October 2008 Archives

Tomorrow is Halloween. Normally, we pass out candy, but this year, we're trying something different.

M thought it would be healthier to pass out glowing skeleton key chains and bouncy rubber eyeballs as treats. I disagreed.

"I'm pretty sure neither are what folks would call 'easily digestible'," I told M, using my newly acquired John McCain air quotes. "I have a better idea."

I then laid out my brilliant plan, which involved sifting through our closet, picking the clothes and shoes we haven't worn for at least a year, and giving them to the kids who came to the door.

"Everyone wins," I said in my closing argument. "The kids will be hip, wearing my old college sweatshirts and high tops. Their parents will think we're generous. And we'll have cleared away some clutter."

M contemplated the idea for a few seconds, glanced at the clock, and then grabbed her keys. "If I hurry," she said. "I can still make it to Target to get those bouncy rubber eyeballs before they close."

So, for all those disappointed kids out there who won't be styling in my nineties wardrobe, I apologize. Maybe next Halloween.

I thought it would be fun to share a few inspiring quotes and photos (three, to be exact) from other people's blogs, since I've been failing to produce my own material.

1. Advice from Two-Heel Drive's recent entry, The Case For Starting Your Own Hiking Blog:

Heck, if John Muir were alive to day, he would have a blog. How do I know? Because the only thing as voluminous as Muir's backcountry
travels was the volume of his writings documenting them. Muir was
eloquent, passionate and observant, and obsessive about writing it all
down. If you are any or all of these things, why not put 'em to good
use and share with the world?

2. A photo from Calipidder's new ZenPhoto gallery of Mt. Whitney through Mobius Arch, taken on a recent trip to the Eastern Sierras:
3. Poetry from Adventure Journalist's recent entry, We Are Neither Here Nor There:

The Virginias this morning are layers of purple, red and gold, a sea of suspended waves rolling across the basin toward glittering high rises
that, just hours ago, flicked off their neon beacons and sunk into the
fray of the yawning, stretching city again.

I can always count on these folks to brighten my day with the ideas, photos, and imagery they share.

Of all the overused words and phrases tossed around, flung, or fired this endless election season, here is a list of the ugliest or most tired ones in dire need of retirement, or, at the very least, a long vacation...

• 270/538
• Blue State/Red State
• Domestic Terrorist
• Drill, Baby, Drill
• Elitist
• Executive Experience
• Fact Check
• False Equivalency
• Game Changer
• Gravitas
• Hatchet/Scalpel (and any other economic tool/instrument)
• In The Tank
• Joe Six Pack
• Joe the Plumber (and any other "Name the Occupation" variation)
• Kitchen Sink
• Kitchen Table
• Kool-Aid
• Lipstick
• Main Street/Wall Street
• Marxist
• Maverick
• My Friends
• Pro-America
• Reach Across The Aisle
• "Real" America
• Socialist
• Talking Points
• Vetted
• Without Preconditions
• You Betcha (whether used by a candidate or a columnist imitating a candidate)

Along with this list, I wouldn't mind seeing jokes regarding gained expertise based solely on one's line-of-sight shelved for at least four years.

Poem on my mind... "The Patience of Ordinary Things" by Pat Schneider, as heard on The Writer's Almanac.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

After hearing this poem, I found myself staring at my coffee cup and at the tile floor and at the towel hanging by the kitchen sink. I found myself not only looking out the window at the morning light, but at the window itself. With my attention drawn to these ordinary things, it took me longer than usual to leave the house this morning and I have this poem to blame thank.

Yesterday, I deposited my vote-by-mail ballot into the convenient, 24-hour drop box located in the parking lot of Santa Clara County's Registrar of Voters. I figured it was a cheaper and safer way of ensuring my ballot reached the right hands. The alternative was paying 59 cents and praying the postal service delivered it before November 4.

While visiting the Registrar's site, I discovered they have a neat feature where one can track the status of one's vote-by-mail ballot (both when they sent it and when they received it). Over the next few days, I'll be checking to confirm they counted my vote.

By the way, if you are voting in person and want to avoid the crowds on Election Day, the county offers early voting at the Registrar's office. They're open 8 AM - 5 PM, Monday through Friday, and 9 AM - 3 PM, Saturday and Sunday. And here's a handy map to help you get there.

