Sailor Jim; Storyteller

Okay …. republican presidential candidate John McCain was a POW for five and a half years, enduring - as he’s described it - “brutal torture” that was so horrific that he “broke” and attempted to kill himself.  He even has put this in political ads.

Sooooooo, no post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) resulted due to this?  Vietnam, shot down, tortured for over five years, attempted suicide, and none of it affected him beyond that?  He’s never stated that he ever suffered from (or is still suffering from) PTSD and, as near as I can tell, not one print or broadcast reporter has called him on it.  They’ve gone rabidly after politicians for depression, alcohol, drugs, infidelity, illegal immigrant house staff, and stuff they did or said in their high school years, but McCain possibly having a fairly severe emotional disorder is being given a pass?

Somebody get Tom Brocaw down here for me to bitch slap, okay?

Hell, Wikipedia even lists this:

In August of 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain. McCain was subjected to repeated beatings and rope bindings, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery. After four days, McCain made an anti-American propaganda “confession”. He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he would later write, “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”

 Okay, I wanna know why the hell hasn’t anyone demanded a clean bill of mental health on his guy?  I want to be able to vote a vet into office, but - holy pete! - as a PTSD sufferer myself, I know how it can screw a guy up when he’s under pressure and how it never, ever, totally goes away.  If McCain is still suffering from PTSD, I’d really like to know about it prior to November.  I’d also like to know why the hell aren’t any news agencies asking about this and trying to discover how stable the fella really is?  Are there special orders to leave him alone on this?  I know that Bush’s people attacked this point during the last election, while doing their best to ensure the nomination, but was it ever settled?  I’ve searched the web and news, and I get bupkis!

Has anyone seen anything other than blog entries and the like?

Well, crap.

Yesterday, I wrote about this article that was - or so it seemed - yet another in an endless series of “science explains all” type papers, this one taking on that time loved subject, how come Stradivari made such good stuff.  My final line was, as you might recall, “There are no simple answers, just lazy scientists.”

And, sometimes, it’s actually lazy writers who screw up …

Here’s the actual abstract for the paper that the article was about and - surprise, surprise - it really has nothing much to do with what I was carping about.  It was … well, the title really says it all: A Comparison of Wood Density between Classical Cremonese and Modern Violins. That’s right, they were trying to come up with a good scientific reason that Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri Del Gesu’s instruments sound so much better than any of the modern stuff.

In my defense, I’ve seen - and become rather disgusted with - dozens of articles over the years that attempt to do exactly what I was bitching about, come up with the one thing that made Strads so damn good, that it was very easy to take the Wired article at face value and run with it, rather than doing my homework to ensure that my source material was on the up and up.  In short, it pushed the right button and out popped one of my knee-jerk reactions.  Mea Cupa and all that.

By the way, if you have nothing better to do, download the actual paper and give it a read.  Fascinating stuff.  Although … and I feel that I have to say this … it seems that comparing classic instruments with modern ones - which is to say, violins and such that have aged for a couple of hundred years compared to violins that have aged, at the oldest, a little over a decade - to determine why the classic instruments sound so much better is a tad … well, odd.  I mean, couldn’t the simple fact that the Stradivari and Del Gesu instruments have aged over three hundred years - and that’s over three hundred years of being carefully maintained and cherished by professionals - have something to do with their sound?  It seems reasonable to me, but I’m not a scientist or musician, nor do I play one on television.

Anyway, my bad and I apologize to anyone injured by my hastily written opinion.  (That’s right, Sailor Jim Johnston is a big enough man to admit when he’s wrong … which puts me several billion points ahead of Bush.)

Not!

Here’s another bunch of egg-heads trying to explain why Stradivari made such good instruments.  This bunch ran several of his violins through a CT scan and discovered - surprise, surprise - that the wood he used “… possessed an exceptionally uniform density, with little variation in growth rings added by trees each season.”  They attributed this to the fact that he used wood harvested from trees that grew during The Little Ice Age, which insured the density.

