The Longest Season: TNG

The newest iteration of political attack ads is in full swing. These are the response spots, answering, or at least attempting to answer, the arguments put forward by the first round of advertisements. Thus we now have both candidates, and their surrogate PACs, complaining that the other side has misrepresented them (true), taken quotes and positions out of context (also true) and warning people not to believe anything the other guy says (pot, meet kettle).

We're now starting to see hints of the third generation arriving wherein the candidates deny the accusations and accuse the other of whining about otherwise fair attacks. Slowly being buried under layers of charge and counter charge are the original points of contention, whether valid or not. Eventually the ads will become incomprehensible to anyone who has not been following along from the beginning.

There is a smattering of spots for local politicians showing up, mostly US House and Senate races. These tend to be more "Hi, I'm So-'n'-so and I'm running for X. See my pretty family? I live and work around here and promise to not be like the last guy you elected." Mostly, this is because all the candidates are from the same party, vying in the upcoming Republican primary for the right to take on the sacrificial Democrat; even so a couple are slightly edgier. One states that the office being sought is "elected not inherited" a sly reference to the fact the opponent is the "IV" of that name whose recent ancestor (the II or III, I'm not sure which) also held that seat. Of course, the candidate making that insinuation happens to be the son of a former congressman and CIA director who just started adding daddy's name to his own in his campaign, but, hey, if you're not willing to vote for a hypocrite you'll never vote at all.

The good news is: political ads have not yet completely overtaken the airwaves.

The bad news is: because of the good news, the loud-mouth local car salesman and talking animal insurance mascots are still around.

Successfully Not Giving A Damn

The opening ceremonies are today. The competition has already begun. The games will continue non-stop over the next two weeks. The whole world is watching.

Meh.

The whole world minus me.

Actually, I'm sure there are others. Others who are not enthralled by the corporate hype, the overblown production values, the selective showcasing of only those events where "we" are competitive, the lovingly crafted heart-rending spiritually redemptive back stories. I can't be the only one.

I was living in Salt Lake during the 2002 Winter Olympics and stayed away then, too. The only good things to come out of them then were the plaza fountain and a loosening of the moronic liquor laws by officials embarrassed to be perceived, correctly, as hopelessly straitlaced rubes by the sophisticated wine-swilling, beer-chugging Europeans. My sympathies go out to all the Londoners who can't get away.

In stead, I shall be watching my baseball team continue to under perform in its season long struggle to qualify for a wild-card slot. Go Rays!

Bartleby Victorious

Bartleby's subtle and clever plan of inaction has come to successful fruition and she is proud of herself for it.

Bartleby is now an indoor cat.

Most of the recent monsoons have been accompanied by thunder and lightning and a couple of the cells have passed directly over us with literally house-shaking consequences. Unlike, say, a dog which is not ashamed to admit its fear of natural forces, Bartleby pretended not to be afraid of the storms. It was, of course, sheer coincidence that, during said storms, the only comfortable place to take a nap was wedged tightly in behind the slider-rocker in the lanai. (Any other time she'd be sprawled across the highest point she could find: chair back, table top, etc.)

My brother took pity upon her and got into the habit of bringing her into his room during the worst of it and then kicking her outside again afterward. (Actually, I was the first guilty party, bringing her in during the tornado warning.)

Last week, however, something happened. My brother had set up a fancy enclosed litter box for her in his room along with food and water and during a particularly vicious storm had let her stay with him. This suited her at first, but now she refuses to go into his room so I have brought her food and water into the hall outside his door. Meanwhile, Bartleby has appropriated a small throw rug in the middle of the walkway between the kitchen and living room where she sleeps 18 hours a day forcing us to take giant steps over her.
Pretty much her sole activity consists of sticking her head in the refrigerator and enjoying the cold air whenever the opportunity presents itself.

Actually, now that she is confident she can come inside whenever she wants, she is more willing to go outside. Yesterday, she knocked on the glass door of the lanai to go out and half an hour later came to the front door to be let in again. Despite the heat and humidity she's taken to sleeping under my car again which is pretty much full circle from when we found her.

Except now she's confident she has finally successfully trained us to her bidding.

Can We All Just Grow Up?

