The Decemberists (Live in Concert, 2005 Edition)

Update: the Decemberists have released a BitTorrent of their latest video, 16 Military Wives. It’s a great song!

My favorite Portland band, The Decemberists, play a show at the Crystal Ballroom tonight. I won’t be able to catch the concert, but I did see them on last night in Eugene, the first stop on their new tour.

The Decemberists have a new album due out Tuesday, which means you can be sure of one more entry on them before the end of the month. Previous entries on The Decemberists include: The Decemberists, The Decemberists (Live in Concert), Red Right Ankle, and The Decemberists (recorded live from KEXP).

I drove to Eugene on a cold and blustery afternoon which featured the first rain the valley has received in nearly a month. I had a warm and hearty meal with Paul and Susan (about which more tomorrow), and then we headed to the show.

As we walked into the Woodworkers of the World meeting hall, I was startled to hear somebody say “hey” to me. There stood Tom Denton, whom I mentioned yesterday as the supplier of one of the songs for my latest mix. He’s the only other person I know in Eugene besides Paul and Susan; what are the odds that I’d run into him at this concert?

The Woodworkers of the World meeting hall (or Wowhall) is a smallish, boxish sort of room, perfect for a mid-week concert aimed at college kids. The space held a few hundred people, most of whom were dressed in what must pass for the latest in fashion: dirty clothes and pierced lips. (I hadn’t realized that piercings were still so popular. It seemed that everyone present was required to have some part of their head pierced, and preferably multiple parts. I saw one guy with two studs in his upper lip; it looked like he had fangs. I felt naked.)

By design, we missed the opening act. In fact, we arrived just as The Decemberists were taking the stage. The crowd cheered. Toward the front, some bozo with a digital SLR took photo after photo after photo. Flash flash flash. (This went on for the entire show.)

Colin Meloy, the band’s lead singer, has an easy, jocular repartee with an audience. He’s chatty. “Ah, Eugene,” he said. “I went to school here.” And, of course, the crowd loved it. “Isn’t it finals week?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you be back at the dorm studying?”

The group began the show with the ever-bouncy “Billy Liar”:

Billy Liar’s got his hands in his pockets
Staring over at the neighbor’s, knickers down.
He’s got his knickers down.

They played old favorites, of course, but also featured a fine sampling of stuff from the new album. I’ll admit that I didn’t care for all of it, but some of the songs — “Mariner’s Revenge Song”, “Sixteen Military Wives” — were classic Decemberists. (Which means precious clever lyrics, bouncy strings, a smattering of accordion, and lots of songs with nautical themes.)

Midway through the show, Colin made an announcement. “We’re going to do a cover song,” he said. “We’ve never done this live before. Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Petra Haden.” (The group made some lineup changes recently, adding Petra as vocalist and violinist. This was her first show with the group.

Paul leaned over to me: “Hounds of Love,” he said, referring to a twenty-three-year-old Kate Bush song.

“Ha ha,” we laughed at Paul’s silly joke.

Our laughing faded quickly as we were shocked to hear the tinkling piano that marks the beginning “Wuthering Heights”. It wasn’t “Hounds of Love”, but it was a Kate Bush song. How strange is that? Stranger still was that Petra did a marvelous job with the song. “Wuthering Heights” is difficult, yet she nailed it. The crowd roared, giving the biggest applause they’d give all night. (I wanted to shout “Petra rocks!” — about as clever a pun as I’ll ever devise on my own — but the crowd was too loud, we were too far back from the stage, and I was too shy.)

It was a great show. The Decemberists shine in live performance, especially in a small venue like the Wowhall. For a time, I hoped to catch them again the following night at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland, but it just didn’t work out.

Will the band ever become truly popular? I doubt it. They’re too smart. But they’re certainly worth a listen if you’ve never heard them before. Amazon has all their albums for sale, including the newest, Picaresque; their last album, Her Majesty, which is loaded with great songs; and their first album, Castaways and Cutouts, which is perhaps less mannered and more easily accessible.

Peanut Battle

There was a peanut battle outside our house yesterday. I took photos. (Some of these are blurry, or underexposed, or mangled by iPhoto. I apologize; I’m learning a new camera. Also, on my monitor at work, some of these photos are very, very dark. )

Every morning she’s home, Kris feeds the birds. She fills the seed feeder with millet and thistle. She puts peanuts and dried corn-on-the-cob in the squirrel feeder which hangs from the walnut tree. She places more peanuts in the feeder outside the kitchen window, along with a pile of birdseed and a new block of suet (if necessary).

[Photo: The scrub jays love the peanuts]

We’re not sure how the birds know to look for new food, but they do. Especially on Sunday mornings. The scrub jays are usually first to find the food, and they’re the noisiest about defending it. They love the peanuts. So do the other birds.

In fact, for a short time, our yard becomes the site of a great Peanut Battle.

We’re still puzzling out the rules to this war. Only one jay can be on a feeder at a time. If another jay swoops in before the first is finished, the newcomer is sent flying with a tremendous squawking chatter. However, if the jay on the feeder takes too long to choose a peanut (are some better than others?), a new jay can chase him off.

If the starling appears, the jays retreat. They’re scared of her. But the starling doesn’t really eat much; she simply likes to sit at the feeder, glowering at the other birds, challenging them to fight.

L: A jay lands at the feeder, R: The mean ol’ starling

L: The stupid band-tailed dove, R: The flickers perform their mating dance

A couple of band-tailed doves live nearby. They’d like to eat, too, but they can’t seem to figure out how. They see the other birds flying to the feeder, so they come over to join them, but they’re too stupid (and perhaps too big) to land inside where the food is. They land on the roof of the feeder and pace back-and-forth, staring stupidly at all the jays that have peanuts in their mouths.

While the big birds eat, the little birds wait their turn. Even the flickers — which are at least the same size as the jays and have deadly-looking bills — yield. They’re too polite. And besides, yesterday the pair that lives in our trees seemed more interested in each other than in food. They fluttered around the lawn, nodding and bobbing, circling each other. We think they’re preparing to mate.

It’s important to note that the jays don’t actually eat the peanuts. They take the peanuts and they hide them in the yard. They tuck them in corners of the flower bed. They stick them in the middle of the grass. They cover them with leaves. The jays think they’re planning ahead, storing nuts for later, but they’re really just extending the Peanut Battle.

When the feeding begins, the crows swoop in. They perch on the wires and in the branches of the walnut. They watch the jays tuck their precious peanuts away. When all of the work is done, the crows swoop down to undo it.

L: The crows work methodically in teams, R: They often find peanuts beneath leaves

It’s fascinating to watch the crows at work. They cluster in twos and threes, pacing the grass systematically. They snatch up leaves and cast them aside. They check the dirt. They find many peanuts, and they eat them instead of saving them. (In the fall, the crows gather walnuts. To open them, they fly above the street and drop the nuts over and over and over until the nuts crack.)

The picture below may not look like much, but that’s simply because I don’t have a long enough lens to show all the detail:

[Photo: a complex tableaux in which the Peanut Battle rages

That, my friends, is the Peanut Battle raging in full-force. In the left of the frame is a crow, picking through grass and leaves, searching for hidden loot. Up and to the right, you can see Filbert, the squirrel. The squirrels love the peanuts, too. (They dominate the feeder in the walnut tree; the jays yield to their mammalian nature, I guess.) Sunday morning, Filbert was scurrying around this little patch of ground looking for peanuts. He chased off all interlopers: the flickers, the jays, and and the starling. If you stare hard, you can almost discern the jay beneath the rhododendron, to the right of the squirrel. She’s hiding a nut. Clinging to the dogwood at the right of the frame is one of the flickers (the male, I think). He uses his woodpecker grip to hang from the tree while he waits for a spot at the feeder.

There are other birds around, too, of course, all playing some role in the Peanut Battle:

The leftmost bird above is a Steller’s Jay. She likes to eat from the feeder at the walnut tree. She’s not as brazen as the common jays, and is much more skittish around humans. And cats. The next photo is another (horrible) photo of the flicker. We like our flickers quite a bit, and I look forward to getting some good shots of them eventually. The third photo is of one of the two birdbaths. These get constant use during a Peanut Battle, though we’re not sure why. In this case, the robin has no hope of winning a peanut from the jays, so he’s contenting himself with a five-minute bath.

The final picture above shows a mystery bird. This bird has made a couple of appearances lately, but we can’t get close enough to it to really note its markings. It seems to have a blood-red head. Its wings are dark, with a long white stripe. We can’t recall what its chest looks like. I say this bird is a pine grosbeak, but Kris is unconvinced. (Maybe it’s this house finch we once saw at Jeremy and Jennifer’s?)

We enjoy birdwatching. It’s one of the highlights of our new house. On Sunday mornings we stand in the kitchen window for ten minutes, or twenty, or thirty, and we watch the Peanut Battle unfold.

(We’re not the only family members who like the birds, either.)

Comments

On 31 January 2005 (07:39 AM),
al said:

Nice details and photos. My neighbor hand feeds peanuts to the scrubs, so I’m going to try it soon. They seem a little skittery, but he claims they’ll take the p-nuts right from his hand. How big is the mystery bird? It almost looks like a pileated . . .

On 31 January 2005 (08:04 AM),
J.D. said:

That’s amazing that your neighbor can feed the jays right from his hand.

Kris and both estimate that the mystery bird is about the same size (or perhaps a little smaller) than a jay. I’ve only seen it once, and that was from far away (as you can tell from the photo). As I say, it seemed to have a blood-red hood that didn’t end evenly around its neck. Its wings were dark with a white stripe. (Though from the photo, it seems almost as if perhaps it has a white breast.)

According to Sibley: a jay is about 11.5 inches long, a grosbeak is 9 inches long, and a pileated woodpecker is 16.5 inches long. We did see a pileated woodpecker once last fall, and this isn’t it. The head is definitely different.

On 31 January 2005 (08:17 AM),
Tiffany said:

This is only a little related to your bird watching story.
This weekend we went to Petsmart and were amazed by one lady that brought in her 5 cats to push around in the cart! I mean what cats like to travel in the car?
But far cuter, was a second lady that parked her cat, in a cart, right next to the bird cages. The cat was really enjoying the show from only a foot away.

On 31 January 2005 (08:54 AM),
Tammy said:

Jd, we have these too and I really think they are a red breasted sapsucker; a kind of wood pecker. Read this and see: http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/id/framlst/i4030id.html

On 31 January 2005 (10:13 AM),
J.D. said:

Ding ding ding ding!

Tammy is absolutely correct. I’m not sure how I missed this in Sibley, but the mystery bird is a red-breasted sapsucker. The drawing in the book looks exactly like the bird I saw. (And it’s 8.5″ long, which seems exactly right.)

Based on the drawings, I would guess that the specimen in question is young male adult southern red-breasted sapsucker. (The red on the northern variety extends to its chest, whereas the red on this ends around its neck.)

On 31 January 2005 (10:21 AM),
Lynn said:

I loved this entry. My cat and I both love our birds and squirrels.

In the magazine Birds and Blooms they sell a cardboard person to be set in a chair, it’s hand extended, to get the birds used to feeding from it. Then you can just move the cardboard person and take its place, or so the theory goes.

