very little ado about nothing

the ipad and blogger.com don't get along.

it's one of the few things an ipad won't do elegantly, conveniently, and better than anything originating in redmond, wa.

like many things in this life, however, there are workarounds. in this case, it's the ability to put up a blog post straight from email. i compose said email, send it to a specific blogger.com address, and viola. instapost.

* * * * *

the excruciating, months-long implosion of the seattle mariners continues with nauseating predictability. it goes like this: the starting pitching is stellar, giving up two or three runs. the offense doesn't score at all. mariners lose.

in the alternative, the starting pitching gives up bunches of runs, but the offense accidently puts up bunches plus one. the bullpen then blows the lead in gut-wrenching walk-off fashion. mariners lose.

another, less frequent, aberration: in a riveting pitchers duel, the game goes into extra innings. seattle puts hundreds of runners in scoring position in every frame, but can't push anybody across. eventually, inevitably, mariners lose.

today, seattle ace felix hernandez gave up three runs in the first inning, then dug in and allowed nothing through the next six innings. the offense responded with familiar futility, picking up their teammate by scoring...zero runs. mariners lose.

somewhere in the middle of a 6-23 july, a player went berserk in the dugout and showed up the manager on national tv. the front office responded by saying...nothing. the player wasn't even reprimanded, let alone suspended. the manager, we assume, isn't long for his job.

i know: it's only excruciating if you let it be. still...damn.

* * * * *

the seafair torchlight parade made its way through downtown seattle tonight. the highlight of the evening was the seafair pirates, who glowered and waved swords and fired their cannon and said "arrrgh!" in a pirate-y way.

the crowd applauded loudly for the police, fire department, and military drill units that went by. oddly, they cheered the guys cleaning up after the horses just as loudly. no idea what to make of that. the mayor of seattle was neither cheered nor jeered as he rolled by in a red corvette. given his environmentalist credentials, he must've been conflicted about riding in a corvette. given that he's a politician, he must've felt odd about the total apathy he inspired.

* * * * *

it's late. mrs. spaceneedl is asleep on the couch. the dogs are snoozing in their various spots around the living room. the little needls are asleep, finally, after spending last night at a "lock-in" sleepover at boys and girls club...where they apparently slept not at all. not coincidently, they were surly all day today.

* * * * *

tomorrow: a walk to the village for coffee, followed by yoga, laundry, grocery shopping, and listening to new music (downloaded to the ipad) while cooking dinner.

lather, rinse, repeat as necessary.

Sent from my iPad

survivors guide to living

just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
suzanne the plans they made put an end to you
i walked out this morning and i wrote down this song
i just can't remember who to send it to

oh, i've seen fire and i've seen rain
i've seen sunny days that i thought would never end
i've seen lonely times when i could not find a friend
but i always thought that i'd see you again

won't you look down upon me jesus
you've gotta help me make a stand
you've just got to see me through another day
my body's aching and my time is at hand
and i won't make it any other way

* * * * *
in "deep survival" laurence gonzales writes there are two kinds of people. survivors and victims.

survivors, he says, are rule breakers. they are independent in mind and spirit. in a tough situation, they do better than people who follow the rules and stick to the plan, no matter how badly the plan has gone awry.

"when a patient is told that he has six months to live, he has two choices: to accept the news and die, or to rebel and live. people who survive cancer in the face of such a diagnosis are notorious. the medical staff observes that they are 'bad patients,' unruly, troublesome. they don't follow directions. they question everything. they're annoying. they're survivors.

"the tao te ching says, 'the rigid person is a disciple of death...the soft, supple, and delicate are lovers of life.' "

boys, quite often, don't fit that last description. not on the outside, anyway.
the boy at our house is soft-hearted and emotionally susceptible, but he wants
the world to believe he's wizened and grizzled and hard-shelled.

we're willing to play along, sometimes. to that end, we recently sent him to a
week-long ymca b.o.l.d. (boys outdoor leadership development) camp in the north cascades.

the idea is to cultivate confidence through the development of wilderness survival skills, some of which might be applicable elsewhere in life. or to just hike around and do some fishing outside the city. whichever.

the boy came back complaining bitterly about a week of privation and forced marches and giant mosquitos and an epic failure, fish-catching-wise. and yet on his return, he was inexplicably exhuberant, as if he'd passed a great test of pre-adolescenthood.

there's no telling what of any long-term value he may have internalized, but maybe he picked up one insight that'll help turn him into a survivor.

maybe somewhere down the road he'll stop and think, "you know, when i went in the lake with my boots on, my feet got wet and stayed that way for two days. that experience taught me that it may not be a good idea to pee on this electric fence, or to pet this pit bull, or to get in this car with my drunk friend."

all we can do is put him in position to learn, and hope for the best.

