A View of the Field

Another something I done writ fer a contest over at Jason Evans' Clarity of Night place. Hope ya'll enjoy it:

A View of the Field

She always wanted a view of this field. We talked about it before, sitting on the porch drinking lemonade. She’d tell me, “Burt, plant me right up there so’s I can always keep an eye on ya.”

So that’s what I did.

Toward the end, she was hard to understand. She was always yelling, but the palsy made it hard to tell what she was saying. She’d get frustrated when I didn’t hear her right. I’d bring her soup, and she’d yell and throw it ‘cause what she wanted was something else.

Some nights I’d just go driving longer than I probably should have, but until you’ve been there your own self, I’d ask you to keep your opinion to yourself.

Then came the night she finally passed. I’d been in town, having some drinks at the tavern. I came home and she was screaming, like always. I went in to her and she had the devil’s fire in her eyes. She looked hard at me, tried to say something.

“Inn meh” she said.

I didn’t understand. I went closer.

“Kinn meh,” she said again, clearer.

I kissed her, and she spit in my eye.

“Kighgh me!” This time I knew.

I went out and fetched the shovel and showed it to her and she smiled. I knew what I needed to do then. And I did it. And then I buried her.

When it’s my time, son, please bury me anywhere you want except not under that tree.

High Up In The Family Tree

A side effect of this whole facebook phenomenon (yes, I'm on facebook - I have to spy on my daughter, you know) is finding out how common one's friends names are. See, you can search for friends in the system by their names.

When I search for my name, I get no hits, other than a small handful of people who share my last name. Most people in this country with my last name are related to me in some relatively easily traceable form. Although that is not universally true, it is pretty close.

But when I search for some of my friends' names, I get hundreds of hits. It kinda shows to go you how unique my name is, comparatively. My friends who think they're pretty unique are generally wrong, when compared to me.

There was only one other person I am aware of who went by the same name as me. He was something like my great-uncle, or even my great-great-uncle. Anyway, he passed away years ago.

Not everyone knew that.

About ten years ago, I got a call from a woman who was frantic to reach me. She was insistent that in the 1950's, I had handled her divorce, and now her ex-husband had died, and she needed some of the divorce documents to claim some of what she felt she was owed.

I had to explain to her that I wasn't even alive when she got her divorce, that I wasn't a lawyer, had never practiced law, and that the person she was looking for was likely retired or deceased.

I couldn't say for sure what had happened to him because in our family, we don't really know each other or have family reunions or anything. The few times we've tried, it occurred to us that a roomful of fiercely independent and stubborn introverted creatures is probably NOT the best recipe for a par-tay!

This is not to say that we don't value family, or our family connections. We just don't LIKE each other.

Perhaps an illustrative anecdote would help.

My great-grandfather on my father's side (I guess that would make him my Far Far Far for all you Swedes) was an oddball of sorts. As a teenager, he travelled from his home country of Sweden to America to attend theological school here in Pennsylvania. The theological school, apparently, had no idea he was coming. He just sort of assumed that he should just show up? I don't know. Mail service wasn't great then -- maybe his application got lost.

Either way, he started out his career as a man of the cloth before turning to some sort of homeopathic chiropractic podiatry or something. The best information I have on why he changed careers was because some in this religion thought he was too judgmental, dogmatic and by the book. So they, in essence, fired him from the ministry.

Let me tell you, that's saying something. It would take a lot to get some of these judgmental, dogmatic, by the book people I know upset enough to say that someone was too much of any of these things.

My grandfather (Far Far) used to go to him with issues or problems that he wanted advice on. "It's all in the word of God" Far Far Far would intone. Some help that was.

Far Far, not surprisingly, became an atheist or an agnostic. Whatever he was, he wasn't terribly pushy about it. And now my father is, I believe, an agnostic as well. (Interestingly, Far Far was a chemical engineer and dad is/was a biochemist (retired) -- both about as far from homeopathy as one can get as well.)

A year or so ago, I ran across a few recordings of my great-grandfather giving sermons in 1949 and 1950. While it was fascinating to me to hear the voice of an ancestor, with a thick Swedish accent, and a very serious tone, the content of his sermons was ... well, it was pretty bad. People within earshot of my speakers that day asked me to turn it off.

So there you go. I loved hearing my great grandfather's VOICE, but his OPINIONS were unwelcome. That's us. In a nutshell. We like our roots, that we have roots, etc. - but we want to be as high up in the family tree as we can be.

Scent of a Latte

In general, I am not a fan of perfumes or colognes. A little light perfume on a person can be nice, and at times downright sexy, but I don't wear any. Mrs. P doesn't wear any either.

And I'm fine with that.

It's the stereotypical thing though that annoys me. When a person wearing perfume or cologne leaves a room, and their smell doesn't go with them. Or when that person is wearing so much when you're sitting next to them that every breath you take tastes like alcohol.

Other ways that this artifical perfumed smell permeates my world is via soap. I use the bathroom, wash my hands after, and for the rest of the day I smell something flowery. Turns out it's my hands. That really bugs me.

Well, today, I think I have reached the bottom of the perfume stories. I ordered a coffee at my local Starbucks. The young lady who was making it seemed like a pleasant enough person. She smiled a toothy pretty smile as she handed me my drink. But it wasn't until I was driving home and took my first sip that I recognized what she had done to me.

The lid of my coffee cup was permeated with ... something. Something flowery or something.

I suspect she had used lotion on her hands and when she pressed the lid down onto my cup, microlitres of her lotion rubbed onto the plastic lid and bonded with it.

And now whatever it is is on my lower lip. It is not the best latte I have ever had.

Nurse! Nurse!

I have noticed an unusual trend lately. I know a number of people who were trained as nurses who are no longer in nursing care. Some are doing related work - working as a continuing education training coordinator for an online learning company, for example - while others are far from it.

A good friend of mine is a nurse, keeps up her licenses, and even acted as a school nurse for a time, but her primary job(s) now are athletic coach, bookkeeper, and swimming pool manager. In the past she has managed sales staff at a car dealership and formed a partnership with her husband.

I asked her why she opted out of nursing care.

