What beer with crow?

I, uh, may need to eat some words, here.

Recall that I thought that it was really dumb to make a re-do of True Grit with The Big Lebowski Jeff Bridges? How I mentioned that the original movie was a stand-alone great? That it didn't need improving on?

Maybe so.

But when I went to see the flick on Christmas afternoon with my mother, we found that the Cohen brothers had done it.

And I know that the poster shows Jeff Bridges (Rooster Cogburn), Matt Damon (Ranger LeBoeuf), and Josh Brolin (Tom Chaney) as the leads, but don't you believe it for a second. Hailee Steinfeld steals the show, in her depiction of the sharp-tongued 14 year old Mattie Ross (from near Dardanell in Yell County).

It's worth seeing at the theatre. Go to one with a good sound system-- the sound is good. When Lucky Ned Pepper sees Rooster through a spy glass fire his pistol to signal that he's crossing a bald spot over a ridge, we see the shot, and second or two later hear the muffled report. When Rooster clambers down the pit to rescue Mattie, and fires off a couple of rounds at rattlesnakes, you hear the distinctive report of a black powder gun, echoing in a rocky, dirty pit. Before Mattie gets to the stream to get water to clean, you hear it as she approaches it. These little things make the movie better.

Damned Cohen brothers. Did it again.

Laundry

I've often said that a defining point in a couple's relationship* is the point where they agree to do laundry together. It's a mix of the mundane and the sweet. The couple is so enamored with each other that they will choose to accompany the other even during a stunningly boring chore that most despise.

There are of course division points within this Waterloo. One is: Laundry Together, Separate Loads. This is safest. It even makes sense: both have this task to do-- why not do it at the same time at the laundromat, and get it done all at once?

(This can pretty much only be accomplished at laundromats. Except for the expense and the hassle of loading up the car and unloading the car, I kind of miss laundromats. When I was a bachelor, I would wear every stitch I owned before finally loading up about five or six loads of laundry to the coin-operated laundromat, and getting it all done-- a month's worth at least-- in about two hours.)

But the Separate Loads method will inevitably evolve into Laundry Together, Shared Loads. Your laundry partner will have just a small number of whites, or delicates, and there you are with your own half-load, and it will make perfect sense to share a load, even if you never leave so much as toothbrush at your Significant Other's residence. Don't want to waste another buck. It's simple economics.

But that way leads to sorting laundry together, which involves sorting dirty laundry together. Friends, I've long advocated not living together until married ("if you're going to act like you're married, get married."), partly because of the issue of sorting dirty laundry. It's an intimacy that some people aren't ready to face, the first time they have to reach for the Spray 'N' Wash to get out a skid mark from their belovéd's drawers. A marriage contract can provide the necessary ballast.
______________________
So, back in October, 1991, I met this young lady, and we started going out. We spent a lot of time together, and by spring of '92, we were in that place in the relationship where we did laundry together.

One night, we were at the big coin laundry across the street from the university. My girlfriend and I had about 4 loads, and we got them all fired up. We decided to walk over to the grocery store and get some items for that night's supper while they washed. When we got back, we found that our washers were empty. As I looked around, I was approached by the laundry attendant. He was very direct, and slow. I put his IQ in either the Very Low Normal range, or the High Functioning Retarded range.

"You had not come back when your washers ended, so I took your laundry out," he said.

"Okayyy...?" I responded hesitantly. His shirt was buttoned to the top button and was tucked in carefully. His head was crew-cut with a zero-guard all the way around his head. His tone was initially a little bit accusatory, as if I had left a baby unattended. But he had done something nice for us.

"I put it in those dryers. Now you have to pay for that, and there is a bundling fee," he explained. "You can pick it up in an hour. I will have it ready." He wouldn't shift his gaze from my eyes. Most people don't look directly into your eyes like that.

"Okay... what, um, what's the price for this?" I asked. It seemed kind of presumptuous of him to have taken our laundry out and started up his "service" so quickly, as we had only just missed being back in time. The laundry was certainly not full, and there were machines idle. But something about his manner made us feel like he would snap if argued about. The laundry was kept neat, and he seemed to feel that everything was Just So.

