Wisconsin + Christmas = Three Thoughts

There was no great adventure when I visited my immediate family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA, Earth, last week. I did not get snowed in while in a layover in Kansas City. I did not meet any women from other countries. I did not nearly get into any fistfights.

There is no, therefore, opportunity to merely relate one story and hammer out a blog. Instead, I am gonna cobble three things together.

Agua

My brother has a son. (That makes me an uncle, for those scoring at home.) He's about 15 months old, and he's cute.

He walks nearly as quickly as I do (although I think I can take stairs faster (at least going up... he might be able to fall more quickly down them than I could because of his lower center of gravity)) and he's got a burgeoning vocabulary (I'm not going to bore you by saying he's about the cutest and smartest kid in the world; even though I think that, you don't want to hear it).

As part of his day care, he goes to a multi-lingual environment. I don't know specifics, but I believe it's to increase his chances to meet women from other countries later in life. In any case, he knows a smattering of French and Chinese and Spanish. And a smattering of English, of course.

I relate all of this because he has one other ability in addition to those two: the ability to grab things. If he were an action figure, it might be spring-loaded and called a "Lightning Strike Kung-fu Grip". He loves taking things off of tables and shelves and Christmas trees.

I saw all three of these wonderful skills come together in one moment when I was standing with him in the kitchen in my sister's home. I was getting myself water from the fridge and he was standing there, sort of wobbling but relatively stable, watching me. I looked at him and said, "Agua."

He did a sharp 360 and then pivoted to his left, where a short shelf had a cup sitting on it. He reached for it and said, as he pulled the cupful of water onto the floor:

"Agua."

Oops.

Who?

I have a fair number of phone numbers in my phone, but sometimes when I meet someone it doesn't "stick". Sometimes people change their number without telling me. Sometimes people who know I don't have their number txt me just to mess with me, it seems.

And sometimes something else happens.

Because of my night owled-ness and my Pacific Time Zone-osity, I was up considerably later than all of my family members. I was lying on the pull-out couch mattress with a laptop, cable television, and a book until the wee hours of the morning... chatting and reading and watching. And, occasionally, txting.

It was about 2:00 on Christmas morning when I got a txt that read, "merrry christmas!"

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "I do not know that person's number. I will have to investigate."

It was a 541 area code, which meant Oregon, USA, Earth. OK. Seems reasonable. Non-Portlanders use that area code. I know some non-Portlanders. But who was it?

I couldn't just txt back, "Who the f is this?" both because it would be rude and it would be surrendering. I wanted to be able to figure out who it was. I doubted it was a friend, because most of my friends use proper punctuation and only use two r's in "merry".

I scanned my memory banks for friends of friends that might have my number. I thought of women that I'd met and given my number to but not bothered to put theirs into my phone (does that make me evil? I prefer the term "inebriatedly selective"). I had a few potential answers, but they seemed remote possibilities.

So the next morning I txted back, "Merry Christmas. Sorry, but who is this?"

The response, within about 10 minutes, was a single word: "chancery".

Chancery? Huh? Is that a name? Is it a woman? Do I know a Chancery? Had I met a Chancery?

"Yes", "you heard me", "yes", "I think so", "no", and "not that I remember" were the answers to those questions that I was working from.

I went to Facebook. There can't be that many Chanceryses can there be?

Yes. Yes there can be. Over 500, none of whom are friends of my friends. Most of whom seemed to be non-local and dudes, to boot.

So I considered and decided to be ambiguous, hoping to learn more without asking for more. I txted back, "How have you been? You have a good holiday?"

"good yours?"

Nothing. So I decided to end this by txting, "Good. It's been a while. Hey, do you have Facebook?"

I hoped by getting Facebook access I would remember who the f this was. Shortly thereafter, he/she/it txted back, "no because i txted the wrong number. this isn't david"

Oh, Chancery. I never knew ye!


Emotional Equilibrium

I currently have two positions about the human condition. The first is the tension we all have between being a part of the group and being apart from the group.

The second one has to do with our ability to normalize. Flowers and TM2000 and I have discussed this at length (actually, over email, as is our INTJ wont) and I really think it's true: people get used to things.

Lose your arm? That sucks, it really does, but eventually you'll get over it and be pretty much where you were emotionally before the accident/donation.

Win the lottery? Badass, but with enough time you can be less happy than before (see: Hurley on Lost, because I'm pretty sure that it's based on a true story (except the sharks with the logos on them... give me a break!)

So I believe that the human brain has evolved to being SLIGHTLY dissatisfied. The people who got fat and happy tended to achieve less because of their happiness (including, but not limited to, achieving fewer babies and/or weapons to kill other peoples' babies). The people who gave up when the going got rough tended to be unproductive and their genes died.