"I love doing the actual nursing, but it's all the political BS. You can't do anything without watching your back. Somebody's always looking to screw someone else."

She keeps up her license as a fall back plan, should her family ever fall on hard times.

At one point I did a tally in my head and came up with about 10 people I knew who are trained as nurses, got their certifications at various levels, and now are doing something else.

In my world, that's not so weird. I have a BA in English, but I am not doing traditional English major work -- I'm not a teacher or what have you. Instead, I am a "technical director." Which means...

Actually, that's not really clear. Someday I intend to explain what it is that my job title means. But not now.

The difference though is I don't have to keep up certifications. My schooling wasn't specialized. Nursing is different. It is specialized and credentialed.

So why are people turning their backs on it?

The short answer from the ones I talked to is this -- they aren't allowed to do what it was that drew them into the practice in the first place.

The Book Man

He walks into my office holding a book and sets it on my desk. "I think you should read this," he says.

No good has ever come out of this scenario.

When he offers me a book, it is on one of two subjects: business improvement or conservative religion. Although I live and play in the business world, I am not consumed by it. I do not get a charge from optimizing my interpersonal communications for maximum profit.

I work so that I can get a paycheck. That's it.

And although I am very interested in religion in general as a subject, I am not as interested in being proselytised to. I won't be converted. I am not likely to read a book and suddenly say "Holy shit. Why didn't anyone ever say that before."

So. This book is in the former category. And like so many of the other business improvement books he has given me, it is written like it's a story, a novel with a hammer of a message.

I'd rather they leave the story part out of it, because they never put any decent thought into the story, but instead cobble some insipid narrative about a guy with a problem at work and some magical guru who solves the problem by convincing him to think outside the box.

There. You can stop reading these now. I have just summarized them all for you.

Fish. The Goal. Leadership and Self Deception. Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying. All the same. Different lessons, but same idiotic mechanism.

I suppose there are people who can't sit through a non-fiction book who will digest the lessons better if it is told as though an actual human being were involved, but I'm not one of them. And as an English Major, and a writer wannabe, I find the whole thing infuriating.

These books are all this guy reads.

One year for Christmas I bought him one of my favorite books -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It's a bit of a long story, but I thought it would be relevant. Pirsig's pursuit of quality in that book reminded me of what we were trying to do with our young start up.

He didn't read it. I know he didn't.

This is why I don't feel bad when I don't read the books he has given me, instead using the technique that got me through high school and college. I read just enough to bullshit my way through a conversation with him about it.

That's my self help book for the business world. Faking It, by Posolxstvo.

Snow Day

Yesterday, all the forecasters were predicting snow. Not a ton of snow, but snow all the same.

When I went to the local rink to pick up the 12 year old, he informed me that school had been called off and that he wanted to sleep over at a friend's house. I called Mrs. P to verify. Sure enough, school had been called off.

Not a single flake had touched the ground.

When I woke up I was greeted by about 3 inches of fluffy stuff. Not enough to freak out about, but enough to make things a bit inconvenient. I should mention though that I was woken by a call at 5:30 AM telling me that my daughter's school was also cancelled.

I realize that I am coming across as a curmudgeon, but for crying out loud, what's a little flippin' snow?

When I got to work half the company had decided to stay home. One of my bosses has a virile hatred of snow. When it snows he becomes a crabby little tyrant. The other loves snow, and is driven to make money.

The email exchange this morning was laughable.

"Okay, there's snow on the ground, but we still have a lot to do."

"But don't come in if you aren't comfortable with it."

"But we still need to have our Friday AM production meeting, so please come in..."

"Unless you don't want to."

Guys. Get on the same page. And then communicate to the company please...

Carl's and Joe's

When we first moved to Westwood, Massachusetts when I was four, the only food we had in the house was a box of cereal -- Wheaties. We bought it at the little store at the bottom of the hill as we pulled into the neighborhood.

The store was officially called the Oak View Food Store, but no one called it that. We all knew it as Carl's. Carl's was one of those small neighborhood groceries where a kid could go in with a dime and get a candy bar or a comic book or something. Or your parents could go in and get a pack of smokes or a bottle of soda or what have you.

Every day I would walk a mile to school, passing Carl's twice. It was a bit like a home away from home.

Today for lunch, I went to On A Roll and had a reuben and a bowl of broccoli cheese soup. Nobody calls it On A Roll. Everybody calls it Joe's.

Have you ever noticed that the best places to go are called by the owner's name, even if it isn't the name of the place?

Sicko

I shouldn't, but I will.

I am going to comment on a movie I haven't seen yet. It helps that I have just finished listening to an hour and a half long Q&A session with Michael Moore talking about it.

Okay, I'm not really going to talk about the film. Instead, I am going to talk about Moore's grand plan for universal healthcare. See, what I was thinking as I listened to him talking was, "Damn, this is a good idea. Who's going to pay for it?"

At one point, he was called to the carpet because he was holding up the various national healthcare systems out there (France, Germany, Canada) as being exemplary. I forget exactly where that discussion went, but he kept pointing out what a wealthy nation we are compared to these others, and that he thought it was ridiculous that we have people who don't have health care in this nation.

It made me wonder, in those other nations, when someone screws up, what are the norms as far as healthcare related litigation? In America, especially in the Philadelphia area, healthcare costs are enormous because, in part, of the exorbitant cost of malpractice insurance that is needed to protect against the myriad lawsuits flying around here. Can a Cuban national sue his healthcare provider for poor healthcare? Might that have an impact on the whole equation?

Now, Michael Moore makes a lot of sense as he talks about what we should be doing and all the programs we should have and so on. In a way, I am an extreme social liberal, as I really do believe that our society has an obligation to itself to keep us all afloat. But I am pragmatic as well, and I kept listening to him and wondering "Great idea. Who's going to pay for that?"

Perhaps I am not the right audience for this. I have always been middle class. From month to month, I make just enough, somehow managing to sock a wee bit away for retirement, pay for food, shelter, etc. But luxuries are few. When he talks about these programs, I panic. I have just enough for me and mine. Where is all this extra money he talks about coming from?

