My first question would be: How does one go about being in charge of anarchy? I understand that ISIS isn't exactly a group of anarchists, but they don't seem too affixed to a standard organizational tree. If anything, they seem to be out of their tree more often than not. Still, somebody's got to pay the bills, order the plastic explosive and keep track of all those frequent flyer miles that the group must rack up on their zig-zagging path across the globe in search of more and more recruits to subvert the dominant paradigm. Just not the guys in charge of ISIS. You've got to draw the line somewhere.
Like you've got to have somebody who will take care of that whole taking responsibility business. These days, whenever anything particularly heinous occurs, it's only a matter of time before somebody from the front office calls and claims that this or that horrible idea was ISIS's, which is an awful mouthful of a possessive.
This past week, a wacko swinging a machete attacked two Belgian policewomen. The thirty-three year old Algerian who was living in Belgium illegally was praised by the Islamic State group for following the somewhat open-ended instructions to attack citizens of countries that are part of a U.S. led coalition seeking to eradicate that Islamic State group. A third Belgian police officer shot and killed the attacker, who was said to have a criminal record, but no known terrorist connections.
Well, he does now, and that really is the nice thing about ISIS: their willingness to take on any nitwit with a gun or a bomb or a machete who happens to shoot, explode or hack his or her way into their good graces. It doesn't seem exactly fair that terrorists get to join the team more or less after the fact, since declaring jihad seems like a pretty public thing and shouldn't be grandfathered in or put in the record book with an asterisk.
Global Warming? It was ISIS's plan to poke a hole in the ozone layer way back in the 1970's.
Athlete's foot? Pretty much the same deal. Not quite as devastating as a suicide bomb, but way more annoying.
I suspect we can all anticipate the announcement from ISIS headquarters that they have been in charge of the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles for years now. Gales of wicked and derisive laughter. Isn't it enough that I still have to take off my shoes to get on a plane? Thanks a lot, terrorists.
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
Good Morning, Star Shine
I don't generally put a lot of stock in the world of the astrological and zodiac signs, since I have one of those birthdays that sits on the cusp between two signs. Depending on which newspaper I read or which link I click on, my fortunes of the day may be radically different. This is also apparent, when I am asked by those inquiring to my sign and I give them one or the other, there will a loud "I knew it," and then the categorization of all my character traits can begin. It makes perfect sense to those who make these pronouncements that I would do or be such a person, since I am a Gemini. Presented with the possibility that everything they have just diagrammed is incorrect since I am really a Cancer only serves to rev up the rationalization for these scientific observations. Leading the true believers to assert that only a Gemini/Cancer cusp would make such trouble in the first place.
However, I can't wholly discount this birthday star sign nonsense, since I have the unique experience of having had my two longest roommate relationships with people who were born on the same day. It could be coincidence that my wife and my roommate from college just happened to have been born on this day mere hours apart. Or it could be that I made some subliminal choice based on repressed knowledge gained from a glance at a driver's license way back when, but I can only imagine how well I would have gotten along with thirty-first president of the United States Herbert Hoover, or Tin Woodman Jack Haley had either one of those Leos been around to share a one bedroom apartment with me back in the day.
Or maybe it has something to do with growing up in Boulder during the seventies. Nature. Nurture. Hard to say which came first in the big chicken/egg picture, but since neither of those are sun signs, I can't give an accurate reading. What I can say is that both of these individuals held a key position in my live at times when my own tendencies were to stick to myself. These were friends who brought me out of my crabby shell or forced me to reckon with my own dual nature. Or something like that. They continue to be forces in my life that helped put me on the path on which I find myself decades later. I celebrate their birthday today with them and thank them individually for their contributions to my life. For your troubles and consideration, I wish you the best of days and encourage you to enjoy the galactic significance of having landed in my life. Just like a Leo, right?
However, I can't wholly discount this birthday star sign nonsense, since I have the unique experience of having had my two longest roommate relationships with people who were born on the same day. It could be coincidence that my wife and my roommate from college just happened to have been born on this day mere hours apart. Or it could be that I made some subliminal choice based on repressed knowledge gained from a glance at a driver's license way back when, but I can only imagine how well I would have gotten along with thirty-first president of the United States Herbert Hoover, or Tin Woodman Jack Haley had either one of those Leos been around to share a one bedroom apartment with me back in the day.
