Feline humor

Few things are as funny as a drunk cat. Except, maybe, 2 drunk cats...

Tanto

Spent a goodly amount of time yesterday learning sneaky ways of wielding a tanto (short blade). It's amazing how the Japanese have constructed entire systems around every single weapon they could conceive of. Had they been a little bit less inflexible in their approach, WWII might have had a different ending. I'm going to have to get a tanto bokuto so I can practice this stuff.

I've also been reading up on the history of traditional Japanese ryuha. What an inbred lot those founding martial artists were! There are one or two of them who were behind 80% of the schools, making most of them offshoots of the rest. I'm going to make a chart of that for research purposes, which I'll complement with more information as I gather it.

It'll make a nice appendix for the book I'm in the process of writing, by commission.

Big Bull Lesbians

Here, at one of my accounts, there's this big bull lesbian going by one of those incongruous girly-girly names, like Candy^*. She heads up one of the departments and her main interaction with my team is as regards security. Now, I normally don't mind big bull lesbians as I believe in everyone's freedom to practice their preferred sexuality so long as they don't try to do it in my personal space unless by invitation. I also don't mind ugly, as that only makes the rest of us look better.

The problem with this big bull lesbian is that she's pushy, bossy and usually whining about things which are her fault to begin with. She was on the warpath earlier today, bitching about some user ids that hadn't been created within the allotted turnaround time we have. We subsequently proved to her that she'd never sent the request in the first place. I had my security lead reply-to-all on the big bull lesbians whiny email where she'd copied her management and mine just so that I could (yet again) make her look like a complete fool.

why couldn't she be a lipstick lesbian? I wouldn't mind pushy and obnoxious if she was easy on the eyes. It's the hideous combination of all that which is appalling.

^*Not her real name as I don't want to face a lawsuit, or worse, a charging big bull lesbian.

The Legend Grows with each Telling

I wonder if this wouldn't explain many historical and pseudo-historical persons' reputations. You start out with someone that did something slightly or severely impressive. People notice it and start talking about him (or her, whatever). Every time the story's told, it gets better, more impressive, harder to top by anyone else.

Soon you have a New Testament being appended to your regular canon.

There's people out there saying I've done certain things. Some of them are outright incredible. I mean, for the life of me, I can't recall doing anything remotely similar. Nothing to even explain how someone would germinate the idea that I'd done it.

This hobby's indulged by both people near me, who actually interact with me in person, as well as by those who know me from my online presence alone (or think they know me, rather). Some of the stories are magnificent. As others have done before me, I neither agree nor disagree with their veracity. As Sinatra, I think, once said, "it's not important what they say about you, as long as they're talking about you".

To hear some of them talk I do nothing but write snide comments aimed at them, deface their websites, cause invasions to other countries and singlehandedly cause the downfall of civilizations. Neat.

My own PR dept, and they're free! LMAO

Good thing is that a faction among them does nothing but inform me of what they're all saying about me, so keeping abreast takes little effort on my part. I hope someone writes a book someday...

Life interferes with blogging

I'll be back soon, in form.

Arts and Crafts revisited

Went to the A&C Festival as planned. It was mostly the same artists as last year. If there was anyone new they weren't remarkable enough to stand out and I did not notice them. That's not to say there wasn't anything good to look at, artwise, because there certainly was.

The ticket was amply justified by listening to Bob and the Dixie Gents, who again graced the event with their incredibly great jazz. I got some reasonable good pictures of them performing, as well as pictures of a couple of noteworthy artisans' works. One picture is of the only piece that actually came home with me, a curious, cartoonlike, little clay figurine, of a samurai atop a wooden platform with a banner, and his two swords at his side. I'll leave you with that one till I post the rest of the pics, how's that?

Arts and Crafts

Despite the title of this post, I am not going to discuss the more intricate procedures of the art of serial murder. Rather, this weekend is the Annual Arts and Crafts Festival in a nearby town. I went last year having nothing better to do and was utterly surprised by the totally amazing artisans showing off their wares.

Also of note was a jazz quartet that performed every hour or so. They were incredible. I'll be there tomorrow. If I see anything great, I'll have a camera this time around.

See you all next week...

Rocket Scientists

I have a cousin by marriage who owns a small IT Support & Maintenance company. Since he started courting my cousin 15 or so years ago, we've been pretty good buddies. Moreso since we shared a profession and thus moved within the same circle of people. We'd probably have ended up meeting even without my cousin's assistance since we usually got invited to the same presentations, cocktails, product launchings and other similar events within the very insular and inbred IT community.

