Full of...
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Sitting in the emergency room last night, I was watching a little kid playing on the floor (which is the last place I would let a little kid play if I had one). Anyway, the kid struggles to his feet and I notice he has a slogan printed on the back of his pants. It says "Full of Attitude." I pointed him out to the Head Rat, who agreed that the pants were full of something, but we were guessing it wasn't attitude.

The only thing I can think of more boring than watching a liter of saline solution drip into an IV is watching two consecutive liters of saline solution drip into an IV.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, August 30 2005 10:10:27 PM

Michael Yon's Gates of Fire
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In spite of the inordinate amount of time I spend on the Internet and the volume of information I try to digest on a daily basis, I rarely blog in anything remotely resembling real time. Consequently, I am usually a bit (sometimes a lot) behind the curve when it comes to current events. Mostly I'm OK with that, because I think my best stuff is some of my essays and not the odd little notes I post when I find something interesting.

Michael Yon's latest dispatch from Iraq was posted a couple of days ago. From his website: "Michael Yon is an independent, informed observer chronicling the monumentally important events in the efforts to stabilize Iraq. His dispatches have the benefit of his life experiences without drawbacks based on deadlines or demands of marketplace." As opposed to the mainstream media, which gives us stories of bodycounts and car bombs written from hotels or paraphrased from official press releases, Yon is on the ground, with the troops, writing about our efforts in Iraq at the street level. He provides first-hand descriptions and pictures. His most recent dispatch called Gates of Fire is, I think, one of the most powerful things I have ever read.

An excerpt:

The next day, Iraqi Army and Police commanders were in a fury that LTC Kurilla had been shot. Some blamed his men, while others blamed the terrorists, although blame alone could not compete with disbelief. Kurilla had gone on missions every single day for almost a year. Talking with people downtown. Interfacing with shop owners. Conferencing with doctors. Drinking tea with Iraqi citizens in their homes. Meeting proud mothers with new babies. It's important to interact and take the pulse of a city in a war where there is no "behind the lines," no safe areas. It's even dangerous on the bases here.

In order for leaders of Kurilla's rank to know the pulse of the Iraqi people, they must make direct contact. There's a risk in that. But its men like Kurilla who can make this work. Even and especially in places like Mosul, where it takes a special penchant for fighting. A passion for the cause of freedom. A true and abiding understanding of both its value and its costs. An unwavering conviction that, in the end, we will win.

Make no mistake about Kurilla--he's a warrior, always at the front of the charge. But it's that battle-hardened bravery that makes him the kind of leader that Americans admire and Iraqis respect. Like the soldiers of Deuce Four, Iraqis have seen too much war to believe in fairy tales. They know true warriors bleed.

Once again, I'm behind the curve on this one, but even though it has been picked up by a number of well know blogs, starting with Intapundit, Blackfive, The Belmont Club, Captain's Quarters, Powerline, Michele Malkin and others, and I realize my efforts are minimal, compared to theirs, I think this is important. I often use the phrase "go read the whole thing" and I always mean it, but this is different. If you are a supporter of the War in Iraq, you need to read this and the other dispatches on Michael Yon's website. They will reinforce your belief in what we are trying to accomplish, the Iraqis who are beginning to do it, and the Americans who are helping. If you are not a supporter of the war, please read this anyway. I don't see how any American can read these dispatches and not be left with a feeling of absolute admiration and awe at the level of dedication and commitment on the part of our troops, whether you agree with the war or not.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, August 27 2005 08:41:24 PM

IPIP-NEO/Political Compass Meme
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This meme showed up at the Smedley Log this past week. I meant to get to it sooner, but...