* * * * *

my friend kary was a survivor. life handed her a raw deal several months ago, but instead of accepting the bad news, she stood and fought.

she endured chemo and bone marrow biopsies and seizures. she ignored an indifferent doctor who told her she had a week to live, and lived on. she kicked a dangerous lung infection so she could undergo a bone marrow transplant, which was cause for much hope.

but acute myelogenous leukemia is a bitch of a disease, and eventually it fought kary to a draw. life's rulebook tells us that in case of a tie, death wins. but kary never gave up, never let the specter change who she was. she showed us what it means to be a survivor instead of a victim.

since no one gets out alive, that's about the best example any of us can set.

at sea

several years ago i fell in love with a painting.

(which is something i hardly ever do.)

it's a riot of blue in a spray of hues and textures. the color explodes off the canvas like a serene bay befrenzied by a hurricane. the eye is frantically led across the scene, top to bottom, corner to corner, but never finds a safe place to land. the patterns we all instinctively seek to help us make sense of our world are nowhere to be found. the chaos is as profound as the very human need to either organize it or escape it.

to that end, in the midst of the bedlam, my eye sees the suggestion of a sail. there's no encouragement that the ship it might be attached to will find its way to safety... just an inkling that such a thing might be possible.

the painting was created by a friend who was going through a difficult time, and to me it exudes the powerful emotions she might have been feeling. i was mesmerized the first time i saw it, so much so that i offered to buy it. (purchasing art -- something else i hardly ever do.) i think eventually i might've offered two or three times, but she wasn't ready to part with it.

flash forward several years to a couple weeks ago, when this note came from my friend...

"So, I have been thinking for the last week and a half that I need to ship the blue painting to you. It's been really strange -- a really strong feeling that I should give it to you. So, dammit, I am. :-)"

i will tell you i stared at those words for a long time, trying to paste together a narrative, a logical explanation for why they came when they did. sitting here tonight, i still can't do it. because the timing coincided with the waning days of another friend who was transitioning through the last stages of leukemia.

she died the day before the message arrived.

i have no idea what metaphysical forces swirl around us. i can't say, "i was feeling pain for a friend, and another friend on the other side of the country came along at exactly the right time to pick me up in a way that defies rational thought."

i don't know what any of this says about anything. but knowing how much i don't know...i'm willing to go with the flow.

and to be grateful for friends, across time, and in the face of the unknowable.

* * * * *

the painting arrived at our house yesterday. it's as beautiful and moving as i remembered it. thank you, maggie.

* * * * *

for kary and frederica

anadarko stormy night

so i'm sitting here looking out the window at a hummingbird.

it hovers, moves in for some breakfast, backs out, takes another look, goes back in. and so on.

and i'm thinking, "what an amazing and startling and beautiful adaptation. fast yet maneuverable. delicate and absurdly strong. nature does some nice work, doesn't she?"

and then i think, "wouldn't it be neat to dump a couple barrels of oil on that hummingbird? and all the flowers in our yard, while we're at it? after that, we could set the whole scene on fire."

that would be fun.

if you're BP. or halliburton. or the aptly named anadarko. they love that kind of spirit-obliterating overkill. why dump one barrel of oil on a hummingbird when you can dump two?

or two billion?

i'd be a little vexed, however, if hell's oil hounds wouldn't at least let us take a few photos of our newly and gloriously besludged homestead while it was still smoldering. i mean, if you're going to go to all the trouble of despoiling and defiling and de-lifing an ecosystem, no matter how large or small, why not take a little pride in your work?

inexplicably, that's what's happening on the gulf coast. anadarko (one of the hosts of the gala in the gulf) is scuttling away from its friends like a crab off a rotting sea turtle. they're refusing to help pay for damages, insisting BP is the reason for the goo-covered season.

BP says it is disappointed by the announcement and will evaluate its options about what to do next. "They have failed to live up to their obligations," BP spokesman Mark Salt said in a statement.

if you can see the incongruity of BP scolding anyone for failing to live up to obligations, perhaps you can appreciate the irony of sending Salt to bemoan BP's wounds.

but back to the hummingbird.

you know what'd be really fun? if the bird fought back. not in a global warming kind of way, which is gradual and imperceptible and totally unsatisfactory, justice-wise.

but in a "carrie" kind of way, in which nature, drenched and demeaned and debauched one time too many, just. plain. snaps.

in our little dramedy, we'd cut to wide shots of countless deepwater oil rigs all over the globe. without fanfare, all of them are sucked down in violent whirlpools, disappearing without a trace.

