something about mary

Frank:

About the toughness of women, I recently read a book that was about the life of a typical t-shirt.... how the cotton is grown in Texas, then shipped to China where it is made into a t-shirt in some gigantic sweatshop, then shipped back to this country, etc., etc.  Eventually it is discarded and sent to Africa, where it is resold and gets a whole second life of wear.   The book got into the history of the textile industry to some degree, and it talked about how over the last 200 years of industrial cloth production, textile factory owners preferred women workers to men partly because they were better able to handle the tough repetitive physical conditions and the drudgery.  The men tended to just give up, or to rebel.  Plus, they were not as skilled with the fine motor skills. The ideal workers were women who had children or other people who depended on those women for their survival.  Those women would endure just about anything in order to bring home a paycheck.  Another type of worker that was preferable to men was children, before child labor laws, because they were docile and nimble, cheap, and expendable.

Something About Mary had a lot of funny parts.  It was interesting how much of the humor involved people with physical or mental disabilities.  One of my favorite parts in the movie is the short section with the murderous hitchhiker who is going on in his loony way about his idea for a "Seven Minute Abs" program, and he gets all riled up when Ted suggests that someone might come up with a "Six Minute Abs," and he's saying stuff like "7's the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 dwarves. 7, man, that's the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin' on a branch, eatin' lots of sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea?"

Meat cookies?  What are you talking about?

I didn't write yesterday because I was at a weekend "Men's Retreat."  I have been going to this weekly gathering of guys for some months now, where a bunch of men get together one morning each week, and talk about what's going on in their lives.  It's related to a church we go to off and on.  Anyway, each year they have a "retreat" where they get together someplace and spend a couple of days talking even more, especially about "deep" spiritual and emotional things.  That's the idea anyway.  Probably sounds like a pretty accurate description of "hell" to you, and it kind of sounded like that to me, too, but I thought it would be interesting and different to give it a try.  Why not?  And it was interesting and different, and both good and bad.  I just got back from it, so it's going to take awhile to process it all.  It was held at a monastery in New Hampshire, a place with monks living in in, who have given up all claim to private possessions and are now living in this community for the rest of their lives.  When they -- and we joined them -- for meals, they eat it total silence, no speaking.  But most of the time it was just the guys from the men's group, together, together, together. It is very unnatural for me to be in a group as much as I was, and it felt good when night came, and I got to be alone again.  From listening to these other guys talk, the guys in my men's group, I realized that most guys go through life from childhood to the present with all kinds of plans and intelligent approaches and systematic schemes for trying to get where they want to be.  Not me, boy.  I've just floated along from one thing to the next, like a baby crawling around on the forest floor.

--edward

children

Frank:

I would be a complete dud as a ship captain as well, whether the ship was sinking or not.  I would hide in my room, and do a lot of meditating, and sneak up on deck in the middle of the night when no one was around, so I could enjoy the view of the stars.  And that would be when the ship was doing fine.  Who knows what I'd do in an emergency?  Of course, the main difference between me and the Titanic captain and the others is that those other guys were ships captains, and I'm not.   They had actually aspired to that position, and achieved it, and were responsible for everyone on board.

Yes, women are different than men.  Not only do they have more sensitive noses, they are tougher, more resilient, and crueler.  And they are more likely to talk about disgusting things -- like picking up dog shit --  during mealtime.

No, I don't see myself getting hooked by the ipad and all the features it temptingly offers.  Mostly, because the features it offers aren't all that tempting.  I mean, sure, there are a lot of "cool" things you can do using i-pad apps, but do I really want to do those things? No, not really.  Just like most of the objects and stuff in the world seems to me like a bunch of clutter that just gets in the way, most of the nifty options available on the i-pad seem like more unnecessary crap to get in the way and trip over.  It's like being on a backpacking trip, and finding pretty rocks strewn along the way.  Do I really want to pick up all those rocks and carry them for the next six days?

So did you get the jerky made or not?  If so, was it a hit at the party?

We watched Something About Mary the other night.  Peggy had seen it once before and didn't particularly want to see it again, but in the end she enjoyed it.  I think the reason she didn't like it the first time was that we watched it with our kids when they were ten, or something, and each time there was a gross or indecent part, she probably had a bad reaction, thinking that kids shouldn't be watching something like that.  Now, with the kids grown up and gone, she is liberated.  I can understand why you would like that movie.  No offense -- I guess when someone starts out like that, you know they are about to say something offensive --  but you seem like you could easily be one of those guys, obsessing about Mary and having your entire life revolve around a hopeless pursuit of a Mary. I would not be like that, because I don't have the long range stick-to-itiveness needed for such devotion.  A few days after meeting Mary, something else would come along to distract me, and I'd move on to other things.


