Thursday, February 27, 2003

Got a raise

Today's been a little better. I feel like I have just gotten over a tragedy.

Yesterday, it snowed again, and while it wasn't very deep (a few inches), our Saturn SC3 can't handle snow. It slips and slides everywhere. So we stayed put until the plowed our roads last night. They are predicting more snow later today, but it will all probably melt after the weekend. This is the kind of snow I am used to, but it's been so long, a lot of my snow skills are rusty. At least I remember to check to see if the light packs has dark ice under it. I nearly did the splits on my own front steps, but luckily, I kept low to the ground so I was able to recover without pulling a loin or something.

I got a 4.5% raise at work, which covers the cost of living plus tip. I also got stock options, which right now are so low that they didn't even give us how much they were worth, just how many we got. They base it on percentage of pay, so like years ago, I'd get 50 and be happy. Now I got almost a thousand for almost the same price. I hope the market improves, a lot of my stock is in the negative if I sell right now. I have some shares at $90 when the stock is at $11. Yeesh. Those will be long term, I tell you. Luckily, I also have some at $1.25 so I am not totally in the red. The best part of this is the "rating" I got for "Exceeds standards" which is like a rating of 4 on a scale of 1-5. Considering I got a little backlash for "not adopting new technologies," this was pretty good. The "backlash" was because my boss wants to use an old, outdated HP technology (Note to programmers: how old? Hint: our programs have to have line numbers. Yeah, that old...) and I wanted to use free Linux and perl. I won. He lost (we are phasing out what he spent over $200,000 on with my $0 cost solution) because I could run my stuff without buying anything, or requiring a service contract. I am not really bummed about this because A: I am still employed, and B: My job does not suck (it's fun a lot, I get lots of praise, and I am always learning new things and fixing stuff). I have many friends who are employable, but unemployed right now.

My friend Nate and his wife Jen are in town, and I hope they come over tonight. Nate was a guy I met while working another job. He was 18, and a total technological dynamo. Nate was the guy with the answers, and if he didn't have them, he'd make them up! He taught me a LOT over the years, about various topics, like building computers, configuring Windows, and so on. Over the years, though, our skills have parted, and no longer do we need each other's advice because we're working on various things. He admitted to me a few weeks ago that he wasn't "up to speed" on new hardware, and the question I asked him about APM was out of his league. Wow. I had out-Nated Nate. Thank God he's cool and fun to be with, or we'd never talk ever again. :) He's energetic, and likes to talk a lot. I like that type. I am the only one that calls him Nate, because he introduced to me as "Nathaniel," and anyone named that where I was growing up was called "Nate," for short. His parents (who are also mega-cool) know it's me just because I am the only one that calls him Nate.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:43 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

More snow, and maybe some good news

It snowed again last night. Only a few inches, and it will probably melt by the weekend.

Last night, I totally broke down. The stress became too much, and I had a nervous breakdown. This is the first one in a few years, and it was at least mild, but finally I got to mourn Brenda's passing, which was something I had swallowed down for so long, it became almost a psychosis. I knew swallowing it down might result in that, so I don't consider it "tragic," any more than knowing the risks of getting into a bar fight or something. But it wasn't just Brenda. It was countless numbers of other things, too, most of which are illustrated in this online autopsy of my personality (cons, friends, work, etc.). But the breakdown occured, and at least my wife doesn't hate me, which is good. So is the fact I feel a little better.

My first nervous breakdown occured when I was about 5. I had the most when I was 12-14, at least 5 of which resulted in suicide attempts. I have only had about 3 or so since I have gotten married. Part of what happens is this: my emotions, all trying to exit at the same time, jam and block up like an ice dam in the beginning of spring. Then, it finally breaks, and floods the system. Part of the problem is the wash of energy created by this flood can't be handled by whatever circuitry controls my outward responses, so some sort of feedback loop starts, and it becomes a self-sustaining chain reaction. I shake, babble, cry, and then wake up on the other side, a little unsure of what happened, and having a vague memory of a total systems meltdown. My father thought they were hysterical, and mocked me when they happened, which to this day is part of the problem with letting go. At least I am not suicidal anymore, which is what always scares me, but it seems that those days are long gone. I think my father might have been trying to get me to succeed, because he just kept egging it on, and that's why the levels of breakdown are not nearly as severe these days, and only last a few hours or so. Although I still feel stupid they still happen.

This is part of why these entries are neccessary (plus the private ones you don't see), so I can reconstruct what might have happened. Of course, I kind of saw this coming in January, which is why I called Colette at said, "I need help with pre-reg," because I feared I might do this right before Katsucon. But Brenda's passing delayed it a few weeks.

More good news is that Christine does NOT have food poisoning, per se. She has the Norwalk virus, and the cure is simply to "wait it out." Looking from the incubation period, she would have contracted it at work last Thursday or so, possible from a bad lunch. She's getting better, but still dizzy and weak. Now I feel bad dissing the Amphora's on this, because, as Christine said, "It's our place." I'll still be wary of it, though.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:30 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 25, 2003

What can you say?

Last night, a friend of ours called to say he thought his marriage was over. He married another friend of ours, and told me his side of the story, and I hope to hear from her now. I listened to him sob for about an hour, with the frantic "what am I going to do" tone I have had in my own voice so many times before when I lost a loved one. Ms. "A," if you are out there, please drop me a line... we love both of you, really.

Then... my online journal and 3WA pal, Laurie, died of cancer this morning at 5:30am EST. She's survived by her mother Mary, and daughter Rachel. This was not sudden, but it sucks all the same. I left her a small passage in a goodbye thread about her, telling her she's earned a haunting with a good, old-fashioned "Boooooooo!"

And all I keep hearing about is how we're going to war. And to be ready for enemy attack. It's like living during a constant, good old-fashioned, "duck and cover" Cuban Missle Crisis.

And there is more snow predicted. Christine is still sick, and going to the doctor today. I haven't had my blood pressure and migraine meds in over a week because of Katsucon, then the snow, then Christine's sickness, and so on and so on. I am getting headaches, murmurs, hot flashes, and all kinds of fun.

On top of this, all I keep hearing is doom doom doom about my company and the new management and blah and blah and blah and more doom blah. Please don't stop by my office unless you have work for me, okay? I can't change how the upper management works, I can't force things to go one way or another. To make things worse, hackers busted into our database last week, and all *I* ever heard about it was from Slashdot. Funny how CNN never said anything...

I am so numb. What the hell is going on? Can I get off this ride before I puke?

Posted by Punkie @ 02:54 PM EST [Link]

Monday, February 24, 2003

To do something truly evil...

I had to add this entry to post a quote that truly made me gasp with glee.

"Religon is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religon." --Dr. Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate April 1999

I hope it's a real quote (you know the Internet), but it's so true. By the way, I have this personal opinion that everyone should see Kevin Smith's film, "Dogma," when they have the next free moment. It really puts a hard line between "ideas" vs. "beliefs." Here's a quote from Rufus from that film I almost cried when I heard:

"I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant [...] A belief's a dangerous thing, Bethany. People die for it. People kill for it."

I have no real ulterior reason to post this, just reading that first quote triggered this post.

Posted by Punkie @ 12:37 PM EST [Link]

From the Abyss to Amphora's to a Party to CoffeeCon 8

My good friend Neal called me Saturday morning. Since he's been my friend since were about 10, he incomprehensibly thought I would remember a poem I wrote when I was 12 about "The Phantom Flusher," when he should know I can barely remember what I wrote in my blog last week! Just kidding, I love Neal a lot. See, I wrote comedy even back then (Neal did, too, and he was also an accomplished cartoonist who did a great rendition of a guy with sunglasses in an inner tube), but while I barely remembered it, after a few lines, I sort of recall... sort of. I just barely recalled a cusp of a memory that maybe I once wrote a poem about some psychotic phantom who killed people while they sat on the toilet. But I was 12. I think Neal has far better memory than I do, and it's nigh time I started listening to those "Best of Grig" tapes again; tapes he made me years ago as a gift. See, just after sixth grade, Neal's family moved back to Texas, but for the next six years, we sent cassette tape letters back and forth, and that wonderful sonofabitch saved some of them! I listened to a few of them, but they brought back such painful memories, I kind of stopped, my ears burning with old scars and things I thought I had totally forgotten. But Neal, I think, in the end, will be my savior. I am thinking of doing a narrative on these tapes. More on this later on in the year.

But Neal also said something about this blog. he said it was like "peering into the abyss," which kind of made me go, "Hmmm..." I just want to let you readers know that my life isn't really all bad. It's just real bad right now. I thought this weekend would provide some good because we had a party, but then Christine got food poisoning! Man! This is the way it's been. No break. She's still sick as we speak, and I think it's time I said goodbye to the Amphora's.

[wayback machine grinds up again, screen gets wavy]

Back in 1982, I hung out with an... odd crowd ("You, Punkie? No!"). There was a spell where I met some people with a theater company I was working with where a lot of the older teens kind of thought I was a "tragic case," and "took me in." I was working on the Fairfax County Theater production of "Land of the Dragon." I was a bit part player. I played several people, actually, two of whom had speaking parts of a few lines. One of the girls playing the major lead took me aside one day, and gave me her phone number in case we wanted to "chat or something." Her name was Elise, and she was probably 16 or so. Elise had a friend Dawn who was my age, but they acted as equals. Elise kept bugging me over and over, "If you want to hang out, call us, and we'll come get you." One day, they did.

I recall it was a Friday night. My father was away, and my mother had just passed out from a drunken phase. I was watching SNL reruns on Channel 20, and it must have been about 11:15 or so, when suddenly, some big bangs knocked on our kitchen door. It was Elise, Dawn, and some friends I had never met. "Come on," she said, "we're taking you out to have fun!" Thus started a strange and twisted tale of my life I kept sealed for YEARS. Neal, it never got on the tapes because I was afraid my parents would find out. This may be the first you have ever heard of it.

Elise, Dawn, and friends were... late night party goers. They had cars, or friends with cars, and that night, we went out to Georgetown and they took me to see "Rocky Horror." I was pretty weirded out by the whole thing. My first Rocky Horror was near the back row, watching drunken people scream at the movie screen, shouting obscenities, and trowing rice and toilet paper. I think I made an assumption is was some art thing, but I stayed quiet while I watched Dawn and her boyfriend get in a staged argument with the front row over who had a syphilis. Afterwards, we ran around Georgetown. While this was the only Rocky Horror they took me to, for the next six months, through winter, I got "kidnapped" in this manner. I ended up at punk rock shows, late night mall runs, wandered around DC, and there were two places we ate: Hamburger Hamlet on M street in DC, and The Amphora's on Maple Avenue in Old Town, Vienna.

The Amphora Restaurant is... hard to describe. The best way to describe it is "an upscale Greek diner." But to us late night punks, it was open and had coffee at 3am. They never seemed to care that at 3am, there were punks with green hair sitting on the back of the diner booth benches, and all we ever ordered was coffee and cake, and paid in wadded-up bills and assorted coins. It had its own ambiance. It was sort of like a Greek rec room, with stone walls, with plaster, paneling, and low ceilings with thick beams and Greco-Roman and Mediterranean Decor. The funny thing was that it was very upscale during the day, and won 4-star awards from the Washington Post. They are still very successful, now with their own separate bakery and a larger diner which opened in Herndon in 1996 or so.

