Veteran's Day

Veteran’s Day is for us all, whether we actually put on the uniform and saw combat or not. We turn ourselves upon those who did, awestruck, and try in any demonstrable effort to point our collective American focus on those who traded some measure of their freedom in exchange that we might not have to bargain with ours. We can’t know what it’s like to be 7000 miles away from everything we’ve ever known because our country, our people, asked us to go there. We can’t know how changed, transfigured, one might be afterwards.

There is a photograph of my grandfather in his living room standing in uniform arm in arm, smiling, with his wife who sits in that same room with him every day. They are who they are because he wore that. I am who I am because he wore that. We are all who we are because they wore that.

Sadly, last week reminded us that these stories do not always end in picturesque black and white photographs and the romance of how the Greatest Generation allowed us to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school in English. Sometimes the transfiguration, whatever its source, is not into something noble, beautiful, and romantic; sometimes there is a horrible metamorphosis, twisting at the soul of those caught between commitments and tragically unmoored from the mission they are commissioned to execute – our country, our people, who count on every man and woman in service, who need every man or woman in service – our safety, our freedom and our identity is their mission. Sometimes the tragedies are not quite so grotesque as unfolded last week in Texas. Sometimes it’s small, and simple, like the nameless stories that newspapers never cover like newly married couples who make their lifelong commitments just months before being flung across continents to carry out the yearlong ones. But I guess it’s only small and simple from the outside.

I have faith that that photograph and that couple and every wonderful and morose moment in between occurs under the watchful eye of a loving God, even, paradoxically, the murders at Ft. Hood. I certainly don’t understand how, and I am returned to the often unsatisfying “My ways are not your ways” from Isaiah 55:8, but to be fair, I don’t understand how the two people found their way from the photograph to their living room half a century later, either.

Let it at least serve as a terrible reminder for us, all of us, that we need them. And that we need Him. We need the servicemen and women, because without them, we are not “we.” Our country, our people are defined by the dividends of freedom they have voluntarily surrendered so that ours may collect interest. As we realize this, though, it may be easy to overlook the fact that as much as we need them, they need us, too. They keep going because of us. A care package, a letter, a meal, a handshake, a thank you serves to remind them that we have not forgotten that they have done something incomparably gracious just by doing their job, by being who they are. So I take this opportunity to say thank you to them for in their sacrifices, I see lives lived in the example of that loving God, whether they realize it or not, and a simple reminder to put our focus on them, and Him, today, on Veteran’s Day. But I guess it’s only simple from the outside.

Rain, rain, go away. (Not really; you're cool rain)

It's been raining around here a lot. That's ok on its own, but it's also getting cold, and the cold is empirically bad. It is a proven fact that people who like cold weather are sociopaths. I know you are probably thinking, "Ted Bundy killed people in Florida!" Aha! He was born in Vermont. Count it.

With these rains, though, comes thunder storms. It got me thinking about how when we were kids and somebody would say, "I saw thunder!" and then the other little smartass kids would say, "HA HA HA! You can't see thunder!" I was probably one of those smartass kids. I had a pretty vicious habit of correcting people when they made innocuous blunders when I was younger. Then I learned that people don't like it when you point out their flaws so pointedly, so I tried to lay off. I'm a recovering correctaholic.

The thing, though, is that there are two separate words, thunder and lightning, for basically the same thing. If you take a gander at my handle there, you can probably guess I know a little about sciencey things. So for those of you who don't know, I'll lay a little meteorology knowledge on you.

The exact mechanism of lightning forming is not well understood, but it's a discharge of static electricity (static electricity is the bitch kind of electricity) from a cloud to [usually] the ground. Even though it's the bitch kind, it's still a horrendous bolt of electricity that travels through the air, kind of like the boy in A Boy Named Sue. If you've ever held electricity in your hand, or things like extension cords, you notice that they kind of heat up. The lightning bolt named Sue is like that times a million. I don't know if a million is enough, but the air gets super hot and that expansion and re-contraction of air makes a boatload of noise. Think of the pwoompf sound that you hear when you light something on fire really fast. Except times a million.

Here's the thing: thunder is the sound that lightning makes. They are different sensory reactions to the same event. It's just that you see the lightning sooner due to the fact that it's really bright and you can see it from far away and light travels faster than sound. But, they aren't really different. If a cop asks about a barfight and the guy says he heard a slap, nobody's going to say, "HA HA HA! You can't hear a slap!"