The amusing thing to me, when I started hanging out in his office during a more or less extended project, was his disbelief on some of the outrageously stupid actions of his lower level employees. His 'mensajero', which is your basic gopher type errand boy, was a young kid by the improbable (for that country) name of Antoine. Turns out his father was French. He was always called 'Antony', though. Antony had knocked up his gf and she had recently delivered a baby boy. One day, I saw him come into the office lugging what looked to be a year's supply of disposable diapers.

I asked him what the hell he was doing, and that's when I learned about the gf, the pregancy, the baby and the whole thing. He went on to explain he'd gotten a great deal on those diapers buying them in volume. And that was that. I had just been making idle chitchat.

Then the very next day, I saw him walk in with a small package of, you guessed it, disposable diapers. I told him that his kid was definitely a world record for crapping, if he needed more diapers that soon. He reluctantly admitted that he'd bought diapers that were way too small the day before. And this was from a guy making minimum wage in a country where minumum wage means starvation, basically.

That's when my cousin, who had heard both exchanges, started rolling his eyes. When Antony left to deliver a letter or something, he started ranting on how he didn't understand how someone could be so stupid. And that he also did stupid stuff on the job, and he was getting tired of it, yada yada yada.

I felt obliged to point out that had Antony been a smart person, he would not by any means be working for my cousin, for poverty level wages, at a job about as rewarding as counting morons at a Democratic Convention. Had he been a rocket scientist, as my cousin seemed to expect, he'd be employing my cousin and not the other way round.

Although my cousin understood this, from a logical point of view, I was forced to repeat the same message about once a week for the rest of my tenure there as one or another of his low level, underpaid employees committed gaffe after gaffe.

I was reminded of this whole thing yesterday when I had to get a tow truck for a breakdown. I called the insurance emergency number, identified myself, gave them the info necessary to ascertain that I was indeed covered for what I was requesting, and gave them my whereabouts. Before doing any of that, I had called the dealer and explained the situation. Since the car had been in for repairs not 10 days back, he graciously said he'd cover whatever portion of the tow fee wasn't covered by the insurance.

Now, I actually had to work, so I didn't stay with the car. I left it open, took all valuables with me, and cached the key where it wouldn't be found too easy. And even if found, the car wouldn't start, so who the tanj cared?

I tried to explain to the Einstein that was taking my call about this, saying I'd left the car open, giving him the exact location, and asking him to get it towed from there to the dealer, giving him the dealer's address and phone. That's when I started running into snags.

First of all, when I said I was on mile marker 24.4 (literally, on that section of the highway they place markers every tenth of a mile, and I was parked right behind the sign that said "24.4"), he couldn't seem to grasp the concept. I take it they hadn't covered decimals in whatever poor excuse for a school he'd been kicked out of. At one point he asked me what went between 24 and 4, and I guess he wanted me to spell dot for him. After giving him a primer in 1st grade math, which seemed to have doubled his mental capacity in one fell swoop, he sounded so grateful, we then passed on to the tricky piece about payment.

I told him the dealer was prepared to cover, in cash, any costs beyond those covered by the insurance. He didn't think the tow truck driver would agree to this. I told him he was wrong, as I've done the exact thing before, plus, I was willing to give him my credit card number just in case. From the silence on the other end, I took it he did not have a credit card, didn't know what one was, and had exhausted his capacity understanding decimals and so wasn't willing to invest any more neurons on this.

After much doubt and dismay, he hung up to call the tow company and said he'd call me back. He did call me back. About 5 times. Each time with one more concern he'd thought up on why this wouldn't fly. I finally asked him for the number of the towing company, conferenced them in, explained the situation and was assured that someone would be by within 1/2 an hour and would take care of it.

Now, I'm not like my cousin in that I expect entry level workers to be rocket scientists, but come on! Give me something to work with here! This is a prime example of why jobs are fleeing to India and the like. They may be poor over there, but they're educated and still willing to work for peanuts.

Sad, but true.

Spelunking Part I

Spent some quality time underground yesterday, but don't have time to post about it now. Maybe tomorrow.

Ignorance is Bliss

(or one man's trash is another man's treasure)

We had an auction at the Firehouse this weekend. It's one of the many ways we raise funds. Our Fire Station is all volunteer, and except for infrequent government grants and some funds provided by our community leaders, the money we use to support our function comes from our fundraisers.

When it comes to the auction, what we do is request donations from local businesses and people. Not money, understand, but items. We then auction off the items collected in Chinese Auction format. Instead of actual bids, people buy tickets which they deposit in a bag in front of the item they want. At the end, we pick out a ticket from each bag and the owner of the ticket gets the item.