Amphora's was a pillar in a strange period in my life of actors and punks and other artistic dreamers of their teen world. And... I never fit in. I was a square peg, but they LIKED me for some incomprehensible reason. I was underage, probably the youngest in their group, but they always acted as if I was some person whom could settle an argument, like a favorite nephew or something. Even after "The Land of the Dragon" finished its run. Even though I wore geeky tees and rugby shirts. Then, just as quickly as it started, something very tragic happened, and it ended. The whole experience left me so brutally traumatized, I shut out that part of my life for almost ten years. It took my friend Suzi to coax most of it out of me. I won't go into why it ended, but let's just say it had to do with misplaced love, a jealous boyfriend, and someone who "meant well" who found out she was a patsy in some petty game (Dawn, I forgive you). Oh, and someone had a serious overdose on drugs and we all laid low for a while. That time in my life was like a hot star that burned brightly but burned out quickly, and I look back on it fondly while forgiving those who made for a bad end, because we were all teens and allowed to be forgiven for stupid crap. A lot of what happened to me in 1982 started seeds to who I am now. Some have a summer of 69, I had a winter of 82.

So... The Amphora Restaurant has always been a place I knew where some strong late night coffee and good cake could be had, but I didn't return until late 1987, when a friend of mine took me back there, and I pretended I never heard of the place. I pretended until the early 90's, when my good friend Brad started taking me there at like 1am, because it was open, and we were poor (I was actually unemployed, and he did weird retail record store hours). I also took a lot of friends there and we have had some odd experiences from time to time.

Brad and I had the most, because the waiters that are willing to work during the wee hours tend to be odd. There have been a few that were... scary. One guy was this Haitian gentleman who said, in a deep voice, "I *serve* you! I *serve* you well, yes?" He had an intense stare, and acted like he was on cocaine. We tipped him heavily because we were scared he'd kill us if we didn't. Then there was another guy, probably from the Mediterranean, who got so mad at us because we returned some food, that the manager got involved, and a shouting match in another language which ended with crashing in the kitchen. The manager said our meal was free if we left immediately because he was going to fire the waiter and was afraid he'd take it out on us if we were still there. We fled. Once I got metal shavings in an ice cream sundae, and another time, we got steak that was frozen in the center. But I always said, "We come here so much, we're bound to get more mistakes than most." Most of the time, the staff was completely nice and formal, I still came.

But in the last few years, the food has gotten... less unique, and more like chain restaurant food. And the prices have more than doubled in the past six years. The service is still good most of the time, and their bakery still has great cakes, and the coffee is still fabulous. But Friday night, while taking my wife on a date, she got sick from the food she ate. And she's still sick. I think it's time I closed that part of my life and said goodbye to the pillar that was Amphora's, although I do so with a tearful regret.

[Edited note 2/26: It wasn't food poisoning, it turned out to be the Norwalk Virus]

But now to the second part, totally changing gears. Although my wife was sick Saturday, she still wanted to have the party, which we had scheduled back in January. By the time she realized she was too sick to party, the party had started and I, Grig "Don't drink alcohol" Larson, had to host a drinking party. Christine is usually FAR better at this than I am, and so while the party went well, and lasted until Sunday evening, it was not as "hip and fun" and it should have been. At LEAST I didn't go to sleep at 11pm like the last few parties at my house. I was so bummed, it was around 11pm each time, my head just shut down. This time I managed to stay up until 2am, but by then, everyone else had fallen asleep. There was a muted tone because Christine was in bed, in pain, sleeping when she could, and being sick the rest of the time. Brad, Mark, Missy, Sean, Louann, Josh, Sara, Roberta, Chance, Scarlet, and Kieren (Sean, how do you spell that name?) managed to brave the cold slush that has been made from the pouring rain and fog on the deep snow from the previous weekend. We had a great time, and many stayed over until the next day. By Sunday evening, Sara, Missy, and Josh were the only ones left, and Christine actually made it out to be with them, but she was still very sick.

I just want to say, I love our friends. I really do. No buts about it. They rule.

People brought great stuff, and not just alcohol. We have a lot of food left over, though, because some other people we invited did not make it, either because of work or the weather. But I got to see more alcohol I had never seen before. They made "Lemon Drops," "Girl Scout Cookies," "Hurricanes," and tequila. No one drank enough to get sick, but some tipsiness was seen. Missy and Mark fell asleep on the couch together, and looked very content. Because of this, we're now calling it the "cuddle couch."

One drunken discussion Sean and I had (okay, neither one of us was drunk at the time, so I can't really blame that) was to run a con. As I have said before, people ask me to try that from time to time, and I go, "Ha! NEVER!" but Sean's angle was unique (as always). Run it as an intentional failure. So started discussions of "CoffeeCon 8," (why start with 1?) where we'll have terrible programming, rotten advertising, and we'll pick the hotel with the worst staff, and when the con is in ruins, the attendees want our heads, we make enemies of our staff, and the guests are on fire, we'll flee to Europe where I'll learn to say, "Sorry for my friend's boorish behavior..." in four different languages.

Look for it in 2005. I may also run an "Anti-CoffeeCon" bid party where we'll make like a WorldCon bid to "outsnob the snobs" to encourage total staff infighting and eventually bid dissolution while we run away with the money. I had this plan when I wanted to host a "SnobCon 2002: WorldCon in McLean, Virginia - The Con For Elite Fandom Who Hates Other Non-Elite Fandom."

"It'll be GREAT!" says Sean, enthusiastically, holding up two thumbs...

Posted by Punkie @ 01:01 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 20, 2003

To return or not to return? Bah!

A few months ago, I got a nice managed switch for $5, used. It's telnettable and really great. The only problem was that it was "noisy." When I plugged it in, it sounded fine. But after a while, the fan began to whine and it was this horrible "just under the sound of your hearing" whine. It was grating to be in the same room with it. So I looked around online for a new fan, and found one. It arrived today, and I plugged it in. Hmm... not spinning. Then I smelled smoke. Then I SAW smoke! Thick curls of white smoke! I quickly unplugged it. The fan was bad. I'd return it, but it would cost me more to ship it than the fan was worth ($5).

The punchline? The old fan stopped whining.... [wah wah waaaaah]

Posted by Punkie @ 06:40 PM EST [Link]

The Status of my Den ... my House ... my Life...

My den is a mess. A terrible mess, and while I am not the neatest person in the world, my den has now reached what I call a critical state of mess. I am afraid the gravity of the mess has reached the point where it may collapse in on itself and create fusion or something. That will suck (pun intended). Then other people's messes will orbit around my mess and then I'll have my own squalor system (ba-DUM tssssh... thank you, I am here all week, enjoy the buffet).

My house is also a mess. Not like years of buildup, although the guest (and storage) room has certainly gotten a bit more crowded. Not in organic waste, either, which I usually try and rid myself of as soon as I smell it. But time has become so scarce a commodity that even that has begun to slide. The cat box is now emitting cartoon-like rays of odor. Dishes are now starting to pile up and crust over. Laundry goes undone. It's bad.

So is my damn life. Lately, my attitude has sucked. If I haven't been sick or hurt, I have been at work, or working for a convention. Now I am not working for any conventions anymore (well, I mean, any work that requires a lot of pre-con work), but I feel bad because I left two conventions leaving a wake of unfinished crap. My last job with them ... sucked. Let's be honest here. I know they weren't my fault with the sickness and family death and stuff, but one thing I have learned in customer service is the customer doesn't care if the delivery truck broke down, or a supplier lost all his inventory in a flood, all they care about is whether they got the stuff they bought on time or not, and in proper condition. I screwed my customers, and that makes me feel so bad, it hurts. It stings. I will never live this down in the history of my own life. So I have been in a spiral of self-loathing and shame and anger. Depression is really pressing down hard on me, and it's taken so much energy to keep it at bay, I barely have time for anything else. And it's a losing battle.

When I was a kid, I was depressed a LOT. I mean, from age 8 through about 15, I would say depression accounted for 80-90% of my waking life. From 11-13, it was so self-critical, I wanted to end my own life, and made several attempts. And these recent events and the depression and the darkness that surrounds me has caused a GREAT deal of suffering. Thank God for friends. Thank God. There are times I am so grateful I have a great family and fantastic friends that my knees become weak and I want to grovel in front of some idol in pathetic gibberings of thanks.

It is because of random stuff that friends have said to me that I feel like a spark of enlightenment shined down on me through the rain. This moment happened at Katsucon, while I was alone in my hotel room, about to collapse into a horrific implosion of self-hatred, when the feeble supports of a smile and "suck it in and spit it out" just gave way. I don't know what combination it was, like something Rogue or Mark had said, I think, but I don't recall what. For a brief second, while sitting in a muddy patch under a huge tree in the darkness, with rain and thunder pouring all around me, a bronze ray of sunshine hit my head. This enlightenment showed me a glimpse of my whole core problem with myself, a control issue. It's all about control, and how I am, secretly, obsessed with it (at least to me, probably the audience that watches the movie of my life just said a collective "Duh!").

When you are a kid, living in chaos, it's all about control. It is. From the very beginning, all kids want control of some kind, because it's part of learning. It's a lot of what makes us human. We don't so much adapt to our environment through instinct, we control it. Cold out there? Make fire. Wear fur. Build hut. That sort of thing. We don't like what nature gave us? We change it. Other animals do that with nests and such, but we have taken it to extremes. So as kids, we all try and sort out the world. But what if your world is filled with random terror? Well, you try and adapt quickly, and you realize the more you control what happens to you, the less pain you suffer. It's ingrained into you. You become a control freak, because even a little slip can have devastating consequences. Or not. You never know, so you play it safe. You drop a glass one day, it's said, "Don't worry, it's an accident." A few days later, "ARE YOU A STUPID KLUTZ?? GOD DAMN YOU MAKE ME SICK!" Same event, different responses. No consistency. That's what causes neuroses.

So as an adult, I am still playing that game. Like I said in an earlier entry, I am still obsessed on patterns. Why do bad things happen in clumps? My brain keeps me awake during times of crisis, trying to find patterns. I use science, psychology, sociology, logic, and even superstition and spiritual patterns. Many lead to wrong paths. Sometimes I find other stuff, which I store for later. But why? For control.

This is what leads to self hatred. I think some of the assumptions one has about oneself is that you are in control over yourself. Makes sense, right? Want your left arm to lift, it lifts. You want to walk to the store, you go. But what if your leg breaks? Now going to the store is harder. Desire of control leads to frustration over obstacles. Now, a healthy person thinks challenges are exciting and a part of life. That's because at some long point in their life, probably childhood, they gained confidence in their own decisions and self-image. "If I make a mistake, that's okay. We all make mistakes. I will solve this latest challenge and succeed!" They believe that! For people like me, I say it like Catholics who only go to church during Christmas and Easter: you go through the motions, but don't practice what you preach. You say, "It's okay to make mistakes," because you hope that nobody notices you failed, and exposes that you aren't in control. You never solved that problem. Lack of control = weakness among the insecure. You are afraid of not being in control. Fear leads to hate, hate leads to anger ... but if you screwed up, where does it go? Some people hate others. "The world sucks, people suck, I hate life!" I used to hate life, but mine was, "I suck, I hate life!" I didn't realize that total control was unattainable, and while I type this, I logically know it's true ... but don't really believe it. In fact, I just got mad at all the spelling mistakes I made because I can't type as fast as I think. There's only so much brain-finger control us dyslexic people have, especially with motor control aphasia. But I still hate myself for it.

Gymnast Dan Millman once said there are no ordinary moments. We don't have control over everything, because every second of every day changes a little or a lot. The key to success in life is to know when to control, when to let go, and how you differentiate between the two. I still have a very crude method that's only slightly better than random, and since I have a lot of anger to work out, it's a very violent journey.

Oddly enough, it is the energy of depression (self-anger) that motivates me to clean up stuff. That's why I can't really clean in front of people, because half the time, I am swearing up and down about crap I hate about myself. In fact, I used to bang my head on walls just to reset the chain-reaction of self-hatred when things got really frustrating. Luckily, I have a hard head, and found that cleaning a kitchen used just about as much energy, and actually accomplished more than bruises and bumps on my noggin.