next, we'd cut to mid-shots of oil executives, sitting in obscenely plush board rooms, sipping black pearl brandy, laughing about "the little people." they spontaneously combust (the brandy, however, is spared).

at this point, we cut to a long shot of a massive sandstorm enveloping the athabasca oil sands. the project sign is broken off and comes to rest on top of a dune. the project itself is buried, impenetrably, forever.

the music builds as we see a horrifying, extreme close-up of dick cheney. his face gets increasingly red as he reads rolling online reports of the demise of his favorite hobby (after war profiteering and torture). his head explodes.

outside cheney's window a hummingbird appears, hovers briefly, then turns and flies away, toward a panoramic wide shot of the wyoming mountains at sunset.

dissolve to a medium close-up of the hummingbird, accompanied by the sound of a symphony of strings, flying high over the earth, surveying the beginnings of the healing.

fade to a clean, gauzy white.

the end.

* * * * *

yes, the fantasy would be fun. a lot more fun than the reality we're getting instead.

apropos nothing, this evening i saw an eagle flying low over our neighborhood.

* * * * *

h/t to pete wung for the atlantic link.

knee jerk

a year ago i was young for my age.

now i'm old for my years.

my, how time flies when it's artificially accelerated.

it was a year ago, see, that i tore my ACL, which led to a couple surgeries, which led to a dramatic change in lifestyle.

weights and basketball and general knuckleheadedness have been replaced by walks and yoga and a bosu trainer. the knuckleheadedness remains constant.

the 9 to 5 desk has been replaced by a sit-stand work station, at which i never sit. I no longer own a pair of basketball shoes. and my clothes have been replaced by the wardrobe of someone significantly less corpulent than i.

the upside, however, is that my knee is now a more dependable predictor of rain than the weather channel.

I think the changes were long overdue, and will be to my benefit for the long haul.

but I miss the old normal.

iown. ilike.

i've never been a gadget guy.

i've never felt the need to be the first on the block to own the latest widget.

that said, i'm prepared to be insufferably pleased with my new ipad.

it was a birthday/father's day/pick a holiday gift, and i'm typing on it right.this.second.

standing here on the end of technology's diving board, with billions of life-enhancing apps a short download away, i have just a whisper of remorse about this amazing toy: i wish the geniuses at apple had named it something else.

"ipad" sounds like a feminine hygiene product.

they could've gone with itablet or islate or irobot. something. anything. ipad? you can't tell me the focus groups were excited about that one.

but iquibble. the folks in cupertino got so much else right. the unpleasantness with adobe notwithstanding, of course. and the unfortunate lack of USB connectivity. and the strange absence of a web camera.

besides that, i mean.

first task at hand: getting off the work computer.

the thing's a piece of PC junk. compared to an apple product, it's awkward and inelegant and uninspiring. not to mention the fact it doesn't belong to me. that makes it a bad place for vacation photos, the music library and other nonwork stuff.

once that transmogrification is done, there's lots of exploring to do. i'm not big on user's manuals, but then again the ipad doesn't have one. not an old-media version, anyway. so i guess i'll just have to dive in and swim around awhile.

what will it do? is there an app for yoga and wine and travel and novel-writing and boat-buying? sure there is. i just have to go find it.

what won't it do? tsk, silly question. it'll do anything clever people can imagine. if developers were into such things, it'd probably cap the deepwater horizon well, clean up the gulf, and convert the world to a rainbows and faeries-based power supply.

it'd cure cancer, locate missing children and put the 'yes we can' back into barack obama.

it'd find god, ask her if she has any good app suggestions, and implement them with a couple subtle improvements.

it might even bring summer to the pacific northwest. nah, let's not get crazy here.

sidebar: it just occurred to me that the spaceneedl family is getting all appled up. between us, in the last year or so we have acquired a macbook pro, an iphone, an ipod touch, a nano, a shuffle and this ipad. it happened over time, so gradually that we didn't even notice.

but here we are. it's an apple world. and we're living in it. what happens now?

no, don't tell me.

like this new device, let it be a pleasant surprise.

whatever. write.

"write drunk, edit sober."