So the moral of the story is, lay off on thunder and lightning. It's just a universal shared experience and the concept of language developed before we understood high energy fluid mechanics.

Also, I am writing this as I am watching the Green Bay-Minnesota game, and I have to say that I would not be that disappointed if I never heard Brett Favre's name ever again.

Sitting-O

I just got back from listening to Neal Jeffrey, a former QB (that's quarterback) for Baylor University and the San Diego Chargers, who gave what he called a pep talk for life at church. It was pretty much what you expect, a good testimony about his life in service to Christ, impressive (and self-deprecating) stories about playing football, and a little bit of stuttering. That's kind of his thing; he is a speaker who stutters (very well, he points out) while talking about faith.

It got me thinking, though, about how weird it is that when you sit around clapping for something cool somebody said, how do you know when to stop? Like, for instance, if you are at a Starland Vocal Band concert and after they finish Afternoon Delight, sure, you're clapping, but for how long? Eight claps? Twelve? Usually, you judge based on everyone else, right? Well, somebody's got to be the pioneer. He's like the guy who starts the wave, except in reverse. The guy who gets tired of smacking his hands together first.

I also have questions about when exactly a performance traverses from just sitting and clapping to standing up and clapping. What is that element in your speech that takes you over the edge? I'm guessing it has something to do with quality of booger jokes told. The same applies to jazz concerts.

Anyway, if any of you have been to performances and remember thinking, "This is the thing that will make me stand up when I start clapping. This guitar solo/tennis serve/ventriloquist trick/sawing magician's assistant in half/etc puts him over the edge." Or, "He was so close, but because he made fun of Democrats/Republicans/black people/children/asthmatics/applesauce/whatever, I'm only going to clap from my seat. And indignantly for only four claps, at that," I want to hear about it. I want to know where that edge is.

Would you please enter your phone number?

I made a pretty happy discovery yesterday: it looks like I can save some money on automobile insurance this year by switching to a different provider (oddly enough, not Geico). I had been using a certain online provider that has a cartoon trying to convince me to save the world by going paperless or something, and they don't have actual stores so it's all online or over the phone, which reminded me of something I hate. (I know, surprised, right?)

Have you ever called into an automated system and they ask you to enter a phone number or social security number or something? I have. The computer knows who you are, they can tell you your upcoming balance, your service plan, your whatever. But as soon as your fight your way through the labyrinthine thicket that is that computerized navigation system, the person makes you give them all that information all over again. There is nothing you can tell me that will convince me that this is not asinine.

There are a few conclusions I can draw from this: 1) Their technology is not sophisticated enough to tell the person who is calling, even though the Homework Hotline at my college could do that, 2) they don't trust their computer system to deliver the proper information, 3) they enjoy being inconvenient. All of which are good options.

So, the moral of the story is that the computerized navigations are stupid, and they don't have to be. Come on, non-threatening electronic voice. Step up your game.

Hey Sports Fans

I wanted to advertise some sports writing I and some of my friends are doing. Check it out at almostcompetitivechatter.blogspot.com and keep reading the observations at howobservant.blogspot.com

Here are a couple of phrases that I hate

I probably come across as an authoritarian agressor when it comes to proper speech usage, commercial likes, and decision making. That's not that true. I respect your preference to like stupid stuff, so long as you respect my right to criticize it. You can, of course, defend yourself (as you should), but chances are you are wrong anyway and will not win.

This is especially the case if you make a habit of using a particular set of words or phrases. My mom has a huge list, while most of hers are common errors made with actual words, notably the inexplicable "supposably" pronunciation for supposedly, which, in her mind, is grounds for sterilization. I have issues with that sometimes too, but I also have issues with words that are used that probably should not be nearly as often as they are. Let's take a look, shall we?

• Myself - This is one of the former complaints. This is misused all the time. It is the reflexive pronoun used for emphasis or reflection, like when the subject and object of a verb are the same: for instance, "I laughed so hard at their grammar mistakes that I peed myself." It is not a replacement for the standard nominative (I) or objective (me) pronouns like, "John and myself will empty the tiger's cage" or "Please send the shoes filled with champagne to either Hector or myself." No dice.
• Utilize - This is a longer word that means the same thing as use without bringing anything extra to the soup. This word should be used never.

