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It was such a cliche, I meet a mysterious woman in a seedy bar, she accepts my offer of a drink and my small advances, until many drinks and several hours later we stand together in the mouth of the small, dirty alley sharing a warm embrace. I can smell her perfume and the bourbon on her breath as I lean in for another passionate kiss. We've been here for at least half an hour, and one of us should suggest retiring together to somebody's apartment or hotel room. I hesitate to speak. My mouth is occupied. But that's not it. Her name has slipped away in the cloud of bourbon that's surrounding the inner folds of my brain. Was it Nancy or Heloise? No, something more modern like Britney or Madison? That's not it either. We end our kiss and I lean into her body, my face nuzzling the side of her neck as I drunkenly struggle for words. What was her damned name? She hugs me tightly and it heightens my frustration as I again try to remember her name. Suddenly, it comes to me.

I was in 10th grade and things were rocky at home. My father and I had never gotten along well. How does one get along with an abusive megalomaniac? Dad was a foreman with a company that installed underground utilities for other companies, the majority of the work being digging trenches, burying conduit, and pulling cable through it for the phone company. He was a proud blue collar worker. After 8 years with the company and a reputation as one of the toughest, most productive foreman, he was head of a large crew and taking down a cool $5.60 an hour. We didn't get on well, and as I grew older and matured, our relationship deteriorated. He was particularly unhappy about my aspirations as a musician and took every opportunity to let me know about it. I could never understand what his problem was until I grew old enough to realize that music was one thing (maybe THE one thing) that I could do reasonably well, but that he had absolutely no ability to do. He couldn't carry a t

I've mentioned it in this blog before, but it's an amazing technological time we live in. Everyday, people from all economic strata use and benefit from amazing technologies. It's also a great time for design and the meeting of design and techology. iPhones, iPods, computers, medical devices, cars, you name it, these devices are ubiquitous and influence peoples lives in ways that I think we as a society, don't fully understand. There's one industry though, that I've noticed for the amazing leaps in design and function in the past several years. No, it's not sports cars, it's not the Segway, it's not Apple. It's the baby products industry. I live in a neighborhood that contains, well let's face it, a lot of yuppies. These couples are having kids left and right these days, and because I live in an urban environment, it's possible to observe them out walking or running errands, all with their kids in tow. The first thing that caught my e

Most of us, as we travel through life, acquire a nemesis or two. Holmes had Moriarty, Superman had Lex Luthor, Tom had Jerry. I've had my share of them, schoolyard bullies, underpaid bosses with Napoleonic complexes. But one of the worst I ever had was my sixth grade teacher -- Miss Murray. Miss Murray and I were chemically predisposed to hate each other. You know the feeling, you walk into a room and meet somebody you've never seen before in your life and the hair stands up on the back of your head and you just don't like the motherfucker! That was me with Miss Murray. It was a crappy school year and we fought, oh we fought, tooth and nail throughout the year. I was upbraided for talking in class, my grades were all above "C"s (which was demanded by my crazy father, but that's another story) and since the numbers couldn't be made to lie, report cards always noted problems with my 'attitude' and 'comportment'. I hated that bitch! T

I like to eat. Really. I appreciate well prepared food, be it some regional peasant fare or expertly crafted haute cuisine. I like to cook too, and I'm pretty good at it. I refuse to use a recipe and tend to like to prepare simpler, straightforward dishes. Sometimes after watching a cooking show or perusing a menu on the window of a fancy restaurant, I like to play a little game where I think about ideas for dishes that, frankly, sound uhhh, not so good. Here's a few ideas: -tuna pudding -peanut butter soup with canned asparagus spears and cranberries -angel hair pasta with stewed prunes -waffles with anchovy paste -oatmeal with braised eel -baked trout stuffed with parsnips and Brachs caramels -pan fried calves liver with orange sauce -egg rolls stuffed with cottage cheese and vienna sausages -gaspaucho of strawberries, waermelon, peaches, and oysters with a chicken fat meringue Isn't this fun? The best part is that one will hopefully never have to eat any of this!

