Doing the Charleston, Holy-style

A spokesperson for the travel industry estimated this week that at least 5 billion Americans made a trip of 100 miles or more during this holiday season. A large majority of these were on the airlines or driving on the road, though a growing minority of travelers are choosing clean alternative transportation such as paddle boat, skate, and sliding downhill on a piece of cardboard.

When my family and I decided to go the 200 miles from Charlotte to Charleston, S.C., to visit my great aunt, we debated the merits of flying versus driving. We could make it either way in about the same amount of time, when you consider the attendant hassles and time delays involved in modern jet travel. Did we want to pay about ten times what it would cost to drive so we could experience the stimulation of surly counter agents, body searches and a potential plunge from 20,000 feet, or could we endure the tedium of freeway motoring? We realized how close a call the decision was about 50 miles out of town when I almost fell asleep at the wheel, but in the end, we’re glad we decided to drive.

There’s little of the magnificent American landscape so idolized in popular culture on the stretches of interstates 77 and 26 that bisect the state of South Carolina. Brown flatlands give way to sulfurous marshes as you approach the coast, so you’re generally left to your own imagination to summon enough interest to stay alert.

One way to do this is to admire the creativity (and lack thereof) that’s been put into the naming of different locations along the route. Towns have been saddled with unimaginative monikers like Jedburg, North, Cope and, from mapmakers who gave up completely, Ninety Six. There’s also a “Townville” that apparently was judged to be better than “Cityberg” or “Villageton”. Meanwhile, interchanges between the federal highway and various county roads have been given elaborate names to honor prominent locals, I guess because “Exit 17” was just wasn’t inspirational enough. For example, there’s the Medal of Honor Recipient Eugene Arnold Obregon Memorial Interchange, the State Solicitor J. Robert “Bobby Joe” Adamson Jr. Interchange, and the Buck Mickel Memorial Southern Connector, to name just three of the dozens we passed. I can only assume that the memorials were put at highway exits to symbolize how these heroes left the mortal world in much the same way we drivers are forced to get off for gas and a Pepsi.

Though most of the old-time South is located too far off the highway to appreciate, we did get a good sense of the bygone era when we stopped in a tiny village called Restarea. The town had only two roads – “Cars Street” and “Trucks and Campers Avenue”. Though the manufacturing base of Restarea left long ago, there are still pockets of commerce among the 100 or so residents of this bustling community. The only shopping area is a bank of vending machines behind a beautiful wrought-iron gate. There’s a small park where families eat at picnic tables and dogs romp at the end of a leash. The city hall still shows an unfortunate remnant of segregation, with the community rooms divided into separate men’s and women’s facilities. Despite that, there’s still evidence of an active cultural scene inside, including an innovative arts installation where residents can leave their thoughts for others to consider, including thought-provoking folk wisdom such as “eat me,” “Goths and emo rule” and “your stupid.”

As we got further into the last half of our four-hour drive, amusements starting running low until we were passed by a large semi with a sign on the back that asked “How’s My Driving?” I’ve seen these for years and always wondered if anyone ever called, so I pulled out my cell phone and decided to give it a try. After a couple of rings, the operator answered “England Transport customer service, can I help you?”

“Yes,” I responded. “I wanted to offer a comment on the driving of one of your owner-operators.”

A pause, then skeptically, “How can I help you again?”

“I was just passed by one of your trucks on the interstate and a sticker on the back asked ‘how’s my driving?’ and gave this 800 number. I figured not many people responded unless they were mad about something, and I just wanted to offer another perspective.”

“OK,” said the woman. “Can you give me the truck number, please?”

“No, I can’t. It’s already passed. But I can tell you it had a metallic silver trailer, mud flaps on the back wheels and was heading south about 60 miles from Charleston.”

At this point, I got the distinct impression this woman was only pretending to care. “Oh… kay,” she said. “Can you give me your, uh, comment?”

“Yes,” I said. “The driver seemed to be doing an adequate job. Nothing dangerous, nothing dramatically good either. I’d say he was meeting expectations.”

Another pause. “Um, okay. England Transport appreciates your input. Thank you for calling.”

“Do I get a coupon or a discount or anything toward my next less-than-truckload haul?”

No response. She’d hung up. At least my grogginess had passed.

Rural South Carolina was now receding in the rear-view mirror as we headed toward the more metropolitan Low Country. We passed a pickup truck with a bumper sticker advertising the “Medieval Tattoo Studio,” and I couldn’t help but wonder how inked scarring of the skin could be more primitive than it already was. Maybe they splash you with flaming tar to give your etching a random effect. Soon, the “Holy City,” as Charleston bills itself, was all around us.

We had a pleasant two-night stay at our favorite Hampton Inn-Historic District (thanks for the one night free, Mr. Eichmann). We started to remember next morning at the lobby breakfast buffet some of the reasons for the “Holy City” nickname. A family at the next table grasped each others’ hands and bowed their heads, quietly but audibly thanking the Lord for the Honey-Nut Cheerios, banana and decaf that His Mercy had bestowed upon them. Later we met up with our aunt, and got to hear all the details about how her tiny evangelical congregation had schismed yet again, this time over something to do with casseroles. (They had been renting a movie theater for their weekly services when there were 40 of them; now that they’re down to 20, they’re looking at local self-storage facilities.) Aunt Vertie confirmed later that she had indeed erased the line between faith and lunacy. We commented on how well her Buick Regal seemed to be running, and she noted that it probably needed some brake work but she was hoping the occasional addition of fluid would allow it to last “until the Rapture.” This sounds like something that GMAC and other car loan financers should investigate – leasing options that are pegged to the End Times.

It was a short enjoyable vacation that made a nice respite during the holidays. Charleston is a great place to visit but I prefer my home just off the Ungodly Memorial Interchange.

Giving until it bleeds

There was a lot of negative talk out there after my Friday posting claiming that gift-receiving was so much better than gift-giving http://davisw.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/giving-vs-receiving-which-is-best/. The Internet was absolutely abuzz, if you count the guy who said I was a “seflish idoit” and the email I got from my mom asking if that’s the way she raised me.

To prove the point that I can also be a very caring individual who feels deeply the importance of giving back to his community, I’ll be hauling a load of stuff over to Goodwill at the end of the tax year on Wednesday. I also went to the bloodmobile Saturday to give the gift of life.

Talk about giving of yourself, this is the most selfless contribution one can make short of a lung. My wife and I have been giving this annual donation right around Christmas for the past five years or so. She’s actually way ahead of me in the quantity given, having started in college. I was only introduced to the concept when the local Starbucks began sponsoring the event with the incentives of free coffee and a baked good for all donors. I also wanted to see if it was true that you’d get drunker on a couple of beers after your body had been sapped of almost a quarter of its life-force.

We arrived early enough to be first on the list of those signing up. While the rest of the nearly overflowing coffee shop was lounging around concerned only about number one (that coffee goes right through you), Beth and I read through the pre-donation materials to be sure we were still eligible. Easily clearing the requirement that I was at least 17, weighed at least 110 pounds and had at least one arm, I signed where they told me and soon was called out to the parking lot where the bloodmobile was parked.

I was directed to the tiny interview room by a middle-aged South Asian woman. This was a good start: my past experience with the workers who staff these events was that they tended to be either young Hispanic- or African-American women who were fast on the take but still required several jabs to hit the right spot, or else they were older Southern white women who were equally jab-happy but much slower about it. I’ve seen enough cardiologist ads in the paper to recognize that Indians make great healthcare professionals. In addition, when it was discovered the scanner connection to the laptop wasn’t working properly, she was able to troubleshoot that without calling home.

We huddled together in a space about the size of an airliner bathroom while she ran through the extremely personal health history questions she kept assuring me she was required to ask. Was I a hemophiliac? No. Have I had an organ transplant in the last 60 days? I don’t recall one. Have I ever had sex with another man? No. Have I ever had sex with a hemophiliac or transplant recipient who was a man? Have I ever been in prison? Have I ever been to Africa? Have I ever killed and consumed the flesh of another person? If so, did that person have hepatitis? Was I bitten by a crazy cow in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996? No, no, no, no, and no, that unfortunate cow encounter was in 1997.