Where do you guys purchase your birdseed, peanuts and suet? You mentioned once that you can find suet on sale for 50 cents each – cheapest I’ve found is about 80 cents.

On 31 January 2005 (10:39 AM),
Kris said:

Lynn–

Coastal Farm store occasionally has a case of 12 suet blocks on sale for $5.99. We stocked up and bought 2 cases last time. Good thing we have a cellar!

Thanks for the bird ID help, Tammy!

On 31 January 2005 (10:56 AM),
tammy said:

Happy to be of assistance, dear cousins.

On 31 January 2005 (02:20 PM),
Amanda said:

Great entry! Now I think I will just have to buy some sort of bird feeder. In Florida it’s not nearly as exciting as in Oregon, apparently. I might see some Mockingbirds, Blue Jays, Crows and the occasional Cardinal (or usually two).

On 31 January 2005 (03:39 PM),
John said:

Great photos. The squirrel vs. bird battles continue at our place. On Sunday, *everyone* was out in the yard battling for seed. Do you ever get the flock of those small finch-like birds? They descend on the ground eating seed. Also, been meaning to ask you: what’s up with the Save Kellog Lake from the Transit Center signs near River Road? Leftovers from last November?

Tangerine Dreams and Marshmallow Skies

Sometimes, there’s a man…

One year in the waiting, five days in the making! (Click on stuff!)

Rearing in quaffed monk, you stun me by employing eight windows when the priest is but iodine.

Ming the Merciless says:

From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee. For hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee.

The richest man in the world:

(No joke)

Dustmites the world over love you for your feet.

Homer: A gun is not a weapon Marge, it’s a tool. Like a butcher knife, or a harpoon, or… or an alligator.

Homer: Lisa, if you don’t like your job you don’t strike. You just go in there every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.

Homer: Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?

Homer: Marge, don’t discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals! (pause) Except the weasel.

Homer: He has all the money in the world, but there’s one thing he can’t buy.
Marge: What’s that?
Homer: (pause) A dinosaur.

Homer: Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.

!!!!!!!! 100% NUDE ALL TEEN STICK FIGURES !!!!!!!

You look like someone who has lunched poorly and who has no expectations for dinner.

Eleven Worst Songs of 2004

Free throw contest

Remember Jesus?

[Jesus Quintana tongues his bowling ball]

Comments

On 24 January 2005 (12:37 PM),
dowingba said:

Oh man, I too remember when Simpsons was good. By the way, I turned my speakers down almost instantly upon loading this page. How dare you. I trusted you, man.

On 24 January 2005 (01:52 PM),
Mom (Sue) said:

I laughed when I heard your sound upon opening this site because I recognized the line and the movie instantly, having just rented it from Netflix and sent it back after watching just 1/2 hour of it. I especially don’t like John Goodwin as a psycho — I prefer him as a big teddy bear.

On 24 January 2005 (01:57 PM),
J.D. said:

Well, I’ve had three different people tell me that the sound I’ve embedded in this page causes problems, and each person told me it causes a different problem.

I guess this is why I don’t usually embed sounds in my pages. Watch out next January 23rd, though, because there may be another… :)

On 24 January 2005 (02:32 PM),
Drew said:

That was Khan, not Ming – methinks.

On 24 January 2005 (04:24 PM),
Aimee said:

Maude Lebowski, baby … Who else? (For the record, this is one of the best internet quizzes I’ve seen in a long time …) Did you really come out as The Jesus, Jd?

On 24 January 2005 (04:25 PM),
Denise said:

The embedded sound works for me, man.

On 24 January 2005 (04:31 PM),
Joel said:

According to the “Which Big Lebowski character are you?” quiz:

Why don’t you check it out? Or we cut of your Johnson!

On 24 January 2005 (04:33 PM),
Joel said:

Oh, crap. I didn’t do that link thing right. Which is just the sort of thing the Dude would do, right? Or is that more of a Donny thing?

According to the “Which Big Lebowski character are you?” quiz:

I am Jeff Lebowski, but nobody calls me that. They call me the dude, or his dudeness, or el duderino if they’re not really into the whole brevity thing.
Why don’t you check it out? Or we cut of your Johnson!

On 24 January 2005 (06:46 PM),
J.D. said:

No, Aim, I did not come out as Jesus. I, too, am Maude Lebowski. “I can’t suppress my instinct to be a mother.”

Man vs. Skunk: A Photo-Essay

Regular foldedspace readers are aware that we’ve been harboring a skunk under the office for the past two months. The odor was fairly strong at the end of October, but faded for several weeks until erupting in a perfect storm of stench earlier this month.

Today, I’d had enough. I made it my crusade to eliminate this odor from our lives. Here’s the story of J.D. vs. the skunk.

This is the old trailer house in which our offices are housed.

[photo of trailer house in which our offices are housed]

My office is on the left-most end of the trailer. It is from here that the odor emanated. It was strong. It was nauseating. It was unbearable. We evacuated my office, moving all necessary paperwork and computers to other offices. When the smell would not go away, we called in a company called the Critter Gitters. They set a trap in order to lure the skunk from under the house.

[photo of the skunk trap that did not work]

We left the trap outside for about a week, but to no avail. No skunk. Last night, it dawned on me: a whole host of factors seemed to indicate that the skunk might not be alive to take the bait; it was likely that the skunk was dead. This seemed so probable, in fact, that I prepared to crawl under the trailer to retrieve the corpse without taking any pre-cautions in case I might encounter a live animal (or worse, more than one).

I bought a box of Vicks VapoRub. (I was just going to buy Vaseline, but Kris noted that Vaseline doesn’t really have much of an odor.) Would this stuff work?

It certainly had a strong odor of its own! I applied liberal gobs of it to my moustache and to my nose (including inside my nostrils).

Ouch! Ouch! Vicks VapoRub burns when applied in large doses. And it smells awful.

It smells no worse than skunk, though. Fully armed with two flashlights, the digital camera, a garbage bag, a dustpan, some eye protection, and a pair of gloves, I set off to find my skunk.

There’s no easy way to maneuver under the trailer house. The crawlspace is small, especially toward my office. I simply sucked it up and dove in…

[photo of me crawling under the trailer house]

The ground under the trailer is basically solid earth. Or, at this time of the year, a cold, hard mud made damp from weeks of rain. Much of the trailer’s underlayment has been torn away, and insulation hangs in wads. I’m almost certain this damage was caused by the three ornery boys who grew up here.

[photo of the crawlspace beneath the trailer house]

It took some time to determine the best path. Eventually, I opted to skirt the edge of the house, crawling around the wheelbase.

My second obstacle was the sewer pipe. I thought about crawling under it, but elected to go around again.

Soon after, though, I found myself stuck, wedged between a metal joist and the sloping ground. I had to crawl backward to get out from under the house. I removed my jacket and my sweatshirt, leaving only a turtleneck. Minimal protection, but my body was much thinner now. This time, I made it through the tight place. Almost immediately, I found the dead villain.

It took several more minutes of maneuvering to reach the body. It was a tight fit, as I’ve said. And the whole time, the skunk’s scowling face stared at me. His little black beady eyes were knowing and evil. They gave me the heebie-jeebies. Oh, and let’s not forget the stench. Even though I was making every effort not to breathe through my nose, it took enormous discipline to keep from wretching. It would not have been fun to crawl through my own vomit. By breathing through my mouth, I avoided most of the stench, though my throat did begin to burn.

I wrestled the skunk into the garbage bag, and then dragged it outside.

I felt triumphant! I also felt sick. Though the Vicks VapoRub did a fine job of suppressing the smell, I could taste the musky foulness.

[photo of the dead skunk resting on the lawn]

What then to do with the skunk? “Throw it in the trash!” suggested Jeff. This seemed like an awful thing to do, simply shifting the odor to somebody else. “Burn it!” he said, but I was worried about the stench of burning flesh. Eventually, we hit upon an imperfect solution: we buried the thing on the furthest corner of the property, near the road.

[photo of me digging the grave for the skunk]

Now we’re waiting for the trailer to de-odorize. Most of the rooms already smell fine. My office, however, stinks, probably because the skunk died just below it. Perhaps, too, it stinks because Nick dowsed all of the draperies in vinegar. sigh

Comments

On 21 December 2004 (02:09 PM),
pril said:

you are one brave mofo, JD. That’s all i can say. ;)

On 21 December 2004 (02:14 PM),
Scott said:

J.D. wins best post of the year. Hands down.

On 21 December 2004 (02:17 PM),
Denise said:

Ok, that is probably the scariest and stinkest thing I can imagine. That dead skunk picture is disgusting. I can’t believe you did that. Being under the house would have scared the heebie jeebies out of me just on it’s own, let alone having to find THAT thing and bag it!

Thank goodness I am NOT a man and will never have to crawl around under a house looking for dead varmints.

On 21 December 2004 (02:27 PM),
mac said:

next task? Find the skunk’s mode of entry and bar any future spelunking by J.D. Unless he secretly liked it.

On 21 December 2004 (02:34 PM),
Kris said:

How will he smell when he gets home, I wonder? Great job, Custom Box Hero!

On 21 December 2004 (02:35 PM),
J.D. said:

Find the skunk’s mode of entry, Mac? You mean any one of the dozen places where the skirting is missing? :)

I keep meaning to post this anecdote. It’s funny (and skunk related), though it’s also a bit like the whisky anecdote:

One day last week I had to spend a couple of hours in the office before visiting customers. Though I couldn’t smell skunk on my clothes when I left, I knew the odor was there. “I can’t make sales calls smelling like a skunk,” I thought. “What can I do?”

It occurred to me that I should stop by home and pick up my pipe. I did so. I puffed it in the car for about ten minutes, bathing in the rich aroma of cherry tobacco.

When I got to my first appointment, I realized that I probably smelled like Tony used to: like the butt end of a cigarette. I took a ten minute walk, hoping the odor would fade.

As I carried the Christmas basket (filled with tons of goodies) into my customer’s office, I noticed a “Proud to be a Non-Smoking Workplace” on the door. Great.

I greeted the client with a hearty “Ho ho ho”. The basket was well-received. But after a minute or so, the client frowned — only slighlty — and backed a step away from me.

After this, I drove around for twenty minutes with all my windows rolled down, hoping the cold, brisk wind would all the odors from my body.

I’ve had a disproportionate number of Idiot Stories this winter, haven’t I?

sigh

On 21 December 2004 (02:47 PM),
Jeff said:

The most obvious mode of entry for mr. skunk would be the very same mode of entry used by JD to retrieve said skunk.

On 21 December 2004 (03:11 PM),
Mom (Sue) said:

Don’t worry, Kris, my shower was used to remove whatever residual odor there may have been from J.D. (although he didn’t smell like skunk when he came down here, amazingly enough). There is a bit of the mud from under the trailer house in my back entryway and bathroom, and Silver was spooked by J.D.’s muddy shoes left in the back entryway until I took them outside. I don’t know if that was because of J.D.’s scent or the skunk’s. :-)

On 21 December 2004 (05:14 PM),
Courtney said:

How did you get the skunk to show his pearly whites? That’s what I want to know.

Thanks for bringing levity to an otherwise dark day. I needed a good story and a good laugh!