So when I am too depressed to clean? Red flag. Like when the boiler stops giving off steam, but it's still taking on fuel. Something's gonna blow.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:31 PM EST [Link]

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Stuck at home

Last night, we tried to go shopping. What a disaster. Christine, CR, and Sara went out and barely made it back, even though the shopping center is literally right behind my house. Not only were they out of stuff, but the people there were rude and in panic mode. At least we got some stuff we needed, but our Saturn SC3 does not do well in ice and snow, it slides all over the place.

This morning, we tried to get out, but the ice was too much. We're hoping to make it out later so I can get to work. CR, Sara, and I spent a lot of yesterday shovelling out the car, and as predicted, I hurt my back. My back really, really hurts, but today it's better than yesterday, so I hope the healing trend continues.

Now that I don't have to worry about Katsucon, Evecon, or Castlecon anymore, I will spend a lot of that released time writing (which was my plan). While snowbound, I got to work on my newest work, "Between the Lines: The Life and Times of Tony Bumper," in which I wrote out a particlarily hard part of the last chapter. I have the first few chapters already written, some rough ideas about the middle, but I had to see where the end was going BEFORE I invested time in the middle. Already I am going to have to make some heavy changes in the first few chapters, but that's kind of how writing a book goes: you lay down the framework, adjust it so, and then write, re-write, and re-write some more until it's a smooth and polished piece ready for submission. I am still having trouble deciding on the market. If I go junior-adult, I have to clean it up a bit, which I don't really want to do. If I go fully adult, I may miss my adult target because it's about a bunch of teens. And I still won't know until I have most of it done.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:23 AM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

The weighty issue of snow

Well, the big melt has started. The snow on my roof started to melt, they formed huge icicles... and tore my whole gutter system down in the front. My gutter and bits of roof are hanging off to one side. I mean, luckily, we have house insurance, with a deductible, and this should be covered... but...

... is it unreasonable to ask for a period of not having to worry about anything? Is it? Jesus H. Christ. I hope the part of the roof that's torn off doesn't leak too much water back into the house. I have no ladder to get up there to put up a tarp. if the water damage gets too bad, I'll have to climb the roof from the deck in the back, and walk over the roof... man, that will so suck. Especially if I fall off the roof, which is entirely likely. Fat 300lb walruses like me don't do well on steep roofs.

Work was shut down yesterday, but it's open today. Can I go? No way. There is just no way. They did plow a small stripe of our street this morning, but not wide enough to back out of your driveway without getting jammed against a snow drift. You have to not only dig out your driveway (thank goodness I had the foresight of asking Christine to park back as close to the street as she legally could), but then you have to dig out the ice ramp that the snowplow leaves behind, and not just the width of the car, but a whole wedge wide enough for the car to back out at an angle to turn down the street.

Years ago, back at our house in Reston, I got a large bag of salt from a bulk store, and never used more then a handful of it. When I moved, I considered throwing it away, but I hate throwing stuff away I paid for. So I kept it, along with all the salt the former occupants left in the shed. I had enough salt to reconstruct a Biblical tribute to Lot's wife. For years. Totally unusable. I'll be using it now, buddy.

Oh, and to add to more crap? My friend Laurie is losing her battle to cancer. "Laurie is not winning her war as we had all hoped," as her friend Roe said. "Some little individual battles over the past few years were won – but the overall war is now overtaking her." We're not sure how long she has. Days? Weeks? Months? Dammit.

This year sucks.

Posted by Punkie @ 10:47 AM EST [Link]

Monday, February 17, 2003

Katsucon 9 - It's Snowtime!

There is this artist I see a lot of in anime art shows who does cute anime girls in snow. I kind of like his work because he accentuates the face because the body is usually covered with a parka or something. I have always considered that rising to the challenge as an artist. This con was also a challenge.

I know I have a policy of not posting about cons I work at, but I think I will risk this policy and tell God and Heaven that the predictions were right: we were never meant to go.

It started in December. I got gastro-enteritis, and was very, very sick. This screwed up programming for Evecon, so when I was able to think clearly, I had to finish the programming. This delayed Katsucon pre-reg, which was my job. Everything got massively behind, and what with long work hours, recovering from an illness, and other family matters, Colette (Katsucon Vice-chair) graciously helped me catch up with pre-reg. Good thing she did. Just as I was recovering from that, in mid-January, I got that horrible ENT infection, and when I was able to get out of bed, I had to get right back to work. Then, Brenda died. Gopher (who was supposed to be taking the con off for his personal life) and Colette ended up making the badges, and I felt bad because James (head of at-con Registration), was possibly going to get screwed, but to relieve any suspense on the part of my readers, he didn't complain if he did. But poor Colette, who had to run the con from her chair, plus her job, plus working on her college degree, now had to worry about pre-reg.

Looks like I got out of the convention biz on a bad note. I feel horrifically bad about this, and the guilt is eating me raw. My poor health screwed over Cheryl at Evecon, and now was screwing over Colette and Keith. Plus all convention attendees. I was determined to do as much at-con work as I could, which was planning opening ceremonies, and hosting "Whose Katsu" at cosplay halftime.

Then came Thursday, February 13th. Normally, in my backwards life, any day that falls on the 13th, especially near a full moon, is a good day for me. Friday the 13ths has ALWAYS been good for me, and back when I was a teen and doing the "Biorhythms" charts (does anyone do those anymore), my "peak" days were usually on the 13th of the month. But I digress. I did not expect bad news this day. Christine called and said she just found out the convention Staff Suite, Con Suite, and Green Room (guest suite) were all closed down. Why? The hotel decided to shut down any food function. I covered this in my previous entry about the weird dance cons have with hotels about food, but when I spoke with Keith and asked him why this time, as opposed to all the other times, he said that it was NEVER written in the contract, but the hotel, in order to get business, usually looked the other way. This new management did not. There were a LOT of things wrong with this new management. Keith was a very unhappy man all con. But it was to get worse.

Snow. I have been bitching for the last ten years about how it never snows good anymore because of global warming, the paving and overbuilding of Northern Virginia, and how winters just aren't winters. The irony. I always knew that taunting God in this manner would result in, "Oh yeah, Punkie? How about a real good snow? How about I screw your friend's con with it?" Sometimes I wonder if God knows he can't hurt me anymore, but can hurt those around me, so when he gets mad, he hits them instead. Coward. But mentally, I feel can predict some of his moves now. I had already prepared mentally to accept this challenge.

Of course, this didn't help anyone at Katsucon. Already, Colette had told me a lot of staff was jumping ship (not her words, but I keep hearing people use this term). I mean, I was quitting pre-reg, James is quitting at-con reg and moving to Alaska (why, James?), and... well, I am not posting con politics here, but several other staff leads are also leaving. Most of them, like me, are moving on to other things, and still want to be part of Katsucon, but have other cons, family, and personal lives to get on with.

I just want to digress here and state, for the record, that Ed and Ezza Fortner, head of AMA, have the cutest damn baby girl I have ever seen. Oh my God. And so sweet, too!

Okay, back to the con. So we are losing staff. And with the weather, we are losing even more, short term. And attendees are low. Pre-reg was lower than last year, and I attribute that to the rapid growth of the anime convention industry as a whole. I mean, a few years ago, there were only a few big cons around, and people traveled from everywhere to attend one. I mean, when I started pre-reg, we had people from Japan, England, and Canada coming. Now, there are so many, they don't have to go as far. And the cons are more specialized, too. Shoju, Tekko, and even video-gamed themed are "bleeding away the ranks," as some have labelled it. Well, that's what happened to sci-fi cons in the 1980s, and when sci-fi became more mainstream, the small cons began to dry up, and the big cons also began to vanish (the Internet also helped this along and all but killed the "fanzine"). Some will survive, of course, as they adapt to new markets. I hope Katsucon does, because they have some of the best people who love anime. Plus, we moved. Back to smaller hotel in Virginia. Many anime congoers didn't care for this, especially the contingent in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Some say with Otakon, Nekocon, and AMA... who needs Katsucon? Well, I think Katsucon is as good as any of those cons, but then again, I am biased (also, half our staff also works at some of these cons, too).

Back to Thursday. They were predicting snow. It was anyone's guess as to how much, and while I am superb at predicting weather patterns (thanks to an internship with a great Earth Sciences professor in school, Dr. James Sproull), this one was hard. A huge damp low pressure front was sliding northwards on an oozing trail from the Gulf of Mexico. Slamming down from caribou country from Canada was an iceberg in the form of a high pressure front. Meteorologists know that air under low pressure can hold more water than air under high pressure. So when the two meet, the boundary means precipitation. Light precipitation just means fog (depending on dew point) and heavy means rain. If it's too cold for rain, it's snow. If the change is too sharp, it can mean hail, especially for thunder-- okay, I bored you all, didn't I? To summarize this lesson, this was a really high (cold and dry) meeting a really low (warm and moist), and it just dumped a ton of snow.

By Friday, they kept predicting snow in the DC area, but it changed hourly. First 8 inches of snow, then a winter mix, then 12 inches of snow, then no snow, snow mixed with rain, then just rain, then no precipitation, then 12-18 inches of snow, then just some would get snow, and some would get rain, then... I mean it did this from Thursday through Saturday. A lot of us were glued to the hotel cable's weather channel, but since hotel cable sucks, the weather channel is a generic "we don't know where you are" sort of a snapshot of the US in general, and 80% of the US had no weather to speak of. Of course the East Coast... all the local news channels contradicted each other, but most agreed "it's gonna be bad... if it happens, which it might not... then again... we need the ratings... so hang on for the latest change of our minds."

When I was a youth in the ancient 1970s, we got about 2-3 good blizzards a year (snow around 12" in one fall), and assorted smaller snows. We had a really BIG snow about every 4 years. Even back then, people overreacted when it snowed, but it seemed there is less and less snow every year since about 1991. So in the last few years, even with a small 2" accumulation, the local news have been saying, "Storm of the Century: Blizzard 2001 - live updated coverage." They channels had "Johnny-on-the-spot" reporters broadcasting in some slushy area of DC with plastic rulers, exclaiming that snow has "already become 2 inches deep in just 4 hours!" In 1998 was our last "big" snow, which topped my area at a whopping 8 inches, and the news went into a micro-fact frenzy, and had news specials on frostbite and all kinds of crap. I feel old, because I find myself saying, "Blizzard of 77. Three feet deep with an ice crust on top. No school for a week, and my friends made tunnels in drifts that we could stand up in. You couldn't shovel because there was nowhere to shovel TO. Our town was shut down for days." I recall it was cool for us as kids, because we made tunnels, but sucked for me, because my dad, who hated snow, could not leave to go to work, and thus I was stuck with him. If we had that now, I was sure Fox5 News would start speculating on glaciers. "Don't panic," says reporter Janice Weatherbunny near to Potomac, "but this IS how glaciers start. Exclusive Fox5 Glacier-cam shows that, yes, some large chunks of ice, some as big as a car, are forming around the Potomac River." A blurry camera shot would show some ice-covered rock, and then the voice of impending doom the use for the commercials would say, "Could this mean the new Ice Age?" I could see Janice, shivering in her $700 parka, saying things like she was totally serious, "A scientist we spoke to could not stop laughing, perhaps he was hysterical with fear, but it's too early to tell ... back to you in the studio." But you know what? This didn't exactly happen. Why? Because our area is now practically under Marshall Law, what with "terrorize alert" Code "Orange."

This code, by the way, almost got the Katsu truck impounded because it was a Ryder truck, with Florida tags, unattended near the Pentagon Thursday night. Thankfully, we got that all sorted out. But they had police, bomb-sniffing dogs, the works. Keith was pulling his hair out all week. And it got worse.