At any rate, if you like this sort of thing, feel free to participate. Like Howard at the Smedley log, I have included the Chris Lightfoot political survey. Although I thought about not including the IPIP-NEO personality results (for reasons listed here) I decided to go ahead and post the major categories as 1) no one who knows me personally will be terribly surprised by the results and 2) in the unlikely event that I am actually being considered for hiring and the prospective employer figures out that these are my results and doesn't want me because of it, then they would, hypothetically speaking, probably have expectations about me that I couldn't live up to anyway, so we would probably both be happier if I weren't hired. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

____________________________________

Overview: This post is a community experiment with two broad purposes. The first is to create publicly accessible data about bloggers’ personalities, which may have sociological value in addition to being just plain fun. The second is to track the propagation of this meme through blogspace. Full details and explanation can be found on the original posting:

Instructions (to join in the experiment):

1) Take the IPIP-NEO personality test and the Political Compass quiz, if you have not done so already.

2) Copy to the clipboard that section of this post that is between the horizontal rules, and paste it into your blog editor. (Blogger users may wish to use ‘compose’ mode to preserve formatting and hyperlinks. Otherwise, be sure to add hyperlinks as necessary.)

3) Replace the answers in the “survey” section below with your own.

4) Add your blog information to the “track list”, in the form: “Linked title - URL - optional GUID”.

5) Any additional comments should go outside of the double lines, including the (optional) nomination of bloggers you wish to pass this experimental meme on to.

6) Post it to your blog!

7) Trackback to the post you found this on (if you know how).

Survey:

Age: 46

Gender: Male

Location: Kansas, USA

Religion: Christian (Protestant) (nominally speaking)

Occupation: Corrections

Began blogging: (dd/mm/yy): 24/02/03

Political Compass results

Left/Right: 3.50

Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.44

Chris Lightfoot Political Survey results

Left/Right: +2.1823

Idealism/Pragmatism: +3.2146

IPIP-NEO results

EXTRAVERSION: 0

AGREEABLENESS: 18

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: 5

NEUROTICISM: 99

OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE: 60

Track List:

1. Philosophy, et cetera - pixnaps.blogspot.com - pixnaps97a2

2. Parableman - parablemania.ektopos.com - p8r8bl9m8n18

3. Rebecca Writes - everydaymusings.blogspot.com

4. Ales Rarus - alesrarus.funkydung.com - ales2112avis

5. the smedley log - thesmedleylog.com - tsl181103

6. Ratlands - members.cox.net/cziltang

____________________________________

I've taken the Political Compass test before. I always end up in the "libertarian" quadrant. My scores would be larger on any of these tests except for my unwillingness to commit to the extreme ends of any Likert scale. The Lightfoot survey was no surprise. The personality results were not really surprising, but were a bit more extreme than I would have imagined. The only one which I might take real issue with is the Agreeableness score. One of the sub-scores is Trust, which I scored a flat 0 on. In retrospect, that is probably due to my excessive focus on work (which involves 100+ criminals on a daily basis). If I were re-taking the test and consciously thought about the "real" world instead of work, I might have scored higher. And, since I don't know anything about the validity of any of these tests, I'm not going to get too worked up about any of it.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, August 27 2005 07:01:24 AM

Mental Mush
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I have a bit of time this morning, so I was planning to write about a couple of things that have really been bothering me, but when it comes down to it, I find that I'm too depressed to write. That doesn't happen to me very often, as I have always used writing (in one form or another) in lieu of psychiatry. But, there it is. I don't seem to be able to string together anything remotely resembling a reasoned argument (let alone a well-reasoned argument) so I guess you get what you get. Here are few little tidbits that deserve comment, but won't get one from me today.

Hawaii has imposed a price ceiling on gas. (via the Agitator)

In England, a farm that breeds guinea pigs for medical research is shutting down its operation in the hopes that the animal rights activists who stole the corpse of the owner's grandmother from a local cemetery will return it to the family. (via Samizdata)

"Yesterday was a sad day for scientific integrity, as two high-profile studies misread and exaggerated the prevalence, causes, and costs of obesity." Hey, if the data don't support the right conclusion, just fudge a little, right?