On 21 December 2004 (10:15 PM),
Joel said:

Congratulations, very bravely done! Is there a skunk-retrieval bonus at CBS? And if not, shouldn’t there be one?

On 22 December 2004 (08:38 AM),
jenefer said:

Cecily & I want to know why you didn’t use a “custom box” instead of a plastic bag to retrieve the skunk.

On 22 December 2004 (09:01 AM),
al said:

I regret that I am unable to attend the funeral. I suddenly remembered my dental appt. at the same time. I don’t know why.

On 22 December 2004 (09:12 AM),
Andy said:

Wow – this is nastier than the dead rats I ferreted out of our crawlspace.

I’m just glad there wasn’t the extra stank.

On 22 December 2004 (10:19 AM),
Amanda said:

Wow. I can totally empathize, although clearly a stinking, rotting dead cat under our house can’t possibly have been as bad as a dead skunk. Eek!

Even more gruesome, however, was the other dead mummified cat that was found under out house. But I wasn’t nearly as brave as you. We hired someone to remove the stinking carcasses.

On 22 December 2004 (09:17 PM),
Andrew Parker said:

Wow. A (rare) compelling argument for slab floors.

On 22 December 2004 (10:01 PM),
Betsy said:

I’m still stunned that one of your necessary pieces of equipment was your digital camera. I’d have wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible, which would have meant no time for pictures…

On 23 December 2004 (01:44 AM),
Schmela said:

Great post. I agree with Betsy about the camera, although I’m not sure I could ever go into a crawlspace looking for a dead skunk…camera or no camera.

You should read a chapter in Gary Paulsen’s book, Winterdance, entitled “Major Wrecks.” There is a passage about some evening training he did with his sled dogs that may just be the wildest, most hilarious skunk story I’ve ever heard. I had difficulty reading it because I was laughing so hard.

Hope you have a skunk-free Christmas.

On 23 December 2004 (10:00 AM),
Lynn said:

I love the difference in the pictures of “JD prior to entering” and “JD post skunk-gathering”. The facial expressions are great.

On 23 December 2004 (11:06 AM),
Amanda said:

By the way, you remind me of Jonathan Frakes, especially in that last photo.

On 23 December 2004 (09:50 PM),
grannyj said:

Have you given and thought or concern as to WHY you had a dead skunk under your office trailer?

Our Wild Kingdom

It is a cold, damp Sunday morning in the middle of December. Grey.

On the lawn, three plump crows strut purposefully from here to there, pausing to pluck worms or bugs or seeds from the grass. They are together, but apart. They’re like teenage boys. They are cool. They are aloof.

In the garden, among the grass cover crop, a Stellar’s Jay flits from spot-to-spot, finding food the rooks have overlooked. The crows swagger; the jay glides. She is the prom queen, conscious that all eyes admire her beauty.

Jasmine, the neighbor’s Golden Retriever, stands behind the fence, tucked into the gap in the arborvitae, panting. Her black, beady eyes follow the movement of the birds. She shifts her weight from paw-to-paw, barely containing the coiled spring inside her. Were the fence removed, she would bound at them, snatch one in her jaws. Jasmine is the wallflower: the kid without a date.

The squirrels are the class clowns. Two of them have climbed down the walnut tree to feed at the nut basket. One of them is perched upon it, gorging himself on acorns and filberts and seeds. He’s finished the corn cob we put out yesterday, and has flung it to the lawn — a demand for more. The second squirrel makes repeated — but futile — attempts to snatch a seed or a nut from the basket. The first squirrel will not allow it. He shifts position to block the interloper, chases him, sometimes rakes a claw across his haunch. He will not share his bounty. The squirrels bicker in a fierce chatter.

The fat grey neighborhood cat, Crenshaw, is curled in a ball, sleeping on the porch, warm on the blanket we’ve placed there for him. He doesn’t care about the birds, or the squirrels, or the dog. There is sleep to be had and by god! he means to have it. He wakes when I inadvertently slam the door to the coat closet, but only for a moment. He is the apathetic outsider.

And somewhere, somewhere Simon and Nemo are exercising their inalienable right to be outdoors on a Sunday morning. Are they in the bushes, stalking prey? Are they digging among the roses? Are they under the porch, hiding, asleep? Behind the workshop? Exploring dark places? Are they next door visiting Oreo and Tsu? Spending time with Pook? Fighting with Flash?

No — here they come now, up the mudroom steps, pawing the screen door so that it bump-bump-bangs, signaling their desire to be let inside.

Later, Nemo sits and watches the squirrels. His tail sweeps the floor in fevered lashes. When the squirrels chatter, Nemo chatters. He wants outside now. He regrets having come inside for breakfast. A fattened squirrel would be ever-so-much tastier.

Simon is on the kitchen counter — in willful violation of Kris’ iron law — gazing out the window at the birdfeeder. He watches the finches and the chickadees as they peck at the millet, or hang in clusters from the cage in which we’ve placed a block of suet. The little birds love the suet. (So, too, do the starlings. There are no starlings this morning, however.) Simon is stoic. He may wish he could torment the birds, but he does not show it.

Upstairs, Toto is resting like a loaf bread, purring on the futon. She is watching Kris, who is sits at the computer doing her finances, shopping online, listening to Christmas carols.

I am wandering from room to room, admiring this wild kingdom.

In the evening, we drove down to Jeremy and Jennifer’s. While Kris stayed with Harrison and Emma, the rest of us headed to Zion Mennonite for the annual sing-your-own-Messiah. It was great fun, though I felt a little out of place. Not because I was an atheist in a church, but because I didn’t know my part well enough. Next year — and I do plan to do this again next year — I will prepare in advance. I’ll buy a copy of the score, and practice singing along to one of the Messiahs I have on CD.

Comments

On 20 December 2004 (08:33 AM),
Tiffany said:

Our wildlife is not nearly as personable.
We have lots of dogs being walked, most are very thrilled, running from spot to spot smelling the dogs that came by earlier.
We have only one neighborhood cat. She is a very over-weight calico that our cats run from window to window to watch. She can climb the six-foot stucco wall in a flash.
There are lots of birds; sparrows, a few doves, black birds, and lots of humming birds. The humming birds ‘float’ by the windows to drive the cats crazy. We had a falcon that cleared out most of the doves, but he has moved on and the doves are moving back in.
Our pair of road-runners are out every morning. I am not sure where they live, but they keep our yards free of lizards. The cats can not figure out the road-runners, they look like a bird, but are about 1foot high.
Last are the bats… we have the cutest 3-inch brown bats that fly every evening. They sleep most of the day in the tile roof and in the palm trees; they only feed about 30 minutes out of every 24 hours. I love watching the bats.

On 20 December 2004 (09:26 AM),
J.D. Roth said:

Here is the state of the wildlife on a cold, damp Monday morning in December:

Jasmine is nowhere to be seen. Mortimer and Crenshaw are both on the porch, each on his respective blanket. The squirrels are asleep in their lairs. There aren’t any birds on the lawn.

There are, however, many birds at the feeder outside the kitchen window. They’re taking turns. The flicker swoops in from the oak to peck at the millet. When he leaves, a scrub jay floats in to take her turn. Myriad tiny birds swarm the suet cage.

Once again, Simon sits on the window sill, watching them. “Simon,” I tell him. “You’re not allowed on the kitchen counters.” He ignores me.

And best of all: across the yard, perched on the lowest, broadest limb of the filbert, rests an orange furball. Flash has climbed the tree, presumably for a better vantage on all the avian activity. He and Simon have stared at each other, but neither seems compelled to escalate the conflict.

I wish I could find the digital camera.

On 20 December 2004 (09:58 AM),
Kris said:

Here’s a wildlife snapshot from the crime lab:

always lots of crows looking important, as well as seagulls soaring and squawking (rats of the sky!). The starlings in this neighborhood confine themselves to the easy pick-ins at the Costco food court. Today there are Canadian geese on the lawns and last week I saw a mating pair of wood ducks land on the “stream”– we are in a sort of industrial park-slash-wetlands. One morning a grey heron took flight from the cattails as I turned into the parking lot, and people have reported seeing rabbits, too.

Inside the lab, we are dealing with an invasion of large brown spiders. The current hypothesis is that they came in with a delivery of lab coats from the cleaners. Does that give you the willies? Oh, and the morgue apparently has mice.

On 20 December 2004 (10:51 AM),
Jeff said:

Here’s a wildlife snapshot from Custom Box:

Pepe LePew and his foul stench are still living under the office. Maybe we need to paint a white stripe down Toto’s back and put her in the trap — she could surely lure that Casanova out.

On 20 December 2004 (01:18 PM),
Tiffany said:

Is the fact there are spiders in the drug lab and mice in the morgue a contamination problem?

On 20 December 2004 (01:28 PM),
Tammy said:

So do you guys make your own suet? If so how do you do it? I could go through all my kids magazines and find out but I don’t feel like it. Do you put peanut butter in it?

On 20 December 2004 (01:48 PM),
Kris said:

Tiffany– Not a problem from a drug analysis standpoint; neither rodents nor arachnids are known for their substance abuse. Also, there are very few crime scenes where a spider or mouse is going to make or break a case.

Tammy- We buy the suet blocks from a garden or farm store. They are about 50cents apiece if you buy them in bulk when they are on sale, and each one lasts us about a week. I think the main ingredient is beef lard. Which makes you think, where do birds normally find lard in nature? Are they cooperating and taking down cows?

On 20 December 2004 (03:14 PM),
Johnny said:

Although not widely known, birds do, in fact, cooperate to take down livestock. See here

On 27 December 2004 (08:31 AM),
JC said:

It’s ‘critters on parade’ in our backyard. The squirrels are the ruling class–they have gangs even. Though, once in a while, pretty birds flitter down and try to fight their way for some seed.

Chilly

I can’t get warm.

“I’m cold,” I said last night at the dinner table. Kris and I were eating take out pizza: mine pepperoni and pineapple, hers barbecue chicken and skanky black olives. (Why can’t pizza places buy good black olives?)

“This house is going to get cold this winter,” Kris said, munching on a slice.

“You think?” I asked.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

She may be right.

We recently had a high-efficiency gas furnace installed. It takes a while for it to do its thing, but once the house is warm, it seems to maintain the temperature fairly well. Still, we have to figure out how to program the thermostat so the house is warm when we need it to be warm, but is cool when we need it to be cool.

This morning was bad.

Last night Kris decided to fiddle with the thermostat. She delayed the morning heat by half an hour. It’s not tremendously cold outside yet — no lower than the mid-40s — but when I got up this morning it felt colder than it has been so far this fall. I was decidedly cool. In the old house I would have warmed my inner core with a nice bath. That’s no longer possible, of course, and a shower just doesn’t provide the same warmth.

Nevertheless, I had it in my mind that a hot shower would be just the thing. Only a hot shower was not to be had. There was no hot water. Kris had used it all. So, not only was my inner core not warmed, it was actually cooled.

I reacted by sulking and pouting, of course.

“Stop it,” Kris said. “It’s not worth being grouchy.”

“You’re not the one who’s cold,” I said. “You had a hot shower.”

