Summer in the city
I was talking to a friend the other day and found out he might be flying into a blast furnace.
“What do you know about Phoenix in late August?” he asked.
“I know nobody goes there unless they have to. What’s going on?” I asked.
Turns out the band Green Day is having a concert there. Obviously Green Day knows nothing about Phoenix in late August.
Having grown up in the Valley of the Sun, I could tell them that any description of the town at that time of the year does not involve the word “warm.” That is far too mild. The correct terms are “blazing,” “scorching,” “molten,” “fiery,” “hellish” and “(deleted) hot.”
I told my friend that since the days average about 112 degrees, “you’ll be fine as long as you move quickly between an air-conditioned car, an air-conditioned hotel room and any other air-conditioned indoor space. Otherwise you’ll probably melt into a puddle in about two minutes. Where is the band going to play?”
“I think it’s at the same place the Suns play,” he said.
“Well, that’s a covered arena, so you should be OK,” I said. “But I still think you’re nuts.”
It turns out Green Day in going to perform in an open amphitheater. This makes me wonder if there isn’t an unholy plot involving the band’s manager and the some local hospitals who want boost their patient counts by arranging a rash of heat stroke cases.
But I’m being a pessimist. As Bob Boze Bell wrote some years ago, there are at least five good things about Phoenix in the summertime.
(1) It’s always easy to find an open tennis court.
(2) Fried foods stay warm for days.
(3) Funerals are much shorter.
(4) Lawyers still try to wear ties. (Bob had a long-standing grudge with the legal profession.)
(5) The snowbirds don’t just melt, they evaporate.
(OK, I made that last one up, but my memory is going.)
One other thing my friend will need to keep in mind is that any car you meet on the street with its windows down has the right of way.
The windows down means the driver doesn’t have air conditioning and is therefore insane. And if the vehicle has vinyl upholstery, that person is also about to burst into flame and needs to get to one of the Valley’s many well-staffed burn centers as quickly as possible. So be kind and just get out of their way.
On second thought, maybe my friend should just catch Green Day when they play Denver the day before. That’s probably what all the fans in Phoenix are going to do.
Yes, truth is stranger than fiction…
This just in from The Rural Blog:
“Between Elkton and Hopkinsville in southwestern Kentucky, along U.S. 68, stands a tall concrete obelisk, much like the Washington Monument but somewhat smaller.
“Like it, this one recognizes the father of a country, but one that didn’t last long: Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who was born in the little burg of Fairview in 1809, a few months after Abraham Lincoln, about 125 miles northeast.
“It’s a state historic site, and it is now run by an African American, Ron Sydnor, whose ancestors Davis and his allies fought a war to keep enslaved.”
Yes, it’s true, and you can read about it here. Enjoy.
The good news, and then the bad news
Here’s one of those “good news, bad news” items.
The good news is scientists are seriously debating whether to name a geological epoch recognizing humanity’s impact on the planet. (Read about it here.)
The bad news? It’s in recognition of how badly we’ve mucked up the environment.
Feels kind of like being called up to the podium at the pet show, then getting handed the “Worst of Breed” trophy.
Coincidence or irony?
So this morning I’m wading through the usual glut of e-mails and see this:
“SEATTLE HEMPFEST 2010: YOU WANNA PERFORM?”
It seems the Hempfest folks are seeking music acts for their “protestival” (which sounds like a medical term, “Mr. Jones, I’m afraid you have protestival of the glandular region”). They want people to electronically submit demo information instead of mailing a CD, bio, photos, etc.
The Hempfest folks are very proud of this. Electronic submissions are “cleaner, greener, easier and faster” they claim. It’s also another nail in the coffin for the U.S. Postal Service, so its a win-win situation! (They didn’t really say that, but it’s sort of implied.
So now we come to the “coincidence or irony?” part.