--ernest hemingway

the thing about writing is, there's never a lack of subject matter.

sometimes there's too much.

at such times, the brain can fail to process the wealth of options. the keys can stop working. the words get stuck and scrambled.

this is one of those times.

i can trace this trend back about three weeks to the spaceneedl family gathering in the arizona desert. one, there was no wi-fi where we were staying. so two, i didn't bring my computer with me. and three, it was an emotionally charged series of days that i still haven't sorted out.

in no particular order there was a wedding, relatives who hadn't seen each other in years, a 50th anniversary celebration for my parents, and a vigil for my father-in-law's cat, which was on its last legs.

on the upside, we did get to fly there and back in first class. the wine, while not good, was free.

the following week, i was off to san francisco, for a string of days with colleagues and several thousand of my closest urology friends. and by "friends" i mean people i've never seen before and whom i don't expect to remember even if i see them again.

those kind of friends.

while there, as previously reported, one of our cats died.

despite that, or perhaps because of it, i was overserved some excellent wine during the evening events. a bunch of us climbed california street to the tonga room at the fairmont hotel. think tiki bar meets 80s cover band. i rode a cable car for the first time ever (despite having once lived in san francisco). and we wandered, wide-eyed, through the california academy of science. the exhibits were interesting, but nearly overshadowed by the open bar, the heavy hors d'oeuvres, the cirque du soleil performers, and the tim burtonesque characters from alice in wonderland.

turns out, those urologists really know how to party.

last week there was the camp experience. about it, i tweeted thusly:

chaperoning 6th graders at camp sealth. think 'lord of the flies' in heavy rain.

getting eight sixth grade boys to work up a camp skit? sure, no problem.

sixth grade camp, day two. oh, look, kids...it's raining. again.

camp, day three. let's take a look out the weather window where it's...raining. for a change.

those observations don't entirely sum up camp. in between the tweets there was the dangerously failed archery debacle, the utterly unchallenging challenge course, soggy s'mores by the smoky campfire, and KP in the mess hall on spaghetti night. and lest we forget, ants in the beds.

there was no alcohol at camp, for a number of very good reasons. so while everyone got soaked, the adults dried out. isn't it ironic...

random rhetorical question: if the technology had existed, would hemingway have tweeted?

nevermind. stupid rhetorical question.

through these many days of joy and sorrow and celebration and melancholy and laughter and reflection and too much wine and not enough wine, i notice that i wrote nary a word about any of it.

it wasn't for lack of content, so it must've been something else.

i have no idea what.

olivia, adieu

hold on, hold on to yourself
this is gonna hurt like hell

hold on, hold on to yourself
you know that only time will tell

--sarah mclachlan


olivia died this past weekend.

we don't even know why.

she was only eight years old or so, still young for a cat.

so we were prepared to go too far, spend too much, to get her healthy again. we've done it before, for the big dogs, and we were ready to do it again.

but we never got the chance.

she died overnight, at the emergency vet clinic, and we found out the next morning.

the children were sad that next day, but they seem to have gotten over it. the missus and i, however, unlearned long ago how to let go so easily.

it's not that there's a lack of life in the house. we have an abundance of the two-legged and four-legged variety.

it's that olivia was part of the fabric of that life. it's that she had a well-defined place amongst us, a vital space that is gone empty.

it's that we expected her to fill that space for many years to come.

and it's that i didn't even get the chance to say goodbye.

i'd rather be stayin' in

headin' out to san francisco
for the labor day weekend show...
and honey i didn't know that i'd be missing you so
come monday, it'll be alright
come monday, i'll be holding you tight

i'm heading out today for a different kind of show. over a different holiday. but i'm heading to san francisco nonetheless.

i'll be there over memorial day, and the boy's birthday, to boot. no, i'm not kidding, and i'm not amused.

true, we had an early birthday celebration for him, and all the spaceneedls were together in a far-flung place last week. so it's not like this is a tragedy.

but there are times when the work-life balance is all effed-up. and it never seems to be in favor of the "life" part.

funny how that works. ha ha. and yet, as previously noted, i am not amused.

desert update

apropos nothing, today the seattle city council voted to boycott arizona.

not me. i'm still not boycotting.

until after this weekend.

gold in the desert

politically, i would prefer to boycott arizona.

instead, we're just a few days from hosting an event in scottsdale.

go figure.

in addition to the wedding we're attending on saturday, all the spaceneedls near and far are gathering sunday for a celebration of my parents' 50th anniversary.

so, on this auspicious occasion we're setting aside the political for the personal and the parental. despite the fact that we'll be behind the lines, amidst a retinue of right-wing relatives.

for this celebration of the half-century, i'm totally prepared not to talk immigration law and ethnic studies and the "we're all arizonans now" gibberish spouted by the unemployed half-term governor from alaska. these opportunities don't come along every day, after all.

i can make this proclamation as long as no one on the far right runs their mouth without engaging their brain. if that happens, no one would blame me for gently inserting a stray fact or two into the mix. verdad?