Well that ought to do it.  Thanks, scientists, well done.  Oh … sorry, before you go and record this one in the win column for good old “science explains all,” would you mind taking it a step further and explaining exactly why the other musical instrument makers who used the exact bloody same wood didn’t end up with anything even approaching Stradivari’s work?!?  I mean, are you saying that he was the only violin maker at the time, or that the others didn’t use the same wood, or that The Little Ice Age only affected trees that he used, or what?

Science … feh.

His stuff was good not because of the wood, the varnish, the glues, the soaking, or the boiling.  His stuff was good because he was a master … and because of the wood, the varnish, the glues, the soaking, and the boiling!   There is no one answer, no one solution; to simply record one oddity and announce that this is the answer is like simply saying the Big Bang created everything and ignoring the guy waving his hand in the back who’s asking, “But what preceded the Big Bang, then?”  There are no simple answers, just lazy scientists.

Excellent films.  The former is a Pixar work of art and one of the prettiest animated feature films I’ve seen in years; the latter is a marvelously funny retelling of a classic story (I never thought I’d like anyone but the immortal Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, but I was wrong) that kept all the fun catch-phrases and bits, but also managed to up-date it superbly.

In short, spend the cash and catch both on the big screen if you have the chance.

Okay, so I’m hired for a gig and it’s even going to pay me more money than I thought it would.

Fine, that’s not much.  A little negative karma will be coming to balance it out, like - oh, I dunno - like I’ll get a cavity or something.

Okay, so - at the same time - I got called in to interview for an Admin Assist job at a county agency.

Fine, that’s probably not even going to require much balancing at all.  Maybe the cavity will be on a Saturday night instead of a weekday.

Okay, so when I first meet the head of personnel for the Admin Assist job, she hands me a second job description and asks me if I’d mind being interviewed for it, instead.  I look at the description … it’s for a Program Specialist Benefits Counselor.

(hamanahamanahamana)

I say, sure … no problem.  She leaves me to read over the job description.  Participates in program planning, development, and implementation; Interviews clients to gather information; Documents; Develops; Coordinates; Assists; Identifies … shit, I could do this job in my sleep!  This is exactly the sort of thing I should be doing and - HOLY PETE! - lookit the salary and benefits!!  Oh … ah … there it is.

Calls for a four year degree.  I see, okay, so this is the little extra balance that Karma needs for the Admin Assist interview; to show me what might have been and then snatch it away.  Fine.  No biggie.

After a bit, she comes back and takes me into a conference room for my interview.  I relaxed and enjoyed the interview (I mean, what the hell … I was already all-but hired by the first place, so this was just a long shot, anyway), smiling and making little jokes as we went through the procedure.  The head of the program asked me about my background and I gave some good examples to show how my military training and civilian job heterodyne nicely with their needs.  The head of personnel asked me about some specifics and I waltzed through, staying light and easy and demonstrating how I was all things to all men.  The lady who’d be my boss, who’d I be the Admin Assist for, asked some odd and fairly quirky questions which - I assume - were intended to plumb the depths of my personality and I had them all laughing by the time I got done answering.

In short, it was a really good interview and a good time was had by all.

And then, just at the end, the head of personnel asked which job was I more interested in, the Admin Assist or the Counselor gig?

I smiled sadly and explained that she must have missed the fact that I didn’t have the necessary college for the Counselor position, so the point was actually moot.

She replied that they were willing to waive the degree and that, after reviewing my application, that I had the perfect combination of skills, training, and experience they were looking for in a counselor … so was I interested in the position?

(hamanahamanahamana)

I finally got my jaw to work and stammered out something along the lines of “uh-huh.”

I actually have a shot at a really good gig … I didn’t put in for it, they wanted me for it based on my application for a far lesser job.

Oh my god … I’m going to lose all my teeth, aren’t I?!?