"It is by the pound. I can not tell you how much it is until it is dried and weighed. There are the prices up there," he said, pointing behind him to a board with a schedule of prices for laundry done and folded, by the pound. It got a little more economical for each progressive weight by 5 lbs. Even as he pointed, he kept staring at my eyes. It was kind of creepy.

My girlfriend and I decided to just go to the video rental store next door to pick out a movie while we waited. We surely couldn't afford to eat out, now. (We were both so very poor.)

When we returned, my new simple friend was hard at work bundling laundry. We sat on some molded plastic chairs in a corner, and watched the inane show on the television hanging from the ceiling. Besides my girlfriend, me, and Our New Special Friend, there were only some immigrant ladies and their small children, who ran around unsupervised.

As I paid the guy to get our laundry out of laundry jail, one of the ladies that we had sat with began demanding of her children, in increasingly more frantic tones, "Felipe? Donde es Felipe? Donde es su hermano? Mi bambino!" (Where's Philip? Where is your brother? My baby!)

Everyone began looking around for the baby. I had earlier seen a very little baby sleeping in a car seat/carrier earlier, and was thinking of that kid. He had been mostly wrapped up in blankets.

At just this time, one of the laundry loads got off-center, and began to slam the drum against the housing. Thud. Thud. Thud.

My girlfriend and I looked at each other with wide eyes as we heard "Mi bambino! Donde es mi bambino?!?" and boom-boom-boom, as our New Special Friend stepped into my consciousness and said, "Sir, that will be nine dollars and forty nine cents."

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" went the off-centered washer. Someone must have put in a heavy blanket, or a quilt, or...

"Felipe!"

"Sir, I am going to have to ask you for correct change." I thought about that pile of blankets, with the baby in it.

Our jaws had gone a little slack before they finally found Felipe playing out in the parking lot. Turned out he was about three.

I married that girl on the last day of February, 1998. And even now, my wife of 12 years (as of Sunday) and I can still make each other laugh by exclaiming, "'Felipe!' Boom! Boom! Boom!"

See what doing laundry together can get you into?

___________________________________
* I almost said "relationship between a man and a woman," but I suppose homosexual relationships have this, too. But then, I'm not so sure. There are vast gaps in my knowledge.

Yet another reason why we should not look to Australia for inspiration.

Aside from the fact that they're also filming insipid reality shows, I mean. Australia hosts a British* I'm A Celebrity-- Get Me Out Of Here! show, and they put B-list people with presumably recognizable names in icky situations. In one recent one, they cooked a rat, and had the celebrities eat it, or something. Yeah, it's disgusting. But whatever. They're being paid in more camera time, and a shot at money.

The Aussies are now firing up a full-fledged animal cruelty case about this. Over a rat being killed on camera. To be eaten.

Rodent plagues are common in Australia. They also carry fleas, which can spread other plagues, like that little matter that consumed 1/3 to 1/2 of Europe in the 14th century. Rats are truly omnivorous, and are known to attack helpless persons (like babies) when they find them.

Boy, howdy. It's nice to know that the Aussies have managed to quell all real crime, that they've got time to focus their resources on protecting vermin like this. What's next? Mosquito and housefly protection?

_____________________________________
*Julie informs me in comments that it's actually a Pommy British reality show, filmed in Oz.

Uh thanks. But you're still a scam.

Oh, National Scholars Honor Society. How you still pester me. You pester me not for the glory of academia. You pester me not for the recognition of honor.

You pester me for money.

Which I shall not bestow upon you. Because you're still a scam.

Hulu. For your vegetation pleasure.

I'd just like to point out that Hulu now has added Seasons 3 and 4 of Adam-12 for your free, on-demand, no-sign-up-required viewing pleasure. In seasons 3 and 4, Reed and Malloy now carry 4-inch revolvers (as opposed to the 6-inch ones in the previous seasons) in the silliest floppy pivot holsters you've ever seen, and their 1970 Plymouth Satellite looks far cooler than the old Belvederes that they were driving before.

