Flipped Off: How Speed And Greed Kill Houses

DON'T KILL THIS FLIPPER. Save your rage for those d-bags who
ruin houses and then jack up the price.

Greg:

Know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get a pump-action 12 gauge Remington and ventilate the liver of the next "handyman" I see attempting to "flip" a house.

Yeah, OK - I won't. Yeah I know, I'm all Buddhist and stuff and the whole shooting somebody with a shotgun kinda runs against the grain of the whole compassion thing. (Yeah. Kinda. -Ed.) But I'm hacked at what I see these guys doing to houses, not to mention to what they're doing to prices, and I desperately need to vent my anger by at least soaking one of these guys with a squirt gun filled with wee-wee. That's harmless and it'll get the point across, right?

Let me back up. Here's how I hyperextended my spleen on this particular subject.

Teresa and I are in the market for a house. We have to get something by July 1 because that's when our lease is up. Besides, Crashy McThunderfoot just moved in upstairs, so our apartment is kinda like living in the basement of a bowling alley now. If only to save our eardrums, we must move.

So we're out looking for houses now. You are already well acquainted with my inclination to obsess on turn-of-the-century Craftsman architecture, not to mention work myself into a pungent lather over small domestic gems of the early 20s. So the first house we go to was - at least architecturally - a classic small Craftsman bungalow. My kinda place. Looked great from the street. But oh, Sweet Mother of Gustav Stickley what this man - the owner, who we'll call "Flipper" - had done to the place. It was obvious in very short order that he had tried to flip this house - to improve its appearance quickly and on the cheap so's to fool the first cloth-eared bint with a swollen wallet and leaden aesthetics that walked through its ill-hung front door.

First of all, he must've got the paint and plaster buckets mixed up. The place needed plaster desperately. What it got was 36.8 coats of paint. Even that did not stop the canyons that were forming in the walls even as we watched. Then he replaced all the interior doors with hollow-core pieces of shite; turned the kitchen into a mustard-colored, black-marbled, 1970s love pad, and then - and THEN - painted the Christ-all-freakin'-mighty out of the exterior without - withOUT! - scraping it first. It looked like a case of post-adolescent acne that got a dermabrasion treatment from Lizzie Borden.

Needless to say we didn't buy it.

But - man! - don't you think people like that oughtta be arrested? At least? The Craftsman bungalow is an American architectural icon and legacy. Anyone who compromises one of these places in any manner should at the very least be forced to live in a rusted-out single-wide on the Hanford nuclear reservation. Surely there must be some rule of law whereby these speedy, greedy Home Depot recidivists can be flogged in a very conscientiously designed village square.

But no, this is America, and those who throw art into the meatgrinder of commerce get their own TV show. And those who throw Thomas Kinkade on their walls are looked upon as "art collectors". (Frankly, I'd rather draw on my walls with a poop crayon. But that's just me. And my poop crayon.)

So off we went and continued down the list of homes that we had decided to view that day, and the next was no better. Someone had turned the back porch of a cove-ceilinged 1920s cottage into a very long, narrow bathroom - or rather Bathing/Pooping Assembly Line. If you turned sideways in there you'd be trapped forever. Best to just face the wall and move along. And again, plaster that was practically basted with dusty flat cheap-ass acrylic.

Oh, the price on both of these palaces? 'Bout $380k. I think you can buy Utah for that much now. Which brings me to my next point, which is the fact that house flippers have contributed in no small way to the hysterically inflated prices of real estate in our formerly affordable neck of the Pacific Northwest. (Not exactly so. The increased focus on Seattle because of the Grunge Movement, microbrews, our "liveability" index, and MegaJillionaire Paul Allen's Seahawks - not to mention overpaid Boeing veeps, Genentech billionaires, Immunex zillionaires, a feistly little startup with a can-do attitude called Microsoft - and - the predilection of the mossbacks to fleece California transplants all contributed in their own small way. -Ed.)

Yeah. So. Poop. Not going so well so far with the whole house-hunting thingamadillyo. However, we are venturing down to Tacoma on Saturday to take a look at a Craftsman we found there for a buck-two-ninety-five. We've discovered that you can still find unmolested architectural treasures in Tacoma for cheap. And we've been assured by our agent that the low, low real estate prices have nothing to do with the fact that the city is riddled with crime and smells like baked ass, or that "Tacoma" is the Salish word for "the place where evil dwells". We'll give you a full report when we get back.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Happiness Pt. 6.5: I Won The Lottery. Again.

THAT'S HOW I ROLL. First thing I'm gonna buy when I hit the Lotto jackpot
for real is a sweet setta wheels just like this bizzad bizzoy right here.
Dudes at the Starbucks driveup window are gonna crap every corner of their
pants when I glide up for my short drip in this ride. Oh yeah. And then
I'm gonna give the rest of the money to world peace. Amen.

Greg:

I won the damn lottery. Again. Well - wait - not the whole thing. If I'd've matched one more number, we'd be having this conversation at 600MPH on the Bonneville Salt Flats in the front seat of my solid gold rocket car. But anyway, for the third time in less than a year, I won $1,000 in the Washington State Lottery. Fu, the guy at Uwajimaya who sells me my tickets, gave a little squeak and exclaimed, "That's three times! You're the luckiest person I know!"

So what's my secret, assuming I have one? Well it's like this. I do have a lottery-winning secret. However it's not the reason that I keep winning money literally by the thousand-fold. Here's what happened:

Way back in ought-one when I was going to Seattle Central Community College on the state's dime, I was forced to take math against my will. Unbeknownst to me - or to the gnomes who run my checkbook - I had hidden powers of mathematical wizardry that suddenly bloomed under the tutelage of my many, many math teachers at SC(3). So yeah, I'm hanging out in the math lab one day, (Just saying that makes you a certified nerd. -Ed.) and I'm all talking smack about how the lottery is not truly random because if it was you would not be able to plot a bell curve on the results (which you can). No number would have a better chance of being drawn than any other number. It would be pretty close to a flat line. And Nick, the Uber-Math-Geek (If math smarts were pectoral muscles, he'd have an 80-inch chest. -Ed.) says no, it's truly random. I'm all like, "Hey Nick, why'n't you go blow a quadratic?" And he's all, "Why'n't you suck my rational equation?" And our professor goes, "Yeah, real mature." So I says to him I says that I had a way to prove that it wasn't random, and I was going to go do it, and when I did, he would have to wear a t-shirt every day in the math lab that said "THADDEUS GUNN'S KUNG FU IS THE BEST - and I, Nick, am his bitch for life".

So I got a spreadsheet of all the results for the Washington State Lottery Lotto game from day one up to the present, and I listed them all out in descending order of how frequently each number was drawn. I drew a median line through the results, thus creating a set of the top 50% most frequently drawn numbers. Then I wrote a simple Visual Basic program (OK - now you're a certified nerd with a gold star. -Ed.) that would randomly draw sets of six numbers from that pool. I would draw five sets of six numbers this way, and then create a control set which was drawn randomly by the Lotto machine at the store where I bought the tickets. So what I wound up with for every drawing was ten draws: five by me, five by the machine.

After doing this for three months, I calculated (with my bitchen new math skills) that my draw set won over five times more often than the control set. What I mean is that it won something - any prize level from $1 to $75. I wasn't shooting for winning the whole damn thing. I just wanted to influence my frequency or chances of winning anything. So it looked like I was right, that the lottery was not truly random, and that meant that a person could indeed influence their chance of winning a prize. Nick would be my bitch for life. Of course he poo-pooed the whole thing and told me it didn't mean anything, to which I replied that he should probably drive a Fibonacci equation into his rump at high velocity.