I was offered the Vision Center gig today.  $7.90 an hour and all the contact lenses I can eat.  More than I thought it was going to be and, as a topper, I get special training in how to fit people for glasses and measure eyeballs.  Y’know, that little thing the glasses folks do, holding a small ruler of sorts up and looking into your eyes?  That.  It’s still a part-time gig, so it’ll only be around three or four days a week, but what the hell?

The only thing that could possibly bitch it up is my failing either the background investigation or pee-pee test.

Best of all, I have an interview tomorrow for an even better job … who knows, maybe luck is finally going to fall my way!

A local county agency just called, not twenty minutes ago, asking if I was still interested in an Administrative Assistant position I’d applied for a while back.  (Apparently, the young lady they hired in lieu of moi - the fools - decided that full-time motherhood was more important.)  I have an interview for Wednesday.  This job is full-time and pays a whopping $2500.00 a month.

Geez, I guess this is Da Lawds way of saying, “Yo, Dude, yer retirement is over!”

1.  The rattle ball is mine!  Touch it and die!  Play with it and you’ll wish I’d simply killed you!

2.  The rattle ball is a great toy, but it’s improved a thousand percent when I use daddies foot as a rattle ball aide!

3.  If daddies wearing a sock, the ball can be forgotten in the heat of battle to attack the sock.

4.  Reaching down and prying me off of the sock only means that daddies hands are now part of the battle.

5.  Playing with daddies sock and hands makes mommy laugh, so it must be a good thing.

6.  Never touch mommies socks and hands!

7.  Daddy sure knows a lot of odd words, but he must enjoy playing as much as he yells.

Good interview, actually.

I kept it low level and used all my people skills.  The interviewers, both female, seemed pleased with me and my replies.  No silly-shit questions, just “give me an example of a time when you demonstrated … ” sort of things.

The gig is part-time, around 24 to 32 hours a week, and I’ll be working full days (none of the “four hours a day” sort of thing I was worried about), so the gas problem is not really a problem.  Drive in three or four days a week, work for eight hours and drive home; earning around fifty bucks a day minus twelve bucks for gas a day for a thirty-eight dollar profit per day, around one hundred and fifty bucks per week … that ain’t too bad.

I’ll have to go in for a pee-pee test on Monday (I warned them about the fact that I was on meds and they said to just bring the bottle with me when I’m tested) and then it’ll take a few days to do the background investigation.  I got a nice laugh from them by saying, when the personnel lady asked me if I had any aliases, that I’d once been known as D.B. Cooper …

One fifty a week,  six c notes a month … all for helping people pick out glasses and doing the paperwork.  Not too bad … especially since retirement sucks.

(Or is Fate just sitting there, hiding around the corner and waiting to jump out when I let down my guard?  Jeez, it’s a bitch being me at times, y’know?)

Remember that interview I had for the meat stocker gig?

Well, the personnel lady - reviewing my application for her records - noted my office experience and, surprisingly, put two and two together.  In this case, my experience was one of the twos and the fact that the manager in the optical section needed office help was the other.  She called and asked me if I’d be interested in the job.  I said that I would and she put in a request to list the vacancy.  That was two days ago and today she called to see if I could come in for an interview tomorrow at ten.

After a brief pause, I said, “Um … tomorrow is Saturday, you know.  You want me to come in for an interview on Saturday?”

“Sure, the manager doing the interview will be here and no time like the present.  Besides, she wants help like yesterday, so she wants to take a look at you as soon as possible,” she explained.

Okay, now I get to see just how powerful is my weirdness field.  This is a job, a vacancy, that was only opened after the personnel lady realized that she had an application from someone perfect for the gig, right?

So here’s the question:  Exactly what am I going to do, what answer will I get wrong or what reply will I make that’s too damn odd, that screws me out of this job?