You remember that time we were boys and we went to that hillside opposite Peter Worden's house in the Berkeley hills and started digging a hole because we bought that cock and bull story about digging to China? I was picturing myself popping out on the other side, with a bunch of Chinese girls looking at me, taking photos of the first American child they'd ever seen. We start out all eager and fresh, pink and rosy faced -- me with my blue eyes, blond hair and cute little freckles, along with my black heart -- and we're thrusting our shovels in the dirt like we're going to get to China any second.  About a minute later, we're all hot and sweaty and tired, and  we realize the whole thing is a fake.  There's no digging to China.    Then that great big pain in the ass bully -- what was his name, Bee-low, right? -- he comes tearing down the hill. He was a total dick, but worse that than, he was stone scary and he liked beating up little kids.  He was basically a teenager shaped like a full grown man.  We scattered into the bushes, and he falls into the hole.  A second later, we heard him moaning and roaring at the same time.  Then:  "What the fuck!" he's screaming as he charges back up out of the hole.  "I'm going to fucking get you!"  We took off, stumbling and tripping down the hill, and he starts throwing rocks and big balls of mud and these heavy round pine cones.  I could hear them whistling past my ears, sucking out the air as they went by.  Then we were free, running down the street, and he was bellowing up on the hill, images of blood and violence exploding in his brain.  Children.

--edward

the meteorite

Frank:

I see the Portland paper finally put in a mention of the California meteorite, thanks to the fact that a couple of collectors had found bits of the debris.  That would be an interesting hobby -- or is it a job? -- to be a meteorite hunter.  It's amazing that two different collectors have found bits of this one already, given that the pieces are so small, and could be anywhere within a radius of who knows how many miles.  I wonder how they pinpointed where to look, and how they went about looking, and how much these little bits of space rock are worth.  I see one was found near the town of Coloma, and the other near Lotus.  I wonder if those towns are now filled with collectors, with all the motels filled up (or maybe there are no motels there), and the cafes full of meteorite-seekers in the morning, chowing down on bacon and eggs before heading out to do their prospecting.  Maybe those towns will have to hire Wyatt Earp-like sheriffs to bring law and order to the once-sleepy towns, now filled with drunken meteorite collectors, space rock robbers, and prostitutes.

I found a tick on me yesterday, and ever since I've been feeling imaginary ticks walking all over my body, under my clothes. 

For some reason, I've been spending a lot of time doing yard and garden work this spring.  Maybe it's because we've been having glorious April weather, and I don't mean this gloomy, overcast crap that you revel in.  No, it's sapphire-blue skies all the way, with no dismal clouds to clutter up the heavens like floating white funeral shrouds.  At any rate, I have been digging out unwanted scrub growth, and cutting down tree limbs that are dead or disorderly.  Of course, the real work begins once these bushes and trees are cut down and lying there on the ground.  They have to be all cut up and taken to the dump.  NOT!  I am serious advocate of the "find it and grind it" approach.  I take any branches, twigs and leaves that aren't ridiculously large, and spread them out over the lawn, which needs mowing anyway, then go over them with the lawn mower.  It's amazing how the mower tears this stuff up and makes it vanish.  Sometimes you have to go over it several times, but the lawn ends up getting mowed in the process, plus I tell myself that all this shredded organic matter is good for the soil.   I'm killing three birds with one stone.  Bring it on!  It's so much fun, once I've eliminated all the bad stuff, I'll probably do after all the good plants and bushes.  I'll grind everything, until we're living in a zen-like zone of complete emptiness.