Nick now works as a Programming Titan for some company that prints money by the silo-full especially just for him. On the weekends, he crushes numbers with his 80-inch pecs at the Pike Place Market. (The tourists love it. -Ed.) He also drives a solid-gold rocket car. I, on the other hand, do not.

So yeah, so I've been doing this "experiment" for...oh more years than I can count now (Six. -Ed.), and my draw set still beats the control set five-to-one in number of wins. However - here's the rub: the control set, though it wins five times less frequently, wins - and I have calculated this mathematically - way way way WAY more $money$ than my draw set. The three times that I won $1,000, it was the control set that won. Same with the times that I've won $150. My draw set wins $1, $3, $5 and $20, like, all the time. But the big duckets come from the control set.

Ancillary-yet-interesting note: On my "three things" list the night that I won for the third time, I wrote, "Won $1k in the lottery again. Although I didn't mind winning, it didn't make me as happy as I thought it would."

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Happiness, Pt. 6: Gettin' My Dawdle On

Meet my new role model. Droopy Dog is the pace car in my rat
race.

Greg:

I sent an email to that guy you asked me about - Max Hong, the guy who was relocating to Seattle. I said yeah sure I can show you where to score fat, gnarly buds with big red hairs, captain! I've been hooking foreigners up with ganja since '87 and I've got the t-shirt to prove it. Just say the word! I hope this did not offend his Korean sensibilities.

PSYCHE! I did no such thing. Actually, all I told him was that I've lived here for 20 years and had no plans of leaving my White Supremacist compound on Whidbey Island.

PSYCHE AGAIN! Good God man, you are so easy! Freakin' just look at you! You're all wigging out because you think I probably told this guy about how your strange affection for your tuba (and proclivity for having sex in barns while the brass section of the London Philharmonic watches) made you the model for the main character in Peter Shaffer's gritty psychological drama Greguus. Look, if he knows about that it's because he reads the paper. I didn't say anything. So chill. Eat a donut. Carbohydrates are a calming food. Or that's what Dr. Max Hong tells me.

Speaking of chill, this happiness experiment that I've been doing on my brain since November has caused me to chill in the most delightful ways. Here's an update. Doing the "three things" exercise really does work incredibly well for something that seems like such an insignificant gesture. However it does work a whole lot better if you do it right before you go to sleep. I know this because I was having a hard time staying awake and writing in my journal each night while I was in a state of repose on my TempurPedic Coma-Tron 3000, especially if I'd just eaten dinner not long before. As you know I get up at 4AM every day, so laying on the world's most comfortable mattress with a gutful of pasta at 9PM was proving to be a knockout combination. Even trying to avoid premature narcolation by writing while sitting upright at the dinner table didn't work so well. Half the time I was doing a full on neck-wilt followed by a face-plant right between the pages of my Moleskine. Most of my journal entries started to look like "1. Getting a check fro~~ #20a;slkjd ~~~~~~~~~. Snnrrrrrrrrrrfff." And then there'd be a stain on the page that looked like the Shroud of Turin would look if Jesus had been wearing glasses. So I started to do the exercise first thing in the morning which is just about the only time my brain works anyway. I have to admit, it's a great way to start the day, but the persistent mood-elevating effect from it began to ebb after a couple of weeks, so I decided I oughtta go back and do the exercise the way it was prescribed. I figure if I don't eat anything after 2PM, I should be able to stay awake long enough in the evening to get it done. I'll let you know how that turns out. Since I have a tendency to obsess on pudding at about 2:30PM every day, I believe accomplishing that will take a great deal of fortitude that I may in no way possess. We'll see.

I've continued doing the other exercise, the one I created to do in the morning, that one about "Three Things To Look Forward To Today". That one has been working out really well and works exponentially better than any "to do" list I ever wrote in my life. Stuff that I write in this list actually get done. Who'd'a thunk?

But the best side effect (or is it direct effect?) of this whole experiment is the across-the-board deceleration of my life in general. To wit, I have begun to dawdle, to dawdle well, and to dawdle often. Example: usually when I go hiking or snowshoeing on the weekends, I like to be the first person on the trail so I can enjoy the silence unperturbed by dogs, children, adulterers, fastpackers, sullen teens, Fat Grannies, Ozzie fans, and other representatives of the various phylums, classes or species tributary to the H. fartknocker evolutionary branch that might be found in the deep woods of the great northwest. I'm usually making everyone's life a living, shrieking hell by prying them out of bed at an UnGawdly hour on a weekend morning and making them rush to the trailhead. Not so anymore. Last weekend I was content to let the group gather at its own speed, then meander its way to the trailhead at a pleasant - dare I say floaty - pace. It was so much more relaxing than my usual way of doing things. The general texture and pace of the day reminded me of a rather pleasant week I spent in a Canadian hospital smacked out of my gourd on morphine. Everything had the languid, beautiful tempo of a still, warm autumn day, or...say...Hempfest. But this time I didn't have to have my appendix removed to enjoy it. What's more interesting is that this deceleration took place apparently without my volition. I didn't plan it. I just woke up one day, stopped giving a rat's ass, and started moving at a more organic pace...say the speed of a carrot...or perhaps even dirt.

Now I'm assuming, mind you, that this is the result of the exercises that I've been doing and not the result of the gradual evaporation of my precious life-giving fluids as I approach and overtake middle age. I'm convinced it's the former because of the proximity between the initiation of the exercise and gradual entanglement of my limbs in the giddy molasses of sloth. The fact that I can bench three times what I could when I was twenty, not to mention the vexing new growth of insolent black hairs on my chest where there were formerly none, both indicate that the bung and stopcock on my hormone barrel is getting - if anything - more leaky with age. At this rate I should be the strongest, slowest, most hirsute 80-year-old you've ever seen.

And speaking of geriatrics, I was surprised to find that not only is Jack LaLanne still alive and jumping at age 92, but another pugancious nonegenarian desperately wants to kick his ass. I thought that guy had stopped pissing people off and jumping-jacked his ass right into Forest Lawn decades ago. Apparently not. Well if he's still around when I'm 92 (which would make him 140), I'd probably like to take a crack at slapping the gums out of his mouth, too. I can see it now. I'll throw one punch and it'll take half a day to land.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Flying Blows

Big Heavy Sweater. You might think it was
really ossum to sit next to Hemingway on the plane...
that is until he got his itchy pretzel dust and
stinky rum sweat all over you.

Greg:

I've made a psychological breakthrough. I've managed to upgrade my irrational fear of flying to fully rational hatred of flying. As The Bard once quoth, How doth flying blow? Let me count the ways.

OK - so here's how this came about. I had to fly down to San Francisco for work a couple days ago. I was sitting in the waiting room at my gate - you know, the one with the screaming kids (what do they do, import choleric infants from 18th century England and stick them with pins or something?); crackling, unintelligible PA announcements; scoliosis-inducing seating, and That One Guy Who Stares At You The Whole Goddamn Time (is he on airline payroll, I wonder?). I was starting to get some anticipatory anxiety, something that I've learned to recognize as easily and detachedly (Hey, nice word! -Ed.) as you might recognize a stomach ache. I've been dealing with it and an entire spectrum of related and ancillary anxieties since you dropped me off at the nuthatch that one night back in 1984. Suffice it to say, I've also learned to deal with it for the most part. So yeah, I'm feeling the clench train pulling into the station and so I figure I'll listen to the fear of flying audio course that I always take with me to impart some rational wisdom to my irrationally-twitching brain. And then I just said to myself, "Y'know what? Fuck that. And not just fuck that. Capital FUCK capital THAT. I don't wanna be that "guy" who has that "thing" that he has to treat all the time. That's a lot of work and a bunch of BS." So I just quit. And I wasn't fearful anymore. And that was pretty much it. Done. Quit. Stop. No mas para yo. Goose egg. Empty set.

