We regret to inform you...

First off, my apologies for the long delay in the follow-up to my last post. The motivation behind the post had been a "date" that Electra and I went on. The evening consisted of dinner and an academic function with her proximate to me. That's it.

The only notable aspect of the night was the shock expressed by almost anyone who discovered that we might be on an actual date. This shock was soon transmuted into some of the sweetest grist our local rumor mill had ground in some time. I was approached by wide-eyed gossips sputtering phrases like, "Are you and Electra... dating?!"

At first I found this amusing, seeing as the function had held all the romance of a pity-date from your cousin for junior prom, but that soon passed. I returned to my natural state of being vaguely annoyed. Our peers had been shocked because Electra and I really didn't go together. She's kind of Fiona. I'm kind of Shrek. It's really an all-around disturbing picture, that almost stirs a sense of queasy injustice in people.

Third-party rejection doesn't bother me, thankfully. I understand that folks need to maintain a sense of natural order so they will have some idea what to expect in the future. First-party rejection, however, I find positively delightful, with the most delectable occurence happening on a warm spring night. Listen to my tale of woe, so that you may share in my joy.

One evening I was sitting with a friend in front of the television. We were doing our best impression of Xbox boys, quietly staving off manhood for another day. Our concentration was soon interruppted by a half-dozen or so Texans coming through the door (I mention their nationality only to give you an aural picture of the volume). They assumed positions around the room, either sitting on the questionably hygenic floor or lounging on the ancient couches, and continued their animated discussion.

I played on.

It turns out the subject of their colloquy was the ever popular topic of dating. These people are members of a church community of singles, so the topic comes up hourly. The only consensus that the group had achieved by the time they decided to start bothering me was that there wasn't enough dating going on. Yes, thats right, a group of single men and women were out together complaining to each other about not going out with each other. For those of you unfamiliar with intrachurch relationship dynamics, feel free to cue the Twilight Zone theme music. I however understand that this sort of inanity is like an everlasting gobstopper to the twenty-something Christian in a state of post-collegiate ennui.

I played on.

The discussion moved to the subtopic of how not enough guys are asking girls out. To hear it from the ladies surrounding me, they spend night after night knitting sweaters by the phone hoping that someone, anyone, would call and offer to take them to Patrizio's.

I played on.

At this point, one of the young ladies, Skeeter we'll call her, decided to chime in. I remember her saying something to this effect: "I don't know what their (guys) problem is. I mean, if a nice guy asked me out, I'd say yes. If he wanted to take me to dinner, we could have dinner. What's the big deal. Am I just not attractive enough? What's the big..."

I paused the game.

"Miss Skeeter," I turned and said,"I would like to take you to dinner."

Last week I killed a pigeon. I was driving down the freeway and struck it with my rear-view mirror. My mirror was broken off and the bird was deposited in an even spray along the side of my truck. I only bring it up now, because the instant before the pigeon was struck by the mirror, our eyes met. On the face of the pigeon was the look of stunned terror. A look I had not seen since a warm spring night, when I saw it on the face of a young lady who I asked on a date.

Welcome to my world. We're glad to have you.

So beautiful... they should have sent a poet

Have you ever known someone by reputation alone? This has happened to me quite a bit in recent years. I am a member of a possibly over-large church and therefore know a great number of people on a casual basis. Because the first degree is so massive, the second degree is positively ginormous, and there are a goodly number of intersections at this point and beyond.

The result of this is that I hear familiar names being dropped all the time. Not familiar because I have ever encountered the person, but rather by sheer quantity of references. This can go on for years. When I finally meet owner of the name, it is usually an underwhelming experience. I make the mistake of thinking that there must be something really amazing about the person if I hear them being referred to all the time, like a modern day Achilles. The truth is that there are a great many more heels than Achilles.

There is one name in particular which I first heard about four years ago. It was the name of a young woman, who for our purposes and her temporary anonominity will be altered to ... Electra. Two things you should know about Electra. First, she was almost always talked about by men, single men. Second, the way her name was spoken was very unusual. It was always, "yadda yadda yadda, Electra ... ( reflective pause), yadda yadda yadda." This went on for years.

I remember the first time Electra's name was ever spoken to me by a woman. This woman, who is very wise and for whom I have great respect, was idly looking at the names in the cell phone belonging to a mutual male friend of ours. Suddenly I hear, "Electra! ... Electra! ... I can't believe he has Electra's number in his phone!" in a shocked and disgusted tone of voice. I gathered from her attitude that Electra was of such rare quality that being in this lecher's phone list was a mild blasphemy.

Electra became a sort of stock character in conversation, a name used to make a point. This usually occurred in the company of lonely men, a company I often keep and often offer. Electra represented a kind of feminine ideal. A gold standard of beauty, grace, talent, holiness, and intelligence, upon which an economy of guy talk could be built. You can imagine that I was tad bit interested in meeting the lady behind the legend.

Time passed. At long last I met the mystery woman. I had little warning. I was on my way to a restaurant and found out that she was going to be there. I believe our first words were:

Her: "Hi I'm Electra."

Me: "The Electra?"