I was walking home from the grocery store yesterday and a flight of urban pigeons caught my eye as they flew toward me. As usual, a couple of them were flying precariously low, so that as they came closer I instinctively ducked. When this happens I'm not near as concerned that a pigeon is going to collide with me as I am that one is going to shit on me. It's happened. Anyway, all of this got me to thinking about...err...shit! I know this isn't an attractive topic for the old blog, but think about it -- for something as useless as shit, the human race has come up with a lot of words for it. They say Inuits have 100 different words to describe snow. I decided to see how many words came to mind to mean shit. Here goes: shit crap caca dung cowpie (specialized) manure spoor droppings guano excrement turd feces scat ordure That's about all that I can some up with. 14. That's 14 words to describe something that's useful for two things, fertilizer and medical dia

We sat opposite each other on the Red Line. She was petite, brunette, with a subtle beauty that catches the eye. I was smitten. I cast occasional glances her way, careful to look away before she caught me, until she did. My smile was answered with one of her own. Her eyes darted around the rumbling subway car as I stole yet another look and we flirted silently, until we eventually reached my stop. As I departed the train and walked down the platform, I felt a tap on my arm. Could it be? And as I turned, yes, it was her, not only the same stop but she wanted to speak to me! Shy men wait their lives for an event such as this. Thoughts of courtship, unbridled passion, nestbuilding and even children quickly ran through my mind as I faced her. "Yes?", I asked. "Dolphins on Pluto eat pond sludge", she said. And with that she smiled and wandered away to find a seat on the nearest bench and await the next train....

I haven't owned a television for several years now. I know, I'm weird. I had to get rid of the my TV because if I have a TV I'll...well....watch it! All the time. I mean, I'd eventually have to get a feeding tube IV and be cathatarized. The other reason I can't own a TV is commercials. When I was in 8th grade, I was taught, as part of my multimedia class, about nefarious techniques used by advertisers. You know, bait and switch; food design in ad layouts; that sort of thing. Being an already cynical youth, and one of reasonable intelligence, I jumped on this like syrup on pancakes. Every advertisement became an exercise in 'spot the bullshit' for me and I became very good at it. For me, advertising, particularly TV advertising, is an exercise in being insulted. Because advertising is generally very insulting. At least to me it is. I often wonder about most other people because advertising clearly works. Companies spend millions of dollars doing

I had another in a series of aggravating experiences yesterday. 'Series' is probably not the correct word, since I've been having this same bad experience, with increasing frequency for the past several years. Now, you might imagine that I was about to describe having a tooth filled, or being a pall bearer at a funeral and dropping the casket, or having the new assistant at the doctor's office dig around repeatedly for 10 minutes looking for a vein from which to draw blood. But I'm not. No, the aggravating experience I've been having has been in just trying to open things that I buy. That's it. Just trying to open things. Used to be, you bought a bag of chips, grabbed the top of the bag on either side and pulled and whammo! the top seam opened and it was crunch time. Buy a record album, quick run along the open side of the jacket to split the plastic, pull the rest of the plastic off and it's off to happy tunes land. Nowadays, you grab a bag of c

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I read an article yesterday about a rock formation in Arches National Park in Utah (and yes it was an arch) collapsing. Apparently this rock arch was a popular sight in the park for generations. Presumably these formations were formed by erosion of the rock, mostly by water I would think, over millions of years. The final death blow was caused by further erosion, I'm guessing from rain, wind, and possibly chemicals in the atmosphere. Ever wonder what it might have been like to be there the very second that the arch fell? Or when a big hunk of ice shears off of a glacier (or these days the Arctic Ice). I was wondering if there were other arches in the Arches National Park. I'm guessing there are. I wonder how many of those will go in the next few years. Can you imagine if they all fell at once? Now that would be something! And what would happen to the park? Would people no longer go to the Park to hike around if there were no arches, just some new piles of pretty red

Living in the city affords one many opportunities to see interesting architecture. But I'm not talking about new architecture, or even classic architecture. Actually, I'm not talking about architecture at all, but it was a good opener. I'm talking about buildings. I live in a city that's been around for a while, so there's a lot of old buildings that have been repurposed again and again over the years. In the old days though, they often marked buildings so that you can tell when they were built. In newer buildings (by that I mean buildings from the last 30 years or so) there may not be so many discrete date plaques or whatever, but you can sometimes tell from the shape of a building or some other indicator its relative age or original purpose. I you really pay attention to these things you can sometimes get an interesting archeological perspective on run of the mill buildings you walk past everyday. I'll list a few from my neighborhood so you can see wha