So now that I was no longer distracted by thoughts of falling out of the sky in a flaming, tangled mass, I was free to experience the splendor of traveling aboard a modern aircraft.

It sucks. It's not nice at all. Who in their right mind wants to be bombarded with cosmic rays while trapped inside an aluminum sausage? And it's loud, it's stuffy, and that 110% real faux leather they make the seats out of - why, if one were to break wind against it, it would most certainly make a mighty cracking sound like two razor strops colliding at supersonic speed. Papp!! Imagine the embarassment. (Speaking of which, ever since I wrote that bit about farts, the traffic on this clog has not abated even for a day. Google Analytics shows me that they're reading what will become known as The Dear Gregory FartBlog in Malaysia this evening.) I suppose I could go on to whine about the pretzels they gave us which were - and I crap you negative - the size of the nail on my pinky finger. But it all seems so pointless. Flying is what it is - a suffocating, claustrophobic hell peopled with people who get their people sweat all over you because you're crammed smack up against 'em in a 600 MPH autoclave of human misery. And neither you, nor I, nor all the magical pixie dust in Baby Jesus' coke bullet is going to change that. I've been working on this "happiness" thing, and it seems really counterproductive to dwell on that which induces agony, y'know?

But here's the ape in my ointment. I have two more round trip flights coming up in the next two months. I got tickets to go to two full days (two days!! ) of teachings from His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama (we call him The Big D) at the Graham Civic Center in San Francisco at the end of April, so I gotta fly down to that. But I figure either way, if I go down in a flaming ball or land safely but all schmutzig with people sweat, I was on a pilgrimage to see The Big D so I'm pretty much a shoo-in for nirvana.

Oh yeah, and then I'm going backpacking in Yellowstone at the end of May, so again, I'm going to have to fly not once but twice both ways for that. You can only fly from Seattle to Boise and then straddle an angry gnat to Jackson. They won't send you direct. I'm sure that the fine people of Wyoming put the kybosh on direct flights, citing the danger of their fair state filling up with steers, queers and hobos from Liberal Ol' Seattle if such a thing were allowed. (Hey - wait a minute... Actually... There was a movie about... Oh never mind. -Ed.) But again, whether it's a flaming ball or people sweat, I was on my way to Yellowstone so I'm pretty much a shoo-in for the Happy Hunting Grounds. (Think again, kimosabe. -Ed.)

But that's it, though. No more flying for me after that. I'd probably have to fly if I were going to Europe or something, but I'll probably never make it to Europe because I don't believe it exists. That's just some story they made up to scare us when we were kids. ("Little Thaddeus, did you know that in Europe they have a toilet that shoots water right up your hiney?" "Eeeeewww! I hate Europe!")

And if I go to Bhutan, I'll just take the train.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

The People In Hell Called. They Said Thanks For The Ice Water.

Manchego speaks: Chinga los otros! Soy Manchego,
el luchador mas pequeno y mas feroz de todo del noroeste!
Témame, putos! (NOTE: Manchego's opinions are his own, and
do not reflect the opinions of Dear Gregory, its affiliates, or
the many Dear Gregory-related defense industries.)

Greg:

As you can see from the picture, my fascination with tiny Mexican wrestlers has not abated. I call this one Manchego, and cobbled him together from a Seahawks bottle koozie, a Jones soda bottle, and a genuino 1/8th scale Mexican wrestler mask from the most Mexican part of the Mexico. A co-worker just returned from Mexico City (or thereabouts - can't be too sure as I wasn't listening) and brought along what at first appeared to be a half-score of tiny severed heads. Imagine my glee when they turned out to be cat-head-sized Mexican luchador masks which he graciously distributed evenly among his fellow man. Such a boon. Most confusing though was the tag sewn inside which read, "To be used as a novelty device only. Not for the prevention of disease or unwanted pregnancy." I think something may have been lost in translation.

There are no Mexican wrestlers in Children of Men, the new movie directed by the excellent Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mama Tambien). And why should there be? Oh, because he's Mexican? Look at you, ya racist! It takes place in 2027 in an England that is in the midst of mass sterility and rampant xenophobia. No one has had a kid in 18 years and illegal immigrants are rounded up like beeves and penned at the roadside while they await deportation. It's a real "feel good" flick along the lines of Pollyanna. I'm lying. But while it is an excellent, excellent film, be forewarned: there is not nearly enough morphine in Canada to offset the feeling of dread and despair that it induces in the viewer - namely me. I loved the film, but I had to go home and cleanse my brain by viewing The Little Mermaid afterward. (No seriously, he did. -Ed.)

And as if that wasn't bleak enough for me, then I had to go and watch Running With Scissors as a follow-up. I thought I was going to be seeing a dark comedy along the lines of The Royal Tennenbaums. What I saw was home movies from our dysfunctional youth. Again - a great film, but oh by the flaming, dyspeptic heart of Baby Jesus was it depressing. If you go see it, make sure you have the suicide prevention line on your cell phone's speed dial. You may need to call them directly from the theater...perhaps even while the film is showing. (Now available on DVD. -Ed.) I'm just going to say ten words about it - ten words that encapsulate that entire film and my entire youth: "Agnes, I want you to make me some Hamburger Helper." Those who have seen the movie will get it.

And no, I'm not going to launch into how much of an emotional quagmire our home life was. After 29 years out of the house and realizing how happy my life is now, it seems pointless. That movie just reminded me of what it was actually like because there were so many parallels. Since the film has a lunatic psychiatrist as a central character, it reminded me of the first psychiatrist I was sent to when I was 17. The guy was a whack job. We were talking about anger and he was telling me how he hit his wife because she deserved it. He even described how satisfying it was to him when her head made a thunk when he threw her against the wall. And for my part I just thought well, he's a psychiatrist isn't he? He has a degree. He must know what he's talking about. But here's the thing. Regardless of how awful it was overall, I have a lot of really happy memories from my childhood, a lot of them having to do with you. And that gives me faith that regardless of how dire the present circumstances may seem, there is always some small bit of joy available if you are attuned to perceive it, even if it is only Chekhovian irony. I learned how to be happy in the midst of my dysfunctional childhood; ergo, it couldn't have been all bad. If it was hell, there must've been some ice water in there somewhere.

Still - have the suicide prevention line and the morphine handy when you watch the movie.

So. Where was I? Oh yeah. This American Life. Speaking of living hells, I just listened to an episode of TAL that was entirely devoted to the life story of Carlton Pearson, the once nationally celebrated evangelist with a congregation of 28,000 who fell from grace (and financial security) when he stopped believing in hell and started preaching a gospel of inclusion. (Yeah, that's right. The self-righteous freaked right the shit out when they heard that homos were going to heaven. -Ed.) Furthermore, he was branded a heretic by his church. Did that stop him? No way, Jesús. But you really gotta hear his story. You can listen to it for free on the TAL website. The salient point of the program for me was when Pearson said the he realized that hell is not a place; hell is what we do to each other.

So on that cheery note, I'm going to go take my aching brain out of my skull and baste it with adorable puppies and kittens before watching My Little Pony and eating ice cream until a rainbow sprays out of my butt.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Tashe Dalek, Yo!