1. This is a list of unrelated thoughts. I'm writing it because my brain feels blocked and this seemed like the easiest way to unblock it. Plus, I thought this would be the best way to combat my listlessness.

2. The World Series is tied at a game a piece. This, despite the fact that the Phillies have been more successful than the Rays at getting men on base. Philadelphia's problem has been leaving those runners on base instead of getting them across the plate. In just the first two games, they've stranded 22 men (compared to Tampa Bay's 7). If the Phillies want any chance at winning the championship, they need to get those guys home.

3. NaNoWriMo is nearly here and just the thought of the 50,000-word challenge fills me with dread because my recent track record of finishing challenges has been a complete disaster. I can't point to one success this year. It's disappointing. No. It's more than disappointing; it's unacceptable. It has created this cognitive dissonance between the guy I strive to be (someone who follows through) and the guy I've lapsed into being (someone who flakes). I need to get myself out of this hole. I tell myself NaNoWriMo could help, but my inner-coward (who is best friends with my inner-critic) keeps saying I'll only dig myself deeper.

4. When I saw this photo on Modern Hiker, it cracked me up...

For the next few minutes, I searched the web for other photos of walkable sleeping bag poses, but nothing compared to the first one I found on Amazon...

I understand and appreciate their practicality, but their Michelin Man appearance makes me snicker every time I see them. And now that I've said that, I kind of want one.

5. I just wanted to share another inspired print by the brain/talent behind Scary Go Round, John Allison...

I love the palette of the print and its mix of Halloween and Oz with a Scary Go Round twist. (First seen on his blog.)

(Or, Bah Da, Bah Da Da Da)

(Or, How Word Manufacturing Works)

I put a lot of thought into this entry's title.

Okay, that's a lie.

The truth is I gave no thought to the title. What I (and by "I", I mean my brain) actually did was delegate entry-titling authority to my fingers. On most days, my brain is the one that supplies the title, but today it decided my fingers could try their hand at it since they're the ones who do all of the dirty work (a.k.a. typing). (By the way, the hand reference in the previous sentence was their idea.)

In fact, my brain had no idea what title my fingers had typed until tiny scouts in my eyes (a.k.a. Eye Scouts) reported the news to Castle Grayskull, my brain's current residence. Scuttlebutt around the castle is that my brain wasn't happy with the title and actually ordered my fingers to change it, but relented when they threatened to rebel.

Of course, a finger rebellion would have meant an immediate halt to word manufacturing operations and that would have meant no more writing, one of my brain's favorite pastimes. Since word manufacturing is so important to the writing process, I thought it would be fun (at least for me) to explain how it works.

It begins with my brain. Imagine it sitting on its throne in Castle Grayskull. On a whim, it waves over one of its many servants waiting nearby, and says something like, "Tell those wretched fingers to type 'amalgamate'."

The servant bows, runs from the room, and delivers the command to one of the many fleet-footed messengers twiddling its thumbs by the castle gates. Like lightning, the messenger races across the bridge that spans the moat of my mind and down the well-grooved road known as my spine.

"Amalgamate, amalgamate, amalgamate," says the messenger with every breath it takes. It repeats this chant until it reaches the Hall of Letters, which stands at the corner of the road's first major intersection, right across the street from Starbucks. The hall was once located in the castle, but was relocated when my brain needed an extra storage room for the heap of political hodgepodge it has been hoarding the past few weeks.

The messenger races into the hall and startles the slumbering scribes with a louder-than-necessary, "Amalgamate!" The shout sends the scribes into action. Each scribe has a specific role. There's the Speller, the Spellchecker, the Parser, and the Sequentialist (formerly called the Choreographer before somebody decided the title wasn't "edgy" enough). There is also the Word Master who supervises the team and has final approval before the word plans are given to the runners known as the Handy Twins, Lefty and Righty McGee. (They legally changed their last name to McGee, but refer to themselves as the Handy Twins to keep the rest of my body on its toes.)

The twins race down their respective arms and give the plans to the Hand Captains, who, in turn, relay the orders to the Finger Pilots.

"Pinkleton, on my mark, I want an A!" shouts the left hand captain. "Mark!"

Meanwhile, in the right hand, that captain shouts, "Okay, Indy, on three, and not a moment sooner, give me an M. After that, Ringo, give me an L, but not before I give the word."

"What word would that be?" asks Ringo, who has always been a wiseacre.