Whatever. I think we all have the capacity to overcome bad things in our life... but also have the capacity (and tendency) to cause ourselves grief. We cause drama or second-guess or become bored by things.

I thought of this during my visit. It was so good, objectively. Fantastic food, lovely people that I care for deeply all around me. A night of karaoke and some interesting conversations with people who weren't even in Wisconsin spiced things up.

And yet I had feelings of stress. Of boredom. Of restlessness.

Hopefully these feelings weren't altogether obvious to my family; I really enjoyed my time with them and was sad to go, and I miss them tremendously already. But I'll probably get over it soon enough, right? Damn you, blessed human condition!

The Eyelash and the Cuticle

The other night I was lying in bed, thinking about stuff. About work and life and my cats and Planet of the Apes.

And about my finger and something that had happened to it earlier that day.

In order to understand why I would be thinking about my finger, it's necessary to take a step back in time. Back to the time when I was in my mother's womb and the Flying Spaghetti Monster was handing out attributes. For whatever reason, I was cursed with a horrible innate sense of direction, but I was given extremely healthy cuticles.

My cuticles have served me well: I've never had ingrown finger- or toe-nails and when I got my pedicure in Las Vegas my feet were deemed "flawless". (I actually blogged about this, but it's among the "Temporarily Lost Blog Entries" of 2007 that are awaiting migration from MySpace.)

So I've gone through my whole life not having to worry about my fingernails and cuticles too much... until about two months ago.

Two months ago, inexplicably, my right index finger became inflamed, right along the middle-finger side of the cuticle. It hurt and eventually it popped and pus came out. It was sick. But the swelling went down and I thought it was over.

It wasn't over.

About three weeks later, it came back with a vengeance. Again the finger swelled and it hurt and it popped along the fingernail and again the off-white nastiness seeped out.

I had no idea why. I thought, originally, it was a cat scratch that got me, but two in the same place? That seemed doubtful. So I ascribed it to finger-HIV and vowed not to shake hands without a condom.

Not really.

I didn't know what it was, and I still don't... or do I?

The other day, I looked at my finger. It was no longer swollen, but the right side of the fingernail had sort of lifted away from the finger underneath (like the "crescent" at the end of nails, but this was along my cuticle).

It would have been wise, perhaps, to leave it alone. To shrug and say, "*shrug*" to myself and to get back to work.

Instead, I poked at it, and I saw a black line. I saw a black line underneath my nail, where the nail was lifted away from the skin.

At that point, I couldn't let it be. I poked and prodded and eventually got the black line out. It was nicely and snugly wedged in place, and took some doing getting out. The "black line" was... an eyelash.

You see, gentle reader, that in addition to magnificent cuticles, I have been blessed by the FSM with rather luscious eyelashes.

(Yes, I know. "Vanity at its finest.")

The reason I was pondering this, when I had important things like Planet of the Apes to go over mentally, is because I wondered which came first.

Did the eyelash settle in the space between my fingernail and skin? It's definitely possible, and it's perhaps probable, that I had rubbed my eye and it somehow lodged itself there.

Perhaps, though, the eyelash caused the infections. Perhaps it penetrated my hitherto pristinely healthy cuticles and caused the pain and the pus and the pondering.

I pondered about the relationship of cause and effect... how we can have things happen to us and notice something unexpected in our lives and not be sure whether it caused, was caused, or was unrelated to those things.

I pondered about the unknowability of some things... how we can have as much data about something as anyone in the history of the world and just not know--and be pretty confident we will never know--the answer to something.


I pondered about all of this, and I wondered whether any of it (eyelash, cuticle, cause and effect, unknowability) is relevant.

Then I went to sleep.

Planet of the Apes Paradigm

Humans want to see patterns. We want to connect the dots whether it's part of a coloring book or in life. We solve problems because of this and we see gods because of this (sometimes both at once).

Paradigms are ways that we categorize and frame things, communally. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. The idea of paradigm shifts in hard science has been around since Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and has been applied to life more generally since then.

OK. Big deal. (I mean it is a big deal, but I rarely write about actual big deals. Hmm... I wanna have an adventure with someone that I give the codename Big Deal to. Or maybe I will make up adventures. He/she sounds pretty awesome.)

The reason I bring all of this up is because I was lying in bed the other night, thinking about stuff. Work stuff and life stuff and infected cuticle stuff (wait until you read the blog on that last one... it's gonna be almost as brilliant as this one (you think I kid; just you wait)) and then I thought about my cats. And then I thought about the Planet of the Apes.

Planet of the Apes is not the greatest film ever. Yes, it was nominated for two Academy Awards. Yes, it spawned four sequels and a remake and a TV series. Yes, it had a great ending one of the greatest Hestonisms ever (this is a spoiler, in case you've managed never to see the movie and ever plan to):

It may not be the greatest film, but it made a huge impact on me as a kid and I still think about it occasionally... the social message and the intra-species kissing and the mute chicks.