Snow cornice. Hurricane Hill trail, Olympic National Park. If you're looking for
a place to freeze every single one of you 'nards off during Lunar New Year,
I can't think of a more beautiful place to do it.

Greg:

Tashe muthaphukkin' dalek, and a Gung to the Hay to the Phat to the Choy! It's Lunar New Year, yo! It's 2133, Year of the Boar! Hope this letter finds you eating something made of pork, which in Chinese medicine is a warming food. (Although, don't get me wrong, I can't really endorse the eating of pork since I'm a vegetarian and all. But as I recall your diet consists of about 68% pork so I'm probably correct in assuming that you are reading this with a bag of chicharrons in one hand and a ham hock in the other whether I like it or not.)

Instead of staying in Chinatown and watching my little dog freak right the hell out over all the firecrackers and whatnot I decided to split town, hit the frozen road and do some snowshoeing.

Wait! Wait! I have to tell you something funny that happened even though it has nothing to do with Lunar New Year. Last week I was walking back to the office after lunch and I was just about right in front of the building when I encountered a lady out walking a great big beautiful golden Lab. Musta weighted about 150 pounds. Real pretty dog. So I asked her if I could pet her dog and she said yes - but, "Watch it. He jumps." So I put my hand down there by his snout to let him sniff it and BANG! The dog totally fucking tackles me and - more startling still - starts making those earnest, arduous gyrations that dogs are wont to make in fits of sexual passion. I don't know if you've seen me recently but I'm fifteen and three-quarter stone heavy and eighteen and a half hands high. It takes a shitload of sex-crazed Labrador to knock me down. So the lady starts screaming "CHICO! CHICO! GET DOWN! JESUS CHRIST, GET DOWN!" And I was wondering to myself - while being dry-humped with all the might and mechanical determination of the steam hammer that killed off John Henry - whether the lady knew what the word "jump" actually meant. Once I had wrested myself free from her dog's unsolicited - er - embrace and got to my feet I wanted to say, "Ma'am, your dog doesn't jump. It does something that rhymes with jump. But it does not in fact jump. Get my drift?" But by the time I got my shit back together she was throwing all of her weight into the dog's lead and dragging it off up the street.

As usual, I have digressed. Onward now.

So anyhoo, Teresa and I rounded up some friends and rented a cabin Wayne the Hell out in the wilds of Port Angeles (where the yards are more plentifully sown with rotting Volkswagens than a beach-hippie's crack is sown with grains of sand) and made a snowshoeing weekend of it. T'was a gaye auld tyme. We went to one of our usual summertime stomping grounds, Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. It's a whole different ball of wax (or snow) in the wintertime, though. We decided to take a pretty easy trail that we'd done in the summer a bunch of times: the Hurricane Hill trail. Well, in the summer it's a walk and in the winter it's a freakin' trek, especially with tennis rackets on your feet and snow and 40MPH winds stomping you in the face most of the way. Although don't get me wrong, it was still a blast and a half and rather a hefty workout, and the stunning beauty of the park in winter was more than sufficient fuel for the usual breathless exclamations of love, sacrifice and self-enucleation.

Can I stop right here and do some product endorsements? First, let me just say that there's nothing like brewing up a cup of Boyd's Country Creme with your JetBoil on a snow-covered ridge at 5,500 feet after having trekked a few miles on the best goddamn snowshoes ever. The tenacious grip and feather-like weight of the MSR Lightning Ascent makes snowshoeing a - well I won't say breeze, but it makes it way nicer than doing it with queen sized bedframes of beaver sinew on your feet like the Cheechakos used to do. We were lucky that one of our party - Tami Fairweather, the most mirthful person on this otherwise drab planet - (No, seriously. It's a huge compliment. -Ed.) works for Cascade Designs and five-fingered us a few pairs of these bad boys from the promo pile at the office. Her promotional ploy worked. I shall purchase my own pair anon.

Wait - another word about Boyd's real quick. Every other beverage they produce blows. Their coffee is simply atrocious. You should use it to stun tobacco beetles or something but for God's sake don't drink it. And it probaby took the combined brainpower of thirteen marketing executives to come up with the term "Country Creme" for something that is essentially hot egg nog made from chemicals that would otherwise be sprayed on tenement rats. But with all that said, it's goddamn delicious.

Final product endorsement, then I gotta skeedaddle. The guys from Tempur-Pedic are coming over to replace my box spring. They didn't even quibble for a second when I told them that my box spring was squeaking. They're just up and replacing it - snap - like that. Now that's service. They should be here any minute so I gotta run. Have a looksee at the photos from our trip below.

Cheers, and Happy New Year!

-Thaddeus

Snowshoeing 2.17.2007

Uncle To The 26th Power

Pull my finger: Something tells me that at least one of these guys is somebody's

batshit-crazy uncle. So this is what I have to look forward to.

Greg:

I'm going to tell you something that may surprise you. These letters that I write to you are not private. In fact, they are "posted" on a "blog" called "Dear Gregory" where literally "hundreds" of "people" "read" them.

Now let me tell you something that will surprise you even less. Our niece Morgan gave birth yesterday at 5:10PM to our newest grand-niece, a linebacker of an infant girl (8 lbs. 10 oz., 21") named Mina. That brings our nephew/niece total to 26. We are now uncles to the 26th power.

Just stick with me. All of this seemingly disparate information does have a singular point.

Back to the "blog" issue. Last month, I installed sophisticated tracking code on this blog which enables me to see exactly how many people are reading it and exactly wherefrom. It also tells me which installments get the most "hits". (Ask me to slow down if all this heady technical jargon is too "much" for you.) What I have discovered from reading the data produced by my new analytics tool is that people everywhere simply love farts. As a matter of fact, people love farts five times more than they love philanthropy. Here's my proof. Of all the letters I've written to you, the one about farts scored five times as many page hits as the lowest scoring page (which was essentially about philanthropy). And the "fart" entry set an all-time record for number of hits from any entry point - and - and - it was read worldwide. Wimbledon, Valencia, Madrid, Paris, Budapest, Beijing - all God's chilluns love they farts. Yes they does.

However, people read about farts much more quickly than they read about philanthropy. People spend about 3 minutes ripping through an installment on farts, whereas they spend a dawdling 16 minutes on installments about philanthropy.

OK, so - how does this figure in with the astounding number of nieces and nephews we have in common? Lord knows I can't even remember most of their names. Who are they again? Let's see if I can keep a running total - John's kids: Gabe, who has four kids, so that's five; Camiya plus her three kids - so that's nine - Brendon has two...or three? - I'll spot him one, so that's thirteen total now for that one sibling. You've got none, so that's easy. Sgt. Rock's kids: Phaedra - fourteen - Alowan - fifteen - Morgan plus one - sixteen, seventeen. And our sister - she has ten. Whoah, that's twenty seven! But that takes into account Brendon's extra mystery kid that I may have just made up (let's call him Shmendrick), so it may just be 26 after all. Well, anyway you slice it, that's a buttload of kids. It's like somebody got out the baby hose and sprayed it in every direction.

So with that many nieces and nephews of ours crawling the planet, it's a pretty good bet that some of them read this blog. And if they read this blog, then according to my fancy new analytics tool, they love farts.