Keith and Christine managed to get a sort of staff suite going, but the hotel would only allow use to serve snack food or anything not cookable. They wouldn't even let us have a coffee pot! And they put us in a tiny boardroom, where the food (that was supposed to be for the con suite) was stacked around Christine like the bricks of a castle, the five fridges were filled with Veggies, and what sodas we had had to be chilled by ice in coolers. All the meat that had been ordered for the staff suite was not allowed in the hotel, but we did managed to get deli meats and tuna for sandwiches. Keith apologized a lot, but it was evident that he was not to blame. The hotel was FULL of dickwads. Pencil-necked, suit-wearing, over-reactive, permanent wedgie suffering dickwards with crabs, poles, and all kinds of bugs up their ass. They even screwed up our hotel room, and it took Keith to straighten it out. The hotel clerks were stupid trolls with attitudes like they didn't speak English, and that's somehow your fault. The desk clerks were okay, it seemed to be the people who answered the phone and left messages that were surly troglodytes who should be forced into that small shack the Camp Counselors put Wednesday in from the movie "Addams Family Values" until Julie Andrews tunes cause bleeding from the ears. The gals at 3WA have a great name for these types of people: Asshats.

My con "experience" was okay. Opening Ceremonies was 13 minutes late at 6:13, which while better than 90 minutes late from last year, is still 13 minutes late. And because the band "Duel Jewel" was playing later, the tech crew wanted us to be over promptly at 7. The tech crew, Neil, Brain ("Amazing Pose Lad"), and Doc were awesome. Supportive, together, and solid. While they were terse on limits and things, they were not unreasonably so, and did well with my last requests and demands with nothing more than a well-deserved warning frown. I would worship the ground they walk on, but then Brian's sensei would laugh at him.

I presented the "Katsucon Animated Music Video Award" for comedy, and got to hand Glenn Fitzpatrick the Golden Kabuki Ninja and some VCDs for his piece "Gendo: Son of God," which delightfully parodied the Evangeleon Saga with a "They Might be Giants" song. Very funny.

"Whose Katsu" went well, I think, and I had far more games than I needed (or used), which was better than the alternative. John, Kevin, Rob, and Pocky were awesome. Pocky had lost his voice at the con, but saved it for the performance, and everyone was a real sport. Funny and witty sports. The audience ruled, too. Kevin won, and he got to read the Hotel Welcome book in a style of my own choosing, like a 12-year-old AOL geek in a chat room. We all joined in with age/sex checks, until Pocky shouted "NO CARRIER." Hee! My boss, who was in the audience, liked that part. His kids thought that was funny, too (they are all AOL teens).

Also, Tom and Sue graciously gave me a chance to be a cosplay judge for workmanship. This was an experience like nothing else. I think the person they were going to have do it could not make it (I think the weather was part of it), and they needed someone they trusted to do it. I think I did okay, and I got to experience some anime cosplay stuff I never encountered before. First of all, more than half of the costumers had illustrations to go along with their costumes, which helped me immensely! I now knew what they were drawing from. Also, a lot of satin was used in anime costuming. I'd say almost all costumes, with the exception of those wearing raincoat-like items, had at least some satin, if not mostly satin, in them. The cosplay categories were Youth, Novice, Journeyman, and Craftsman. Youth was only one kid, so he got all the awards. The novice people were super-nice, although one costumer did nothing but explain all her mistakes. I subtly told her next time sell herself better, and point out what she did RIGHT as opposed to wrong. Journeyman costumers were also nice, but I met one group in Craftsman who were total snobs, and I hated to give them an award, but they were the only ones that qualified. In their defense, they had a very nice setup of costumes. Just the girl in charge was soooo conceited, I wanted to slap her. I ended up cross-snobbing them by correctly identifying their costume techniques, and she was surprised at how much I knew, and finally shut up. I am not usually like this, but man... there's only so much, "My deah, I buy the GOOD satin by the BOLT...!" I could take. I hope Tom and Sue think I did a good job...

But by Saturday night, I was exhausted. I had been on my feet most of the day, and they hurt. I sat in my room, trying to get better so I could see my friend Andrew "DJ Amiga" Iwancio spin some tunes at the dance, but I only made it to the staff suite when...

Back up a bit. By Saturday night, we were all looking out the window out to Crystal City, and saw nothing remarkable. The snow was blowing across the hotel glass, but nothing was collecting in the streets. But then we started to hear from our friends in outlying areas, and they were calling us to make sure we were okay, and they were getting dumped. When my son called from the babysitters, Christine finally held a secret conference with her senior staff. At 11:45 at night, Christine came back in announced she was closing the staff suite, she was going home. Half her staff who listens to everything she says like she's the Oracle at Delphi, suddenly bailed the con as well. We had to take our friend Sara home with us because the Metro had shut down (DC, your public transportation sucks so bad, it creates a false vacuum), but she often stays with us from time to time, anyway, so it was no big deal. We got home around 2am. The snow was pouring like a sheet of clouds. We picked up our son and dogs from the babysitter, and got home just before they shut the roads down.

We made it just in time. It's Monday now, and the plows haven't gotten to our roads yet. Our car is buried. We're low on food, but could go another few days without really starving. We have a lot of meat, and we have electricity and a fireplace if that goes. I don't know how the con ended yet. I heard bits and pieces that after we left, a whole lot of other people also left. Not just attendees, but merchants, artists, volunteers... and I hope they did. Because it's brutal out here. The hotel also were being total bastards by saying "if you check out early, you pay for the whole weekend!" and then telling people who HAD to stay, "We have NO rooms!"

It's probably not three feet here (as they predicted), but it's at least over two feet. It's taller than my dogs, who are so low to the ground anyway, they compete with snakes, but they are really not pleased that the way yard is. Widget is so light, he can walk ON the snow (but won't, it's totally freaking out his Pomeranian Universe), but Ahfu is heavy enough he has to dog paddle through it with those flipper-turtle feet Pekinese have. I had to dig a path for them to pee and stuff, but the snow is dense and heavy; perfect for making igloos, but a bitch to shovel.

School shut down. Work shut down. Everything is shut down. Well, this *is* the blizzard I asked for...

Posted by Punkie @ 02:47 PM EST [Link]

Friday, February 14, 2003

More on my work life

I have said before, I work a lot.

Part of the reason I pull more than 40 hours has to do with how my brain works. See, programming is hard to do in 10 minute increments. Programming to me is like stacking blocks just so, and then when done, spraying them with glue so they stay that way. But when you have a delicate structure of blocks stacked just so, and someone comes along, interrupts your train of thought, and starts moving and adding blocks ... it all falls apart. And this happens all the time. My job is several projects which change priority daily (or disappear), plus training myself new technology, plus maintaining existing systems, plus being the sympathetic listener for coworkers with problems. As a programmer/analyst, I only program and analyze less than half the time. The other part is dealing with authority issues, like escalating things, ordering things, dealing with coworkers, following up on people who forget about me, and so on.

I reduce this two ways: first by working early in the morning, and second by working late at night when no one can bother me. This was truly illustrated last night when I worked more than a 15-hour day, from 6:00am to 9:30pm. I have done MANY of these. Out of those 15.5 hours, I spent 4 of them on system maintenance and reports, 4 in meetings, 1 waiting for some guy to bring back my computer installed with software I have needed for several months now, half an hour for lunch, and then... 6 hours of blissful programming, 5 of those 6 hours totally uninterrupted (4:30 to 9:30). In those five hours, I accomplished what usually takes a week if I had done 8-hour days (which is impossible anyway, because of meetings being scheduled past when I am supposed to leave at 3pm).

Of course, I think most meetings are useless. I know this is a common complaint, but it's amazing how little useful information gets done at some of these meetings. Many times, it's one or two people who ruin it for everyone else. Sometimes, the leader of the meeting can't get to the point quick enough. Here's my ideal meeting:

Leader: I have a problem with the widget process. It should give me A, but gives me B. Please explain.
Worker 1: I built the widget system. It would only give you B if C occurred.
Worker 2: I programmed the system. I agree, but it could also be D.
Leader: Find out if its C or D. I expect e-mail on your progress daily until the issue is fixed.
[End of meeting: 3 minutes total]

But usually the leader is upset or hungry, and folds the widget system issue with other issues, makes his or her own speculations based on fragmented knowledge. Worker 1 may be defensive, and blame it on 2, who then gets into a "it's not my fault" spiral. Hours later, the meeting has devolved into repeating issues not even remotely connected with the widget system.

I had one boss who was dragged to so many meetings, he used one of his employees with less work to be his "meeting proxy." He said, "Most of these meetings don't need me. But because I am head of International, they include me in everything. So you go as me, listen for my group's name, and if they ask you a question, tell them you'll e-mail them a statement, tell me the question, and I'll e-mail them a statement. But don't worry, most meetings won't even know you're there. If I keep going to 5-6 hours of meetings every day, I'll never get any work done."

Sheesh.

Posted by Punkie @ 09:03 PM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 13, 2003

How to Screw a Con: Hotel Catering Rules

Didn't I write some entry about why I'd never run a convention? Oh, yes, I did. Well, here's something I have actually seen before, but never to a convention at the scale of Katsucon: they said, at the last minute, "NO FOOD." We had a con suite... "TOO BAD!" But we had a staff suite for our staff --"TOO BAD!" But the guests need--"TOO BAD!" I am not sure if the hotel had this in their contract with us or it was a verbal agreement. All I know is that we have pallets of food that will now spoil or go otherwise uneaten at a cost of thousands of dollars to Katsucon.

Hotels make money several ways. First, and the most obvious, is the rooms. But they also make use of "function space," the huge rooms that most common hotel guests are not really aware of. You remember that scene in "Ghostbusters" where they trap the green Slimer Ghost in a ballroom with all those tables and glass chandelier? That's a "function room." Hotels have several kinds. Some small hotels have only a small room, good for small wedding receptions. Some bigger ones will have a ballroom, or rent out their suite rooms. Then the big hotels in cities have several rooms, usually one big room with moveable wall dividers. They sell that space, but if a convention gets a "block" of rooms, the hotel will "give" functions to you at a reduced rate, or even free. The third, and most major way hotels make money is by catering. If a hotel has a restaurant, they probably have catering. Hotels in major cities have an almost Nazi or Union-like rule system about catering that sci fi cons have found hard to work around. Big Hotel chains sometimes have contracts with their own caterers that NO food will be allowed to be served by anyone else. The prices for the food would never be considered reasonable to the average human. Let's say you go to an average restaurant and get a steak dinner with a glass of wine and a dessert. In our area, that will run you about $20-25 if you don't go to some fancy-shmancy schmaltz-ridden place like "The Four Seasons." Now if you order from the Marriott-catered hotel a steak dinner for 200 people, you'd think you'd get a discount for 200 steak dinners with wine and dessert, right? Try $70 a plate. And they certainly aren't the quality you'd get at The Four Seasons. How about this, a small business meeting with soda and chips? An 8 ounce bottle of soda (about the size of a small can) will run about $2.50 each. Bag of chips about $3, and they won't be "super-sized," either. AND you have to buy in bulk amounts, like you can't have 10 bottles of soda, you have to have 32 at a time. Plus you have to pay for some dude to stand at the table and serve it, even if no one is at the table serving. It's a union/contract thing. I have seen these planned for my company as well as conventions. While sci fi conventions run on a shoestring budget, most companies just pay without questioning because the purchasing agent isn't paying for it, the company is. So who cares if we paid $6 for a $1 pair of items and didn't use them all?