She just shook her head and ignored me. I went upstairs to the computer. There I performed an iTunes filter on the word “cold”. I played the resulting songlist.

“Very funny,” said Kris over Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice”. When I left the house, Hank Williams’ “Cold Cold Heart” was playing.

On the drive to work, I cranked the heat as I listened to my Patrick O’Brian. I’m sure the car was an inferno by the time I reached work, but I still felt cold.

At work, in my skunky office, I turned on the space heater full blast. I zipped my sweatshirt. I tried to think warm thoughts. I listened to the Beach Boys.

José came in for some orders. “Ay-yi,” he said. “Es muy caliente!”

I still think it’s cold.

I can’t get warm.

Comments

On 21 October 2004 (09:54 AM),
Kris said:

We’re having temperature issues here in our new laboratory, as well. The chemistry rooms have been warm. Even for me, 84 degrees when I’m wearing a fall sweater and lab coat is too hot. Today we learned the reason: the thermostatic sensor that controls the chemistry lab, instrument room and offices is (wisely) located in the trace evidence microscope room, located on an outer wall right by a large window. As a result, the thermostat thinks it’s cold, and heat is pumped out in chemistry. The heat never reaches the sensor, of course, because the heat and the sensor are separated by two air-seal doors. Lovely.

This morning, we are finally getting our bulletin boards mounted on the walls. Why, you may ask, did it take three weeks? Because, dear reader, we were not allowed to hang them ourselves. No, sir! Instead, a state (DAS)employee had to do the job. Now, there are state employees and there are state employees. Our particular DAS representative is about 6-foot-two and hugely obese. He moves in slow motion, taking frequent rests. As you can imagine, in the heat, he was sweating profusely, using his already-sodden bandana to wipe the sweat from his bald head.

As the DAS guy was laboring with drill and screws, my co-worker Rob had put in a CD mix of mine that ended with Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”. This engendered a discussion of the Weird Al version, “Amish Paradise”. So, the next CD had to be Weird Al’s Greatest Hits. Too late did we guiltily realize that the first two songs are “Fat” and “Eat it”. Boy, did we feel like jerks.

On 21 October 2004 (10:06 AM),
Denise said:

Hmm…and Kris doesn’t have her own weblog because of ????? ;)

I just think it would be very intersting to hear of all the testing and other coolio activities she does during the day.

Ok – bad pun, but I couldn’t resist.

On 21 October 2004 (10:31 AM),
AmJo said:

I too can’t seem to get warm. I forgot how much colder it feels when it is damp. The winter temps. in DC are lower than here and the wind can be a real bitch, but it is dry. I warmed up much easier there than I do here. I can’t get my feet and hands to stay warm, especially at night. I think Paul may have even felt sorry for me last night–he wrapped his ever-warm hands around my cold, cold feet while we were watching the West Wing.

On 21 October 2004 (10:33 AM),
Pam said:

J.D. – First your interest in clothes shopping raised some eyebrows and now you are cold – Welcome to the world of ice “queens.”

On 21 October 2004 (01:54 PM),
Joel said:

I bet a nice hot enema would warm your core!

They turned on the heat in our classrooms. Now instead of bundling up in a sweater and a ski cap for class we all strip down in the heat. And doze.

On 21 October 2004 (01:59 PM),
Lynn said:

Funny, I’ve been colder this fall than normal. I even stocked up on longjohns at the Target sale for sleeping.

On 21 October 2004 (02:12 PM),
Denise said:

Hmm…maybe we are all just getting old.

On 21 October 2004 (03:16 PM),
Semi-sequitur Tangent Man said:

I too wonder if olives can taste good on pizza. I like olives on my pizza but they almost always turn out rubbery. (These are your run-of-the-mill black olives BTW.)

On 21 October 2004 (03:42 PM),
J.D. Roth said:

Greetings, Mr. Tangent Man. It’s good to have you back. :)

I am very particular about olives. I love olives, or at least the good ones. I had never tried non-black olives until a couple of years ago, and now I’m an addict, especially in the spring and summer. Black olives have their place, of course, and I eat them especially in the fall. However, I prefer meat olives, and above all they must be *firm*, especially if I am to eat them by themselves.

Too often I find that food service olives in general, and pizza olives in particular, are of some strange degenerate variety: limp and rubbery, possessing a dull, metallic taste. If I wanted metallic olives I’d, well…I’ll never want metallic olives. And yet those were the sort on Kris’ pizza last night.

Deplorable.

(p.s. I am particularly fond of Black Pearl Jumbos, which have long ago been renamed Black Peral Extra Large or some such. The MNF women take pleasure in trying to test my ability to detect Black Pearl Jumbos. I’ve got a fairly good — though not perfect — track record. The key is the olives must be of quality; they need not always be Black Pearl Jumbos.)

On 21 October 2004 (07:25 PM),
John said:

Try this…
Snuggle-up together in a warm blanket with a good novel, take turns reading. It warms the body, heart and soull

On 22 October 2004 (09:41 AM),
Jon said:

We put in a gas water heater when we remodeled the basement. I’ve never noticed that we run out of hot water.

Action Girl’s Guide to Living

The final writing class of the term was last night. I haven’t mentioned the writing class in several weeks because I haven’t gone; buying a new house has kept me busy.

I’m sad to have missed so many sessions. The instructor, Rick, is quite good, and I always came away from Wednesday night inspired, motivated to write. I want to create something.

Last night, Rick shared various bits of wisdom he’d gleaned from years of writing classes. While these may seem like platitudes, I think they each contain an important insight:

Talent does not get you published; hard work and perseverance do. Perhaps this is obvious, but some of us it ought to be a mantra. You may be talented at something, but that talent is meaningless if you don’t use it.
Self-loathing is far better than cowardice. This, of course, is just a re-wording of the old “better to have lost in love than never to have loved at all”, or the similar “shoot for the stars”. Basically, the idea is that if you try and fail, you’ve still done more than by not trying at all. Take a chance!
Observe the world around you. This is especially important for writers, of course. Pay attention to the actions and conversations of the people you encounter. Observe what happens in the natural world. Learning to notice details makes life richer.
Live life with an insatiable curiosity. Ah, yes. This one I’m good at. Never stop learning!

Rick’s rules reminded me of Action Girl’s Guide to Living.

I first discovered Action Girl when Dana mentioned her during our superhero discussion several weeks ago. Action Girl, created by Sarah Dyer, isn’t a superhero in the traditional sense of the word. She has her own comic book, sure, but her main super power is the ability to help people take charge of their own lives. Dyer has a personal agenda, and she’s pleased to share it with the world.

Here is an abridged version of Action Girl’s Guide to Living (follow the link for Dyer’s extended version).

Action is everything! It really doesn’t matter what you say or even what you think; it’s what you do that matters. Be less of a consumer and more of a creator. Write. Sew. Cook dinner. Put on a play. Publish a magazine. Make a web site. Don’t just buy stuff: make it!
Support other’s actions. Support what other people are doing; spend your time and money on things done for something other than profit. This doesn’t mean you can’t buy the new U2 album, just try to buy things on smaller labels, too.
Have a code of ethics. It doesn’t matter what your code of ethics is — everyone’s is different — what’s important is to have an articulated set of rules you follow. You can change your mind as you go along — what works for you now might not work in ten years — but you should know what it is you stand for now.
Don’t be a hypocrite. Once you’ve developed a code of ethics, live by it. Consider your actions and how they relate to your standards. Don’t make compromises. For example, if you believe that it’s wrong to eat meat because it exploits animals, then don’t wear leather, and don’t use products tested on animals. Be consistent.
Be positive. Life is short. Don’t wast time bitching about others. If you can do something about it, do it. Otherwise, get on with life and forget it. Re-route your negative energy in a positive direction. If you hate something, fine, but don’t make it your career.
Be open-minded. Read books and magazines and newspapers and web sites. (And not just the ones you already agree with or like.) Listen to other people’s opinions. You don’t have to welcome every new idea with open arms; just be willing to change and grow.
Forget the “scene”. Discard the idea that a thing has to be underground to be legitimate. Or that something popular is necessarily bad. Good work is good work, no matter the forum, no matter how broad its appeal.
Most things suck. Become more discriminating. Pursue quality. Don’t waste your time with the mundane. You’ll have more time to do something fun!
Be adventurous. Try new things. Eat new food. Learn a new skill. Travel. Watch foreign films. Change your hairstyle. You might not enjoy everything you try, but then you might find something you really love.
Live life. Never stop buying toys. Write letters to complain about things you don’t like. Make your own clothes. Do stupid tourist things with your friends. Never pay for a haircut if you can help it — that’s why you have friends. Learn to cook more than just spaghettios. Don’t hurt other people. Start a collection of something you like. Make elaborate valentines for your friends. Don’t be so serious. Learn to do more things and feel more competent. Don’t be afraid of technology. Don’t worry about what other people think. Have fun!

Dyer has distilled these rules into a succinct “Action Girl Manifesto”:

ACTION IS EVERYTHING! Our society, even when it’s trying to be “alternative” usually just promotes a consumerist mentality. Buying things isn’t evil, but if that’s all you do, your life is pretty pointless. Be an ACTION GIRL! (Or boy!) It’s great to read / listen to / watch other people’s creative output, but it’s even cooler to do it yourself. Don’t think you could play in a band? Try anyway! Or maybe think about putting on shows or starting a label. Don’t have time/energy to do a zine yourself? Contribute to someone else’s zine. Not everyone is suited to doing projects on their own, but everyone has something to contribute. So do something with all that positive energy!

It’s a great philosophy, one I endorse wholeheartedly (though I may not always practice it myself).

I have a couple of additions:

Ask for it. You’ll never get it if you don’t ask. And you might be surprised at what you can get just by asking.
Don’t sweat the small stuff. Who cares if your shirt isn’t ironed? If you forgot to mail the phone bill? If you can’t remember someone’s name? Take it easy. It’s not that important.

What’s the gist of all these rules? Do something! Don’t just sit there; get up and live!

Don’t watch a movie on television; go make one yourself. Don’t write a book; go write your own. Don’t buy dinner from a restaurant; cook it yourself. Don’t shop for new clothes; sew your own. Don’t drive to the store; walk, or ride your bike.

Be creative! Build things!

Discover new foods and friends and books and movies. Don’t be stuck in a rut.

Lighten up. Relax. Don’t be so critical of others. Instead, support what they do. Enjoy life.

These rules are important because our modern society programs us to operate like mind-numbed robots, driving everywhere, buying pre-packaged everything, consuming mass media. I’m just as guilty as the next person, but I want to change.

And that’s why I’m happy that over the past six months I’ve begun to write fiction. That, if only occasionally, I ride my bike around town for errands. That we’re buying an old house that will require personal care and attention.

I want to be an Action Girl. Er, Action Boy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat breakfast. I’m going to have some of “Rick’s Precious Granola”, cereal my writing instructor made himself.

Comments

On 10 June 2004 (09:22 AM),
Johnny said:

Ask for it. You’ll never get it if you don’t ask. And you might be surprised at what you can get just by asking.

I am asking for everyone to send me a million dollars and join my cult, er, I mean my new religion. I have asked for this in the past, but this time I really, really mean it. If you have to choose between one of the two about things, please just send the cash. Thanks in advance.