On the other hand, I believe it’s a part-time position.  Maybe they’ll love me and want to hire me on the spot … but they’ll only want me for four hours a day.  It’s three to four gallons of gas to get to and from Jasper, where the job is, so that’s - at the moment - around $12 to $16 dollars a day worth of gas.  If they pay me close to the minimum, say six bucks an hour, then I’d only be making (before taxes, of course) $24 a day … which, after gas is deducted, will only actually be around $8 to $12 a day and $40 to $60 a week.  Is making between $160 and $240 a month worth the hassle?

If it was eight hours a day, but only three days a week … well, hell, that’d be better since I wouldn’t be driving in on the days in-between and would end up spending less on gas, meaning more profit for Grace Johnston’s favorite sailor son.

So maybe, instead of dangling a good job in-front of me and then making me lose it, my weirdness field is going to get me a good job that I can’t afford to accept, huh?

I’ll write tomorrow and let you all know how it went.

I’ve used my down time due to my urinary infection (my penal time, if you will) to reread Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason.

Only in a country where ignorance is valued and education has become a distant back seat to entertainment, can people like George W. Bush and Dick Chaney have weaseled their way into power and then set to systematically dismantling the systems that prevent massive abuse of power.  The fact that, in order to prevent these sort of abuses, all people actually have to be able, and willing, to do is read … it’s enough to make one weep.  We have become a nation dependent on sound bites and news clips, and the absolute worse part of it is that - were you to say as much to an average citizen - it would be readily acknowledged and admitted … and the vast majority would be baffled to hear that depending on such in no way makes them an informed or aware citizen of America.

(I can always tell when a medication is making me depressed … it’s when I start rereading through my political library.)

Okay, let’s see … Sulfamethoxazole twice a day (on an empty stomach and with plenty of fluid) for the infection, Phenazopyridine three times a day (with food and plenty of fluid) for “urinary discomfort” and - apparently - to amuse the patient with the dazzling day-glow color the piss becomes, and Percocet every four to six hours for the entire “yaaaaaaa, kill me or rip the damn thing off” feeling.

Only ten Percocet, so they only lasted a day and a half … which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, really.  Made me dizzy as shit and gave me some truly twisted dreams.

Ran out of the Phenazopyridine this morning, which is also okay, since I’m pretty sure that the “urinary discomfort” is going to be okay at this point … and day-glow orange piss only has a limited entertainment value, anyway.

The Sulfamethoxazole is good for the next few days, shouldn’t run out until Monday, at which time my little infection should be nothing more than an horribly painful, but whimsically told, memory to delight and disgust the unsuspecting listener, casually tossed into any random conversation like a playful hand grenade.

During the past few days I learned some very important life lessons … for instance, when the instructions say “take on an empty stomach,” it really means “either take on an empty stomach or it will empty the stomach for you.”  At the same time, anything that says “take with food” means “either take with food or prepare to suffer abdominal pain the likes of which haven’t been experienced since ritual disemboweling was discontinued.”

(By the way, there really should be a warning label on the Percocet that says something like “take with food or without food or whatever, dude … just enjoy the ride and ignore the purple snakes.”)

Oh, by the way, if anyone else ends up taking these pills in combination, here’s a little advice from your favorite sailor:

1.  Timing is everything, so do your living best to make sure you take the “take on an empty stomach” stuff at least two hours before or after the “take with food” stuff.  Ignore this at your own peril.

2.  Everything is going to say “drink plenty of water” while taking these meds, so remember that whatever goes in, gotta come out and plan ahead.

3.  Remember that stuff for “urinary discomfort?”  It means that it sorta numbs the urinary tract, which - trust me - was a good thing from the get-go, but does result in a rather odd side effect that wasn’t noted on the instruction sheet … it changes the “gotta go” feeling.  You know what I mean, the feeling that tells you that you need to wee-wee?  Well, this stuff sorta damps down on that feeling … which, if you don’t pay careful attention to the new sensations, can lead to some really tacky accidents with number 2, above.  Also, since it colors the urine playfully (which will stain, by the by), it can be quite disgusting.