So bring your own food? Pah! But some hotels, knowing we bring in thousands of people, will bend the rules, but you have to have it signed in the contract. Now, hotels break contracts like pie crusts: easily made, easily broken (thank you, Mary Poppins). Sometimes this is because they promised something they couldn't possibly deliver ("Yes, we can reroute our whole phone system for your demonstration"), or can do, but won't ("Yes, we'll have a bouquet of 144 red roses waiting for the bride when she arrives"). Now, hotels will usually try and get away with a lot, hoping that you won't take the time to call them on it, and even if you do, won't prosecute because it takes too much time and money. I mean, I don't want hotels to look evil, but in some cases, communication is their major problem. In our area, it's usually a change of staff. Like say in June of 2002, you sign a contract for a big Christmas party for your company in mid-December. By the time December rolls around, I can bet you the hotel manager, the guest liaison, and the head of their catering has changed. At least. In our area, the whole hotel could be bought out by another hotel company. What was a Doubletree in June is a Marriott in December. Think they remembered your contract? Hardly. So in December, when someone calls to give the hotel a head count, you realize that smiling girl who answered "No problem" to everything you asked for is gone, and replaced by someone who has pulled your contract out of the filing cabinet for the first time in her life. Ooooh... you've been double booked with the "Southern Baptists for Christ" rally that same weekend. Both of you have the ballroom. Now it's a guess as to what to do.

Now, to be fair, hotels have a LOT of meetings, parties, and conventions pull out on them. I bet half the time they double book they get no conflicts simply because they book a wedding reception for June, and when June comes around, they call and see how many are coming only to get a sad answer the wedding's off, and didn't someone call you? Of course, a GOOD guest liaison will constantly keep updates and a chart... but GOOD people like that are rare. You end up with, and this seems to be a major city thing, half-assed lazy employees who only care about selfish short-term needs. Hell, if they get fired, they can easily get a job elsewhere. This is the city, where there is no "reputation" for a job well done... or a job done poorly. Hell, DC residents voted for Marion Barry. Twice. Even after he was caught on film smoking crack with a prostitute and was jailed. They still re-elected him. The city life is great for slackers. So that spills over into work habits, and hell, the people who make promises to hotels, for that matter.

Of course honorable people and groups, like Katsucon, are royally screwed when the other end slacks. I don't know the full details, but I am sure I'll hear more before the end of the con. My wife runs the staff suite, and now suddenly, her work is reduced to handing out cheese doodles and small snack-wiches, so she and her staff of 11 will have no problem with this vastly reduced work load, but what can you do? How come the other two years we had a staff suite, the hotel let us? Oh... change of management. Again.

Stupid hotels.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:33 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Please stop making fun of the French

I have gotten a SLEW of e-mail from people, mostly in a frail attempt at humor, about how the French are ungrateful cowards and snobs. Look, I have worked with France and French people on a technical level, and they are neither ungrateful nor are they cowardly snobs. They don't all wear berets, smoke thin cigarettes, sitting in cafes, discussing art and how much they hate the Americans with a cantina playing in the background. Nor does everyone live within viewing distance of the Eiffel Tower on some cobblestone street like Champs D'Elysees, drinking red wine while they paint on canvases.

The French are real people, not a stereotype. They don't have to support what they don't want to. I don't care if they support something we don't, that's their decision. We may not like it, but please don't assume every French person is the same, and go "Ha ha ha" at some stupid joke about how one was slapped by a US Marine.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:54 PM EST [Link]

The Upcoming World Barfight

The War we have coming with Iraq really sucks. I mean, yeah, I totally believe Saddam is one evil dude. I spent two hours researching the history of this guy, and man ... he's evil. I mean, he's Hitler-style, insecure, unbalanced, killed his own people evil. I have no doubt in my mind he wouldn't hesitate to use biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons at the slightest provocation with little regard to mercy of any kind ... against anybody. I think that he should be ripped out of Iraq by the roots, taking his whole sick and terrified family with him. But that doesn't mean removing him will be easy or fun.

Most of you are like me, you don't understand squat about what's going on in the Middle East. So I did some research because I was tired of not knowing squat. Now I know maybe a little more than squat. Let me explain some problems we have, as I see them.

First of all, assume that the United States knows barely more than you do about foreign policy. We have made some serious mistakes, backed wrong people, and generally made a mess of things over and over. I am not saying we are bad guys, I am saying we tend to swing our big stick and shout a lot without much thought or education beforehand. Half of our foreign relations staff look in shades of absolute based on stereotypes, deliberate misinformation and propaganda by opposing sides, and just in general being stupid. The other half are doing their best to cover up the first half's mistakes. That's why no one in politics can even agree on any one thing.

Next, we have bad agendas. This was worse during the cold war, and we still aren't good at it now. Just a summary of ONE of our big mistakes is Afghanistan. When we hated the Soviets during the Cold War, we backed the anti-Soviet "freedom fighters." We gave money and weapons to anyone who hated the Soviets without much research, which wasn't too smart. One of these groups was the Taliban. When the Soviets lost (or probably just gave up when they couldn't use WW2 tactics on people hiding in desert caves), the Taliban ended up taking power. Of course, they were religious zealots, and went about destroying anything that wasn't from their radical faction of Islam (let me state for the record that Islam itself is like Christianity, if only in the fact that it's a nice religion about being kind to your fellow man and have a good relationship with God, but seems to have the same share of insecure splinter factions who twist fairly good scripture into words of hate and war). Remember those huge Buddhist Statues they destroyed? Well, the Taliban kept control by keeping people stupid (like how slavemasters kept slaves illiterate) and like the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, used religion as a mask for government agenda. So people suffered, because it was all about the people in power, not the citizens that they ruled over. They also needed money, and Osama Bin Laden and his goons of Ultra-radical psuedo-Islamic had plenty of that. So Osama said, "I'll pay you money to set up camp here," and the Taliban went, "Okee dokee!" So then Osama hit us while we weren't looking, and went "Hee hee!" and then we went and attacked the former people we supported, the Taliban.

Think of it this way. You are a big strong guy with a big heart, but who isn't too bright. You see another big guy you hate at a bar, harassing up some ladies you don't know, but you hate this guy, and so you decide to protect this group of women. The guy isn't so tough, backs down, and one of the women turns out to be a real nut case. You decide to ignore her, and suddenly, her boyfriend you never knew hits you on the head with a bottle. You chase this guy out into the street, but he's gone. Your friends tell you "it's not worth it," but your head hurts and you have no idea who this guy was, or when he or one of his friends may attack you again. You are the US. Your friends are NATO, who usually back you up, but this time, they are restraining you. Even the big guy you used to hate turns out not to be such a bad guy after all, and he's the former Soviet Union, now Russia. The group of women were Afghanistan. The girl was the Taliban. The guy who hit you with the bottle is Osama Bin Laden.

Now let's apply this to Iraq. Iraq is this chicken-butt guy who does nothing but try and egg people on. He's sitting in the back of the bar with his buddies at the same table, some who support him because he's part of their group, but are kind of unsure about him. Iraq has some buddies like Syria who will support him no matter what (unless attacked). Then Iraq has some other buddies like Saudi Arabia, who support him, but realize Iraq might be totally crazy and screw up the whole table (Arab world). "He's one of us but... Iraq, just keep it down." Some are not even sure if they would defend him in a fight because he's so arrogant and stupid sometimes, and goes through raging periods of drunken fights where he usually only ends up hurting himself. Saudi Arabia is on a limited term friendship with you, because you two are business partners, but you like that guy "Israel," whom no one at the Arab table can stand one bit. Israel has been your bufu buddy since he came in the bar almost 50 years ago, but that guy Arafat keeps throwing bar nuts at his head. Recently Israel and Arafat claimed they'd stop fighting over bar space, but they can never seem to stop throwing bar nuts at each other and screaming "Quit it!" You think Iraq has a gun, and will shoot people, but when your NATO bar buddies search him, they can't find a gun. You are convinced NATO's not searching hard enough, because why else would Iraq wear a holster?

Guns, by the way, in this bar fight, are nuclear weapons, which are correctly pronounced "new-CLEAR" not "new-cue-ler," by the way, Mr. Bush. Russia, the United States, France, China, Great Britain, Israel, Pakistan, and India all have guns. And possibly Iran.

Iran was a guy we supported until he went religiously mental (when the Ayatollah Khomeni usurped the Shah, whom we had supported) during the Islamic revolution of 1979. Iran hates the United States, and after they took our hostages for over a year from our embassy, the feeling is mutual. Of course, Iran and Iraq also hate each other, and Iraq was at war with them for a long time afterwards in a battle that lasted many years and neither side really got it together enough to defeat each other, so they stopped after eight years of stalemate, and both claimed victory to their people. Saddam is scared silly that an Islamic revolution will happen in his country, so he pretty much killed all the clergy, and then claimed to be religious himself. Did I mention he killed off all the former staff and put in his own family? And even has killed them from time to time? All hail Nero.

So ... we have told our NATO drinking buddies that we're going to beat the snot out of Iraq and rip out Saddam by the roots, something we should have finished ten years ago. NATO thinks Osama hit us a little too hard with the bottle (the 9/11 attack), and we may not be thinking straight. Like we're going, "Ow, he got hit, we can't get the SOB who did it, so ... let's beat up Iraq!" Maybe we are, I don't know. I bet most of the bar thinks so. Of course, if Iraq does have guns, he's going to shoot Israel, ex-buddy Kuwait, and quite possibly at us. I think that's probably proof right there he doesn't have guns, he would have used them by now (there was a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb at the port of Joppa in Israel, but what became of that we're not sure). When he got chemical weapons, he used them on his own people, the Kurds, because they wanted to remain religiously isolated from the Saddam/pseudo-Islamic state. But that's only proof he doesn't have guns ... yet. I am sure the second he has one, he's going to use it. I mean, he wouldn't if he was smart, but I think he's past crazy to override smart. When he took power in 1979, killed most of the former cabinet as "spies and traitors," and then launched an eight-year war with Iran, which back then, we were all "Yay Iraq!"

Now here's where it get complicated on our end. See, the Arabs have all this oil. We have oil, but when you counted in the cost of labor and stuff to drill for it, it was cheaper to buy it from the Arabs. But the Arabs founded OPEC in the 1960s, an oil-buddy group, most of which sit at the Arab table (but meet in private near the jukebox so you can't hear them). They didn't like the fact we were buddies with Israel (among other things), so in 1973, they acted like a cartel and decided to raise oil prices dramatically by cutting back on world supply. This hit the US badly, because we had gas-guzzling cars. So Iraq thought... "Hey ... we're not with OPEC ... let's sell to the US." Money POURED into Iraq, which went from a piss-poor desert nation to one of incredible wealth in just a few years. Money + lust for power = Iraq today. In fact, we STILL buy oil from them, even when we had sanctions against them NOT to buy stuff. I mean, even current Vice President Dick Cheney has companies there. Talk about conflict of interest.

So, like Afghanistan, the situation with Iraq is also partly our fault. We gave them money for oil, then supported their war against Iran, and then kept giving them money even though we said we wouldn't. Now Iraq is beating their chest and being Mr. Badass because he got to the liquor again. The other Arab countries are nervously supporting him, but will probably flee his side if he does something too stupid.

Then, someone in the Asian section of the bar, some drunk we beat up in 1953 only to end in a draw (again, NATO eventually said, "Okay fellas, back off ... this isn't WW2," even though they were also fighting) gets up, raises his slobbering bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, and shouts, "I have a gun!" That's North Korea, who has seen better days, and might just be desperate enough to develop weapons and shoot South Korea (his ex-wife) or Japan (who used to hate us in the 1940s, but now we're both in love in some strange homo-erotic worship). South Korea is looking for a quick exit in our direction. China, North Korea's only hope for a pal, is telling him to keep it down before he gets himself killed.

Nice bar. We're all a little messed up, but I hope we don't end up in some regrettable brawl that gets someone shot, you know?

Disclaimer: This essay is based on my personal knowledge which may fall a little short of specific truths based in part on over-generalization of facts, gaps of knowledge, and personal experience of drunks. I encourage my readers to feel free to disagree with any or all parts of this essay, and do their own research.

Posted by Punkie @ 11:29 AM EST [Link]

Monday, February 10, 2003

Painful weekend

I'm numb, but okay. This weekend was sure painful. But it was necessary.