Finally cleared to proceed, I walked out to the main aisle of the mobile. My interviewer asked which arm I wanted to use, and here’s where I must admit I puffed up a little with pride. If you read my previous posting about selling my body to a company that was doing shingles research http://davisw.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/a-second-career-perhaps/, you might remember how exceptional the main vein in my right arm is. The inside of that elbow has been widely admired for the way in which the blue vessel protrudes in a come-hither fashion just below the thinnest layer of skin. Since the right-armed donation loungers were all full, I was asked if I wanted to offer my left arm instead. But when I showed the admiring circle of blood ladies my right vein, they all agreed I should wait. One of them marked the vein with a pen, then posed next to it for a photo to show her family. I took a seat to wait my turn.

After about ten minutes, Beth finished her session and I was able to take her spot. The needle went in effortlessly and soon the blood was flowing. I sat back and relaxed as much as I could while workers scurried perilously close to my connection and the intercom played Christmas songs. And, wouldn’t you know it, two of them were from my “Worst Christmas Songs of All Time” list http://davisw.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/worst-christmas-songs-ever/ and a third was Bob Seger’s boozy rendition of “Little Drummer Boy.” (I don’t know if I was starting to get a little light-headed or what, but the line “the ox and lamb kept time” struck me as absolutely hilarious.)

My languor was soon interrupted when one of the workers reported that an “overflow situation” was developing somewhere in my vicinity. I tried to look behind me where my bag hung to see if the room was starting to look like a Quentin Tarantino film and I was preparing to bleed out. Apparently it was only a minor overflow so I was able to avoid infecting the whole bus with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or whatever it was that wacky British cow gave me.

I was disconnected from the tubing, had a gauze bandage affixed to my magnificent vein and was told to raise my arm high in the air. After a minute or so, a role of colored tape was brought out and a length was cut off and wrapped around my arm. Everyone else who’d been through this step in the process was asked what color tape they wanted, so I already had my eye on a nice pale green that would contrast nicely with my hazel eyes. But I was assigned the blue with no questions asked in what would turn out to be the only disappointment of the experience.

As Beth and I headed back into Starbucks to collect our premiums, I began thinking what kind of bakery item I’d be selecting for my freebie. When I placed my order at the counter for a tall-low-fat-mocha-no-whip and a slice of coffee cake, I flashed my bandaged arm at the barista and told her I’d just given blood. The point was to communicate that I shouldn’t be charged for my order but apparently the counter people hadn’t been told how this worked so she rang me up for $5.57. I got the confusion straightened out easily enough, but the embarrassment I endured for those few seconds when she thought I was just showing off my bandage to impress her lingered longer than it should have.

Now if I could’ve shown her my vein, that would’ve been a different story.

New ideas for 2008

The New York Times recently ran a wonderful feature in their Sunday magazine profiling what they called the “Year in Ideas.” They examined several dozen new concepts floated in 2008 that “helped make the previous 12 months, for better or worse, what they were” – an introduction that belied their alleged astonishment at the unlimited nature of the inventive mind.

I’ll admit that all the ideas are extremely imaginative, but that doesn’t mean that some of them can’t also be extremely bizarre. Today and tomorrow, we’ll look at a few examples:

Air Bags for the Elderly – In light of the fact that falls are the leading cause of death among people 65 and older, a Japanese company has begun selling a wearable set of airbags. Describing the device as looking “something like a fishing vest with a fanny pack attached,” it contains motion sensors that will inflate two airbags – one around the hips and the other around the neck – when a fall is detected. “Instant Michelin Man,” notes the Times. This innovation updates an earlier attempt to reduce injuries, the foam hip pads. Both the low-tech hip pads and the high-tech air bags could be a success from a bioengineering and cost standpoint and yet still fall victim to the elderly’s penchant for wanting to be fashionable. “One of the reasons people shy away from these is that they don’t want to make their hips look larger,” said one researcher. “These air bags look kind of parachute-y.”

The Biomechanical Energy Harvester – A knee-brace-like contraption has been developed by a Canadian scientist that reportedly can harness the power of your walk and turn it into something your cell phone and other small electronics can run on. Strapped to the back of your leg, the device taps the power of your muscles with each stride without making walking feel any more difficult. At less than three pounds, it’s small enough to fit under your pants (or, less subtly, just below the hemline of your skirt), which is a significant improvement on version 1.0 – a backpack that made its own electricity from the subtle bouncing of your walk but, unfortunately, weighed in at 80 pounds.

Bubble Wrap that Never Ends – Again it’s the Japanese leading the way to a better future. They’ve created a battery-powered keychain with a panel of eight buttons that simulate the tactile joy of bubble-package destruction. Roughly translated as “Infinite Pop Pop,” the company has already sold a million of the gadgets in its first two months of release, and it’s reportedly now available at American outlets such as Target and Wal-Mart. Makers of the real thing, the Sealed Air Corporation of New Jersey, acknowledge the tension-relieving properties inherent in ruining their product, yet they won’t admit to feeling the stress of potential competition from the Far East. (Probably the same way GM felt when that first Toyota rolled onto the docks of California.) No word yet on whether the Biomechanical Energy Harvester could be used to power the “Pop Pop” keychain.

Carbon Penance – To assuage the guilt many of us feel about our contributions to climate change, a Swiss-born inventor (again with the foreigners) has built a leg band that monitors how much power you’re consuming. When levels have exceeded a certain threshold, the techno-garter slowly drives six steel thorns into the meat of your leg. The concept came to the inventor, who not surprisingly also refers to herself as an artist, while designing a device that punishes the wearer who doesn’t spend enough time talking to their houseplants. The leg band is apparently not quite ready for full-scale development and distribution because of a slight flaw: when the spikes dig in, they don’t hurt that much.

The Cloth Car – This is a concept car developed in Germany that substitutes fabric for the more conventional (and you’d think safer) hardened plastic and aluminum auto body. The shell, made of polyurethane-coated Lycra, is stretched over a car’s frame in four separate pieces. It creases when the door opens, can be unsealed if work needs to be done on the engine, and contains eye-shaped slits so the headlights can shine through. The interior is similarly flexible, featuring a steering wheel and dashboard that collapse to lie flat and create more interior space. Perhaps the seatbelt and upholstery will be made of steel.This is the second installment looking at innovations of the past year that have both the potential to make all our lives more comfortable and, at the same time, illustrate why researchers and inventors typically live such lonely, pathetic existences.

The Dog-Poop DNA Bank – The mayor of a small city near Tel Aviv wanted a more effective way to enforce regulations requiring pet owners to clean up after their dogs have done their business. So he turned to the city’s director of veterinary services to come up with a system that could use DNA fingerprinting technology to attach (so to speak) unclaimed feces to specific dog owners. An army of 13-year-old volunteers recruited by the mayor’s office fanned out across the city, going door to door to collect samples of poop with which to create a DNA bank. Surprisingly, about 90 percent of city residents who had kids showing up on their doorstep asking for some shit complied with the request. Once the problem of random canine defecation is solved, scientists will then turn to less pressing issues like genetic research on dog diseases and returning strays to their owners.

Eat Kangaroos to Fight Global Warning – An official with Australia’s wildlife services, which you’d imagine is supposed to be protecting indigenous species, proposes that raising and eating kangaroos instead of sheep and beef could cut methane emissions by as much as three percent. Unlike the ruminants we’re used to slaughtering and devouring, kangaroos have a different stomach structure with different organisms to digest their food -- probably something to do with the pouch. Already considered a specialty meat that’s (not surprisingly) a bit gamy in taste, the hoppers-cum-whoppers sustained native Australians for 40,000 years before Europeans arrived with their stupid cows. Reaction in the land Down Under has not been especially positive: the official can’t find any funding to further his study, plus he’s battling newspaper headlines that read “Skippy on the Menu!”