 

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, August 25 2005 11:50:39 AM

More Tinkering
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I'm picking up a few suggestions regarding the picture at the top of the page. So, here's today's version. (Thank you to those that wrote to me about it.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, August 25 2005 12:00:49 AM

Please set your watch back
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There used to be a bumper sticker that was popular around here in the old yuppie neighborhoods that said, "Welcome to Kansas, Please set your watch back 50 years." Kind of catchy, and just the sort of semi-subtle, condescending comment on the backwardness of Kansas that was guaranteed to set you apart from the yokels, if you were a left-leaning, obviously intellectually and culturally superior yuppie type. Generally speaking, I find that sentiment annoying. I'm not going to argue that Kansas is the cultural center of the universe, but it is basically a nice place to live. I have roots here. My forefathers homesteaded here after the Civil War. For the most part I am proud of being a Kansan.

There are times, however, that being a Kansas is sort of embarrassing for a thinking, reasonably well educated individual. Mostly, I just cringe whenever the Kansas Board of Education meets, because they always make us look stupid. Most recently, they decided to include the teaching of the theory of Intelligent Design and criticism of evolution in the state science curriculum.

I have written about this subject before. My position has always been that science is science and religion is religion and dressing up creationism in pseudo-scientific language doesn't make it science. Recently, I have had to re-evaluate my position. It has come to my attention that there is more than one theory of Intelligent Design. So, I have come to think that teaching Intelligent Design may be appropriate as long as all the major theories of intelligent design are covered in the curriculum.

What changed my mind? This web site which promotes a theory of Intelligent Design I did not know existed. After careful consideration, I was swayed by this open letter to the Kansas Board of Education. I think the arguments presented are compelling. An excerpt:

OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.

Go read the whole thing, including responses from some Kansas School Board members.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, August 24 2005 12:44:27 AM

By the Light of the Night
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By the light of the Night

It'll all seem alright...

"Sweet Transvestite", The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Daytime really isn't my specialty. I do try to do the daytime professional 8 to 5 thing, but I'm not really very good at it. So, when the need arises and I have to work on second shift, it is kind of like going home. As frustrated as I get with things that need to be done or fixed, it just never seems quite so bad when I'm working into the night.

Of course, I may feel differently when I get home tonight.

On a different note, I wrote recently about filling out applications online as a symbol of hope in bad times. The main danger in such an exercise is that someone may actually take you seriously. Last week I got a call from an organization in Wyoming. They were really interested and frankly I was seriously considering it. In the end, reality set in after I figured up the costs involved. With Rat, Jr. in school and not self-supporting and the prospect of maintaining two households, it became apparent that it was something we just couldn't manage.

Still, it's nice to be asked.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, August 22 2005 11:21:09 AM

Of Backgrounds and Inadequate HTML
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Tinkering with the site tonight. I'm not sure I like it. I'm trying to give a feel for the area around here, although this is no more typical than the lake that is a couple of mile west of this picture or the wooded creek bottom that is directly behind where I took this. At any rate, this was taken about 20 miles from where I live.

Mostly, I'm having trouble with using the picture as a background. Specifically, I haven't figured out how to get the picture to stretch or contract if the column width changes. On my monitor at a resolution of 1280x1024 with a favorites bar on the side it looks OK, but without the sidebar the picture starts to repeat on the right hand side. On my old computer at 1024x768 it looks fine with or without the sidebar. On a monitor set at 800x600 the column is squeezed enough that the picture starts to repeat at the bottom.

So, if anyone out there has a quick way to make a picture stretch, I would appreciate the tip. Meanwhile, I will keep looking in tutorials.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, August 22 2005 12:31:44 AM

Sunday Night Quiz
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First, this is not the beginning of a regular "cat blogging" feature. I just can't do the quiz without the picture.

Second, this is not one of those "Which (fill in the blank) Character are you?" quizzes. Sorry. I'm just not that creative. This is simply a test of your ability to draw inferences from visual information

Based on this picture, Which of the following is most likely to be true:

A) The cat has delusions of grandeur

B) Someone in this household drinks too much Coke

C) The cat owns stock in Coca-Cola

D) Chimpy McBushitler invaded Iraq for the OIL!