Now, and this takes us to the title I placed on this post, what is the worth of any item? Not the price someone places on it, but its real worth. If we go look at Economy 101, we learn that things have a greater or lesser value according to the number of items available versus the number of people wanting to have one. Supply and demand. And that's all well and good, but let's take a pound of gold. It's worth a considerable sum, apparently. But since I have no pressing need for a pound of gold, I wouldn't go out of my way to get one. Whereas right now I could use a beer, and for one of those I would go out of my way. So beer is worth mre than gold to me, at this point in time.

Then we can go to even trickier issues. Let's take cultural items. A fine Japanese print is worth a lot to me, as I value Japanese works of art. Turns out that most in my community don't. Hence I acquired a very nice Japanese print of an actor portraying a Samurai for the cost of one ticket, since nobody else thought it worth a "bid".

Although that was the only item I'd set my heart on, I also made off with some other plunder, some very worthwhile. I'd bought tickets for the hell of it, as well as to support my fire station, so I walked around and plunked them in whatever items struck my fancy. One of them was a cowboy hat, an expensive one, which a lot of people were bidding on, too. Winning that one was totally unexpected. I missed out on a 200 dollar certificate I was planning on selling if I won.

But still, even though a few items were spectacular, a lot of the items offered were on the trashy side. It amazed me to see the squeals of joy when the winner was presented with those, and I got to thinking. Nothing has any worth independent of that assigned to it by whoever wants it. My Samurai print was indubitably garbage to almost everyone else there, and rightfully so, as they had no need of it, didn't know what it was, and couldn't care less. So maybe their trashy junk is actually very worthwhile, only I don't have the culture to properly appreciate it? I prefer my culture to theirs, but I must now recognize that even that is relative.

I'll need to digest that thought some more before I decide whether humanity's a bane or a blessing.

Eventful Day

Got woken up at 5am to go get some sucker out of his pickup. A boulder had fallen off the mountain due to the heavy rains and sideswiped him. Poor guy had to be flown out in a medevac helicopter.

I'd decided to work from home, so after the usual hygiene routine, I logged on and started on it, only to have the transformer that feeds my area die with a loud bang. Took the power company all frigging day to get it operational again, or replace it, rather. Luckily, I had a few meetings to attend, which I was going to by phone, and precious little online stuff to get through. I took advantage of the situation to organize a year's worth of paperwork that I'd been stashing wherever it fell for the longest time.

Despite working in N.J., I'll have to break with state tradition and admit that I am not gay, nor have I taken a lover of my same sex. Sorry, Governor, you're on your own on this one.

I was pleasantly surprised by someone commissioning me to write a book. Turns out this person likes my writing style, and bear in mind that said person is completely unaware of this website. Hilarious. I said I'd do it. There might be some good money out of it, and at the least, it'll be a good learning experience.

I've got some activities this weekend at the firehouse, and today's power outage nixed my idea of fulfilling yesterday's promise and actually writing something meaningful. I'll try to redeem myself next week, folks.

Have a great weekend...

Back soon...

I'll make up for my skimpy writing tomorrow, I promise...

Procrastination

Yesterday I kept the blog posting window open throughout the day, always meaning to write something down, but never quite getting to it. I've been busy these days, what with a new account (on top of the old one), plus an "on the side" project gearing up which I have to make time for, somehow, and of course, all my extracurricular activities like firefighting and budo.

Nonetheless, around 6pm I finally decided to write something down, for Pete's sake! That's when the fire department pager went off. I usually just pause and listen, instead of jumping up and rushing for the car. Most of them are for automatic fire alarms (which the Chief checks first, then determines whether we need to go or not, in which case a second page will go out) or individual requests for someone to call control, and other, similar, non urgent things. This page, though, said those most exciting of all words: Structural Fire in Progress!!!

Firefighters, most of us, have this dichotomy; we know fires are bad, and they hurt property and people, and all that sort of stuff. But at the same time, we all get our jollies by putting on smelly, unwieldly gear, topping it off with an oxygen mask worn last by who knows which of your buddies, some of whose hygiene isn't all that it should be, and rushing into a building in flames. We love doing that. Don't ask me why, but we do. You will never see a happier crew of firefighters than when a page goes out saying "Structural Fire in Progress".

Oh, sure, after a fire, especially if there are any victims, and more especially if any of those are brother firefighters (or children), you might see a very demoralized crew, some maybe seeking out the company chaplain or any other available counseling. But for the most, a building or house on fire means playtime for firemen, and a chance to practice those skills we've learned through hour upon hour of training and/or drills.