Am I doing something wrong, or is this level of pettiness for real?

Chrome won't allow me to see any Facebook content and IE only shows a blank G+ page. Seriously, guys? I can access both providers e-mail accounts from either browser.

I sure hope it's me doing something wrong.

Book Review

I feel sorry for the censors over at the CIA.

Seriously.

They have to read every article, essay and book written by every CIA employee, current or past, before publication, to insure no secrets are released, intentionally or otherwise. But--and this is apparent from my reading of various items published by CIA employees, current and past--they are not allowed to edit or critique the works they censor. This is also apparent from the quality of the novel I am trying to work through right now. I don't know if I'll make it.

The cover boasts the fact the author is ex-clandestine service. The blurbs on the back, including from Larry Niven and Dean Coonts,* rave about the book's cosmic science-fictiony thrillerness. This story is supposed to tie in every paranormal X-files conspiracy theory as only a CIA insider can! As best I can tell so far it's a minor miracle we're not all speaking Russian by now.

Let's forget about the protagonist who conveniently develops characteristics as necessary. He's rich. And good looking. Does he need to figure out something technical? Well, he's intelligent. Wait, not just intelligent. A savant. Four degrees from three different schools. (Does Cornell even offer an advanced degree in philosophical epistemology and astrophysics?)

This brilliant, well-bred, rich young man volunteers for France in World War I (admittedly before getting his college education). While many people, on both sides, thought the war would be a romantic adventure when it first started, our hero goes over in 1916 when the full horrors of trench warfare are well known. What's his motive? Don't know. Not an overpowering love of France. Really, no idea.

Now, I'm willing to believe (or at least suspend disbelief) that he's brought back from a battlefield death (combination shooting and gassing) by aliens. This is supposed to be a sci-fi thriller after all. However, I can't believe he's given a magical Bible by his (not nearly as mysterious as she's probably supposed to be, nudge, nudge, and who is never heard from again anyway) nurse, put on a hospital ship (named Galactic. Get it?) with another wounded prisoner whose name and wounds are almost identical to that of his best friend who went to France and was killed right next to our hero and who then dies himself (why was he even there?) when the hospital ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat whose captain surfaces to machine gun the survivors but is in turn blown out of the water by another hospital ship (the Angelic. Get it? Get it?) that was following eight hours behind and carries a cannon whose gunner is happy to sink "the Nazis." Nazis? Really? It's still 1917 at the latest. And was he machine gunning the survivors for eight full hours? That's dedication. Actually, it's all nonsense and has nothing to do with the story as far as I can tell.

Nor am I willing to accept that the alien who crash lands his saucer, containing his wife and kids no less, at Roswell while buzzing Earth with several friends for no discernible reason is named . . . wait for it . . . Kul' da-Zak (probably because he was destined to dead end into the New Mexican desert). It is a detail, unfortunately typical, as irritating as it is irrelevant since he only ever appears again as a half rotting corpse being transported across country in a box misdirectingly labelled as carrying torpedoes. Of course, our hero, now with the CIA and escorting the trip, proceeds to ask a GI what the labels mean, then tells him they're not carrying torpedoes but bodies, then tells him it's just a joke and never to speak to anyone about this ever again pinkie swear. Is this the CIA's idea of operational security?

Not to mention the unseen omniscient supreme being named Ga'Lawed with twelve Samaritan "apostles" named Won, Tu, Tha'Ree, Vor, Fieva, Sixkt, . . .. Need I go on? Perhaps something in CIA culture drains imagination from its operatives.
And this is where I give up: Our hero, who single handedly predicted not just the outbreak of WWII but its ultimate course and outcome by means, we are told, of theories from Poincare and Malthus and a ball of string, has just handed a report marked "Eyes Only," to his boss, the admiral, a security level which he has just created, also single handedly and without any input from the intelligence community or any other government entity, thereby confusing his boss, the admiral, who responds saying: "My sailor's gut is full of gas and I'm going to break wind like a high-pressure squall. Tell me something that calms this bureaucratic sea."

Nope. I quit. I'm barely a third of the way in and I just can't take it any more. This is a thriller with no thrill. A suspense story with no suspense. Dull, plodding exposition interspersed with inane dialog, over-explaining but never showing.