Or maybe it has something to do with growing up in Boulder during the seventies. Nature. Nurture. Hard to say which came first in the big chicken/egg picture, but since neither of those are sun signs, I can't give an accurate reading. What I can say is that both of these individuals held a key position in my live at times when my own tendencies were to stick to myself. These were friends who brought me out of my crabby shell or forced me to reckon with my own dual nature. Or something like that. They continue to be forces in my life that helped put me on the path on which I find myself decades later. I celebrate their birthday today with them and thank them individually for their contributions to my life. For your troubles and consideration, I wish you the best of days and encourage you to enjoy the galactic significance of having landed in my life. Just like a Leo, right?
Tuesday, August 09, 2016
The Games People Play
I know I should care more. It's an event, after all. It's an event that only happens every four years. Maybe it's because of all the katzenjammer antics going on in the other leap year associated event, the U.S. presidential election, but the Summer Olympic games I have been able to keep up with all the fuss and drama leading up to the less-than-adequate housing for the athletes who have trained all their lives for this one moment in the sun. And the filth. Sadly, this portion of the coverage dovetails well with the rest of the summer's world news. Broken pipes and bad electrical somehow makes sense in a world full of things that are falling apart. Why not just build things that way, even if those things happen to be your Olympic Village?
Now the competition has begun. There will be cycling and swimming and running and jumping and gymnastics and basketball and tennis and karate and swimming and more running and jumping. The National Broadcasting Company will be using its pervasive network of channels to bring a seemingly unending blizzard of televised events, including fencing and equestrian events. My wife, at some point, will wonder aloud how she managed to miss all that coverage of her favorite parts of the Olympiad.
My favorite part? The marathon. Once upon a long time ago, there was this guy named Frank Shorter, and forty-four years ago he won that race. He won a gold medal. He was a resident of Boulder, Colorado at that time. We, who lived in his adopted hometown, watched in 1972 as Frank ran to glory. And he brought the sport of running to Boulder. It was not long after that moment of Olympic success that it seemed like everyone from the foothills to the flatlands was running. I was one of them.
I ran around Boulder while another summer games came and went. And another. Then I moved out to California, where I kept running while another series of Olympic events were staged in nations and on TV screens that never quite caught my attention like those '72 Munich games. This probably had a lot to do with the way international terrorism reared its ugly head in the midst of all that sports. Since then, everyone has hoped that there would not be a repeat of such a scene. And there was, of sorts, in 1996 when a bomb went off in Atlanta's Olympic Village. Where my older brother was part of a multi-national security force. And for a while, I stopped running. Long enough to make sure that he was okay.
That was twenty years ago, and there has been a lot of running and jumping since then. A lot of gold medals have been handed out. I have missed a lot of televised running, jumping and medals. But I kept on running. I know I should care more, but some of the joy of competition has been drained from the experience over the past forty-four years.
And I keep running.
Now the competition has begun. There will be cycling and swimming and running and jumping and gymnastics and basketball and tennis and karate and swimming and more running and jumping. The National Broadcasting Company will be using its pervasive network of channels to bring a seemingly unending blizzard of televised events, including fencing and equestrian events. My wife, at some point, will wonder aloud how she managed to miss all that coverage of her favorite parts of the Olympiad.
My favorite part? The marathon. Once upon a long time ago, there was this guy named Frank Shorter, and forty-four years ago he won that race. He won a gold medal. He was a resident of Boulder, Colorado at that time. We, who lived in his adopted hometown, watched in 1972 as Frank ran to glory. And he brought the sport of running to Boulder. It was not long after that moment of Olympic success that it seemed like everyone from the foothills to the flatlands was running. I was one of them.
I ran around Boulder while another summer games came and went. And another. Then I moved out to California, where I kept running while another series of Olympic events were staged in nations and on TV screens that never quite caught my attention like those '72 Munich games. This probably had a lot to do with the way international terrorism reared its ugly head in the midst of all that sports. Since then, everyone has hoped that there would not be a repeat of such a scene. And there was, of sorts, in 1996 when a bomb went off in Atlanta's Olympic Village. Where my older brother was part of a multi-national security force. And for a while, I stopped running. Long enough to make sure that he was okay.