And so they go, letter by impeccably-timed letter, until the word is finished (not the actual word "finished", just to be clear).

Meanwhile, the Eye Scouts, who have also been given a copy of the word plans, verify every letter is in order. If it isn't, they send revised plans to the Hand Captains to make the necessary corrections. (Ringo loves corrections since he's the one in charge of the backspace key.) If everything is good to go, they report the success to my brain. And that is how a word is manufactured (a.k.a. typed).

By the way, it should be noted that the sequence described above normally takes place in a fraction of a second and the messengers, scribes, hand captains, finger pilots, and eye scouts who participate in the operation are an elite team of highly-trained professionals known as the Subconscious Squad.

Just four miles down the road from the house, on Monterey Highway, straddling the border of Morgan HIll and San Martin, is a farm I had no idea existed until Ann mentioned it the other day.

For most of the year, it's known as Uesugi Farms, but every October it becomes Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park, complete with a pumpkin patch, a haunted house, corn mazes, pony rides, train rides, hayrides, and live music.

Even though we thought it might be a place geared for young families, M and I decided to visit. Because yesterday started off chillier than usual, we waited until later in the day to drive over, giving the sun plenty of time to warm things up.

It was perfect weather when we arrived. After paying $3 to park (they charge on the weekends) and navigating through a corn maze to reach the lot, we automatically gravitated to the largest landmark in the park -- the giant pumpkin pyramid.

I don't know its actual height, but I'm guessing it stands roughly twenty feet high.

Since it cost money to go on any of the rides (between $1 and $5, depending on the attraction), we wandered around the park and took photos of the attractions, like the train ride...

and the pony ride. This was one of the off-duty ponies.

For me, the best part of the park was the pumpkin patch. They had pumpkins of every size, shape, and color. They had peanut pumpkins, blue pumpkins, and sugar pie pumpkins. They also had fancy gourds.

Since we had traveled so far to visit this farm, I thought it only made sense to pick a pumpkin. The "regular" pumpkins ranged in price from $4 to $13.

The $13 pumpkins were massive, far too big to carry around unassisted, which was why the farm had wheelbarrows available. Of course, some people chose not to use them for their pumpkins, but chose to use them to tote around their kids instead, despite the bold-lettered warnings printed on every wheelbarrow.

Anyway, we decided a $4 pumpkin was the right size and price for us. After a thorough vetting process, which involved evaluating every pumpkin based on color, diameter, symmetry, stem angle, and a host of other physical characteristics, we finally found "our" pumpkin. It now resides on the dinner table. If I have my way, it will stay there, unscathed, through Halloween. I'm hoping M doesn't have other plans for it.

Before leaving, we made a quick stop at the Red Barn Marketplace where I got an inexpensive souvenir shirt ($4.50) to commemorate our hour spent at the pumpkin patch.

Admittedly, I didn't go on the hayride, but let's keep that bit between us.

If you live in the Bay Area and are looking for something to do this month, I highly recommend visiting the Uesugi Farms Pumpkin Park. It's good family-friendly Halloween fun.

You can see a few more photos from the farm on Flickr.

Two days ago, news surfaced that AIG had spent $440,000 on a "team-building" retreat for executives just days after the struggling insurance giant company had accepted an $85 billion bailout package from the government. According to reports, the retreat included "spa treatments, banquets and golf outings". On last night's special Thursday edition of Saturday Night Live, Seth and Amy took the company to task...

Whenever I see somebody with a bumper sticker or comment signature with the word "NObama" on it, I always think, "Really? Are we in the second grade? And if we are, is that the best you could come up with?"

This morning, it occurred to me that I was being too hard on the person who coined the phrase. How could I possibly judge him or her without putting myself in his shoes or her heels? So, while I was shaving, I played around with the last name of the man who could potentially be our next president and came up with a list of less-than-flattering variations (go First Amendment!). Here are my Top 3 names:

YObama: Sarah Palin could use this one to rile up her base. All she has to do is find a racially-charged Yo Mama joke, give it a political twist, and knock Barack down a notch, like so, "YObama is so fat, I mean, his tax hikes will be so fat that he will look fat also. Not to say that being fat is bad, though. I'm very tolerant of fat people, since, also, many of my friends, my dear close friends, back in Wasilla, up there, in the great energy-producing state of Alaska, of which I am the maverick governor in, are fat, too. Oh, snap!"