where was i? oh, yes...setting aside politics. i can totally do that. i can simply bask in my parents' enjoyment, as well as the sunshine forecast for the event. i can turn my face to the sun while turning the other cheek. i can avoid politically charged topics while recharging my solar batteries.

i want to set a good example for the newlyweds, after all. not to mention for the happy couple married almost as long as i've been alive (kidding, mom!). come to think of it, my children will be in attendance, too. that's good examples for three constituencies at least...not that i'm counting.

what could possibly go wrong in that scenario?

my pledge to my parents: in the heat of the desert, i'll leave the heated rhetoric to others. worst case, i'll referee and send everybody to the bar...after which everybody flies back to their respective corners of the country.

after 50 years of parenting, it's the least i can do.

maybe one day my children will do the same for me.

where was junior?

it’s ken griffey junior’s fault.

if he hadn’t been asleep in the clubhouse, the mariners wouldn't be in an unrecoverable tailspin. they wouldn't have lost 10 of their last 12 games.

and the players wouldn't be freezing out a longtime beatwriter who had the nerve to report pesky facts about junior sleeping in the clubhouse during yet another season-killing loss.

we in america demand more from our sports icons.

where was junior when the oil rig blew up? sleeping in the clubhouse.

where was he when the arizona legislature passed its odious racial profiling legislation? snoring on his sofa.

didja know tiger woods pulled out at the players championship? and by that i mean "he walked off the course during the fourth round complaining of a neck injury." where was junior? putting on a sleep apnea clinic.

if the mariners want to pay the guy $5 million to be ichiro's designated tickler, that's their prerogative. if don wakamatsu doesn't think junior's a good pinch-hitting option over a catcher hitting a terrifying .140, hey, he's the manager.

but if junior's gonna be aleep at the switch while the rest the world falls apart around him...

well, he's no role model, that's for sure.

week and weary...

the oldest person in the world died this week.

The world's oldest person, a Japanese woman on the southern island of Okinawa, has died a week before her 115th birthday, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Kama Chinen, who witnessed three centuries, was born on May 10, 1895.

i don't think it was "her time to go," necessarily. i think she was just pissed off and wasn't going to take it any more.

after several decades to think about it, she might've been increasingly annoyed that yet another generation of kids was growing up with no respect for tradition. she might have been in high dudgeon that an unruly teenager would run onto the field during a baseball game. even so, surely she was shocked to learn that the penalty for running around the outfield during the all-important phillies-cardinals game is to be hit with a few thousand volts of electricity.

did you know that hundreds of people have died after being tazed? it's true! so it's entirely possible that the penalty for teenage foolishness at a ballgame might've been death. gee, baseball's a tough sport, isn't it?

speaking of capital punishment, sort of, cops in oakland blew away bambi this week.

"...under orders to "dispatch the deer," officers shot it seven times before it died. Animal control officers were also on the scene.

Officials said the deer was gunned down because 'it was acting disoriented in an urban environment.'"

kama chinen might've been disturbed to learn that the penalty for being confused in an urban environment is death. if that's the standard these days, the vast majority of city dwellers will not only not live to be 115---many of them won't last the week.

as someone said, if you were lost in the woods, you might be acting disoriented as well. good thing bambi and his friends aren't packing heat, then, huh?

do you think kama chinen remembered hurricane katrina and FEMA director michael brown? was she cursed, like the rest of us, by an indelible memory of the half-wit president saying, "brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"?

(if by that he meant brownie was doing a heck of a job killing people, as if he were holding their heads underwater himself, then yes, brownie did one hell of a job.)

that memory alone might've been enough to push kama chinen past her breaking point. but no, there was more. brownie wasn't done killing crowds with his laseriffic perspicacity. squinting conspiratorially on fox news this week, he said the obama administration may have welcomed the damage from the river of oil (still) pouring into the gulf of mexico. because...secretly, the administration didn't support the oil companies, and wanted to shut down offshore drilling altogether.

j'accuse!!

brownie, it should be noted, is an incoherent boob whose next intelligent syllable will be his first. the fact that he's expert at arriving on the scene of a bad situation and making it much worse makes him the perfect sort to feature prominently on fox news.

how grateful are the people of nashville that brownie wasn't first on the scene of their current disaster?

Amidst the news of a car bomb attempt in New York City and the oil slick inching towards the Gulf Coast, the flood that has devastated Nashville, TN and the surrounding areas got lost.