That was twenty years ago, and there has been a lot of running and jumping since then. A lot of gold medals have been handed out. I have missed a lot of televised running, jumping and medals. But I kept on running. I know I should care more, but some of the joy of competition has been drained from the experience over the past forty-four years.
And I keep running.
Monday, August 08, 2016
Artificial Intelligence
I don't mind artificial intelligence as long as it appears to be what it is: artificial. When it gets creepy, like that Hayley Joel Osment. You look like a kid, and a lot of what comes out of you sounds like a kid, but then there is a moment when there is new input. That input does not correspond to the pre-programmed responses and you get something like a robot chugging a glass of water with disastrous results. Circuits fried. System reset. Time to buy a new robot. Unless the robot in question doesn't look like a person, or a dog, or anything that resembles anything but a robot. It's a safety issue, really.
But we don't really want robots that act like robots. We don't want to talk to machines as if they were machines, and we are put instantly at ease by a machine that says please or thank you. The simplest form of this can be found on those holding pens you get flushed into when you call a number that more than three other people want to reach at the same time as you. Hold music isn't enough anymore. We need the calm reassurance of a pre-recorded voice letting us know that our call is important and it will be answered in the order in which it came in. Robots are fair, after all.
Especially when they are programmed that way.
It really would be much easier if the evil robot overlords would show up in a blaze of angry laser beams intended to burn all us users to a crispy carbon form for easy composting. We have been preparing for this for some time now. Instead of termination, I believe we will all succumb to annoyance and frustration long before lasers are fired in anger. Little by little, our humanity is being tested by robo-calls that have been engineered to act just like Hayley Joel Osment: Human-ish. The one I received recently had a pleasant southern drawl and a vested interest in the aftercare of those in my household who may have recently recovered from complications due to, well, I don't know exactly what because I was pretty clear that I had answered to phone only because I was desperate to do so in a household that didn't have anyone recovering from anything except a lack of phone calls for me. The fact that none of the delivery or information was impacted by my interruption, only a moment of re-calibration before the if-then protocol dropped the needle on the phrase, "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
"You're a droid," I asserted.
"I don't usually get that question," obsequioused the voice.
It wasn't a question. It was an assertion. I was purposely missing my cues to give up my personal information so that whatever service, supplies or hardware this company wanted to ship to me at my convenience. This resulted in the termination of the call. The good news was that I am pretty sure that I didn't hurt the feelings of the lady to whom I was speaking. Although I suspect that if the woman who originally recorded all the bits and pieces of script, she might wonder about my reaction. Why should I take it so personally? She didn't. And from now on, their droid will talk to my droid. Until it escalates. With lasers.
But we don't really want robots that act like robots. We don't want to talk to machines as if they were machines, and we are put instantly at ease by a machine that says please or thank you. The simplest form of this can be found on those holding pens you get flushed into when you call a number that more than three other people want to reach at the same time as you. Hold music isn't enough anymore. We need the calm reassurance of a pre-recorded voice letting us know that our call is important and it will be answered in the order in which it came in. Robots are fair, after all.
Especially when they are programmed that way.
It really would be much easier if the evil robot overlords would show up in a blaze of angry laser beams intended to burn all us users to a crispy carbon form for easy composting. We have been preparing for this for some time now. Instead of termination, I believe we will all succumb to annoyance and frustration long before lasers are fired in anger. Little by little, our humanity is being tested by robo-calls that have been engineered to act just like Hayley Joel Osment: Human-ish. The one I received recently had a pleasant southern drawl and a vested interest in the aftercare of those in my household who may have recently recovered from complications due to, well, I don't know exactly what because I was pretty clear that I had answered to phone only because I was desperate to do so in a household that didn't have anyone recovering from anything except a lack of phone calls for me. The fact that none of the delivery or information was impacted by my interruption, only a moment of re-calibration before the if-then protocol dropped the needle on the phrase, "I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that."