Immediately after I finish deleting the Hempfest message, this message from an outfit called “Special Guests Inc.” pops up:
“THE WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED/INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITY”
“What are you smoking?: Some authorities encouraged by America’s failed ‘war on drugs’”
I was tempted to forward this to the Hempfest protestival people, but they’re looking for music acts, not interview opportunities. And in any case, they would probably say they’ve already answered the question.
Time to catch some z’s
Thank you Danny Westneat.
In his column today, Westneat explains why those attacks of narcolepsy hit me about 30 seconds after I sit down for an afternoon meeting.
It’s simply that my brain is craving a nap. In that respect, I’m no different from Ken Griffey Jr. during a Mariner’s game. (Except I’m nowhere near as well-paid.)
Everything fits perfectly. According to Westneat’s source, the “nap zone” hits about 12 hours after the midpoint of last night’s sleep. That would be right about 1:30 p.m. for me which is right when most afternoon meetings get underway.
Now I have a perfect excuse to give when people see me nodding about 15 seconds into a riveting discussion of code enforcement issues. I’m in the nap zone! Can’t they see that?
Unfortunately, this does not explain why an overwhelming urge to nod off also strikes during excruciatingly boring discussions conducted in the morning or at night. This subject obviously needs more research.
But let’s take that up later, I’m feeling really beat right now.
Back from the Windy City
Whoa. Sorry about the long pause since my last post. I’ve been out of town.
I flew off to Chicago for a vacation. Why Chicago? Well, as I’ve been telling people it’s because I’ve been through the town twice before. Once en route to London and once en route to Boston and the only thing I saw of the city was the view from my airplane seats and the inside of the airports. So I decided that one day I needed to get back there and give the place a proper visit.
And the last week in April was that time.
It was a fun visit. I toured the U-505 (a German sub captured in World War II) at the Museum of Science and Industry, toured famous sites via a double-decker bus, saw the city from the skydeck on the Sears Tower (1,353 feet above street level), checked out the Cloudgate sculpture (aka “the Bean”) in Millennium Park, toured infamous sites via The Untouchables Tour (complete with a black bus) and got a free bag of money.
So here’s some of my vacation photos, this first one being a theater marquee I just liked-
And here’s the Cloudgate sculpture-
And here’s a million dollars in $20 bills which is part of an exhibit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago on the history of money.
This fed tour was sort of a surprise. It’s not advertised and I only found out about it from a tour guide who said pointed the massive building out as we passed it by and said, “If you want to see what a million bucks looks like, you should stop by there.” So I did.
It’s a really cool exhibit and they even let you have a free bag of money worth about $364. The catch is some assembly is required -
One last note. According to the “Unofficial Guide to Chicago” I checked out of the Walla Walla Library, the term “Windy City” is supposedly not used by locals. It was coined by reporters to describe the blowhard politicians.
Frankly, I don’t believe it. While I was there the wind off Lake Michigan blew hard, cold and constantly. OK, the politicians were windy too, but at least you could silence them by hitting the mute button.
This and that
Batting cleanup today, so here goes:
The mystery of Waitsburg and the census seems to have been solved. It seems the U.S. Census people don’t regard post office boxes as residences, so people who get their mail in a P.O. box didn’t get a census form.
This brings to mind an anecdote about Los Alamos, N.M., where a small city sprang up in World War II after Robert Oppenheimer decided that was the place to put the R&D lab for the atomic bomb.
As part of the security precautions, all mail, correspondence, etc., went through a post office box in Santa Fe. That way people wouldn’t give the place away by telling relatives to send letters to “the top-secret government research lab way up in the mountains.”
Along with all the people who converged on “the hill”, the work force included quite a few young men and women. Some of these folks, not surprisingly, struck up relationships, got married and then started producing kids.