Here's a tip, kids, if you're reading this: don't tell anyone we're related. You know why? I'll tell you. One day you're going to be somewhere, maybe somewhere far away, maybe some place where they read this blog, like China. And you're going to be in a Starbucks in Beijing and some guy is gonna come up to you and he's gonna say (in Chinese), "Hey, do you read 'Dear Gregory'?" And you're gonna say, "Read it?! I'm freakin' related to that guy!" And then all of a sudden the guy's gonna point at you and scream "You love farts!" And then pretty soon everybody in the place is going to be screaming "you love farts!" in Chinese. And you're gonna feel pretty crunchy. And then they're going to put you in a labor camp where you'll be forced to build the Victory Over The Fart-Loving Roundeye Memorial Dam. And that'll pretty much be it for you. Done deal. Game over.

Look, all of this may sound like lunatic ravings to you and there's a very simple reason why it does: because it is. But every little kid out there needs to have a crazy uncle who spews rambling, nonsensical yarns to the point of glossolalia, don't you think? A friend of mine had an Uncle Carl who used to raid buffets at the funerals of complete strangers while wearing a Santa hat. Nobody said shit to Uncle Carl and he was always well fed. Never had a grocery bill in his life. People gave him a wide berth and a bottle of suds and let him be. I learned from Carl's example that pretty much anything you want is attainable, provided you're willing to compromise a big, thick slice of your dignity to get it. I always wanted an uncle who was about that nuts. Then one day I looked around at a crowd of my nieces and nephews who were laughing their fool heads off because I had my suit on backwards and was talking gibberish, and you know what I realized? I realized that crazy old Uncle Carl was me. (Only thing missing is the Santa hat. -Ed.) So yeah, with 26 (27?) nieces and nephews, I figure I have to be able muster up enough crazy to go all the way around.

I'm rambling now, but like I said, that's exactly what crazy old uncles are supposed to do. They're supposed to ramble and tell fart jokes. So far I'm doing pretty damn good, dontcha think?

Pull my finger,

-Thaddeus

Why Must I Fart So Much?

Hubert Korneliszoon Poot: Dutch Enlightenment-era writer
and namesake/author of the first fart joke.

Greg:

I don't know if you've ever farted before. I didn't really keep track while we were growing up. Maybe you did and you just blamed it on your tuba and no one was the wiser. After all, the tuba is the most flatulent of all the brass instruments. Just in case you haven't, don't take it up as a hobby. It's really not worth the alienation and/or social stigma. To wit:

I had two going-away parties to attend last night, one for my friend and (now) former co-worker Francesca (hired away by the Starbucks creative team) and another for my friend and (now) former co-worker Tyler (leaving on a round-the-world voyage)...

Wait, first I simply must digress onto the topic of Naughty Limericks. Francesca is one tough old bird, and though that tough old bird is a songbird who trills like a meadowlark, (Drop that goddamn bird metaphor now before I shoot you with a bb gun. -Ed.) she occasionally peppers her discourse with Naval-grade profanity. So I figured hey, what's a better send-off for a pottymouth like Francie than writing and performing a trio of Naughty Limericks in her honor at the event? So yeah, I did. And for your edification, here they are - with reactions from the present company included parenthetically after each:

There once was a hooker named Francie
Who found her vocation too chancey
She found some employment
Much more to her enjoyment
And safer than dropping her pantsies

(Francesca hoots with joy; one token giggle by the rest of the company; many anxious brows furrowed.)

Francesca has gone to Starbucks
We wish her "so many good lucks"
All we ask, Francie dear
In your heart, keep us near
And come visit us miserable fucks

(Francesca blushes with joy and cackles; much nervous clinking of cutlery on the part of the rest assembled.)

Francesca the horny wordmonger
Needed fresh meat to lessen her hunger
She felt wrongly pent
By the age of consent
"Eighteen? Hell, I'll go ten years younger!"

(Francesca shrieks with glee I LOVE IT!; cold granite silence and frozen, contorted grimaces of abject terror from the rest. Apparently pedophilia, even in Limerick form, doesn't play well in Seattle.)

Yeah, so as you can see, I was a smash hit. And soon after that I continued to ingratiate myself to the present company by furtively playing an oboe cantata with my butt. As you know, I'm a vegetarian. That means when I go out, if I'm not going to a strictly vegetarian restaurant, I have to make do with whatever legume, twig, or compost heap that's on the menu. And usually the selection is pretty much anything you see pictured on the label of the Beano bottle. I don't know what it was about the entree I ordered, but it could've been called The South Wind Special. Blazing sciroccos of acrid stench were emanating from my backside. Since I had the handy "out" of Tyler's party, I clenched my hiney as best I could and said my goodbyes.

Needless to say, I never made it. On the way there, I stopped off at home to pick up Teresa, but by then such a fugue was going on - with grumblings, claps, and staccato horn-bursts (with the occasional bold firmata and scintillating arpeggio) - I couldn't possibly subject another group of air-breathing humans to its terrible majesty. I mean c'mon, my ass was practically respirating. Someone would've called the police. Or the Guinness Book statisticians. So instead I sat at home and did my best to inflate the couch.

It's perplexing. Why do I gotta toot so much? And how do I explain to Tyler that I couldn't make his party because my ass was practically shouting and I was afraid of asphyxiating the guests? I've combed Emily Post's rules of etiquette, and I got zero hits on any combination of the terms "fart", "party", "wind", and "stanky". Any advice you may have short of using a cork would be most welcome.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Why Am I Such A Total F@#king P&%sy? And Other Profane Musings

Dear Baby Jesus, how can I quit being a such a total fucking pussy...
and how come I swear so fucking much? Hallowed be thy name,
A-fucking-men.

Greg:

I've slipped and hit my head this morning on a brick of self-hatred which resulted in an effluvium of profanity, much like hitting one's head on an actual fucking brick might cause. Bear with me.

Have you seen me lately? If not, look up. I'm the guy in the picture. I look like a potato made of Silly Putty. And my standing curl form is horrible. Plus - Jesus, wouldja look at my moles? What am I, a Dalmatian or something? Plus plus, I'm weak. I'm a total - well, you know what.

Hang on, I'll be done in a minute.

Oh yeah. And I'm convinced that I set a horrible example as a father. There's that, too. Here's what set this off. Aaron's been sick for - oh I don't know, long time now. Nothing acute. Just feeling like a stack of shit on top of a bunch of mystifying symptoms. He's been to the doctor a few times now and they've turned up nothing - nothing in the bloodwork, nothing in the throat culture, no underlying pathology detected, nothing. I keep telling him that it's the beard, that he has toxic mold living in his beard, and that one day it's going to eat his whole head while he's not looking. My comments, of course, are borne out of beard envy. I cannot grow anything more than mange if given a month, whereas he can grow all of Fidel Castro (including the fatigues, the hat, and the cigar) practically overnight.

I mask my true concern with humor, of course, as no one likes to see their kid be sick. Did I say concern? I meant neurosis. Did I say neurosis? I meant a clawing, burning, self-immolating obsession with a mantra that goes "OM - ifIweren'tsuchahorriblefathermykidwouldn'thavethisproblem - OM"

You know what would probably be a good thing to do right now? That ABCDE exercise that I'm supposed to do for that University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology study that I'm part of. (Duh! -Ed.) I really don't think this whole "my kid's problem is all my fault" thing is going to do me much good in the long run, and may even result in me looking more like a fucking potato more than fucking ever. (I can think of at least two things fucking wrong with that statement. -Ed.) And it will probably only wind up annoying the h - e - double - ski -boots out of Aaron. You remember how I showed you this exercise previously using Lange as an example. The point of the exercise is to disarm pessimistic thought patterns by citing contrary evidence and then generating alternatives. Anyway, lemme give it a shot. But be forewarned. Like malaria, it'll probably get worse before it gets better.