PinocchiObama: It's the perfect way for McCain to refer to his opponent without calling him "That One" or showing his customary frustration, yet still insinuating That One's dishonesty, as in, "My friends, while Joe Lieberman and I were co-writing our thirtieth bill, PinocchiObama was still wearing diapers, or so he would have us believe."

Say It Ain't SObama: It could be a Palin classic. It combines a reference to the 1919 Chicago baseball scandal (another point against the junior Senator from Illinois) with a reference to the 1980 Ronald Reagan line, while echoing her famous use of the phrase during her starring role in the recent blockbuster, VP Debate. (Joe Biden and Gwen Ifill played Polite Opponent and Lambasted Moderator, respectively.) Palin could use it at one of her stump speeches, like this, "Aww, say it ain't SObama. There you go again, pointing backwards again, as though the past has any connection with the future. By the way, did I mention you palled around with a guy who was a domestic terrorist back when I, and you, too, were in the second grade?"

It's safe to say I now have a greater appreciation for people who come up with clever insult names. It's a lot tougher than I thought.

(By the way, if you couldn't tell, the presidential election has been on my mind lately.

After the Olympics, just as the national conventions got underway, I went from an attentive observer to a political junkie. If I don't get my daily fix of Cooper, Hannity, Olbermann, and Stewart, the day feels strangely empty. It isn't pretty or healthy, I know, but it's the current state of my attention.

Normally, I would keep these thoughts bottled up or subject M or my family to my silly political asides, but this election seems to have everybody on edge and this seems to be the only safe place to release my thoughts.

M doesn't want to talk about politics at home because she already hears an earful at work. My folks are very Serious Conservatives who reacted so violently to my first mention of Obama that one would have thought I told them I had committed a crime. Now, of course, my mom believes she has a moral obligation to convince me that Obama is Evil and that I should only entertain the thought of voting for him if I want to destroy of our country.

So, if you are tired and/or disappointed to see politics here, I apologize, but I promise, it will be over soon and I will get back to the business of writing about hiking and other randomness shortly.)

Words on my mind... This Human Season by Verlyn Klinkenborg, from today's New York Times. Here is a snippet of it:

Most of the time, nature is simply there -- when I do chores, when I walk down to the mailbox, when I look up from writing. I don't expect
solace from it, nor do I theologize it with my own desires. It simply
persists in sublime indifference. And yet from time to time I find
myself surprised by it, and I know that what I am really noticing is
the volatility of the human world.

I have been struck before by the gap between the new news of my city life and the old news of nature. I have that feeling now. Nothing in
the natural world upbraids me. It offers no commentary. It has nothing
to say about financial meltdowns and dirty politics or, for that
matter, personal grief. But the other lives on this farm do remind me
of how captive I have become, like all of us, to the tensions of this
incredible human season.

(Hat tip to Danny Gregory.)

The latest tweets by the presidential hopefuls as of six o'clock this morning:

BarackObama: Asking you to get your family involved in this year's election. Watch & talk with your family!

JohnMcCain: New Ad: Dangerous

Based only on these tweets, here are my impressions of both campaigns...

On one side, you have a campaign focused on the people and attempting to foster hope by encouraging involvement.

On the other side, you have a campaign focused on the opposing candidate and attempting to foster fear by slinging mud.

That's a lot to glean from two tweets, but I believe these are distilled versions of each campaign's broader strategy and message.

I also believe they highlight why every tweet needs to be on point and contain the campaign's core message. Every tweet needs to express the candidate's beliefs, attitudes, and values. And since any tweet can be taken in isolation, it needs to provide its own context.

That's a lot to ask from a tweet, but these aren't the tweets of two regular guys. These are the tweets of two men vying to be the next President of the United States. (Technically, these are the tweets of their supposedly web-savvy campaign teams, but let's pretend each man actually knows Twitter exists and respects the people who use it.) Because of that, I believe they and their tweets should be held to a higher standard.

Twitter may be a casual setting, but if these two men intend to use it for a serious purpose, like seeking the highest office in the land, they can't afford treat it casually. They can't simply send off-the-cuff, on-a-whim tweets like I do. They don't have that luxury.

While I'm still a Twitter amateur with less than 200 tweets to my name, I do have a tweet of advice for both candidates:

You only have 140 characters. Make each one count. Tell me what you stand for & what you will do as President. Give me signal, not noise.