If you answered A, you are correct. If you answered B, you are also correct. If you answered C, you are incorrect, but you are close, as the cat's (nominal) owner does own stock in Coca-Cola, so you get half a point.. If you answered D, your ultra-left wing delusions are interfering with your ability to find a modicum of enjoyment in a picture of a stupid cat.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Sunday, August 21 2005 08:26:19 PM

More Chicken sans Head
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According to Technorati, there were 10 posts in the blogosphere in the last day that used the phrase "like a chicken with its head cut off." This is, of course, of absolutely no real significance, just one of those little things I think about when I should be asleep. A bit of math suggests (assuming the Technorati figures are reasonably correct) that you could find this phrase on one out of every 1.5 million blogs in the last day. Considerably better odds than winning the lottery, for instance, which, last time I checked were on the order of 1 in 126 million.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Friday, August 19 2005 12:20:01 AM

Amphisbenic Bipolar Determinator
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OK, so I was on a roll tonight. I had this idea that I would prep the basic background for two posts and then use an amphisbenic bipolar determinator to choose which to write on and proceed to that post immediately. Sort of "semi-live" blogging. Except that I had this really clever intro to the project laid out but I couldn't remember the exact term "amphisbenic bipolar determinator."

I really hate it when I have an idea and want to make a quick reference to something I read once and I can't remember exactly what it was. In this particular case I remember the context and where I read it. It was in a gamebook actually written by Harry Harrison called "You can be the Stainless Steel Rat." I have a copy. Somewhere. Just can't find it now.

In case you aren't familiar with the term, "gamebooks" were early interactive fiction from the 70's and early 80's. I guess there was a series of "choose your own adventure" books. Basically they were early solo RPG's. In some of them you rolled dice and depending on the roll, you turned to a different page for a different part of the story arc or a different story outcome. The various chunks of the story were scattered through the book in an apparently random order, so that you had to work your way through the book to get to the end, which very well might be in the middle somewhere. With the advent of personal computers, gamebooks quickly became outmoded, and interactive fiction developed in a variety of ways.

One branch of this development is called hypertext fiction and is pursued seriously by some authors as a sort of non-linear form of prose (or poetry). The fascinating part of this for me is that you could take an old gamebook, like "You can be the Stainless Steel Rat" and type it into a computer, substituting the appropriate hyperlinks for the "turn to section 42" instructions and you would have the same story in hypertext fiction format.

Anyway, I've now spent two hours looking for "You can be the Stainless Steel Rat" and (after I gave up) looking for the text online. Eventually I found it. That's how I verified the correct term. Unfortunately, I don't have time to write either of the posts I was planning, so I will have to use the amphisbenic bipolar determinator tomorrow to choose between "The Circus that is Dennis (BTK) Rader's sentencing hearing" on the one hand and "The FSM and the Kansas School Board" on the other.

Not familiar with the Amphisbenic Bipolar Determinator? OK. Here is an excerpt from "You can be the Stainless Steel Rat" that should shed some light on the problem.

But what kind of a bomb did you throw? Here's how you find out. To determine the course of future events you will need to use an amphisbenic bipolar determinator.

What? You have never heard of an APB, which is the common term for an amphisbenic bipolar determinator? You've got one right there in your change. Take it out, that's right, a real APB.

Yes, all right, it's called a coin too, an even more common term for an APB. The operating instructions are...Ohh? You know how to operate an APB?

That's right, flip it into the air. Let it land, look at it. It it is :

HEADS turn to 106

TAILS turn to 189

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, August 17 2005 10:59:32 PM

Ni
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For reasons I don't understand and will make no effort to speculate about (other than to say it is obviously a slow news day) McQ at Q and O posted a link to Which Holy Grail Character are You?