I just got back from a small, dying coal town called Keyser, West Virginia, Christine's home growing up. Her sister Brenda had her services there because it was kind of in the middle of where everyone was.

This story has so many players, and my mind is all clogged and in shock with this past week, it's hard to figure it all out. First, there is Brenda, who died. Then Bernie, her husband, who is doing better now, and actually managed to crack a few jokes. Then there is Heather, their daughter, who is about the same. Kind of numb, but recovering. I worried about those two the most, but they seem to have each other and are on the road to recovery. After all, Heather has her newborn to take care of, and Bernie has Heather and the newborn to take care of. At least Brenda got to see her granddaughter before she died.

It was no small bit of news that Brenda had been sick for a while. She never talked about it, but she was very ill for the last three years, and felt absolutely TERRIBLE that Bernie had to suffer so much to take care of her. They loved each other more than ... man, only 30 years of a loving marriage could produce those two, plus a great daughter to boot. But her death was pretty sudden, under suspicious circumstances, as one of my previous entries mentioned.

We were going to leave Friday, but then the weather got bad, and so we left early Saturday morning. We took our two dogs with us. Ahfu loves travel. Widget hates it, and promptly drooled excessively until he threw up during the trip. We had rented a Chevy Blazer 4x4, but got a Ford Explorer without 4x4, a fact we discovered later... too late. We drove with Debbie down to her place (owned by her daughter and son-in-law), and then couldn't get back out of their driveway. They live near Piedmont, right next to the sewage treatment plant that treats water spilled from the great paper mill, Westvaco. They got the Victorian house in complete ruin, but have lovingly restored it. Sadly, it's right on the side of a mountain, so they have no yard to speak of, and their driveway is a steep pitch down from a street which runs around the mountain like a loosely-fitting belt. We got stuck. So we had to wait for Debbie's daughter, Erica, and her husband Travis to haul us out of their driveway. Travis was a patient angel and got us out, explaining to us we didn't have a 4x4, which explained why we couldn't find it on the dashboard anywhere (the rental place said it was part of the vehicle...). But he got us out.

Our hotel was the same hotel we always go to: Keyser Inn Econo-lodge. Originally the "Keyser Inn," it outright failed at its upscale attempts to be worldly, so Econo-lodge bought them out. At least they let us keep dogs. The rooming is... well, clean and simple, and the clientele a little on the odd side, but otherwise, I found no fault with our lodging. Christine's sister Cheryl and her husband Jack also made it down from Ohio, barely, because their truck is always on the edge of breaking down. On the way in, they started to leak coolant, but the problem fixed itself, apparently. They got a room across from us, and we ferried them back and forth to functions.

We also heard her brother Fran, from Florida, did make it up. There was debate until the last minute, but he and his girlfriend Lulu made it up. He also brought his daughter Hope, whom I hadn't seen since she was 8. Now she's 17 and all grown up. I saw quite a few people I hadn't seen as kids, older and looking like adults with kid's faces.

Seems a shame when family only gets together for funerals. Last funeral was mom's back in 1998. This felt like that all over again.

On Sunday, we went to the funeral home, and we got to go early as direct family. Bernie had set up a "memorial board" where everyone was invited to bring photos of Brenda, and the display was beautiful. By the time the real service for everybody got started, the place was packed, and people were standing in a fairly-large room. It was hard to be all rigid and brave with a room full of crying people. I almost broke down myself, but I had to suck it in... swallow it down. Let my nightmares take care of things. I had to be there for everyone, and I think I helped. After the service, they had another "family only" viewing down by the cemetery. It was freezing; a winter storm was on its way, and everyone was talking about it. The sky was only partly cloudy, but it was blowing in the valley that made this cemetery, and I was shivering.

Afterwards, we went to a church where people had prepared meals. Now... I am not sure how many of you are aware of this, and I don't know how common this is. But when Nanny, Mom, and Brenda died, some church somewhere fed everybody. It hasn't always been the same church, and this church was not even Brenda's, but they fed everybody some nice chicken and ham, plus all kinds of side items and desserts. Everyone from the service came, and the packed church function room was full of socializing and condolences to Bernie, Heather, and all of Brenda's siblings. After that, we went back to the hotel, exhausted, and slept a long time.

I had nightmares, but that's par for course. You can't suppress all this grief and expect to just keep it down. But it's not my sister, I have to be there for my wife, and she doesn't need to see me trying to steal sympathy. Nightmares don't have the power they used to, due to an odd medication I was taking for my migraines once. They gave me nightmares, vivid ones, every night for months. After a few weeks of this, my brain ran out of themes, and even my "dream logic" began to go, "Oh, the bees thing. Look, I have been running away from giant bees several times now, and I am just not afraid of them anymore. Give me something else. Oh, being caught without pants. Well, why be embarrassed? That's my own damn fault for not checking when I left for work. Re-living junior high? Okay, nice attempt, but you know... it's getting stale. I mean, I feel sorry for that bully, and that guy... he ended up not being so bad in high school. Being raped again? Nah... after the proctologist exam, it just seems funny now..." Then i stopped taking that medication and the dreams went away, but the lack of fear of them remain. So one dream, being in a mental hospital claiming that my life was not real ended up being almost a triumph at the end when I beat the haunted clown nurse at her own logic. I woke up with this phrase in my mind, "You know... the game here is not to escape. The game in this ward is like a role-playing game of cards. You have two sides. The crazy side, and the nurse's side. Both have different defense and attacks. You hold your cards close, and gain cards from experiences. Now, the real game begins when you realize the goal is not to quit the game, but survive with all your cards, becoming stronger with each play, until you are undefeatable. You start..."

We got up Monday, finished our visits, and went home. We talked a lot about death. A lot. Where we go, what we do, my near death experience and what I learned from that. We're also still not sure if we're going to Katsucon or not.

The long term issue here goes back to Bernie and Heather. After the hubbub of a recent and sudden death, the support wanes quickly, leaving you alone for the first time. You get massive support before, during, and about a week after the funeral. Then it drops sharply, and this is where a TRUE friend will help you: the long term situation. When the shock wears off and the pangs of being alone first grip your heart like an icy claw. Still getting mail addressed to that person. Telling the bank, insurance company, and tax office. The first missed birthday, or anniversary, Christmas, or other special time you spent together. Dealing with people who were away and hadn't heard, and you have to say, "I am sorry you didn't hear, she died a few months ago." What to do with her things when they get old and unusable ("I remember she was so happy when we finally got that car... and now it's dying...")? How long to sleep on just "your side" of the bed. Nights of loneliness or hearing that song she always liked. Sudden bursts of tears when you eat at the table alone, realizing you still set a place for her. When, finally, their pet you took care of all this time dies. After a long time, someone shows you old home movies, and you see her again, hear her voice, and miss her all over again. When the grandchildren grow up, not knowing their grandma, and asking about her. When a memory, long locked away, suddenly springs to life like a hidden jack-in-the-box, about a perfect summer breeze, hitting her hair just so, and her turning her familiar eyes to you and saying she loves you and that vacation was great, but that funny-looking man at that Lobster Restaurant was sure rude. This is when you have to be there for them, hug them, let them cry, be a good listener, and share stories about what a great person she was.

Hug your loved ones for me. Cherish the times you have them. They fade all too quickly.

Posted by Punkie @ 06:49 PM EST [Link]

Friday, February 7, 2003

Bored from the Rings...

It's snowing. I think I'll take some pictures, but before I do that, I want to write.

I saw in another person's journal today that they read "Lord of the Rings" for the first time, and it reminded me of this guilt I have had for years: I didn't care for "Lord of the Rings" very much.

In fandom, that's akin to blasphemy, especially fandom from my past. Let me explain. I first read "The Two Towers" when I was about 8, not knowing it was part of a trilogy, and I found it dry, boring, and didn't make much sense. Now, some of you may be saying, "You were eight???. Yes, I was. I wasn't allowed to watch TV as a child, except for certain PBS shows, and that was as "a treat." So books were all I had to keep entertained, but it was part of me being a social pariah as well. That's a whole 'nother thread, so back to Tolkien. When I was 11, I found that it was part of a trilogy, and read all four books (including "The Hobbit," a kind of prequel), and while I thought it was okay... it was hard to get through. I mean, I have read some pretty heady stuff, I had read Herbert's "Dune" series by then, plus a lot of scientific stuff about the paranormal. I found the whole series to be long, dull, hard to get through with too many main characters and ... an air of how lofty it was that turned me off. I re-read it again when I was 14, and didn't find it any better. I re-read it again when I was 16, at the advice of my best friend, who also told me there was "Cliff's Notes" available. I bought the Cliff's Notes, and used it to keep track of everyone. "Who's that? Oh... son of Aragorn, I get it." It made more sense, and while I was deep in fandom by this point, I figured the feeling of, "But I still think it's boring," was better kept to myself.

Well screw that. I am 34. It was boring. I found the movie to be dull as well, but thank God for special effects to keep me interested. There, I said it. I still had trouble following everybody, and who was who, and did that guy just get killed? Oh, I see. Okay. Doesn't he come back? Oh, he does. Okay. Sheesh. Like watching a soap opera. I found the Shanara series by Terry Brooks and the Eddings' saga to be the same. Even the Harvard Lampoon spoof, "Bored of the Rings" was not enough to keep my interest, and I liked their spoof of "Dune." I guess I am not much into medieval fantasy very much.

Maybe I'll read it one more time to be sure... :)

Posted by Punkie @ 11:58 AM EST [Link]

Thursday, February 6, 2003

Jagged Pill - Brenda's Passing and the Aftermath

Where to start?

After the last entry, we got a call at 3am from Brenda's husband Bernie. She had died Wednesday morning.

Out of all of Christine's sisters, she was the one I was second closest to (Debbie is the first, and was the first one I met). Brenda and Bernie were like... peas in a pod. "Joined at the hip," was what everyone said. They dated and quickly married, and have been since 1973. They were married on Valentine's Day, and this Feb 14th was to be their 30th anniversary. They only had one daughter, Heather, who is married and has a daughter of her own now.

It's hard to just say Bernie, because it was always "Brenda and Bernie." Bernie was a quiet, soft-spoken man who I really liked because he wasn't all macho-man about guns and huntin' and sports cars. He was a slightly shy, but very funny person. He was so doting to Brenda, and put up with her many moods. Brenda was a real "spitfire," a term I only use with her because she was. She was a small, diminutive woman, but in stature only. She made up for her physical height by a big mouth, large eyes, and a rapier wit that was quick and close. Never get her mad, because it was only funny if you weren't the recipient. She was entirely self-sufficient, even in the last few years, when she got Multiple Sclerosis. She went through periods of blindness, partial blindness, and partial paralysis. Not that she ever complained. She'd be the type that would talk on the phone, and say in passing, "Why I do feel better! Yes, last week, though, my dog jumped out the car window and I freaked out and I run into a tree and flipped the car over. Silly me, though, that dog was fine..." You'd never hear about her many hospital visits or near death experiences except if it was a setting for another story. You'd be like, "You were paralyzed for a MONTH?" and she'd say, "What? Oh, yes. But that's not the point, the point is that those stupid nurses they hire there are crazy! This one girl..."

She was the girl who'd beat up bikers in a pool hall.

Bernie was just the opposite, but together they made a complementary pair. Bernie's sense of humor was always delivered dryly. The one famous story was that when Christine was little, Bernie told her he had an invisible parrot. Christine was five, and already suspicious, but after a lot of visits, Bernie had her petting empty air at the edge of his finger and "holding" the parrot for him when he went into the kitchen. Then, one day, Christine sat in a chair, and Bernie went, "Oh no! You sat on the parrot! He's dead!" Christine cried and cried, and while this may not seem funny, but almost cruel, Bernie delivered it differently than I can right now. Christine talked about it for years, and it became legendary. Last Christmas, we gave him a small electronic toy parrot that talked as a good-natured rib. I understand that humor, because for years we convinced Christopher he had a brother, but kept missing him ("He was just here, five minutes ago ... he went to school before you did, I guess.")