These procedurals are quick 24-minute tastes of an idealized view of police culture from the years before and during my birth. Dad was a patrolman, back then.

It's Istanbul Not Constantinople.

What do we call Burma now? Myanmar.
What do we call Pretoria, South Africa now? Tshwane

I can't keep up with them all. I grant that new African countries would have new names, or re-use old ones. I get that Yugoslavian subdivisions got renamed. That figures. Likewise with the former USSR districts, regions, and states.

Recent events in India underscored that some of their better-known towns just flat changed their names without asking us:
Calcutta to Kolkata.
Madras to Chennai.
Bombay to Mumbai.

Lots of geographic geekery to be found here about name changes.

But here's a question I've had for a while, which I've never had a satisfactory answer to:
Why do we still call Bangkok "Bankok," when everyone in Siam Thailand calls it Krung Thep?

8 million residents there call it that. It's short for "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit," which could really cost you to utter, when the meter's running on the cab you just hailed. ______________________________________________________

Click above to embiggen.[ate.][(ify.)]

Speaking of a practical use for knowledge of geographic name changes, my wife picked up a Replogle 12 Inch Starlight Globe fairly recently, at an auction. She seemed surprised at how happy this little $5 purchase made me, and said "I'm sure that it's not anywhere near current." Almost 11 years of marriage, and this woman still doesn't really know me fully. Of course it's not current! That's its charm! I was tickled to find that it didn't have a visible copyright date near the legend in the S. Pacific (where they put pretty much all the legends on globes, right?). Finding out when the map or the globe was made is half the fun of an old globe. Usually the answer is most easily found in Africa, specifically toward the south of that continent. But I started with the Middle East:

Click to embiggen.

See that place where Oman should be? It's listed as Muscat & Oman. That puts it as being prior to 1975, and probably earlier. See that pink area where Yemen should be? That's the Aden Protectorate. See the orange area listed as "Yemen"? That's North Yemen, which declared itself a republic in 1962. The Brits withdrew from the Aden Protectorate in 1967. Aha! We're getting closer. Let's see... does it help that Abu Dhabi isn't listed? Nah-- we wouldn't have seen it before '68 or the U.A.E. creation in '71. The Somali Republic had gained its independence from Britain in 1960, and Djibouti (French Somalia) didn't gain independence from France until 1977, so that's no help.

Let's check west Africa-- Western Sahara was still Spanish Sahara. Guinea-Basseu was still Portuguese Guinea. These do nothing to help me-- they still went by those old names in the early 1970s. Togo was no longer French Togoland, which put it later than mid-1960. Benin was still humorously named Dahomey, but that would last until 1970. Equitorial Guinea was still called Spanish Guinea. The Gambia got indepenence in 1965, but never changed its name.
Well, it's time to cheat, and go down to south Africa:
South West Africa hadn't yet re-invented itself Namibia, which they did in 1968. Aha! South Rhodesia hadn't yet changed its name to Zimbabwe in 1964.

And the clencher: Northern Rhodesia was a British protectorate from 1963 to 1964, when it became Zambia. (Well, it was also a British protectorate from 1924 to 1953, but we've already established that this globe's not that old.)

So, neat globe from the early Johnson administration. 1963. The world was really changing back then.

As I noted up above, it still changes even now, as well. Hour by hour.

But back then, the changes came so fast and furious, they would make you dizzy:

To the long list of things that I don't care about, please add also this one:

I don't give a damn about a political candidate's family.

Be they good, bad, well-to-do, poor-as-church-mice, straight, gay, literate, less-than-literate...

I don't care.

I don't care.

I DO. NOT. CARE. ABOUT A POLITICAL CANDIDATE'S FAMILY!!!!

If, perchance, you find the opportunity to catch the ear of a pundit or two, or of a news journalist who reports on the elections, please be so kind as to pass this on.

Surrealist Compliment Generator.

Just keep hitting refresh for new ones.

My favorite so far:
"Your presence reminds one of a blind jackal, eternally dependent upon misguided archbishops to provide instruction in bowling."

Blogging On A Theme: Astrology.