The Cryptos Conundrum, by Chase Brandon. As you value your sanity, let this one lie.

*(Either Niven and Coonts owe Tom Doherty money or the CIA has something big on them in its files.)

Monsoons and Their Consequences

The height of Rainy Season is well and truly here. Pretty much every day is the same now. Sun and bright blue skies in the morning, clouding up from noon on, and drenching downpours with thunder and lightning in the afternoon and evening with the clouds breaking somewhat around sunset. The timing can vary by a couple of hours either way but once the process starts the sequence stays the same.

Last year the town came down our street and reworked the swale alongside the road . . . right up to, but not including our property. They tore up the old grass, retrenched the ditch, laid new culverts under driveways and then re-sodded the whole thing. Stopping at our property line meant not creating a way for our swale to drain into the improved ditch only ten feet away.

Now, every day, we get a four foot wide (though admittedly very shallow) puddle across the foot of the driveway and a temporary moat around the property and a low section in the back becomes a qualified wetlands trysting place for the (immigrant) frogs bellowing all night long. Fortunately (or maybe not), our bedrock is porous limestone and all the water drains down and disappears within hours. I say "maybe not" because all that water seeping through tends to dissolve the limestone, creating caverns which, if the overlying rock is thin enough, cave in on themselves making a sinkhole, although there's only been one in the entire county according to the local sinkhole map which is over twenty years old. Anyway, our area is more prone to subsidence than collapse sinkholes.

It is highly unlikely we will ever realy face a sinkhole, although noe impossible. This is one of the few places in the country where you can get insurance coverage for the earth swallowing up your property.

Learning To Fit In

I was at the library today when the following announcement came over the public address system:

"May I have your attention, please. The zombie make-up workshop will be starting in the adult meeting room in five minutes."

I am beginning to suspect this mania for all things undead (which I share, by the way, being a huge fan of The Walking Dead and anything by George Romero) might be our society's way of coping psychologically with both the 9/11 trauma and the ensuing decade plus of war. Zombies are a way to both recognize and deny the permanence of death which will, eventually, take us as well. (I understand Romero's zombies were a statement against Cold War paranoia, or racism, or the banal conformism of a consumerist society but we always adjust our allegories to fit our current needs.)

Or maybe that's too heavy an interpretation and this is just American culture at its best. You're welcome.

I have to say I was tempted, but it turned out the workshop was for teens. Either way, they need to be prepared.

The Cuban Invasion

It came to my attention this morning, thanks to the regular short environmental piece on my local NPR station, that the large frogs that jump onto our window screens in the dark of night with a heavy thump and clunk reminiscent of someone trying to break in might be Cuban Tree Frogs, an invasive species that eats literally anything it can fit in its mouth including (but not limited to) insects, native frogs, lizards, other Cuban Tree Frogs and even baby birds(!).

The Department of Wildlife Ecology & Conservation of the University of Florida wants us to report and kill (sorry, "humanely euthanize") the invaders with benzocaine in a bag in the freezer.

I'll need to do a little more research to make sure our frogs are really Cuban Tree Frogs and not the besieged local good guys but, based on the size alone, I'm pretty sure we're under attack.

DIY Follies, Automotive Division

I am not mechanically inclined. I know this and readily admit it. While I am fascinated by systems and the workings of mechanical objects and often understand (and can, in cases, even teach others) the theory behind things that work, I know better than to try making them work myself, if they choose not to. This applies especially to automobiles.

Despite 20+ years of listening to "Car Talk," to the point where I often call out the diagnosis before the hosts do, and despite "helping" (meaning "supervising," meaning "watching") a friend do a driveway brake job, I will not attempt my own repairs. That said, there are two things I can do: change a tire and change the oil.

So this morning, having purchased oil and filters, gathered paper towels and tracked down the funnel, I made ready to do manly car stuff. I pulled on the little handle to release the hood latch and heard the thump as it released.

Or, heard a thump of some kind. The hood was still sealed shut.

I pulled again. Nothing happened. Finally, on the third try I got a result. The latch handle broke free from the cable.