PS. Just so you know, I need the cash because I’m going to meet the President of Nigeria. His assistant undersecretary sent me an email asking for my help in getting back a bunch of cash that apparently the evil former regime had socked away in a Swiss bank account. Once they transfer it to my bank account I can help them out, but I need lots of cash first in order to get the wire transfer authorized. So it’s obviously for a worthy cause. It’s not like it’s just going to lie my own pockets. I mean, line my own pockets.

On 10 June 2004 (09:41 AM),
Denise said:

Johnny, you’ve tried this cult thing before, haven’t you? Do you think you’ll have better success this time?

I love this post, J.D.

On 10 June 2004 (10:00 AM),
Johnny said:

“Action is everything”. I’m sure it wasn’t the success I wanted because people just forgot about it. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

On 10 June 2004 (10:10 AM),
Betsy said:

Great post, J.D.

Especially the ‘ask’ part. I hate asking people for stuff, or help.

It took the death of someone I am close to in order to jolt me out of my ‘I cannot possibly ask’ mode – but last week, I started asking. And people started responding. No one even thought twice about it, and people were glad to be able to do something, anything.

We all felt better afterwards, I am sure.

On 10 June 2004 (10:20 AM),
Virginia said:

I’m reminded of the saying,

He who whispers down a well,
About the things he has to sell.
Does not make the shinning dollars,
As he who climbs a tree and hollers.

On 10 June 2004 (10:43 AM),
Anthony said:

These rules are important because our modern society programs us to operate like mind-numbed robots, driving everywhere, buying pre-packaged everything, consuming mass media. I’m just as guilty as the next person, but I want to change.

Well put.

Action is everything! It really doesn’t matter what you say or even what you think; it’s what you do that matters.

I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but the point made is important. If you really believe in something, you will act it out in real time, so it is our actions, not our ideas, that faithfully reflect who we really are.

While I certainly do not agree that “it doesn’t matter what your code of ethics is,” I do think every person should be consistent with the code they choose. I continually try to maintain consistency in my own life, and I congratulate you, JD, in striving to escape the mindless herd and build your life around your ideals. Only people who think and do for themselves are free.

On 10 June 2004 (02:42 PM),
J.D. said:

Who knew? Benjamin Franklin was the Action Girl of the 18th century, though some of his advice seems dated now. Here are Franklin’s Goals of Virtue (via makeoutcity.com):

Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; that is, waste nothing.
Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; speak accordingly.
Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries; or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
Moderation: Avoid extremes; forebear resenting injuries so much as you think deserve.
Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.
Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.
Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

I wonder what other good advice I can find on the net…

On 10 June 2004 (04:46 PM),
Hmm… said:

Ask for it. You’ll never get it if you don’t ask. And you might be surprised at what you can get just by asking.

Can you buy these for me?

On 10 June 2004 (04:58 PM),
Johnny said:

Well Nick, if you don’t tell us who you are how will we know where to have them delivered?

On 10 June 2004 (05:06 PM),
Nick said:

Hmm…good point.

Geek Squad

Though I was fairly well integrated with my classmates in grade school, by the time I reached junior high I had gravitated toward a clique of geeks. Junior high is a time of cliques. I spent all of high school striving to transcend these cliques and never quite succeeded; all I did was alienate my existing friends. (Fortunately, college offered a fresh start.)

During my recent “clean and purge” binge, I took time to browse through my old yearbooks. I thought’d be fun to scan in some of the old photos. The birthday entry for Denise came of that, as did last week’s collection of my school pictures. I also scanned in pictures of all my geeky friends.

You might remember some of these goofballs from previous entries such as TAG Science (which was followed by a sequel of sorts, Cassie).

Our little clique comprised:

David Carlson
Dave and I were best friends from fifth to eighth grades. We lived close enough to do a lot of stuff together. And we did. We played D&D, we went hydrotubing, we argued the merits of comic books (I liked Marvel, he liked DC), we played computer games together on our VIC-20s. Later, we listened to music together. (The first time I heard Michael Jackson’s Thriller was in Dave’s room.) Dave and I had a falling out in high school. Or, more precisely, I underwent a drastic change, became (as Dave puts it) “a Bible-thumping sheep” and discarded old friends. For a time, we hated each other. We’ve patched things up over the last decade, though, and now we do geeky stuff again. Dave is a lawyer operating out of Salem. (For a time, he was the “youngest partner in the state”.) Dave’s a regular commenter here, though he thinks weblogs are an exercise in narcissism.

Andrew Parker
Andrew and I were in Mrs. Onion’s first grade class. We weren’t geeks then, of course; we were squirrely little munchkins, just like all the other boys. As we grew, I spent some time at his house. I remember seeing Star Wars with him once. I remember fishing for crawdads in his creek at one birthday party. I remember that his family owned a single-volume version of The Lord of the Rings made up to look like The Red Book of Westmarch. I remember that in the late seventies his father had, in the house, some sort of computer that could dial in with a modem to play a networked D&D game with wire-frame graphics. As we grew older, Andrew became less squirrely, more stoic. Still, his birthday parties were always fun. One year, Dave and I pitched together to buy Andrew the live Styx album, Caught in the Act. That was the year we all stayed up late watching Octopussy. Andrew left Canby for Lakeridge (or Lake Oswego?) after his sophomore year of high school. He went to Stanford for college and now brings the world lots of exciting gadgets as the VP for product development at The Sharper Image. Andrew comments here from time-to-time.

John Kern
Ah, John Kern. I haven’t seen John in twenty years. I always thought John and I were very similar — smart but prone to stupid things. He and I could be very silly together. John lived in Charbonneau, a wealthy community between Canby and Wilsonville. I loved to go over to his house because it was so enormous and beautiful. John didn’t go to Canby for high school; he went to LaSalle, and gradually the rest of us geeks lost touch with him. In junior high, he held two computer parties. We all brought our machines over to his house and stayed up all night doing geeky computer stuff. (Or at least as geeky as you could get with VIC-20s and Commodore 64s and TI-99/4As and, yes, even a Timex Sinclair 1000.) Once we played Pitfall to the wee hours of the morning. Another time (possibly the same time), we snuck into his parents’ bedroom to get their copy of Flashdance. We watched ,it hoping to find some dirty parts. There weren’t any. I think John eventually did something with ROTC, joined the Navy or Air Force. I’d love to see him again. He’s probably married, with five kids and a crazy life.

Darren Misner
I met Darren in fifth grade, drawn to him because he was interested in comic books. For a couple of years, we were pretty good friends. I spent a lot of time at his house playing D&D (and Villains and Vigilantes — or was it Champions?), leafing through his comic books (like Dave, he preferred DC), and playing on his TRS-80 (he had a great dinosaur game for it). We spent Halloween together our sixth grade year, trick-or-treating up and down his street. Nobody was home. We smashed a lot of pumpkins and took a lot of candy from dishes left on porches. Darren drew his own comic books and tried to sell them at the school store, but his only potential customers were his fellow geeks, and he usually gave us copies for free. I always liked Darren, but he was tentative, unsure of himself. He seems more confident as an adult. Like Dave, Darren attended Whitman College. He’s now the bookbuyer for Powell’s Beaverton.

Mitch Sherrard
Mitch was a strange duck, but I liked him a lot. (After all, he introduced me to Bloom County!) He didn’t always hang with the geeks, because he was kind of a loner. Mitch was hard-rocking, Stephen King-loving kind of geek. He liked D&D too (kind of a requirement to be a geek in the early eighties), but he was more interested in the life-and-times the game emulated. He liked the armor and the weapons and the castles more than the actual gameplay. (He’d be a perfect candidate for the SCA.) Because Mitch was somewhat different than the rest of us, he offered a unique perspective. He could argue a position that the rest of didn’t take. He was passionate. Mitch and I stayed friends throughout high school, and kept in touch a little bit after we graduated. He called me one Christmas break but I never returned his call. I’ve not heard from him since. I’ve been trying to track him down without much success. (Dave thinks he might have a connection that would lead us to Mitch, but, to be honest, I’m a little apprehensive.)

Jonathan McDowell
Jonathan was a kid that everybody loved. He was certainly a geek, and part of our group, but he was also cool enough to hang around with the regular kids. The teachers loved him because he didn’t goof around. Rather, he goofed around, but he knew when to stop. He was the funniest in our group (though John Kern was close). He was a great joke-teller and song-singer. One day in TAG Science he taught us to sing “My lover, he was a logger, there’s none like him today. If you’d poor whiskey on it, he’d eat a bail of hay.” We were supposed to be working on plant propagation, but we sang goofy songs instead. Though we all like him, Jonathan never did much with us outside of school. He was a member of a private church, and I don’t think he was allowed to mix with the riff-raff. I didn’t see much of Jonathan in high school, and have no idea what happened to him after graduation.

Jeremy Martin
Poor Jeremy Martin. He was most certainly part of our group; he was a geek, and in all of our classes. But just as the other kids picked on us, we picked on Jeremy. He carried his Dungeons and Dragons books with him to every class. He didn’t try to hide his geekiness. Most of us knew enough to try to pretend we weren’t geeky, even though everyone knew we were. Jeremy had no shame. So we picked on him as others picked on us. Still, I liked him. I went over to his house to play Runequest. He came over to my house to play our made-up version of life-sized D&D back in Grandpa’s woods. Jeremy was a good guy, but nobody was willing to give him a chance. That’s too bad. I don’t know what happened to him in high school and beyond. When Kris and I still lived in the apartment, just after moving to Canby, we ran into Jeremy and his mother one day. He was moving from a house in town to someplace in Portland. That’s the last I saw or heard of him.

The following were not geeks, but they deserve special mention:

Paul Carlile
Dave was my best friend for the four years beginning in fifth grade. Paul was my best friend for the following four years. Neither of us can remember how we met. Apparently we knew each other in junior high because he signed my yearbook. It wasn’t until our freshman year that we began to hang out together, and by our sophomore year, he was my best friend. (Tom Stewart was another best friend for Paul, I think.) Whereas I was staid and liked planning, Paul was all about spontaneity and fun. The combination worked well. We also had great arguments about life, the universe, and everything. Once, after a Newberg-Canby football game, we sat in the car and argued about the nature of God for more than an hour. (I was for God, he was against). By our senior years, we were so in-sync that once, while were driving down a country road, he began to tell me something and I said “I know” — “How do you even know what I was going to say?” he asked. We compared notes. I had known what he was going to say, though it was a completely unrelated to our previous conversation. Paul and I have kept in contact (with varying degrees of closeness) all our adult lives. It’s always great to get together with him. He still brings spontaneity to my well-ordered life. Paul’s a regular commenter around here.

Tamara Brunson
I never knew Tamara well. She was a sweet, good-natured girl who was in all of the advanced classes with us geeks. We had a teasing kind of acquaintance, each of us making fun of the other. She was important to me mainly because first Dave and then Paul had a crush on her. It was strange to go from one best friend to the other and to have both of them infatuated with Tamara. I didn’t keep in touch with Tamara after high school, but for a couple of years in the mid-nineties I’d bump into her at concerts and events around Canby. She was happily married, had adopted a child, and was running a Montessori school near Banks. She’s a good person, and I hope she’s doing well.