Scrupulosity Disorder – Researchers from Brigham Young University suggest that as many as a million Americans suffer from this disorder defined as “obsessive doubt about moral behavior often resulting in compulsive religious observance.” Not to be confused with your standard evangelicals, sufferers worry about thinking bad thoughts, whether or not these thoughts are acted on in the physical world. An omniscient God, after all, sees past the bumper stickers on your SUV and into your heart, where you may be doing things like being aware of curse words. Though possibly related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, there can be a fine line for chronic hand-washers like certain sects who observe such a ritual as part of ordinary religious observance. Treatment is thus problematic but another researcher says once patients are released from the crippling doubt about their own virtue, they can emerge with a new sense of faith, even if it means slightly more soiled hands.

The Spray-On Condom – The idea with this device is not so much the convenience of application but with the way it can made to fit a variety of sizes. Rather than asking retailers to stock a quantity of as many as 30 or so sizes, the spray-on condom can be customized to each man. The inventor, a German entrepreneur, got the idea in an automated car wash – not in the back seat while canoodling but while observing that the car was being inserted into a tube-like structure and then sprayed with latex from all sides. (Oh, baby). The only drawbacks reported in real-life testing were that the spray was a little cold and that the latex would take up to two minutes to dry. That, and the fact that the European Union’s strict product standards will make it difficult to bring to market, means the condom won’t be commercially available any time soon. I guess if you can wait two minutes, you can wait two years.

Vending Machine for Crows – An NYU graduate student (probably a marketing major) put coins and peanuts into a dish attached to a vending machine he created. The crows arrived and picked out all the peanuts, leaving only the coins. As they pushed the coins out of the way while looking for more peanuts, the coins were dropped into a slot which then dispensed more peanuts. When the crows figured out the equation that coins plus slot equaled more nuts, the more entrepreneurial birds starting looking for loose change on the ground to put into the slot. Realizing that the flock was quickly becoming his intellectual match, the grad student brought in a few more researchers to help him figure what all this might mean. Rather than arriving at the obvious answer (a fleet of trained ravens who could steal cash from the pockets of pedestrians, thereby giving the students the power to ultimately rule the world), they’re trying to do something positive. “Why not see if they can do something useful for us, so we can all live in close proximity?” they asked. They’re now busy trying to apply their techniques to train rats to sort garbage for us, instead of imagining in future in which they could practically bathe in dimes.

Giving vs. receiving -- which is best?

They say that giving is better than receiving. This sounds to me like one of those counterintuitive urban myths, except with fewer unauthorized kidney transplants. I would contend that common sense dictates that it’s the receiving that’s better than the giving. Sure, there’s a rush of warmth when you see the look on that loved one’s face as they open your gift. But that tends to pass pretty quickly, whereas on the receiving end, you’ve still got the socks.

No matter how much joy I’ve ever experienced giving or receiving during the holidays, it can’t possibly match what one of my coworkers went through just the other morning. Lucy is widely known as, shall we say, the expressive type, never one to keep her thoughts or feelings unshared. The generosity with which she lays out all the details of her life is something I don’t always appreciate. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. And giving. And giving.

The co-worker sitting immediately to Lucy’s right has become her close friend, which Lucy pretty much requires when you’re that close to her every day. Jen was nice enough to bring Lucy a gift, a contraption called the Pasta ‘n More. You may have seen the ads on late-night TV: features include a strainer lid, steam rack, storage lid and, if you order now, two handles. You can cook, drain, serve and store pasta all in one vessel constructed of FDA-certified materials. Makes a great gift.

But “great” didn’t come close to describing how Lucy felt upon opening the package. There were shrieks, there were yips, there were even tears. The entire production floor ground to a halt and got to hear how wonderful the gift was, how fantastic the pasta was going to be, and how unbelievably extraordinary was the two-quart capacity. Eventually, she had to be comforted and led to a chair.

Kind of made one of my most memorable gifts from childhood pale in comparison. I grew up in Miami, which sounds like an ideal place to spend your formative years but was actually quite lacking in many ways. I’d read in books at school about concepts like autumn leaves, mountains, chimneys and snow, though these were totally alien to the south Florida scene. Our Santa came not in a sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer. He came in a helicopter powered by Pratt & Whitney.

My grandmother, who lived in Pennsylvania, took pity on me one year and actually mailed me an oak leaf that had fallen in her yard. I removed the leaf from the envelope and marveled at how red and how leaf-shaped it was, not like the palm fronds and crocus spirals in my unnatural subtropical hell. She could’ve used the U.S. Postal Service to clear her yard like her neighbors used the city’s curbside vacuuming trucks if we could’ve figured out the logistics. Only the intervention of my parents kept me from requesting a snowball with the next shipment.

This is not to discount the value of the gifts I received from my own parents, for these were also very special. We lived in a modest working/middle class neighborhood but they always made sure my sister and I had one of the best Christmases in that part of town, and not just because all our neighbors were Jewish. My anticipation and gift list began in late November, when the 3,000-page Sears catalog would arrive at our door by flatbed truck. Up till about age twelve, I’d quickly flip to the last section of the giant volume where the toy section was spread out in its full black-and-white glory and begin to compile my list. (When my teens arrived, I tended to first make a furtive stop to check out the models in their industrial-strength bras and the sexiest girdles this side of J.C. Penney.) More often than not, I’d get most of the items I’d requested.

Aside from the conventional gifts that every boy of the ‘60s received – footballs, cap guns, the occasional bike – my parents were as accommodating as they could afford to be to some of my more unusual requests (no, not the bra). One year I asked for and actually received a full-size pool table. Our three-bedroom home contained modest floor space at best, yet we managed to turn that monster on its side and wrestle it down the hallway to my bedroom. There, it barely fit next to my bed, hard up against the other three walls. I still remember how impressed visiting friends would be as we stood in the closet banking shots into the corner pocket.

Other especially memorable gifts included a punching bag, a portable tape recorder and a slot-car racing set. As a nerdy, pimply overweight kid, my pugilistic skills were not the best. It was theorized the punching bag would build both the confidence and technique that would allow me to defend against those vicious Jewish bullies. The height of the bag on its spring was not quite right, so my most vivid learning experience consisted of the punched mass viciously returning back to my lower abdomen. I spent hours complaining about this to the tape recorder in an affected British accent, which I imagined would ultimately land me a job as radio deejay. The car racing set, much like the small stereo and the electric guitar I received at subsequent Christmases, was a mass of primitive electronics that alternately provided fun and dangerous high-voltage currents.

My folks were also open-minded enough to buy me some of them rock and roll records all the kids were so crazy about. I still remember the year I received the Beatles’ White Album, and the contortions I had to go through to hide the picture inside of a naked John Lennon. Though I succeeded at that, the Fab Four were eventually exposed when my mom overheard a playing of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which contained the line “everybody’s got a wet dream.” What had previously been just noise to her now took on the awkwardness of a subject the 15-year-old doesn’t especially care to discuss with his mother. A year later, she heard the lyric “nothing’s gonna change my world” on “Across the Universe,” and commented that John should “quit whining and do something about it if he doesn’t like the world.” That is one valid criticism you can make about the Beatles: they didn’t exert much influence on the culture.

So now it’s the day after Christmas, and I’m enjoying playing with this year’s gifts – peanut-butter-stuffed pretzels, a book of crossword puzzles and a hat. ("Whee!" I gushed as I spin the fedora on my finger. "It's a hat!") At least these gifts are unlikely to electrocute me.

