The One Thing Big Oil Can't Beat

Killin' stuff has never been so fun!
Want your kids to grow up "green bonded"?
Get 'em the new Deer-Killin' Barbie!

Greg:

Hi, it's me, your dirt-hugging tree-licking brother. You and Marie sell dirt, right? ("Real estate", okay, whatever.) So I imagine you guys are out in the toolies every once in a while selling psuedo-ranches and mini-mansions to jodhpur-clad horse-weenies - people who consider themselves "outdoorsy" because they circumnavigated Lake Tahoe in their Escalade. Okay, so, tell me what you think of this. I was recently introduced to the term "green bonded" by a writer from The Mountaineers. In the piece I read, he posited that people who spend time in the outdoors become bonded to nature and the outdoors, and are thus more likely to back ecologically-minded legislation. Interesting thought, however I believe there needs to be an allowance made for the way in which you become bonded to the outdoors. For instance, do you become bonded to the outdoors through hiking and backpacking, or through chasing down pregnant caribou with a snowmobile?

I get catalogs from a whole slew of outdoors outfitters, among them REI and Cabelas, which is just like REI except that it's outdoor gear for people who like to kill stuff. Take both catalogs, put them side by side, and turn over the idea that both sets of folks are "green bonded". By the way, believe it or not, I don't have anything against hunting (except that I wouldn't do it). I do have a problem with leghold traps and high-powered rifles. I say that if you're of a mind to eat some deer, you oughtta at least be able to physically dominate it. At least be able to beat it at leg-wrestling. That's all I ask. Speaking of physical domination, certain Great Plains tribes used to get two guys to chase a deer down until it dropped from exhaustion, and then they'd hold a bag over its head until it smothered. (It can be done. Deer are built for short bursts of speed. If you get one boxed in between two Kenyan long-distance runners, the deer'll be sucking wind and crying uncle in no time.)

Which brings me to global warming (didja see how I did that - pulled a logical flea-flicker?), and how I hear the Big Oil is running a campaign to discredit my most beloved green-bonded tree-hugging brother, Al "Stiff As A Larch" Gore. Short story: Big Oil (or Greasy Bastards as I like to call them) is running some TV ads to say that the science behind Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" is turds. So yeah, they're fuckers. Not surprising. They think that people will just go "Oh - I see. It's turds. Lemme go back to flaming off this thirty-gallon barrel of sweet light crude I've got in the backyard."

Here's why this smear campaign will never work: COGNITIVE SCIENCE. The brain is really interested in self-preservation, so much so that it is impossible for any living thing to suppress its own startle response. S'a'fact. You can't do it no matter how much weed you smoke while watching "Gilligan's Island". Believe me, I've tried. As organisms, we're way into staying alive by way of staying alert. That's why news stories of danger and tragedy are so engaging and compelling to the human psyche. We believe that we have somehow avoided danger by being informed of it, even if it happened on the other side of the globe. Add to that the fact that every bit of weather we get is now underscored in common conversation by "because of global warming", and you have an indelible connection. Hurricane Katrina? Global warming. Floods in France? Global warming. Pizzlies invading Los Angeles? Global warming and photo op with Al Gore. So yeah, so Greasy Bastards, Inc., will spend all this money saying, "It's poop-science!" and then the next big storm we get (which will be about twenty minutes from...thousand one...thousand two...now) will completely erase from every human mind whatever Big Oil was blathering about. There is not a single goddamn thing anyone can do to stop humans from being afraid of the weather.

Don't get me wrong. That's a good thing. People should be afraid of the weather, considering how many people get killed by it every year. I believe that "green bonded" or no, folks who were otherwise uninterested in the outdoors will become keenly interested in the short-term future. For the first time in modern history, they will come to understand that their personal survival depends on that vast expanse outside their window.

I'd like to hear what you think of all that. Oh yeah! Totally off the subject, but only marginally related: a zero-energy home that doesn't look like a spaceship piloted by stinky hippies AND only costs a buck-two-ninety-five to build! Smoke that, Big Oil!

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

My Sole Literary Ambition

Let's make some noise! Avant garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen
(pictured here, preparing to kill everyone) gets paid to
make music out of train wrecks and ostrich farts. Why can't I make a
living with my obsession?

Greg:

Got your message. Heard you were going to be out until Monday. What do you have to do that's so all-fired important that it's going to keep you away from the telephone for that long? Are you camping out for tickets to an Imax film about the history of the slide rule? Or is the Nevada Whores Orphan's Symphony mounting a retrospective of the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen? Whatever it is, I hope it brings you joy, and that you return to the telephone with your voice intact. I know how you like to shout yourself hoarse at Stockhausen concerts.

Which brings me to my next point which is things that bring me joy. Correction: "the" thing that brings me joy. It's just that yesterday while I was revising my profile to say "My sole literary ambition is to write these letters to my brother Greg", I realized that my sole literary ambition is to write these letters to my brother Greg. So it's the joy of self-actualization, one that you are keenly aware of being a musician and all. It seems that those who are aware of exactly what their self-actualizing gig is - the one thing that they do with their own hands that gives their life purpose, meaning and direction - are understandably the ones who feel the constant frustration of not being able to do just that one thing all the time.

Some folks might say that's just the way life is, that you don't just get to entertain your obsessions, artistic, scientific or otherwise. I say that's a load of hooey - you don't get to entertain your obsessions if you can't make money doing it. But this is America, dammit! There's a way to make money doing just about anything!

So what predicated my assertion of letter-writing as my sole literary ambition was a recent compliment I received from one of my co-workers. Patrick Kevin, a marketing - wizard? junkie? stylist? seargent? - anyway, he came into my office, apropos of nothing, and asked me in (what I took to be) abejct flabbergastration, "What are you doing here?!" At first I thought he was implying that I blew off a deadline by sitting on my hands or playing Frogger or something.

Clarification and amelioration: I do, at times, sit on my hands and/or play Frogger. I do not, however, blow deadlines. Why? Not because I have a good work ethic. Because I'm as neurotic as a hamster on meth, and believe that I'll be stricken with boils if I'm dilatory. This digression has been brought to you by GlaxoSmithKline, makers of both Dexedrine and Paxil.

So I says to him I says, "uhhhhhwwWWwhhhhuhhhh?" And he surprises me by telling me that he's been reading my blog and why am I not making big cash dollars writing screenplays or something instead of writing junk - excuse me, opt-in email when all the writing he sees out in the world can't touch mine with a three-meter pole and so on. I know that Patrick knows his way around good writing from our conversations. And I could see he was really serious about what he was saying by the way he was stirring the air in my office with his right arm and then his left, as though he were making peanut brittle and trying to make good and goddamn sure it didn't scorch before it reached the hard-ball stage. (That's a little confectionary insider joke.)

I have to tell you honestly, it was the best compliment I've received on my writing since PEN/Faulkner and National Book Award Winner T. Coraghessan Boyle called me "a fine and pithy writer who won't miss any more classes." (Emphasis: his.)

So anyway, yeah, that about made me stammer and blush. But it also made me think about why I'm not making big cash dollars writing screenplays. Then I remembered how I've already written six or so screenplays, ranging in quality from "sucky" to "unbelievably sucky" to "unforgivable", and that I really didn't like the whole film culture (oxymoron?) or writing screenplays. It also occurred to me that I might write a novel or something, but coming home mentally knackered after a hard day at the email factory left me precious little motivation to even press the start button on the TiVo, let alone coordinate the mammoth task of creating an ampersand by way of pressing the shift key.