But due to wartime security, the birth certificates for babies born to couples living in Los Alamos had a unique twist. If you were born at that time and in that place, your official birthplace was “Post Office Box XXX, Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
Now on to other topics:
I’m having serious tech envy. My colleague, Sheila Hagar, just got one of those cool GPS units for her vehicle. The thing doesn’t just show you where to go, it gives verbal directions. There’s even a range of different voices, including one with a British accent which is the one the Hagar family has named “Jonathan David,” because, well, it sounds like a “Jonathan David.”
She’s going to blog on this in greater detail, so this is just a heads-up. I intend to check this wonder out myself just as soon as I get back from a vacation I’m about to take to Chicago.
So that’s all until next week. Watch this space for pictures and story from the Big City….
The Census vs. Waitsburg
So what’s up with Waitsburg?
According to a news release from Sen. Mike Hewitt, R-Walla Walla, the Waitsburgians are apparently saying “no thanks” when it comes to being counted in the 2010 Census.
(Go here to check out the Census return figures for yourself.)
As of Wednesday, only 40 percent of the folks in Waitsburg have mailed their Census forms back in, the lowest return rate in Walla Walla County. The city of Walla Walla is holding the lead with a 73 percent return rate, followed by College Place (70 percent). Overall, Walla Walla County has a 71 percent return rate, the same as Benton County and only a point behind Columbia County (72 percent), but ahead of Franklin County (69 percent).
Jumping over the line into Oregon, Milton-Freewater’s citizens are dragging their collective feet with a 64 percent return rate, way down from the 75 percent who opted to be counted in the 2000 Census. (But that’s not far behind the city of Tacoma, where only 66 percent of the residents have returned forms.)
Censuswise, the folks who can hold their heads up are the citizens of Dayton, who have posted an 80 percent return rate. That figure beats the city’s 2000 return rate, which was 79 percent.
But getting back to Waitsburg, what’s up with them? Are we seeing some kind of revolt against being put into a vast government data bank? A hint of the dark distrust citizens there have of the federal government? Or is it just a refusal to open up any letters from the Census Bureau on the grounds they may contain bad news?
Or could it be just a general dislike of being asked to fill out yet another government form? (Which, given that this is April 15, tax deadline day, makes about as much sense as anything.)
Whatta bunch of turkeys!
So I’m taking the long way in to work the other day and here’s what I see strutting around in somebody’s yard–(Click on photo to get the full view)
Office WMDs
I may live to regret this, but I bought Sheila Hagar an office WMD.
Well, OK, maybe a Nerf six-shooter isn’t considered a weapon of mass destruction, but in Hagar’s hands, who knows?
The Nerf is necessary because although Sheila is a good friend, when we rib her too much she takes to throwing pennies at us. While we normally don’t mind having people toss money our way, we had to acknowledge that flying pennies could damage valuable office equipment. (It might also injure one of us, but who the heck cares about reporters?)
So while running around KMart the other day, I spotted the Nerf Gun, which looks like a revolver on steroids.
I presented said it to Sheila yesterday, but I also felt compelled to include the Nerf Gunners Creed, which reads as follows: (with apologies to the Marine Corps)
“This is my Nerf Gun. There are many like it, but this one is mine.”
“My Nerf Gun is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.”
“My Nerf Gun, without me, is useless. Without my Nerf Gun, I am useless. I must fire my Nerf Gun true.”
“I must shoot straighter than Terry McConn, who is trying to mock me. I must shoot him before he shushes me. I WILL…”
“My Nerf Gun and myself know what counts in this office is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. WE WILL HIT…”
“My Nerf Gun is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus I will learn it as a brother (or sister, in my case). I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my Nerf Gun clean and ready. We will become part of each other. WE WILL…”
“Before God, I swear this creed. My Nerf Gun and myself are the defenders of my desk. We are the master of the smirking laggards surrounding us. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY PERSONAL SPACE!”
“So be it, until victory is ours and there is no enemy but peace!”
P.S. – Sheila’s already asking where she can get extra rounds. I think I’ve created a monster. Let’s just hope the Nerf people don’t make a belt-fed model…