Given that I'm saying it, it probably goes without saying that I couldn't resist another stupid quiz. I take some small comfort in the knowledge that I am a Knight who says NI. (I would have been really annoyed had it turned out I was Zoot.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, August 17 2005 08:39:02 PM

Jesus Loves You
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I do a lot of business with a company that supplies our police band radios and accessories. I was over there the other day when I noticed a car in the parking lot. It belongs to the rather pleasant young lady who is the receptionist/stock clerk there. She has a bumper sticker that says:

Jesus loves you and I'm trying

And I suspect she probably is. Like I said, she seems like a very nice young lady. Certainly nicer than me, as I won't even pretend I'm trying to love all of the rest of humanity.

Right next to "Jesus is my Homeboy," she also has another bumper sticker which (I think) provides more information about her than I wanted to know. It says:

Secondary Virginity: You can't change your past but you can change your Future

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to make fun of her, or her faith. And I'm all for honesty. I just think sometimes the whole world doesn't need to know every little detail.

In some way it seems like it is sort of the Jerry Springerization of faith; sort of admirable but profoundly tacky at the same time. Or maybe its just me.

(I'm also not sure I buy the artificial construct "secondary virginity" but I'll leave that for another time.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, August 16 2005 09:58:15 PM

Like a chicken with its head cut off
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Howard at the Smedley Log has some comments on my "can't win for losing" post. In them he links to www.idiomsite.com which as a list of idiomatic expressions and explanations for what they mean. So I started looking for some of my favorites. For "like a chicken with its head cut off" it says:

"Meaning in a frenzied manner. Poultry twitch and sometimes run around after decapitation. When poultry is decapitated, they begin to twitch and may sometimes begin to run around, that is how this idiom which means 'in a frenzy' comes from."

If you've never seen this in real life, it is pretty impressive. I first saw it when I was about 5, on my Grandparents' farm. Grandma grabbed a chicken and took it to a log standing on end which served as the chopping block for chickens (I never saw it used for anything else). She chopped its head off with a small hatchet they kept at the block. As soon as she did it the chicken jumped up and started running around the yard in roughly a circle. It seemed like minutes to me then, but was probably 20 or 30 seconds. I can still see that headless chicken running in a counter-clockwise circle around us, blood spurting out of its neck. It finally fell over and Grandma picked it up and started in on the job of plucking it. We ate it for dinner.

As long as I'm on a roll here, I might as well mention two of my other favorite idioms: "Going off half-cocked" and "flash in the pan".

"Going off half-cocked" is used around here to mean being so angry or upset that you rush off to take action without being really prepared and without any real prospect of accomplishing anything. On old muzzle-loading guns (and on old revolvers, at least the ones I have, although I don't have any that are less than 100 years old, so I'm not positive about modern ones) the hammer has 3 positions. It can be down against the nipple (where the percussion cap sits or against the firing pin in a revolver), it can be up half way or it can be fully cocked. When the hammer is fully cocked on a muzzle-loader and you pull the trigger, the hammer falls on the percussion cap which then ignites the powder in the barrel, causing the gun to fire. Half-cocked is a safety position. The hammer will not drop, whether or not you pull the trigger. Putting the hammer at half-cocked allows you to put a fresh percussion cap on the nipple without risking firing the gun. If the hammer were resting against the percussion cap and you dropped or jarred the gun, you could conceivably cause it to fire. If you needed to fire such a gun on short notice, you would leave the hammer fully cocked, so that pulling the trigger would fire the gun. If you forgot and left it at the half-cocked position, when you pulled the trigger, nothing would happen, and if you were being shot at, would put you at a significant disadvantage (if you consider being dead a disadvantage).

We use "Flash in the pan" to mean someone or something that creates a commotion and then just disappears into oblivion. In the music business you might call this a "one hit wonder". It goes back to the days of flintlock firearms. In a flintlock, instead of a hammer and percussion cap, the gun is fired by pulling the trigger which drops an arm holding a piece of flint down onto a piece of metal, causing sparks to ignite gunpowder in a small pan on the gun. The gunpowder burns through a small tube into the barrel, igniting the main gunpowder, and the gun fires. A "flash in the pan" comes from the occasional problem of the fire in the pan not traveling down the tube into the barrel and consequently, the gun not firing. In such a case, you get fire and smoke, but nothing else.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, August 15 2005 09:46:19 PM

Dain Bramage
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I thought perhaps today might be a good day. And it was, right up to the point I got out of bed. I would share the details of what was, all told, an eminently forgettable (and for that reason, I probably won't) day, but there is really no point. All topped off (in way that those who have never had college aged offspring will never understand) by writing the checks for Rat Jr.'s tuition for the fall semester.

