impounding on the door

Everyone should have to go to a big city impound lot once. Everyone. Even if it's just for a glance at the operation.

Mine came last night. It's an old story: friend gets DUI (or DWI or OMVI, whatever law enforcement goes with today), friend needs two other friends to help her remove her car from impound: one to driver her car home, and one to drive everyone there. I played the role of the second driver.

But there was one problem - the lot closes at 8. My friend called at 7:15. A front drive to one house, then a lesson in swerving and avoiding hazard-drivers on the interstate, and we arrived

Cross the Scioto and a little park set back the trees for the fishermen, then it's just a rough sea of automobiles.

We pulled in five minutes before closing. Luckily, the police stick to their closing time. They didn't pull the "bank on a weekday" routine and shut down 10-15 minutes before the time on the door.

Just the same, I'd rather not visit the little barbwired auto lot for a while.

The worst moment of the morning

After a long night, when a midnight coffee failed to dent my sleepy form, I crashed hard. Waking up when the cloudy dark still stood strong, I estimated at least an hour, maybe two, before the alarm intruded.

As I tossed and tried to roll back over, the alarm's radio broke in.

There is no more defeating moment in the pre-dawn hours than waking up minutes before the alarm. Rolling over to sleep again is moot.
This started in high school, when habitually I woke anywhere from five to ten minutes before the air raid siren started.

This body somehow adjusts quickly when the waking hour changes. Maybe it's a testament to my circadian rhythms. Even when the alarm never sounds, I generally wake up around that time anyway.

Not that it ever makes those three minutes I could have been sleeping any less annoying.

From this day on, I own my father's blog

My apologies to Elton John and Bernie Taupin for the subject line, but my Dad won't pick up the blogging gauntlet anytime soon. His first encounter with the blogging world was not exactly pleasant.

To put it country simple, the man who shot down the Internet ten years - before he stumbled onto umpteen metal-detecting forums and found Karl Melville, the guy who sat behind him in high school home room, 40 years after they last saw each other - muttered, "What the ___ is a blog?"

Journals, much less online ones, aren't really his thing. Yet - he only discovered them Sunday, and still hasn't grasped the breadth of blogging out there.

And no, he doesn't about this.

I'll wait until he finds a useful one to tell him about mine - then again, maybe not yet.

Nothing stops the joggernaut

When the sun cracks through the standard Central Ohio gloom for weeks at a time, I never remain inactive for long.

But recent events - too many close calls between bicycle and car, the immovable beer gut - have convinved me better uses of my time exist than touring Belgium five nights a week.

A few cans of light beer don't hold a swaying candle to the strongest Trappist brews, able to drench the sharpest mind in a single bottle.

So I'm officially an event drinker - and no, having nothing else to do fails to qualify as an event.

In its absence, I've decided to take a strong effort at shrinking that belly. I started yesterday, jogging around the neighborhood for about 20 minutes, soaking every inch of me in sweat, awakening long dormant muscle groups, and wrenching my heart and lungs (29 year olds don't have heart attacks, do they?).

I doubt a marathon lies in my future - running regularly won't change the fact that I've always been abominably slow - but set those miles in the routine, and a 5K or similar race might fit this stocky build.

First, though, let's see how I huff, puff and plod my way through the neighborhood tomorrow morning.

Blogger's note: To the best of my knowledge, the term "joggernaut" was first coined by WJM Sr. in the late 1970s.

Say it ain't so, Pluto, say it ain't so

Clyde Tombaugh giveth, and the modern astronomer taketh away ... 76 years after its discovery, Pluto is no longer a planet. Teachers and textbook manufacturers, get out those erasers.

Why does a planet lose its status? Because the world's astronomers say eight planets is enough.

In elementary school, and later in grade school, that standing never received any scrutiny from teacher or pupil. Sure, Pluto was little more than a tiny punctuation mark at the end of the solar system, closer to the chunks ice and rock that circle at the solar system's edge.

But I came of age as probes beamed back fresh images of Uranus and Neptune; as Voyager II circled those gaseous worlds, it felt like every day they sent news of a new moon, ring formation or features unseen elsewhere in the solar system.
Only Pluto and its giant moon Charon remained a mystery. As telescopes improved our knowledge of the solar system's edge and finally a probe headed for Pluto launched in January (New Horizon's scheduled arrival: early 2016), the urge to marginalize Pluto sprouted.