Tami Sale
While both Dave and Paul had a crush on Tamara Brunson, I had one on Tami Sale, my dentist’s daughter. Tami made my heart ache, and I’ll bet she never knew it. She was beautiful. She was smart. She was popular. And, best of all, she was nice to me. She didn’t treat me like dirt. We had a computer class together in eighth grade, and sometimes we’d collaborate on projects. I went to the eighth grade graduation dance — my first dance — solely because I knew she’d be there. I asked her to dance three times, and she said “yes” every time. We danced to “Open Arms” by Journey, and for the entire summer I melted whenever I heard that song. Poor Dave had to put up with me pining for Tami Sale all summer long. Then high school came along and I forgot all about Tami. I saw her in class, of course, but my crush had evaporated. Ironically, we were cast as husband and wife in the play our senior year (You Can’t Take With You — we were Ed and Essie Carmichael). We gave each other a perfunctory kiss during every performance. And I didn’t even care! Four years earlier I would have killed to give Tami a kiss. Such is the way of young love.

I think most of us in the geeky clique suffered terribly during our junior high years. (Maybe everyone does.) We were the bottom-feeders on the social ladder, and well aware of it. School was miserable, except when we were with each other. I wouldn’t trade those years of pain for anything now. They helped make me who I am today. I like myself now. To hell with all the popular kids!

Comments

On 16 April 2004 (08:59 AM),
Tiffany said:

My junior high was far more divided by race then by social class. The ‘Military Kids’ were far out numbers by all the race groups, so we stuck together. We had our cliques within the MKs, but we would stick up for each other then an outsider was picking on us. There were a lot of fights in my junior high. I still have a scar on right hand from one of those fights. I never started a fight, but I am still a little proud to say that I never lost one either.

Then in high school I hung out with the ‘New Wave’ group for the first 2 years, music and/or race made the cliques. Then I moved to what I can only describe as the ‘Smart Stoners’. The Start Stoners were in all of the advanced classes and did well in them, but spent most of the evening and weekends either drunk or stoned. I was not drunk or stoned with then, I just found that I loved these people. I could debate life with them far more then the New Wavers. The Smart Stoners were not racist like a lot of my high school classmates, however they were not to found of the police. I married one of these guys by the way.

But I got off of the subject; we had geeks in both junior and high school. In junior high they were included in the MKs, no questions asked. In high school, there were enough geeks that they had their own large clique. I knew many of them from the advanced classes, and they picked on each other far more then I ever saw non-geeks picking on them.

Growing up as a MK, I learned that things were disposable. Every move Mom got rid of clothes, toys, sometimes pets and we lost friends. Yes, you say that you will keep in tough, but it often does not work. I always find people that grew up in one place and still know the people they went to elementary school with fascinating, geeky or not.

On 16 April 2004 (09:07 AM),
Joel said:

The Geeks Rule the Earth.
Or so it would seem. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, all those business types who ought to be going to jail but mostly aren’t; they all seem to be geeks.
I was/am definitely a geek, and junior high was definitely the low point of my life. I recently asked my geeky clique (self-dubbed The Institution) whether we were geeks in high school, and was surprised to hear them mostly deny it. “We weren’t geeks! Many of us were quite popular! Several of us earned athletic letters (in something other than debate and band), we generally had dates, we rarely received beatings… etc.” I’m fairly certain that many of them are in denial, but I’m not going to push the point.
Being a geek where I grew up, as I think we’ve discussed in this forum elsewhen, wasn’t as bad as in some other communities. We were kind of a Third Path between the Jocks and the Burnouts.

On 16 April 2004 (09:20 AM),
Dana said:

Tiffany: Growing up as a MK, I learned that things were disposable. Every move Mom got rid of clothes, toys, sometimes pets and we lost friends. Yes, you say that you will keep in tough, but it often does not work. I always find people that grew up in one place and still know the people they went to elementary school with fascinating, geeky or not.

I didn’t grow up in the military, and I expect I didn’t move as often, or to as foreign of places, as you did, but I learned this lesson, too.

My family moved when I was two from a rural cottage in farmland (with no neighbors) into a neighborhood filled with kids. When I was 9, the summer between third and fourth grade, we moved to Minnesota. In February of my 8th grade year, we moved to Nevada. Then, the summer between my Junior and Senior years of high school, we moved to Idaho.

I attended a total of three grade schools, two junior highs, and two high schools.

People with a strong place-history are fascinating to me — their world seems very foreign in an odd way. Every few years I was uprooted, put into uncomfortable situations, and forced to build a new life. Most of my extended family has a less mobile history (although generally more mobile than JD, 90% of whose life has passed in a 45 mile circle centered on Canby).

I often wonder what I’d be like if I’d grown up in only one town, with one group of schoolmates. I also wonder what JD would be like if he’d moved around like I did.

On 16 April 2004 (09:25 AM),
J.D. said:

Joel: Being a geek where I grew up wasn’t as bad as in some other communities.

Or times. We geeks who came before blazed a trail of acceptance for the geeks of future generations! We made it cool to talk about our thirtieth-level Paladins and to obsess about our video games. You reaped the benefit of all our hard work.

Or something.

Dana: generally more mobile than JD, 90% of whose life has passed in a 45 mile circle centered on Canby

Make that 100% of my life in a 20-mile radius centered on, say, Woodburn. And my family (grandparents, father) have spent 95% of the last 100 years in this same circle. Spooky, huh?

On 16 April 2004 (09:26 AM),
Denise said:

Jr. High is Hell on Earth, or at least it was for me. 8th Grade was the worst for me…well, that is if you overlook that bad perm I had to live with in 7th Grade.

Ok – Jr. High all together was completely horrible and left some deep self-esteem wounds for quite some time.

You are very brave for sharing those pictures…I would NEVER share the bad perm picture!

On 16 April 2004 (09:41 AM),
Joel said:

Dana said: “I often wonder what I’d be like if I’d grown up in only one town, with one group of schoolmates. I also wonder what JD would be like if he’d moved around like I did.”
Perhaps you’d be married, settled down in the family business, while JD would currently be undergoing procedures to change his gender?
It’s a big deal, this moving around business. A friend of mine moved around a lot as a kid, and he always seemed kind of skinny and undernourished. It was generally understood that he was constantly rationing his food against some upcoming journey. He’ll bury us all, that skinny guy.

On 16 April 2004 (09:45 AM),
Dana said:

Joel: Perhaps you’d be married, settled down in the family business, while JD would currently be undergoing procedures to change his gender?

Somehow I doubt it, Joel.

Although, I do have to say that I think JD would pass fairly well as a woman. He’s rounded as opposed to angular, and his voice isn’t particularly deep.

Plus, there’s all that musical theater he’s into… =)

Really, though, it’d never happen — he’s too lazy to do all the work necessary to pull it off…

On 16 April 2004 (09:47 AM),
Joel said:

[laughs with delight]

On 16 April 2004 (09:48 AM),
J.D. said:

Dana: It’d never happen — he’s too lazy to do all the work necessary to pull it off

I don’t want to pull it off: I love my penis.

(Laugh! — it’s funny.)

On 16 April 2004 (09:52 AM),
Denise said:

Your penis is funny, do tell!

On 16 April 2004 (09:57 AM),
Dana said:

Groan

Yes, yes — funny penis. Of course, looks aren’t everything. (rimshot)

Seriously, though, I can’t see JD putting in enough work on a regular basis to be presentable as a woman. The only way would be if it turned into his obsession du jour, like making audiotapes and cross-referenced summaries of Trek episodes. It’d last a year or two, then he’d drop it and drift off to something else.

I just can’t see it. It might be amusing for Halloween, though.

On 16 April 2004 (09:58 AM),
J.D. said:

Argh!

Another one of my geek talents was to always say things in just the wrong way, so that they could be interpreted in a way other than I had intended. I was always saying self-depricating things unintentionally.

John Kern had this talent, too.

Otherwhen…

Tony just came into the office. “My GOD, you were a geek,” he said.

“Of course I was,” I said. “Don’t you remember?”

“No. I was too little. To me you were just a big brother. But looking back, you and your friends were geeks. No wonder you love that show [Freaks and Geeks].”

Ah, the blissful ignorance of youth.

On 16 April 2004 (10:01 AM),
Dana said:

Tony: My GOD, you were a geek

Were a geek, Kemosabe? How about IS a geek?

On 16 April 2004 (11:57 AM),
Lynn said:

Funny how other people often see you differently than you saw yourself. Tony didn’t necessarily think you were a geek, but you knew you were/are. heh.
I don’t think I was a geek. I didn’t have geeky interests. But I didn’t consider myself terribly popular either. I had friends in the popular crowd, but I didn’t always feel a part of that clique.
Junior High was fun for me. Lots of changes: new friends from Beavercreek, starting to wear make-up, ears pierced, etc. Freshman and Sophomore year were extremely difficult for me, emotionally. This was a time in which I made a transition from one group of friends to another and not by choice. Let’s just say girls can be cruel.
And…I’m with Denise, my 7th grade picture was heinous. As was 8th grade. Yikes.

On 16 April 2004 (01:33 PM),
Amanda said:

I don’t like looking at any pictures of myself from about ages 13-17. Frightening.

On 16 April 2004 (01:50 PM),
Dave said:

Well this is a little bit of a flash from the past. As I read through JD’s entry I was quite amused by the memories (good and bad) that it brought back.

As for what I’ll now call “The Brunson Affair” (or lack thereof, actually), let’s just say that it was a very dark period for me in which I managed to mete out more wrong than right and that a very nice girl handled my unwanted attention with a remarkable amount of maturity and grace. Much more than was deserved, I should think.

For the record, I’m not sure that it would be an appropriate characterization, however, to say that JD and I “hated each other”. Certainly I can’t think of any reason why JD would have hated me (though I’m open to correction on this. Highschool was a time I’d be much in favor of forgetting). For my part, I must admit that I was very angry with JD. After all, someone who was my best friend for many years simply got up one morning and made the decision that he wasn’t going to associate with or talk to me anymore. Lest you think I’m subjecting this to a certain amount of hyperbole, that’s literally the way it was. For no reason that I could ascertain, one day JD just simply stopped acknowledging my existence. No conversation, no returning telephone calls, wouldn’t even look at me in the hallway at school.

That was a long time ago, but truth be told, that rift mars our relationship to this day. We both know this, but it’s not something that we’ll ever talk about, nor do we need to. For my part I think I understand (now) his reasons for doing what he did, although I still believe that things should’ve been handled much differently and with a greater degree of external awareness.

Maybe I’m just bitter that I was dumped for the attractive, Christian kids. C’est la vie By college I had mostly forgotten about it and it wasn’t until law school when I saw JD on the Willamette campus one day that I gave it any additional thought. Fortunately the passage of years has dulled the issue from both ends.

But damn, JD. Were you and I in a contest to see who could get the bigger,geekier glasses or what?

On 16 April 2004 (02:27 PM),
Dana said:

Sorry Dave, but I think you win that contest…

I should try and dig up some old pictures of me during this period. I hate mine probably even more than Denise, Lynn, and Amanda — enough that I’m not sure I have any.