National news outlets are reporting the story, but the damage is far, far worse than viewers are hearing.

as bad as it is, it could be worse. the brown reaper could be there wading through the streets, swinging his scythe from the grand ol' opry to dollywood. waving a "mission accomplished" banner as flood-drenched, half-drowned residents flee in panic, leaving the city a shell of its former grandeur, to be replaced by an ersatz, disneyfied replica for the tourists who go home and say, "new orleans has really bounced back, we had a great time there!"

did i say new orleans? i meant nashville. obviously.

the list of the week's pernicious events goes on and on. and on. any of them could've been the last straw for someone frail and diminutive and exhausted by humanity's changeless idiocity. let's face it, when you're 115 years old, it probably doesn't take much to rush you up to the end of the diving board...and just a little bit beyond.

the way things are going, if this week hadn't gotten little kama chinen, the next one shirley would've.

double your money

mrs. spaceneedl has a job.

this is good in that she's been a burden on society these past several weeks. more deleteriously, she's been a burden on herself, because her self is greatly defined by her employment status.

when mama ain't working, mama ain't happy. and when mama ain't happy, run.

when she lost her last job, she was certain it'd be months before she found another. she had visions of calendar pages flying off with no prospects in sight. i thought she was wildly mistaken, and told her so, but she was undeterred. disaster was nigh, the wolf was at the door, and the cavalry was nowhere to be seen.

so far i've resisted the urge to say, "i told you so," but if the right moment comes along, i'm neither above it nor beneath it.

i understand her apprehension--we're built to be a two income family. we can hop along on one leg for short distances, but pretty soon we're face down in the mud.

the fact that 98% of the country is similarly situated comforts us not at all.

anyway, as of last friday the calendar pages are where they belong, the wolf has temporarily retreated (it's always at the door, you know), and our little house of cards is slightly more stable.

for the moment, mama's happy.

that should last at least until the work-related travel begins.

drill this

as the oil washes ashore, there's silence.

not a word is heard from the "drill here, drill now" crowd, petrochemical lapdogs whose teeth drip oil but whose voices have gone quiet.

it wasn't that long ago that they couldn't stop running their mouths...

"offshore oil rigs are perfectly safe and environmentally friendly and if you don't support domestic drilling you're not a real american."

the people spewing big oil lies are predominantly republicans, but even the obama administration recently opened the door to increased drilling off the east coast. that plan has been quietly put on hold.

oil is still pouring into the gulf by the hundreds of thousands of gallons a day. the spill is currently larger than jamaica, and it may be months before the leak is stopped. and yet--somehow--the jackals still insist they should be allowed to keep drilling...

"I would urge that people don't make a long-term policy decision in the midst of an emotional kind of crisis," said Exxon President Lee Raymond.

raymond, it should be noted, is the kind of person who would caution against gun control while the columbine shootings were still going on, and against airport security on 9/11.

are you ready for the images of dead and dying animals covered with oil? the few individuals that will be saved are a sliver of a nanofraction of the number that have already been killed, those that will be killed, and those that will sink beneath the waves and never be seen. and lest we forget, 11 workers were killed when the rig exploded.

the spill is expected to surpass the ecological disaster caused by the exxon valdez. that catastrophe occurred 20 years ago, and it's predicted that it'll be another 10 years before the arctic environment fully recovers.

so, gulf coast, only 30 years to go. yay!

the fishermen whose livelihoods have been wiped out by the spill are now lining up to work for the company whose product is killing the fish and shrimp and crabs in the gulf. is it bad karma to suggest BP's new employees might consider sabotaging the company whenever they get the chance? you know, stealing office supplies, taking long lunch breaks, severing their global communications network?

yes, probably it is. so we'll not suggest it.

instead we'll suggest that exxon and bp and lee raymond and sarah palin and newt gingrich and mary landrieu and all their oil-drenched sycophants go somewhere and drill each other--while the grownups figure out how to undo the damage they're so eager to continue inflicting on the world.

hot fun in the summertime

we're going to a wedding next month.

that's the good news.

the bad news is, it's in arizona.

i hope no one asks to see our papers.

i mean, what if the local constabulary thinks we look like illegal immigrants?

"papers!"

"yes, we read them. which ones do you mean?"

"you're about to experience an arizona saguaro a whole new way, boy. now show me your papers."