Losing its status, the astronomical elite throw out terms like trans-Neptunian objects, Plutonian objects and dwarf planets; they can now throw out any number of books on the subject.

Pluto will always orbit as a planet in my mind, even if it is just a giant chunk of rock and ice disowned by a distant, ambivalent sun - and an even colder group of astronomers.

the end of my politics

Many roads lead to political apathy. Mine led right through the dark heart of the American system, where our leaders only speak in text lifted off press releases and every step they take follows a plan of outlandish choreography.

Classroom politics doesn't format so well with the real world. I miss those spirited, substantive debates - by college's end, political science held my interest more than English lit. Out here in the wilderness, it's all sound bites and missives cut down to the barest frames just to fit on a postcard. A major mid-term election nears and my interest wanes to the point of extinction. Too many "show votes" to rile up the party base; meaningful change will set on the shelf for another term.

If you want substance, click on a weblink. Few candidates know the meaning of the word.

new earth under my toes

More than anything, I needed a break after a few months of furious posting. Expect the updates to start flying later today.

the electronic field goes fallow

I'm giving the blog a rest for a little while. I've felt pressure to update constantly and my updates slip as a result.

Updates will come as I feel up to writing. But for the time being, I just don't. There's a place for dirty laundry; the blogosphere is not the clothesline where I want to air it out.

"May the wind take your troubles away"

For as much as I joked about becoming a moving guy, I seriously wouldn't mind hitting the road as a truck driver.

This past week illustrates the reasons. When I departed Columbus before sunrise last Wednesday, no one would have known it was August, because once Interstate 70 lined up in front of me and the wind tossed the car gently, I shivered (yeah, after weeks of 90s, Appalachia offered a trace of crisp autumnal morning). I never turned on the air conditioner in the car, and barely broke a sweat (a special moment for a sweathog such as myself).

Being amazed by simplicities helps me enjoy the road ... yes, even despite my gripes, in New Jersey (crossing in Trenton instead of on the turnpike was much more pleasant). The drive to the Tom Waits show in Louisville was much the same; when my fellow concertgoer crashed out for the drive south of Cinci, I dropped the windows, gave the accelerator a little extra pressure and forgot about the semis barreling up behind me. I just want to drive, and not fear the reality of sticking to one place.


Why entertain a trucker's life? Because your problems have an easier time catching up to you if you stop moving. Of course, maybe their problems just ride shotgun, since they're on the road so much.

Appendix:
Full disclosure: Subject line comes from Son Volt's "Windfall."

Think about it

(Cue old timey radio announcer's voice) "Nine out of 10 people wear sunglasses to hide their dead eyes."

Or at least that's the theory I'm going with, as I waved across a 4-way stop at a burly man in shades to make his turn before me. He just sat there with a dead expression until I threw up my arms ("I trying to be nice here, even if I call you every forbidden, four-letter Anglo-Saxon word in the book while I'm being nice").

Hollywood types, government agents (you're not conflicted about mortality if you're willing to take a bullet for a politician) ... What are they trying to hide with those shades? The Hollywood types can easily afford surgery to fix cataracts or whatever damage the sun inflicts. Then there's the guys wearing 80's style mirrored sunglasses. Most of the ones I've known tend to live about a decade off from the real world, so I really don't want to know what they're hiding.

So what about you?

Really bad news and the futures traders go flaccid

These days it doesn't take much bad news to give an oil futures trader a boner. Hurricane Katrina disrupted the pipelines? Crude spikes (Sure, seems reasonable enough). Saudi Arabia's King Faud died? Crude goes up (he had something to do with oil before he spent the last 10 years of his life incapacitated after a stroke). Fears over Iran (so when does the Iranian president have anything good to say in our direction?), North Korea (zzzz.....) and Iraq (if you're just finding fear in this quagmire now, congratulations on the end of your coma)....The point is, they don't need a good reason to send crude through the roof. They just do it.


But now BP shuts down its Prudhoe Bay oil field because of extreme negligence in maintenance. Energy Secretary says she should be OK ... and prices drop? That would seem like mighty good reason to raise prices.

I paid $2.69 a gallon just east of Cambridge, Ohio yesterday, the lower rate in months. Explain, explain, ye impotent futures traders....