Her: "Umm, yeah..."

Immediately I regretted this. She looked at me as if I were the punch line to a long and unfunny joke. I refrained from speaking to her unnecessarily the rest of the evening. Instead, I tried to catch a few furtive glances at the one and only. Sure she was beautiful, exceptionally so. But in a world with three and a half billion girls, you're bound to meet a hottie now and then. No, the characteristics that make her into such a singularity took time to become clear to me. As they will to you, dear readers, so stay tuned for next time.

We Few, We Happy Few

This week, America celebrated Valentine's Day. For millions of people, the day was an occasion for special recognition of the significant others who make our lives palatable. For many of those without a valentine, the day was an occasion for the celebration of the American virtues of cynicism and sarcasm. But for a few, the passing of the holiday means something else entirely.

This weekend marks the beginning of the Spring Campaign. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, I will share it with you as it was explained to me by a veteran of many battles.

There was a time when wars followed certain conventions. One of them was that there is no fighting during the winter. This convention came about mainly because it makes good sense. You're as likely to lose men to the elements as to the enemy. The Russians knew this. Napoleon and Hitler, however, must have overslept the day that lecture was given in Global Domination 5331.

As the chill winds blew, the smart generals stayed in their camps. They rested and plotted. Between mad bouts of shivering, General Washington surely devised many a fiendish gambit against the Redcoats for when the snow melted. Passes clear and rivers running, the Spring Campaign could begin.

What does this have to do with Valentine's day? Simply this: one should not try to start a relationship from November to Valentine's day. Dating is difficult enough without having to brave the dangers of Thanksgiving Charybdis and Christmas Scylla only to skirt the shoals of New Years while the fierce storms and jagged rocks at the Horn of St. Valentine foam.

I know what you're thinking. The holidays can be a wonderful catalyst for developing a relationship. Yes, thats true. But a chemist's catalyzed reaction, is an idiot's explosion. Just be aware of the risks. The problem arises from the fact that these special times require the two parties to be synchronized. How one handles a particular holiday depends heavily on the level of the relationship at that time. If you assume a different relationship level than she does, duck. You DO NOT want to meet skeptical parents until you have to. I swear the uptick in store traffic I saw at Crane and Co. last January was due to overeager women wanting to just "browse" the engraved invitation catalogs because their daughters brought home an actual man for Christmas.

Holidays are as bad as birthdays, potential relationship killers. Birthdays are difficult to manage because they come at any time of year, but the same isn't true of the holidays. They can be avoided like the bad section of town that they are. There will be plenty of time for urban renewal later.

So this is it boys. I hope you've been gathering intel because it's time to mount up. The passes are clear and your quarry awaits.

Its just so petty

On Sunday I joined an exceptionally nonexclusive club. The membership requirements are frequently met here in Dallas, as the the sole line reads "Must have had car broken into and burglarized." The roster of this honorable fraternity includes the names of many of my friends, and I feel a renewed sense of kinship to them.


Among the losses:

1. The twohundred and thirty-three dollars required to repair the damage
2. The leather binder given to me as a graduation present
3. Two short stories I was working on.
4. A single CD from the set of four comprising the worst audio book I have ever suffered through (which I borrowed from the library and must therefore replace in its entirety so that it can be inflicted on others)
5. Residual denial of the total depravity of man

What really gets me about this crime is how stupid and petty it was. The binder's value to anyone but me is limited. As for the picture, let's just say that is why God hasn't made me king.

There's no place like homeland

Something inflammatory today. Reading news reports out of the middle east has gotten me wondering. Does anyone really have a right to a given piece of land? The obvious focus of this question is the situation in Israel, but reading about Iran brought the question to mind today.

Pull out an atlas and locate Iran, it's next to Iraq in case you're having trouble, if you are an American and don't know where Iraq is, your problems are so vast that even the threat of imminent immolation by thermonuclear hellfire should be of no concern to you.

Once you see the middling wedge of land, possibly colored orange for contrast from the surrounding greens and yellows, consider the following questions. Why are the borders where they are? Why is this tiny part of a page in an atlas labled "Iran?" Was it always like this? What was there before? Was the change a good thing or a bad thing? Would another change, sure to come at some point, be a good thing or a bad thing? These are great questions to ask about any plot of land in that atlas, even our own. Borders, when viewed on the timescale of the totality of human history, are lively critters. If you had a world map for every decade of the last 3000 years, and were able to arrange them in flipbook fashion, the seething colors could probably only be described as psychadelic. You may have wonderful arguements for why a nation should persist, but none do. It's a lot like handwringing over endangered species. No matter what you do, species go extinct. Something like 95% already have. Before you scream social darwinist, my point is that people seem to confuse static situations with dynamic ones.

Anyway, back to Iran. I believe that is why the mullahs that run the show in Iran are so keen on developing nuclear technology. Nukes are the most solidifying force the world map has ever seen. Once a nation has them, borders and labels gain a good deal more permanence. The only reason Kim Jong Il will still composing musicals for a while is his access to a nuclear arsenal.