See also Tamara, Marko, Atomic Nerds, LawDog, and Ambulance Driver's take on this theme. I've got no clue what they wrote. Hate the theme but love the idea? Then give us some feedback. But go read theirs, too. They probably did their homework assignment more than an hour before turning it in...
_____

"A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an 'intellectual' -- find out how he feels about astrology."

--"The Notebooks Of Lazarus Long," Time Enough For Love
by Robert A. Heinlein.

_____

When I was in police academy, 14 years ago, my otherwise estimable academy coordinator told our small class of 15 that "60% of career police officers are Libras." This from a woman with a couple of degrees, a Master Peace Officer license, and an entire police academy under her. I looked around the room. Two nods, a grimace or three, and a lot of frozen faces. I hope mine was in the last category-- I'd hate to have that good woman (an excellent instructor, and still teaching and serving as a peace officer) perceive any disrespect from me.

I later found out that one of the grimaces was from a guy who was some other sign, which was the foil of Libra (I can't recall which that would be-- what's the opposite of a balance scale? A goat? An arachnid? A pair of twins? Perhaps a crustacean...). He was afraid that this would mean that he wouldn't get or be able to retain a job as a cop, because of his destined contradictory nature to the needs of the task.

Meanwhile, I, who had cinched one of the two Libra billets in my class, thought that the whole concept was utter bunk. First, I knew a few career cops, including my father, and none that I could recall had birthdays anywhere near mine. Second, I knew 'way too many people who did have birthdays near mine, who no more should become cops than I should become an exotic fan dancer at cocktail bars for tips... read: Not at all.

Finally, it would simply have been too remarkable of a fact for me to have just then heard of it for the very first time at the tender age of 22 years, all lived within a cop's family. Ain't no way.

And, in fact, my venerable coordinator was (on that particular facet of her knowledge) full of steaming crap, bless her pea-pickin' little heart.

---

Imagine if we ran the criminal justice system with an eye toward following the "science" of astrology:

We would man extra officers during certain cycles of the planetary and stellar alignments. (Contrary to ever-popular and almost understandable belief, there is zero correlation between crime and lunar cycles. I say again: Zero. Don't believe me? Look it up. Yet I know some cops and more than a few emergency workers who believe in a significant increase in emergency calls when the moon is full.)

We would, while performing field interviews, check the astrological sign of the suspect to determine how to deal with him, and whether or not we should call for backup... you know-- like maybe a Virgo, because this guy's an Aquarius, and thus you *know* this interrogation is going nowhere.

"Your honor, I had to skip that step in the use of force continuum, because this guy was a Taurus, and you know how they can get..."

At the jail, they would segregate populations using a classification that looked not at all to the relative security risk of the given inmate, but more toward whether their zodiac assignments were compatible. Skinhead and Black Panther? Well sure... if they were under complimentary star signs.

Judges would consult star charts before applying indeterminate sentencing.

Voir dires would predictably become attempts to learn what sign the potential juror was born under.

Anti-discrimination laws would be passed for people born under opposing signs.

Finally, anti-defamation civil attorneys would begin to make their nut, defending the rights of the downtrodden signs.

- - -

I've always looked askance at astrology. How the hell did it manage to score the "-ology" suffix away from the real science of astronomy? And why were some otherwise apparently intelligent people giving it any credibility?

I remember how, when in 8th grade and I took Earth Science, my moronic science teacher got to the astronomy portion of the course. We were made to memorize the signs of the zodiac, and repeat them with their dates in a test. For credit in science class. This was the same bitch who gave me a B on my working metal detector that I had entered in the science fair, because I had duct-taped the variable trimmer capacitor (cleverly stolen from an old car radio at a junk yard) to the hoe handle that I had built the whole thing upon. This sucker could detect a 10 penny nail under a yard of dirt, and I had soldered the breadboard myself, but she didn't like the look of duct tape.

Her name was Mrs. Bead. And she can't sue me for libel, because it's all true.

The most useless crop we harvest.