There was an interesting piece in the paper about a 42-year old guy who died in the Portland area recently.  Each day, the paper focuses on one person who died -- usually people who led inspirational lives --  and writes up a story about him/her.  That sounds like a great job, by the way, being the reporter who writes that article, provided he has no other duties or responsibilities, which I'm sure he does.  Anyway, the article starts off talking about how everybody loved this guy who died, who looks kind of like of like Brent only smaller, and was saddened by his death.  Then it said that he has been in AA for the last two years, and it really turned his life around, and how he had a license plate that said GOD-AA or something like that. He was a short-order cook. His mother talked about how glad she was that he was getting better, she was so glad he had finally turned his life around, and how inspiring he was to other alcoholics.  Then it reveals that the way he died was that he was driving at high the wrong way on the interstate at 2:30 in the morning, and his SUV had flown off the road and he was ejected from the car and killed instantly.  His relatives had no idea where he was going at that time of night.  Then it said he lived with his mother.  And a brother said the guy had started drinking again about two months ago.  The end.  It's almost like the reporter started writing the article right away when he first started interviewing people, and the negative information only started coming out when he was halfway through the article.  By that time he probably realized this guy really wasn't appropriate to be the person to write the article about, but he figured what the hell, he'd already started it and it was too late to look for someone else.

--edward

dead relatives & Drop7

Frank:

That's amazing you can drive through different neighborhoods and the i-phone will show you which houses are for sale and how much they are asking.  I wonder if there is another gadget that tells how many people live there, and their names, and what they do, and give photos of them, and stuff like that.  It's sounds like John is a fully functioning virus in Apple's scheme of world domination.  Whether I am headed that direction remains to be seen.  I like your idea of using the i-pad to call up dead relatives.  I looked to see if there are any software applications under the title of "dead relatives," and was surprised to see there is not, but they have just about everything else.  Of course, there are many software applications related to genealogy, and ghosts (there's one called Ghost-o-meter that you can use in your house or anywhere else, and it has a meter that detects ghosts and other spiritual phenomena... and also ones called Paranormal Scanner and Ghost Detector) and graveyard and haunted site travel apps (Haunted California, Wicked Walks New Orleans, etc). I think there is a business possibility still waiting there, with the dead relatives idea. I imagine some sort of app where you would enter the name of the dead relative you want to contact, and specific questions, and the application would answer them, like a very sophisticated version of that old plastic "Magic 8" ball.  On the other hand, a little more research now shows me that there is are Ouija Board apps, and various spiritualism and fortune teller apps, so maybe it's already covered.

I was thinking today what objects could be now considered obsolete, if a person wanted to replace as much stuff as possible with his i-tools, which is probably the direction we're heading.  I thought of radios, TV's, normal phones, books, maps, paper photographs and maps and charts, and cameras, newspapers, magazines, newspapers, and certain tools like the compass and calculator, and no doubt a whole lot of other stuff.  On the other hand, a lot of basic material objects are still needed... furniture, clothes, cooking and eating utensils, personal care products, and such.

I had read an article in the New York Times recently about "silly" digital games ... games that are mindless and plotless, where you're just moving along from one level to the next, trying to score as many points as possible.  The article was titled "The Hyperaddictive, Time-Sucking, Relationship-Busting, Mind-Crushing Power and Allure of Silly Digital Games."  The author was talking about how millions of people do these games A LOT, and how many billions of hours are spent on them.  It's not like he was totally dissing them; he has experimented with many of these games himself.  He said the one game he got totally addicted to for awhile is called Drop7.  Out of curiosity I downloaded it (free) on the i-pad, and played it.  I can see how a person could get addicted to it, though I'm not there yet because I haven't played it enough to really get the hang of it.   Circles with numbers keep appearing steadily, and you're dropping them into various columns, and when you do it well, there are all sorts of noises and explosions.  A robotic sound track plays constantly in the background.  You feel purposeful, focused and energized while you're doing the game, like you are accomplishing important things, and that somehow you're making real progress in life, and you don't want anything to interfere with it....

Interesting that you have noticed the east coast media purveyors don't pay much attention to California.  So much of the news comes out of New York, and New York is actually a very ingrown, self-absorbed place that pretty much considers itself as the center of the universe, and pities anyone who lives anywhere else.  Many people who were raised in New York could not imagine living anywhere else.  There was a famous New Yorker cartoon by Saul Steinberg that pretty much said it all.  I attached it, hopefully.

--edward

the virus

Frank:

Interesting about the meteor.  I would think that would be headline news, but I guess it's no big deal, on a national level, anyway.  There's no coverage of it here. Is it big news in California?  Maybe meteors are constantly exploding all over the world with a loud bang. It really must have made people jump in the area where it was bright and forceful. 

It's interesting that Downieville would want to commemorate being the place where they lynched a woman for killing someone who tried to rape her.  Maybe they should add other attractions, like a statue showing a Downieville priest who abused little Mexican boys, and a plaque honoring the house where a local crazy woman drowned her two children in the bathtub.

