]

And if a horse kept breaking his leg the way my car keeps breaking down, you simply shot it and got the whole thing done with!

And if you wanted to share a visual joke with somebody, you just flat out showed them. You didn't have to worry if their eyeglasses were compatible with your sight gag. Feh.

You kids today, you just don't underst . . . oops. Gotta go -- my cell phone is ringing. More later.