Down with the sameness

Pacing the corridors of a mall for the first time in ages, I muttered to my high school friend, "We could be walking anywhere in American right now."

Aside from department store anchors, I don't do malls anymore. Too much homogeneity, too staid and anti-sceptic, this marks a 180 degree turn from the boy wasting his prime high school Saturdays sitting among the Great Lakes Mall's fountains.

This epidemic has rage for decades and it approaches a critical point. I spent a few hours at a B & N with the same floor plan and merchandise (save the local section, as with all the company's other stores); not a thing in the entire shopping center beyond that one bank of shelves gave away my location as New Jersey.

Imagine amnesia today; wake up in one of these shopping centers, and you'd be hard-pressed to pluck the first clue. Pedestrian unfriendly and without a flourish to exclaim, no one wants anything but a branch to bear them in conformity's grove.

Melt down your identity, and let the chains go wild. It's the American way.

Again with the Clerks

Clerks 2 sure surprised ... and I'm not talking about the bestiality (or inter-species erotica, if you will) Jay's obsession with Buffalo Bill's baizare nude scene from Silence of the Lambs, jaw-droping use of "porch monkey" or the confusion between Anne Frank and Helen Keller (oh, they went there).

Just short of the 30-yard line myself, watching two losers float in limbo offered too familiar a feeling (except most of us don't have a best friend to join us for the wandering).

Spending my recent days in the towns where Kevin Smith filmed the unexpectedly poignant sequel helped too. Attached to the comfort of a hometown, even a surrogate one, becomes a harder habit to shake after time.

Clerks 2 hits notes that Garden State sounded a few years ago, with a nearly catatonic Zack Braff character waking up to a better life than the one he ran away to pursue.

What's the deal with NJ films hitting hard in the waters tossing my own rudderless life? OK, it's not always rudderless from the shore, but from this seat, it definitely feels that way somedays. When you have no one else depending on you, it's too simple to pull in the paddles and submit to the current.

In the car, I drink what I want, even gasoline

Before any vacation, I brace for the question.

"If you're driving that far, why not fly?"

Chalk it up to getting older, or at least settling in my ways. But more importantly, I don't want any hassle, which since the Unibomber, has defined almost everything housed at the airport. The events of the past few hours just reinforced my fears of delays, and why air travel regresses with every near-disaster. I certainly never expected booby-trapped cups would attempt a coordinated attack on Transatlantic flights; if their airlines didn't, their business might prepare for another rough patch.

Don't misinterpret - I'm pleased we don't have planes exploding over the Atlantic Ocean, and that the British rounded up 20 of this bomb-drinking extremists. The world sits in a bad enough spot right now, and doesn't need a fresh round of al-Qaida-produced mayhem. Those planes go up, and people already calling America a police state will wish fondly for the days of the Patriot Act.

The last time I flew - May 2004, from Columbus to Phoenix for my sister's graduation from ASU - the thing that struck me the hardest was the sheer loneliness of the airport. It wasn't just music players, cell phones and laptops - people went to amazing lengths to isolate themselves from the airport's pace. Go into the bar or coffee shop, and conversation is still fleeting (granted, it goes a little better at the bar, with alcohol loosening gruff lips) .

I happens outside the airport as well. The moment the plane landed, and cell phones became legal again, the entire cabin erupted into a fury of dialing. Clutching their fixes, they were worse than the smokers, who still had to collect baggage and get curbside before lighting up.

But I'm a motion guy (and an emotional guy, just not in this post). I can live with rush hour so long as the car continues forward, even at idling speed. And driving on vacation is part of the deal right now. I love to drive; the oil companies love for me to drive because I live by the bicycle at home.

Rolling across the hills of Pennsylvania with the sharp wind gently shoving me fit my mood better than spending the first two hours of my day in line at the airport. However, on 90 percent of my days, it always will.


In the name of cologne
His three calls a day wear thin at times- especially the ones interrupting his son's vacation, but he
The order of the day was "Like Father, Like Son." My father, due home for his regular weekend away, called to say he abandoned plans to fly, jumped in rental car and began the 500-plus mile journey to Columbus. He wasn't interested in checking all his bags in or throwing away his shaving kit because of what would-be martyrs half a world away failed to do.

"The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older."

The breakfast the end of young adulthood (see mid-July) only began the shock and awe of the next phase. Too much bicycling turns my legs into creaky machinery after 8 hours in the car.