I understand that there are a lot of people more wealthy than me. Perhaps they are the ones who should be paying for this. But putting myself in their shoes, for a minute or two, it is very hard to clearly see the problems of poverty from their vantage point. Until you have lived poverty, can you really and truly understand how desperate life can be? I don't think so.

And now a word about socialized medicine. In the military, we had socialized care. I didn't pay a dime for any medical procedures at all. When Mrs. P had our first two kids, all we paid for was a couple of days worth of meals, at $4.75 per day. If I needed a prescription, I had no co-pays.

But, if I wanted something that was of a less than urgent matter, I either had to wait, or it was not available at all. Depending on the availability of personnel capable of performing said services and the level of demand. (Perversely, in some of the more remote outposts, in order to keep medical staff trained and ready, I knew people who were getting tons and tons of plastic surgery through the system, simply because there was such a low demand in those parts.)

When I did use the medical care, the results were a bit hit-or-miss. I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed while in Hawaii. Three out of four were bone impacted. What would normally have taken 20 minutes took 2.25 hours.

I didn't pay a dime.

But I did get this lovely scar on my lip. See, my oral surgeon apparently "slipped with the drill."

Fine, mistakes happen.

A year later, my lip swelled up like a son of a gun. Scar tissue was blocking a salivary gland. So, I had to have the gland removed. By the same oral surgeon who took out my teeth and caused the scar in the first place.

In the process of removing my salivary gland, he cut a nerve.

To this day, I have this scar and numbness in my lip.

Would this have happened if I had gone to an oral surgeon who was not being provided for free? Who had to rely on his reputation? Who was making real money? I don't know. It might have.

What I do know is that my experience with socialized healthcare in the military was not as good as my experience has been with healthcare "on the economy" as we used to say.

So, that's one man's anecdote. Do with it what you will.

A Few Stats

Since I started keeping track, back on June 12, 2007, I have had 3,114 visits from 839 unique visitors, representing 47 countries. Aside from the initial entry page, the most popular page I have is my Porn for Beginners post (which, by the way is NOT porn), with 1.45% of all page views...

You bunch of sickos!

Most people arrive at my site by way of referrals from (in order) blogger.com, Molly Gras, Dave, Hedy, Jeni, myself (how exactly does that work?), Doctor Sardonicus, Jason Evans, and Sonja. Thanks for all the plugs. I am still amazed that you folks have found me worthy of adding to your sidebars and stuff. (Side note, I just noticed that Jim Donahue of the Velvet Blog has added me as well -- Thanks Jim!)

In 2007, by year's end, I had averaged about one post every other day, or .47 posts per day. This year I am averaging .75 posts per day, although still I don't think I have legitimately beaten Dave for a monthly post count yet. Maybe once, but there were technicalities involved. It seems there always are.

At this rate, I should have 275 posts by year's end, which would be exactly as many as my entire output of 2005 (24), 2006 (81), and 2007 (170) put together. Which is just bizarre to me.

HWJV

Strolling through Barnes and Noble tonight, I saw a book title that left me baffled...

How Would Jesus Vote?

Clearly an attempt by some fundamentalist group to try to convince others to espouse their platform. And that's what gets me.

Jesus lived 2000 years ago. None of the gospels were written down until at least around 50 years after he was crucified, and the whole nature of Christian thought and dogma was in a wild state of flux in its infancy, for the first 300+ years. Once the Council of Nicea codified the basic tenets of Christianity, there were still splinter groups that had differing opinions, although you were taking a big risk to go against established thought at that time. (Spanish Inquisition was much later, but the concept wasn't new.) The whole nature of Christ's message was debated heatedly and bloodily for years. But we were left alone to figure it out. Christ wasn't around to help out with determining who exactly was getting it right.

Where we are now in the world of Christian thought, we have arrived at by way of a meandering journey of thought that has resulted in a certain concensus of opinion about what the proper interpretation of multiple conflicting statements throughout the New Testament is.

But did we get it right?

"We? What do you mean we? It's all in the bible!"

But who decided what books to include and what books to exclude? Jesus didn't. We did. The books we included or excluded weren't even written in Christ's time. I won't even get into how the wording of these books was deliberately and/or accidentally altered over the years.

So, how is it possible that someone today would have any real idea about how Jesus would vote in our elections on our issues? As far as I know, in Jesus' time, voting was not even a concept he had to deal with. You were told what the law was by whomever was in charge at the time.

I could be wrong. I may be totally misinterpreting the agenda of the book in question. But still, so often I run into people who act as if they have been given some special insight into what God/Jesus wants. And their only proof is that they "just know." Or they have been told by someone else who "just knows."

Call me weird, but I think I need a bit more proof than a feeling before I would presume to write a book about what Jesus thinks about our economy and the war in Iraq.

Don't get me wrong - if you have a faith that works for you, I think that's great. I would not want to do anything to take that faith away from you. If you arrived at that faith by thinking for yourself, you have earned it.

If, however, you have arrived at your faith by default, by being told what is right by others, by reading books that tell you how Jesus would vote, I would urge you to think long and hard about what you really believe and make your faith, and therefore the script of your life, truly your own.

Mis-fortune

Last week, in honor of a co-worker's birthday, we went out for Chinese. Usually my fortune is pretty trite and stupid.

This time, it was completely non-sensical.

"Don't let friends impose on you, work calmly and silently."

It sounds like two secret agents exchanging code phrases.

If any of you wants to venture a guess as to what the holy heckfire this was supposed to mean, by all means, let me know. But just don't impose on me...

December 30, 2004

The only thing my four year old (at the time) wanted to do was go to the top of the Empire State Building, but we had a full day's agenda planned, and we kept telling him "We'll see."

After fighting crowds on the train from Trenton, walking umpteen blocks to the Hard Rock Cafe only to find that they had a two hour wait, touring FAO Schwartz, and taking in the Planetarium Show at the Natural History Museum, we were exhausted. It was getting close to 8:00 and we hadn't eaten yet.

He was insistent.

We compromised. We agreed to walk by there and if it looked reasonable, well then, maybe.