Then I realized that the one thing that taps into a boundless well of desire to write is the simple thought of writing to you. There's nothing I'd rather do than gab to my brother Greg on paper every gol-durn day. Honestly, I can only - and do often - converse unceasingly with you on subjects as diverse as game theory, The Funkadelics, my cat's ass (aka The Brownstar), and the hubristic hegemony of the right wing. Watch, I'll prove it. I can say, "Fast and bulbous, The Mascara Snake!" And you'll automatically say, "Also a tin teardrop!" And I bet you even said it before you read that sentence. Why? Because you get it, and by extension, you get me. And there's nothing more affirming and comforting in this often confounding and heartbreaking life than being understood. It's the one time you're sure that you're alive.

Thanks for being my brother, and thanks for giving me a reason to write.

And if you enjoyed this, please send $75,000 and full medical coverage to my home address.

-Thaddeus

Jaco And The Corn Flakes Box

Greg:

I wanna tell the people who read your mail that one story about Jaco Pastorius. Hold on. I'll be right back. And try not to butt in!

Hey You Guys:

You may not know this about my brother Greg, but he has many talents other than being a genius inventor and loveable old crank. He is also a very talented musician and luthier, so he not only plays basses, he makes 'em, sometimes from the remains of old Chris Craft cabin cruisers, sometimes from fine endangered hardwoods, and sometimes from crap that's just laying around the house.

Take the time he made a bass with a Corn Flakes box for a pick guard. Way back in 1984, he had this piece of shite '62 Fender p-bass reissue that he wanted to turn into a fretless jazz bass. So he took a pair of needle nose pliers one day and yanked out all the frets and filled in the neck with plastic wood.

(Greg: Oh I did not! Me: Shut up! I'm telling the story!)

No, honestly the thing looked like hell. And it didn't have a pick guard. So he just up and cut the shape of one from a Corn Flakes box (those were MY Corn Flakes, by the way, you breakfast stealer!) and then just freakin' poured Verathane or whatever the hell it was all over it right there on the kitchen counter...and spilled some, too, thank you very much!

(Greg: I cleaned it up! Me: Like hell you did! You thought you could make it dry up by blasting it with my blowdryer - which died, thank you - and that didn't even work. So we had that gummy patch on the counter forever. And you guys over there, stop snickering about the blowdryer. It was the 80s. Men had blowdryers. And Greg, I never got my deposit back on that apartment, either. Greg: That's because our roommate Kelly burned the kitchen down. Me: Well, that's another story.)

So yeah, so now he's got this petrified Corn Flakes box cover that he screws to the beat-to-shit body and multifariously-pigmented neck of this Frankenstein of a bass of his. Then he put a different tail piece on it and some different pickups or whatever. Actually, he coulda put curb feelers, chrome spinners and ermine mud flaps on it for all I know. I don't know much about stringed instruments.

(Greg: I'll say. The only thing you can play is the stereo. Me: Shut up!)

Okay, so then he gets accepted to the Musician's Institute in Hollywood and goes down there and is all wowing 'em with his amazing musical prowess - and LO! Who should come to the Institute for a bass clinic but JACO PASTORIUS. Okay, a bunch of you in the front row are scratching your heads, so let me spell it out for you: Jaco is considered far and wide to be the greatest bass player who ever lived. No, seriously. 'S'a'fact. And so Jaco sees my brother over there playing his bass, going Bow-bikka-bow-bikka doodley oodleyoodleyoodley - bweeeewuuuwweeewuuuuh! on his FrankenBass, and he's all like, "Hey man, you're a pretty bitchen bass player, and that's a pretty freaked out bass you got there." And Greg's all, "Yeah I made it out of groceries that I stole from my brother."

(Greg: I did not! Me: Shut up! I'm telling the story! You wanna tell the story, go get your own blog, call it How My Brother Ruined My Jaco Pastorius Story dot Blogspot dom Com, and friggin' tell the story yourself. Greg: I'm going to punch a sheet of my stationery as hard as I can. Then I'm going to put it in an envelope and mail it to you. When it arrives, take the sheet of stationery out of the envelope and apply it to your nose.)

So then Jaco's all, "Hey man, can I play the FrankenBass?" And Greg's all, "For a dollar. PSYCHE!" And Jaco's all, "Check out your razor-sharp wit, man!" And then Greg's all, "Here you go, knock yourself out." And he hands Jaco the bass.

What happened next is history.

So then Jaco is like, "Hey man, that's the best bass I've ever played. Can I have it?" And Greg goes, "No." And Jaco's like, "Why?" And Greg goes, "That box of Corn Flakes was the last one that Kellogg's issued with the planar-geometric rooster illustration on the front. It's, like, priceless." So Jaco whips out a Sharpie and signs the pick guard. Later, Greg busts out some more Verathane and ruins another apartment when he laminates over Jaco's autograph.

The really sad part of the story is that although Jaco was a musical prodigy, had serious troubles with drugs and alcohol, not to mention mental illness. On September 17th, 1987, outside a club in Ft. Lauderdale, Jaco was beaten to death by a bouncer when he tried to get in without paying.

My brother Greg, on the other hand, came down with a strange illness that afflicted his hands. Now he can only play the bass and dial the telephone, but somehow inexplicably cannot answer correspondence. His hands just curl up like that witch's feet in The Wizard of Oz - you know, the one the house fell on - whenever he tries to pick up a pen. It's called gregorian hand-withering syndrome. And it must be stopped in our lifetime. Send donations to: GHWS, 40 Knucklebone Lane, Sho' 'Nuf, Shackabama, 24242.

(Greg: Retard. Me: Corn Flakes stealer. Greg: Tooth jockey. Me: Low-charisma. Greg: Mountebank.... )

Screw The Internet Already, Okay?

Camp Coot-In-The-Woods: you can almost smell the crankiness.

Greg:

Screw the Internet. Screw it. It hasn't improved anything. If anything it has made life more difficult. Oh sure, it has its upsides. You can buy stuff that you didn't need faster, and porn comes right into your home almost unbidden. Sure, you get to hear the good opinion of millions of people that you might not even pee on if they were engulfed in flame. Plus, you get bushels of email from other folks that you can tolerate even less and would pay American money for the opportunity to massage with an enraged tom cat. Not to mention that the NSA is able to read all your email completely unhindered by any part of the Bill of Rights, and brew up charges of witchcraft against you by using your own words. But aside from all those benefits, what the hell is it worth?

What is it that has my a wrench in my ass? I've been trying to plan a vacation this summer, that's what. I somehow imagined that I could get all my summer holiday plans put together with a few clicks on Expedia. (No, I'm not linking to those squidgy fuckers. No way. Nope. Why? Because Expedia lies like a ten-year-old.) All I wanted to do is get some airfare and maybe a hotel or something down at Crater Lake. Thirty-six hours and eighty-five hangnails later I got dick. Expedia tells you there are two choices: Crater Lake Lodge and Mazama Motor Inn. But because of the magic of the Internet, now every fat granny, weiner dog, and freelance bung-pounder who can pilot a Cheechako Box has clogged the bookings until September ought-twelve. Wanna stay at the Crater Lake Lodge? You're SOL because a retired crap merchant from Delaware named Porky J. Visa McMastercard (+ his weiner dog) has it stolen it with a click of his mouse. This "ease of use" bullshit has made it impossible to do anything you wanna do. It's like living in downtown. Everything you ever wanted is only four blocks away, but you have to drive there and it takes you half an hour. (And of course there's no parking when you get there.)

Hateful Sidenote: I have booked with Expedia in the past. The results? Hotel rooms that share a wall with the roaring counterweights of the elevator. Hotel rooms that look out onto a clattering rooftop industrial air conditioner. Rental cars that either don't work or don't exist. Airfare twice as expensive as I could've got by going directly to the airline. And being misled to believe that Tucson has only three hotels.


Wilson's Cottages are conveniently located between BFE and
Ozymandia in the heart of a vast forest in 19th century Oregon.