I have nothing left to say.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Thursday, August 11 2005 08:52:31 PM

Either-or
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Aside from my deliberate use of this title as a Kierkegaard reference, it has little relevance for this post. A better title would have been Either-either-either-or, but that pushes the boundaries of even my tolerance for redundancy.

Onward.

I was sitting in the drive-thru lane at McDonald's today, exercising what little freedom to consume food of my choosing without outside interference there is left. (Look, I know the Food Police are after me. It's only a matter of time...) Actually, I was doing no such thing. Rat Jr. offered to buy me lunch (of a sort, if you consider two cheeseburgers lunch. Which I do, as it is more than I usually have time for).

In front of us in the line was one of those Yupster-mobiles; you know, the high-dollar SUV with the leather seats, DVD player and all of the chrome racks and running boards and gizmos that tell you that this is a fashion statement, because you know damn well that the thing is never going off-road because the paint might get scratched and that would reduce the re-sale value.Now, I have nothing against conspicuous consumption. My beef is with the fashion statement aspect. SUV's should be dinged and dented because they have been more than a couple of feet off the blacktop. Otherwise they are just really expensive station wagons. It is a function vs. form thing. I harbor the same disgust for people who turn pick-ups into low-riders. Pick-ups are for hauling stuff around and besides, it just looks wrong, sort of like a cardboard box blowing down the street in a high wind.

This particular weasel had a vanity license plate. It read LOANGOD. I'm pretty good at figuring out "plate-speak" but I have to admit this one just gives me the willys. Either this guy is offering to loan me his god, wants to borrow my god, is encouraging all of us to loan god to each other, or he is a bank loan officer with a really, really big ego. No matter how you slice it it just seems tacky to me.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, August 10 2005 11:28:01 PM

Can't win for losing
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You've got to admit, "Can't win for losing" is a pretty strange piece of verbage. My Grandmother used to say it a lot. I never quite got it. It was just one of those things I grew up hearing and didn't really think about all that much. When I did think about it, the idea of not even being a good enough loser to be the best loser just didn't make sense to me. I sort of got hung up on the semantics. After all, if you are the best loser you won, right?

I finally got it when a friend shot himself with a .357 magnum after getting caught sleeping with the dean's daughter at a small church school up north somewhere. He had the audacity to not die. Nothing like a botched suicide to make you look incompetent.

In today's victim culture, the functional equivalent of "can't win for losing" is being not quite pathetic enough to qualify for victim status.

So, in keeping with today's theme, I offer this bit of insight from one of my readers (thanks, K).

Scientists have recently proven that if it were possible to collect all of the people in the current world population who feel depressed; helpless; hopeless and/or trapped by a sense of inability to to improve their circumstances in life and line them up, end to end around the planet, approximately two thirds of them would drown.

Of course, like I saw on a billboard (for Jones Soda, I think) 74.6% of all statistics are meaningless.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Tuesday, August 09 2005 06:48:23 PM

The Dance of Denial
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It doesn't matter if you run away, It doesn't matter if you've gone away

When you're taking off the road, And you're locked outside the block

It's OK, Life's a dizzy

Far to busy, Never stops

Feeling heavy, Try to steady

It's all you've got

from "Breathe In" by Paloalto

The Head Rat and I were watching "Hellboy" this evening. "Breathe In" is in the soundtrack. I just thought it was a cool song. I'm not sure why I was thinking of it just now, as I'm listening to Zero 7 at the moment, but, as we have demonstrated repeatedly here, linear thought is not my specialty.