Twas the parody before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land
The economy’s falling like castles of sand
The stock market tanked like a chimney of hair
Investment banks toppled, and wide roamed the bear
The Dow hit new lows, then fell even more
The middle class joined with the ranks of the poor
Retirement and pensions and 401(k)’s
And savings we’d kept for our golden-age days
Were gutted and shredded and eaten for lunch
And now try to borrow in this credit crunch
We’ve bailed out the autos, insurance and banks
And we’re thrown out of work -- this is our thanks
Unemployment climbs higher, near seven percent
And foreclosures rise and yet so does the rent
The Internet’s fun but it’s taking our jobs
And turning us all into hypnotized mobs
Outsourcing continues, white-collar work prowls
To lands in South Asia with too many vowels
We tried “Buy American”, tried doing our part
But succumbed in the end to the lure of Wal-Mart
When all looked quite lost and we struggled to cope
We saw signs of life, we saw signs of hope
When what to our wondering eyes did appear
A president-elect a bit large in the ear
But he knows how to lead, even knows how to talk
And he goes by the uncommon name of Barack
His electoral victory o’er Old Man McCain
And that gal from Alaska, the one who’s insane,
Was truly historic, inspiring and cool
After eight years of piss-poor incompetent rule
Now he’s picking his cabinet, a quite able lot
Can’t remember them all but I’ll give it a shot
Now, Daschle! Now, Vilsack! Now, Holder and Duncan!
On Solis! On Salazar, Gates, Chu and Clinton!
From the right, from the left, labels falling away
Need just one from the South and one who is gay
Transition’s proceeding at an admirable rate
Less than thirty days now till the January date
That Cheney and Rove and their underling Bush
Return to their homes with one final push
To a life full of leisure while the rest of us work
To undo the disaster that’s left by this jerk
But we’ll hear him exclaim as he flies out of sight
“Sure I lost your life savings, but I coddled the Right”.

Monday musings

Two new products appearing in recent TV ads caught my attention:

The first is something called “ImmuGo,” which is supposed to increase the efficiency of your immune system. In fact, it bills itself as “the Official Immune Support Product of the Hollywood Movie Awards.” This is quite a claim. Not only have I spent my entire life failing to realize that such a thing as an immune support product exists, but now I learn there is an “official” one. This is one sorry licensing arrangement, if you ask me, not something I’d expect from the marketing masterminds of sister-product “HeadOn (applydirectlytotheforehead).” I guess they chose the Hollywood Movie Awards as sponsor after finding that the Arena Football League and General Motors were not available. If I ever have the need for my immune system to be improved, though, I’m definitely going to choose the ointment (salve? unguent? balm?) used by an organization that shows pictures of George Clooney and Keira Knightley on its website.

The second commercial was for a service rather than a product. I don’t remember the cosmetic surgeon’s name, but he was offering a special that gives you treatment of one “area” free for each area purchased. By area, I assume he’s talking about the part of your body that you want to be surgically revised. This seems a little gimmicky to me. With the exception of a few internal organs (whose physical appearance I can’t imagine anyone would care about), the human body is so symmetrical that virtually everything comes in pairs. You’d almost have to get two areas done at once, unless there are women who want one breast enlarged but not the other or men who want only half of their spare tire liposuctioned. I wonder if the surgeon would allow you to mix-and-match: could you perhaps have the dark bag under one eye eliminated, and then have a toe removed as your second “area”? I’m betting the contract has some fine print that disallows this.

* * *

Did you realize that the group of individuals who officially decide when the nation is in a recession is called the Business Cycle Dating Committee? They look at a variety of statistics to determine when the economy is trending positive and when it’s heading into a downturn and, I guess in their spare time, arrange for social encounters among eligible economists.

* * *

I’ve been thinking about the right kind of career advice to give my teenage son as he prepares to pursue his studies at college next fall. It seems that, between outsourcing and computerization, there’s really going to be very little left to choose from. The only sure bets that I can come up with are nail technician and the guy who puts tires on your car. I’ve read that even fields like anesthesiology and drive-through fast-food order-taker are being endangered, the former by a new software program and the latter by distant call centers that can handle hundreds of Wendy’s at a time. One of Daniel’s big interests right now is journalism, a respectable career to be sure but one that seems to be on its last legs. I’m encouraging the journalism, thinking it may survive on the web long after the last newsprint is recycled. I’m afraid, though, the only worse advice I could give would be to suggest he take courses that would allow him to major in United Auto Work.

* * *

I hate that most fruit flavors have been hijacked by the health, beauty and cosmetics industry. Cherry has become virtually intolerable, since it reminds me of either cough syrup or kids’ shampoo. Orange reminds me of baby aspirin. Somebody should be sued.

* * *

I’ve always wanted to be in a wheelchair, have a cast or be admitted to the hospital. I’ve long believed, as stated by George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” that pity is very under-rated, and I want some. I did have a kidney stone removed a few years ago (unfortunately on an out-patient basis) and I was able to take some advantage of the situation a few days later when I accompanied my family to Costco. I checked out one of the motorized chairs they provide for their more feeble customers and had myself a grand time roaming up and down the aisles. The world looks so different when your eye level is reduced by three feet – all these people look down at you with such sympathy.

I once thought about jumping off the roof of our house when I was a kid in order to break my leg and avoid a particularly arduous segment of physical education – tumbling or wrestling or square dancing, I think. Ultimately, though, I chickened out.

* * *

I’ve always wondered who would win in a fight between a cow and a horse, though both are so even-tempered it seems unlikely ever to happen.

Playing the corporate game

As I’ve written before, I’ve been involved in a lot of game-playing during my corporate career. I’m not talking about the politics and back-biting that make the corporate life so much fun. I’m referring to the all-too-occasional exercises in what’s generally called “career development,” where a group of employees sit around a table (or a bush or an abandoned fire training tower) and get run through a series of humiliations and/or life-threatening workouts. If you’re lucky, you only feel stupid; otherwise, you end up “developed,” a painful condition where you exhibit a positive attitude all out of proportion to your circumstances.

Generally, these outings are designed to promote creativity and build camaraderie among the troops. You’re taken out of your normal cubicle environment and put in a setting where you are encouraged to think outside the box, dare to be great, or push the envelope of your normal comfort zone. I happen to believe that thinking outside the box is over-rated, and remind my cat of this every time he strays over the edge of his litter container.

Nevertheless, I try to be a good boy and play along. The first couple times, I genuinely tried to improve myself and my value to the company. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a lot more jaded, as you’re about to read.

One fairly common method to get group members to open up and talk freely is to mentally transport them to a different place in time. Here, they can talk about their aspirations or ramble nostalgically about the past. In one session I went through in the early ‘90s, staged for what were (wrongly as it turned out) perceived to be future leaders, we were told to draw a picture of where we saw ourselves in ten years. The only thing the 15 people had in common was that they imagined a future somewhere very far away from the company they were supposed to be leading. I remember that my picture had me sitting on a dock next to a huge satellite dish that retrieved documents from outer space that I would then proofread while my son sat next to me fishing. (I wasn’t exactly prescient about the coming rise of the Internet.) Poor artist that I am, my group’s facilitator interpreted the scene as someone working at NASA directing the first mission to Mars, with my son playing the part of a tethered robot. Close enough, I figured.

A similar exercise was done with another group a few years later: they were told to think exactly ten years into the past. Headlines of the exact day were read aloud and a hit song from the period was played to tickle everyone’s memory. We heard funny tales from high school, a story about a surprise birthday party and, from one young woman who could barely hold back her tears, a recounting of the day after her mother was killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. The brainstorming was not especially inspired after that.

Another common activity is to break the group into smaller teams who are then given an assignment that requires them to work together to accomplish a goal. Once, we had to use tape, pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks to create a contraption that could cushion an egg from a six-foot fall. Another time we had to reach consensus on the best way to fold a sheet of paper into an airplane, then test our designs with a farthest-flight competition in the parking lot. My prototype was damaged when it was run over during flight testing; I wanted to ball up the remains and wrap them around a rock, which I was convinced I could throw way farther than anyone’s aircraft was going to go. Apparently, this was not the paradigm shift my trainer had in mind. Maybe I’d do better if a coloring or finger-paint session was next on the schedule.

I also had an opportunity to work on the other side of the equation when I spent a few years as an excellence trainer. (Note that I said “excellence,” not “excellent.”) During each day-long quality awareness session, we played what was called the JIT game, which was meant to demonstrate just-in-time production techniques. Each six-person team was given a collection of interlocking blocks and asked to set up a line that could produce exact replicas of a certain configuration. They were required to re-engineer their process several times – with blatant hints from the trainers – to achieve more and better widgets crafted each time with fewer and fewer people. At the end, they could do their very best work with only two people instead of six. Inevitably, some participant would learn the wrong lesson and ask what would happen to the four people who no longer had jobs. The trainers were told to make some vague hint about how maybe they could work in marketing instead.