So contrary to what Expedi-fucker tells me, there are more than two hotels in the vicinity of Crater Lake. How did I find this out? Total accident. I used a map. Remember maps? Those things with the multicolored lines and wrinkly topographical relief that remind you of gramma's leg after she got impetigo? Yeah, so, there's a place that I found that has been run by cranky old coots since the 1930s, and it's called Wilson's Cabins and they DON'T FUCKING TAKE CREDIT CARDS! Thank you, Jesus. What this means is that in an age where Porky and his ilk can click a mouse easily enough, but would sprain their tongues if they licked a stamp, places like Cranky Cabins has vacancies! Yay! But it's a really strenuous ordeal to secure lodging with them. You have to do things like "call" them with a "telephone" and "mail" your deposit with a "check" that you "write out" with a "pen". Added bonus - they don't have telephones or televisions, either. And you have to share you bed with a pizzly. But it's only one mile from the south entrance of Crater Lake National Park.

So yeah, I'm doing my vacation the old-fashioned way, including the part where I get the kids out of bed at 3AM and stuff them in the back of the car for an eight-hour drive to Bumscratch. I couldn't be happier. I am going to hike the SHIT out of Crater Lake, by the way.

I know I sound like a complete Luddite or Philistine or New Englander or whatever it is you high-falutin' well-educated liberal dilletantes in Nevada call folks like me. (Wait - maybe I've mistaken Nevada for someplace else. Isn't Nevada the place with the maple syrup and the colleges and the Canadians? No, wait, that's Nevhampshire. Nevada is the place with the whores 'n' stuff. Never mind.) Were it not for the fact that Mark Keeney said to me one day, "Hey, you oughtta have a blog", (to which I replied, "Whatsablog?") I would still be sending you these epistles on Crane's 1830s-era 100% cotton rag stationery via US MailSherpa. (Side note: it is because of Keeney's suggestion that I refer to him as The Blogfather.) With Baby Jesus as my witness, when I retire, I am going to completely unplug from this whole "Internet" fad and step back into that magical land that is redolent with the aroma of mimeograph juice and carbon paper. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to pick up my flint axe and musket and go slaughter something for breakfast.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

Meet The New Boss

My God, it's a city of pizzlies!
The grizzly/polar bear hybrid will be able to swim,
climb, track humans as prey, and perform
long division. He will also bird-dog every
ho in the hizzy.

Greg:

You know how I hate to cover current events in my letters to you. I figure that if it's in the news, there are enough people blabbing about it already. What new angle could I possibly add to the conversation by saying, "Yeah - Bush is a crook!" Or "Yeah, gas prices are really high!" Or "Yeah, the world will eventually be ruled by pizzly bears!"

Wait a sec. I'm the one who said that the world will eventually be ruled by pizzly bears. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. That also deems the subject fair game (no pun) for this epistle. So here's the deal:

You may have recently awakened on a public park bench and pulled the newspaper off your face to be confronted by the CBC news story "Strange bear was grizzly-polar hybrid, tests show". If not, then let me inform you of this astounding new taxonomical development. The story goes like this: Roger Kuptana, an Inuvialuit guide from Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories, took Jim Martell, a 65-year-old honkie from nowhere special, on a hunting trip during which the aforementioned honkie shot and killed a mottled brown-and-white bear. The bear, as DNA evidence proved, had a grizzly bear for a father and a polar bear for a mother.

As a former resident of Alaska, I'm sure you're agape. As a former resident of Alaska, so am I. Your first thought was probably, "Oh dear Lord! It wasn't enough for the grizzlies to be at the top of the food chain, have a lucrative auto parts endorsement deal, and be at the center of the California State flag. They had to up and start bird-dogging the polar bears' wives and girlfriends! Daaaaaamn! That's some cold shit! They done gone and messed wif' de kid now!"

I heartily agree. It is cold-blooded. What do a hard-workin' polar bear gotta do to keep two-thousand pounds of wild-born woman satisfied? Sheeeiiit.

But I'll tell you who is to blame for this: GW. That's right. Global-muthafuckin'-Warming. Here's why. The male polar bears are drowning because of a lack of ice. The females are moving south into - you got it - grizzly country. And the male grizzlies are all like, "Chicks! Sweet!" Bada boom bada bing you got pizzly bears.


Planet of the Pizzlies: Jillions of years in the
future, gigantic pizzlies will make a snack out of
Chuck and his silly boom-stick!

Don't be fooled. The pizzly bear that the geriatric honkie shot is not a one-off. Pizzly production is happening all over the Great White North and it will continue to happen apace until you have to walk on pizzly heads just to get to the 7-11. But that's not even the scary part. Silently freak out over this, my man: polar/grizzly hybrids will have the best of both bears. Not only will they be the biggest fur-bearing land mammal since the mastodon, they will be able to both climb and swim, and will track humans as prey (a trait particular to polar bears). So the worst news about global warming is not that we'll all have to sprout gills and become accustomed to the taste of saltwater martinis. It is that when we return to our spawning grounds each year, a good number of us will wind up as pizzly snacks - that is if we survive being preyed upon by bears the size of Pavarotti's sofa and actually get a chance to evolve.

All kidding aside, this sort of thing gives me hope. When I first heard that polar bears were drowning because of receding ice, it truly saddened me. I spent a lot of time meditating on the dukkha of transformation. Whether it is the disappearance of the polar bears or the disappearance of my own face in the mirror, constant change in inherent in life. Clinging to the status quo breeds suffering. However, it still troubled me that the disappearance of the polar bears is a phenomenon that has a lineal connection to the avarice of man, and is thus a subtractive change that is happening needlessly.

Seeing that picture of a pizzly bear restored my hope, though. It made me believe that everything's going to be okay. Nature, the consistent favorite of Father Time, will always prevail. And that gives me hope - even if it means that pizzlies will make dessert out of my descendants.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

In Praise Of Jim Bergman

Jim Bergman can out-drink Immanuel Kant, out-play
Les Claypool, and out-swim Stephen Hawking.

Greg:

I have a certain troublesome neurosis, and I think it might be familial. See if you can relate.

I have friends. They're all really great folks. Problem is I just don't like to spend time with them. That sounds bad. Let me try to describe it a little better with an example. When I meet a friend for lunch, somewhere about halfway through, I panic and want to leave the conversation. I feel stuck. I feel like I left a stove on somewhere or a door unlocked - whatever it is needs my immediate attention. So that means when I think about making plans with friends, it always sounds like a good idea at first until I realize that about halfway through a conversation, I'm going to freak out and be overwhelmed by the need to flee. It's not their fault, it's mine. It's just plain bizarre. To say that I am as crazy as a shithouse rat might create resentment among shithouse rats.

Here's the flipside. I don't like being alone, either. I discovered this while I was camping solo in Port Townsend a couple weekends ago. I like hiking alone well enough, but I like hiking with Teresa better. I once described the situation to Teresa like this: if I'm home alone, I get lonely and have a hard time writing well. If I'm home and Teresa's nearby, I can't concentrate enough to write. However, if I'm at home in my room with door closed, but I know that Teresa's in the other room, I'm perfectly comfortable. (She's asleep right now, but when she gets up and comes into this room, my writing day will be over.)


This is your brain on Bergman.

Which brings me to my friend Jim Bergman, who was such good company on our recent hike up to Lake Serene that it made me reconsider this whole weird neurotic "trapped" feeling I get, and made me think that I ought to work more diligently on correcting it. Jim's boon companionship during the hike obviated what I had been cheating myself out of by maintaining this neurosis.

Side note: Bergman was incredibly impressed by your resume - the parts of it that I could recall, including the fact that you once were a luthier for Mike Tobias. How obscure is that?