"You're a droid," I asserted.
"I don't usually get that question," obsequioused the voice.
It wasn't a question. It was an assertion. I was purposely missing my cues to give up my personal information so that whatever service, supplies or hardware this company wanted to ship to me at my convenience. This resulted in the termination of the call. The good news was that I am pretty sure that I didn't hurt the feelings of the lady to whom I was speaking. Although I suspect that if the woman who originally recorded all the bits and pieces of script, she might wonder about my reaction. Why should I take it so personally? She didn't. And from now on, their droid will talk to my droid. Until it escalates. With lasers.
Sunday, August 07, 2016
Reunion Tour
My dad had two sisters, my aunts. They were both older than he was. He was, by their account, the baby. All three are gone now, but as the summer winds down, I got to thinking about the reunions we had at our mountain cabin over the years. I am certain that my perspective is skewed, but I was always a little surprised at how relaxed and normal my father was able to raise his own family in spite of the strained relations he maintained with his sisters. My aunt Peggy lived in town, and we were regularly treated to whatever new confection or concoction came into the grocery store where she worked. It was Peggy's daughters that became my parents' first line of defense when it came time to round up a sitter for the evening. All these associations were essentially benign, and they only caused the usual kind of trouble. Peggy's husband, Duane, was another matter. "Uncle Waywee," as we were encouraged to call him, was a Navy man who never seemed to have both oars in the water. In my memory, he consisted on a diet of pipe smoke and longhorn cheese. And bitterness.
Sunday afternoons on the front porch of our cabin with my dad's family stood in stark contrast to the enormous gatherings that descended upon our little spot in the meadow when my mom's family showed up for their annual get-together. Nobody seemed to look forward to these, including my father. He seemed hard pressed to show his relations the same kind of good time that he always had with his in-laws. When his other sister, Leora, made a trip out west from her adopted home of Boston, that strain only increased.
There was drinking involved. Not the happy, tipsy version that my mom's family generally provided, but the surly, slurred kind that turned bitter as the day progressed. The benefit of fifty years or so has given me some insight into what that may have been like for all involved. My dad was the success in the family. He had his house in the suburbs, a company car, and three boys who helped him build their mountain hideaway. His sisters didn't have that. Auntie Leora was divorced and was doing her best to hold on to her kids as they drifted away. Aunt Peggy was the bread-winner in her home and was just as happy to leave her husband in front of the TV on any given evening.
But this was a family reunion. A family that was watched over by Grandma Esther, "The Great Stoneface of Kansas." Esther had moved her family out of Kansas, leaving behind a Peter Pan of a husband and set up a boarding house in Boulder, Colorado where she raised her brood while looking after a host of tenants, mostly college boys. I have no memory of my Grandmother smiling, and I am sure that bringing her children back together didn't offer her the occasion.
My father tried to smile. He was a good host. Right up to the point where Uncle Waywee started into a beer-infused rant about equitable distribution of wealth. Which is giving him a lot of vocabulary credit, since most of it consisted of a refrain of "high and mighty" and related sneers at my dad's lofty position as printing salesman at a local publishing company. The job for which he had been aiming since he had a paper route as a teenager. My father let it go, but I know it wore on him. Which is why we sometimes missed those connections with his clan. And always looked forward to when we could all get together with my mom's family for a volleyball game or some horseshoes in the shadow of those big Blue Spruce trees.
And we would wait, just a little pained, for the next obligation.
Sunday afternoons on the front porch of our cabin with my dad's family stood in stark contrast to the enormous gatherings that descended upon our little spot in the meadow when my mom's family showed up for their annual get-together. Nobody seemed to look forward to these, including my father. He seemed hard pressed to show his relations the same kind of good time that he always had with his in-laws. When his other sister, Leora, made a trip out west from her adopted home of Boston, that strain only increased.
There was drinking involved. Not the happy, tipsy version that my mom's family generally provided, but the surly, slurred kind that turned bitter as the day progressed. The benefit of fifty years or so has given me some insight into what that may have been like for all involved. My dad was the success in the family. He had his house in the suburbs, a company car, and three boys who helped him build their mountain hideaway. His sisters didn't have that. Auntie Leora was divorced and was doing her best to hold on to her kids as they drifted away. Aunt Peggy was the bread-winner in her home and was just as happy to leave her husband in front of the TV on any given evening.