4.  Which brings us to the stuff for pain, which is just Oxycodone with a little acetaminophen tossed in, and will knock you on your ass and/or put you to bed.  (Actually mileage depends on your personal vehicle, driving conditions, and how much drugs you’ve slammed in the past.)  Combine being pretty much knocked out with 2 and 3, above, and the possibility for disastrous oopsies approaches one hundred percent.

Bottom line:  Easy on the pain stuff, space out the “take on an empty stomach” stuff from the “take with food” stuff, go the bathroom every fifteen minutes while awake (just to be safe), and - no matter how embarrassing it might seem - invest in a small box of Depends or sleep on a plastic sheet for the first day or so and be ready to wash bedding.  (Added aside:  Wearing a condom to bed might seem like a clever solution, but - trust me on this - it only leads to sillier accidents and lots of wifely smirks.  Give it a pass.)

I am beginning to loath the taste of cranberries and I’ve come to appreciate William Claude Dunkenfield’s opinion of water; if I have to drink another quart of the filthy muck, I may puke.

On the other hand, peeing without pain is almost worth any price.

What sort of sick and twisted world is it where one’s best friend, all of a sudden, becomes his worse enemy?!?

I never th0ought it could happen to me, not to me … and Squeeker!  But there it was!

It was, in all aspects, a normal enough Friday.  Oh, I had a sore back, but I’d been pushing myself a bit hard, so it was understandable.  A lovely day … then, around six in the evening, he struck!

Burning while peeing!

I couldn’t believe it!  Pain, no matter how slight, during our ’special time?!?’  Was my old friend turning a little kinky in his old age?

Then it got worse.  More frequent trips to the john, more and more pain while peeing; it got to the point that I was pissing every five or ten minutes and the pain was intense.  I looked it up on the Internet and decided that I had some sort of urinary tract infection.  The recommendation was to pound water and, if it didn’t clear up with a day or so, take it to a doctor.

So I started drinking around a liter every half hour.  Dian, predicting that I’d be heading to the emergency room before dawn, hit the hay for as much sleep as she could get and I sat up with my traitorous ex-best friend.

Then the night because nightmarish … I started passing blood!  The pain was indescribable.  I woke Dian and begged for the sweet release of death.  She got the car keys.

The emergency room guy, a little skeptical, asked for a urine sample.  I brought him back something that would have made Dracula smack his lips and they immediately started tests to check for kidney stones.  (Shipmates, my father was pestered with kidney stones and, from his description, I really want no part of that action!)

Time passed slowly.  Two a.m.; three a.m.; four a.m.; five a.m. … finally, after my umpteenth trip to the bathroom (where I’d started to see little blood red bits of … I dunno, tissue of some sort at the beginning of each pee and the pain was bad enough that I’d started yodeling in the crapper at the end), the doctor came and announced that it wasn’t kidney stones.  It was a bad infection, one that had somehow eroded a vein (which accounted for the blood), but that it was easily treatable.  He put me down for a pain injection (which isn’t what it sounds like; it was actually a pain killer injection), antibiotics, and some specialty meds that would keep the “localized pain” down.

My last trip to the head, I stopped outside the door and just glared at the toilet bowl.  One of the nurses caught me at it and announced, “Sorry, but sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

I gave her my best lopsided smile and replied, “What kind of twisted world are we living in where a man’s penis becomes his worse enemy?!”

She gleefully snipped off another length of rubber tourniquet hose and called, “A woman’s world, of course!”

It’s now six p.m., everything healed enough so that I could crawl into bed without worrying if I was going to soak the mattress (at one point, I was going to sleep in the tub and say ta hell wid it) and the pain/blood is mostly gone.  I’ve gone through several large bottles of water, call it around a gallon and a half, have started on cranberry juice, and Dian’s no longer mother henning me.

As for Squeeker … what can I say?  Things have been sorta tense between us.  I know it wasn’t his fault, but … well, he hurt me and hurt me badly.  It’ll be a few days before our relationship is okay again, but I doubt if it’ll ever be back to ‘normal.’  How could it?