I used an unnumered list, the inferior form of list, because I could only think of two at the time of writing this and a numbered list of 2 looks tacky, and quite frankly, we're all better that that. If you feel the need to demonstrate, please add your distasteful phrases in the comment section.

Is Little Debbie a good Hostess?

A discovery I made recently has the potential to ruin whatever health gains I may have been making in my unfortunately not regular enough visits to the local olympic swiming pool: the vending machine in my building at work has cinnamon streusel cake. You may not have known this about me, but I have strong and far reaching food tastes and opinions, and one of the is that Hostess makes super excellent breakfast baked goods. Another is that cinnamon is a flavor not to be trifled with; it does get jealous of chocolate and peanut butter. Hell hath no fury like a spice scorned.

My dad has been involved in the grocery business in some fashion for basically my whole life, and most of his -- he is the leprechaun from Lucky Charms. I'm joking of course, as that would be absurd. My mom's side of the family is my Irish side. As a result, though, he would periodically bring home retail products -- almost always "day old," which is groceryspeak for "old" -- some of which were sometimes strange and obscure, like weird cookies shaped like windmills or clogs, or lemon turnovers that come in that weird wrapper that can't quite decide if it's paper or plastic. It's the same stuff that breakfast burritos, the you know the kind that everyone seems to own but nobody really ever eats. Sometimes, though, my siblings and I would hit the individually packaged jackpot when he'd score something like Teddy Grahams, Koala Yummies or some other bear shaped cookie. Or, those glorious, glorious Hostess cakes.

Honey buns and the aforementioned delicate sweetness that is cinnamon streusel cake were the top choices in my mind. Like preservative laden versions of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, they were unmatched by their peers. Sure, Ho-Hos and Ding Dongs are vaguely inappropriately named delights and the confections that made my lunches the envy of the middle school (and it's a wonder I didn't weigh like 300 pounds) but they weren't an excuse to let you eat cakes that taste like candy for breakfast.

The hitch, though, is that for some reason the vending machine versions of these products tend to taste more decadent than the ones in stores. Maybe they benefit from aging, like a fine cheese, or maybe they have gone away from trans fats and the vending machine versions don't turn over fast enough for the inventory to have caught up. Or maybe the stores I shop at are just too high brow for such simple pleasures. All I know is that I have looked forward to coming into work everyday this week for y reakfast that will probably take 5 years off my otherwise impressive life expectancy.

I don't want to ruin the friendship

I was thinking about something that came up in the life of one of my girlfriend’s friend. One of the age old clichés that girls give guys, “I wouldn’t want to ruin a good friendship” is complete poppycock. Poppycock, I say! There is no circumstance that this statement would be true. The girl is either lying to him, and that she is really, quite simply, not attracted to him, or lying to herself, and is afraid of what would happen if she said yes. If she really valued the friendship, she would tell him the truth and actively ensure the friendship would not be ruined afterwards. If he cannot accept that, then he was lying to himself and was not really invested in the friendship, but rather a convoluted courtship and reached an unfortunate failure.

I have been lucky enough to experience one go the good way and one go the bad way. The difference is how we reacted to the admission. In both cases, it was I who wanted more. The good one happened earlier in my life, and fortunately for me, the friendship was important enough to her not to allow something like my romantic interest keep us from being friends; today, she is one of my closest. I don’t really understand what happened with the other. All I can figure is that I was not important enough for her to put in similar effort, and we are not part of each other’s lives, and it still bothers me, even though this happened some time ago. The fact that I have endured the first of these, though, proves that expression of romantic interest need not doom an actual platonic relationship.

The honest expression of emotion, however easy for me to write here, is not easy to actually commit to in practice. There is an established fear of rejection in all of us, and this is clearly a manifestation of that, which is counterintuitive, because the person doing the rejecting in this case is being pursued. But the real reason for hesitation is obscured, and when that happens, the friendship is being held back anyway. Like every healthy relationship, platonic, romantic or otherwise, honest communication is critical.

That idea is antithetical to the desired outcome of relationships, anyway; if someone is worth your friendship, they ought to be worth your better friendship, right? If they are worth a romantic relationship, they ought to be your friend, too. That is a definite success that my girlfriend and I have experienced, even if the achievement of that was realized in a roundabout way. To a degree, she could be a character in this story, with a very positive outcome.