Jim Bergman was born James Bergman somewhere in Washington State thirty years and some change ago. He has a brother and some parents. I'm making all this up because I don't really know. I do know that he holds a degree in Philosophy (with a minor in Cocktail Party Bullshitting, no doubt), and can throw down mind-bending Kantian dialectic with the best of them. Where I met him was during our tenure at AtomFilms. I was the Editorial Producer and he was woefully underpaid for some horrifically boring task that he performed gleefully enough in some rather Spartan accoutrements. I thought he was gay and Jewish. Wrong on both counts. (Or at least as far as I know, lo these 7 years passed.) He got fired - unjustly in my estimation - for exactly what I can't even remember now. Had to do with saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time. After that event, he took to relieving his frustrations by becoming a triathlete.

Bergman was also the bass player for a very fun and rather frenetic country band called Colville Melody, a group of unwashed acoustinauts that were a couple hogsheads short of a jug band. He left all that glory to strike out on his own as an enterpreneur, selling gear to his fellow triathletes. He concurrently worked for Roland keyboards, again probably performing some ponderously boring task for low wages in Spartan accoutrements. Then one day he decided to chuck all of that, sold his 1,200 square foot suburban Bellingham ranch for an embarassingly huge sum of money, and enrolled in massage school. And that's where he is right now.

You can't talk about Bergman without talking about drinking. The two are inseparable. It's also difficult to describe the manner of his drinking because the bouts don't last long enough to be describe as a binge, but on the other hand, explosion isn't all-encompassing enough to relay the short-lived incandescence and ferocity of each event. To wit, back in the day, I could out-drink Bergman if you're talking sheer volume, but I could in no way exceed his alcohol-fueled feats of personality-rending stupicifocity. You never knew how many beers it was going to be until the charming Henry Jekyll mask peeled off to expose the howling, pugnacious escapee from the boneless chicken ranch. We had to invent a whole new term for it. We called it "getting Bergmaned". It's no wonder that Bergman, charming and erudite though he may be while sober, holds the world record for alienating women.

With all his foibles, and probably because of them, Jim Bergman is my pal. Jim Bergman will make you laugh - hard. Jim Bergman is just plain loads (truly plural) of fun, just like the rest of my friends, and I should spend a lot more time with the lot of them.

Oh shit I left the stove on.

-Thaddeus

Mud Shoe Diaries: Bridal Veil Falls, Lake Serene & Mt. Index

Mount Index, seen from the shore of Lake Serene.
Two words: Oss. Umm.

Dear Greg:

Howya been? Don't say nothin' because I already have your answer: nowheres as good as me! Why the obnoxious-yet-self-assured overconfidence? Because I've been hiking, yo! And not just some lame-ass flatland hike in tiny, tiny bear territory. I've been up in the snowfields, ogling the waterfalls, huffing the mountain air, and gleefully causing myself all manner of trepidation and injury.

Last Sunday (April 20-something), me & the gang took USFS Trail 1068 up to Lake Serene at the foot of Mount Index with a side jaunt to Bridal Veil Falls. The round trip was 8.2 miles with an elevation gain of about 1,900 feet (which ain't so bad, until you figure that pretty much all that elevation gain happens within about 1.3 miles of trail). Thank God some burly-ass Washington Trail Association volunteers built stair frames (see photos at the end of this letter) to take the place of the nasty-dangerous dirt trail that used to go pretty much straight up.


Lake Serene with "just a little snow".

That doesn't mean it was easy. Oh mais non. I told you about the Hellclimber 3000 in my previous blog. Well, working out on it paid off in spades when it came to negotiating these stairs. There was also a wicked nasty patch where a gigantic blowdown roughly the size of your grotesquely Popeye-ish right forearm made us have to scramble through some really slick mud and roots. And then there was the snow which we had not anticipated - which was thoroughly my fault. You see, when it comes to outdoorsmanship, I am still what John Muir would call an "idiot". Or perhaps he wouldn't be quite that kind. He might've called me something like a fookin' penty-weest or even a flat-moufed basturt, nae bu' beef tae th' heels. I digress.

We didn't anticipate the snow because I had heard that the snow level was at something like 5,000 feet, and we were only hiking up to 2,500, so I figured... Well, snow level has to do with where new snow is likely to fall, not where the edge of the snowfields end, and since we've had a lot of late-season snow here, that means... Yeah, so, snow. Better still, I have snappy new traction devices for my boots as well as trekking poles, neither of which I had during my ice-and-tiny-bear encounter earlier this season on Mount Si. But did I bring my extra traction? Nay. And did I believe that sleekly-attired fastpacker we met on the trail who told us that there was "a little snow up there"? Aye.

Greg, never believe a sleekly-attired fastpacker. They lie and they're crazy. Subsisting on nothing but Nutella does something to their brains. They are the meth freaks of the outdoors. (Not to be confused with the meth freaks of the North Cascades, a brand of homonids from Snohomish county that cling to the undersides of rotting double-wides and paranoiacally swat at imaginary bugs.) We wound up smushing our way up, through, and over a snowfield for about a mile, at times having to balance on its treacherously rotting edge. But at the end of the trail, the gob-smacking, heart-rending beauty that you see in the photos above was enough to make one forget all about spandex-clad fastpackers and their falsehood-spewing mountebankery. And although the temperature at the lakeshore brought to mind adages of plumber's cracks, witches' bosoms, and the neutering of brass monkeys, the intermittent springtime sun was quite warm. I offered a prayer of thanks to REI for blessing me with black outer gear.

Side note - speaking of REI: the twice-yearly 20% off sale started this weekend, so naturally I had to expand my gear collection. Come to find out, I'm already geared up to about my eyeballs (which are also quite nicely outfitted), so I was hard-pressed to find anything that I actually needed. That didn't stop me from purchasing an MSR WaterWorks EX Microfilter, a ceramic and carbon water filtering system so effective it screens out Giardia, bacteria, viruses, tiny-tiny bear poop and poltergeists. To underscore its effectiveness, there's a photo on the package of a fastpacker in Patagonia using it to drink straight out of a cow's butt. It should come in handy some day when I go swamp stomping in 'Nam.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.
PS: Here's a whole bunch of photos that my friend and co-hiker Jim Bergman took of the trip. Enjoy.

-Thaddeus

Rage, Jesus, And The Hellclimber 3000

Hellclimber: die Treppe, die verwunden!
If it did not already exist, Dr. Josef Mengele would've invented it.

Greg:

I have to preface this letter by saying that a few days have passed since I wrote what appears below, and in that time, the rage of which I speak has ebbed, owing to the ever-changing landscape of the human psyche and certain interpersonal dynamics (misunderstandings, apologies, whatnot). You should understand. As I recall, you are as sweet as sugar candy most of the time, but also have inclinations to phlegmatism, biliousness, epithets, invection - not to mention acrid, acrid spite from time to time. Indeed, I recall times from our youth when local ne'er-do-wells would pelt your window with stones while you were napping just so they could see you rocket from the house in a purple rage. Glee ensued at your expense. Such is the burden of the perpetually peevish.

Well, I am no different, other than the fact that I've never been pricked to naked rage by the neighborhood wags. And I'm sure that Those Who Read Over Your Shoulder (TWROYS) will wonder was it I? Was I the one who pissed him off Grand Royal this week? To which I reply, "Dear Readers, in ways large and small, and in your own very special way, it was every single one of you bastards."

But let's be friends now! That was yesterday! Que sera sera! J'apologize! Today I have a clear and compassionate mind, a contrite heart, and a fresh load of Snapper Turtles. (Why Snapper Turtles? Read on.)

-TRG

Greg:

I don't look around for ways to suck at being Buddhist. I really don't. It seems that I contain a great deal of rage, and that is the crux of the "sucking at Buddhism" issue. It's hard to be enraged and compassionate at the same time.