Actually, I was thinking about a previous boss of mine. When I first read about it, I was fascinated by the "Dance of Maya" which I saw described as the veil of illusion between us and that which is cosmically real, or something like that. Anyway, this former boss and I occasionally got the chance to just chat a bit and one time I was talking about the Dance of Maya. He told me that he much preferred the "Dance of Denial". He described the Dance of Denial as the social lubricant that allows us to continue to function in a semi-civilized manner when we have to operate in the midst of people we would rather choke the life out of. It is, he said, the art of pretending not to be repulsed by the very fact that these "others" are breathing our air. In short, it is the art of denying reality in favor of something more socially acceptable.

I thought he was just being clever, but over the years I've come to realize that this was one of those truly pivotal moments in my life. In reflecting on this concept, I realized that we all do it. For example, I have a relative who would just as soon spit on me as talk to me. And, I must say the loathing is mutual. But, we always smile and say polite things when we see each other. The Dance of Denial is easier than expending the effort to deal with the situation honestly, and besides, if we were to be honest, it would really inconvenience the people who have to interact with the both of us.

When I was younger my daughter used to ask me why I looked mad all the time. I used to tell her I was practicing to be a grumpy old man. The practice has paid off, but apparently I have peaked too soon. The percentage of people who annoy me by breathing my air is growing and I realize that I spend most of my days dancing the Dance of Denial. But, what else are you going to do, right?

It's all you've got

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, August 08 2005 08:15:19 PM

Fun Facts
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I saw this article (which in the archives is labeled "po_snow") in The Register the other day and just couldn't pass on it. Aside from the glib stereotyping (and if you are going to engage in glib stereotyping, anorexic models are a group that are pretty hard to generate too much sympathy for, right?) I find this absolutely fascinating.

Italian scientists have discovered that the river Po contains the remains of the consumption of more than 4kg of cocaine daily - equivalent to an annual snow festival of 1,500kg per year among the Po valley's five million inhabitants.

(...)

(Previous estimates) have now been literally blown out of the water by the test for benzoylecgonine, a byproduct of the body metabolising cocaine which makes its way into the sewer system in the normal way, and thence to the river Po.

The investigative team described the findings as "staggering", which comes as a bit of a surprise since the river Po benefits from the presence of world fashion capital Milan - generally considered to have the greatest percentage of anorexic models among its population and therefore the planet's highest per capita consumption of Bolivian marching powder

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, August 06 2005 11:55:49 PM

Of hope and lottery tickets
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One of my readers (no, that is not a typo; I really meant "readers" with an "s") e-mailed me about some of my recent posts. Since I haven't asked him for permission to use it, I won't reference it specifically, but in general, he expressed some concern about my, shall we say, state of mind. This is my (very slightly edited) response:

Wow. I thought my blog buddy Howard was the only person who ever read my stuff.

The 8/3/05 entry was very much about "some kind of funk". The only real problem is that it isn't a temporary thing. It has been building for quite some time now, and frankly has far less to do with work than with the rest of my life. Things at work are no worse (on the whole) than they ever are (at least from my perspective). After all, all we are trying to do is an impossible job with insufficient resources and the powers that be only hinder us with insurmountable obstacles. Same old same old, right? I mean, it has been that way in every corrections job I've had for the last 25 years.

My problem with mid-life crisis is that my options are limited. I'm not tempted by fast red convertibles, I have no desire to trade the wife in on a younger model, I'm not the kind to have hair transplants or liposuction and the Peace Corps doesn't need people with only corrections experience (I've checked. Of course, the State Department does, for Iraq, but I can't pass the physical). So, it all comes out in this sort of stuff. By writing like this I've saved enough on psychiatrists over the years to finance my nicotine habit.

