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Zen Foodism

December 21, 2015
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The library is closing in 15 minutes, so this will be brief. Four weeks ago I became employed by a corporation that manages several restaurant chains. In the course of my employ I’ve been on my feet every working minute, and have not only lost several pounds but have also had a good insider’s look at what happens in a quality restaurant. When a customer spontaneously says “It was wonderful” or “That’s the been airport food I’ve ever had” on her or his way out, and that’s happened many times in these weeks, it means much more than that they had a good meal. They traded a segment of their irreplaceable lifetime and were happy with value received, even though they could have saved money and time with alternative sources of nutrition. That well-being will improve their digestion, their outlook on life, and (given that we cook from scratch with fresh, top-of-the-line ingredients) their very bodies, incorporating the ingested nutrient into their cell structures. Win-win-win–almost Zennish.

Badge Me In, Scotty

December 15, 2015
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badge

In these terrorism-laced times it is hard not to feel vulnerable and targeted, no matter who or where you are. And at Sky Harbor International Airport, self-proclaimed “America’s Friendliest Airport,” the big challenge is to be at once accepting of a mind-boggling diversity of humanity, and mindful that the Bad Guys often strike at or near the airport, or on and/or with airplanes.

One consequence is that a new airport-vendor hire is treated as a provisional employee while a ten-year criminal background check is done. Until the positive results come in, the new hire must be escorted through and beyond the security checkpoint everywhere, including to the restroom. My own background check, just completed, took a solid three weeks. Somehow I managed to limit my restroom need to once per shift. (Yesterday’s shift was 10-1/2 hours. Yoicks!)

When I was “cleared for takeoff” (just last night) I was voiced-mailed to go to the Badging Office for video watching and testing. I arrived at the Office at 10:30 AM this morning (Tuesday and Saturday are my days off right now) and emerged, educated as to my responsibilities as a blue-badged airport employee, at 12:45. The videos I was shown did a good job of covering security basics, which are mostly common-sense things (example: if you badge yourself in through a door, you must be 100% sure that the door closes securely behind you before you leave it) that such as I, being NON-commonsensical, don’t normally think of.

Now I am badged. The badge is good for six months. I trust and hope that I am too.

Orange Pig on Greenmetal

December 1, 2015
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You’ve been recruited. You’re in a cadre of superheroes whose sigil is the profile of a straightbellied orange pig against a deep gunmettally green background. Your superpower and your mission are identical: you alchemize food service into performance art.

Or: You wake up at 2:45 AM, shower, floss, brush, dress, do your flight-check of absolutely essential items, walk four-odd miles in the dark pre-predawn to the northwest terminus of the Valley Metro Light Rail, catch the 5:00 AM edition of the Light Rail and have it convey you to 44th and Washington, get on the escalator, get on the moving walkway, get on another escalator, get on the Sky Train, hear the automated voice botch “East Economy Station” for the kajillionth time, get out at Terminal Four, and call a manager at 5:53 AM to escort you through TSA testing at the security checkpoint. Your clockin time is 6:00 AM.

Or: in three days you’ve done a ton of watch&learn, and the first thing you ought to learn, but don’t, is to get out of the way. “Walk with purpose,” one of the wait staff, loaded with meals and right behind you, says, and you finally get it. Later you’ll learn to hurry without seeming to. But your head is full of the table numbers and the names of everyone and where you need to be most of the time, a few crucial times, almost never (the bathroom, for instance–act accordingly!), when you need the manager’s override, where you cannot go without an escort, and how to field frequently-asked questions.

Or: a LOT of people are getting to know you awfully fast, and it’s a kaleidoscope of welcome-to-my-worlds when you get to know them. One is AMAZING!! LIVING the DREEAM! One is a magician who arranges a table for five in a split second. One is a bartender with the self-assurance of Zeus. One is a cross-country runner with a full trophy case on the rez. They’re special, and they’re treating you like one of them. You’re “Buddy” and “Baby” and “Brother,” and that’s just the Bs.

Or: You’ve been on your feet for six solid hours with no letup. You’re OK above the ankles but your left foot has decided to cramp at odd intervals and you can’t always walk it off. Finally you get philosophical about it. Bring it on, you stupid foot.

Or: You press the CLOCK IN/OUT part of the screen, slide your card, assure the machine, which sometimes scolds you, that you ARE clocking out and you’re NOT taking a break, and your receipt/record of a week’s worth of work comes sliding out, and you realize that you’re where you should be right now, doing exactly what you should be doing.