I go to a Buddhist shrink. I talk to her about my rage all the time. The conversation goes something like this:

Me: "Boy am I pissed."
Her: "Is there anything wrong with that?"
Me: "Well...It limits the ways in which I can see solutions, that's for sure."
Her: "What if you were to say 'I experience myself as an angry person'? What if you were to say that?"
Me: (Internally: WHUH the FUH?!) "I guess...I...OK. I experience myself as an angry person."
Her: "Where do you feel that in your body?"
Me: "Ummm...mostly in the steam that is now jetting out of the holes in my exploding cranium."

Long story short, I've had rather a trying week at work so far and it's only Wednesday. The week didn't start out so bad, though. On Easter Sunday I went to St. Mark's Cathedral. To celebrate, the Episcopalians brought out what can only be described as the 40-Foot Holy Ribbon Dancer(s) and the ever-popular Cloth Butterfly On A Stick. All of this being so far removed from what I understood as the story of Holy Week, I decided to revise my understanding of the Easter story thus:

33 years ago, Peter Rabbit laid an egg inside a tomb in Eastern Hoosapatamia. After three days, the egg hatched and out toddled Baby Jesus. This miracle is repeated every year. Peter Rabbit lays literally millions of eggs each year, but only one - The Cadbury Prize Egg - is lucky enough to be laid inside the tomb. It is said that after Baby Jesus hatches, if he pokes his head out of his tomb and sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of Easter. If not, bring on The Rapture. (So far, so good on that whole Rapture deal.)

Yeah, so, church. Oh and further good news, I did not burst into flame. Afterwards we had a sumptuous feast of Fake Lamb Stew (which is so good, I can only guess that it's made from real lambs). Aaron, Marissa, Justin (Aaron's new roommate), Teresa, Elizabeth and I had a fantastic time. Many laughs were shared. It was the best Easter ever. EVER! Doubt me at your peril!

See? There it went again. The whole misplaced rage thing.

Which bring me to my next point, which is displaced rage. Or is it really displaced? You be the judge. This week we have a lot going on at work, and a lot has gone wrong (he said, for lack of a better way to not bore you with the details) as it is wont to do when we have complicated projects. So that means in turn that people get grouchy and pouty and vindictive so on - you know, the usual adult corporate behavior. Their behavior is not what's really troublesome to me. Nor am I trying to point the finger at myself and say that the situation would've been different if I had thought about it differently. No, bad behavior is bad behavior, period, and it's reasonable for me (or anyone else) to get angry over being treated poorly. What's troublesome to me is that my primary reaction to that sort of thing is absolute rage. In other words, excessive anger.

Don't get me wrong. I don't run around the office biting into jugulars. I keep a very cool demeanor for the most part. But the counterpoint to my outward serenity is the I Hope Your Fucking Eyes Get Fucking Devoured By Fucking Snapper Turtles, You Fucking Fuck mantra that runs beneath my calm exterior. It's distracting to say the least. Further (and perhaps more) troubling is the heart-bleedingly ardent Please Baby Jesus, Send The Snapper Turtles To Devour That Fucking Fuck's Fucking Eyeballs prayer that goes along with it. This, in my mind, is irrefutable evidence that at the core, I am not only a very bad Buddhist, I'm a very bad person.

So anyway, in the midst of wishing death to all four corners of the compass, an email to the entire consumer marketing division comes down from on high reprimanding us for - get this - playing too much ping pong, and directing us to limit our ping pong to 30 minutes or less per day. The reason given is that we're behind in our subscriber sign-ups for the quarter. (I'm sure you can hear the resounding WHUH the FUH already.) The email did not include an attachment that proved the linear connection between sign-ups lost and number of minutes of ping pong played. It would've been nice if there was an f(x)= -4/x thrown in there somewhere at least. And I have a creeping suspicion that if we're behind in sign-ups, the problem is much larger than ping pong. And I also need to remind you that a) I don't even play ping pong, and b) I'm part of a creative team. We don't stack bricks for a living, so more time spent at the desk does not equal more or better work done. Surely you know what I'm talking about. The downside of all of this is that there's really nothing I can do about it, so I'm left sitting here in my own bile.

So yeah, so then I'm freaking beseeching Baby Jesus to send an Army of Snapper Turtles such as the world has never seen. And I mean to the point of obsessive psychopathology. And I'm doing all kinds of counterproductive stuff. Losing sleep. Biting the cat. That sort of thing. So I decided that it'd probably be a good idea to work off that rage by going to the gym.

Au contraire. It was not to be. For on this day, I chose to work out my rage on the Hellclimber. I figure, "Hey, it's like walking up the stairs. How bad can it be?" Answer: It can be hell! It's awful! It may make you strong and give you the lungs of a teenage whale, but it will punish you mentally and physically. You climb and climb, but at the end of half an hour, you haven't made it to Somewhere Nice. You haven't even made it to the fucking landing of Somewhere Nice. You're still right there on the Hellclimber! For The Love Of Our Egg-Born Saviour, I say this thing is the primary tool of the Dark One.

Needless to say I was (and am) still enraged. The only thing that has changed is now the Hellclimber has been added to my Death List.

[If you'd like to purchase your very own Hellclimber, click here!]

So my point is this: what the heck do I do with all my rage when it becomes physically unmanageable? Is there some amount of rage that is either justified or to be expected? And finally, where can I get some ravenous Snapper Turtles?

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

The Rapture: Free Cars, No Fundies!

The Clearasil Jesus: This guy
couldn't kill nobody!

Greg:

Sgt. Rock, our brother, sent me a link to a blog by a guy name of Joe Bageant. Good writer. Mighty long-winded, though. Never say in five words what you can say in ten-and-a-half pages, I guess. Bageant was raving about what hate-seething tomes the ultra-rightwing-Christian novels of the "Left Behind" series are. Were it not for the fact that I read this particular installment, I never would have read any portion of the "Left Behind" series. Christian Hate Porno is not my bag. My thing is real estate. Send me pictures of a nice 3BR/2.75BA turn of the century Tudor revival with real mahogany plate-rail and wainscoting, vaulted ceilings and picture molding, and I may never leave the bathroom. I look at architecture the same way most men look at porn. (Yeah, baby! Lift those soffits! Show those dentils! Give the boys what they paid for!)

As usual, I have digressed.

Joe Bageant happened to reprint a paragraph or so of one of the series. It was some over-the-top kill-porn where Jesus was making the guts of the infidel - whoops! unbelievers - 'splode and their tongues dissolve in their mouths with a wave of his hand. Here's a chunk:

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again." -- From Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series

For a second I thought they were talking about some pee-o'd radioactive Guest Worker who had SuperPowers. I was so wrong. They're talking about Jesus H. Christ, the guy that Mel Gibson made that movie about. You know, the guy with all the compassion and stuff. Little Lord Jesus No Crying He Makes. That guy.

So yeah. Wow. I had no idea what a freaking blood-bathing hate-tome industry the whole "Left Behind" thing was until I read Joe's blog. 65 million copies of this stuff has been sold. And as he says, if the same books had been written from an Islamic perspective, we'd be burning them in the streets, expunging freedom of speech from the Constitution, and closing the borders.

To be fair, I didn't quite finish this blog entry. It sucked all the air out of the room and I passed out. And all I really know about the Last Days/Rapture stuff is what I've read on bumper stickers ("In the event of The Rapture, this car will be unmanned" - to which I reply, "Ossum! Free car!"). But the jist I got from it was that the popularity of these books is cause for a great deal of concern for non-theistic types like myself and everyone else who isn't either a honkie or a fundie (fundamentalist Christian) or both. We're all likely to get snuffed either directly or indirectly by these wingnuts any day.