I managed to get the latch reattached to the hinge (but not the cable) and drove up to the mechanic my brother uses on a regular basis. I had been there only once before, myself, when I first moved down here and wanted the car gone over after it's 2000 mile trip, but I was in their computer so all was good and, within half an hour, the cable was reattached and the oil changed all for less than $30. They used their own oil and filters, so now I have a stash set aside against any future lubricant-based emergency.

At least I can still change a tire.

Happy Birthday to All

It's taken some time to really sink in that, now that Mom has died, I am no longer anchored to the house. Yes, I went to Tampa for the Android developers' Meetup and we're no longer careful about making sure one or the other of us is always home, but it still feels a little . . . weird . . . to be able to just get up and go somewhere.

We had our barbecue early in the afternoon because my brother had to work yesterday evening. Ribs, sweet corn, potato and macaroni salads and cole slaw with apple pie for dessert. The fourth is one of those one-meal days. As the sun dropped behind the palm trees to the west, it occurred to me I could, for the first time, go watch the fireworks in person, up close, as opposed to the TV broadcasts of national celebrations and glimpses of the local shots half-hidden on the horizon in previous years when Mom couldn't travel.

I drove downtown in the dusk through a thin intermittent haze of barbecued meats and parked as close as I could to where the fireworks were to be launched which was about a mile away. Half that distance was due to the sheer number of vehicles taking up every conceivable parking space in the center of town and half because the authorities had blocked off the bridge to Ft. Myers (from which the fireworks were to be launched) and all the approaches and intersections.

People were massing, drawn on foot and bicycle, skateboard and stroller, to the foot of the bride, past tents offering ice cream and pizza, fries and gyros and falafel, shaved ice and bottles of water and mango peach tea. I walked past a bouncy castle and inflatable obstacle course for kids. Aisles of booths offered handyman repairs by veterans, enrollment in GED classes for Spanish speakers, sign-ups for cable TV and pool services, club-store memberships, vacation plans, and more politicians on the make than is probably safe for one's sanity (mostly Republicans since they have a primary coming up soon and are all running against each other right now but I did see one lone Democrat who will face the winner in November) all handing out fans with their names and pictures on them which, considering the heat and humidity, meant people were willing tolerate, if not approve, their presence.

And, oh, the people. Tall and short, skinny and fat, old and young. All the hues from pale pink to dark chocolate and every shade of brown in between, mostly natural but an awful lot thanks to some serious sun time. The woman in the hijab. The guy in the confederate T-shirt. All the folks in variations of flag shirts and shorts and bikinis. The black kid with the impressive dreads. The white kid in what I thought was a blue spiky mohawk threaded with flashing green LEDs but turned out to be a wig. The Germans standing next to me struggling to identify the "Star Spangled Banner" as the band up on the inflatable stage slid from a patriotic medley through military anthems to Johnny Cash. The group of children behind me who, when the show started, exclaimed "Wow!" at every starburst until it became a chant that eventually became a rhythm of its own and slid out of sync with the explosions taking on an unintentionally ironic tone. These are folks who might not run into each other on a day-to-day basis, who might not otherwise associate. all down at the foot of the bridge, together, having fun, sharing the one thing we all have in common: the freedom to be us.

If a country is the people (and that is the premise behind our whole experiment, after all), we are in great shape.

The Sinking of the USCGC Mohawk

The US Coast Guard Cutter (decommissioned) Mohawk sank yesterday in a series of explosions in the Gulf of Mexico about thirty miles west of Captiva Island. There were no injuries. Everyone had a good time despite an hour delay waiting for a casino ship to arrive and a second delay after the failure of the first attempt to set off the explosive charges.

She is now officially the USS Mohawk CGC Veterans Memorial Reef.


The Mohawk was the last ship left from the WWII Battle of the Atlantic where she fought u-boats. She was also the last ship to radio reports to General Eisenhower signalling clearing weather and allowing the D-Day invasion to proceed.

According to Diver magazine ". . .no sunken ship is quite complete without treasure and the Mohawk is no exception. Celebrity adventurer Pat Croce has hidden artifacts from his Pirate and Treasure Museum aboard the old warship, including an 18th century rum bottle and 17th century shot. The first diver to find the treasure using the hand drawn map, also sunk with the ship, will get to keep the booty and claim free passes to the museum."