Awhile back, we were talking about about how you like nature, and are not in favor of man's screwing it all up.  I was reminded of that today when I was taking our dog Ryder for a walk.  I was watching a pair of sweet little birds called the Eastern Bluebird.  They are larger than a chickadee, smaller than a robin, and are red on the breast and a nice shade of blue on the wings.  Before my time, they used to be a very common songbird on the east coast, but now you hardly ever seen them, in Maine, at least.  They have been wiped out by the millions by sparrows and starlings, which tend to find bluebird nesting spots, destroy the eggs, then take them over for themselves.  I wouldn't have seen any today except that a bluebird loving guy in our town erected a bunch of bluebird nesting boxes in a field.  I guess the entrance to the boxes somehow prohibits the other birds from getting in.  Sparrows and starlings are both non-native birds, introduced by man.  Of course, on the other hand, if a man hadn't come along and set up all these bluebird boxes, they wouldn't have returned, or wouldn't have survived, anyway. 

You might be surprised after all my talk about technology and how i-devices are turning people into viruses, that yesterday Margaret and I went out and bought an i-pad.  We needed it to replace our old, heavy laptop, which finally died, probably because of all the humidity in Costa Rica. Spilling Costa Rican coffee on it didn't help, either, I guess.  These i-pads are amazing devices, and I have to say they are incredibly well-designed to turn people into virulent viruses, more so than I had imagined.  They make it so easy to access and buy different kinds of technology, games and software, and also to share photos, thoughts, and who knows what else, to anybody you know, or don't know, that has an e-mail address.  You can even call people on the phone using the thing, and see each other as you speak, if you're both hooked up to that technology.  And of course it's got a great camera, and any time you take a picture, it's asking if you want to send the photo to other people, which you pretty much can do with just the tap of your finger. And any time you write something, it wants to know if you want to send it to someone.  And any time you look at something, it wants to know if you'd like to show it to someone else.  When the saleslady was showing us the i-pad at the Apple store yesterday, I commented "these things are training us all to be blabbermouths."  I could tell I had hurt her feelings, so I had to sort of back off that statement and try to explain it away, even though it was absolutely true.  At any rate, there is no question that these devices have the ultimate effect of encouraging people to become human cancer cells in a vast electronic chain of marketing and chatter.  Yesterday I looked up "Twitter" on Wikipedia because I wasn't really sure what it even is, and I noticed that a research firm has analyzed the messages that are sent via Twitter, and it determined that a majority of them constituted what they called "pointless babble."  And now, to contribute my own visual pointless babble, I am going to attach this photo I took of myself using the new i-pad. Why is the picture sideways?  I have no idea.  I notice that I I look like a cross between Bill Gates and Uncle Steve.  I wonder if I could get a job as a Bill Gates impersonator.  If I moved out to Seattle, and put on a little weight, and studied the way Bill Gates moves and talks, I bet I could fool a lot of people.  The only problem is that they'd all be asking me for money.

--edward

arbus breivik

Frank:

It's interesting to see that while regular big city newspapers are foundering, small town newspapers that only address local affairs and high school sports and so on, seem to be flourishing.  The Portland city newspaper gets smaller and worse (and more conservative, since it was purchased by a conservative conglomerate) each year, but there are a dozen little community weekly newspapers that apparently are doing fine.  I noticed the other day that one of these local Maine papers has an ad saying that there is an immediate opening for full time reporter.  One sentence in the ad says "We embrace newsroom technology and the use of social media, and so should you."  I'm not sure what "newsroom technology" is, but the part about social media reminds me how out of it I am in the technology world.  The same way a lot of conversation between guys used to be about sports or TV shows, now a lot of conversation, between men anyway, is all about i-pads, i-phones, and all sorts of "apps"  .... a lot of stuff I don't know much about and don't care much about. They sound like high school guys, talking about girls, only they're talking about electronic gadgets.  My only contribution to conversations like that is to call the other guys "viruses."  The other day I heard there is one application where you can speak into the i-pad what you want to say in English, and it comes back out in Spanish.  You said Jane has a high quality scanner... does she make much use of the computer?  I remember at one point you said she wasn't into it at all. How about Brent and Renee?