The most enjoyable game I can recall from my quarter-century experience with this garbage was the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. What I liked best was that this was something you could do largely in the privacy of your own personal space, without having to “team-build” with your half-witted coworkers. You’d answer a battery of questions about your preferences – there were no right or wrong choices – and then you’d be put into one of 16 categories that labeled you as an extrovert, a thinker, a perceiver, an innovator, a molester, an invertebrate, etc. The only group participation required was at the end when you were given your results and told to go to a part of the room where you’d join up with others of your monstrous ilk and compare notes.

One thing I have learned from all these corporate games is how to game the system. Since no judgments are made, no answers are wrong and no ideas are too ridiculous, you can offer up the most absurd input and enjoy watching your guide squirm as they validate your responses. “Yes, Bob, your idea about twirling on our tippy-toes while talking to clients on the phone is a very innovative one,” the trainer says. “Let’s write that up on the whiteboard.” Until they wise up and put your manager behind a two-way mirror with your personnel file, your pay grade and a taser at the ready, these learning opportunities can actually be rewarding. Just not how they were intended.

I beg (urp) your pardon (achoo!)

I wrote not too long ago about my annoyance with the social convention that demands a verbal response from bystanders when someone sneezes. Just as we properly fail to comment when our friends and coworkers make other kinds of unprompted nasal or oral outbursts -- like snorting or saying “hi” -- so too should we mind our own business for the sneeze.

The most common response always seemed a little presumptuous to me anyway. “God bless” sounds too much like an order to the deity. He’s supposed to stop whatever grand enterprise He might be involved in so He can heed your command to bless Bob from accounting simply because he (Bob) had an irritation of the nasal passage that caused a sudden, forceful expulsion of air and God knows what else? Even the most focused of us has to concentrate when creating worlds or smiting errant Methodists; we don’t need to be distracted by requests for trivial blessings, especially when we all know that Bob makes it louder than he has to just because he craves attention.

Saying “God bless” is second nature to many of us, yet would other cultures similarly demand their gods do such casual bidding? Can you imagine hearing “Shiva, hand me that stapler,” or “Yahweh, tell that guy to knock off the humming”? I don’t think so.

If we’re all going to agree that spontaneous eruptions from the mouth or nose need some kind of acknowledgment, let’s at least be consistent and come up with some standards that make a little bit of sense. I think I’m as competent as anyone to start the discussion.

For sneezing, I proposed we switch over completely to the more secular “Gesundheit.” I believe that translates from the German to “good health,” which is probably too late to hope for if the cold germs are already in the trachea but seems like a nice sentiment anyway.

For coughing, I think we should say “Schadenfreude.” Again, turning to the Germanic tradition feels appropriate and, since the translation has to do with taking delight in the failure of others more successful than you, a certain bitterness is properly communicated.

For hiccupping, I would suggest something along the lines of “Sorry you’ve had a convulsive gasp caused by the involuntary contraction of the diaphragm. Let’s agree that it won’t happen again.”

For burping, let’s go with “Jacksonian democracy.” Admittedly it makes no sense, but it should at least prompt a change of subject to 19th century American history. I think we also need to acknowledge the pause in conversation you’ll sometimes detect when someone just barely manages to suppress a burp. Your boss says “I really think that in order to cut costs further we’re going to have to (pause, slight puffing of jowls and slight lowering of jaw) lay off our entire workforce and outsource our production to Chimp Haven, the retirement home for lab monkeys” and you’re thinking “Wow, that was a close one; I should probably say something.” That something should be “jubilee.”

For yawning, no response should be required unless the yawn is accompanied by an audible sound. If it is, let me propose either “need a nap?” or the equally appropriate “please close your mouth as soon as possible.”

For throat clearing, keep in mind that this is usually done as a preface to an interruption, so a good reply might be “what the hell do you want?” If instead, a true backup of phlegm was actually involved and the “ahem” was sincere, say nothing but instead evacuate the area immediately.

For chewing gum in such an insistent manner as to cause a cracking sound, we should say (into the nearest 911-enabled telephone) “The nature of my emergency is that my friend has apparently swallowed Bubble Wrap.”

For sniffing or sniffling, like when you’re try to get air through a slightly congested sinus, I’m tempted to suggest the caustic “Oh, boo-hoo, what a baby” but that seems a little harsh, even to me. I think I’ll recommend tactful silence unless – and this is a very important exception – the sniff is accompanied by a high-pitched tweet, which should prompt the response “There seems to be a bird in your nose; let’s join together to kill it.”

Nose-blowing, even the most subtle variety, is an abomination that I can’t believe is sanctioned in polite company. Considering that it’s far less spontaneous than other expulsions – the blower even premeditates (if we’re lucky) his or her move by producing a hanky – it should not be tolerated, much less tacitly endorsed with a friendly comment. Nose-blowing should only be done under the care of a healthcare professional on an in-patient basis at the nearest major medical center, or at least not in the same room as me.

Horking, mostly done by cats trying to expel a hairball though occasionally heard from elderly gentlemen, should be met with the Spanish phrase “se me olvido me cuaderno,” or, literally, “I forgot my notebook.”

I think I’ve provided an adequate framework for the transition from our current methods of recognizing these outbursts to something much more fair and equitable. I realize that there may be some categories I haven’t covered, in particular those hybrid explosions that combine two or more of the above-defined events: the sneef (sneeze + cough), the curp (cough + burp), the york (yawn + hork) and the never-documented but often-theorized snickup (sniffle + hiccup). But I can’t both create and manage this new system, and will have to rely on the good sense of average citizens to take it to the next level if that’s what’s needed.

I don’t want to appoint a Language Czar to oversee my plans though, if necessary, I understand George W. Bush may soon be available.

Don't forget to get Alzheimer's

Like many people approaching late middle-age, I’m starting to have some concerns about my memory. I’m not sure where on the continuum from a few “senior moments” to full-blown Alzheimer’s I might be, and even if a neurologist could pinpoint it, I wouldn’t be able to remember what he said.

It’s that short-term memory that I seem to be having the most trouble with these days. I guess this is something everyone struggles with to an extent; even the twenty-ish cashier who I just paid for my tea had notes scribbled all over the back of her hands, including a scrawl that looked suspiciously like “kill.” (You’d think a chore that life-altering would tend to stick with you, but maybe she’s got a lot of holiday-related obligations -- parties, cards, gifts for the nephews, etc. -- on her mind.)

Now that I think of it though, my mid-term memory is also suffering. I recently made a list of all the places we’ve gone on vacations over the years so I wouldn’t forget the tremendous time we had in Montreal or that great walk along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. My wife would suggest that if these events were so memorable, then I’d remember them, and I suppose she has a point. But I did shoot photographs and took video on both of these trips, so why should have to waste cranial storage space when I can just as easily root around in the dusty bags stashed in the top of the coat closet to recall such precious times?

What tends to be most bothersome to family members, and I’ve heard this is a symptom I share with the most desperately neuron-deficient, is that my long-term memory remains quite good. The problem is that it’s not important lifetime milestones like weddings and births that I remember with such clarity. I do vaguely recollect that my wife had some sort of child a while back, and I’m pretty sure it was a boy because that’s what we have walking around the house now 17 years later. But the details of that event are roughly equivalent to my recall of the ’63 Dodgers and the record-setting 104 steals made by Maury Wills on their way to the World Series. The emergence of a living being who represents my own flesh and blood from the womb of my beloved life partner is a truly magical experience but, c’mon… 104 stolen bases in one season?

What worries me is that it’s neither long- nor medium-term memory that allows you to get through the day in some sort of organized, survivable fashion. It’s the immediate stuff that’s most important to daily life. I can’t imagine arriving at the airport having forgotten my passport and yet getting a reprieve from the screeners because I can remember the actress who played Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies” (Irene Ryan).

