I'm off to New York for the extended weekend. We're gonna tool around Brooklyn, visit my cousin's new house in Park Slope, and go by my Aunt's old brownstone in Flatbush. It's been a long time since I've been in Brooklyn, since my Aunt passed away.

When we were kids we'd drive down the Belt Parkway to her house, and there was a sigh that said "Welcome to Flatbush". It was the same sign they showed at the beginning of Welcome Back Kotter, and my brother would always point it out. I wonder if it's still there?

Scientific America: A matter of time

The gods confound the man who first found out How to distinguish hours. Confound him, too, Who in this place set up a sundial, To cut and hack my days so wretchedly Into small portions! --Titus Maccius Plautus (254?-184 B.C.)

I had the strangest dream last night. A friend's girlfriend build a rocket ship to travel into outer space, and I was invited to go along. On the ride to the launch pad I started to panic. What if the rocket exploded on takeoff? Images of early rocket trials flooded my mind. I thought if brilliant German scientist couldn't get it right the first time, how could my friend's girlfriend. As we approached the launch site, I saw that the rocket was actually a modified WWII P51 Mustang. I realized the only reason I was asked along was because I used to fly single engine aircraft, and I'd be the only one who could land the mustang on the moon. However, I have heard stories about flying the mustang, and how it's hard to see out of the front of the cockpit, and I have never landed a taildragger before. I really started to panic. As we stepped onto the launch pad, the mechanic pushed against the wing of the mustang, and it broke off and fell to the ground. Then I woke up.

finally, a little clarity...

nightly status phone meetings make Mark a dull boy...

Talking yesterday with a friend about upcoming travels. Am I excited? I am indeed...

Just so very bored today.

The project has entered testing and bug fixing stage. Every bug that gets assigned to me is like a cold hard slap in the face. You suck, (Slap!)…Maybe I need to get over it...you think?

There was this one corner downtown, I think it was around Nicolette and seventh street, that we'd walk by on occasion on the way to lunch. In the summer, when it was warm, you could smell the stench of sewer gas and soot as you passed this corner. Most people would be repelled by the stink, but it always reminded my of my Grand Aunt's house in Flatbush, and I'd feel melancholy for a few moments until I realized I was, in fact, smelling sewer gas.

Reason #2 I believe I've died and gone to hell: It seems that every job I have had in the past few years has been further and further from my home. And, every time I think I've found a new not so traffic congested route, they start road work on that route a few days later. This can only be the work of Satan.

I long for the days of working downtown, a mere fifteen minute commute via bus or bike.

A little of the old ultra violence…

Reason #1 I believe I've died and gone to hell: During the lunch hour with fellow software engineers, the conversation centered around the discussion of lawn sprinkler installation and state regulations requiring backflow devices on said sprinklers.

It's all about perception. I was walking along the creek path on Sunday night, and an elderly couple came riding down the path. It occurred to me that they were riding rather slowly, and I was almost keeping up with them. It made me wonder about getting old, and becoming less active. I got to thinking about human mortality, and how transient life can be. At this point the woman came screaming down the hill in front of me. She came flying past me with a huge grin on her face peddling away like mad, and went tearing down the path.

I've been staying up too late, and getting up too early. Usually, I can barely function on eight hours of sleep. Six hours makes me a bumbling idiot...well, more so anyway.

I hate the proxy server here at work. I understand the need for proxies, and I don't mind using them. It's just when they filter out all sorts of nonsensical items. Sure, its their servers and their bandwidth. I understand all that. But it still doesn't sit right with me. Any form of censorship is hard for me to swallow, especially when I want to look at a site on the way back machine, and the proxy denies me access…

photo(s) of the alba...err...ampersand

Since the surgery I have been applying vitamin E to the scar. A few people along the line have convinced me that it will help it heal. I was originally poking holes in vitamin E tablets, and then squirting the oil onto the scar and spreading it around. This worked fine, but E tablets also contain soybean oil and other products, and the oil was staining my shirts. Tam went to a specialty food store to find other vitamin E solutions. They gave her a bottle of pure vitamin E, and it has a handy roll-on top. I came home last night, and tam’s lips were looking rather shiny. She said she had applied the vitamin E to her lips because they were dry. In mid roll she had realize that this particular roll-on was being used on my scar that goes a fair way into my armpit, so for all practical purposes she was apply armpit E…

new shirt, new shoes, new pants…same old me.