"yes, well, see we're not actually carrying any papers. unless you count this copy of the u.s. constitution. perhaps you've heard of it?"

that's not a conversation that would end well for us.

mrs. spaceneedl grew up in arizona. i lived there for three and a half years.

cosmically speaking, we got out just in time. just ahead of the collapse of the rule of law. the principle that says you can only be accosted by law enforcement if there's a reasonable suspicion that you've committed a crime.

a standard slightly above, "you look suspicious, bitch."

the premise that an illegal immigrant just has "a look" about them is a little nebulous, legally. as a source of illegal immigrants, given arizona's proximity to mexico, one might reasonably conclude that most of the offenders would look mexican.

therein lies a problem: in arizona many people look like they might be of latino, hispanic, or other spanish-esque descent. they account for up to a third of the state's population.

will arizona's already-stretched police departments stop and harrass all of them? if not, why not? aside from the fact that state's new "you all look alike to us" law is unenforceable, of course. put another way, if even the anti-immigration loon tom tancredo thinks this measure goes too far, you should conclude it's way, way out there. really.

as an aside, dollar for dollar, no one commits more crime than white folks. the people who threw the global economy into meltdown and liquidated trillions of dollars? overwhelmingly, they were zanetti-suited white boys. why aren't we profiling their ilk? better still, why aren't we putting them to work doing dishes, laying sod and pouring searing-hot tar on the neighbor's roof?

why aren't rednecks carrying signs demanding we raid high-finance workplaces, fence off lower manhattan, or close large bookstore chains?

perhaps arizona doesn't have an illegal immigrant problem. maybe, and i'm just speculating wildly here, arizona (like the rest of the country) has an illegal employer problem. maybe if employers weren't falling over themselves to hire cheap (and desperate) labor, those laborers would stop risking their lives to come here.

but then employers would have to hire americans, and as everyone knows, americans are lazy and don't want to work. so that's out.

arizona's official unemployment rate in march was 9.4% (which means its actual unemployment rate is significantly higher). that's a lot of people who don't want to work. coincidently, houses in the state's major metropolitan areas are so far underwater it may be years before they see sunlight again.

all of which implies that arizona has a lot of problems that have nothing whatsoever to do with illegal immigrants. and yet somehow the state government thought this was an ideal time to make themselves a laughingstock. and to help tourists decide other states might be better destinations for tourism dollars.

it's early yet. the wedding isn't until the end of may. it's possible cooler heads will prevail, and arizonans will decide their new law isn't such a good idea.

if not, we'll still have time to complete crash courses in "anti-constitutional rhetoric for dummies" and "how not to look all illegal-immigranty in arizona".

up in the air

the missus isn't wild about air travel.

she doesn't care much for crowded commercial flights. she breaks into a cold sweat at the mere suggestion of turbulence. and she white-knuckles take-offs and landings.

so you can imagine how she feels about float planes.

(hint: not good.)

but sometimes a gal's just gotta get up and go places. like victoria, bc, for example. and while she would've preferred a leisurely drive as prelude to a soothing ferry ride, circumstances sometimes call for speed.

a day trip for job interview, fer example.

thinking it might help to be able to see what was going on, the nice people at kenmore air let her sit next to the pilot. that turned out to be a mixed blessing. the takeoff was no big deal, but the landing...

heading in, the plane passed low over an outcropping of rocks. from the copilot seat, the rocks reportedly looked really big and really close. hopefully they won't make her pay for the ten indentations in the dashboard.

despite it all, the interview went well.

so well that the company invited her for another round of interviews in raleigh, nc.

she won't be driving to that one, either.

goal oriented

i skipped yoga today.

i planned to make up for it by by going for a run.

right after i put together the portable basketball goal that's been sitting in a box in our garage for, oh, six years.

big mistake.

put it together for the kids, mrs. spaceneedl said. we want them to spend their time outside getting exercise instead of indoors looking at lcd screens, don't we?

well, of course we do. there's no arguing with the perfectly reasonable.

"sure," i said, cheerfully.

big mistake part deux.

my simple plan, so innocent, so unassuming, was stampled by the assemblage of ill-fitting and unrelated parts coiled in that box.

i spent the next four hours reading instructions written by someone to whom english is at best a third language. wrenching together pieces that were lovingly machined by drunken cave sloths on a three-day tequila binge.

"Our presentation in content to the users instruction's is overall and quickly understood. There is reliable and correct that the information is offered in the instruction's and try hard to avoid the artificial error. The mistake that will be found in printing, if causes some careless mistakes, please forgive it."

of course. thanks for the heads-up.

Warning: may contain small parts, which some assembly required. For indoor and outdoor use only.

shut up. seriously.

"Take careful aim at bolts. To start bolt threads, hold bolt firmly in hole and attach after washed nut."

are. you. kiddingme? i just told the missus that i expect to visit the emergency department today.

"Do not have heavy pressure or big striking to such arm bracket."

okay, the arm brackets don't fit, and the holes therein are too small to accommodate the bolts you've provided. i'm literally drilling out the too-small holes with the largest drill bit available at ace hardware.

