Walking the Dog

A lot of interesting things happen when I walk my dog. A lot of interesting people come up to him. But last night takes the cake in recent memory. My Alaskan Malamute stopped to relieve himself, no. 1 style. A gringo* joined him. I kid you not. A gregarious Spanish-speaking Mexican fella walked up beside him, whipped it out, and aimed at the same spot -- all while my dog was still peeing! -- to dispense processed cerveza, I imagine.

*Well. The. Hell. Something new is learned every day. It was brought to my attention that my usage of gringo was contradicting the additional context. That is true.

Here I thought gringo was the Mexican equivalent for outlaw or cowboy. I was somewhat close but definitely not close enough. Had no idea it is a disparaging term let alone that a white feller is supposed to consider being called it disparaging. That's what I get for watching old westerns with my head in a bowl of popcorn. That and an awful ear for speech makes me often oblivious to linguistic stereotyping. My mistake. 6:30 pm

winner and champion

who would win, t-rex or george washington? which wins, rock, paper or hurricane? what about rock, paper, lava?

i don't know the answers to these all-important questions. i don't even know why they're important. but there they are, out there, demanding answers.

the temptation is to provide a non sequiter response, consistent with the question. but the reality is that such disinformation is remembered, with disdain, long after the question is forgotten.

what to do, what to do...?

more importantly, how did i get myself into this moral quagmire? oh, yes. i agreed to become a parent.

like any long slide into lifelong dependency, this one began innocuously. with a pair of kittens. "mikey," my wife trilled sweetly. "we have to have the kittens." i didn't see the harm. cats are low-maintenance. sure, let's have the kittens.

before long it was my sole responsibility to clean out the litter box. and still i did not see.

the next escalation came a few years later. enough time had gone by that, again, i hardly noticed. "mikey, we have to have the dogs." not one, two. golden retrievers. famously good with children.

me, blindly agreeable.

a few more years, and our symmetry was still intact. two cats, two dogs, two married people. then, one blissful day, it came...

"mikey, we have to have the children."

this time i noticed. and i saw the perfection, the patience, the persistence of the plan.

the slow start. the ramping up. the enduring commitment.

the seismic drop of the hammer.

my awareness came too late. i was invested in the cats and the dogs, not to mention my wife. dominoes fell, events transpired, births ensued. all led inexorably to the question: who would win, t-rex or george washington?

the answer is neither. the winner would be my wife, victorious without ever firing a shot.

smoke you

smoke. smoking. smokers.

i don't like any of them.

smoking-related diseases kill 425,000 americans every year. that's a lot of damn americans. that's like filling up safeco field and killing everybody in the stands...ten times a year.

but you know what? smokers know what they're getting into. which must be why they're all such aggressively antisocial deathmongers.

smokers will strap a child into a carseat, then fill up the car with smoke. they'll sit in a nonsmoking section and light up. they'll blow smoke in the direction of me and my family (at which point i'll sometimes volunteer to help expedite their statistic-hood).

and every smoker who has ever driven a car will throw their cigarettes onto the road.

i really hate that.

so recently i spent a few days collecting roadside cigarette butts. i filled bag after bag with stinking, soggy filters. i loaded up my garage with the bags, and then waited for the right opportunity.

it came yesterday.

after a day of rain, followed by clearing skies, a guy driving a little convertible flicked his cig back over his shoulder, right in front of me. further up he pulled into a parking spot, and i pulled in behind him.

as reasonably and sweetly as you can imagine, i mentioned that he seemed to have lost something on the road. i held up a cigarette butt for his benefit (actually, it was one of the butts i'd collected earlier, but i didn't think he'd notice the difference).

he got a shocked look on his face, and said something rude. composed and pleasant, i told him about the tons of waste thrown by smokers onto our roadways each year, and couldn't he please be more careful in the future?

he got ruder still. in fact, no matter how i tried to reason with him, he just got more and more vile-tempered and ill-mannered. eventually he picked up yet another cigarette butt off the sidewalk and flicked it at me. triumphant, he turned and strode into a nearby building.

and i watched him go.

then i went back to my car and hauled a huge, butt-filled trash bag (one of those heavy-duty black bags) out onto the sidewalk. i dragged it over to the side of his nice little convertible and dead-lifted it up over the side.

gosh, it was heavy. and soggy.

that was my observation as i dumped the bag into his nice little car. just filled it up, over the seats and into every nook and cupholder. filled it up as a reminder to this particular smoker that his cigarette butts really add up over time.

i'm sure he'll understand and appreciate the message. if not, i have several more bags in my garage.