Adversity (the bad situation): Aaron is still sick despite several trips to the doctor and negative test results.
Beliefs (what unrealistically pessimistic beliefs do I have about the situation): 1. That it's never going to end and there will be nothing I can do about it - just like his mom was sick all the time, just like my mom was sick all the time, just like I felt sick all the time when I was a kid. It's hopeless. There's never going to be a definitive diagnosis. Or worse, some well-meaning medic is going to doom him with some dubious and contentious illness (like fibromyalgia, a term that some people in the medical community believe is a wastebasket diagnosis). Or even more worser still, some really idiotic and well-meaning medic is going to tell him that he has MS or cancer - like they did to me. (You're fucking kidding me, right? -Ed.) (No, I am not fucking kidding you. -TRG) 2. This never would have happened if I had set a healthier example. When he was growing up, I was always Smokey McDrunkenstein, always complaining about my health and doing very little about it. A great role model for a healthy kid I was not. I may have changed my ways, but that's not going to make much of a difference now. I've gone and saddled my kid with a bunch of sickness behaviors and not a single wellness behavior. It's my fault, I tell you! My fault!
Consequences (what happens as a result of harboring those beliefs): I swear a lot. And I feel like a big steaming turd of poo. I'm generally angry and irritable and no fun to be around. I feel like I'm snapping at everybody, including Aaron. I feel like I just went and undid all the work I did on my happiness. My nose is stuffy.
Dispute (disarm pessimistic thinking with specific, concrete examples): What am I, nuts? Turn that frown upside down! For starters, Aaron isn't my mom or his mom or me. He loves his job, so he's not using illness as an excuse to blow off responsibility. How he handles either his wellness or his illness will be authentic to him. He has an excellent network of friends, so he's not dependent on me for...well pretty much anything, come to think of it. It's not my responsibility to prevent, cure, or over-parent him. He's a grown-ass man (Point of proof: awesome beard. -Ed.) and will make his own decisions. I can go ahead and relieve myself of a responsibility that wasn't even mine in the first place, and stop driving myself nuts.
Energization (a word they had to use to be consistent with the alphabet theme): My head feels clear, I don't feel as tense, my thoughts are no longer racing. However, I still look like a potato.

Well, three out of four ain't bad I guess. Thanks for listening.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

WTFWBD?

Michael Coates today. You've probably never seen anyone so happy to see
a dentist.

Greg:

First things first. Michael Coates is gonna be okay. Like I told you in my last letter, an oral surgeon is going to do the work pro bono. I'm sending the money I was going to use for his care to the Auburn Community Dental Clinic instead because as they said in the follow-up article in the Seattle Times ...

...to really get an idea, people should visit a community dental clinic at dawn on the days they treat poor people needing urgent care. "You'll see a line of people holding their teeth and crying," [Coates] said. "I'm not a special situation."

I did write him a letter directly and sent a few bucks for him to get some ice cream. I told him that when I got my wisdom teeth pulled that's about all I could eat. I told him that I even had to put my birthday cake in the blender. (Cake shake is freakin' ossum, by the way. You should try it!)

Onward.


Mahakala, the wrathful deity of violent compassion. He will
kick your ass, but in the nicest way possible. This is the thangka
that hangs in my dining room. Mahakala reminds me to eat
my vegetables...or else.

I watched a documentary yesterday about the destruction of the giant Buddhas in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan. You may remember that the Taliban government sent out a decree back in late 2000 that all non-Muslim art and statuary was to be destroyed, so that meant the two 1,600 year old giant Buddhas of Bamiyan (180 and 121 feet tall) had to go. So the Taliban rolled up there with a shitload of explosives and spent a couple weeks trying to blow them up. Eventually they were successful. Sixteen hundred years of history and culture blowed to hell.

Seem like a shame? Well here's the ironic thing. Think of it from the dhammapada's perspective. Didn't Buddha preach that "nothing is permanent; everything changes"? As great a loss as it was of irreplaceable historical objects - to paraphrase the ubiquitous bumper sticker, What The Fuck Would Buddha Do? I'll tell you what he'd do. He'd prolly just say, "See? Like I said." And then go off and do shots of rice milk with the monks. I mean, c'mon. Ever seen the kalachakra ritual? A whole phalanx of monks spend a week or more laboring over an exquisitely detailed sand mandala, only to have the Dalai Lama come along and fuck it up. Either it's an object lesson in impermanence, or those monks really have to figure out a way to keep His Holiness' mitts off their sand paintings.

Okay, so the site where the giant Buddhas stood was not uninhabited, mind you. There were hundreds of rooms carved into the cliffs around them, vestiges of an ancient monastery that was part of the whole complex. These rooms were inhabited by the Hazaras, the most persecuted ethnic group in all of Afghanistan. They had been the protectors of the giant Buddhas for the past 1,600 years. Even when the Taliban blew up the statues, they left the Hazara there. It wasn't until some very well-meaning folks from UNESCO and several art-hugging European nations got together and decided that they would rebuild the statues that the Hazara got removed from their ancestral homes. Seems like once you turn something into a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it's okay to keep the frescoes and kick out the folks. No longer living in their cliffside caves, the Hazara have been relocated to a windblown plateau somewhere out in the desert. They're now half an hour from their water source, three hours from the closest bazaar, and freezing their Buddha-loving asses off in the howling wind on a daily basis. Where's the love?

Again, I ask What The Fuck Would Buddha Do? In my self-serving fantasies, I see the Buddha calmly taking in the situation through his all-seeing eyes. Then raising his right hand in the mudra of blessing he says, "Verily, that is some fucked up shit, man." Then, instantly trans-carnating into the form of Mahakala, the deity of violent compassion, he busts down the door at UNESCO HQ and kicks every ass in the place twice. (Those who are not present at that time because they're traveling for business or out sick will have their names taken down by the Buddha for ass-kicking at a later time.) Then re-forming himself into Avelokiteshvara, the Buddha of compassion, he bandages their wounds. Finally, transforming himself one last time back into the Sage of the Sakya tribe, he does shots of rice milk with the entire posse. Then the Hazara go back to their ancestral homes in the Bamiyan Valley caves and live happily ever after. Amen.

So yeah, I know I'm not waking you up to the fact that there's a shitload of misery in the world whether it's infected teeth or eviction from one's ancestral home by well-meaning dipwads. Like I said in my last letter, with so much misery going around, I can see why people do nothing. There's just too much of it, the problem is just too big, and one person can't do anything about the whole problem. But I think that a solution that keeps getting missed is that one person can help one other person. That's not too much to do. There has to be a way to do just that little bit and make a huge difference. Each one help one. That is my rumination for today.

All of this reminds me somehow of my favorite quote from Shantideva. It needs a little introduction if you're not hip to how reincarnation figures into the Buddhist religion. The point is not to try to reincarnate, but to break the cycle of samsara and quit reincarnating. Boddhisattvas are folks like you and me who have sworn off enlightenment and nirvana for themselves so that they can assist all other sentient beings in attaining Buddhahood. Sound like a big job? Oh mais oui. It's probably both the biggest project and the most shit detail on the Buddhist job roster. It's tantamount to saying, "I'm going to forego nirvana and spend eternity trying to bring shitheads to Jesus." (...or possibly bring them to some more appropriate Buddhist deity. -Ed.) So bearing that in mind, it takes compassion-balls the size of pickle jars to say what Shantideva said way back in the 8th century:

For as long as space endures,
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.