For just one example, with this being the Christmas season, I am expected to remember hints dropped by loved ones about the type of gifts that would be most dear to them. I barely even realize that it’s the most wonderful time of year until we’ve run out of Thanksgiving leftovers, and that still hasn’t happened yet. My wife and son already have an estimated four presents either in-hand or on-order for me, and I’ve yet to visit a single retail website (unless you can count ESPN.com). I think Beth said she wants an iPod or socks or tea, or something in that general area. But these kinds of things come in such a huge variety of options these days that it’s very challenging to pick out exactly the correct item. Beth has kindly promised to get me to the website of choice this weekend and position the cursor directly on the gift she wants, then turn away as I click so that there’ll be at least some element of surprise.

It’s exactly this kind of immediacy that enables me to function with some measure of decency. I’ve borrowed a term from modern manufacturing techniques to give credibility to the technique I’ve developed. Called “Just in Time” – for the idea that you don’t build something until right before someone wants it – I want to learn what I need to know just before I need to know it. Don’t tell me several weeks in advance that my mom’s birthday is coming up. I need to know at the very last minute so I can spend three times the necessary amount on rush postage and still be two days late.

Aside from occasions like gift-giving and breaking the heart of my dear mother, the other major handicap I’m learning to live with has to do with following directions to get from one location to another. Visiting my son’s high school the other day, I asked at the main office to be directed to a particular room number. I was told go out this door, turn right, go down the hall and through the double doors, walk across the open area to building E and take the first hall to the right all the way to the end. I moved my head up and down and put the most understanding look I could summon on my face as the sounds being made by the secretary in front of me went whizzing by my head. It was at this point that I wished I’d put a Garmin GPS on my Christmas gift list.

There is one major benefit to a severely deficient memory, and that comes while watching television. I can’t tell a first-run TV show from a rerun even if it stars Bernie Mac, Heath Ledger and Pope John Paul II. I can blissfully sit through every episode of “Seinfeld” or “The Office” that I’ve ever seen and enjoy the jokes like I’m hearing them for the first time. This annoys my wife to no end, since she has the memory of a wolverine and can recite dialog from foreign films she hasn’t seen for years, and do it in French. Plot twists already known to millions hit me out of left field, like an errant throw from Orlando Cepeda trying to gun down the speedy Wills on his record-breaking dash for third base.

I’m just hoping to hang on till retirement, when I can while away my remaining days, remembering to drool now and then but not much else.

Rediscovering the rock concert

As a fifty-something man, it’s been some time since I’ve been to a live rock concert. I’ve been a fan of the genre for as long as I can remember (at least since 1966’s “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” assuming that counts) and grew up being inspired by rock’s energy and message (the Red Baron gets shot down in the end). Nothing beats a live performance of rock ‘n roll to celebrate those two magical elements in a community of like-minded people.

The last concert I can remember attending before just recently was during my final year in college when I drove 180 miles to see John Denver. Now I know a lot of the purists out there will claim that John Denver hardly qualified as a rocker, but let me tell you that the bespectacled moptop could seriously get down. He wasn’t all “Rocky Mountain This” and “Rocky Mountain That.” He actually had a drummer on several of the songs.

This past summer, I got to attend my first arena show in ages as I accompanied my 17-year-old son to a performance of Canadian rockers Rush. I was delighted to be invited, first because it indicated that Daniel wasn’t too embarrassed to be seen with his dad in public, and secondly because he was embracing a style of music that we could share an appreciation for. Also, I wasn’t on restriction, like the friend he originally planned to go with.

We made our way to the Verizon Amphitheatre just north of Charlotte on a hot July day. Walking through the parking lot, we saw numerous tailgate parties featuring abundant amounts of beer and suspicious smoky odors. The rebellious nature of rock was alive and well in these small groups who were openly defying the property-wide ban on cigarette smoking. When we got to our seats, we found ourselves situated in mid-row between a guy throwing back Bud Lites at an alarming pace and a 6-foot-8 student with limbs the length of a primate.

The three-man band took the stage and proceeded to rock long and hard through a set list of new songs and classics. We tried to care about selections from their new “Snakes & Arrows” album but were really there for oldies like “Tom Sawyer” and “Working Man.” To give something of a theme to the tour, they’d produced a short film featuring Jerry Stiller on a nationwide search for rotisserie chicken (I didn’t get it either), and stage props that included upright ovens that roasted rotating birds. The increasingly drunken guy to our left was really getting into this, repeatedly shouting “chicken! wooo!” and “wooo! chicken!” directly into my ear. As the afternoon heat and closeness of the crowd started getting to us, we retreated to the back lawn and spent the rest of the show looking up at the stars and considering how man should “put aside the alienation and end up with the fascination.”

Then, just this past Wednesday, I had an opportunity to join Daniel for another concert, this time with former Talking Heads front-man David Byrne. We drove through a soaking rain to arrive at a trio of venues clustered together on the east side of Charlotte. I had been to this site several times before but became confused about where exactly I was supposed to park. There’s an auditorium, an arena and a theatre, and they are forever changing labels as corporate naming rights come and go. Were we looking for the Bojangles Arena, which used to be the Blockbuster Coliseum after it had been the Cracker Barrel Arena for years? Or did we want the Papa John’s Theatre, formerly the Time Warner Cable Theatre, formerly the Slim Jim Turkey Jerky Performance Space? We found a line of cars queuing up for a parking lot, so we got in it and hoped for the best.

And the best is what we got. David Byrne put on an absolutely brilliant performance with all the quirky lyrics and bizarre choreography of the Talking Heads. Three back-up singers and three dancers lumbered frantically around the stage in hilarious chaos, at one point performing while lying flat on the floor and at another time scooting around in office chairs. The music was every bit as enthralling, with the new stuff as mesmerizing as the oldies. I will say nothing nasty or sarcastic about Byrne who is, remarkably, a fellow fifty-something.

The auditorium offered very comfortable amenities and seating, though the crowd didn’t seem to know how to use the latter. When the musicians first took the stage, we all stood and welcomed them loudly. We continued standing through the second song, and the third song, and I began to wonder why we had bothered to pay for the seats. When a slower-paced song began, most of the audience took the chance to sit down and rest, but then re-exploded onto their feet when a high-energy number followed. My back is not in the best shape and I was starting to wish we could pick a pose and stick with it; I didn’t care which one, I just didn’t like all the up and down. Perhaps the guidance of a program would’ve been handy, like those we used to have in church that prompted “the congregation rises” and “now you sit down.”

The other parts of the concert that gave me pause were the sing-along portions. It wasn’t a formal row-row-row-your-boat kind of thing. I’m talking about how enthusiastic audience members would chime in with the chorus of certain songs, whether they knew the lyrics or not. I wanted to hear Byrne singing “Life During Wartime,” not the bozo behind me who chanted “This ain’t no Hardee’s/This ain’t no Frisco/This ain’t no dueling in town/No time for potluck/Or heebie-jeebies…” and so on.

The end of the set arrived, a reasonable 90 minutes after the show began, and we gave a rousing ovation as the band bowed, waved and then left the stage. Then, more awkwardness – how exactly is this encore thing supposed to work in a way that doesn’t embarrass the performer and afflict the audience with repetitive motion injuries? We all know it’s a sham, that the musicians are going to return for another song or two. Still we play this little game where we pretend we can’t live without them and they pretend to be on their bus, halfway out of town already. Byrne and company seemed to stretch their luck a bit with the amount of time they stayed off-stage, and the cheers were starting to ebb when they finally returned. Embarrassing, yes, and yet we did it all over again following another song. After this one, though, we clipped our appreciation short and managed to get them to stay away.

Though awkward, uncomfortable and slightly scary to someone my age, I must say I enjoyed both of these concert experiences thoroughly, probably slightly more in retrospect than during the event itself. It was a great chance to bond with my son and allow us to share a common passion for a cultural phenomenon that will never die, even if most of its earliest fans will shortly.

Help me, Honda (my life with cars)

With all the attention currently being given to the plight of the American auto industry, I thought I’d take this opportunity to use other people’s hardship for my own personal gain as a topic for a blog posting.

Not that I’d be caught dead driving an American car, because driving while lifeless can be very dangerous. Actually, my family and I have a long history with domestic auto producers. My grandfather worked for a Ford dealer in Pennsylvania. My father owned almost exclusively Ford products for most of my childhood, except for a failed and ultimately flaming experiment with a Renault. The two most memorable vehicles of my youth were a giant Mercury Monterey with a reverse angle rear window that rolled down at the touch – actually it was more of a 15-second jiggle – of a button, and an even gianter Galaxy 500, our first car with air conditioning.