Hi...

at this point i lose all composure and break down in tears. given the fact that i never cry, naturally people rush up and clamor about me.

they don't know how close they were to clamoring about me, instead, at my funeral.

before i go on, it's important that you know that i'm not prone to fits of drama-queenishness. i'm more prone to stoicnicity and stiff-upper-lipicity.

so when a come-apart happens, it's generally genuine.

i had planned to begin posting to this blog weeks ago. but a cross-country move and two cross-country drives intervened, and my priorities were rearranged.

while on the second cross-country trip, driving my car from north carolina to seattle, i encountered a rogue thunderstorm in eastern colorado. mid-storm my car hydroplaned from the fast lane to the ditch.

i went from 70-to-zero with freakish quickness. in the process i crossed three lanes, two medians and a barb-wire fence. my car and i performed two complete 360s. i had enough chances to roll/flip/invert for a lengthy x-treme driving highlight package.

dale earnhardt died in a car-related event that seemed innocuous by comparison. the young woman who stopped to check on me said, "it looked like you were flying."

and yet.

my car and i did not flip. we were not broadsided by oncoming traffic. we did not smash into a guard rail.

instead, we nestled into a field of tall, lush weeds, which acted as a crash stunt cushion. the car was bruised, but not seriously. and i was completely unscathed. not so much as a heart murmer.

within an hour or so ford roadside assistance sent a truck to pull me back onto the road. after a brief period of uncertainty, the auto proved completely mobile.

and while my driving was temporarily more conservative, i've since resumed my regular road demeanor.

fact is, the crying jag mentioned above never actually happened. but it seems like it should have, doesn't it? better people than i have died or been maimed with far less provocation. my illusion of control was nonchalantly snatched away, shredded, and returned to me. any or all of these disconcerting events would warrant some introspective wailing and metaphorical wringing of hands, don'tcha think?

apparently not.

carry on.

The Insipid MSNBC

When MSNBC first arrived on the scene in 1997 (?), I loved it (okay, loved Soledad O'Brien). I watched her entire shift as I worked from home as a freelancer. I got over my three-month crush quickly when I took a job where TVs weren't ideal. The news wasn't any better than CNN but did have a fresh look, which appealed to my twentysomething eyes, and went on to become the staple look for movie sets requiring high tech information bunkers.

Seven years later I find myself "watching" MSNBC again. I can't tell you anything about the news anchors or the set. I use TV more as radio these days since news radio seems to have abandoned the airwaves. My watching lately is due to NBC's Olympic coverage bouncing around six or seven channels. However, with MSNBC I have noticed I don't turn it off when they abandoned Olympic coverage. So, I watched attentively for five minutes. Then either turned on CBC for their fine Olympic coverage or turned off the TV.

Today, I set my alarm for 8:30 to remind myself to turn on MSNBC for the U.S. women's soccer game against the Matildas, as Australia's womens team is called. Problem no. 1 was that the game started at 8 am. Thanks MSNBC partner, NBC, for the faulty info.

The game was uneventful and was a 1-1 final after the U.S. gave up a late goal in the 75th minute.

Immediately following the game, the newsbreak from MSNBC leads with "Unmanned Predator spydrone crashed in Iraq" and finishes with "No further news."

God damn it, George Bush. This war is costing us hardware. Oh, the mechanicality!

Nothing like creating news. Where is Soledad O'Brien these days? I'd have excused her. ;)

[ed. Nothing like burying your lede.]

Illiteracy Can Save America

Seriously, has it come to this?

Last night, on a whim, I looked up the NJ and NY phone numbers for the ACLU and put them in my phone.

This morning, they're doing bag searches again to get on the ferry. And the guy doing the searches pulls me aside and says, "Sir, I feel that I need to confiscate this book."

Continued at Sea and Sky and Land

Better coffee through chemistry

On Sunday, I used the last of the beans in my apartment. On Monday, I made due with a cola. On Tuesday, I usually skip my coffee fix altogether, so I had forgotten to include beans in my day's errands. On Wednesday, today, right now! I am without coffee beans. Oh, the madness. Gives me a good excuse to walk the mile to the store before Seattle does yet another rendition of Miami with its too-hot-for-the-natives weather. Although, yes, I am not a native of Seattle, I do come from a 'colder' place, so I can play the trump card here, okay?! So, get off my back. I haven't had my coffee yet!

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil has announced the creation of a coffee DNA data bank, which will help the country improve the quality and size of its coffee crop.

The announcement was made Tuesday by Agriculture Minister Roberto Rodrigues during a ceremony at Embrapa, country's agricultural research agency.

Over the past two years and at a cost of 6 million reals ($2 million), Embrapa and the Sao Paulo State Research Foundation worked on the Coffee Genome Project, which mapped 200,000 coffee DNA sequences, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site.