That Legends of the West website is interesting.  I wonder how much of it is actually true, and how much is just a collection of the most colorful claims that have been made over the years.  Of course, that could be said for just about any history.  A lot of the stuff that is considered facts was pulled from different quotes from old newspapers, and from various recollections of unreliable people, but in the end, the "truth" probably doesn't really matter since there are so many versions of it.  It might as well be a good story.

I bet you could take some interesting photographs in those old mining towns you are talking about.    If you were some fancy New York art photographer, you'd import a bunch of freakish people, such as a morbidly obese woman, and a hollowed out junkie, and people like that  (have you ever seen photographs by Diane Arbus? .... this is a real question, not to be ignored.  I attached a sample Arbus photo), and then have them pose among the various strangely leaning, decaying old mine buildings.  These photos, in black and white, would end up selling for thousands of dollars each in New York art galleries.

I have to say that following the Breivik trial turns out to be maddening, as you suggested it might be.  It seems that much of the time Breivik does get to go on and on spouting his political "philosophy," and describing killing all those teenagers in endless detail, while the family and survivors squirm and sob in the audience.  The whole Norwegian temperament is about trying to be as calm and controlled and polite as possible, and to make every effort to be fair and restrained, and the end result is that a nut like Breivik, who completely flaunts those traditions, takes full advantage.  The latest article about the trial in the New York Times was headlined "As Killer Gloats in Court, Norway Shows No Anger."  So you made a good decision not to read about it.  Too bad you've got me telling you about it anyway.

I would be flying into San Francisco or Oakland, and driving out to your place from there.

--edward

straw dogs and vines

Frank:

It is interesting that you were mad and frustrated because some reporter had gone ahead and taken your idea for reporting on the Latinos.  Of course, if you had completely, unanimously wanted to to act on that idea, you would have started working on it some time ago.  There obviously is a part of you that did not want to do it at all, a bigger and more influential part of you than the part that did want to do it, since it's the one that got to have his way.  So while the part of you that wanted to do it is now mad and frustrated, I would think the other part of you would be rejoicing and saying "Yes!"  Do you feel that at all,  or do you only feel the anger and frustration? 

By the way, was the article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune?  I tried to google "Tahoe King's Beach Latino" and it looked like there had been an article in the Tahoe Daily Tribune, but it said the article had been removed from the site.  I wonder why.

I never saw Straw Dogs, and now I'm so old and sensitive that it's too late. The movie would be too suspenseful and shocking for me now.  Here is an interesting fact -- the title "Straw Dogs" is taken from the most famous text on taoism, the Tao Te Ching, which supposedly collects the sayings of taoist sage from about 2500 years ago, Lao Tzu.  There is a passage there that says "Heaven and Earth are ruthless; they treat all creatures as straw dogs."  Straw dogs refers to little disposable straw figures that were used in certain Chinese religious ceremonies.  They were carefully set up to create a little diorama-like scene that was important for the ceremony, kind of like Christians might set up a little creche scene showing the baby Jesus and the wise men and all that.  As soon as the ceremony was over, they'd just crumple up the little straw figures and throw them away, or burn them.  So basically, it's saying that's how god treats all living things.

I'll have to watch There's Something About Mary again.  I think I've only seen it once and I remember it was very funny. 

Yesterday and today, I chopped and dug out five large brambly thorn bushes that have been growing on the edge of our property ever since we moved here.  It's some kind of invasive species that apparently is hated by most gardeners, though I didn't think they were too bad.  One of the negative things about these bushes is that these horrible vines were growing up near the base of the bushes. They'd grow out every year.  These vines were dark green and almost oily, and they'd make they nasty looking seed pods that reminded me of something from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."  Also growing up beneath one of these bushes was another nasty vine, a great big woody thing that was about two inches in diameter at the base, which grew up and wrapped itself all around a nearby tree, like a python, and was made of a weird, spongy kind of wood that was very elastic and flexible.  I could never really get at these vines before, because they were protected by all the thorns of the thorn bushes.  Anyway, the point of all this is that is was interesting how these semi-evil plants were all growing together, all basically protecting and supporting each other, like some kind of gang.  It was satisfying to finally eradicate the whole mess, once and for all though I am now sore all over, from all the chopping and yanking and sawing.  The inner wood of the thorn bushes was a weird, almost fluorescent yellow. A lot of the digging out of roots had to be done with a crowbar.

It's looking like I'd be coming out to Tahoe probably the afternoon of June 22, and leaving the morning of June 26.  Does that sound okay?

--edward