But the bigger change is my friend from high school, one of my best since seventh grade. And I'm not referring to the healthy New Jersey accent carried in his voice, since many Midwesterners (those of us without distinct accents) easily pick up traits of other dialects. Ain't that right, y'all?

I still live by myself in a gray neighborhood, and EP coaches high school football and wrestling, teaches American history and with his wife, has a 16-month old cherubic daughter, who rarely stops smiling, laughing or impressing with her vocabulary and growing command of the alphabet. Eric's one of the few people I could tell he lives 'the most normal life imaginable' and take it as a compliment.

I'm sitting in an anonymous coffeehouse, sipping my drip and pounding away while he sees his varsity receivers through a morning weight session.

I love the big city and the luster of old neighborhoods. Still, I can't shake the pangs of jealousy, even though our lives have evolved into nearly incompatible species. Keeping your options open is a good way to die alone.

Midwesterners will find the non-toll road, even in NJ

Crossing the Delaware in an unpatriotic fashion, the toll plaza produced no ticket despite pushes on every button available to me. Ten miles later, an unsympathetic attendant told me that the short journey would cost the full fare for the turnpike. if the PA Turnpike charged me a similar rate for taxing their roads, I'd have run a $100 tab (instead the $16.75 they asked for).

I'm going home via the backroads, and not giving another dime to help this state and its bankrupt garden.

Stealing something from the smallest moment

Today I stopped along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, somewhere between Breezewood (the DC exit) and Harrisburg, made myself a sandwich, sat at a picnic bench tossing scraps of my bread to the sparrows which had obviously seen a picnic before.

And at that time, I couldn't have been happier. It faded once I entered the state of New Jersey, but then I was content.

"Tom Waits' songs are not designed for an audience clap-along."

That thought ran through my head during one of his tunes during a three-song piano interlude, as hundreds of audience members joined in. It doesn't fit the music.

Luckily, I wasn't the only one who thought that.

"You guys are more out of tune than I am," Waits said as he paused the song, then continued without further audience distraction. The clap-along was officially dead and buried for the rest of the show.

Insult your audience to bring them in line. Brilliant. He was a such a ham all night; even on the big stage, it was like a small bar pianist's banter with the crowd.

More lengthy review will come once I've had a shot at some sleep.

A forward about a decade too late (Running down the zodiac)

Too many people feel that sending a flurry of forwarded junk across the Internet qualifies as staying in touch. If a personal response actually arrives, it will be elbowed by a dozen or more goofy pictures, lists falsely attributed to George Carlin or things that might result in a pink slip if your employer saw them.

Yesterday, I found one somewhat worthwhile, even if it had little basis in reality. It ran down the zodiac and talked about characteristics for each and how they respond in romantic relationships.
What struck me the most were the worst pairings for each. Being solidly Leo, was surprised to see Pisces on the list and with this nugget next to reasons why they make a bad pair: "You'll hurt them long before you ever know it."

If I looked at all the ... well, it's best not to think about how many Pisces I've dated. Not on this weekend.

And with all the junk cluttering my inbox in 11 years of e-mail, how could this forward take so long to reach me?

How right you were, Thomas Wolfe

The office has been abuzz from a column forwarded our way. A former senior staff member, never known for her affable personality, basically spends the entire piece ripping all of us left and right. This is poor taste and selfishness at its best. And since it was written by someone who tried her best to burn bridges with half the company, it's utterly predictable.

If you know the place where I work, it takes little insight to insert the names she drags around in the mud, and as for her guarded, secret little nicknames, well, the whole thing is pretty childish.

You know, I don't love my job, but when I go, I will let all of those feelings go. That's the end of it.

I'm not going to set fire to the bridge, or for that matter, the bridge struts and charred remains our former colleague doused with kerosene in this insipid editorial.

Polar bear boxers

They have no actual power over the temperature, but at least they transport the mind to somewhere slight more comfortable.

Or at least that's my rationale for wearing boxers crowded by lines of tiny polar bears in July.

Cautious tufts in my careless garden

Perhaps the continued heat de-natured my brain proteins on the walk back from the grocery store, but rather than let the swelter in my apartment continue, I jumped on the bicycle after four days of dormancy. Heat or not, my legs demanded more movement. After all, atrophy (one word, not two) is never far away.