Too much water passed.

It was interesting, but that’s all.  Believe it or not, it was like every interview I’ve ever had while applying for a clerical gig.  Same damn stock questions as all the rest, including the silly season ones; “What tree would you be … what color would you choose … blah, blah, blah.”

The gig turned out to a night time job (from ten to seven, I believe she said) and involved, simply put, involved stocking the deli, specialty, and packaged meat sections.  Stocking meat products throughout the night … which didn’t sound terribly difficult, but neither did it sound terribly feasible.  I mean, I know this store and the areas that she was discussing and I couldn’t imagine it taking eight hours to fill even if it was totally empty by the end of the day.

So I said as much and she shrugged.  “If it takes less than eight hours, you’ll spend the remaining time assisting other departments.”

Other departments?  What other departments?

“Well, stocking shelves or taking deliveries or helping with cleaning or whatever is needed.”

Huh … so I asked what departments did the meat stockers generally assist, in that they must do it almost every night.

After a little hemming and hawing, she admitted that they spent most of their time helping the janitorial staff.  I smiled and said something to the effect that I understood why she had a vacancy, then.

The rest of the interview sorta went downhill from there and we were both a little relieved when it ended.  I don’t expect to hear back from her.

Here it comes, the second step in the three step plan.  The minimum wage will increase to $6.55 in less than thirty days.  (For those who are unaware of this plan, here’s a link.)  Which, of course, means that even more prices will go up and even more people will be laid off or just plain fired soon after.

Now, I’m not an economist (nor do I play one on television), but it seems to me that our countries financial well being is being administered by strategically shaved monkeys stuffed into really expensive suits.  I mean, it’s like their sole response to any financial problem is throw their shit at it and make as much noise as possible.

I once saw a very stupid headline that read:  County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds.  The gist was that this particular county was going to spend a quarter of a million dollars to publicize its tight financial state with the goal in mind of getting voters to approve higher taxes.  Okay, so if it worked, then they would get more money to run the county … but they’d still be out the quarter million.  And how many taxpayers are going to say, “Damn, would you look at that?  They must really need more funds if they’re willing to spend so much to get us to vote for higher taxes, huh?”

Okay, so our government has spent over 65 billion dollars on “Economic Stimulus Payments.”  Businesses are folding right and left, lots and lots of major employers are moving to less expensive countries, gas is slowly becoming more expensive than booze (which will really make MADD happy, I suppose), and unemployment is slowly heading to hitherto unknown heights, and our governments response is to spend more money.

Did we find more gold somewhere?  Are these billions coming out of a special secret fund that started back during WWII just in case of such an emergency?  Or is this made up money, pulled out of a bunch of well dressed monkey’s butts and handed out to people too damn stupid to realize that the answer to an economic problem isn’t spending money that doesn’t really exist!

Workers are upset that they’re paychecks are too small to buy what they need and want (mostly because prices keep going up for damn near everything, while they’re pay - in that they are minimum wage workers - stayed the same), so our government, instead of curtailing inflation and dealing with the reasons behind corporate greed, decided to increase the minimum wage over a three year period.

Well, that ought to do the trick, huh?  Because, as we all know, the answer to workers not having enough money to buy what they need is to pass a law making their employers pay them more money.  How elegantly simple … or simple minded, perhaps.  How is a corporation that has raised prices when their employees got the old rate going to respond to having to pay out more money?  Will they smile and explain to all their stockholders, “sorry, folks, but it’s the law … you’ll just have to get by with smaller dividends and profits … we know you’ll understand and be compassionate to the plight of the working poor, right?

Oh, hell, no!  They’ll raise their prices or lay off workers or, and more likely, do both!  The cost of the stuff the workers want and need will go up and chances are that their higher pay will actually buy less stuff, not more.  The rising prices will make all the unions try to renegotiate for their members, to raise salarys commiserately, and more companies, not wanting to deal with any of this new round of bullshit, will head overseas where minimum wage is around three cents an hour … and raise prices, still, just because they can.