The line was wrapped around the block. Apparently a lot of people like to go to New York City around the New Year. And a lot of people like to go to the top of the Empire State Building. We were told it was going to be about an hour and a half wait.

I didn't have it in me, but the four year old was disconsolate. I agreed to wait in line while Mrs. P got the straight dope on the wait from the people at the door.

A group exiting the building overheard her getting the rundown from the guards. Heard her explaining how we needed to know what the true wait was going to be and why. Heard her describing the four year old's insistence.

The group approached her and handed her a card. It was a VIP pass, good for up to 8 people, valid through the end of the year - midnight, 12/31/2004 - the next night.

"Take this up to the guard," they explained. "With this, you don't wait in line. You go right up. You don't pay."

I was doubtful. Is this real? I'd hate to step out of line only to find out that we were being bullshitted.

The four year old was still in tears worrying about whether we could go up or not.

"What the hell," I thought.

We went to the front of the line. We showed the card. The security guard grinned and opened the door for us and whisked us right to the elevator. We were up and down in under an hour, including the time needed to buy overpriced crap in the gift shop.

The four year old was thrilled. This was all he wanted out of this trip. And to be honest, these strangers made it possible. I doubt we would have been able to wait the full time, as hungry and tired as we were.

The Pos bunch (plus my baby sister) at the top of the Empire State Building.

I'm not sure who's idea it was, but when we exited the building, we looked for a group who could benefit from us paying it forward. We met a group of twenty somethings in which one of the young men was planning to propose to his girlfriend at the top. They had the right number of people. We gave them the card and instructed them to pay it forward when they were finished, and then we went and found a restaurant.

Anyone who tells me that New Yorkers aren't a friendly bunch is just itching for a scrap.

Dancing About Architecture

After having written four out of the planned twenty-five entries in my version of the album project, I have come to the conclusion that I do not like writing about music. More importantly, I do it poorly. And I choose not to do something if I can't do it well.

Because most of the selections in my list impact me emotionally in some sub-conscious level, most of the writing about the music comes across sounding like a 12 year old trying to express his love for his latest crush but completely lacking the needed vocabulary. So I found myself resorting to an uncomfortably large volume of cliches and hackneyed expressions.

In all cases, what I am really trying to say is "Listen to this. For some reason that I can't put into words, I love this music, and I can listen to it over and over and over and still not get tired of it. It stays with me, and in some ways forms the soundtrack to my life. My heart resonates at this frequency."

So, reluctantly, I am abandoning the project.

In case anyone out there was checking in and genuinely was interested in what remaining albums on my list were, I will now deliver the remaining entries, with a brief blurb about each where appropriate.

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue This should have been called "lightning in a bottle." Miles Davis and John Coltrane together. Every track is another moment of abstract bliss.

Depeche Mode: Some Great Reward In 1985, Depeche Mode redefined for me what music could be. This was the first of their albums I acquired.

Dire Straits: Making Movies I originally got this because a friend told me to. The only song I initially knew was "Solid Rock." That was one of the weakest of the entire set. Side 1 of this (on the LP) is as close to perfect as a rock album side has ever gotten. In my opinion.

Electric Light Orchestra: Out of the Blue When their Discovery album came out, a couple of friends of mine and me became semi obsessed with ELO. Between the three of us, we had all of their albums. Out of the Blue was mine. As a double record set, it's about one side too long, but probably contains some of ELO's best studio work.

Peter Gabriel (aka "Intruder") Dark and brooding, this is not a cheerful album. But it is a classic. As soon as I heard "Games Without Frontiers" for the first time, I was hooked. When I heard the rest of the album, I was assimilated.

Genesis: Abacab Sort of goes hand in hand with Phil Collins' Face Value. It was the right music at the right time.

Daniel Lanois: Acadie As I left basic training in San Antonio, the plane I was on had a music channel. As the plane went wheels up, "Still Water" was playing. As soon as possible, upon landing in Monterey California, I went in search of this album. When I found it, I knew upon first listen that I had found a unique gem.

Mink DeVille: ...Where Angels Fear to Tread I might be the only person in the world with a copy of this album (cassette, actually), that I located in the cut-out bin of a record store before seeing a movie one night in the eighties. The only reason I even grabbed it was I had seen Mink DeVille perform on Saturday Night Live once, and I was intrigued. Mink DeVille's lead singer has a very Mark Knopfler sort of voice, but their music runs more Cuban/New Orleans/Southside Johnny. If you have ever seen the movie The Princess Bride, Willy DeVille, Mink DeVille's lead singer performs "Storybook Love" over the closing credits. Since the rest of the music was done by Mark Knopfler, most people think that's who that is. It isn't.

Modern English: After the Snow Years after "I Melt With You" rose to the top of the charts and then fell back down, I was still in love with it. When I found the album it was contained on, I snatched it up as quickly as I could. I own three Modern English albums. This is the best.

Nine Inch Nails: Pretty Hate Machine When I was a budding "artiste" I had this idea that I would combine the best of Depeche Mode's style, the electronica, etc., with something a bit more angry and sinister. And then I heard this record and gave up on my idea, because NIN had already done it better than I ever could have.

Pink Floyd: The Wall The first few times I heard this album, it was way too far afield of what my auditory processing centers in my brain could handle. By the time I graduated college, I couldn't imagine a week going by without listening to it at least once. My how our horizons get expanded...

Queen: The Game My first Queen album. Many would say it isn't their best, and they might be right, but "Sail Away Sweet Sister," "Dragon Attack," "Rock It (Prime Jive)," "Play the Game," and, of course, "Another One Bites the Dust" all in one collection can't be wrong.

Radiohead: Kid A Blame it on the movie Vanilla Sky. "Everything In It's Right Place" became an obsession for me. Most of the rest of the album follows suit. A couple lame tracks that don't make the cut, but buying this album opened a whole new channel of my musical appreciation, paving the way for groups such as Sigur Ros.

REM: Murmur Recorded back when Michael Stipe still mumbled everything. When this came out, I liked being the only kid in my class who owned a copy. The weirdo. That was the blueprint for much of the rest of my life.

Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream In the early 90's, when everything on the radio was strating to sound exactly the same (a bunch of Nirvana copycats), I thought that rock had finally died. Then I bought this CD. The opening song alone ("Cherub Rock") restored my faith in the future of rock. At least until the early 2000's, when every band was sounding like a clone of whoever Nickelback copied their sound from.

The Smiths: The Queen is Dead Someone more into music than me told me that if I liked REM, I should check out The Smiths. At the time, their latest album was Meat is Murder. Which I liked, not loved. I liked it well enough though that when their followup came out, I bought it. Meat is Murder had a few very good songs. All of the songs on The Queen is Dead were on par with the best songs on Murder. 'Nuff said.

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Run Do I need to say anything about this one? Jungleland? She's the One? Backstreets? Tenth Avenue Freeze Out? Night? Has a better rock album ever been crafted? If "Meeting Across the River" had been replaced with something a bit more upbeat, it would have been damn near perfect.

Pete Townshend: Empty Glass One of the first music videos I remember seeing was for "Rough Boys." I bought the album not much later, when I was in 6th grade. Pete's best solo album.

U2: The Unforgettable Fire This was hard for me. I have about every U2 album, and I was afraid that no one U2 album could or would stand above the rest. I chose this though for its otherworldly nature, and how it bridges the two best eras of the band -- the War era and the Joshua Tree era. Plus, production by Lanois and Eno on this was stunning.

The Who: Who’s Next Baba O'Riley. Won't Get Fooled Again. Arguably two of the best rock songs ever, all on one album. Too bad much of the rest of the record fails to live up to the promise of those two songs.

Yaz: Upstairs at Eric's I actually don't know what to say about this one. Surreal electronic neo-disco. Powerful female/androgynous sounding vocalist. I just like it.

A Shameless Plug of Possibly The Worst Musician I Have Ever Run Across, Myself Included

I own Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway on LP. It is a fairly scratched and beat up LP. I recently went looking for a replacement via iTunes, but there are a great many wonderful artists and albums that are woefully under-represented by iTunes. Genesis is one of them.

There are however versions of the song The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway available.

One that caught my eye was by a group / person called "Rondonna" which I can only presume is meant to be some sort of a bust on Madonna (no pun intended).

Rondonna's version of the song features heavily distorted guitars, a straining voice trying to sing in a key not native to Ron Donna, and a complete disregard for hitting the actual original notes in the song.

But "Lamb" is only the tip of the nasty toxic waste infested iceburg.

Rondonna's album, CrabJuice, also features covers of such favorites as Send Me an Angel (by Real Life), I Could Never Be Your Woman (White Town), Can't Get You Out of My Head (Kylie Monogue?), Take Me To The River (The Talking Heads), and Just Like Heaven (the Cure).

If you have iTunes and a strong stomach and are in the mood for a laugh, look this up. Seriously. He makes me look talented. And I suck!

Or go here and, I dunno, send the guy love or something. I mean, it takes guts to put yourself out there like that.

#4 - Face Value

Have you ever been to a rock concert? You know how they often play music through the sound system in advance of the musical act coming out to play?

So, there I was – Queen with Paul Rodgers at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, 2006. The warm-up music that was being piped in was Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight. If you know the song, surely you are familiar with the point at which the electronic casiotone percussion yields to the full set of drums in an arpeggiated descending scale of toms. (3:18 into the video below)

Rat ta ta tat ta ta tat ta ta tat!

Now, imagine watching a semi-full arena listening to this song. And at that precise moment, every single pair of male arms air drums along with the song. I can’t play drums, but it is almost impossible for me to listen to that song without waving my arms in the air like a complete and total jackass when those drums kick in.

It is a cultural phenomenon – a true, non-blog-world meme, if you will.

If that were the only song on this record, that might be enough to garner it a spot in my top 25, but it isn’t. Fact is, there is not a single dud track on this album. This was before Live Aid, before Genesis was doing arenas, before Phil Collins was producing everyone from Eric Clapton to Earth Wind and Fire. Before Phil Collins thought he was a Motown performer.

This album is personal, heartfelt, painful, poignant.

The first time I heard it, a local classic rock radio station, WMMR, had a weekly feature in which they would play seven full length albums, back to back, throughout the course of a Sunday evening. On this particular Sunday, I had a cassette ready to record whatever came out. And on one side I recorded Face Value. On the other, Abacab.

It was an imperfect recording, but one that I treasured.

For me, the high point of the record is the final song – Tomorrow Never Knows. I am too young to have known and loved the original version of this. For me, this IS the original. Phil’s treatment of it, with layered drums, keyboards, and other instruments bathes you in sonic waves. One of my better friends is a complete curmudgeon when it comes to anything Beatles or John Lennon. God help the poor soul who redoes one of their songs and changes it – or worse, tries to sound just like the Beatles.

He was unfamiliar with this version. I take it as a huge compliment that he did not barf when he heard it. Although he did correct one place where Phil changed the lyrics a bit.

I couldn't find a video of Phil's version of the song. So the following will have to do. It's the first time I have ever seen this video, and I had to laugh at Phil's Members Only style jacket with the sleeves pulled up. How very eighties, mate.

Simple Rules For Forwarding Me Emails

Rule #1: I don't care who else received the message. Please strip out all the headers from the last 90 times it was forwarded.

Rule #2 (corrollary of #1): When you forward me a message, don't attach the message as an attachment. I swear to Allah if I have to open seven embedded messages to get to the point, I will not be in a receptive mood for whatever the hell it is you want to say to me.

Rule #3: If it's about politics, make DAMN sure you know my political views before you send it. I don't care if what you send me is in opposition to my beliefs, just don't presume that my beliefs are the same as yours.

Rule #4: If it's about religion, make DAMN sure you know my religious views before you send it. I don't care if what you send me is in opposition to my beliefs, just don't presume that my beliefs are the same as yours.

Rule #5: Is it a cute story? Does it involve angels? Is it heartwarming? If so than either I've already seen it a thousand times or I won't think it's cute or heartwarming. And I don't believe in angels -- least not the kind that all these emails are about. Consider your audience at all times. If you send me a cute, heartwarming story about angels I can only conclude that you do not know me very well at all, and perhaps you should not be forwarding me messages.