Hopefully he got his wish and he's still out there somewhere, bringing shitheads to the Buddha.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

A Good Turn

From the Seattle Times, January 30th, 2007:
Michael Coates cries after Dr. Heather Olson, left, of the Auburn Community
Dental Clinic, tells him his blood pressure is too high for her to administer a
pain-relief injection. Coates, suffering with four infected wisdom teeth, got the
shot later but cannot afford to have the teeth pulled as needed.
PHOTO BY JOHN LOK, SEATTLE TIMES

Greg:

Okay, you know how much of a soft touch I am when it comes to giving away money so this probably won't surprise you much. I have a funny story about how I tried really hard to help somebody by sending them some money and as hard as I tried, I just couldn't find anybody to take it. Not even the person I was trying to help.

Just a couple of days ago I saw an article in the Seattle Times that made me an amalgam of sad, outraged and filled with compassion for somebody I don't know from - well, from somebody I've never met. The story bore a picture of a man named Michael Coates. He was weeping in agony from four infected wisdom teeth, and from the dire news that he had received from the dentist. Mr. Coates has no dental insurance, being that he's from a very low income bracket, and could in no way afford to have the oral surgery he needed. To ameliorate his pain, he was numbing his mouth with ice water from a pitcher that he carried with him. And I thought Christ Jesus! How's that a way to live? Here's a grown man who works his ass off for a living (delivery driver and odd jobs) in complete agony, weeping because he can't get his teeth pulled.

There are one of three ways people - including myself - respond to things like this. 1) We're usually overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem and feel that we're completely helpless and impotent in the face of such things, shake our fists at our God, legislature, or health care system, affirm to ourselves that "something really oughtta be done about this", and turn the page. Or 2) we huck a bunch of money at the ponderous maw of such problems through the organ of some well-meaning charity organization, not meaning to stay insulated from the effected individuals, but staying several bills-length away from them anyway. (For instance, I send money to Amnesty International but I don't make a point to visit prisons.) Or finally option 3), which is to say fuck that noise, I as an individual am going to do something about the problem by helping that distressed individual right there rightfuckingnow!

I took option 3.

First I emailed the journalist who wrote the story to find out if there were other people who had expressed interest in helping Michael out. Then I called the community dental clinic mentioned in the story and asked them if I could contribute directly to them for Michael's care. After being forwarded to several King County Health offices, I had a very long conversation with a director who gave me the funky lowdown on dental coverage for the poor. It's a very short story. They've got fucking ZIP. They have general health coverage available, but dental? Forget it. And this is neverminding the fact that neglected oral care becomes very serious health issues in very short order - like heart attack and stroke. In the end, they told me that they couldn't do the surgery at the community clinic, so they had referred him to the University of Washington dental program. If I wanted to make a contribution to his care, I'd have to call them.

Meanwhile, the journalist emailed me back, told me that Michael had been screened as a patient at the UW, and with his permission, forwarded me Michael's address and phone number. I called the UW first, went through a mighty (although friendly, don't get me wrong - very friendly!) clusterfuck there which - look I won't bother you with it, but it netted zero.

You may be asking yourself why I didn't just call Michael when I got his number from the journalist. Well, you may find the answer quite revealing about my character. Although I'm quick to be a philanthropist, I also have a tiny, anxious homonculus in the back of my skull who shrieks caution and vigilance at me constantly. So I had decided that I would not make a contribution directly to Michael way back before I started making phone calls. However, I did want to make good and goddamn sure that the money I sent would be specifically for his care. I really didn't want to get on the phone with a guy who was clearly in agony, and then have him hit me up for money directly whether he completely deserved it or not. I didn't know the whole story, so how did I really know what was up? I get hit up on the streets of Chinatown by guys claiming to have fucking Ebola virus or whatever, like, every day. And I offer to buy food for panhandlers and most of the time get turned down. So there you go. And somehow I think that makes me a big jaded bourgeoisie fuckup. I'm conflicted. And I digress. So onward.

So yeah. I called Michael Coates finally. And he didn't shake me down. He was a really nice guy, albeit in a shitload of pain. I just happened to call while he was sitting in a dentist's office in Burien. I told him that I really wanted to help him out, that I knew exactly what kind of pain he was in. I told him that I had been without dental coverage once, and had four infected wisdom teeth and couldn't get them pulled for love or candy. I was living in my car some of the time back then and my life sucked from about every angle of the compass. But I, like him, went looking for help and got none. Not from friends, not from the county, not from nobody. People tend to crap their pants when you tell them that you have no income but need to find a couple grand to get your teeth yanked before you find someone with a shotgun to blow them out for free. The problem is just too big. It's just too much money. It's not that they don't want to help. They just crap themselves in a fit of financial impotence. But I told him that I had lived through that pain and I wanted to make good and goddamn sure another person didn't have to, and I was going to help. I told him I couldn't cover his whole cost (estimated at $3,000), but that I could help knock a chunk out of it. He thanked me and gave me the number of the dentist who was going to treat him and told me to give them the money. He wasn't going to take money directly from me. He said that the dentist - J. Scott Moffitt - did this kind of work out of the kindness of his heart every Friday for folks in the community.

So I called Dr. Moffitt's office and they wouldn't take my money either. They just took my name and number down and said they'd give me a call back, which they did the next day.

So here's the kicker. The oral surgeon who was scheduled to do the work on Michael said he would do it FOR FREE. That made me just about weep with joy right then and there. And they thanked me for my intended generosity and encouraged me to donate the money instead to the charity of my choice. (I'll be donating it to the King County Community Dental Clinics, and I'm gonna send Michael a few bucks directly to buy some yogurt and ice cream. I remember what it was like to get my wisdom teeth yanked. I had to use a blender to eat my birthday cake.) So the question remains: who the hell do I gotta blow to do a good deed around here?

Look, I'm really not looking for karma points or anything. I just saw a guy who was in exactly the same kind of physical and emotional pain that I had been in once, and I just really wanted to put a stop to it right the hell then. I couldn't stand the thought of him going on another minute in that state. I think it's a lot easier to approach an individual and help to relieve their suffering than it is to take on the subject of suffering as a whole. Maybe that's what keeps people - and myself - from reaching out more often. When we see one person suffering, we want to end all suffering, and the prospect of that is just too immense for one person.

I remember after September 11th, when all the politics and bullshit blew up around it. I think in some ways all of that cheapened the value of the individual lives lost. In my view, the people who died then were something greater than heroes or martyrs or victims. They were people's friends. They were somebody's wife, somebody's husband. They were mommies and daddies. The little girl I saw crying on the news that day wasn't asking her country to rise to a cause to protect our freedoms. She was asking the reporters to help her find her daddy. I felt like the importance of the death of the most significant person in her life was being both overshadowed and diluted by circumstance and politics. And that was a real tragedy in my mind. Months later, I found her daddy's name on a registry of victims and wrote a letter to her and her family. I said I was sorry, that I knew this was really out of the blue since they didn't know me, but I really wanted them to know that I was very sorry that they lost their daddy. And that was pretty much all I said. No politics, no BS, just a simple letter of condolence. They wrote me a letter back and told me how much they appreciated that. Maybe sometimes sharing a little grief is the most appropriate thing one can do. And maybe it just has to be one helping one for the business of suffering to be worked out.

Cheers. Remember to floss.

-Thaddeus

Discovering Crater Lake

July 18th, 2006: The Little Merman basks on the sunny shore of Crater Lake.

Greg:

I discovered Crater Lake this weekend!