I say "whoah now". Here's why. You know what type of media has a rate of consumption 5-to-1 over every other type of media? PORN. Yeah buddy. So that means for all 65 million of the "Left Behind" series that has been sold, 325 million copies of world-renowned smut classics like "Temple of Poon" ('Witness meat-eating hardbodies lunging on love lumber!') have gone before them. And out of all the people who buy all that porn, how many of them are people we should be really concerned about, viz., rapists and the like? A sheensy beensy teensy percentage, that's how many. Not none, but close. It's one thing to look. It's another to touch. It's the same sort of illogical panic people send up that equates homicidal sprees with video game usage.

The thing that concerns me about Christian fundamentalism - specifically the sort of fundamentalism the authors of the "Left Behind" series espouse, is that I don't hear any other Christians speaking out against it. If they are, they must not be very loud. I mean, isn't there a single priest or congregant out there trying to point out that Jesus was probably more of a touchy-feely and less of a killy-mcbloodbath? (Actually, from what I remember of catechism, I'm damn sure Jesus didn't kill anybody, so these jokers can kiss my left behind.) I mean, c'mon, isn't there even a single Episcopalian (where there's four, there's a fifth!) who can write a scathing letter or something?

So why not me? I'll tell ya why. Because my Vow of Refuge clearly states that I have to take refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha on this one. And not one of the the Three Jewels has told me (yet) that I can throw all their hate-filled fundie asses into a blazing chasm. Instead, I have to sit my own ass on my zafu and generate compassion for people who would really like to see me get flayed with the flaming sword of Jesus.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

March 26th, 2006

Greg:

I don't know if you heard the news, but last Sunday morning here in Seattle, a young man named Kyle Huff inexplicably shot six people to death at a house party and then shot himself. No motive. No reason.

The house where the shooting happened is just a block from where Elizabeth lives. We carpool to work together. I can't avoid going past it when I pick her up in the morning. This morning when I drove by, there were still a number of kids holding a vigil on the lawn and sidewalk amongst soggy sleeping bags and wilted flowers. They looked like they were freezing. I went up to the Starbucks and bought half a gallon of hot chocolate and a dozen or so donuts and brought them to the kids. They were overjoyed to get something warm.

There was a news crew standing by from KING 5. They asked me if I'd speak with them on-camera and I consented. They said I didn't look like a member of the rave scene, and I said no, I wasn't. They asked me to spell my name for them, so I did. Then they asked me to spell it again, so I did. Then they rolled the cameras.

The reporter asked me if I lived in the neighborhood, and I said no. He asked me why I brought the donuts an hot chocolate and I said these kids look like they're freezing, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Then he asked me, as a member of the neighborhood, what effect I thought this tragedy would have on the area. I couldn't understand why he asked me that. I had just told him that I didn't live there. It was like a Zen koan. Everything kind of breathed in for a moment. I don't know how else to say it. I noticed that the reporter had a tan. I noticed that the microphone had a torn windscreen. I smelled wax. I thought about Kyle Huff. I heard some of the kids laugh. And then the breath went out again.

I said I hadn't spoken to any of the people in the neighborhood, so I didn't know. But my heart went out to the parents of all the kids who were killed. I said I have a son about the same age as a lot of the kids at the party, and that I couldn't imagine being worried, waiting for a phone call for him, only to find out that he was never coming home.

The reporter said thanks. I got in the car and drove away. On the way to work, I thought about how someone must mourn for Kyle Huff, too.

"Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion...is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception.

"After I escaped from Tibet, [my brother monk] Lopon-la was put in prison by the Chinese. He stayed there eighteen years. When he finally was free, he came to India. For twenty years, I did not see him. But he seemed the same. Of course, he looked older, but physically OK. His mind still sharp after so many years in prison. He was still the same gentle monk.

He told me the Chinese forced him to denounce his religion. They tortured him many times in prison. I asked him whether he was ever afraid. Lopon-la then told me: 'Yes, there was one thing I was afraid of. I was afraid I may lose compassion for the Chinese.'"

-Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness The XIVth Dalai Lama

God Hates Boners

Believe me, I know exactly what this kid is thinking.

Greg:

You were surprised to hear that Dad's gonna be churchin' up, or re-churchin', or whatever they call it when somebody makes the Jesus-Jew-Jesus turnaround. Perhaps "making a return to the cloth". Ummm, "a rethinking of one's convictions". "Spinning a philosophical donut", or "pulling a religious brodie", to speak in automotive terms.

So yeah, I guess the diocese is going to decide whether he's naughty or nice, and then if all goes well he'll get his collar back. Probably not the same one, though. I think he probably threw that one out years ago before he went to Israel to stay on that kibbutz. Or maybe he sold it at a garage sale, and then some 13-year-old picked it up thinking he had just procured the ideal age-enhancing, beer-purchasing disguise. I wish I woulda nabbed it, because I would be out there right now impersonating an Episcopalian minister. I'd be preaching all over hell and gone. Cash money!

I'll tell ya, though, the one thing I am glad about is that I'm way too old to acolyte for him anymore. He won't be calling me to ask me to be his crucifer or thurifer any time soon. He's probably aware that if I walked into a church, the rafters would burst into flame.

I swear that's how I blew out my L5/S1 disc - by doing all that kneeling up at the altar as a young acolyte. As a matter of fact, the first time my back went out was while I was acolyting the ten o'clock service. I was thirteen, I think. You remember how your mind used to wander when Dad was singing the eucharistic prayer and the sanctus?

"It is very meet right and our boun-de-ehen doo-hoo-ty / that we should at all times and in all places gi-hive tha-hanks unto thee / Oh Lord Holy Father / Al-migh-tee-hee eh-hev-ver-lah-ahst-ing Looooord!"

So yeah, 'bout that time my mind started to wander, and being thirteen and all, it turned to topics far more interesting than eternal salvation - subjects like Kathy Kuhns from my third period English class, and more specifically the size of her brand new boobies. Needless to say, this thought was sufficient to cause me to crack a woodie right there at the altar rail. This in turn caused me to break into a froth of terror because I knew that in just a few short stanzas, Dad was going to get to the holy holy holy part - the part where I'd have to stand up thrice and show the congregation how I'd turned my cassock into The Unholy Tent Of Prurience and Damnation. So I freaked out and tried shifting my weight from knee to knee, hoping to - hell, I don't know what - deaden the erectile nerve or something. And right then bang! my lower back gripped me with a massive spasm. It hasn't been the same since.

I know this all happened because God hates me. I'm pretty sure Jesus likes me just fine. I celebrate his birthday every year, so I think that probably means I'm a "made" guy. God, on the other hand, thinks I'm a douche for that whole boner-in-the-church deal. I can hear the conversations in heaven right now:

Jesus: "Hey Dad, Thaddeus is getting nailed for taxes on all his freelance work from last year. You think you could maybe put in a good word with the IRS - have them cut him some slack or something?"

G-D: "Thaddeus? That kid who got a boner in church? MY church? Fuck that randy little chump!"

Jesus: "Aww c'mon Dad! Just this once!"

G-D: "You know what? Just for that, I think I'm going to just go and arbitrarily fuck his shit up right now, just for hoots. [God swears, like, all the time. It's true. I know this because I was an altar boy. -Ed.] Check it out. The phone is going to ring, and when he goes to answer it, he's gonna slam his bare toe into the table leg. And then - oh man this is sweet! - when he bends over to rub it, his back is going to freak out! But wait - wait! It gets better. He's going to hobble over to the phone and pick it up, only to find out that it's the IRS - and he's getting audited! OhmiGAWD this is gonna be ossum!"

Jesus: That's some cold shit, man. You're just straight-up mean and capricious.

G-D: Of course I am! Why do you think they call me God?

Yeah, it's probably a good thing I became a nontheistic Buddhist. Otherwise I'd be going straight to hell right after I finish my coffee this morning. And if I ever pull a philosophical brodie and decide to re-church, maybe Dad and Jesus can put in a good word for me.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

One More Time For Us Dumb Kids

Somewhere in Pontiac Michigan, a young wordsmith ponders all the
possible spellings of the word "beeeyotch".