Here in N. Texas, the wheat is just now turned gold, with the heavy heads on the stalks pointing like armies of weather vanes the direction of the wind. In a week or so, farmers in air-conditioned combines with iPods jacked into the stereo systems will come along and cut, thresh, and truck away the sweet yellow kernels, to be ground and processed into HoHos, microwave pizza crusts, and Chef Boyardee Spaghetti-O noodles.

God bless America.

But for every farmer harvesting a few sections* of wheat, there are a thousand or more clerks, cops, and pole dancers harvesting their own crops in their front yards. While occasionally that crop may contain edibles such as dandelions, onion, nettle, rye, and clover, it is typically wasted by either being left on the ground or bagged and discarded. Sure, some hippies and Martha Stewart wanna-bes may actually compost it, but for the most part, it's a wasteful proposition.

I speak, of course, to the issue of grass.

The American Dream seems to include owning a home. We pity those who must reside in multi-family dwellings, unless they're penthouse apartments with names like "Phillip Drummond" on the mail box, or with a manservant named Mr. French. But there's a catch. If you want the house and a yard, you must tend the grounds. There is thus a running joke among home owners that they all gave up their weekends when they purchased a house.

Pity most the house renter, who does not even enjoy the privileges of ownership, but must keep up the house and yard that he occupies. As a renter, he is not likely to feel that it is worth investing in higher-quality lawn maintenance equipment, and thus he toils in the yard with substandard, often badly used and abused, mowers and trimmers.

I am now a house renter. And I found in the back yard, after some searching amongst waist-high weeds, an old mower. I bent my back toward the task of making it run, but after an afternoon, many calories, and all of my vocabulary of curse words had been expended, I admitted defeat; I could not get it to stay running.

So we bought a used mower, for $20. I mowed the yard a few times with it, but really-- we got what we paid for it. It too failed.

And finally, with weeds and grass getting to an embarrassing level (we do have Code Enforcement in this town, and I was about to become the object of its attention), I said to my wife: "Enough. I'm a grown-ass man. I don't need anyone else's second-hand mowers. Not anymore." And I went to Sears, and bought a Craftsman Easy Walk push mower with a new Briggs & Stratton 6.75hp 4 stroke engine ("NOTE: Not to be sold in California!") with a mere 21" cutting blade, but with rear-wheel-drive variable speed self-propulsion, optional bagging/mulching/side-discharge, self-cleaning feature with hookup for the hose to the deck, and (wow!) electric key start with pull-cord backup. Complete with recharger cord for the on-board battery, dust-free grass-catching bag, and a quart of oil to put into it. With a moment's hesitation, I bought the 3 year warranty. I'm hard on lawn mowers.

It didn't last the day.

I got that bad boy running with the first little turn of the key. I slew weeds and grass alike in all directions, until I went through a particularly arduous chunk of heavy green, and... "CHUNK."

I backed out, cleared the blades, dumped the grass from the full bag (why the hell was I bagging this? My wife had visions of a compost pile...), and turned the key. It merrily spun away, without catching. I checked the spark plug wire. I spun it again. I checked the blade. Was it bent that way before? Heck, I don't know. I took it off, and pounded it flatter. I put it back on. It still didn't start. "It's not supposed to be this hard," I thought as the ninety-something degree sun beat down on my dusty, sweaty back. And then it struck me: it's not that hard. I bought this bad boy today. At a reputable retail joint.

I loaded the mower and it's accouterments into the back of the car. I drove back into town. I went to the register at Sears, and told them what happened. Their eyes widened. "Do you have your receipt?" they asked. Of course I did. "We'll send some guys out to your car to get the mower," they said. "Do you want cash or credit?"

"I want a mower," I responded. "And frankly, I have to believe that this was a fluke. Just give me another one of the same kind."

I was out of there in 10 minutes, with a new mower. I'll say this for Sears-- they back their Craftsman line, with no questions. That kind of service is probably what's keeping Sears' head above water.

I'm charging the battery fully now. We'll see how this goes.


_________________________
*A "section" is a unit of land that is 1 mile square, and is composed of 640 acres. ** Thus, if we know that a mile is 5280 feet long, we can easily derive the square footage of an acre ((5280^2)/640). It would be a better world if everyone knew these things.