More is leaking in as far as information on how Brenda actually died. The day we heard about Brenda, Christine went down to West Virginia on that Tuesday, picked up their sister Debbie, and drove to Hagerstown to see Brenda. Brenda was sitting up and lucid, holding an oxygen mask to her face. The situation was grim. They said she had pneumonia, but she wasn't responding to antibiotics, and was on 100% oxygen, which the human body can't take for long. Debbie and Christine only had ten minutes with her, but decided to come back down the next day. We all knew it was bad because Brenda asked Bernie to call relatives and let them know. She never did that. She NEVER would have asked for anyone to fuss over her while ill.

Then we got the call at 3am.

Reminded me right away of when my mother got the call when her father died. Funny how fresh that stayed in my mind. I was a preteen, and I heard the phone ring late at night, and my mother answering it upstairs, and hearing my mother cry, and my father yell at her, and then an exasperated "My daddy DIED!" and heavy sobbing. I recall the cold pit of my stomach. Grandpa was dead. He had been sick, but now it was certain. No one woke me up to tell me, I didn't need it for the information, but it would have been nice to have someone tell me. I had to just "absorb" the information from clues, like I always did. My stomach felt cold. I was back in the present, and I heard Christine go, "Oh, Bernie, I am so sorry..." Same cold stomach. But now I am an adult, and I have to be there for people. I wasn't there for my mother, and I won't make that mistake again, says my inner child.

Then Christine shook me awake. I was already awake, and she didn't know that yet, but she said that Brenda had died, and then she didn't know how she was going to tell Debbie, who was in our guest room downstairs. She did, and didn't come back up. I fell asleep, hearing my mother's voice telling me, "Your FATHER says I don't have to GO to Michigan! That I should just have someone TAKE PHOTOS! Know what? I already booked a flight to Michigan, and I am going. I have to leave you here, but don't tell your father until I call him from Michigan." The last thing I remember hearing in my foggy thoughts was a flashback Christine and I getting a call late at night in December of 1989, telling us that our friend Jo-ann had been murdered in a Georgia park, and how ever since then, late night phone calls always mean bad news.

I woke up at 6am to the sound of my mother's voice going, "My daddy DIED!" I see the bed was empty. Christine and Debbie were already awake, and had been since the phone call. They had to go to Hagerstown to be with Bernie. I went to work, CR went to school. Luckily, work was hell. It kept my mind off my mother's voice while I had to fix yet another "network event" that killed two of my servers. I spent all day trying to get my monitoring software (that I built) working again. I spent four hours barking up the wrong tree, thinking it was a corrupted Windows file, when it was instead a flaw in windows that happens when event logs get too big. Deleting the logs fix it, but now I had to undo the other "wrong fixes" I did to fix the problem originally. I then rewrote the code to make sub-logs of fixed lengths. Yes, I know, "Use LINUX!" I have to learn to use PERL better before I can rely on them, but I am getting there.

I had to get a lift home, and so I waited for them to come back, hoping they weren't a total mess. They weren't, but they had some troubling news.

The situations surrounding the time of death are alarmingly unknown. The mask she was holding up to her face was not clipped on because the elastic band was too large for her head, and they didn't have a smaller one. The one the had couldn't be doubled up because then it cut into her ears. But she was not hooked up to any monitoring equipment, and so at about 1:30, a nurse noticed the mask was off her face, and they called Bernie to tell him to come back. When he did, she was dead.

He is totally inconsolable.

How did the mask fall off? Did she fall asleep and relaxed her hand? Did she remove it because she didn't want Bernie to suffer anymore? Did she remove it because she didn't want to be hooked up to the respirator? The hospital says she probably got a blood clot in her lung and died instantly, but Brenda did not specify she did not want to be resuscitated, so why didn't they try and bring her back? They now think she may not have had pneumonia at all, but her lungs had swelled up because of the MS, and that was treatable. As I write this today, she is having an autopsy, and a biopsy is being performed on her lungs. Frankly, I don't care what she died from because she's gone all the same, but it's all very suspiciously like neglect.

Debbie and Christine have been holding together as best they could, and I want to mourn, but can't. I have to be there for her. It was like that when her Mom died. I loved her Mom, Sally was great. Same with a lot of deaths I have had in my life, including my own mother's because the moment she died, I was whisked away to a mental hospital for "signs of depression." So I had to act all happy and crap because being sad would have gotten me medicated. By the time the released me (for "lack of cause"), it had been long over. And I have no grave, my father had her cremated and tossed the ashes away, so ... she was erased. So I take this huge lump of pain and emptiness, take a big swallow, and keep it down. I want to liken it to swallowing a jagged pill, but that sounds so much like 7th grade Gothic poetry. Or Alanis Morrisette. Same thing. Anyway, it is more like keeping down a huge amount of vomit at gunpoint because you know the second it blows, you won't stop. And I can't be the weak guy, again, when my loved ones need me.

Times like this, I wish I had a mommy. I wish I had some big lap to curl into and go to sleep, hearing the soft but loud purr of a mommy cat. I used to get that from Oreo, because he was such a loud purr box. But now Oreo's gone, too.

We think the funeral will be this weekend. I am not sure if we're doing the Katsucon thing, it's too much, too close. Colette and Keith have already taken over some of our stuff. I am fairly expendable, so it's not a deep cut for me, but Christine runs their whole staff suite, a kind of pivotal role at the con behind the scenes. What happens we shall see. I'll tell you now, I don't think *I* will be able to do Opening ceremonies and Who's Katsu, because I don't feel I could take any more stress without barfing up that jagged pill.

Posted by Punkie @ 01:52 PM EST [Link]

Tuesday, February 4, 2003

More suckage

Well, I am feeling a lot better, and I still have half my antibiotics to go. I felt a tickle in my lungs a few times, and I got scared because last year, that developed into pneumonia. Double-lung, walking pneumonia. What a bitch that was to get over. About the same time, too, right before Katsucon. But I wish I could say that I felt better. I feel terrible, but not because I am ill.

Chritsine has many sisters. One of them is only in her late 40s, and her name is Brenda. Brenda is a spitfire take-no-damage kind of woman who charged through life's struggles like a warrior. She was sweet and nice unless you got on her bad side, then there was hell to pay. For the last ten years, though, her health has been pretty bad. She has a degenitive nerve illness of some kind, and in the last five years, it got so bad, she had partial paralysis and blindness. Sometimes, we'd call to see how she was, and she'd say, "Oh, great! I wasn't so good last month, when I was in the hospital for a few weeks, but now I can walk and still read text if it's big enough." She'd speak of near-death experiences like one would speak about stubbing a toe. "I'd forgotten about it, but yeah, I flipped my car over when my dog jumped out the window. But silly me, the dog's fine! Such a fuss."

But today, her husband Bernie called. Bernie is like the best husband ever. Calm, patient, and very loving. I idolize this guy, he's great with kids. Bernie called to say Brenda had been in the hospital for the last two weeks, and was very ill. She had some spinal and pancreas trouble, and while in the hospital to get those fixed, she caught pnemonia. Long story short: she's on 100% oxygen, and they are probably going to put her on a respirator.

That's how Christine and Brenda's mom died. Mom went in for knee surgery, caught pneumonia, got put on 100% oxygen, then the respirator... then they finally took her off and she died about 30 minutes later, surrounded by family. Mom was everything to us. She had no money, and she had a checkered past, but she raised Christine on her own. Her past sins were forgiven that day, as we watched the oxygen count go lower and lower... then it was over.

Needless to say, we're all freaking out.

Posted by Punkie @ 04:53 PM EST [Link]

Monday, February 3, 2003

Today's Education...

... sucks. Take a look on the right here ... it's a screen shot from CNN News. Now right away, we can see how the shuttle broke apart. I mean, hell, they were going 18 times faster than the Universe's speed limit! Someone wake up Einstein's corpse, because he's going to be spinning in his grave so fast, it will power both Philip Morrison's pacemaker and Steven Hawking's powerchair for the next few years, and they are going to need it. Philip will have a heart attack, Steven will be seen playing in the freeway, and the late Richard Feynman will come back from the dead to avenge his wrath against the STUPID...!

Okay, sorry guys. But this makes me SO mad. I mean, come on! USA Today once did a poll on American education, and it showed the "average" number of the planets in the solar system was guessed at 6. The average!!! That means a lot of people guessed lower than 6. There are 9 recognized planets (10 if you count Quaoar, but in 1992, it was 9). Man. Also a lot of engineering students assumed astronauts didn't "just float off the moon" because they (oh man), "were wearing heavy boots."

This is why we must continue to explore space. To get away from these people. Okay, no, that's mean. No, I mean we have to keep pressing for people to have, at least, basic science knowledge. I am not asking for your average Joe to know the molarity of a HCL sample by sniffing, because he'll ask why this "hickle stuff" was "burning his hand." No, I want all basic biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geography, meteorology, and geology to be a requirement to pass being allowed to watch TV. Just basic stuff like "gravity attracts" and "acid burns" and a general knowledge about the Table of Elements. That sort of stuff.

Name the nearest star to Earth. Did you guess Alpha Centauri at 4.3 light years? You want extra credit for getting the distance right, too? No. Wrong. It's a star called Sol, and it's one AU away from earth. Our own sun. Is a star. It's that huge flaming ball in the sky you see during the day, and when you stare at, you get eye ouchies.

I saw the CNN blurb over and over... (the screenshot is from someone else, though) and laughed that kind of neurotic hysterical laugh I have when I am both terrified and amused at something so blatantly ignorant. So I tried to amuse myself by imagining what might have happened at 18 times the speed of light. Well, I couldn't get past the 1*c (just the speed of light), because the mass of the space shuttle turned to energy, and exploded with force of ... well, to scale it down, a standard size Milky Way bar, when totally converted to energy, would blow up with the strength of 66 atom bombs like the ones they dropped on Hiroshima. I'd say even the "fun size" would be enough to wipe out every major city on the US east coast. So, something the size of the space shuttle ... over Dallas? At 18c? I am trying to picture the whole shuttle's mass turned to energy, and blowing up like a small star in our upper atmosphere, wiping out most of the Western hemisphere in some hot shockwave that, but again, I am thinking at 1c only. 18c... 18c... (ponder ponder... and the gears in his head go round and round... round and round... round and round...).

Of course, when you go PAST the speed of light, like 1.1c, no one is sure what happens, because no one has ever gone past the speed the light, a 186,000 miles per second limit (at least in our Universe... those reading this from George Lucas's universe may be different with the Kessel Run being done in less than 12 parsecs). Let's leave out all the junk about relativity, because while interesting to me, I think I have lost most of my readers already. I want to keep this simple, and not talk about tachyonic particles and stuff. Let's just look at 18 * 186,000 mps. That's 3,348,000 miles of distance in 1 second. The diameter (width) of the earth at the equator is 7,926 miles wide. Hell, the average distance from where you are right now and the moon is only 222,264 miles. So in 1 second, traveling at 18 times the speed of light, you could go to the moon and back almost 8 times ... in 1 second. You'd reach the sun in about 28 seconds. Hell, that causes all kinds of interesting things. You could see the sun, zoom back to Earth, then wait almost 8 minutes and you could see yourself leaving the sun with a telescope, because it takes 8 minutes for the light near the sun to hit the Earth. It only travels at 1c. So if it zipped over Dallas, by the time the light from the time you saw it got to your eyes, it would have already been several times past the moon's orbit, and be gone. If it hit the Earth at that speed... now my assumption falls apart, because we have to convert mass to energy from the impact to determine crater size for a 250,000 lb mass at 18c and... ow, my head. Okay, it might just be enough energy to blow up the planet to smithereens in an explosion and shockwave that would shatter the moon to particles the size of M&Ms. My friend Jason might have a better time with this than I am having, he's got a PhD in Astrophysics.