Rule #6: Is it a funny joke? It had better be crap-your-pants funny, because after having had an Internet email account for almost 20 years, there are precious few jokes I have yet to read.

Rule #7: Is it a virus warning? A fantastical story? A safety warning? Do you and me both a favor and go to a few websites to verify the authenticity of the information before sending it on. Snopes is a good place to start. McAfee also maintains a database of viruses of all types. In my recollection, I have had one person send me a valid virus warning (thanks, Dad!). All others were total bullcrap.

Rule #8: Don't get your panties in a twist if you forward me an email and you wind up in a nasty post on my blog. And if I respond directly to you, keep in mind, I am being as nice as I can possibly be in the situation. I don't mean to be an asshole, but I just AM sometimes. If you don't like it, don't forward me things.

Rule #9: When in doubt, leave me out. If it is really that funny/cute/poignant/whatever, next time we see each other in person, tell me then. I'll bet you $100 you forget to do it. So there - how important could it have been? Better yet, ask yourself - would I be willing to call Posolxstvo with this information? If not, don't forward it.

#3 - The Cars

The timeline is hazy for me, but these are the known facts -- my parents were full-blown divorced and my father was living in Sturbridge Massachusetts, home of Old Sturbridge Village. While visiting with him, I met Jennifer and Jay, two neighborhood kids who were about my age.

I think I was about 11 or so.

One of the things we did a lot of was listen to music -- Cheap Trick, Supertramp, Paul Simon, to name a few. In Jay's LP bin, I saw an album cover that immediately turned me off, for no good reason, other than maybe it looked as though it should be the album cover of something my mother would listen to.


Not long after that, one of my older sisters asked for the same album for Christmas. Which further solidified for me that this album must be chick music. And at the time, I was adamant that I was going to assert my identity as a male, damn it, no matter what it took.

This is a classic case of do not judge a [insert noun here] by its cover. Because the music was so not what I had envisioned when I saw the cover.

From the opening strains of "Good Times Roll" to the closing bars of "All Mixed Up," this music was the perfect complement to the preteen angst and such that I was going through. Certain of the songs, "Moving in Stereo" for example, were a bit more challenging than what I was accustomed to, but that was okay with me.

My sister had long forgotten about this tape, and I "borrowed" it from her. I would lie awake nights with this cassette in my little portable Panasonic tape recorder playing it over and over and over. I eventually wore the tape clean out.

Later Cars releases somehow failed to live up to the set up of their first album. Candy-O was close, but was not on par. Panorama was not one I knew as well. Shake it Up had a couple standout cuts, but the rest was not quite up to snuff. And by the time Heartbeat City came out, The Cars were a completely different band. They had become the Ric Ocasek show.

In analyzing what stood out in my mind about the first Cars album, it seems to me that Ric was not as much in the spotlight, that Benjamin Orr was the main front man. And it seems to me that he was the voice of the Cars for me, rather than Ocasek.

I was saddened to learn that he had passed away from cancer a few years back. I suppose no one lives forever, but it always seemed to me that Benjamin Orr should have been given a lot more credit for the success of the Cars than he was, and he should have lived to record a lot more material.

Below, view Benjamin Orr in a live performance (from 1984) of one of the better songs from this album:

If you can't say anything nice ...

This screenwriting group I attend is great for getting feedback on works in process that you might be working on. The flip side of this is that you get the opportunity to provide others with well needed feedback and perspective.

And occasionally someone finishes a full length script and asks for feedback on the whole script.

Last night I read one, and I am struggling with what to tell the author.

It is incoherent. There is no real narrative thread. No crisis. No resolution. And it has, as far as I was able to tell, four characters named John, not for artistic reasons, but presumably because the author kept forgetting he already named a character John. The dialog is illogical and stilted. At best it sounds like the type of dialog you might hear in a stag film, without the benefit of being about the subject matter normally dealt with in stag films.

So what to tell the guy?

Here's another part of the conundrum -- I'm not sure that he could do much better in a subsequent draft even if we all gave him copious detailed notes. In the few times that I have met him, he appeared to me to be mildly "mentally challenged." His verbal communication was basically the same as his written communication -- illogical and incoherent. He doesn't look people in the eyes. He mumbles and stutters.

The first time I met him was several years ago, when he was getting feedback on what turned out to be a section of the middle of this script. In other words, he writes even slower than I do. Which is saying something.

So. Now what to tell him?

It would be a disservice to avoid pointing out the flaws in his script. No matter what his personal challenges might be, he is bringing the script to a group of people who are attempting to be professional writers, and as such, he can't (shouldn't?) be held to a lower standard.

And yet, something inside says that is just cruel.

$327 Lessons

So last night, our dog dodged a very huge bullet. Barely.

Actually, it was a car, and as far as we can tell, he didn't completely dodge it.

Mrs. P was walking him in a neighborhood adjacent to ours, and she had given him just a wee bit too much leash, and he dashed into the road unexpectedly.

Clunk, screech, yelp.

It was dark, and all she knew was that he wasn't himself and that he was acting hurt, and she was in full blown panic. She called me, and I turned into Mr. Spock.

I came and got her and drove her to our vet's office.

It was closed.

I went to another place that someone recommended.

It was closed.

I called my dad, and he gave me the number of another animal hospital.

Closed.

I called information and got ahold of a fourth, and this time it was open. But they don't do animal trauma. So they referred me to a fifth place. A half hour away. But that was the closest animal trauma center.

They were lovely people, took X-rays and determined that we have a very lucky dog, as he escaped real serious injury somehow.

They did a number of tests to determine if there was any internal bleeding or broken bones or organs squished to the wrong place. Negative.

In the end, we left with confidence that Max was okay.

Lessons learned --

1. If you are a pet owner, figure out now where your nearest animal trauma center is and hope you never have to use it.
2. When walking a dog, always always always keep a shorter leash than you think is necessary.
3. Dogs are remarkably resilient creatures.
4. Anal glands are very gross things. (What Mrs. P thought was blood on the road was very likely just the result of Max expressing his opinion about being under a car.)