The point is, though, that a friendship is not ruined by the expression of one party wanting more. It is ruined by the negative reactions of the parties involved. The object of desire can handle it perfectly and the desirer can e a crackpot and result in tragedy just as easily as the desired can turn awkward. Or there can be a combination of both. Or neither, and growth can occur. It’s all choice, and I hope my girlfriend’s friend makes a better one than the second girl in my story and I did.

iTunes? More like iSuck! No wait, that came out wrong...

Apple has done a great jo cornering the market on cool. Their gadgets and computers and cell phones are what it is to be cool in electronics right now. Kind of like Chevy Chase was for that brief year in 1975. If Apple made a toilet, hipsters would line up to do something like mix trendy drinks in them while listening to Vampire Weekend. What do hipsters drink? Zima? Do they still make that anymore?

I considered getting a Mac, because while no hipster, I am a marketing sheep. My interest in the iPhone is well documented and while I ended up not getting either one (the cost of a Macintosh computer made me want to vomit in my mouth), I did buy an iTouch. It is pretty phenomenal, actually, and proably the coolest thing I am likely to buy for some time, even though I am Paul McCartney tickets. It feels a little anxiety inducing to spend as much as he wants to his play his violin shaped bass, but it is getting better all the time.

My only complaint on the magnificent iPod (and is a growing complaint) is that usint iTunes, the software rudder that steers the entire iFleet, is a horrendously flamty experience. I don't know how everyone doesn't bring this up when talking about Apple products. So much of the Apple lineup is considered cool and accessible and what not (we used a Power ac in the Film Clu in college and it made me get all tingly inside -- sadly, they made me write on the social and technological equivalent of stone tablets), but iTunes, their ambassador the PC World, is like the equivalent of having Joe Biden deliver a speech when Barack Obama is sitting down next to him eating M&Ms.

The interface is not intuitive, it is not fast and it is not flexible while pretty much all of the qualities Apple wants us to think of when we think of them. The corporation has a very vertical organization, maintaining a sort of autocratic control of their products and software, which is delightfully ironic coming from a company that made an ad identifying its competition with Big Brother.

The default synchronization operation is to copy every music file I own to the 'Pod (what is with the iEverything anyway? I nGaeilge is the only place I've seen capital letters show up in the middle of the words...) How any people really want every mp3 they have on his or her player? I am not exactly Lester Bangs or Cameron Crowe, but all of ine doesn't fit and some of my music (gasp!) is kind of crappy (Sugar Sugar by the Archies? Really?) or at least not all of it is everyday material. It is a giant resource hog, too, and unless this is some cheeky, trendy form of self-sabotage, I don't get what their problem is. They also make a huge nagging production out of updating the version and make you couple it with Quicktime. If I wanted to be nagged about my music and movies, I'd have Jewish parents. (Jewish moms still nag, right?) As I am switching from one computer to a new one, my podcast schedule is really screwed up and it has not been obvious how to correct it and it took like 3 hours to fix my playlist because, I can only suspect, someone was mean to Apple founder Steve Jobs as a child and did this to get back him.

This is all particularly baffling because the iTouch itself is so completely the opposite. It took me like two seconds to do figure out how to do awesome stuff on it. I'm pretty sure I just found an app to make it a functional Star Trek phaser. My question is this: What's your deal, Apple? Did you decide "Hey, let's make like 90% of our stuff really cool, and the remaining 10%, the most critical 10% that the gadgets and things can't run without, the technological equivalent of gargling malt vinegar." I feel like we're getting a Steve Job on this.

I am such a nerd

Hey everyone, I am typing this from my brand new desktop computer. I built it myself! As if writing this blog didn't make me nerdy enough. I am still trying to fill in all the gaps and what not of doing all the software loads from scratch and copying my writing and music collection over, and I am also trying to think of a way not to make this sound like a 13 year old girl's livejournal.

Oh, I have it. My parents had no faith that I could accomplish this task. While the only hiccups so far tthat I have run into are that I bought a fan I didn't need and I haven't sorted out my S/PDIF to HDMI issues so I am silently blogging right now, neither my mom nor my dad really expected that I would end up with a working computer at the end of my little purchase. Surely I am not the only one of you who gets this treatment.

Engineering has had a strange effect on the way they handle me. This task of building computers, routinely handled ably by 15 year olds, is one of those things that their skepticism will not permit them to think I am capale of, even though I do in fact have a master's degree in a technical field. It's not like I'm trying to pick out a tie for a suit, am I right?