New cloths make me feel like it's the first day of school. I always hated the first day of school.

Since we moved to our new apartment, we have been walking Uther down the street towards the creek. There a house a block down that has two big holes dug out of the front lawn. The holes are built up around the sides by a foot or so, and this creates a big crater effect. It looks as if two small meteors have crashed onto the front lawn. The owner planted grass in these craters, and placed a nice ring of purple flowers around the ridge of the craters. Each time we pass Tam and I have a conversation regarding the nature and purpose of these craters. Tam feels that they will eventually become two ponds that the owner will fill with carp and provide a summer home for a few ducks. Of course, she has always wanted a duck pond. She has been begging me for years to build one, so I figured she has a weird pond fetish, and this led her towards that conclusion. I have no idea what the craters are, and have been unable to come up with a reasonable hypothesis.

We have seen the owner out in the yard a few times, and he is usually trimming the purple flowers with a pair of small scissors. Each time we pass I whisper to Tam to ask him what the craters are for, but she declines, and I have been unable to muster the courage to ask him myself. I had all but decided the man was insane when Tam and her friend took Uther for a walk the other day. He was out preening, and her friend, intrigued by the craters, just out and ask him point blank, "What are these craters about?" he told her that they actually form an ampersand '&', but it has been such a burden maintaining them that now he calls them his albatross. Mystery solved?

Rough boys
Don't walk away
I wanna buy you leather...

The mole slayer…

A few years back I spent a summer or two playing golf. Well, I hit a lot of balls into the woods while hanging around with three other guys. On one particular day we were hacking balls around this public course in Minneapolis. It was a hot day, that mid summer Minnesota kind of hot. A hot where the humidity is upwards of 99%, and the air feels like warm water. We had reached the forth or fifth hole, and were waiting on the tee box for the group ahead of us to clear the fairway. As we sat and waited, the sun beat down on our backs. I became tired, hot and delirious.

After a few moments, a mole ran out from under the hedges just to the left of the tee box. It ran onto the tee, and starting running frantically in circles. We all just sort of stared at the mole for a second, too tired to have any kind of reaction. Then Irik, who was first up and was standing on the tee leaning on his driver, held his club way in the air and starting chasing the mole around the tee. His knees were pumping in the air, his club waving crazily, and he grinned maniacally as he ran chasing the mole. At first I was shocked at the energy he was displaying despite the great heat, and then I was amused by the comical way in which he was chasing the mole around the tee box. He seemed to run in circles forever. Then Rick sneered between his teeth, and said, "get ‘im!" We just looked at him, and then Irik changed the trajectory of the wildly swinging driver in mid swing and came down toward the mole. I never thought for a moment he would actually hit the mole. It was fleeing crazily away from the club-swinging madman, and Irik was off kilter as one leg was way in the air, and he was precariously balanced on the other. But, the club came down smooth and hard, and it landed a blow directly on top of the mole. The mole flew a few inches in the air, rotated a hundred and eighty degrees, and landed on its back stone cold dead.

We all just stared with our mouths open, stunned by the quick and cruel killing of the mole, and by the amazing and almost impossible blow Irik had landed with his driver. We stood for an eternity in the heat of the afternoon sun while the bugs gnawed and pierced our skin staring at the dead mole and then at Irik, and eventually someone said, "That was so fucking surreal." The fairway was clear, so we moved on.

How many times does a man have to get up out of his chair and get pulled back by his headphone cord until he realizes he’s a fool, and when will he relent and buy the wireless headphones he has been coveting (since his first pair broke into pieces).

leth·ar·gy
n. pl. leth·ar·gies

1: a state of comatose torpor [syn: lassitude, sluggishness]
2: lack of vitality or energy [syn: inanition, lassitude]
3: an unusual lack of energy [syn: languor, sluggishness]
4: a state of sluggishness, inactivity, and apathy
5: state of unconsciousness resembling deep sleep

That about sums up my feeling towards work lately...

This is what it will say on my tombstone:

Here lies a man who liked to lie down

A post from the other day got me thinking about all the menial jobs I have had, and I have decided to document them for posterity.

Job 10 and one half: itchin’ to get workin’

The one good thing about low end temp work is you never stay at any place too long…

I arrived at Top Temporary around seven A.M. after a two hour bus commute, and sat waiting in my plastic chair for my work assignment. I was tired and nervous, and my mouth was dry. I gnawed my way through a stale pastry, downed about five cups of burnt watery coffee, and waited. After about a half hour, the woman at the front counter called a few names, and mine was included in the list. The woman briefed us on our new job, and then asked us who had a car. We’d be going to some factory in North East Minneapolis. A guy named Dale said he had a car, and he was appointed the driver for the day. Dale looked and smelled stoned, and he had the slight order of urine emanating from his army jacket. It turned out that Dale was quite stoned, and wanted to further his state as he threw a large bag of marijuana in my lap from the front seat. "Roll one up", he said as he tossed a pack of rolling papers afterwards. At this point in my life I had made the decision that smoking dope at 7:30 in the morning on the way to a new job isn’t the best idea, but dale and the boys did not agree. I passed the bag to the temp worker sitting next to me who was more than willing to partake in Dale’s generosity. We spent the next twenty minutes driving to the factory as Dale and company talked about hockey and one of the temp receptionists with the large cans, and smoked themselves into a stupor.

There is something about a factory job, this overwhelming sense of despair and futility every time I walked through the factory door, the smell of fork lift exhaust and the warm dry heat that blasts from the huge heating units over head, the radio cranking a classic rock station at high volume. I don’t think I ever felt as depressed as I did starting a new temp factory job.

This particular factory job involved manufacturing insulation, the itchy scratchy fiberglass kind. The factory had a huge open room, and in the middle sat a monstrosity of a machine. This machine’s main purpose was spitting out long sheets of paper. Two sheets to be exact, both separated by six inches of scratchy fiberglass. My job was to stand at the mouth of this beast, and cut off sheets at a certain interval, roll them and stuff them into plastic bags. We’d haul these bags over to a waiting truck at the loading dock, and cram it full with insulation. I don’t think I have ever itched so much in my life.

The good thing about factory jobs is that they tend to adhere strictly to the eight hour day, two fifteen minute break and a half hour lunch rules. Some even had bells or buzzers signifying a break. Like the sweet voice of god himself, these bells were always welcomed. A break normally consisted of some Hostess product of some sort, and a good ten minutes of scratching.

Thankfully this particular job lasted only a few days. Not that the next was any better, just less itching.

For a while there I had the page title for the site set to 'All nude all the time!', a stupid joke really (sure I'm nude a lot, but what's it to you!). Sadly, this is the list of top search strings for the month of July:

        3.82% doa nude
        2.63% supertoys last all summer long
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        0.72% driving nude
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'keanu reeves nude', now that's just upsetting...

Every morning I drive by a house on the way to work. It’s a perfect house, perfect in the sense that it is meticulously cared for, never a blade of grass out of place, or a leaf in the driveway. It’s paint is in pristine condition, and I don’t think you’d find a chip or peel anywhere on the surface of the house. Almost every morning I drive by and see the owner out in the yard primping and preening his home. He picks leaves from the yard (or possibly lint), sweeps the sidewalk, mows and trims the hedges almost fanatically. The lawn is always within a half inch of a predefined height. I’d say four out of the five days a week I drive by, he is out there doing something. He is a young guy, maybe thirty at most, but, somehow, he has the free time to spend primping around the yard. It seems kinda sad to me, and such a waste of time. I yearn to have that kind of free time, but I’d spend it much more productively, like lying in the hammock, or going to matinee movies…

I don't mind being on hold, but is it really necessary to play musac versions of bad 70s pop songs wile I'm waiting for you to pick up the phone.

A few things that have been pleasing me lately…

1. Driving the creek road to work on a cool summer morning with the sunroof open listening to various CDs (ok, mainly Edith, but so…).

2. Morning walks with Uther (der gute hund) along the creek.

3. Evening walks with Uther (der gute hund) along the creek.

4. Revival films at the Oak Street…tonight they're showing the Producers. :)

5. Summer.

6. Summer…

Last year sometime someone broke into my car. They took my newly purchased Edith Piaf CD... I finally got around to buying a new one, and I am listening to it currently.

On the outside I may appear to be a lumbering American, but on the inside I am a petite pale skinned Frenchman smoking filterless cigarettes as a wine glass hangs nimbly from my frail fingers. oui...