We live in a fast paced, technologically fascinating world. When you think about it, it's really incredible how far we've advanced in some ways (I'm talking about technology here) and how much of that advancement has occurred in the relatively near past. If you think about it, a human being's day to day life didn't really change that much between pre-Egytpian days and about the late 1800s. I'm talking about the down and dirty details of day to day living. If you took a person from 1500 b.c. and 1500 a.d they both lived a short life span, were probably dirty most of the time, defecated in a hole in the ground, had a good chance of dying from a plethora of diseases which have been eradicated today, didn't get enough to eat, were probably exploited by some government, chuch or both...well, you get the picture. The details of their lives just were that much different. Now in the past 100 and some odd years, things are amazingly different in many ways. In 1

I am, at 50, what's called a 'confirmed bachelor'. That's a nice way of saying that I've spent so much of my life alone, I'm no longer fit to live in close society. My dear mother, before shedding the mortal coil, used to call me a bohemian because I also happen to be a musician and, well a bit of a lazy slob. I tend to live an artistic and intellectual life as much as possible and don't place a lot of importance in the trappings and activities that most people do. Okay, I'm weird. I was noticing that there are a plethora of materials out there; magazines, tv shows, etc. that help people to live what I call a 'normal' (notice the quotes) life. You know, magazines like Good Housekeeping, Home and Garden, New Bride, TV Guide, Health and Guns and Ammo. These things often feature articles on how to effectively do the things that 'normals' like (or feel they need) to do. I thought it would be nice to have a list of things that might hel

I've been reading articles here and there for the past couple of years about a resurgence in the technological development and use of dirigibles. Apparently there is a lot of development going on to develop airships using new materials for the 'balloon' part and safer, less flammable gases to fill them. A trip on the web pulls up a bunch of pages for companies who are building these things. I read about one a few months ago that is literally a football field long. They can lift enormous amounts of weight. I mean, these things sound great to me!!! Funny thing though. I live in a major city in the Northeastern US. There's a lot of shipping and commerce going on around here and yet, the only place I've EVER seen a dirigible is floating over a baseball game or a parade. It seems like the couple of years that I've been reading about these things would be enough time to actually get some of them up in the air and in use for more industrial applications than adv

I rented some DVDs the other day. They included a series from PBS called 'Carrier', a documentary series about life onboard the Nimitz aircraft carrier. Some of the footage featured the guys who work on the flight deck (one of the most dangerous places in the world to work by the way). These people have to work wearing colored shirts that designate what job they do, vests, gloves, ear protection, and helmets. I noticed that the vests are called 'camelbacks' and are actually bladders that are filled with water before going to work. There's a tube that allows the person wearing the camelback to draw water throughout the day. This very handy when you work in a place where the average temperature (when you're not in a desert climate which is even worse) is around 115 degrees. Then I started thinking about a trend that has developed over the past twenty years or so that really annoys me -- every bozo in the world carrying bottles of water around with them every

It's interesting to me that for the past several years, America has waged a war that's been reported to be costing upwards of 2 billion dollars a month to sustain, the nation's infrastructure is crumbling, the price of gas has gone through the roof, causing many people to have to seriously curtail their activities, and twice this past week I've read pieces about the poor state of the US economy that failed to mention any of these indicators. Instead, both articles mentioned the closing of multiple outlets by Starbucks and Bennigans. HOLY SHIT!!!! Starbucks and Bennigans are closing?!?!? How can this possibly be? What are we going to do if the majority of traffic intersections in this country don't have Starbucks on opposing corners? It is truly amazing to me that Americans have such a bloated,false sense of entitlement about everything. People complain that the cost of gas is causing hardship. How many American families have more than one car? How many people

A recent trip to the grocery store tweaked my ever-present disdain for corporate America and their condescending attitude toward the American consumer. I love butter. I mean, I LOVE butter. My mother used to tell the story of how she had a pound of butter out on a kitchen table softening as she was baking something and she looked up to find me, at 2 years old, gleefully stuffing wads of half-softened butter down my gullet. True to my habitual self, when I need butter, I whip over to the dairy section and grab my favorite box of Land o Lakes butter (salted) with the pretty picture of the Native American on the box. Did Native Americans invent butter or something?!?! Anyway, the other day I grab my butter, along with the other items I needed, headed home, stored my groceries and quickly returned to my favorite activity.....staring at the ceiling. Later that evening, I opened my new box of butter and was surprised when I pull out a stick of butter that was half as long as the usual st