“Do not subject bolts to over-twisting.”

fuck you. and your stupid twisted bolts.

i skipped yoga. for this.

and the goal is still unachieved. unrealized. unassembled. we're hours away from shooting hoop one. assuming i dedicate half of next weekend to instruction pages 7-12.

generally i like to finish the projects i start. and i wouldn't mind shooting hoops in the spaceneedl driveway.

but right now, sitting here, i'd almost rather put milk and sugar on the remaining pieces and eat them for breakfast. almost.

another glass of wine, and i'll consider it for dessert.

next week: building a 42-foot yacht with MEMS-based solar propulsion. or a small hadron collider. both, if the weather cooperates.

right after yoga.

things to ponder when you're a pretzel

most of the time at yoga class, i'm in the zone.

which is to say, zoning out. concentrating on staying upright. until someone asks a question or exclaims painfully or tips over.

full disclosure: no one tips over more than moi.

i look forward to these classes every sunday because it's about the only time during the week i'm able to get out of my own head and out of my own way for awhile.

when concentration fails me, and i exit the zone, my mind wanders to some odd and distracting places.

{my knee is numb...i wonder if the feeling will ever come back...i have to pee}

sometimes class runs long. or is particularly arduous, degree-of-difficulty-wise. as noted previously, i'm not particularly pliable. nor am i practiced in the finer, philosophical points of yoga. these factors contribute to additional lapses in focus.

{these women are incredibly flexible...i can totally do this pose...if i dislocate something first}

the instructor, and many of the students, have been practicing a long time. they're annoyingly balanced and limber and strong. me, i'm willing to try really hard. and once in awhile the instructor rewards me with a compliment.

"good, michael...you're less awkward than usual today."

no, she's never really said anything unkind. in fact, she's been nothing but encouraging. she thinks that one day i might reach a state of santi, and get some bhoga from class, if i demonstrate some vidya and don't get all tangled up in granthi.

i think she's right.

{i have no idea what she just said...but she's smiling...quick, nod and smile back}

actually, i am better at this than when i started. i practice some of the poses on the rocker board and the bosu trainer during the week. octogenarians at the ymca regularly compliment me on my balance. i think they must feel sorry for me or something.

{maybe he has some kind of debilitating condition...and at such a young age...poor thing.}

i no longer get as sore in the days following class. i don't fall over quite as often. i stay in the zone a little longer each time. it's a restorative way to start a week that invariably takes a turn for the befeebling.

{that's not a real word...yes but it sounds kinda funny...is there any more champagne?}

* * * * *

semi-serious note: not a class goes by that i don't think of my friend kary, who also enjoys yoga. i bet she's pretty good at it, too. she doesn't know it, but she's an inspiration to me, sunday and every other day.

zombie earl eats tiger's brain

"I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are. And did you learn anything." -- earl woods

"i want to find out who the skanks were. i want to find out if you caught any communicable diseases. and i want you to hold still so i can bury this nine iron in your skull." -- elin woods

tiger woods is back! isn't that great? he's a famous golfer, you know, but he's been away from the game for awhile.

now, just in time for the masters, he's back with a new lease on life, a new escalade, and a new tv spot selling nike. that's nike the lifestyle, we have to assume, given that no products are mentioned.

isn't it a great spot?! tiger just stands there, looking sullen, as his long-dead father quizzes him about something very important. we're not sure what...maybe it's that young tiger swiped some rum from his parents' liquor cabinet. or maybe he blew off putting practice to go on the mike douglas show. or maybe it's that he had sex with an assortment of porn stars, escorts, and his neighbor's daughter.

it's a great spot! on so many levels, not the least of which is that earl woods allegedly was a huge womanizer. that's why having zombie earl crawl out of the grave to lecture tiger, like jacob marley hectoring ebeneezer scrooge, is such a brilliant, ironic ploy by team nike.

watching this spot, who could resist embracing the remorseful, misunderstood eldrick, and then rushing out to purchase an assortment of nike balls and, um, other equipment?

who could resist gluing their eyeballs to the tv set during a week of tradition like no other -- the masters? particularly when billy payne, chairman of augusta national golf club, also is lecturing tiger about the great golfer's alleged moral inadequacies.

augusta national, you know, is legendary for its upstanding tradition of excluding women, blacks, and other undesirables from its ranks. so payne knows of what he speaks when he says tiger is "a disappointment and a disgrace as a man and a role model."

the drama is palpable! can you feel it? and we haven't even talked about the golf yet! tiger is a really, really good golfer. did we mention that? that's why everything he says and does is so important, and why this commercial is so profound and really, really good.

yay, tiger! yay, nike! yay drama, and the 24-hour coverage thereof!

important safety note: watch out for zombie earl! he's eating brains. yours could be next!