Greg:

Got your email describing your invention (an email which I do not count as correspondence, so you're not off the hook yet). I have just one question: ...What?!

There were many, many big words. What do they mean?

I mean - I consider myself a reasonably intelligent fellow. I wasn't raised in Shackabama or Ohiowa or anything. I was raised - just like you were - in the intellectual heart of the Detroit Megalopolis: Pontiac, Michigan. This auspicious origin, combined with the twelve score and forty sermons we endured at our father's birdy little knee[1], has endowed us with vocabularies mightier than half the tongues in Missouri. This has also enabled us to use words like uxorious and abaxial in casual conversation (with stingingly precise usage, I might add) and has made me the hero of at least one cocktail party. (Dude - I totally got laid for using the term trompe l'oiel once. For real! It was ossum! I was 20! But I digress.)

Again, I reprise my entreaty. There were many big words. Whatever do they mean? I tried reading your description of the product. I really did. But I fell asleep at about the term carbon sequestration. Then I drank a whole bunch of coffee and tried reading it again. Apparently I was still a little dim or a little impatient or a little wired offa my tits on caffeine or All Of The Above because I still didn't get it. So I eventually wound up cutting and pasting the body of the email and making a Mad-Lib out of it...the kind of Mad-Lib you'd probably make if you were a ten-year-old kid who was wired offa their tits on caffeine. Horsies!? Horsies!? Like Horsies!? I must still have some caffeine left in my system. Tic tic tic! The result of my experiment is below. Enjoy.

_______________________________________

MAD LIBZ! Product Brief Crazinesses!

The following is a description of the essential features of the [waste]product/[digestive] system. Interested [f]arties who would like to review [a three-dimensional drawr-ing of my butt] should first [sign an Oath of Alliegance to the Dark Underlord].

Keywords: hyper[kids light fires! fires! fires!], energy [d]efficiency, seis[mime] performance, fire[fire! fire! fire!]-proof, [your mom's] mold[y old underwear]-proof, [tiny, tiny bear]-proof, integrated,[segregated, delegated, masticated] whole-building, carbon sequestration [say what?], green [green is the color of my true love's hair!]

The invention is an engin[qu]eered building envel[d]ope system [so you can mail buildings to people? Neat!]intended primarily for residential building applications.

This system achieves remarkable [weiner] structural, environmental and cost efficiencies through the functional [weiner] replacement or integration of the disparate [weiner] components and meth[addeus] currently used in residential construction, [s]ex., stud [You said "sex stud"! You have a dirty mind!] framing, [s]exterior siding, [weiner] sheathing, (separate) [weiner] insulation, (separate) [weiner]ventilation, electrical [weiner] and water [weenie] supply races, and interior dryw[einer].

These features notwithstanding, the aesthetic [prosthetic kinetic] and archi[tech me on the boobies]values and appear[ants in my pants] of buildings constucted using this system ar[abbi a priest and a] completely [nun]conventional [walk into a bar].

Prior to specific inquir[ing minds want to know!], interested [f]arties should [get way]downlo[w]and read the no[-]disc[o]los[ers] document found at [h-tee-tee-pee-whack-wack-dubbadubbadubbadot-kiss-my-round-brown-bootay-dotcom].

_______________________________________

Okay, in all fairness, here's what I'll do. I'll actually try to translate all of what you sent me into English terms that everyone can understand. And then I'll put it up here so people can read it. Then they will truly understand how ossum this thing is. They'll be all, "Oh - so it's like a jelly donut that does your math homework. I get it! Sweet!" And we'll be all, "Gzakly!" See what I mean?

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

[1] EXPLANATION FOR THE READERS: When I say "sermons", I don't mean the "how many times I gotta tell ya to look out for the cat when you're mowing the lawn ya friggin' meathead" sermon. I mean the real kind, like "In Hooteronomy twelve, in the third verse, it says he who lays down with the she-ox will blinded verily be". That kinda thing. Our Dad was an Episcopalian minister for 33 years (that's One Score and Thirteen to you Bible-ish types), so we got the dress rehearsal of every one of his sermons on Saturday, the day before it hit the pulpit. But then he converted to Judaism, and then it was all "Jew" this and "baruch" that. Half of it was in Hebrew and I couldn't understand it anyway. Besides, by then I was all grown up and out on my own. When he spoke Hebrew, I just thought all the Xanax my shrink was giving me had screwed up my ears. But now - get this - he's gonna re-up! That's right! He's re-becoming an Episcopalian! He's busting his collar outta mothballs! Stay tuned for further developments.

-TRG

It Ain't The Clapper

Greg:

Look, I know I'm supposed to keep a tight lip on what I say about your invention since it's not on the market and all. On the other hand, here you are in the same situation every inventor finds themselves in at least once: close to marketability but just shy of enough capital to get it there. I mean, c'mon, this is not some Rube Goldberg device we're talking about. It's a viable product that could do a lot of people a lot of good. It has been deemed utterly patentable by a genuine patent attorney with genuine morals. It has been computer-tested by engineers with genuine PhDs who gave it the thumbs up. It has been feasibility-tested by other folks with PhDs who know a thing or two about feasibility. They also gave it The Official Okey Dokey Stamp. Furthermore, there's probably a forlorn computer geek over on Mercer Island who cashed all his MSFT stock and is wondering what to do with that tumbleweed-size mass of c-notes that is clogging the foyer of his McMansion.

So what the hell am I going on about?

Here's the deal. We've already established that people are eavesdropping (eyedropping?) on this conversation. If some of these people knew something about your invention, they might understand exactly how ossum it is. Overcome by the brilliance of it, they might be compelled to gasp about it to two of their friends - and those two friends would tell two friends - until finally the geek on Mercer Island gets wind of it, blows that tumbleweed of cash your way, and faster than you can say cementatious admixture, you're on the market.

I also realize that by using our public correspondence as a venue for discussing something as technologically dense as your invention may create a wave of boredom that sweeps across this mighty land, causing necks to wilt and foreheads to crash into keyboards from Boston to Honolulu. That's a risk I'm willing to take. Lemme know whatcha wanna do.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

You'll Drink It And Like It

You can't quit the Schmidt. You jes' cain't.

Greg:

There has been a disturbing-yet-amusing development with this whole "people are reading your mail" thing. You'd think that folks would be content to sit back and watch the conversation unfold naturally with the same bemused detachment reserved for Christmas pageants and dog fights. I mean, this is after all a correspondence between you and me (save for the fact that you never ever write me back, so it's actually more like the one-way conversations people have with Baby Jesus - wait; correction: all people except psychotics). You'd think they'd be content to listen in on the party line without interrupting the conversation with a "wait - which one of you guys is Greg?" You'd think we could just serve 'em free Schmidtties right outta the Sport Pak and they'd like it. Oh mais non. That is where you'd be tres wrong.

DG reader-slash-viewer-slash-voyeur-with-an-opinion Dale Zeretzke has made it clear that he wants to hear more discourse on the topic of cognitive science. Jesus H. Gall Bladder of Christ. How do I respond to that? Considering the current forum (viz., a "private" correspondence between you and me), it's akin to having the mailman hand deliver a letter and then tell you, "Just skip to the last paragraph - the one where he confesses." Or like getting dressed and hearing a disembodied voice say, "I like the underwear you had on yesterday a lot better." Dale has gone and busted down the fourth wall on this whole thing.