If I was in charge of defense in Iran, I would want nukes yesterday. I would say and do anything to stall global intervention until I had them. After all, our right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy would be the same as everyone else's. That is, you have the right to do whatever you can get away with. I would have plenty of time, because the road to trade sanctions would be long. No one really wants that much oil off the market, the resulting price spike would turn elections. It will be an exciting news day when I order the first underground test. My only real problem after that would be trying to convince the people down in the next office that, no, we shouldn't secretly give a warhead to those yahoos hiding in New York, or the ones in LA, or the ones in Seattle, or the ones in Miami, or the ones in Chicago, or the ones in Houston, or the ones that peacefully frequent that new mosque down the road from your apartment.

So what to do about Tehran? Well, we have recently received a crash course in mideast realpolitik. Luckily for us, it seems Israel is the devil de jour, and they have the most to lose from a nuke enabled Iran. Israel also has only one friend, the US. Their global image would not be much more damaged even if they conduted airstrikes against Iranian nuclear installations, government buildings, and military infrastructure. Sure we would condemn their actions, but we would still sell them jets. We might even throw in a few exCIA cyberninjas to take care of all those folks with the black hats. The kicker is that no follow-up occupation to curb the ensuing chaos is necessary, because we know now that the chaos happens anyway.

Diabolical? Maybe. But, the people of Iran are as ultimately responsible for their government's actions as we are for ours. Pray for peace, but always be prepared for war.

Your moment of zen

I am fascinated by good music. An object vibrates, creating pressure waves in the surrounding gas, the waves propigate and cause correspoding vibrations in our tympanic membranes, where our brains interpret the different frequencies of vibration as diffent tones. When I was first learning to read music, one of my first questions was something like, "C sharp, OK, but what frequency is that?" I found the use of clefs and lettered notes unnecessarily contrived. Of course I had no idea what I was talking about at the time. My point is, music is fundamentally just vibrations, so it doesn't matter what you use to create it. This is one of the more unusual things technology has wrought. I watched the video four or five times.

I don't remember this in the Inferno

I went shopping at wal-mart today. You have to hand it to the Arkansans who run this quaint multinational. They have achieved an indoor shopping experience with all of the convienience of an open-air bazaar with none of the charm. In the past, I have been known to refer to Wal Mart as "The Devil," but I don't really mean that. I suspect however, that beelzebub does have a permanent seat on their board.

Lacking a homologous X chromosome I already find shopping a less than ideal experience. Standing on the curb in front of my local Big Box Mart, I told myslef that it wasn't going to be that bad. All I needed were a new pair of earphones. I am taller than six feet and the ones that came with my Sony CD player have an insufficiently long cord. I don't blame Sony for this, I have met many Japanese, so I can picture what kind of focus group subjects their product development labs are getting in Kyoto.

Anyway, never go to wal-mart for a single item. It's not worth it. Not even if it's discount blood plasma. Once you enter the store, you realize that the one item you need is located at the farthest point from the door you foolishly opted to use for your entrance. If you were disgruntled by the lack of tram service from the Q lot ( the only one with spaces not mined by rogue shopping carts), despair, for you will find no respite here. Be sure to bring plenty of water with you for the journey. Forgot your water? Don't worry, you can get a great deal on bottled water here at wal mart, and the little "made in china" sticker on the cap will cheerily remind you that you are part of the global marketplace.

I don't know how many of you are familliar with the motte and bailey castle designs from post Norman conquest Britain, but I tell you, William the Conqueror himself would have felt quite secure in the electronics department of any modern wal mart. A low outer wall made of shelving surrounds an inner court. This wall has but a single gap, guarded by blue vested enlisted personnel. Beyond the checkout stand you will find the taller inner walls, also made of shelves. These shelves are the tallest available, providing long sight lines in case of Viking attack.

After selecting my new made-in-China headphones from an array of twenty-two options, I trekked back to the front of the store to check out. Holding my single item I surveyed the dozens of check-out lines, each one with a line of 4 carts, many holding scores of made-in-China baby food jars, many of which will need their product codes entered manually, many of which will be paid for by check, many of which will be attempted to be paid for by temporary checks, with many of those requiring the approval of an assistant manager, many of whom will be unavailable because they hung themselves in the break room when they realized they were assistant managers at a wal mart. So you can imagine my elation at seeing a cluster of cutting-edge automated self-check-out stands with only a few people standing in line.

At the cluster, I found three of the four technowonders were "temporarily out-of-order." One of them actually had a little hand made sign announcing this, steadfastly proclaiming the briefness of the infirmity with its faded letters on yellowing paper. Every single person in the line was rewarded with the "please wait for assistance" screen, some of them twice. Assistance consisted of a the same hurried keystrokes every time. I wasn't able to memorize them by the time it was my turn, so Latoya had to help me too (judging from the glazed-over pleasantness she presented, I think Sam Walton may have actually come up with a decent Soma recipe for his brave new world). Though I had a single small item, the pleasant disembodied voice commanded me to please place my item in the bag. This is so you receive your free parting gift of five additional bags stuck to the one you didn't need.

Thats pretty much it. It's my own fault for not putting a transponder in my truck, I'm sure it's still safe out there in the Q lot.