Anyway, that was the page I got yesterday, and I did not return home till 5 hours later, when we were finally dismissed by our Chief. By that time I was way too tired to write anything, which is why you won't see a post for yesterday, despite the fact that I meant to write one and almost did.

The fire was at the local bus station, probably electrical in origin as it looks to have started somewhere above the false ceiling or inside the drywall. Smoke was coming out, everyone had been evacuated and we headed in. Any door not open we broke down. We identified the point of ignition, tore out the panels from the ceiling, and opened up holes in the drywall. Then, as one of my best teachers at the academy used to say, we put the wet stuff on the red stuff.

The fire was contained in about 20 minutes. We then spent a couple of hours going through the place and making sure it had been put out, and then doing cleanup. Fans were placed at strategic points to get all the smoke out. Happy management types were allowed in and they took the money out of the cash register area. We also had to get all our equipment stored away, change used up air bottles for fresh ones, rack up all the hose back in the truck and in general, make sure that everything was 100% ready in case we got another call 5 minutes later.

I'm still learning stuff at every fire, as I'm relatively new to this. We have some fresh newbies, too, and I'm now in a position to explain things to them, much as my buddies explained them to me a year ago. It feels good to no longer be a newbie. As I mentioned in an earlier post, not being proficient at something I actively do is not a state I take to graciously. Having moved beyond that makes glad, even though I still have a ways to go.

Isn't She Beautiful???

Click on the picture to go to the webpage I got that from. The artist has a whole gallery of his work there, as well as the opportunity to acquire prints. I'd love to wallpaper a room with this sort of stuff...

Blast from the Past

I've received an email from someone I haven't spoken to in ages. To spice things up, I received it at an email address and under a name I haven't used in years. I check that account once a month merely to prevent the freebie email host from deactivating it. It was a slight shock to actually see something unread in it.

The email spoke of a revelation this person had recently had, without going into detail, and that as a result she wanted a straight answer on what I really believed in, especially regarding Crowley, and Egyptians and I forget what else. The nature of reality, I guess.

Interesting. I think I'll respond, too. Who knows, maybe someone else is at long last ready to join the ranks of Godhead, needing but a nudge. Or, of course, it might be yet another false alarm.

Practice Makes Perfect

Sensei corrected some of my waza this past weekend, and also explained a lot of techniques we had previously thought we'd understood, but which when applied we discovered we hadn't, at least not fully. I need to make some time this week, which will have to come out of my work time, of course, to find a solitary spot and practice. The essence of the moves we employ must be 'learnt' by the body more than by the brain, and that involves repetition. I don't want to arrive to class next time and be unsteady in my movements. It'll also involve finding a spot where people won't immediately call the cops about the weird looking man with the scary looking sword. Which reminds me, I need to spend some time today investigating what the law states on carrying edged weapons.

Similarly, I need to start looking at what'll be the next Firefighting course I'll take. I've rested enough after the last one, which lasted for months, and I feel up to getting in some more training hours. I hate being less than proficient at anything I am actively doing, and prefer to go to that advanced stage as quickly as possible. Firefighting is, I think, the one area among my current activities where I could definitely do with more training, even though I continue to get this 'on the job', every time I get a call to respond from the 911 Center. This morning's call, at 3am, was a doozy. Who knew that someone could crash his car through a guard rail and fall from that height without killing himself, or even breaking every bone in his dumbass body? Without being an EMT, and judging by the way he moved and the fact that he was conscious and lucid the whole time, I'd say the victim had nothing more than severe bruises and maybe a sprained back. If I find out more on his condition, I'll probably post an update.

Literacy and the Art of Reading

It never ceases to amaze me how the more opportunities you give people to educate themselves and learn more about anything that strikes their fancy, the more they'll turn to vapid, useless activities.

A few months back I was embroiled in a discussion about the scant tax money that's assigned to Public Libraries today. The person arguing with me was objecting to his having to pay for this when he has never, since school, used a Public Library. Until relatively recently, I was living in the 3rd World, a place that doesn't believe in Public Libraries, for the most, nor in literacy. I've always been a voracious reader. My solution? My dwellings always looked like pilot projects for a Public Library, albeit one with a very narrow spread of subject matter. I spent a significant chunk of my income on books, which were not cheap over there, nor here, for that matter.