Clothing You Can Trust

October 29, 2015
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Today I and my steady girl Joy attended a memorial service for Harvey Rhodes, father of my classmate Charlie. It was held at Chapel of the Chimes, a Glendale AZ institution for many years.

I never met Mr. Rhodes that I can remember, but I’d say from what I saw and heard at the service that Charlie has in him many of the qualities that made his father a fine man. I was glad to learn more about Harvey, and a bit more about Glendale, by virtue of my attendance.

Perhaps incidental to this, I decided to dress up a bit for the occasion, and donned the same shirt and tie I’d worn at Dick Wilkinson’s service last month. Then as now I walked from my apartment to the service, and then as now–and now in sharper focus, informed by my previous experience–I found that I am treated differently–with more respect–when I am better dressed.

My usual garb might be described as Thrift-Store Yesteryear. I am comfortable in a polo shirt or t-shirt and jeans or shorts, and I skirt the edge of “business casual” at work. When I suit up I don’t exactly feel like an imposter–more like a partygoer at a masquerade.

But I do like the person people think I might be when I dress up–and my behavior notches up as well.

Perhaps incidental to this, while I was rummaging in my closet for what to wear, I found a pair of pants with a 36-inch waist that I bought when they were a little too small for me; then my weight ballooned and they were un-put-onable. How about now . . . is it remotely possible?

It is. They won’t really fit for another 10 pounds or so–the muffin-toppage is woefully laughable–but I am able to put them on, and I think by New Year’s Day they will fit comfortably. And I will be more comfortable in my skin, though it will be a little looser. “Relaxed fit,” you might say. 🙂

Rest In Peace, Harvey H. Rhodes.

The Transformative Power of Theft

October 20, 2015
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Two days ago a scoundrel or scoundrels took the rear wheel of my locked bicycle, thus:

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My reaction is only slightly burlesqued in the following regressive essay:

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And the two words were not Happy Birthday (tip of the hat to Stephen King, who made me laugh with this setup and punchline, which I cheerfully stole, this being an essay on The Transformative Power of Theft).

I don’t like not having the use of my bike, and I can’t immediately afford to get it fixed or replaced right now. But there’s an upside of several facets. Foremost is that I’m quite accident-prone when on two wheels, and I have permanent road rash on my left forearm to prove it. The theft also got me the title to this essay, which I think is apt and spiffy, and for which an Internet search conducted just prior to writing does not show a match. (How ironic would that be, if the very title were stolen?)

And, of course, it IS transformative, theft: our whole lives see us robbed of a day of life per day, and sooner or later our various sources of enjoyment go with them. (A friend my age called me up and we swapped infirmities. “But I still have orgasms,” he said in a Thank-God voice.)

Pablo Picasso and Bob Dylan are famous for ransacking their respective genres for source material. It may be argued that they bring enough of themselves to the table to justify their pillaging, just as Shakespeare did, though of the three dozen or more plays he is thought to have written, only ONE of them, The Tempest, has an original plot. (See Pyramus and Thisbe among MANY others for an equivalent to Romeo and Juliet, for instance.)

The great Theft Book includes stolen  thunder, stolen kisses, Pirates of the Caribbean and of Silicon Valley and many other elsewheres, ghost writing (a more cooperative and symbiotic form of theft), taking Shorty-Cuts in line, aggressive panhandling, purveyance of self-destruction aids such as cigarettes, and on and on. We are all thieves, by some stretch. Henceforth I’ll strive to be a good thief. I will steal to achieve more good than harm. I hope. Most of the time.

Hey, can you spare me a change? I’m Tapped . . .

Bein’ Free Is Hard Work

August 8, 2015
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The title of this post derives from the splendid, brutal novel Cool Hand Luke. Luke and his fellow fugitive Dragline are on the lam from prison personnel and their vicious, man-hunting hounds. Drag says he knows where they can get ahold of some nice, [generously-bosomed] country gals. Luke avers that they can’t be messing with women when they need to be making good their escape. “This bein’ free is hard work.”

And so it is. For me to be free of the matrix of indebtedness, ancillary guilt from being subsidized, and the various life-sucking distractions this evil world constantly proffers, I’ve taken a small, no-Internet-access apartment and a full-time, low-paying job that I can leave at the end of the workday without it following me. I’ve worn out my shoes to the point of harm, and then got a new pair that abraded the flesh atop my Achilles tendon into hamburger. I buy my toilet paper at the Family Dollar and my dollar-ninety-nine breakfast burrito at the QT.