Anyway. I was lying in bed thinking about stuff and it occurred to me that my cats parallel the Planet of the Apes! There were three classes (species?) of apes in the movie (not including humans, I suppose), each of whom had a particular role in society. Compare and contrast to my cats, please.

Potter = Gorilla

Gorillas are the militant arm in Planet of the Apes. They are short-tempered and have bad posture, but they have the guns so can take power when needed.

Potter's all black. He's the most physical and outgoing and not the smartest. He often takes charge in spite of being least qualified.

Truman = Orangutan

Orangutans are the priest-politicians of the Ape-dominated future. They are orange and sort of fluffy.

Truman is orange and fluffy and not built for any sort of physical exertion. He is a ponderous thinker and probably would be willing to suppress evidence that humans used dolls before early Ape civilization emerged.

Houdini = Chimpanzee

Chimps are the scientists and appear to be the quick-thinkers. They were the first type of ape to evolve above their station as servants of humans (thanks to a speaking, time-traveling Chimp). In spite of their intellectual capacity, they are bullied by Gorillas and seem to be the lowest rung in Planet of the Apes society (other than humans).

Houdini is the eldest of the cats and appears to be the most intelligent. He had his teeth removed several years ago and, as a result, is unable to resist Potter's bullying tactics.

Geeky? Yes. (Terrible Photoshop? Absolutely. But, really, would you want to spend more than 10 minutes on those pics?) But since I've made the connection between Planet of the Apes and my cats--the Planet of the Apes Paradigm, if you will--I have been reinvigorated. My energy level is higher and my rash has cleared up and I've gone back to feeding the cats.

Sometimes it's all in the way we look at things, right?

For Want of Four Bits

I took the bus a lot last calendar year. I had an all-access card from work and I would take it to work and wherever else the fates may have taken me... of course, I think the fates knew I didn't love riding the bus, so they didn't take me many places via mass transit.

As 2009 arrived, though, my card expired and I consequently rarely ride the bus. I drive to work (free parking!) and I would say that I've maybe ridden the bus a dozen times in the last ten months.

Seemingly irrelevantly (stick with me...) I am required, as a member of the Washington State Bar, to take a certain number of Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credits every three years. My reporting period is ending on December 31, so I am trying to get in the last bunch of credit hours before the end of the year.

I signed up for a big chunk of those credits in a two day conference today and tomorrow. It's about Technology Law, and I was lucky enough to have my employer pay for it as part of the education allocation I get each year. The content of the first day was a good mix of, "Yeah, I knew that" and "That's very interesting". But the CLE is secondary to the return home.

Remember a few sentences ago when I said I don't take the bus much? Well, I knew the bus charged money. I even knew that there was a "peak hours" cost. I rarely carry much cash (since losing my wallet in April after my return from Vegas) so I grabbed $3.50 before catching a bus to the downtown CLE location this morning. Fine, right?

Well, it's $2.00 peak. Not $1.75. So... I paid $2.00 for the ride there and figured I'd worry about the fifty cent shortfall later.

Later came and went, and I still was fifty cents short after the CLE finished for the day.

I knew I had some options. There is a "free ride zone" that would get me part of the way home. I believe that bus drivers can't resist if you just don't pay (although I know there are cameras to watch, and I'd hate to be disbarred over fifty cents). Jaywalking is always an option. In spite of the cold (about 30/-1 degrees F/C) I decided to walk the two miles or so home.

A few things occurred to me on the way home:

I should have charged my cell phone. While it might seem like eight hours of attorneys talking would be enough to keep anyone excited, but I relied heavily on my phone to take mini-breaks throughout the day. I failed to charge it the previous night, however, so by about 2:00 in the afternoon it was down to 1% power. I muted it and decided to keep that 1% around just in case.

But that meant no txting on the walk home. No call to my sister to see how her newborn son is. No technological aid to my trek.

I was left with the cold and the weirdos.

I don't often quote from movies, but this evening I made an exception. As I walked home, passing through parts of the city that I rarely walk through at that time of night (it was only about 6:00, but it seemed later because it was so dark) I thought of this line from Taxi Driver:

"Some day a real rain will come and wash all of this scum off the streets."

Yes, that character was in a taxi, and yes, goes kinda crazy. I was on foot and have (to this point) retained my sanity. But I saw so many shady characters it surprised me.

I don't like to judge people, and I was a bit embarrassed when I saw one fellow who looked very suspicious, walking with his buddy. "Why would you judge him based on how he dresses," I asked myself, "Who are you to judge?" Then the guy pulled a syringe out and showed it to the other guy.

Maybe he was a diabetic and it was insulin, but I doubt it.