The basic flaw with the capitalism philosophy is that it’s hinged on the good will and responsibility of the wealthy.  They have to be aware of their worker’s needs, loyal to the men and women who toil for them, and act accoringly to ensure that their workforce is - if not happy - at least able to continue working.  That is, they have to pay them enough to keep them going, in good health, and to inspire loyalty from the workers.  Men like Sam Walton understood that.

Men like George W. Bush, don’t.  To them, the goal is to make as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and if the faceless masses doing the actual work bitch about it, fuck them and move it all to Ecuador.  Look how much of the running of Texas he handed over to private industry back when he was Governor … this state used to be one of the best for air, water, and soil cleanliness.  Then he all but let the polluting industries write the state laws and now this once proud state is a friggin’ dump.  Men like him are doing the same thing with the countries government responsibilities and these “fixes” to the economy are proof.

I know that no nation on the planet will last forever and no ideology is perfect.  Most nations weaken and fall before the swords of invaders … I sometimes think ours will be the first that commits suicide.

Ah, ignore me … it’s been a bad day and my back is giving me hell, which always makes me gloomy.

I’ve been playing around, just thinking and taking notes, about an odd little time travel story.

One of the things I’ve always noted about a major chunk of time travel stuff is that one either transports one’s body into the past and exists as a unique entity or somehow transports one’s mind back along one’s time-line and exist as a more knowledgeable version of one’s younger self.

So I was watching one of the latter (Peggy Sue got Married, I believe) and followed it with a sort of reverse time travel thing (Big).  I mentioned to Dian that when Tom Hanks character grew to adult size overnight, it really should have killed him.  I mean, consider the physical change, right?

And then it hit me … what if some guy figured out a way to travel back in his own personal time line, but - as sort of a conservation of matter - had to take his older body along with him?  I mean, the entire sending one’s mind back to a younger self is a sort of immortality, isn’t it?  If one could do that, then one could wait until one’s deathbed and just send it all back to one’s ten year old self, and then relive everything.

But sending the entire body back … if you are at your 30th birthday party and you decide that the past year was full of shitty mistakes and decided to head back to your 29th birthday for a do-over, then people watching you at your 29th party would see your body go through all the little changes that occurred during that year.  Injuries, both minor and major, happening and healing in a few seconds, facial hair sprouting and disappearing, weight gain or loss; your 29 year old body would become your 30 year old body in a matter of seconds.  (A very minor Dorian Grey sort of deal.)

No immortality here; you would now be 30 years old - physically - on your 29th birthday.  Keep repeating the year, do it often enough and you could actually die of old age on your 29th birthday.  No way one could go back to one’s childhood, the forced changes to one’s adolescent body would kill it before one arrived!  I suspect anyone who could time travel in such a fashion would find it incredibly painful (all the aches and pains and all the small shit that was spread out over a year, all happening in seconds?) and would, therefor, limit oneself to small jumps … nothing more than a month, tops, and only then - generally speaking - in the case of an emergency.

Is the plane going down?  Jump back a day and cancel those tickets.

Lost everything when the stock market tanked?  Jump back a week and prepare.

Loved one dies or is horribly injured?  Jump back far enough to warn them or to show up and guide them through whatever safely.

Life seems totally fucked up every since that bully in the ninth grade made you eat a dog turd in front of your then girlfriend?  Well, sorry; better find a good shrink and get some therapy, because your ninth grade body would explode if it tried to deal with decades of growth and change in a few seconds.

I don’t know if there’s anything interesting in this, anything worth writing about, but I’m having fun tossing it around in my head.

Okay, so several years ago, the last time Dian and I were living in Burkeville, I filled out an application to work at the local Wal-Mart.  (Yeah, I know … but the job market is pretty tight out here.)  I never got called, so I wrote it off and, a little while later, we moved down to Orange.