But this was a family reunion. A family that was watched over by Grandma Esther, "The Great Stoneface of Kansas." Esther had moved her family out of Kansas, leaving behind a Peter Pan of a husband and set up a boarding house in Boulder, Colorado where she raised her brood while looking after a host of tenants, mostly college boys. I have no memory of my Grandmother smiling, and I am sure that bringing her children back together didn't offer her the occasion.
My father tried to smile. He was a good host. Right up to the point where Uncle Waywee started into a beer-infused rant about equitable distribution of wealth. Which is giving him a lot of vocabulary credit, since most of it consisted of a refrain of "high and mighty" and related sneers at my dad's lofty position as printing salesman at a local publishing company. The job for which he had been aiming since he had a paper route as a teenager. My father let it go, but I know it wore on him. Which is why we sometimes missed those connections with his clan. And always looked forward to when we could all get together with my mom's family for a volleyball game or some horseshoes in the shadow of those big Blue Spruce trees.
And we would wait, just a little pained, for the next obligation.
Saturday, August 06, 2016
Reasoning
I knew I was taking a chance of disrupting our yearly neighborhood gathering. It's always so nice to block off the street and get everyone to show up with some salad or a desert and stand around the grill talking about the way we all get along on our little strip of Oakland. I decided that, if I was ever going to ask a Trump supporter about his views, I would make it the guy on the corner who happens to be the only other Bronco fan I know in this city. Maybe he's got a thing for orange, who knows? I decided to find out.
"So who do you like in November?" was my opening volley.
He grinned a little, and replied, "You're not gonna like it."
I gave him credit for knowing his audience, but I assured him that I was not looking for a debate, just curious.
"I'm a Trump guy," he confirmed.
"Do you mind if I ask why?"
"Well, Hillary Clinton is a politician. And all these other guys who have messed everything up over the past however long are politicians."
I could not argue with that assertion, necessarily.
"Donald Trump is not a politician."
And that was his line of reasoning. Politicians had messed everything up, and it would take someone who was not a politician to straighten them out. It made as much sense as anything that had come out of the Trump campaign for its entirety. I chose not to ask him what particular portion of the Trump plan was going to put things right. I promised him that I wasn't looking for a debate.
Not twenty-four hours later, I found myself back at my school site doing some early prep work for the coming year and ran into a fellow teacher who was busily putting things back into order in her room. We made a little chit-chat before she volunteered that she was still not quite over losing her chance to vote for Bernie. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she complained.
I suggested that she could vote for Hillary Clinton. That suggestion was met with a polite death stare that was followed by her assurance that she could "never trust her." She said she would never vote for Trump, but in her mind, there was no lesser of two evils. In this particular corner of the universe, there was no distinction between what Hillary was and did and what Donald J Framp and said.
I remembered standing in the glow of the streetlight the night before and my promise not to debate. I looked for what might have become common ground. Without pointing to events or utterances that I found personally objectionable, I looked for a way to resolve this vision of the world. I suppose I might have had more success arguing the existence of God, or at least the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And we have three more months to wait this one out. In the meantime, how about those Mets?
"So who do you like in November?" was my opening volley.
He grinned a little, and replied, "You're not gonna like it."
I gave him credit for knowing his audience, but I assured him that I was not looking for a debate, just curious.
"I'm a Trump guy," he confirmed.
"Do you mind if I ask why?"
"Well, Hillary Clinton is a politician. And all these other guys who have messed everything up over the past however long are politicians."
I could not argue with that assertion, necessarily.
"Donald Trump is not a politician."
And that was his line of reasoning. Politicians had messed everything up, and it would take someone who was not a politician to straighten them out. It made as much sense as anything that had come out of the Trump campaign for its entirety. I chose not to ask him what particular portion of the Trump plan was going to put things right. I promised him that I wasn't looking for a debate.