But here's the unpossibly ironical part about all this. What did you say when you called yesterday? You said, "Hey - I have a cognitive science question for you" did you not? And that's exactly what I was going to talk about in this letter. So at least for know I can continue my original course without believing that I have given in to audience pressure - not just yet, anyway - and this is not the equivalent of playing "Free Bird" for the fried-to-the-hat gentleman in the second row. That said:

Your question about catatonia and whether it is a response that allows time to process information. From what I know about it, catatonia can cycle with states of extreme excitement like some sort of psychotic mania, so - yeah I know that doesn't answer your question, but I think that catatonia can be a response to acute sensitivity to both internal and external stimulus. To wit: when I was a stone cold coke freak, sometimes my thoughts were whizzing by so fast that trying to grab one and make it come out of my mouth was like trying to steal a hubcap off a moving car. I was so high and my thoughts were so frenetic, I simply could not speak. I imagine that from the outside, I appeared very calm. Likewise, I've read case studies where a person who was just on the catatonic horizon would respond to questions as though they were trying to sort out the conversation from myriad distractions, like trying to carry on a conversation in a very loud barroom. So in that case, I'd say sure - catatonia probably allows the person to limit the only stimulus that they can actually control, which is the sensations created by their own movement. Can a great deal of stimulus cause a person to shut down? Sure, take a look at a baby. Sometimes the only way to get 'em to sleep is to overstimulate 'em by putting them in the swingy-chair or the stroller...or at the controls of a loaded-for-bear P41 Mustang.

That's my free cents - or fuppence as I like to say. Take this as you will as I'm just a layperson who reads the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science for fun.

Speaking of which, it becons me even now. I'm up to h - as in homunculus.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

How Much For The Gall Bladder?

...and apparently if I save 35% of my income from now until retirement,
I'll be just that!

Greg:

Okay, so I finally figured out how I'm gonna die. Starvation. Here's why.

I don't know about you, but I sometimes like to torture myself with the knowledge that I have no real skills and am tripping, nay, barrelling toward doom with every passing day. All it takes is a tiny market fluctuation to give me an Eskimo-blanket-style toss right out of the job market and back to living in a Ford Maverick. That's what I get for being a writer, I guess. Everyone likes writers, but nobody needs 'em. And I know that you can relate because you made most of your career out of being a musician. Musicians and writers have pretty much the same retirement plan. Which is none. In lieu of retirement at age 65, here's what I see as the options for people like us: #1) Eat a bullet. #2) Take the gas pipe. #3) Armed burglary, followed by conviction, followed by 25 years of three squares a day served in your very own room, followed by carrying out #1 or #2 in a dank halfway house in Des Moines, Iowa. 4) Teach, followed by #1 or #2. (I'd love to teach, but being somewhat short of a degree in education, I don't think anyone is going to accept my qualifications as an itinerant dilletante.) Or #5) Participate in Great Britain's Arse for Shillings program headquartered at the docks in Liverpool (which, in and of itself is a retirement plan, if only a retirement of one's morals).

Why the glum ruminations? I just got done using the retirement calculator on the Vanguard website and it's telling me that I'm gonna have to save up $3.5 million in the next 25 years in order to retire. Which brings me to my next question. Is it possible to sell your organs to science while you're still alive? I'm not talking about signing up for medical experiments. I mean something like - oh I don't know - selling your gall bladder to the Chinese, or selling your venom glands to the Malaysians. If you could do that, you'd make a ton of dough in the short run and probably save at least one member of an endangered species to boot. And if I can't sell my whole gall bladder because it turns out that I need it for something, do you suppose I might be able to shave bits off of it and sell those? It'll grow back, right?

Another thing occurred to me and that is there is another direction to go with this whole retirement thing. Instead of amassing property and capital, one could reasonably de-mass property and capital. For instance, if I got rid of the six-acre apartment, the dog sitter, the housekeeper, the solid-gold 500 mph T1 line, the satellite, and the luxury of being able to urinate indoors, I bet I could save a wad. Let's see, if I add all the - (...that's sixteen thirty eight plus fifty five...carry the twelve...subtract pi...add overhead...subtract underpants...divide overcoats...subtract the other pi...) - crap, that'll never work. That's only a savings of something like eighty quid nine shillings tuppence a month. Maybe if I had a skill, I might even be able to throw myself a yurt on a potter's wheel using common garden clay.

If you have any great retirement schemes, I would be glad to hear 'em. I'm not above breaking the law (depending on which law, of course) or dipping my hand into the Republican money stream - which, come to think of it, is probably breaking the law.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

My Ass Will Not Be Moved

Dr. Brian Graham (above, vertical) demonstrates
correct clinical procedure for the frontal suplex
while simultaneously claiming the WWF
Championship Belt.

Greg:

The diagnosis on my lower spine is in. The word is that I suffer from White Man's Disease. Viz., my ass does not move. In the words of Fatboy Slim, "If dis don't make yo' booty move, you booty mus' be daid". It's true, Fatboy. My booty don't move. It mus' be daid.

Here's how I found all this out. I told you before 'bout how I went and got an MRI and the sports med doctor (Dr. John Robertson who is ossum, by the way) told me that I had a bulge in my L5/S1 disc. Then they told me that they were gonna put weed in my spine to make it stop hurting. Then I went to my chiro (Dr. Brian Graham) and he said "Don't let 'em put weed in your spine, man!" So I say, "Okay, do your worst." So what does he do? He tells me he's gonna give me an adjustment, and then he climbs up on top of the third turnbuckle and does a full-frontal Haystack Calhoun body drop on me. Then he finishes it off with a vertical suplex and a whip-cracking roundhouse to my serratus anterior. I hear my spine go BANG! After that, all is blackness.

When I awoke, there was NO PAIN AT ALL! Dr. Graham had hammered the Love of Baby Jesus directly into my lower spine! And everyone knows that the Love of Baby Jesus is at least 200 times stronger than weed.

First I must say this. I don't believe - per se - in chiropractic. It's not because I think it's a lot of hooey - I don't. I just don't understand how it works. That doesn't stop me from going, though. There's something very weird and satisfying about some guy torquing on you until your joints make a mammoth crunching sound. It's kinda like paying somebody to crack your knuckles for you. Although it has been explained to me a bazillion times, I still don't get how it works. However, I certainly cannot argue with the results I am currently enjoying. Likewise, I would be more than happy to pay Dr. Graham handsomely to wave a chicken leg at my back if it would relieve the pain.

So I went back to Dr. Robertson who said, "Hey man, whatever works." And I said, "You're tellin' me Whatever works. Whatever works like a charm. I'm gonna have Dr. Graham Whatever me right into Palookaville!"

Dr. Robertson did go over my MRI with me, however. It was kinda cool to get to see the inside of my spine. I got to see the bulge in the disc - which is teeny tiny - as well as another herniation higher up which is much larger. It's on the outside of the disc so I don't ever notice it, so that's nice, I guess. Anyway, that is how I learned that my booty don't move. This is how it happened. Y'see, decades of languishing on a barstool caused the disc to become very sad. Then it dried out, compacted and became immobile. It's kinda like Brian Wilson, just laying there in bed all depressed for years, not wanting to do a goddamn thing, just grumpy as hell. And I'm kinda like Sparky Wilson, the Happy Wilson, the one who comes along after all those years and wants to go out and play. So now I'm like, "Hey Disky, wanna do The Twist?" And he's like, "Fkoff." And then I'm like, "Hey Disky, wanna go hike all over hell and gone?" And he's all, "Fuh-period-koff-period." So finally I'm sayin', "Hey Disky, wanna bend over so I can pick my underwear up off the floor?" And then he's totally, "Oh now you really must FKOFF!" And then he stabs me as hard as he can. And then I weep. It's a very difficult relationship.

There is an upside, though. The fact that the disc is about 90% hard means that it most likely doesn't have the elasticity to allow it to bulge further. So I can't see how it can get any worse. You take what good news that you can, y'know?

And speaking of good news, it's time to go home! Yeepaw! I'm going to move my non-moving ass out of this office for the day.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus