Holding Pattern...

Hey there.

It's been a goofy week or so.

Last weekend was a hoot. We had another sort of Second Christmas at the Hotel Yorba. Paul and Lauren came up with a couple of Paul's friends from England. And Mike and Dolores came. And Jeff, too. I'll get some pictures up of all that some time this week.

And then Ted came up on Sunday. We had a great time hanging out and talking for hours on end. I think we took a two hour hot tub. Nothing like our Brokeback weekend from a year ago, but it was still great fun.

This weekend, Jake was sick and Rachel and I got in to making some space in the library/Rachel's office so Michael can stay there. I have a whole post brewing about all of the books in this house.

Anyway, the week before last, I was asked to interview for a contract job doing system design for the State of Indiana. The details are not 100% clear yet, but the work will involve creating a personality for the system, writing prompts, interviewing and coaching voice talent and such. It's a touch tone system, but it should still be an interesting project. It will make a bunch of money for Adapt. And it's a nice one for the resume. Well, my interviews went well, and they ended up picking me. How's that for a drastic life change in the blink of an eye?

The bummer part is it means 4-6 months in Indianapolis. Bi-weekly flybacks are helpful, but there's no getting around how much it's going to suck. And at the end of it, I just know I'm going to wake up one morning to realize that half the year is gone already. And I thought last year went by in a blink.

Anyway - that whole thing is part of why I haven't posted. I was waiting to find out how things were going to shake out. And I also generally don't like advertising when I'll be away. And we were freaking out a bit about what to do with Jake after school. We've gotten in to a great routine and he's been doing really well in school and everything. And wrestling and baseball will be starting soon. I ordered a wireless security camera so I could watch the house over the internet. And got another web cam so we can chat. If I'm gone for a week, Jake can go to Rachel's work after school, but not for months on end. So we were freaked out about that.

Then there's the dogs. Last time I went away for a week, they were freaks. They are used to having me home with them, and when they are alone all day and then I'm not there, they get weird. I've been working with them every day, throwing the ball, taking them for walks, and they've been getting better and better. But I'm the alpha dog, is what Rachel says, and when I'm not here, they go crazy. I was worried about that all going out the window and causing Rachel all kinds of stress.

Well, Rachel's Dad, Michael, stepped up and said he'd come stay with here Monday - Thursday. That is going to be a huge help to us. I can't even tell you how stressed out we were and what a relief it was when he offered to do that for us. Rachel cried and I almost did, but didn't because, you know, I'm a man, dammit..

OK, I cried a little.

So now we can relax a bit. It's still going to suck, of course, but at least I know someone will be here, Rachel will have help with the house, Jake will have some guidance, and the dogs will hopefully be OK, too.

And that's why we spent the weekend cleaning out the library/Rachel's office, formerly Lauren and Paul's Love Nest, and soon to be Grandpa's room.

I was supposed to be flying today and blogging from a Marriott, but there were a couple of contract glitches that need to be sorted out before I go. So I'm in this sort of strange holding pattern for a couple of days.

Oh, and Jake had to make a mousetrap boat as a follow on project to his mousetrap car from back in November...



So that is what's been going on here. What's up with you?

UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!

Robert Anton Wilson is still dead.

Never Whistle While You're Pissing...

R.I.P. R.A.W.

I didn't know what to do, so I just went to my bookshelf, took down a copy of The Illuminatus Trilogy, opened it to a random page and typed what I saw...

"I call it the no-ego trip. It's the biggest ego trip of all, of course, Anybody can learn it. A child of two months, a dog, a cat. But when an adult rediscovers it, after the habit of obedience and submission has crushed it out of him for years or decades, what happens can be a total disaster. That's why the Zen Roshis say, 'One who achieves supreme illumination is like an arrow flying straight to hell.' Keep in mind what I said about caution, George. You can release at any moment. It's great up there, and you need a mantra to keep you away from it until you learn how to use it. Here's your mantra, and if you knew the peril you are in you'd brutally burn it into your backside with a branding iron to make sure you'd never forget it: I Am The Robot. Repeat It."
"I Am The Robot."
"Hagbard made a face like a baboon and George laughed again at last. "When you get the time," Hagbard said, "look in to my little book, Never Whistle While You're Pissing- there are copies all over the ship. And keep in mind: you are the robot and you'll never be anything else. Of course, you're also th programmer, and even the meta-programmer; but that's a lesson, for another day. For now, just remember the mammal, the robot."
"I know," George said. "I've read T.S. Eliot, and now I understand him. 'Humility is endless.'"
"And humanity is created. The...other...is not human."
George said then, "So I've arrived. And it's just another starting place. The beginning of another trip. A harder trip."

I'm sure there is something appropriate in there. Maybe lots of things. Or maybe nothing.

I learned of his passing in an e-mail from Travis. That's kind of appropriate since it was Travis who introduced me to the mind bending works of Robert Anton Wilson when we were at Cal.

His books, well, most of the books I've read, anyway, are amazing. They aren't for everybody, but if they are for you, they will open your eyes to see everything around you both as they are and as they might be if you looked away for a second. To this day, when I read the mainstream press or watch television news, I can't help but shout out, "I have seen the fnords!" in my mind. If I shouted it out loud, those who haven't read any of his books would think I'm crazy. Plus, I not exactly sure how 'fnords' is pronounced. But I've seen them!

I don't pretend that I understand even half of it. It's a weird experience for me in that I get a lot of jokes and come to understand some deep truths, but all the while, I feel like I'm missing more than I'm getting, even though I'm getting a lot.

23 is a perfect example. I know there's something to it, but I would not be able to tell you what. But when Bush's approval rating falls from 26 to 23 percent, watch out!

I can't think of any other books I've read that while reading them have such an impact on my everyday reality. And I'm not the only one that has experienced this. You'll start seeing 23s everywhere - on license plates, addresses, phone numbers. Golden apples will pop out at you from weird places. And you'll never look at George Washington's face, or anything else, for that matter, on the dollar bill the same way again. It's almost entirely impossibly plausible, or perhaps implausibly likely.

He was also responsible for one of my favorite experiences with literature. He wrote a trilogy called "The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles." Basically, it was the story of Sigismundo Celine and serves as something of a back story to the later works - gives some of the (unlikely) history of free-masonry and cults and conspiracies and such. I came across the first book in a used book store, probably in Berkeley. The series was out of print, but I kept looking for the second book. I found it at a used book store on one of our Gualala trips years back. But the third, Nature's God, proved nearly impossible to find. I remember talking with Travis about it and he mentioned that some people think it doesn't exist. That would be just the sort of Grand Joke you might expect from Wilson, until it proved not to be true. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and Schrodinger's Cat definitely apply to that time period when the book may or may not have existed. It was a quest that lasted several years for me. Occasionally I would see copies for sale on eBay for a few hundred dollars. But I got the first two for a couple of bucks each used. And something in me made me question the authenticity of the items for sale. When I finally did get a copy (it was reprinted, so I guess there were a lot of people out there like me trying to find it - enough for another run, anyway) it was, unfortunately, a huge disappointment. I'd like to read it again to see if maybe I read it at a bad time, but when am I going to find time for that? Especially now that I am all in to Against The Day, I've got Infinite Jest on hold at around page 500 (and my weight seems to be hovering at 234 until I pick it up again), I'm supposed to read Extremely Loud, and Incredibly Close, with my friend John, and I just got The End Of Nature in the mail. And I think I loaned my copy to Dolores, anyway.

The funny thing, to me, anyway, is that he is one of my favorite authors and I always forget to list him or his books when I list my favorite authors and books in those "impress people"entries on MySpace or whatever. Now I have to add him to my ever growing list of authors I failed to see live when I had the chance.

I hate that list - Bukowski, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and now I have to add Robert Anton Wilson.

I did manage to see Hunter S. Thompson at Zellerbach, though. And I saw Jimmy Carter getting in to his limo outside of Cody's. We got there late. He was a lot shorter than I thought he would be.

Anyway, I've always taken "Never whistle wile you're pissing" to mean, be in the now, and focus on the task at hand, so to speak. I try to keep that in mind every day. The fact that I am no good at whistling makes it a little easier.

A couple of days later now...

...and it doesn't feel like a rut so much anymore. Kind of a groove with bumps.

Thanks for the good advice - I should know it's Winter and time to feel a little down. Even though the sun is shining it's not getting above 49 here. And we're in the teens at night.

I found this picture...


...and it kind of reminded me of how I felt sort of.

After that last post, I spent a bit over two hours on a nice long blog post about Bush's speech the other night. I was proud of it. And that's rare. I was going to cross post on my Daily KOS blog even. I mainly focussed on his non-accountability acceptance of responsibility. You know, when he said, "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibilty rests with me." I saw a few newspapers saying he accepted responsibility for the mistakes he made in Iraq.

He did no such thing and I went about parsing it. How it barely acknowledges mistakes by saying "Where mistakes have been made..." What does he mean by where? Fallujah? Baghdad? Abu Ghraib? It is almost beautiful how that was constructed - it leaves it up to the audinece to determine how much he is to blame for.

For me, it's along list of mistakes. But I'm sure my llist is shorter and more simplistic than, say, Juan Cole's. But I'm also sure my list is longer than most people's, and certainly longer than most Republicans'.

He then went on to say, "the responsibility rests with me." I majoree in English, and I'm familiar with passive voice. It's useful for turning a weak thesis in to a 3,000 word essay. That and bringing bagels to office hours will get you a B-. But this is something else - like "slumbering voice." When the responsibility is done resting, then what's it going to do? Will his conjoined twin separated at inauguration 'accountability' drop by?

I then pointed to the two things that I think were important in the speech. Like most of his speeches, there's nuggets of truth that can be extrapolated to reveal his true intentions. He mentions the Iraqis passing legislation to "share oil revenues among all Iraqis." That and his threats towards Iran and Syria and the deployment of Patriot missile batteries were the nuggets upon which I focussed.

OK, on the legislation - they are currently trying to pass this legislation that is not so much intended to share oil revenues with all Iraqis as it is to ensure that the profits from Iraqi oil go to a few Western companies. Here's a link. I read about it last week and when I heard that line in the speech, I thought, "Oh, of course, that makes sense." The point of the surge is to get Iraq just stable enough so that the legislature can get back to work and get that passed.

As for Iran and Syria - I think that's the next step. But mostly Iran. A second carrier group, Patriot missles, a Navy man in charge of Centcom now. It all makes sense. Who else has missiles that would use them? Will Patriot anti-missile batteries stop IEDs? No. Do the insurgents have missiles? No. To quote Walter Sobchak, "Am I wrong?"

Also, the Vietnam comparisons just don't end. Instead of Laos and Cambodia, we are now going in to Iran and Syria. And to quote The Dude, "What the f%*k does anything have to do with Vietnam, man?"

Anyway, I was almost done with my post. It was really long with lots of links. I even went ahead and wrote the last line:

"Some might say that this post is too negative, that it doesn't highlight the bright spots. And to those people I say, at least he only mentioned 9/11 once."

See, I was being self referential to earlier in the post where I mentioned he used his old invent hypothetical opposition and address it trick. I was then going back and fixing a thing or two when my computer froze. Froze hard. No mouse, nothing. I never thought I'd have to learn that lesson again, but I guess I did. Save early, save often. That's my mantra. I just forgot it. But I've saved this post a half dozen times. Hold on a minute...

...sorry, I had to save one more time.

Anyway, I will never recapture the last post. And I realize that if I had been writing (in Word) instead of blogging, I would have had an auto-save to go back to.

Oh, in that lost post, I linked quite a few times to the text of the speech at www.whitehouse.gov. It's easy to forget, and we should all be thankful that even though things are pretty messed up these days, even after the election, you can still deconstruct the President's speech and link to it on the Presidential website. Democracy really is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones.

I made some really yummy cookies today. If you're in the nieghborhood, stop by for some. Call first, though so I can get you throught he gate. Except the sisters, Laurie and Lauren, and Paul. You guys are on the perma-list.

Oh, one more thing. We had one of those kid firsts today. It seems like only yesterday we had the first loose tooth. Today marked the first time that a girl knocked on our door asking for Jake. Well, not counting Emily and Dre, but they're like little sisters. I'd tell you more about it, but it would embarrass Jake. In fact, don't mention it to him, OK?

When did my groove...

...become a rut? It still looks like a groove. Same as it did yesterday. And last week. And the week before that. The week before that I was in Trinidad, so that doesn't count. But before that it was a groove, I'm sure of it. But it just feels different lately.

I can't think of any one big thing that caused it. So then I started thinking it was a lot of little things. And today I tried a lot of little things to get out of it.

I ate better.

I worked hard all day.

I paid some bills.

Jake and I did 30 minutes of cardio.

Later we played some pool.

I found my water bottle and filled it thinking maybe I'm dehydrated.

I don't know what it is.

When Rachel got home, I listened to her talk about her day.

Then I told her about mine.

Then she did her thing and I did mine. We both had thngs to do.

Then I tucked her in around 9:00. And we got to talking. And I dumped 15 or 20 things that are on my mind. And I still feel like I had 15 or 20 more in there somewhere.

I came upon the notion that I don't have any long term goals right now. I mean, there's the ever present, "lose weight" and "save money." And I could definitely do better in both of those departments these days. But those are more like lifestyle changes I'm making and not really "goals." And I am making progress. And saying I want to lose 30 pounds and save $10,000 by August won't really change the fact that they are lifestyle changes and not goals.

Or will they? I don't know.

Rachel said I should write. Not blog, but write. Maybe just dig up some old journals and start typing them in to the computer. See what happens.

Maybe I'll try that.

If I come across anything amusing, I'll post it here.