But life is good. I had a wonderful day yesterday, my daughter Kate calling to ask for a guitar lesson and/or a movie (we saw the execrable FANTASTIC FOUR, knowing it would be bad, because that’s how we roll), and afterward, by prearrangement, I spent the night on the living-room couch of my ex-wife, getting the best night’s sleep I’ve had in many days. And today I had a quick and convivial lunch with the sweet and steadfast Joy Riner Taylor, and tonight we’ll be out on the town, not too lavishly.

While I was at Joni and Kate’s I saw one of Joni’s houseplants–she says a schefflera–in a planter I’d made a long time ago; I didn’t remember exactly when, but guessed ten years, then curiosity compelled me to hoist it up high and read the underside (I sign and date almost all my ceramic works). Sure enough, I’d done it in 2004. I was delighted to see it doing what I’d made it to do.

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Bein’ free has been such hard work that my artwork and poetry have been nearly nil of late. (I put in eleven and a half hours of overtime last week, and public transportation and pedestrianism also take their toll.) But, Friends, I am finding my feet. Expect more from this source, well before the end of this month.

The All-Cliché Revue Review

May 11, 2015
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“The new social media have created a self-awareness and self-absorption that puts the 70s–the so-called ‘Me Decade’–to shame.” –Public Domain

*****

the all-cliché revue

BOOM shakalakalaka BOOM shakalakalaka

DRINK the KOOL-AID
Kum Ba Yah.
DRINK the KOOL-AID
Kum Ba Yah.

I know you are, but what am I?
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.
I cross my heart and hope to die.
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.
And those who don’t can go to hell!
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.
IMHO ROFL.
DRINK the KOOL-AID/Kum Ba Yah.

Now look what you made me do.
NOW look what you made me do.
NOW LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO:
DRINK the KOOL-AID.
Kum Ba Yah.

*****

Review. To view again. First we view with our senses, then we view with our thoughts. It is possible to keep up one end of a conversation using nothing but cliché, quotation, and clichéd quotation. In this century the terms meme and trope have become linguistic common coin. In this century no one need wonder what meme and trope mean: here is what happens when they are searched for.

meme
mēm/
noun
noun: meme; plural noun: memes
  1. an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation.
    • a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.
      trope
      trĹŤp/
      noun
      noun: trope; plural noun: tropes
      1. 1.
        a figurative or metaphorical use of a word or expression.
        “he used the two-Americas trope to explain how a nation free and democratic at home could act wantonly abroad”
        • a significant or recurrent theme; a motif.
          “she uses the Eucharist as a pictorial trope”
      verb
      verb: trope; 3rd person present: tropes; gerund or present participle: troping; past tense: troped; past participle: troped
      1. 1.
        create a trope.

We have been deluged with cute kitty-cats and pithy words-to-live-by. We group-mind ourselves into nonselves. The shorthand of our thoughts becomes ever more semantically empty. Have some Kool-Aid. BOOM shakalakalaka. Kum Ba Yah.

Investigation, using 21st-century search techniques, reveals that “Drink the Kool-Aid” refers to a mass suicide of a religious cult; that “Kum Ba Yah” is an entreaty to the Lord to “Come by here;” and that “Boom shaka-laka-laka” is a chorus lyric in the song “I Want To Take You Higher.”

Have a nice day.

What We Want/Think We Want/Think We Think

March 12, 2015
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There was a discussion of robot dogs in CBS THIS MORNING this morning. The consultant, Nicholas Thompson, editor of newyorker.com, says their most immediate use will be military. He also mentioned the use of robots at the end stage of a human life; and there was some banter about the warnings of the dangers of artificial intelligence expressed by such as Stephen Hawking.

Classic science fiction is filled with human/robot interaction. John Campbell and Isaac Asimov hammered out the Three Laws of Robotics in the early 40s, thus:

  • A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Much later Asimov realized that there was an even more important law, and codified the Zeroth Law of Robotics:

  • A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

(Later, in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, a dying Mr. Spock would say “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one,” an echo of the Zeroth Law.)