CNN

Well, thank gawd for that. Amongst the thirty beans or so that I use for my French press, there is always one or two beans that simply do not get with the program. Yay! No more hand sifting.

Oh, sure, I'll have to wait a few years and those coffee suppliers will still have to do a better job of keeping the medium roast beans far, far away from my dark roast, but I'll wait. But I need some -- rgxxxkckxsggrrrz -- coffee of the Mr. Hyde or Dr. Jekyll variety, I don't care, right freaking now!

Sláinte!

Lombard's race is run
By Brendan Mooney

CATHAL LOMBARD has admitted to taking the performance enhancing drug Erythropoietin (EPO).

The 28-year-old Corkman will not contest the findings.

"I didn't set out to try and win medals or to make money. I just wanted to be as competitive as I could and have an equal chance with everyone else.

"I am not trying to justify what I did in any way; I am just saying this was the case, this is what I did and, hands up, I did it."

Lombard, whose honesty is a historic first, expressed his sorrow and apologised to everyone in advance of the pending statement from the Athletics Association of Ireland.

"I got a letter faxed to me on Friday from the Irish Sports Council informing me of a possible breach of the Irish anti-doping rules," he said.

Irish Examiner - registration required, so see New Zealand Herald

Ever since the line went beyond blurry to full-on, open use of professionals, the Olympics has been on a downward spiral. Now I do not care much if athletes use drugs or not, but if the rules forbid usage, then admit it. Come clean when caught. Of course, if judgment of rules abuse by the IOC is handled like the NCAA handles its issues, then many athletes are unfairly punished when taking something as simple as aspirin or cough medicine. Still, I gotta admire this Irish lad for his admission of guilt. Granted, he only deserves admiration because many, many athletes have long been denying their use of illegal substances.

Cathal, my next Guinness or Harp will be toasted your way. Sláinte!

web standards

So, I've finally come up for air. I'm taking too many breaths. I've got so much to do. So much to say. See in the last month -- off and on when not becoming a born again digital virgin (that's right, the technological kid has come in from the analog storm (storms are good every now and again)) -- I've been swimming through content management systems, blogware (again and sticking with WordPress) and web standards.

Before posting a lot about which you may have no interest in reading (then please skim!), know that this is all gonna see the light of day (sorta) at t-floss when its appearance starts to shift. Brand identity, baby! (If anybody knows the title of the book Tom Peters co-authored about branding, published circa 1980, please let me know. It was a fantastic book that doesn't contain all the awful self-help language he employs these days. The dark side of success. And branding. Everyone copies you and the parody makes the original laughable. Sorta. Anyway...)

There is a lot to web standards and accessibility. No more do web developers have to write six different pages for six different browsers. Mainly, they need to focus on 5% of the web's users who use standards-compliant browsers and then do some minimal hacking to accommodate the other 95%. Cough, Redmond, cough. Please make IE7 the best browser. :pray:

Anyway, thank gawd that the browser wars are (mostly) over. (Now, could we do something about our two-party political process! I'm all about the lack of standards when the two opposing parties are basically the same. Um, where was I?) That's right, back in the halcyon days of early 2001 when I took to the road, I tried to redesign my website from my car while doing 85 mph. Zogging while others thought zagging was cooler than zigging. Well, I quickly learned that my poor HTML 3 skills were not going to cut it out on the open road. That Adobe GoLive could only do so much and too much (bloated code). Too many of my friends were having difficulty browsing my site or even downloading it (not to mention uploading it from a 14k wireless modem). Well, the downloading/uploading problem was easily solved but the browser issues were another matter. I threw my hands in the air and awaited the web world people to get their act together.

The saddest bit about all of this is that the tools to obtain web standards, CSS (loosely: design) and XHTML (loosely: structure)*, were finally accepted in prime time when I eschewed my web presence back in late-Spring of 2001. I've lost three years! Had I been patient or not been so taken by, um, well her name is unimportant...
*Content can be achieved by a variety of means as can XHTML but it is all circular and above the reach of this post.

So, if you are interested in standards, I suggest stopping by the sites A List Apart and Asterisk*, the latter seems to be the most focused blog on web design issues regarding standards.

Of course, I am only now crawling out from the waters of theory (read: I was reading books) and onto the land of practice (read: plowing through websites for quick tips as I quickly relaunch my personal website), so there is probably a lot more out there concerned with my standards interests (both arguments for and against) that I've not had enough time to read. Oh, but here's one funny, funny piece, Gurus v. Bloggers 2 (part one), for those interested in the contradictions of 'practice what you preach'. Both these Design by Fire (DxF) articles have plenty of great websites listed.