For that reason, and many more, I consider every cent of my taxes that go into supporting Public Libraries to be money well spent. I am also a frequent user of their services as there are many, many books I want to read but have no interest in actually owning, and as a bonus, I can get good movies, too. I still hoard books but I could never compete with a Public Library, even if I wanted to. It's a matter of space.

Going back to the argument I was having, I am unable to grasp, mentally, why someone having access to information would choose not to use it. I am able to see why they'd resent having to pay for it if they don't make use of it, as an intellectual exercise, even though I don't share the mentality. I'm not handicapped, for example, but I don't grudge the tax money that goes to making things "handicapped accessible". I do think that we have too much "handicapped accessible" things in some places, but that's neither here nor there*.

That whole mentality extends way beyond any argument about libraries, though. I've noticed that people nowadays would rather curl up in front of the TV and watch some utterly stupid, pointless and frequently "insulting to one's intelligence" reality show instead of watching a good documentary, opera, concert, movie or similar program designed to improve a viewer's mind instead of putting it to sleep for the duration. I've seen kids state authoritatively that they don't need math for what they're planning to choose as a profession. It just amazes me that they not only are able to hold such a ridiculous position, but that their parents are unable/unwilling to disabuse them of the notions.

Small wonder that tech jobs are steadily migrating to India, if the workers we're producing are unable to count beyond 10 without taking their shoes and socks off. If we continue down this path of mediocrity, we won't need terrorists or envious Europeans to take us down. We'll be perfectly able to do it ourselves.

*There's a parking lot at the supermarket I use whose complement of handicapped parking spaces was recently doubled, or tripled. This despite the fact that before this change I'd never once seen all of the handicapped parking spaces in use at the same time. Now non-handicapped people, who I must assume are still the majority, have a hell of a time finding a parking space closer than half a mile to the doors. Stupid. And makes it hard not to resent the gimps, oops, sorry, I mean the handicapped. ;)

Of this and that

A significant number of loose ends I'd left dangling, most minor, a few major, have been tidying themselves up almost on their own this past week. Reminds me of a saying a friend of a friend used to have, "that there ain't no problem, no matter how complicated, that you can't ignore". It's a bit funnier and vastly more vulgar in the original Spanish, but that's the gist of it.

Then there are some loose ends that I know I'll have to take care of directly, sooner or later, but I can't be bothered right now, so let them simmer a bit more.

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Spent considerable time this Saturday practicing my brand of bujutsu, and especially, making test cuts with my sword. My technique isn't all it should be, yet, but I'm getting there. Wielding a Japanese katana is something requiring far more finesse than I'd usually invest when it comes to fighting, but then again, I can see how it's far deadlier than what I used to employ before, which was nothing more than glorified hacking.

And the way the sword techniques all have analogues in weaponless techniques has me fascinated. I am convinced that if Japan had been a little bit more diligent in weapons technology instead of dismissing any non-traditional arms out of hand, the history books would be very different. It's also a crying shame that most of these techniques will disappear in another generation or two. No one seems to be willing to devote the time required to master them, especially within Japan's youth. Before too long it'll be the Japanese seeking Gaijin teachers, instead of the other way round.

Interestingly enough, while we were wrapping up and beginning to pick up our shit, a couple of cops walked up, wanting to know why we felt it necessary to have enough swords to equip a small troop. Especially since we were in a State Park. It seems that in this state, explained a cop, "anything over 4 inches is considered a weapon". I smiled my most evil smile, at which he hurriedly corrected that he meant "with an edge", and spoiled my retort. Probably for the best, as he might have gotten uppity. We basically shooed the two cops away, picked up our shit, and left. I think they were a bit intimidated, as each of us had a sword, a bokuto, a shinai and a jo. We were also dressed in traditional Japanese gear. They were probably much relieved when we departed.

Memo to self: Find out what the law says, exactly, about carrying swords. In a state where you can buy a high powered gun with about a 5 minute wait while they verify you, it seems a bit ridiculous that they'd make a fuss about carrying a large knife. Or maybe the cop just meant within a state park?

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Spent most of yesterday at the beach. Stormy weather threatened the whole time, but it never quite broke. The sea was very choppy, though, which meant that the people in charge didn't want anybody actually swimming. There were two morons in a dune buggy patrolling a couple of miles of beach, I guess. They'd kick me out of the water, I'd wait till they were 1/4 of a mile away, and I'd just pop back in. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Everyone else was doing the same thing, too. At around 5pm they went away and everyone started swimming.

This is so typical of current Americana. Everyone seems so preoccupied with making sure no one harms himself or takes any risks. What use is living if you don't take risks? No wonder there are so many suicides.