Thank you. Class is over.

#2 - Time Out

There was always music playing in my house growing up. My parents were somewhat split in their musical tastes, my Dad preferring classical and my mother being somewhat more fond of whatever station played The Carpenters or The Limelighters or what have you.

But there was always music.

My father had a special radio that he used to listen to his classical music. By today's standards, it wasn't all that special, in terms of sound quality and what have you, but as a graduate student, it was what he could afford. And every now and then he would let me listen to his radio as I drifted off to sleep.

He would let me choose a radio station, and set the volume, and then later, he would collect it from my room.

One morning, however, I was informed by my father that I was not allowed to choose my station any more. He said that when he went into my room, the radio was playing "jungle music." To this day, I don't know what the hell he meant by that.

Thus began my father's disapproval of my musical taste.

Through the years, it persisted. Every time I'd play something on his stereo, he would deride and belittle it, telling me that someday I would look for something more, something better. And I thought and felt that he was an old fuddy duddy and he just didn't get it, damn it.

"You should be listening to classical. Or jazz. Rachmaninoff. Brubeck. Anything but these Scorpions," he would say.

Brubeck. Brubeck came up nearly constantly. And I stubbornly refused to ever consider listening to anything he mentioned, out of principle.

Fast forward to about six years ago. My wife and I were looking for something on TV and started watching Ken Burns' Jazz documentary. This time my mind was fertile ground for this music. From that experience I started listening to Coltrane, Monk, Bird, etc. And Dave Brubeck.

Dave Brubeck, not just his Time Out album, was in my mind the quintessential jazz musician. maybe he wasn't the greatest improvisational player, but he was inclusive and ahead of his time. He was challenging yet listenable. Complex and enjoyable.

It was with great trepidation that I told my father that I was really enjoying Brubeck, after all these years.

"Brubeck?" he asked. "That hack? You should be listening to Django Rheinhardt..."

#1 - Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams

Mrs. P and I did not do the traditional route of courtship, wooing, dating, and marriage. We were married long before we really knew enough about each other to make a qualified decision. It is only by sheer force of committment and dumb luck that we have been able to ride out each other's foibles and oddities.

Case in point: it was months after we were married that Mrs. P's collection of music arrived from her ancestral home in Louisiana. Up until then, I had been laboring under the impression that she and I had compatible taste. The arrival of that package threw a great many foregone conclusions into severe question.

Included in her collection was a cassette by a band called the BoDeans, and upon an initial listen, I had absolutely no desire to hear any more music in her collection. The singer primarily featured on that album, Sammy Llanas, had a nasal whine so annoying, dogs three blocks away from our apartment complex were yowling inconsolably. The twangy guitars and general millieu were so hillbilly country, it made my old cattle allergies act up.

I filed it away, hoping to never see or hear it again.

I was much too hasty.

I wish I could say when it was that I gave it a second listen, or even why, but I don't really know. I expect that it was simply a matter of Mrs. P exerting her will, as was her wont. What I do know is that somewhere along the line, I did give it a second listen. And this second listen found me in a place where I was much more receptive. And the jubilance of some of the songs, and the painful heartbreak of others, were then etched on my soul.

To this day, fifteen years later, every play of this album is a welcome thing to me.

The BoDeans aren't for everyone, and subsequent albums, while enjoyable, never quite caught the same magic that was exhibited on this, their first recording.

Below -- a crappy video of one of the better songs from this album. Sorry about the quality, but thieves can't be choosers.

Ripping Off Doc

Dr. Sardonicus has been doing an ongoing project in which he plans to have a post about every single album in his collection. And he says he has around 1000 albums.

Wow.

I don't intend to try to duplicate that. For one thing, I just don't have that kind of attention span. For another, I have a lot of crap albums that I only have because I never got around to throwing them out and couldn't come with a single thing to say about.

Instead, I thought I might do a project where I give a review of my top 25 albums. Mind, that's the top 25 as of this past weekend, when I actually selected the winners. If something comes out today that is so mindblowing, I can't stand it, I won't alter my list for this project. It was hard enough coming up with the list I did, and I don't want to go mucking about with it.

A few ground rules:

1. I have to own the album in the list. I can't say that XYZ is the greatest album ever if I don't own it.
2. No greatest hits albums. For some reason, the purist in me rejected the notion of including these. And it killed me in a couple of cases. Best of the Doobies, particularly side 1, was so cohesive, it was almost as if it were intended to be a standalone album. But best of and greatest hits albums are cheating. Oh well.
3. There are several artists that have been formative and important to me, but who did not have any albums that made the top 25. Not that they don't have great albums - I just don't own any of them. Case in point - John Coltrane. All I have from Coltrane is the Very Best of... and the Ken Burns collection. I wish I had more. I just don't. Again, oh well.
4. Chime in all you want. Agree, disagree, I don't care. This is my list. If you disagree strongly, make your own list.
5. It was hard enough coming up with a list of 25. I do not intend to make it harder on me by making them come in order of importance or something. Instead, the list will be alphabetical by artist's name - last name in the case of solo artists.

So, coming soon - number one in my list -- ...

You actually thought I was going to tell you?

Sorry. Not yet.

Truck Rule

Where I work, we have a rule... No one person may be the sole repository of vital information. It needs to be written down or someone else needs to be trained in on it. We call it the truck rule.

As in, "If Bob got hit by a truck, we'd be totally screwed on this project because no one else knows what the hell is going on."

Recently, a client of mine rolled out a web based content management system, and I conducted a training session on it. Of the nearly twenty people in the room, only Mary seemed to get it. But this was the first time most people were seeing the product, and so came at us with a lot of change requests, which delayed launch.

I then conducted a second training session and again, only Mary seemed to really understand it. Everyone else was not particularly paying attention because she was getting it.

Then last week, a day before the relaunch, I was asked to do a third training session. This was ostensibly to train satellite staff on the use of the system, but almost all the faces were familiar. My point of contact explained to me:

"They're here because last week, Mary was hit by a car." !!!!!