Hawking’s concern seems to be that machine intelligence will first eclipse human intelligence and then ask itself what use humans are, conclude that humans are unnecessary at best and a threat/detriment at most, and either put us to shame or do us in. As for whatever previously enacted Laws of Robotics may have obtained, a simple rewriting of the code would negate those Laws pronto, and if a human terrorist or prankster didn’t do that, the machines themselves might.

A few weeks ago I wrote a short-short called “Siri, Alkiller” on the submissions page of postcardshorts.com. Alas, I didn’t copy my story onto my hard drive, and it was rejected by the Stories on a Postcard folks. (Previously, they had accepted my “Sin Ops Sis,” another pun-drenched effort of mine.) But it addressed this issue, however obliquely: someone with a smart phone was asking Siri for directions to a good Chinese restaurant with moderate prices, and Siri kept saying things like “Death to Al Pacino” and “Death to Al Franken.” Asked if she was infected with malware, she said No, it was Alware. Or an Alfunction. Or the augmentation of her code with an ALgorithm.

Siri fits in because she’s the information genie-in-a-bottle: ask her, and she’ll always have an answer. When she first hit the mainstream, a friend of mine riding in a carload of friends invited us to ask her anything. “Where can I get laid tonight?” said the crudest of us. There was a several-second pause, and then Siri replied, “Escort services: . . .” and listed several in the area, without being told where we were.

Who knows what Siri is going to do with all these questions, from askers that run the gamut from saintly to psychopathic? Isaac Asimov wondered about that way back in 1958, in his “All the Troubles of the World.” Multivac, his prototypical Siri, tasked with solving all the world’s woes, helped everyone but itself; finally, it occurred to someone to ask Multivac what Multivac itself wanted. Its answer: “I want to die.”

“Man doesn’t think, he only thinks he does,” a professor once told a philosophy class, attributing the quotation to Ambrose Bierce. Today I looked for the quotation without success. I did find this, from Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary: “Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.” And on that misapprehensive note, my Friends, I rest my post.

Blog Post #700: “Remember who you are. . .”

January 30, 2015
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0130150929-00~2“Remember who you are.” So Mufasa, the Lion King, admonished Simba, heir to his throne.

Packing up my belongings, deciding what to keep and what to toss, I found the boxes containing the shirts I’d kept from the footraces I was in, mostly in the 80s and 90s. The first one was the MetroChallenge 10K, October of 1982. More than fifty others followed, most memorably the 1984 San Francisco Marathon.

Tomorrow is the Sedona Marathon, whose ancillary events include a 5K. I’d intended to enter the 5K but the onus of “heading up moving out” (see previous post) makes the 5K out of the question. As it is I’ll be leaving a day later than I’d originally planned.

But there is a 5K in my future, and then a 10K, and then a half marathon, after which I’ll decide whether or not a full marathon is beyond my sexagenarian reach. That’s part of remembering who I am. There’s nothing like the finish line of a footrace to make me feel capable–and I don’t get to the finish line without being on the Right Track.

Another part of remembering who we are, that gets less talked about, is remembering our mistakes and failings. I’ve got a bagload of failings and a boatload of mistakes. The cooldown after a workout will be a good time to reflect on those. “Go, and sin no more,” possibly the greatest advice to be found in the Bible, is also the hardest advice to follow–but let’s try, Friends!

Blog Post #600: Gratitude

September 24, 2014
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Every hundredth post I’ve tried to do something special. Post #600 happens to coincide with something special I was asked to do on Facebook over five days’ time. Each day I was to post three things I was grateful for. Here is what I wrote, consolidated. My thanks to Mary Magdic, who put me up to it.

My friend in the Great Northwest, “Magic” Mary Magdic, nominated me to post 3 things for which I am grateful over the next 5 days. So, hip-ho and away we go:

Day 1:

1) I am grateful to have co-created my daughter Kate. She is my life’s joy.

2) I am grateful to have had Romance in my life. Ladies, you know who you are. [smiles] I am especially grateful for the romantic journey I have had with my Sweetheart, Denise Huntington.

3) I am grateful for an array of friends diverse in gender, interests, and DNA, with some friendships going back fifty years and some newer than my involvement in Internet social media. My friends are trustworthy, helpful, kind, and many other qualities found in the “A scout is…” litany, though some are not all that clean and a few are downright irreverent.

Gratitude inventory, Day 2:

1) I am grateful for the 21st-Century technology that has enabled me to reconnect with past friends, meet and make new friends, preserve my thoughts in blog form effortlessly, and enjoy the thoughts of many others.