And my first car was a “blue” Ford Falcon I inherited from my mother just before my junior year in college. I put blue in quotes because the paint job had become almost crystalline in the heat of the Miami sun. It ran reliably enough despite its stunningly ugly appearance, safely taking me the nearly 500 miles I’d routinely drive between Tallahassee and Miami. My most vivid memory of the Falcon was the day I parked it in front of my landlord’s office while I ran in to pay the rent, then emerged just in time to see it rolling downhill toward several parked cars. Not the best way to find out that adding transmission fluid twice a day was an inadequate alternative to actually getting the transmission fixed.

My next car was also a Detroit creation, the much-maligned Chevy Vega. This one really was blue, a “fastback” that seemed like one first-rate vehicle to a poor college student of the early ‘70s. Even though it was another automatic transmission, the gearshift was on the floor, which gave its sluggish drive a certain sex appeal (if only to me). We bought it from a neighbor in Miami, who convinced us it was a great deal, which it probably was since he used his front as a used-car salesman to hide what in retrospect were obvious organized-crime connections. I don’t know how many headless bodies were crammed into that hatchback before the Vega came into my hands, but I know they had a remarkably smooth ride to whatever paving project they ended up in.

The Vega had the distinction of transporting me from my dismal life as an eternally under-achieving college student in Florida to an honest career in a suburb of Charlotte. I drove it for about a year in my new hometown, until I became concerned the corrosive oxidation would metastasize from its body to mine. In my first independent transaction with a car dealer, I made the ghastly mistake of trading it in for a brown VW Rabbit. Not an American car, I know, but by the early ‘80s VW had picked up many bad influences from its U.S. counterparts, not the least of which was constant breakdown. I wasted a lot of money on fruitless repairs before taking it back to the dealer, who took pity on me and put me in my first brand-new car, a Datsun 210.

I was still an very uneducated consumer – I bought the car in the hope that the “cool” setting on the dashboard fan was actually air-conditioning, which it wasn’t – yet I lucked into a reliable though basic vehicle whose fanciest extras were FM radio and faux leather seats. I still remember the feel of those seats after driving through the afternoon heat to my second-shift job a half-hour from home. Open windows on the interstate and that “cool” setting provided little relief to the pit of my lower back, which was utterly sodden by the time I arrived.

Now that I was experienced with Japanese models, I bought a succession of sensible cars. First there was a red Honda Civic, then a white Honda Civic, then a grey Honda Civic and finally a silver Honda Civic. Not much imagination, I admit, but memories of that damn VW were slower to recede than the stench of a dead rabbit jammed up in the under-carriage, and I wanted reliability above all else. I admit I was tempted more than once during that 20-some-year span to go all middle-aged in my car selection, maybe a Miata or a convertible or at least the Honda CRV, the company’s smaller SUV. But common sense (and the advice of my wife) always prevailed. The craziest I was ever able to get was the Honda Odyssey, a chick magnet of a minivan if ever there was one.

My only complaint with the succession of Civics was that there always seemed to be a slight problem in the same area, one I’ve found hard to describe to my mechanic. It’s sort of near the steering wheel, a bit to the left of the gearshift, maybe just above the accelerator pedal. I think it’s referred to as the vehicle operator, or “driver.” Aside from that incident with the wandering Falcon, I’d never had any accidents with my American cars, probably because I was so attuned to every detail of their operation that I actually paid attention while I was driving. With the Hondas I was able to do other things, like listen to the radio and go in reverse.

In my first accident, an oncoming driver tried to turn left in front of me and we had a major fender bender in which I actually sustained an injury, a sprained thumb. The next incident was on the interstate near the exit ramp on my way home from work. A line had backed up for some reason, and when the truck in front of me rear-ended the vehicle in front of him, bringing him to a sudden and, I might add, un-signalled stop, I naturally plowed into him. Some extensive front-end damage but nothing irreparable. Finally, I was backing out of a parking spot at the mall on a foggy day, trying to see over the monstrous SUVs that flanked me on either side, when another driver looking for a parking space backed into my rear side panel. In none of these three cases were the Hondas totaled, an extremely cool verb I’ve always wanted to use; they were only partialled. All were fixed and returned to service.

In the judgment of the moment, none of these episodes seemed even remotely to be my responsibility. All of them were largely caused by the inattention or carelessness of others while I was going about my business. I couldn’t have anticipated things were going wrong or changed to a direction that would have led to a more positive outcome. Simply put, none of the three failures were my fault.

Sounds like I could get a job as head of one of the Big 3 automakers.

Cruising to Alaska

The recent news story about the cruise ship full of luxury passengers almost being hijacked by decidedly more downscale Somali pirates reminded me of my own experience with the cruising lifestyle. It’s all too easy for everyone to make their own jokes about the prospect of buffet-stuffed tourists brandishing pool cues and miniature golf putters to ward off the boarding party, but I’m sure the confrontation was still very frightening to all those on board.

The real story of vacationing aboard a lavish mega-ship is something I got to experience first-hand a couple of years ago, back when people had something called disposable income (ask your grandparents, kids). My wife, son and I had the chance to get nicely priced package through our local YMCA’s Silver Fox Club, a group of retirees who more typically take rollicking day trips to Charleston rather than the seven-day voyage from Vancouver to Alaska that we had latched onto. I kept asking at the sign-up if it was okay that we weren’t doddering and they insisted that it was, so off we went.

Our group of about 20 departed from Charlotte on a flight to Seattle where we would catch a chartered bus for a quick ride across the Canadian border to our port of departure. We arrived at SEA-TAC airport (so named because it’s both seamy and tacky), collected our baggage and shuffled over to the bus loading area. After some considerable delay – we had to shove our own suitcases into the storage bay, which our elderly companions apparently hadn’t trained for at the Y – we left the airport for the two-hour drive north.

Our driver, a heavy-lidded man who looked like he’d hijacked a few buffets of his own, was just across the aisle from my seat near the front of the bus, er, motorcoach. As our vehicle veered from one side of the lane to the other, I could’ve sworn I saw his head nodding. I’d survived five trips to the south Asian subcontinent without a bus plunge and I wasn’t about to experience one on I-5 just outside of Bellingham, but there was the usual sign that said not to talk to the driver, er, operator, so I resisted. Finally, I thought it might be better if I said “much longer till we get there?” now rather than “oh my god, we’re going off a bridge” two minutes from now, so I did, and he seemed to brighten.

By now, though, we were seriously behind schedule and faced the real possibility that we’d miss our debarkation. Even though the cruise line had contracted with the ground transport provider to get us from the airport to the seaport, I doubted they’d delay 2,000-plus other passengers just to wait for the Foxes, even if we were Silver. After we made several wrong turns around the port facility, we found the ship and managed to get out and scramble up the passageway just in time.

The ship was named Something of the Seas (Empress? Brilliance? Enchantment? I forget now) and was as huge as it was magnificent. Greeted in our stateroom by our steward with the usual joke about how the salt air would make our clothes shrink, we stopped to nosh on the welcome-aboard buffet before proceeding to the lifeboat drill/buffet (all jackets extra-large), then on to the settling-in buffet before a quick nap and the midnight you’re-still-not-full buffet. The next two days we were “at sea” according to our itinerary, churning through the Inside Passage while playing trivia games, going on scavenger hunts, scaling the on-board climbing wall and admiring an outdoor pool that seemed out of place off the coast of western Canada.

We arrived at our first stop on the morning of the third day. This was the famous Hubbard Glacier, a mass of ice a thousand feet deep and a mile wide, inching slowly through the mountains and into the sea. We couldn’t actually get off the ship and experience the glacier first-hand (too slippery, I guess) so we sidled up several hundred yards off shore to watch the glacier “calving.” This is the process where huge chunks of ice fall off into the ocean with tremendous splashes while several cruisers-full of drunken tourists watch and talk thoughtfully about global warning. Though this was an unusually moderate June for these parts, the wind rushing over all that ice made us quite cold, so we switched over to Irish coffees.