She's going to be okay, but she will be out for six to eight weeks recuperating, and no one else had really bothered to learn the new system. So the class was packed with all the people who had been planning to pass their work load onto Mary.

As you can see, the truck rule sounds like a deliberately extreme example, and yet, it really can happen.

Food for thought, and enjoy every sandwich.

Flexibility

My youngest received a birthday party invitation the other day. For a classmate who I would say it is a bit of a stretch to call her a friend of his.

But that's not unusual. My kid is a personable and fun guy, so he gets a lot of invitations. Either that, or it's still standard operating procedure to invite the whole class. At any rate, we've seen a lot of invitations.

There were a couple of things that stuck out for me on this one though.

The biggest was the sheer rigidity of it.

• Please RSVP, we need a firm headcount. We can't do last minute add-ons.
• The party begins at 12:00 sharp, but lunch will not be served, so be sure to have fed your child a light lunch before hand.
• We can provide rides for some, but not all, of the kids. [The party takes place a half hour away.]

I'm all for a good plan, and thinking things out in advance, but this plan seems to leave way too little room for things just simply not going according to plan. Which always happens.

In general, that seems to have been my philosophy on life that has successfully gotten me this far: Plan ahead, but be prepared to change those plans, as life is what happens while you are busy making plans.

Or as my friend Joe once put it, "Flexibility is the key to mobility." He was referring to vacation plans, in that case, but it is a good motto in general. If you want to move ahead, be prepared to make adjustments along the way.

I can think of several broken marriages that might have lasted had they both subscribed to this philosophy.

Fidelity

One of the things that I am going to be very very clear on is that I take the concept of fidelity very seriously. I mean, if you are going to commit yourself to someone, to my way of thinking, that commitment means something. And one of the caveats of that commitment is fidelity.

Does that make sense? Do we all agree?

Okay, you don't have to agree with me, but if we're going to have a discussion about it, now that you're clear on my stand on it, if you don't agree, don't expect me to endorse your position. Just isn't going to happen.

So, imagine my dismay today when working in Microsoft's latest version of Excel. I had created a workbook, had shaded certain cells, and saved the file as the previous version of Excel.

And that's when I saw the following dialog box...



Is anyone else out there unnerved by this? Should I be switching back to Lotus 1-2-3? Sure, it sucks eggs, but at least it will be faithful and won't make lame excuses.

Another Day I Almost Died: The Day I Almost Died -- Part 2

Scaffolding -- real life construction grade scaffolding -- is like Lego building blocks for grownups. You can connect and stack them almost indefinitely, and as long as you have the horizontal sway properly tethered and the ability to compensate for unlevel ground using screw jacks, there's very little limit to how high you can go. Each section of scaffolding measures 6.5 feet high, and about 8 feet wide.

In my youth (in my age of invincibility), I worked for a general contractor/construction firm. The inevitable part of every job was moving scaffolding pieces needed to the site and setting up a rig on the facade of the building we were working on. We even used scaffolding on interior jobs where we needed to do ceiling work.

The main job I was working on the summer I was 19 was a huge Tudor style house that needed all the exterior stucco redone and waterproofed. Let me just say right here and now, the reason I finished college was so that I would never have to ever work with stucco again. Or urethane caulking. Both substances are straight from hell.

The house had an outdoor swimming pool, and the owner of the house had invited us to use her pool after we were done working as often as we wanted. It didn't hurt that there was a plethora of young ladies hanging out with the owner's daughter by the pool.

I practically wound up living there that summer.

Well, as the stucco job was getting finished up, we started to take down scaffolding from around the house, and we began to stack up an excess of unused scaffolding. One day, while we were working, my boss set a box of scaffolding up by the pool and over our lunch hour, we passed the time jumping from 6.5 feet up into the pool.

The next day, there was a second box of scaffolding atop the first, and we jumped in from 13 feet up. Through a series of dares and jokes, we somehow wound up with a 33 foot tall tower by the pool. I used to have a picture of myself sitting atop it. I was merely a speck sillhouetted against the sky.

Jumping from the top was a delightful combination of exhilaration and terror. The water was deep enough that when you landed, you still hit bottom, but not so hard you could do more than maybe sprain an ankle.

This too eventually became boring.

I found myself hanging off the side a couple of boxes up and diving into the pool.

I crept higher.

If I curled into a ball as soon as my hands hit the water, I would gently spin to the bottom, and would never hit floor.

I should have remembered a key fact about myself. My body does not always obey the commands of the brain. Playing softball, my brain tells my glove hand to reach up and catch the ball. But my glove hand occasionally stays where it is. And I have been beaned in the face a few times with a softball I should have caught.

This day, from 18 feet up, my brain said "Curl" and my body replied "Not now. I'm busy."

I hit bottom.

I couldn't see - maybe I had forgotten to open my eyes, maybe I was temporarily rendered blind, I don't know. I knew I was still underwater, but couldn't see where "UP" was. Also, I was afraid to move my head, as my neck hurt. A lot.

I decided to just float, as that would tell me where "UP" was. When I reached the surface, I heard voices yelling variations on the "Holy Shit!" theme. I still wasn't seeing anything, but at least now I could breathe. Someone I couldn't see was guiding me through the water, and soon I was hanging onto the edge of the pool.

This is when I began to see. I tested my neck, and moving it wasn't too bad - a little stiff, but not bad - so I asked people to help me out of the water. I was bleeding from a gash on the top of my head, but everything else somehow miraculously was intact.

I was alive. I didn't have a broken neck. A few stitches in my head would clear up the one injury I knew about. Life was good.

At the time I was a smoker, and I asked a friend for a smoke. As I exhaled, smoke blew out my left ear. The impact with the bottom of the pool, coupled with the rapid exhale I must have done, blew out my eardrum. That was fun for a while, but soon my ear began to hurt really badly. Apparently tar and such are pretty harsh on membranes.

The next day, there was no scaffolding up by the pool.

EPILOGUE: A couple weeks later, I started going out with one of the young ladies that was there that day. It didn't last. She later told me that she was the one who fished me out of the water. All these years later, we are still friends. Given that she possibly saved me from drowning I expect that we will always be friends...