_________
**Edited to remove incorrect statement.

Distraction: Anthropology of policing

A guilty pleasure that I ran across recently is Hulu's webhosting of the first two seasons of Adam 12.

The Jack Webb-directed police procedural was set in what was then modern-day Los Angeles, in 1968. My father started police work about this same time. Radio cars were still a fairly new thing. Portable radios were almost never carried by officers. Intermediate force options were limited to hand-to-hand techniques and the batons that they took off and put back on their belts as they entered and exited the cars. Uniforms looked great, partly because they were worn without vests. One pair of handcuffs each. 6" K .38s carried in drop holsters on pivots with minimal retention. The patrol car in the first episode was a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere 383. No cell phones. No mobile video. Book-in apparently took minutes.

Police work was different, then. It's fun to watch it to compare the differences between then and now, and between big city policing with a tall command structure, and little podunk towns with a very flat command structure.

I watched this show as a little bitty kid, about the time it went into syndication (1975). I can't deny that it probably was part of the conglomeration of things that affected my subconscious, factoring into my eventual decision to become a police officer.

Officers were expected to be knowledgeable and courteous to the citizenry. Professionalism was the highest goal. Service to the uniform was tantamount to service to the community. Thus the ideals were ones that any officer can still appreciate.

Fun stuff, which tempts me away from writing the paper I'm working on. But oy! Their pat-down and handcuff procedures drive me nuts.

(Scroll down to the bottom of the page to look through the forty-eight 25 minute episodes.)

Sleeping long.

I've always said that that you need more sleep when you work nights and sleep days. I've been adjusting to deep nights for a couple of weeks.

Yesterday morning I ended my night shift, returned home to my empty house*, and called a buddy. He and his wife had some errands planned today, and invited me to come along for lunch in their new car. I went along, and we enjoyed a beautiful sunny spring Saturday with blue skies and a high about 70 degrees. We had some Asian food, and came back to enjoy a beer and conversation on the back porch. Not wanting to wear out my welcome, I started for home.

On the way home, I thought, why not, while in town, stop for a six pack of good beer? The German deli in town offers a fine selection, and I chose Belgian white, and Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. (They let you mix six packs there.) As I was checking out, a girl before me walked in and ordered a Reuben sandwich before going to pick out a six pack of IPA. (No, Tamara was not visiting. I looked twice.) I stopped. Why hadn't I remembered that they made them there? The cook said he could get me a Reuben out fast. He did.

Good lord. I can't remember the last time I ate a sandwich that good.

After one IPA, I sat down in my bed to check email, at about 19:30 hours. I had been up for about 26 hours. My belly was full. I had a beer in my belly.

Sometime after midnight I woke up and folded the laptop and put it in the floor.

At a little after 09:30 this morning I woke up. 14 hours? Really? I wouldn't have thought it possible.

- - -
*Wife and kids left Friday to visit relatives for Spring Break/Easter.

Lonnie.

Drop me an email.

Please reply to let me know you got this.

-MG

Now you're on the incentive program, eh?

According to SiteMeter's crack staff of statistical analysis boffins, this blog is due to blow through the 100 thousand hits mark in about five to seven days.

Let's look at that number: 100,000.00

Okay, so the insignificant last two digits are actually completely gratuitous.

And when I think of how certain other rockstar bloggers got to 100k so much faster than this little scribblings did, I feel kind of silly even marking the event.

But mark it I will. The visitor who achieves my 100 thousandth hit will get to choose the topic of my very next blog entry.

Horrible waste of time, about a horrible waste of time

A fun little site is Television Tunes, which has all the original songs from old TV shows, from specific seasons. You can hear how they started taking the chicken-pickin' out of the intro to Dallas in the early '80s, and such. Interestingly, over the decade or so that Hawaii Five-O was on, they never tweaked their theme at all. When you're putting greatness out there, it needs no adjustment.

But the best part is the stupid (yet ingenious) Name That Theme Song Game that they have on it. I was sure that I would suck at it, but I was surprised at how high I listed on their high-score list.