I flew into a fit of organizing. It was ossum. I opened up all my file drawers, pulled out the detritus of my past, and fired up the shredder. I got one of those MailMate(tm) jobbies from Staples a couple weeks ago, the ones that'll shred junk mail, CDs, small automobiles, and the bones of your victims. Not that this is a product endorsement or anything, but - damn. That thing turns crapmail and old paper files into a fluffy pile of It Never Happened in no time flat. And you know all that "Easy Button" stuff Staples shows in its advertising? They do not lie. They are not shitting you. I ordered it online and they processed the rebate right then and there - none of this mail-in stuff - and, oh yeah, free shipping - and then it showed up the next day. It's as if they were waiting in the apartment downstairs. Maybe they are. I haven't looked recently. Maybe Staples is becoming as ubiquitous as Starbucks.

Anyway, my point is that were it not for the insatiable need of my new shredder, I probably wouldn't have gone on an organizing spree, which means those rolls of film that I shot on my vacation to Crater Lake last year would've gone undiscovered until my widow was cashing my life insurance check.

So enjoy these photos of Crater Lake courtesy of my new shredder. Cheers, -Thaddeus

Crater Lake selections

The World's Happiest Guinea Pig

Matt Lange, drinkin' up all the
f-in' Sunny Delite.

Greg:

Now I've gone and done it. I went and signed up to be a participant in a gen-u-wine psychological experiment being conducted by the University of Pennsylvania. You may know U Penn as the home of the Quakers football team (I shitteth thee not, friend) who finished the ought-six season with a peaceful, fair and equitable 5 and 5 record against such college gridiron giants as Yale, Harvard, and the Bucknell School of Yeoman Faggot-Making. Quaker football, it appears is a veritable juggernaut of mediocrity.

But you may not know the other U Penn, home of Dr. Martin E P ("Ever Publishing") Seligman, former head of the American Psychological Association and me-proclaimed Jolliest Fucker In The Universe. He's a positive psychology maverick-slash-edifice he is, and one of my personal heros. The Authentic Happiness Website resides deep in the sunny heart of the U Penn InterWebs, and is a swell place to get a well-rounded view of what the hell all this positive psychology stuff is about.

Best of all, you can sign up as a research participant for authentic happiness studies there. If you go to the website, there's a jolly little banner in the left column asking for participants that practically begs you to click it. Of course I could not resist, and better yet did not resist, and so here I am. They gave me an assignment which I have been pursuing semi-diligently ever since. Here it is in a nutshell: (Copyright 2006 Martin Seligman, all rights reserved, I'm jolly but don't make me come down there and kick your ass you goddamn plagiarist, world without end, amen.)

It's called ABCDE. It's a journaling exercise. First you think back on an Adversity that occurred during the day and write it down. Then you write down your pessimistic Beliefs about the event, and write down the Consequences that you suffered because of those beliefs. Then you Dispute those beliefs using specific, concrete evidence, and in the end describe the Energization that you felt as a result of disputing your beliefs.Let me give you an example. For purposes of illustration, I will pretend that I am my friend Matt "Douchebag' Lange of Buffalo, New York (go Bills).

Adversity: My fuckin' sister drank all the fuckin' Sunny Delite again.
Beliefs: She doesn't fuckin' care if I fuckin' die of thirst and scurvy. Where's the fuckin' love?
Consequences: I got really angry and decided to take revenge by taking all her fuckin' diet pills and washing them down with her fuckin' half-rack of Tab.
Dispute: Oh wait. There's the Sunny Delite. It was behind the Tab. How wrong I was. And I just ate all that... Uh oh...
Energization: ENERGIZED?! ENERGIZED?! MY HEART IS ON FIRE AND THERE ARE WEASELS IN MY DUODENUM! HELL YES I'M ENERGIZED!!

See? Pretty simple. I don't know if it was because of this exercise or whether it's the nexus of all of the three exercises that I'm doing simultaneously that has caused me to chill ever-so-slightly over the last couple months. It's not that I don't get mad. I do. It's just of much shorter duration with long periods of chill in between. I got mad as a wet hen covered with wet hornets on Monday, but it only lasted exactly 17 minutes. For comparison, I once got angry in 1977 and stayed mad until 1983. This is a big improvement.I'll keep you posted on further developments.

In the meantime, go visit the Authentic Happiness site and take a few of the tests. You may find out that you're happier than you think.

Cheers,-Thaddeus

I Wrote My Own Goddamn Book On Happiness - And Other Brief News Items

Greg:

I did what I said I was going to do. Namely, I wrote a book on happiness, what it is, and how to get more of it without becoming a blissed-out mantra-yodeling hippie. I took a week off from work to write it. That alone made me happy. I should've made the first suggestion in the book "take a week off from work". I'm self-publishing it through XLibris. I think they have about a five-month turnaround window, so it should hit Amazon, Borders and Barnes and Noble just in time for bikini season.

Actually, it's a lot more than a book of suggestions. Truth be told, I don't think there's a single suggestion in the book. There's one very simple exercise, the one I told you about before, only it's gone into in detail and gives some of the current research that brought it about. I also came up with an additional exercise that compliments the first one and put that in there after I tested it rigorously on my own brain. And there's some in-depth discussion of the definition of happiness that I use for the book, of course. Oh yeah - there's also some discussion of hilariously miserable events in my childhood, most of them having to do with dog poop. Anyway, as I am "too close to the subject", I think I'll hire somebody else to write the foreword. I think authors do that as a means of clarification - "what my friend meant to say was..."

So yeah. So there you go. I just got so tired of all these self-help books that either tell you how to be happy by doing something else (make a million dollars, lose a jillion pounds, have a zillion friends) rather than just getting to the point and saying "do this to be happy". I hope my book accomplishes that. It's really short, to the point, includes damn near everything I learned in all the years I obsessively studied the cognitive sciences, and will cost something like ten bucks (I think). And I promise that it doesn't ask you to change religions, get a color drape, tote a bag of crystals or learn Sanskrit. You can experience loads more happiness and still be the loveable old crank you are right now.

Which brings me to my next point, which is snowshoeing. I went for the first time a few days ago and it was a HOOT. I think it's going to be my new wintertime sport. It's a great way to extend the hiking season and it doesn't require any verve, brio, daring or hipness (unlike snowboarding, which I used to do) - or a hogshead full of cash. And it's quiet. Just you, the snow, and the SCRAPE-SCRAPE-SCRAPE-THUMP-SHRRRUK-SCRAPE-SHUUURRRSH of your snowshoes on the the hardpack. No, honestly, it's much less cumbersome than it seems it would be. I thought that I'd have to shackle my feet to bedframes and sacrifice my hip flexors. As it turns out, modern snowshoes (pictured, above) are delightfully lightweight and easily maneuverable. And grippy, too! They're tenacious little buggers! It beats the crap out of trying to negotiate snow-covered trails in your hiking boots. And best of all, it doesn't matter how cold it is outside, the joyful exertion keeps you warm. It was only 19 degrees with a hell of a wind when I went, and I worked up a sweat that soaked through to my jacket. (I know that's not too smart. I should've dressed lighter, but how was I to know?)

I'm going to leave off now and end with some pictures of my snowshoeing adventure, which is hopefully the first of many to come.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus


Regardless of what the name might lead you to believe, there are no whales in Humpback Creek. My theory? Too shallow. Way too shallow.

Me (foreground) and Elizabeth (background) on the bridge at Humpback creek on January 15th (Martin Luther King Day). Teresa couldn't come because she had to work even though it was a holiday for the rest of us. My theory? Microsoft just hates black people. That's all there is to it.

Still life with dog: Pete Aiken with Cassidy on the bridge at Humpback Creek. If you were thinking that Humpback Creek was the only photo op we took while we were on the trail, you're right. Trying to wrangle a camera out of your pocket with gloves on is a pain in the ass.