My glasses were wire rim, with glass ‘photogrey’ lenses (they’d go dark in sunlight, and they weighed about three pounds because I’m practically blind).

On 16 April 2004 (02:47 PM),
Eila said:

A few comments: one: don’t you people have jobs!!!! This is jealousy speaking; on an ordinary day, I would not even have time to read J.D.’s prose
two: I remember vividly one particular outfit I wore proudly in the eighth grade (it did not necessarily make me a geek, but it was unfortunate, nonetheless) white shorts with a blue stripe down each side, a navy tee shirt, tucked in, blue knee socks and the first pair of Nikes I ever had. I looked spectacular–I was certain the outfit would attract the attention of a certain someone.

On 16 April 2004 (02:59 PM),
Dana said:

Eila: one: don’t you people have jobs!

Hi, Eila!

Speaking only for myself, yes. Yes, I do have a job. But it’s to sit at a computer and type for 8 hours a day. It’s pretty easy to have a browser window open and spend spare moments reading or typing. And I type fast ’cause of all the practice.

white shorts with a blue stripe down each side, a navy tee shirt, tucked in, blue knee socks and the first pair of Nikes I ever had.

Stylin’! =)

One of the advantages(?) of repressing your sexuality during your teen years is that you kind of don’t have any embarrasing crushes to talk about. I mean, I’m pretty sure I understand why I was so attached to my friend Todd, now, but I can’t say that I ever dressed to impress him.

Sigh.

On 16 April 2004 (03:05 PM),
Dana said:

Ah, yes — I should have posted this earlier. It’s a local Minneapolis tech support company. Their company vehicles are very distinctive. They used to be even better — they had random older cars, but all with that two tone paint job and the logo. Now they all seem to be bugs.

On 16 April 2004 (05:25 PM),
nate said:

My junior high years were incredibly painless, as I spent them within the comfortable walls of a private school. Funny; looking back, we geeks outnumbered/outclassed the athlete types (you don’t get many of ’em at a private that doesn’t even offer P.E.), and generally assumed that being athletic was more loserish than our nerdiness (how nerdy were we? Playing the Star Trek CCG until 2 AM, that’s how!). I still keep in touch with a handful of people from that school, and count one of them as my best friend.

Also, I benefit from passing my junior high years during the late 90’s, when geek went mainstream. Not so painful to be a geek when everywhere you looked was another millionaire dot-comer (obviously this was before the bubble burst).

You might think that my subsequent transition back into public school come high school has difficult, but that wasn’t too bad either. I had a good idea what I was interested in (journalism), and my years of private schooling allowed my placement into a number of more advanced classes. That gave me an in with the upperclassmen who I continue to be friends with to this day, even though most of them graduated from HS last year, while I finish up my senior year.

On 17 April 2004 (12:03 AM),
Andrew Parker said:

Your memory fails, John: I had Mr. Schultz for first grade. Didn’t you have a crush on his daughter, or was that someone else?

Dad worked for Control Data Corp for those several years that we enjoyed the free “watts” line to the mainframe in Minneapolis so we could play at all of those crazy simulations while other kids pined for an Atari 2600. Pre-teen geek bliss.

The last time I saw Jon McD was the summer after my frosh year at college. He was driving a lowered pink Beetle that he’d recently painted neon pink and was dating a 28-year-old woman; not exactly how I’d imagined he’d drive off into the sunset, but he always had a unique flair…

On 21 April 2004 (11:18 AM),
D. Misner said:

I have to say it was bit unsettling to be sent a link to this by someone I know. Obliterate that little moron in a V-neck velour sweater now. Nonetheless . . .

To be honest I have very little fond memories of any of these times, but then again I’ve always considered “nostalgia” a disease of the mind. I won’t overturn any rocks here, exposing the slugs and pill bugs underneath, but the character sketches above are a bit inaccurate and saccharine, the haze of time placing a veil over the jagged edges. Of course, the “offenses” that drove me nuts then are understandable now that I can see beyond myself — everybody had their own package of problems. If I have any regrets, it’s probably being cruel to Dave our first year at college. Unfortunately, Dave suffered due to me attempting to rebuild who I was and he represented in many respects what I wanted to forget: Canby, Oregon and the old patterns I had fallen into my first year at college. My apologies, Dave. Really, I’m not that bastard anymore.

On 21 April 2004 (11:41 AM),
J.D. said:

Andrew said: Your memory fails, John. I had Mr. Schultz for first grade.

Darren said: The character sketches above are a bit inaccurate and saccharine, the haze of time placing a veil over the jagged edges.

Both of my geeks-in-arms are correct.

My memory does fail. But I hope that in all the essential details, these character sketches are correct.

Darren’s correct, too, that the character sketches are “a bit inaccurate and saccharine”. The inaccuracies are a fault of my memory, of course, not through willful misrepresentation. As I age, I find that memories of my childhood have taken to hiding in dark corners of my mind, to be discovered when rooting for unrelated things. These memories have frayed, so that I can see the basic form, but not always all the details.

As for the saccharine nature of my character sketches: I’m guilty as charged. Mostly, I have fond memories of this group of geeks. Most of my memories are “sweet” in nature. And those that aren’t, well, I’ve learned through trial and error that this is not the forum for sharing such accounts.

Being a geek was rough. No question. I was suicidal for a time because of it. But I’m happy to have persevered, and now it’s the good memories I try to preserve. I’m sad that other — Dave and Darren, for example — have fewer good memories to cling to. I only hope their adult lives haved proved more rewarding and fulfilling than their childhoods.

Dave said: Someone who was my best friend for many years simply got up one morning and made the decision that he wasn’t going to associate with or talk to me anymore.

Dave, I can see how you might perceive this to be the case, but I don’t remember it that way. (And we’ve already established the problems with my memory.)

I remember the rift as more of a gradual thing. Freshman year was a rough and trying time. We were leaving the Mormon church. I was being picked on by bullies. I had problems with low self-esteem and suicidal tendencies. I had few classes with any of my old, geeky friends. There was a slew of things marring my psyche on a day-to-day basis.

When my family ended up at Zion, I felt envigorated by religious fervor, as you’re well aware. I became obsessed with my new life. I never consciously cast off any of my old friends, though in retrospect I can see that might have seemed the case.

From my side, Dave seemed to grow cantankerous and short-tempered. I felt he didn’t want me for a friend anymore. Hearing his side, I can see that’s because he felt the same thing. We weren’t communicating.

But he’s right: the rift does mar our relationship to this day, and we have side-stepped it, and we have learned to live around it. (Except for this weblog entry, I guess.)

For myself, I’m grateful that the passage of years has allowed Dave and me to become friends again.

On 21 April 2004 (02:30 PM),
Dave said:

Unfortunately for me, at the time JD describes there were moments in which I was cantankerous and short-tempered. Find a 14 year old who isn’t. Fortunately for JD (and me) neither one of us are 14 (thank God).

Darren- good to hear from you again. If it comes as any consolation, I’ve never thought that you treated me especially poorly when we were in college. I full well understood (and sympathized with) your desire to leave behind highschool and it’s attendant nightmarish associations. Frankly, I thought you were just a conflicted guy trying to find himself. I’m glad you succeeded.

On 21 April 2004 (06:00 PM),
Denise said:

Ok – and what does this say about me? Skinny Grasshopper that got dumped by one of the founding members of the geek squad?

And just wanted to add – everyone does things or says things in their youth that they regret. I got hurt by people, and I’m sure I hurt some people myself. Add the hurt to the inability to express true feelings when you are an adolescent, and it is a recipe for misunderstood rifts.

On 22 April 2004 (07:35 AM),
Dave said:

Denise- Don’t feel too bad about getting dumped by JD. He dumped me too and I wasn’t even going out with him!

On 22 April 2004 (07:38 AM),
J.D. said:

What can I say? I was an idiot in both cases…

On 22 April 2004 (08:47 AM),
Dave said:

Well, at least I could’ve gotten a kiss or something out of it. Geesh!

On 22 April 2004 (09:38 AM),
Dana said:

Now there’s an image. =) If you two do kiss and make up, I sure hope there’s photographic proof!

Ants of Mystery

Our household’s ongoing struggle with the local ant population is the stuff of legends. I’ve mentioned it here ad nauseum, and I’m going to continue to mention it until we wipe the motherfuckers from the face of the earth.

Our latest futile effort involves those little plastic ant traps that we’ve tried again and again. They never work.

The packaging on the new ones proclaim “now with two foods that ants love”. Right. They may love the food, but the trick is to actually get the little bastards inside the traps. If they’d go in, then maybe they’d adhere to the dream procedure: carry the food (and the poison) back to the nest, wiping out all of the little buggers, including the queen.

So we got these new traps. We bought two packages of four, giving us eight traps. I placed them in strategic locations around the house (both inside and out). I’ve been checking them almost every hour, but none of them ever have ants in them. The ants just don’t seem to care. They’d rather be exploring the trash.

Yesterday, while lying on the lawn to take a photo of the cherry tree, I discovered an ant trail — no, an ant highway — running from the Secret Lair of the Motherfuckers, across the bald spot in our lawn, and then — get this — up the cherry tree: up the trunk, past the crown, up the limbs and out of sight.

What are these ants doing?

Why are they climbing the cherry tree? Are they after the cherry blossoms? If so, why not go after the blossoms lower on the tree? Why climb the tree to near the very top?

Or, is it somehow possible they have some secret plan for world domination. Maybe they have a little ant-sized rocket ship hidden in the upper reaches of the tree. Maybe they’re working feverishly to complete an ant bomb in retaliation for the hordes of ants we’ve killed over the past few years.

Whatever. I don’t care.

I gathered three of the new ant traps and placed them directly in the ant highway. “Aha, you little motherfuckers,” I thought. “I have you now!”

Of course, I didn’t have them now. Or ever.

When the ants came upon the large impediments in the middle of their highway, they simply walked around them. Grrrr.

I noticed that certain pieces of grass served as special ant conduits, parts of the highway that every ant was obligated to travel. I carefully bent a couple of these pieces of grass so that they ran into the openings of the traps. The ants would walk down the grass but, just as they reached the opening, they would turn around and go back in search of an alternate route.

I held out hope that one ant — a single ant — would overcome his slavish obedience to the Ant Will and, out of curiousity, wander inside a trap to feed on one of the “two foods that ants love”.

Hope was all I had.

Once, toward evening, I went out side and looked at the traps again. Look! Inside one was a single ant, crawling over the surfaces of both foods that ants love. Alas, he didn’t seem to be feeding so much as wandering lost. He couldn’t seem to find an exit. I went in the house to get Kris, to show her my single ant prize, but when we returned, it had escaped.

Damn.

Have these ant traps ever worked for anyone?

Sometimes I’m able to find a consistent morning rhythm. I’m out of bed at the same time every morning, in the bath at the same time every morning, out the door at the same time every morning, at my desk at the same time every morning. When this happens, it’s not unusual to pass the same cars and people every day on my drive to work.

One of those I’m passing now is a fellow on a motorcycle. Each day as I turn right from 13th to Ivy, he’s waiting at the red light. I need to take my camera with me one of these days, because he’s quite a sight.