The next day we arrived at our first on-shore excursion at a small town with a “k” in it. We were told they only had about 100 year-round residents, who kept several blocks of souvenir shops during the summer and kept indoors the rest of the year. The main attraction was a vintage steam train that carried us about 15 miles into the snow-capped mountains where we enjoyed fantastic views. Probably the most unusual of these was a cliff face with a huge graffiti scrawl that read “Mr. Hamilton made us do this.” The story was that in the 1930s, a high-school teacher from the Midwest brought his students up here for a summer of adventure, character-building and, apparently, dangling from ropes. They thanked him at the end of the summer with this cliff-drawing before those who survived returned to Illinois.

We docked next in Juneau, Alaska’s capital city. As we learned in the recent presidential election, state government in this part of the country isn’t much to look at, so we skipped tours of the boxy administrative buildings for a ride up the skytram to a park perched high over the city. We walked a nature trail hoping to spot any of the Big 3 of the Alaskan outdoors (bear, caribou and eagles) but encountered only these furry groundlings that scampered through the brush in a pale imitation of wildlife. The park also had a Pepsi machine.

Our last stop on Day 6 of the trip was in the fishing village of Ketchikan. We had previously shunned the expensive excursions offered by the cruise line; however, this was our last chance to do something truly special, so my son and I signed up for a seaplane trip into the interior. We joined the pilot and a couple from Arizona for a 45-minute hop to a crystal-clear lake virtually untouched by the outside world. We flew in low over the mountainsides while the pilot played inspirational music (“America the Beautiful,” the theme from “Rocky”) over the intercom and let us all take turns holding the steering thing and pretending to fly. Once on the lake, we taxied over to the shore where the pilot produced a small fishing rod and allowed my son to catch his first fish. On the flight back, the pilot surprised us with short dive, just long enough to photograph everyone’s delighted expression, then maneuvered back into Ketchikan Bay just as an unforgettable sunset broke through the clouds. Meanwhile, my wife had been to the totem pole museum, which I heard was quite nice.

All that was left now was our return to Vancouver and the flight back home, both very dreary prospects. Before you get off the ship, they make you gather in arbitrary color-coded groups before you’re allowed ashore, since everyone surging to the gangway at once is apparently a bad idea. All the fees and tips have been paid, so there’s no incentive for ship personnel to be pleasant to you anymore and you end up feeling like you’re in a refugee camp. My group, Camp Yellow, was among the last to be able to board our bus. We drove about an hour through the grey drizzle to the U.S. border where we were ordered off the bus by immigration while our vehicle was thoroughly searched. “We’re old and tired and all have headaches,” I wanted to scold the officials who had delayed us. I doubt that would’ve helped our situation, and eventually we made it to Seattle and barely made our return flight, no thanks to the Department of Homeland Security.

It truly ended up being the trip of a lifetime and I think of it often now that I face a future of lean times and modest vacations. Having been born in Florida and currently living in the heat of the South, Alaska had long been for me an idyllic land of cold and mountains, and in 2005 it was yet to be despoiled by its association with a certain bee-hived governor. Unfortunately, now, when I wear one of my souvenir “Alaska” t-shirts bought on those rustic wooden sidewalks of that town with a “k,” I have the conservative Republicans of my hometown coming up to me, pointing at my shirt, and saying, “Alaska! Alright!”

Dispensing with good taste

If we could apply some of the same principles used by manufacturers of toilet paper dispensers to our country’s ports and immigration checkpoints, our concerns about national security would be over.

Bathroom tissue located in public restrooms is way more secure than it needs to be, if you ask me. American industry has developed highly engineered systems mounted in our nation’s stalls that are designed to allow users the absolute minimum amount of product while simultaneously making that product maddening to get at. These hulking plastic cases dribble a thin, single-ply dangle of paper out of their interior with a reluctance disturbingly similar to what I’m feeling in my own mid-section while trying to wrestle a few squares free.

Managers of these communal bathroom facilities – in restaurants, offices, government buildings – know this is a service they have to provide free of charge to their customers. So they’re obviously interested in limiting their expense as much as possible without putting their drapes and other nearby textiles in jeopardy. I sympathize with their situation in these hard economic times, but I also have similarly urgent hygiene concerns that need to be addressed. I decided to learn more about the companies that build and market these stingy dispensers.

Not surprisingly, most of them are manufactured by multinational corporations with interests in many sanitization-related areas. They are typically sold as part of a package that includes both the dispensers and the toilet paper, which I guess makes sense if you think about it. (The Pez analogy is one that unfortunately comes to mind; you rarely see the candy sold without the dispenser.) Bay West is one such company, offering a broad array of services in the environmental, industrial and emergency segments. Their corporate motto – “Slide Door Right for More Paper”– is printed proudly on each of their dispensers, and belies their larger mission in fields like brownfield site remediation (ew!) and hospital waste management. It’s good to know they have something to fall back on if bidets ever catch on in this country.

Another name that I came across in my research in the lavatory at a local bagel seller was SCA. When I searched for this firm on-line, I came back with several hits that caused me concern that this trend toward synergy in the industry was spinning out of control. Was SCA the Society for Creative Anachronism? The Student Conservation Association? The Society of Crystallographers of Australia? I could imagine any of these names being euphemisms for the business of helping the public do their business in public, but none turned out to be the company I was looking for. A link to “SCA Armor (Heavy)” seemed promising, considering the amount of protection these devices provide, but also led to a dead end. Finally I was routed to something called “Tork Online,” which referenced an SCA that sold “away-from-home tissue products,” and I knew I had struck pay dirt.

“An in-depth knowledge of our customers’ businesses means our products work hard to eliminate waste, reduce maintenance costs and offer hygienic solutions,” reads the products page. “Our dependable, attractive dispensers are designed to optimize hygiene, function and cost-in-use through designs that reduce consumption and maintenance time, dispense effortlessly and discourage pilferage.” Note that it’s only in the last two words of their blurb that they hint at their true purpose, keeping me and others from making off with free toilet tissue.

A more thorough look at the products section shows a fine array of conventional and jumbo dispensers, and a certain genius of these producers that I hadn’t considered before. The conventional model is described as “preventing waste by dropping a reserve roll only after the primary roll is depleted, keeping the used roll core in the unit and washroom floors clear of debris.” The jumbo model -- for high-traffic facilities and, I presume, the waiting rooms of gastroenterologists -- offers a “unique tear feature that eliminates the risk of cutting or scratching hands,” convenient for those moments of desperation we’ve all experienced but are too fortunate to remember in any detail.

Another maker is a company called Merfin, which I’m proud to say services my own workplace. With their system, “time spent replacing rolls can be reduced by up to 90%, and savings are increased by reducing waste and over-consumption with virtually indestructible locking dispensers.” I knew over-consumption was the problem that hyper-extended our nation’s credit system, but I never thought of it as an issue in the area of personal hygiene. Who are they to judge what’s enough or what’s too much? Anyway, I will give them credit for coming up with a cool trademarked and intercapped name for their line – VersaCore, offering the most versatile (bold italic theirs) tissue dispensing options in the world.

Finally, I want to reference probably the best-known company in this field, Georgia-Pacific. I didn’t go to their website because I found out enough to convince me that they are the future of public bathroom tissue during a recent and urgent visit to the toilet in the new upscale Barnes & Noble not far from my home. This casing, while still made of the traditional PMMA polystyrene that seems to be an industry standard, features a stylish, sloped front-end and an overall design that would be at home in the lobby of Europe’s trendiest boutique hotels. I was so impressed that I took a picture with my cell phone, even at the risk of criminal prosecution and a probable listing on certain predator lists. (I’ll include the photo with this posting if I can figure out how to get it off my phone and onto my computer). Even better, it dispensed paper easily in a free-flowing, luxuriant manner that tempted me to roll a mound out onto the floor and lay down for a nice nap.

All things considered, though, I think I’d still prefer the retro approach – the lone, free-standing roll sitting on the tank behind the seat.