Today, they called!  They originally called my old number, then they called the in-law’s number (which I had listed as an alternative number), who gave them my current number and I have an interview tomorrow for a meat stocking position … which, admittedly, sounds a little like a cross between a porno actor nom-de-stup (our newest adult sensation, Meat Stocker) and a really confused sexual predator (that’s right, sarge; the meat stalker struck again last night and grabbed this poor woman’s thawed chicken breasts).  I asked how she came up with my name and she alluded to the application and said, “Your name was at the top of the list.”

Now, I know for a fact that Wal-Mart doesn’t keep applications for this long, but I should look a gift horse in the meat stockings?

Anyway, the gig is for between ten at night and six in the morning (Yup, the midnight meat stocker!), so I don’t know if I’m all that interested in the job … but how could I refuse the interview?  I’ll write tomorrow and let you all know how it went.

Well, pooh!

I was mowing around the pool and didn’t see the little stump of the small tree I removed a few months ago.  It was covered by the tall grass, you see, because I was clever and cut it close to the ground … but, obviously, not close enough, since I bent the fuck out of the mower blade on it.  Wheeeeee.

I’ll bribe Dian with the offer of a Route 44 ice tea and head into town this evening, when the temperature has dropped to a chilly 105 degrees, and buy a replacement at the hardware store.  Maybe I’ll buy two … I cut several of those damn stumps low, y’know.

Actually, talking about stumps, somebody the other day asked me why stumps are always around two feet tall.  I asked him, “As opposed to what” and he replied, “As opposed to being at ground level, of course!”

The thing is that he hired a crew to take down some trees after Hurricane Rita came through the area and they left all the stumps around two feet tall, making it necessary for him to hire somebody else to grind the stumps down.  His point was that, for the money he paid, they should have cut the entire tree down, not just 99.9 percent of it.

I frowned at him for a moment, thinking to myself ‘Huh … he’s got a point there … ,’ until I realized the fatal flaw in his argument.

And I do mean ‘fatal,’ since cutting the tree down to the ground would require the person doing the cutting to operate a chainsaw on his knees!  Or while bent over like he was touching his toes, since there would be no other way to get that low.  Now I suppose that it’s physically possible to use a chainsaw in either of those fashions … but I sure as shit would surely hate being either on my knees or bent over if the tree started to fall the wrong way!!

I explained this and he did a classic facepalm in embarrassment, but then rallied and said, “Okay, so they can’t do it in one shot … so why the hell don’t them slice through the remaining two feet after the tree’s down?  I mean, there’d be no issue of safety if all they had to worry about was the two foot stump, would there?”

Cute visual image, huh?  Big lumberjack guy down on his knees, going though the entire notch and cut routine on a two foot stump and yelling ‘timber’ was it sort of rocked forward a few inches.  On the other hand, I saw no reason that a guy with a good chainsaw couldn’t simply cut straight through the stump around two inches off the ground and then simply push the cut off part off, and I said so.

He intends to have the next crew do exactly that, just to see what they say.  I must remember to tell him that the problem with stumps that are only four inches high is that they play merry hob with mower blades …

I look out of my window and what do I see?

Grass.

Acres of it.

All of which need mowing.

Oh, my aching butt … I mow a couple hours each day, now, and it’s a little like keeping the Golden Gate Bridge painted.  Y’know, one bunch finishes painting at one end and another starts up at the other?  I’d just like it to stay mowed for longer than a day.  The first time I finished, I felt great about it.  I really accomplished something special, getting all that grass mowed … then, while I put the mower up, I noticed that the area I started with was going to need mowing again soon.

That was back in March … now that it’s well into the growing cycle, I’m lucky if an area stays mowed for the day!

I have this recurring nightmare, where I push a mower through the grass, filling a bag and, when I turn to empty the bag, the grass has already grown back!  If I pause for longer than ten seconds, the grass lifts the mower up off the ground!

I’m waiting for the winter of my sweet contentment …