So, no. Okay, I know what you are saying, they meant 18 times the speed of sound. Actually, at sea level, they were going only 16.4 times the speed of sound (at 12,500 mph), but at the height they were at, the speed of sound is actually less ... but not enough to make a difference; they still died.

Which leads me back to what could be the biggest tragedy that might occur from this accident: delay of the space program. Look, the fact they get such a huge piece of machinery up there and back at all, with government-bought parts, who gives the contract to the lowest bidder, like how school cafeteria food is selected ... it's a miracle. Add that to low pay for research scientists, the horrific bureaucracy, constant budget cuts, supplier price bloating, being dependent on keep the public interested with almost no PR department ... it's a wonder we have a space program at all. I mean, it's not they aren't careful. Each mission something new goes wrong, and it takes some huge group of human brains in space and on the ground to fix it. That's how we learn, by mistakes. Sadly, this mistake cost human lives. But that's the nature of the business. I'd say the space program killed only 17 astronauts in more than 50 years. In three accidents. Now, how many bus drivers have been killed in 50 years? Garage mechanics? Police and firemen? Yeah. A lot more. None of those jobs have been banned yet. They just made them safer.

Please support your local science program. Please tell the government to spend more on research, or take some time on your own to volunteer for museums and schools. Hell, do your own research!

Don't let this tragedy make us even more ignorant.

Posted by Punkie @ 02:01 PM EST [Link]

Sunday, February 2, 2003

Beach Bound

There is good news recently. I forgot to mention this, but we got another beach house in Hatteras this year. And we got a week that's over our 14th wedding anniversary. Thanks to Jeni, who found us the house! Thanks to Brad, who worked out how we could all afford it! Thanks to Christine, whose timing got us the house the week we wanted!

The house is WONDERFUL, it has a hot tub, a private pool, allows pets... wonderful! It is a bit smaller than we're used to, and more expensive, but everyone agreed they would pay more for such amenities!

So, late this June, we're all driving down to North Carolina again, and spending a week of fun in the sun.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:12 PM EST [Link]

Thinking of New York City

I plan to go to New York City in April. Not sure how, but I am going to do it. Why?

My first trip to New York City, it was 1980 or so. My father, whom had this... anal knack of finding exactly what he wanted at the lowest price, decided he wanted a pimpmobile. He had a classic 66 Thunderbird all my life, so this was our first "second car." Why my father wanted a deep blue, two-door, Mark V Lincoln Continental was beyond me. But he scoured and searched want ads in nooks and crannies that only a determined control freak like him could do (which is why he was good at his job, I suppose, as a defense contractor/consultant). His search led him to New York City, and since my mother said I'd never been there, she insisted I come along. So we drove from DC to NYC in a car trip that I slept through, mostly. We got a hotel on Times Square (I think), in a Ritzy Hotel right across from several porno theaters. I recall my mother thinking this was funny, ironic, perhaps, that we were paying so much for a room with a view... of 25 cent tittybooths. Anyway, the guy we bought the car from looked like he was right out of The Sopranos. Friendly, Italian descent, with a spoiled little granddaughter living in an apartment with a neon sign right out the window. I think his name was Eli. He smoked big cigars, and that was my father's concern: the car smell. Long story short: we got the car, it was in nice condition, and the cigar smell left eventually. Even came with 8-track quadraphonic stereo (don't laugh, it sounded GREAT in the back seat) and a CB radio (my father's call sign was "Blue Max").

In 1985, a gaming group I was with decided "We're going to Origins," which was a gaming convention near New York City. So near, we got lost and ended up driving around it for a while. I would never recommend driving to New York City, and definitely not THROUGH New York City, in a beat-up 1972 VW Beetle. That was hell, but that's a different story.

So as you can see, I never got to see NYC proper. Never had a NY Pizza, never been to the Garment District, Greenwich Village, or even the Empire State Building. The first time, my mother did convince my father to go to the Statue of Liberty, but that was a one-two-three-go! time of pace, and I remember a ferry, a line, and a really dirty interior of the Lady of Liberty (she's since been reconditioned in 1986). I also wanted to go on top of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, since I saw it featured on "Three-Two-One Contact" showing how you can measure g-forces with a rubber band, some poster board, a market, and a tennis ball in an elevator.

Well, that's not happening, sadly. Ouch.

I have friends in New York. I have my friend Eddie Macha, Broadway costume designer, and my friend Ellen Reif, whom I haven't seen for a while, and last I heard was still working on her acting career. Then there's my friend Merideth Jenson, who is a social worker, last I heard. There are also other friends from an online community I am on I want to see.

But that's not the real reason I am going.

I want to do touristy things, like get crap I don't need that says "I [heart] NY" and cheezy street stuff. I want to get a back massage from an old Chinese guy. I want to go on top of the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and see Central Park (in the daylight). I want to eat Jewish deli, NY pizza, and street vendor hotdogs. I also want to see a show while I am there, possibly "Hairspray," possibly "Modern Millie." I wonder if someone is showing an off-Broadway production of "Man of LaMancha?" I also want to be in the audience of the Daily Show or The Late Show with David Letterman. I also want to see the crater that was the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center.

But that's not the real reason I am going.

The real reason is something spiritual. I can't describe it, it's like I need to see NYC for some reason to fulfill something. Some writer's thing. I want to wander around with my son and just hang out. I will do some of these touristy things to take me to places, but I need to find the NYC in me. DC, I love you, but you're... flabby, for a city. No tall buildings in town (we have an ordinance that states no building is allowed to be higher than the US Capitol), DC is a give of black and white contrast of too wealthy and too poor with little interaction between. I haven't found the "soul" of downtown DC yet. I think I need something to compare it to.

I hope I can afford it. My company has a corporate shuttle jet and corporate discounts all over the city. I could get and stay there cheap, but my company is waffling a lot, financially. I may not even have a job by April (there are no indications of that, in fact, just the opposite, but the winds change quickly in the tech world), or my company might be having so much trouble, they cancel the corporate jet. I have also considered train and even regular plane. I was once on a shuttle from DC to Newark, and was one of THREE people onboard a DC-10. Talk about comfort.

So hopefully, by the end of April, we'll have a lot of photos on here to share.

Posted by Punkie @ 03:00 PM EST [Link]

Saturday, February 1, 2003

Deja Vu

Sadly, today, a vivid memory came back to me.

January 28th was a Tuesday in 1986, and I was home from school because it was a "Teacher Workday, Student Holiday." That meant grades were coming soon. I was a bit worried, but no more so than usual. My mother was drunk, passed out in bed, and had been since I managed to get her there Sunday night. My father was away, and blissfully, this meant I could have some "alone time" where I didn't have to care for anybody.

I found some old ground meat in the freezer, and cut me some hamburger squares. Why did I not thaw them? We never owned a microwave, even though almost everyone had one by that point. My father didn't care much for new technology, something that baffled me for years, since his job was a technology consultant. He worked with computers, but forbid one in his house. He also forbid microwave ovens, VCRs, large TVs, and any large an technological gadget. Some said it was BECAUSE he worked with them that he didn't want to also see them at home, but now I think it was for two reasons: one, he was a cheapskate who didn't want to spend any dime more than he was forced to for his family unless it made him look good. Two, he probably was afraid of being confronted with any new technology that he didn't understand. Anything that made him look humble was out of the question (which is why he hates professionals). So we only had two TVs... a portable color one in the bedroom, and a small black and white one in the kitchen. I was now in that kitchen, "thawing" frozen burger chunks by frying them, while watching TV.

I wasn't allowed to watch TV, either, except "approved" PBS shows. Luckily, when my father was away, my mother let me watch what I wanted, and when she was drunk and passed out, the house was mine. So I was flipping the channels, finding the usual crap in the early afternoon. Then I found local Channel 66, which showed live NASA stuff for some reason. Hey, a shuttle launch. I recalled this was launch #25, and a school teacher who used to teach in my district was onboard as the first space civilian. Launch time in just a few minutes... I kept it on that while I searched for stuff to go with my burger. Yay, there is some cheese left! And some burger buns, too! I ate a lot of scraps in my house because sometimes that's all there was. The cheese was hard, but I knew it would melt fine. The buns had a little mold on them, but it was easily scraped off. I made a mental note to go to the store later and get some frozen dinners for myself.

The burgers finally cooked through, and while they were dry and slightly burnt (symptom of cooking frozen beef right from the freezer), I applied the cheese, and while I was setting my food up at the table across from the TV, the shuttle launched on my screen. "Yay!" I recall saying, putting the buns on my burgers, "Russia, see if you can beat THAT!" I'll never forget what happened next.

About few seconds later, after I took my first bite and felt the center was still cold, I glanced at the screen and saw the chase plane view of the shuttle. A voice said that booster separation was going to happen soon, and then there was a puff of smoke, and then the whole shuttle vanished under a boiling white cloud. Flight time: one minute, thirteen seconds.

"That didn't look good," I said.

The Voice of Mission Control continued normally. It said the altitude, temperature, and so on... like everything was going normally. It did it again. I thought, "Okay... maybe it normally looks like that." Then they panned back, and you could see this evil looking devil's horns forming from the single column of smoke. The shuttle exhaust had forked.

"That really doesn't look normal," I said to my burgers. I scanned my brain to see if I had seen this in a previous launch. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Mission Control computer techs were seeing nothing but XXXXXXXXXX on all their screens. Total signal loss.

"We have an apparent major malfunction," Voice of Mission Control said. By this time, it was apparent things were falling in the air, and there were wisp-like trails of things drifting into the Atlantic. You could hear people crying out gasps of disbelief and horror.

The transmission just showed this for a while, so I grew bored with no new information, and turned to see what else was on. All the major networks had "Breaking Bulletins." I called my best friend Kate and told her the Challenger had blown up. "No way!" she said, and turned on the TV. We talked on the phone for a while, until she suggested I come over and watch it with her. So I did.

That's when life sped up to a normal speed again. The next event I recall was hearing how all of teacher citizen Christa McAuliffe's students were at school, watching the launch live from their school auditorium. I thought, "How grisly." Then, many months later, my hero Richard Feynman dunked an O-ring in ice water, said his speech, then at the end, pulled out the O-ring, and snapped it in half. There were talks of naming the seven stars in the Pleadaes cluster after the seven astronauts. I was a student assistant to someone who worked with Christa, and he was quite devastated; he spoke of her quite often for the rest of the term. Then in astronomy class, we had a whole day dedicated to it. Then... it faded in my memory.

Until this morning.

I got out of the shower, hearing the what sounded like the news playing in the bedroom. Christine never watches the news unless it's some tremendous event. I kept wondering if it was some home design show where some designer talked like a news anchor, and my deafening ears were just garbling the translation. But as soon as I stepped out of the bathroom, Christine told me about Columbia. I didn't know what to say or respond.

I still don't. Part of me feels like, "Well, that's the risks of space exploration... shit happens." Then another part of me thinks that's callous and whatever happened to my uber-caring go-space-go attitude? I don't know. I want to feel upset, but I just don't have the energy. Am I numb? Am I even affected? Am I more affected by realizing I don't feel affected? Maybe after 9/11, I burned out. Maybe it's because I am still sick with sinus pressure, clogged ears, and now a wet cough (aren't I supposed to be getting better?).

As I watch the replay over Dallas over and over, I still feel, "Well, that sucks," like some guy getting hit in the testicles with a stair rail due to a poorly-planned skateboard stunt. I even feel more bummed that Israel's first astronaut and a ton of scientific data was lost than the loss of the crew, which I think is REALLY wrong... why am I so unfeeling?

This doesn't look good...

Posted by Punkie @ 12:23 PM EST [Link]