2) I am grateful to be living in a gorgeous, colorful Valley whose laws severely limit light pollution, enabling spectacular night skies.

3) I am grateful for the existence of the Higgs boson, which (as I understand it) enables the accretion of cosmic fuzz into elemental matter, and thus provides us with a miraculous venue, including our humble selves.

Gratitude inventory, Day 3:

1) I am grateful that my mother, who will celebrate her 80th birthday in January, and looks like she’s good for at least another 20 years, raised me and my brothers with a zero-tolerance policy regarding racism. I am lucky to be her son.

2) I am grateful to have had full-time employment for more than a year and a half, with work that is both fulfilling and accommodating–a perfect “day job” for a creative though many of the work hours have been in the dead of night.

3) I am grateful, after so many years of struggle, for the realization that I canNOT do “anything I set my mind to” but CAN do a certain spectrum of things that I’m not only quite good at but that I also love to do. I not only need never retire; I will never retire. Or, to cheerfully rip off the NRA, “they’ll get my pencil when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.” [smiling]

Gratitude inventory, Day 4:

1) I’m grateful that the hot dog end that was lodged in my throat, stubborn as a cork in a bottle, when I was 9 years of age and long before the Heimlich maneuver was in use, was successfully expelled before I succumbed to asphyxiation; that the 6-pound shot put that nearly collided with my head about a year later, didn’t; and that my dad was there with me during a rip tide at Pacific Beach to quell my panic and get me to backstroke my way toward shore. As to the last, a lifeguard was otherwise occupied until unneeded; he came out when my feet were firmly on the sand. If Dad weren’t there I would likely have drowned.

2) I’m grateful for the singers/songwriters who brightened my days when I was growing up–among many others, Lennon/McCartney, Janis Ian, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Carly Simon, and especially Bob Dylan were voices of sanity and resonance that served the function of guardian angels. I have a wonderful jukebox in my head now, full of the songs I love. I believe I was born just in time to enjoy a Golden Age of original music.

3) I’m grateful for the tens of thousands of miles I’ve gone on foot, walking and running, solo or with a friend or friends. The Endless Road is a well of pleasure, accomplishment and contentment that never runs dry.

Gratitude inventory, Day 5:

1) I am grateful for laughter. I love to laugh and I love creating laughter in others. Among the many who have made me laugh till my head hurts and tears come are Julius “Groucho” Marx, Bill Cosby, Gracie Allen and George Burns, Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, Ben Stiller (need I say more than “Tropic Thunder” and “There’s Something About Mary”?), Rita Rudner, Roseanne Barr, Rodney Dangerfield, Margaret Cho, the other Margaret who, when asked by a guy if he could buy her a drink, replied “No thanks–but I’ll take the three bucks,” Mel Brooks and his confederates in lunacy, and my two all-time favorites, Richard Pryor and George Carlin. I’m grateful that I can call Bill Campana, who has my vote for the Funniest Person on Earth, my friend. And my sorrow at the passing of Robin Williams is tempered by the remembrances of his good friends Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal, who have also made me howl. As for my own sense of humor, I know I’m not as funny as I think I am, but I also KNOW I CAN be funny, if only because I once made a dear friend of mine involuntarily and plenteously wet her pants laughing at a joke about how a girl from Xavier–nope, can’t tell that one here! [smiling]

2) I am grateful to have years of various sorts of Sobriety under my belt. My Achilles Heel is compulsive gambling, but I’m also an obnoxious drunk when drunk and a vegetative slug when stoned. I am proud and happy to not drink, not smoke anything, restrict my drug use to blood-pressure medication and over-the-counter aspirin and equivalents; and I’m exhilarated to have kept a promise to myself, made in late 2010, to give up casino gambling. I still have an addictive bent, but nowadays it keeps itself to some overeating and some excessive Internet surfing. Not having a barrel of monkeys on my back is SO liberating!

3) I am grateful for the gift of life and the gift of hope, the gift of health and the gift of limited-but-immense possibility. It is fine and profound to offer love and be offered love in return. It is ecstasy to express and to be heard and understood and appreciated. It is peculiarly fine to be afflicted and then to get better, which yields the realization that Normalcy can be Amazing. And waking up happy just to have a pulse–that’s what Life is all about to me.

You wonderful friends who’ve read and responded to my previous entries–you are also what Life is all about. Thank you so so much!