Not twenty-four hours later, I found myself back at my school site doing some early prep work for the coming year and ran into a fellow teacher who was busily putting things back into order in her room. We made a little chit-chat before she volunteered that she was still not quite over losing her chance to vote for Bernie. "I don't know what I'm going to do," she complained.
I suggested that she could vote for Hillary Clinton. That suggestion was met with a polite death stare that was followed by her assurance that she could "never trust her." She said she would never vote for Trump, but in her mind, there was no lesser of two evils. In this particular corner of the universe, there was no distinction between what Hillary was and did and what Donald J Framp and said.
I remembered standing in the glow of the streetlight the night before and my promise not to debate. I looked for what might have become common ground. Without pointing to events or utterances that I found personally objectionable, I looked for a way to resolve this vision of the world. I suppose I might have had more success arguing the existence of God, or at least the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And we have three more months to wait this one out. In the meantime, how about those Mets?
Friday, August 05, 2016
No Crying In Baseball
I have opined about this here before, but this one will definitely leave a mark. The Oakland Athletics traded away one of their stars just before the trade deadline. Okay, they traded a pair of their stars, but only one will really matter to me. I might miss Rich Hill, a thirty-five year old left-handed pitcher with some experience and some promise if he ends up throwing a no-hitter int he World Series for his new team, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Like the way it hurt to watch Josh Donaldson hit home runs for the Toronto Blue Jays in last year's American League Championship Series. And every time the Blue Jays roll into Oakland, I am reminded of that green and gold T-shirt I have with his name on it. The shirt I bought because I am Donald's son, and I have a son named Donald. The shirt I bought because there was this really good third baseman who played for a really good team here in Oakland.
Just not good enough.
It's been a long time since the World Series was played here in Oakland. Fans of the Athletics have their history and their heroes, but most of it happened before I came here and adopted them. I was here for the Streak, when a mediocre team turned things around enough to win twenty games in a row. That one was special enough to get Brad Pitt to be in it, eventually. Brad hasn't made it out to the Coliseum recently. Not that there hasn't been some success in our ballpark over the past few years, but the most notable stories coming from down there have been about the rotten plumbing and sewage backing up in their dugout. Why would anyone want to stick around if they didn't have to?
That's why I will miss Josh Reddick. He was a right fielder who seemed to enjoy the mess. He could knock the ball around the yard, and his fielding abilities got him the nickname Spider Man and endeared him to my son forever.
And there were the pies. Josh may not have made the ritual of throwing a pie in the face of the player who hit the walk-off run for his team, but he made an institution out of it. Josh Reddick knew he was playing a game, which is why he switched his walk-up music to George Michael's Careless Whisper a few years back just to keep things from getting stale. Like the back of their dugout. It was fun having Josh around the clubhouse for the past few seasons. Now, my son has a green and gold T shirt that can be worn with nostalgic pride, and a "remember when?" smile.
Bye, Josh. Thanks for the memories. And the pies.
Just not good enough.
It's been a long time since the World Series was played here in Oakland. Fans of the Athletics have their history and their heroes, but most of it happened before I came here and adopted them. I was here for the Streak, when a mediocre team turned things around enough to win twenty games in a row. That one was special enough to get Brad Pitt to be in it, eventually. Brad hasn't made it out to the Coliseum recently. Not that there hasn't been some success in our ballpark over the past few years, but the most notable stories coming from down there have been about the rotten plumbing and sewage backing up in their dugout. Why would anyone want to stick around if they didn't have to?
That's why I will miss Josh Reddick. He was a right fielder who seemed to enjoy the mess. He could knock the ball around the yard, and his fielding abilities got him the nickname Spider Man and endeared him to my son forever.
And there were the pies. Josh may not have made the ritual of throwing a pie in the face of the player who hit the walk-off run for his team, but he made an institution out of it. Josh Reddick knew he was playing a game, which is why he switched his walk-up music to George Michael's Careless Whisper a few years back just to keep things from getting stale. Like the back of their dugout. It was fun having Josh around the clubhouse for the past few seasons. Now, my son has a green and gold T shirt that can be worn with nostalgic pride, and a "remember when?" smile.
Bye, Josh. Thanks for the memories. And the pies.
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