Mostly, I guess he looks like any other biker except that his leather jacket is red. What really sets him apart, though, is his helmet. On top of his helmet, for no apparent reason, is a foot-tall metal spike.

I’m not kidding.

He looks like a frickin’ unicorn!

Comments

On 22 March 2004 (09:08 AM),
drew said:

Wallpaper your house in the same tileset as your website. That’ll scare the buggers off.

On 22 March 2004 (09:12 AM),
mart said:

bah. i like the color and depth for a change…

On 22 March 2004 (09:15 AM),
J.D. said:

Trust me: there’s worse to come.

I’m playing with design elements to see what I like. Today it’s an orange tiled background. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Fortunately, I have a clear idea of what I want in my re-design, so I don’t think much tinkering will be required. The real problem is that I’m borrowing heavily from another fellow’s layout. If the final product mutates, as I expect it to do, then that won’t be an issue. If, however, my final layout is too close to his, I’m going to ask him for permission to use his code-base :/

On 22 March 2004 (10:27 AM),
dowingba said:

I see you’ve been over to Squidfingers looking for background patterns. I like this one cause it looks like chain-mail to me.

In case you were wondering, it is entirely possible to have a three columned layout using only CSS (ie: no tables). I’ve never done it, personally, but I don’t envision what the problem would be.

I know a thing or two about ants, as well. You see, they send out “scouts” to find food. Those scouts leave a “chemical trail” that leads to the food they find. They leave a little puddles of chemicals periodically as little landmark nodes for their armies, like when you’re camping and you leave a trail of twigs so you don’t get lost. If you can find one of these chemical nodes, I’m sure there are some truly dastardly things you can do to the ants. Have you ever played the game “Lemmings”? You know how there’s some places where a big hydrolic thing periodcally crushes your line of lemmings as they walk under it? Just food for thought…

On 22 March 2004 (11:07 AM),
Dave said:

I’ve already told JD about the ant pheremones/scent trails, but he doesn’t ever want to do anything about it, just complain. A little bleach or ammonia in some water and you can wipe out their scent trails and they can’t find their way around.

As for the (poisoned) ant food, believe me there are things that you can feed them that they won’t ignore. The trick is apparently to get the right thing for the right type of ant. We had pavement ants in our basement at one point. The exterminator came out, sprayed the base of the house and the put out a bunch of bait. Within 5 minutes those pesky bastards were swarming the poison and carting it off. In order to get rid of them from the main nest, Karen found a couple of their main exit holes and used a small bottle of super duper poison on the top of the hole. Next day, no more ants.

Does JD want to follow my advice? Noooooo. He’d rather complain about the ants than actually get rid of them. I think that he really likes the ants. They’re his buddies, his play pals. What would he do without them? He’d have to post one of those other blog postings that he’s working on at the moment…

On 22 March 2004 (11:14 AM),
J.D. said:

Do you think we haven’t tried to get rid of these things? Wiping out their scent trails works for maybe a day or two. Then new scouts lay down new trails and you’re back to square one.

We’ve had the exterminator out a half-dozen times in the last eighteen months. They’ve laid down every conceivable type of poison. They cause a temporary decline in the ant population, but within weeks the ants are back.

I don’t think I’m just whining and not acting. Trust me, we’ve done plenty of acting.

There’s a reason I call these little motherfuckers motherfuckers…

On 22 March 2004 (11:28 AM),
Dave said:

1) Wiping out the scent trail will not work forever, you need to keep doing it.
2) Obviously they’re attracted to something otherwise they wouldn’t keep coming back
3) The fact that you wipe out the scent trail inside the house doesn’t effect the scent trail OUTside the house (which is leading them to the house itself). Therefore you need to wipe out the outside trail as well.
4) Find the main nest and poison the main nest, not just around the house.
5) Consider that you may limiting yourself to using weanie-boy toxic chemicals because you don’t want to harm your cats. If that’s the case, then move the cats somewhere for a short period of time and nuke the damn ants.
6) If all else fails, remember that ants are not resistant to fire. Find the nest, dig it up, liberally apply gasoline and set the damn thing on fire. (Without attracting the attention of the Canby fire department of course)
Remember that your object is to KILL the ants. All of them. The more the merrier. The object is not just to keep them out of the house. That would be a fine objective, but they’ve proven that they can’t follow orders and stay out of the house. Kill kill kill. You ain’t blood thirsty enough, druid boy!!

On 22 March 2004 (11:39 AM),
Joel said:

It is times like these that I sit and ponder the question, “What would Wendell Berry do?”

On 22 March 2004 (11:52 AM),
Lisa said:

Oooh! The squidfingers patterns are extremely cool.

On 22 March 2004 (12:19 PM),
tammy said:

If nothing else works cut down that tree they live in!

On 22 March 2004 (12:25 PM),
Dana said:

Dave speaks much ant-related wisdom. Heed him. Consider getting different exterminators. Find the main nest (probably in your crawlspace, I assume).

On 22 March 2004 (12:31 PM),
Dana said:

Which reminds me — exactly which species of ant are we talking about? Do you know? And the trail that was making a ‘bee-line’ (ant-line?) for the tree — where was it coming from?

On 22 March 2004 (12:32 PM),
Emily said:

The pattern is fine, but the color is harsh.

On 22 March 2004 (01:14 PM),
dowingba said:

You could always build a moat between the ant hive and your house. Now, if you see the ants building little boats then it’s time to be afraid…

Am I the only one who think there might be a connection between this ant problem and J.D.’s apparent sugar addiction.

On 22 March 2004 (04:19 PM),
tammy said:

Ah, dowingba, me thinks thou art making fun of Jd’s little problem. Ants and boats? Tis easy to see thee does not grasp the seriousness of this situation!

On 22 March 2004 (08:46 PM),
Johnny Doe said:

Uh, Tammy, I think that should be:
“‘Tis easy to see thou graspeth not the seriousness of this situation.”

But then again, I never could keep straight the second person singular v. the first person singular for those archaic phrases, so perhaps it should be thou dost not grasp, or thou doest not grasp.

Where’s a handy Thor comic book when you need one?

On 22 March 2004 (10:50 PM),
kaibutsu said:

If you want to console yourself, you might try reading “The Argentine Ant,” by Italo Calvino.

Imagine if Kafka had written about pest problems…

On 23 March 2004 (09:49 AM),
Courtney said:

We have a very mild ant problem. I placed 4 of those plastic Raid ant traps and have only seen one ant in the last week. My parents had a serious ant problem. They have Orkin come out and spray every month and the problem seems to be under control. It’s an expensive solution but it seems to be working.

Back to your question about BBQ’s. I got Andrew a grill for his last birthday and we LOVE it. It’s a Weber Performer Grill – it uses charcoal but has a gas igniter. It also has a nice surface area. You can see one for yourself at www.webergrills.com.

My Husband, the Chef

text by Kris, links by J.D.

Jd loves Texas Sheet Cake, a sort of cake-like brownie topped by a rich chocolate glaze. Very sweet, very chocolate-y with a hint of cinnamon. I think this is something his mother fixed when he was growing up. Chocolate sheet cake is on Jd’s menu for Chicken Noodle Fest so I look for his recipe as I make a shopping list.

It’s Friday, so Jd’s working till noon and I’m home. When I can’t locate the recipe, I email him. He responds: “Hm. It may be loose, on a piece of paper, just floating in my recipe bin, or the favorite recipes book, or somewhere. I may have to find it when I get home.” This is déjà vu; the last time he wanted to make this dessert, he couldn’t find his previous recipe, so he purposely got it from his Mom. I’m hoping he can find it, and, after he searches fruitlessly around for a while and is on the verge of giving up in favor of using an alternative cake-like brownie recipe, he actually does. He spied the word “Texas” on a corner, peeking out of a stack of loose papers in a pile on the bookshelf where his cookbooks used to be. He feels victorious. I silently wonder if there isn’t a more efficient system.

When I look at the recipe, I notice it calls for a 10″ by 15″ sheet pan. Although I have more baking gadgets than I could possibly need, I don’t own a pan of this size. Don’t worry, Jd reassures me. He always uses one of our 12″ x 16″ cookie sheets instead. I am doubtful. Does he size-up the recipe? Does he adjust the baking time? Is he sure? He’s very sure, he has made this recipe with this pan, multiple times. Okay, fine—off to the store.

At Thriftway, things go pretty smoothly. A small glitch when he asks if we need peanut butter and I remind him we got a two-pack at Costco last week. He laughs that he could forget such a thing in only a week. But then he gets snippy when in the soup aisle I remind him that we also bought a “flat” of chicken noodle soup. “Why do you assume I would forget that?” he complains. Why indeed? While I am in the produce section, Jd also gets mildly admonished by the Pepsi Corp. stockperson who catches him cheating on the iTunes contest. She has watched him tilt the bottle to sneak a look at the cap to see if he has a winner. He feels no shame.

Home again—time for Jd to cook. I try to prepare myself for the impending combination of Jd in the kitchen with a pound of powdered sugar. I feel like I do a pretty good job of not hovering, but as I’m folding laundry he comes to me holding one of our cookie sheets. You saw it coming, I’m sure. He has realized that, in fact, he has in the past used the smaller size, which we no longer have. He makes store trip number two to get a pan as the batter sits ready on the counter.

As the cake bakes, he makes the glaze on the stovetop. The recipe says to glaze the cake as soon as it comes out of the oven, but when the timer beeps, Jd finds that the cake has risen alarmingly into a dome, rather than remaining flat. I tell him that it should fall as it cools. Be patient. However, wanting to follow the recipe exactly, Jd proceeds to pour hot chocolate glaze onto the convex surface of the hot cake. Gravity exerts its influence, of course, and soon Jd has a sheet pan surrounded by several inches of gooey icing-covered counter. He laughs. I need to leave the kitchen.

Finally, he is done. The remaining glaze has been spread onto the cake, which has flattened somewhat. Wanting to sample his creation, Jd cuts a small piece from the corner. “Hm. It’s not quite right,” he says, “I can’t serve that.” Optimistically, he tastes a piece from the opposite corner of the pan. Still, there is something not quite right. He surmises that what he tastes is the buttermilk. But he has made this recipe before, and it always has buttermilk in it. “The only thing that I could have possibly done wrong is put in a tablespoon of baking powder instead of a teaspoon.” A-ha! I ask if it’s bitter. “I think that’s the buttermilk,” he answers. I sample the cake myself. The strange dome-like phenomena is now explained; the cake tastes characteristically alkaline. Too much baking powder, alright. Jd makes store trip number three: more powdered sugar and buttermilk. Cake #1 goes into the trash. The ants will feast tonight.

While Cake #2 is happening, I go to work on this story. As I make my way to the computer, Jd asks me hopefully if perhaps the omission of the cinnamon could have caused the abnormal rising and taste—he’s not sure he added the cinnamon the first time. I assure him that the cinnamon is completely optional; cinnamon, or lack thereof, is not the cause of his problems.

All sounds like it’s going well from the kitchen, until Jd, obviously pleased with himself, comes in to tell me that he forgot to get more buttermilk at the store (trip #3). “But,” he crows, “there was just barely enough left from the first one!”

I hope you all enjoy the Texas Sheet Cake. It has been a labour of love.