Actually, the weird part is that I have been half-heartedly looking for a job for about 4 years. The Head Rat wanted to be closer to her grandparents in Portland, so I tried to oblige. Of course, they are dead now. The job-seeking thing is basically symbolic. It is the icon of hope (however unrealistic) that there is an "out." When I first started at the facility I had a couple of really bad years. The thing that kept me going was the knowledge that one of my former bosses was running a program in Valparaiso Indiana and at one time he had told me I could come work for him. It was a completely untenable option, as his facility was a private half-way house and they paid barely better than minimum wage. I would never have been able to make it with a sick wife and a small daughter, but the knowledge that there was an "out" was priceless. So, I make the symbolic gesture of filling out the odd application once in a while.

It is sort of like buying a lottery ticket. You know you aren't going to win, but for a few minutes (or hours, depending on your daydreaming schedule) you contemplate what you would do if you did win. Yes, it is escapist. The cool part about filling out an application on line is that (as opposed to a lottery ticket, which costs you a buck and is only good for two or three days) it is free, and is often good for a couple of weeks before you find out you didn't get the job.

(A personal note: Thanks, K, for the e-mail and for helping me break through my latest round of writer's block.)

by Cziltang 
Posted: Saturday, August 06 2005 11:09:43 PM

Ask DNA
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No one owes you,

no one's to blame

Save for bad genes or DNA

Ask your conscience the why and how

Do it then

Do it when

But, do it now

Ask DNA (from the Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack)

I guess I'm looking for a job now. It seems like it is time. I would rather not. I'm a bit out of practice. But you wake up one morning thinking if you just try a little harder, work a little longer, care a little more, something, anything, it will get better. And it doesn't. And you realize it really isn't about harder or longer or more. It just is what it is, and even if you fix what it is that is bothering you at the moment, two or three bigger problems will jump up to take its place before you put the finishing touches on whatever your brilliant solution is, or was, and it will just be more of the same tomorrow.

Of course, I do realize that in another place it would just end up being more of the same with a different backdrop, but still, how much worse could "different" possibly be, right? All I know is that it is a damned inconvenient time for me to have a mid-life crisis. I was kind of hoping to put it off until I was 50.

 

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, August 03 2005 09:24:00 PM

Interviews from Hell
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I hate job interviews. I haven't personally been to a serious job interview in almost 20 years. (I have had to go through the motions a couple of times as a sort of obligatory exercise in bureaucracy that allowed someone else to get a promotion.) But, I'm not one of those people who interviews well, and it has been a good thing that I've been transferred and had my position re-classified a number of times without the necessity of impressing someone in an interview.

As a supervisor I do a lot of interviews of prospective employees. I hate it almost as much as being interviewed. For entry level corrections positions, we usually get young people fresh out of college with their new degree in hand. You can ask all the questions you want, but most are smart enough to have prepared for the likely questions and all you get is a bunch of more or less politically correct crap. The only real fun in these things, and the thing that is most telling about how someone will do in working for us are the questions that are so offbeat that no reasonable person (in a correctional interview, at least) would be prepared for them. Personally, I like to use ones that have been attributed to the Microsoft interview process. Specifically, "why are manhole covers round?" The point is not for the interviewee to get the right answer, but to see their reaction when they come up against something totally unexpected. Without yelling and screaming at the prospective employee, that's about as good as we can do to induce the kind of stress they are likely to experience when something completely unexpected happens on the job. Personally, I have a lot more respect for someone who just says "I don't know," than someone who tries to make up an answer. Making up answers when you don't know is particularly dangerous when dealing with correctional clients. They may buy it once, but sooner or later they figure out you are full of crap. (Usually sooner.)

The only real problem with that kind of approach is that a lot of our prospective employees are fresh out of college and don't have a whole lot of experience in interviewing and although, with training, they would be fine on the job, they just don't have any confidence in their interviewing skills. So its kind of a balancing act. Sometimes we see what we want. Other days, like today, things fall apart. One young lady was so freaked out about her lack of experience today that she started crying. I've never had to offer a tissue to an interviewee before.

The worst of it is that she was barely older than my daughter.

God, I hate interviews.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, August 01 2005 11:32:06 PM