So I tore up some sidewalk on the narrow stretch of Morse Road, then took the marginal roads once I passed Interstate 71, an interchange not designed for crossing by someone on two wheels. In fact, there is no such thing as a bike or pedestrian-friendly road with seven lanes. Wednesday had no close calls, but that was pure happenstance, nothing more.

As the sweat plowed down my face and torso in a dense sheet and my neck burned, I all I could think of was the line between guts and stupidity. They're quite close, and with Morse ripped up for streetscape beautification, they almost run together.

After a quick stop at the comic shop (which I rode my bicycle to; so will I be 29 Saturday, or just 9?), heads cooler than the heat index prevailed, and I rode through the Woodward Park Nature Preserve, where streams and the multi-tiered canopy of trees dropped the temperature by 10 or more degrees. But the heads still weren't that cool, not on a night like this.

A tiny card from Euclid made all the difference

Amid yesterday's bills and credit card offers ("Zero percent on balance transfers through November 2007! I can't lose!") tumbled out a small card with an address in Euclid, Ohio that I didn't recognize. It contained a humbling surprise.

My father's best friend sent me a hand-written card thanking me for coming to his father's funeral this weekend. It was a totally unexpected - and completely humbling - gesture.

If only the mail always left me speechless.

"I must look like a caveman, if they existed. WHICH they didn't."

Ah, Ned Flanders, you won't find yourself relocating to Kansas anytime soon. The poor, ironing-board-flat state still won't make up its mind.

Is there a better nationally-known state level entity than the Kansas State Board of Education? Years after putting itself on the map, it won't go away.
Quick history lesson: in 1999, the anti-evolution standards went into effect.
Moderates (there are no liberals in Kansas) took over the board majority in the 2000 election, restoring the old standards.
Conservatives won again last year and went back to the intelligent design-creationist route, which brings us to yesterday ... when the moderates returned to the majority with a primary victory, and next the state will go back to the old evolution standards.

Ohio just dropped its ID-riddled standards recently, but that fight hasn't ended. The Intelligent Design curriculum will surface again, and both sides will fling mud in a way that would do our ancestors proud.

I swear, we've not evolved a step since the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Kansas isn't a laughing stock because of the board's decision; it's because they're waffling. Someone's going to have to give sooner or later.

Keep the teachers in their classrooms instead of defending their issues all the time.

If ID were actual science, it would belong there;. However, saying "There are things we can't know" flies against everything science stands for.

Words are lethal weapons

Mel, Mel, Mel ... after all the flak over "Passion" you manage prove them right in a pretty surprising manner.

Granted, the man was drunk, but last time I checked, the drink tends to loosen the tongue, and unleashes thoughts best left unvocalized. At least that's been my routine ...

Gentlemen, are you with me?

Why does it seem like overwhelming amount of your female friends (I'm going to stick with 75 percent) will settle down with men you consider completely beneath them? In the past few years, a few weddings forced me to shake my head once I left the reception and say, "That's going to be one of the happiest days in her life, and she's marrying that guy?"

Maybe that appears true because I'm at the age when people are picking partners as if marriage is a pick-up tennis tournament; those additional marriages could skew the numbers.

For some reason, this doesn't apply to most female friends already married when I met them.

Food for thought ... or not, since every woman I know will probably rip me for those these few loaded sentences.

A genius at any age

Even as he strove to push away the fans who dubbed him "the Big Fat Buddha of the Revolution" (his words, not mine), Bob Dylan still churned out brilliant songs. The wordplay evolved away from crazy, swirling imagery he spun into musical gold at will
into a more pointed, straightforward style (bear in mind this is Dylan, so at times, those lyrics still thrive on their opacity.
Take this one from "As I Went Out One Morning," which I can't excise from my thoughts today:

I offered her my hand
she took me by the arm
I knew in that very instant
She meant to do me harm

Brilliance doesn't always carry a load of five dollar words.

John Wesley Harding is a quiet gem, starting Dylan down a country trail that he's not meandered too far from in his subsequent career. Though I knew all his big songs, it was the first Dylan record I owned, and still an fan favorite but not in the same league as (Highway 61 Revisited).
And though I'm in a rare minority - even Dylan plays "All Along the Watchtower" with a Hendrix flair these days - the song never sounded as apocalyptic as the version Dylan reels off on John Wesley Harding.