I am not used to the cold. In college in Evanston, IL, I would wear a heavy winter coat and shorts and walk around the snowy campus. I would look forward to my hair freezing into ropes after bounding from a building following a recent shower. It was exhilarating and I liked it. Now? It's barely below freezing and I was feeling pain in my fingers and discomfort in my toes.

I encountered reason #423 life is not fair. OK, yes. I am a white male with all of my limbs and much of my hair and reasonably straight teeth. I can't complain about TOO much. But life still sucks sometimes.

Case in point: I like dogs. I like to pet dogs and while I'm not terribly eager to own one again, I enjoy giving dogs--especially little ones--attention when I meet them.

I was walking home and saw a young woman walking two little dogs. They had sweaters on and one of them was doing his/her business, so the three of them were stationary. A perfect opportunity to say "hello" to the dog who was not engaged in vacating itself. BUT...

But I couldn't. It would have looked like I was stopping to hit on the chick, and it would have been weird for her and I didn't want to make it weird for her. Not that I'm above talking to a woman on the street, but (a) it was too cold, and (b) she wasn't cute enough. It's not whether I wanted to or not, it was that I didn't want her to think I was. Which I wouldn't blame her for thinking.

Because of this, the dogs went un-petted and I went without expressing my admiration for the little pooches.

Forget human trafficking and other unfair stuff... I didn't get to pet those dogs. That is injustice.

##

Eventually I arrived home. I plugged my phone in, heated up some food and jumped into bed for a short nap.

The walk was good for me, probably. I saved $1.50 and got this magnificent blog out of it. I still plan on bringing $4.00 when I go to the CLE tomorrow.

I Do Not Have an Accent

I do not have an accent.

Or, rather, I prefer to think that I do not have an accent while speaking English. When I speak Spanish? Sure, I have an accent (maybe "yanqui"). When I speak in Georgia? Sure, I have an accent (maybe "smart"). When I speak about cars? Sure, I have an accent (probably "ignorant lady-boy").

I'm no linguist (cunning or otherwise) but I think that most people who grow up speaking one way and are surrounded by folks that speak that way tend to think of themselves as accent-free at some level. There are always outsiders who talk funny, don't drink tea, and/or don't find impregnation of first cousins acceptable.

In my defense, though, the U.S. is the dominant English-speaking country in the world (with apologies to India, which has far more English speakers but are more likely to be mocked than emulated)... and I speak the way people on TV speak. Newscasters sound like I do, non-regional or -ethnical characters sound like I do. Heck, going back to India, call centers train people to sound like I do.

Not exactly like me, of course. But close enough.

Over time I've noticed some weird subtleties in the way I speak.

"Merry Christmas, Mary! When are you getting married?"

I say "merry," "Mary," and "married" pretty much the same way. I say "ferry" and "fairy" the same way. My vowels tend to be flat and, if they are nuanced, I am pretty unaware of them.

Compare that, though, to some of the people I've experienced in my life. My neighbor's mother when I was growing up would pronounce an invisible "r":

"It's time to warsh the car before I drive up to Seattle, Warshington."

My ex (I still only have one "ex," which is weird, but that observation is too tangential even for me to tackle in this blog entry) dropped an "l" inexplicably:

"Did you see that woof? It howled and then ran off."

I thought maybe it was a Michigan accent thing, but... no. She was (or is, presumably, although I'm not sure) just weird like that.

A year or two ago, I was having a drink with Jelly and we were talking (and I was listening; I know it's a miraculous thing for a guy to do when an attractive single woman is getting intoxicated in front of his very eyes) and I picked up on a similar idiosyncrasy: she changes an "a" to an "e" in many words:

"I pledge allegiance to the fleg."
"It's in the beg."
"You are such a feg."
"Teg, you're it!"

Why? Why does she do that? And how had no one EVER noticed (or at least commented on it) before? She denied it, at first, but she eventually (over the course of me pestering her for 20+ minutes) relented that, yes, she does it but that it's correct. She now treasures her minor speech impediment as a badge of courage. You go, Jelly.

Of course when you venture outside of the region, things get more weird. Texans and Cajuns and New Yorkers and New Englanders and robots... things get weird.

They get crazy, though, when you consider the British Commonwealth. Canada is "soh-ry" that it only speaks English "ah-boot" right... they live too close to me to speak so oddly.

Recently Canberry explained some differences between how Aussies (her people) and Kiwis (think: Flight of the Conchords) pronounce things. (It's all about vowel confusion; Kiwis seem to read a vowel and then substitute another one for it.) I'm still working on understanding Aussies v. Brits; I think that the British are more lyrical with their pronunciation, but... I'm working on it, OK?

Don't even get me started on South Africa. They Afrikaan't speak English very well, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm not sure how this blog degenerated into me jingoistically making puns about a people on the other side of the world, but I'm sure they deserved it.

dee - ZERVED it.