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Last Sunday we got up early for the mandatory garden meeting. In an established garden like this, there is a lot of structure, or at least, lots of leaders in fleece with rules about a lot of things. (Yes, I am a little bitter that cane fruit are verboten, since I think a Marionberry bush would be a great addition, especially to counter the aggressive hops from last year – but I guess that won’t happen here.)

We did have the opportunity to share what we do know with some brand new gardeners (70 new across the city). Namely, that installing drip irrigation is both easier and cheaper than you might think given the city’s rebate program. And I did get to ask about peonies, the other long-term investment plant I’m considering. Peonies and ants go together like any symbiotic partnership, and I’m not sure what the ants will mean for the rest of my garden. However, I didn’t hear any warnings – just explanations about planting depths for peonies – so I think I’ll be going for it. And as the sky seems to indicate snow again for tonight, I’ll just have to type up my notes for what I hope to have bursting in green in the garden in another couple months.

While fighting off the flies became exhausting the first day, it was more than a week before he fully realized the boy was never coming back.

Around 8am, most mornings, I look out the window by my desk to see a strange sight. A guy, dressed usually in non-descript shorts and t-shirt, trudges by carrying a plastic girl doll (like the one you dress up in the same clothes as your daughter) about 2 feet in length by it’s foot. Here’s what I know:

• It is always one of two guys, who work at a nearby warehouse that sells framed art to doctor’s and other professional offices.


• The doll is, shall we say, abused. The hair is matted and looks like it might have been burned, and there are marks all over it from shoes and some sort of violence.


• The guy isn’t running, but isn’t moving slowly – like it’s something he has to do but wants to get it over with.


• The doll wears a similarly abused lace thong (no, I didn’t previously know thongs were made in doll size either).


• The doll is always carried by a foot, like a kid holding a safety blanket.


• The doll lives on a  shelf in the warehouse the guys work at when not performing this lap.


•  While the employees at the framed art warehouse regularly have pep talks in the parking lot, we never see an interaction prior to the trip around both of our buildings.


• The shipping manager and myself are the only ones to have seen this, as far as I know – since we get there earliest in the morning.

Last week, something changed. The bigger of the two guys strode by with the doll wearing no shoes on his stockinged feet, and a construction helmet.

So WHAT IS GOING ON?

OK, I’ve already admitted, along with the shipping manager, that we don’t actually want to know. We suspect it is a punishment doled out on the employee with the lowest sales – some kind of punishment/motivation for working harder for your commission. But seriously, why did the doll have to be abused to create this situation?

I suspect I will never know.

I just finished Fawn M. Brodie’s book, No Man Knows My History. This biography of Joseph Smith II, founder of Mormonism, is fascinating for both its contents and for how it impacted the author’s life. While raised as a Mormon, and considered a respected biographer as she gained access to the Mormon archives for her research, she lost her Mormon faith. (You can go ahead and make the assumption that her book is not appreciated by many in the Mormon faith). The Mormon archives are one of the few places to find a lot of material on Joseph Smith’s life, so I appreciate that she had access long enough to get a lot of the carefully researched material into book form; but I can imagine it was frustrating to lose faith in writing a biography of the person so well respected as part of your religion. Also, you might notice that this is one of those books that the reviews on Amazon either give 5 or 1 stars to. Again, this is because while it is a well written and fascinating biography; Joseph Smith’s life as presented in the book hardly makes one think well of him, and your perception of the man and the religion would surely color your opinion of a book that presents him as someone who received revelations that seemed to almost always benefit himself before others.

I must admit, having extraordinarily convenient revelations is an excellent way to secure things you want as well as reinforce how well-connected you are to god. Also, having sacred objects that no one is allowed to see, but only feel through an opaque sack is also an excellent way to show you are holy. Thirdly, telling a young woman that god told you to make her your spiritual wife ASAP or else you would be slain by an angel is apparently a way hot pickup line in the 1840s. (And BTW, god said “don’t tell the first wife about this, babe.”) If anyone has success with this line in the present, please let me know, I’m very curious.

One of the author’s strengths lies in explaining how popular explanations for life in the American Frontier worked their way into Mormon belief. For example, meeting large groups of native people, who built houses, weapons, objects of beauty, and other things believed to be European inventions was completely confusing to the settlers. It was not uncommon for many settlers to believe that the Native Americans were actually descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel, and furthermore, that a white person returning them to the Christian faith would ensure that the converted natives would turn white skinned. Wow. I can’t imagine the explanations used to tell Native Americans why they would want this.

There is much I don’t know about Mormon faith. And I am would believe that much of the Masonic-influenced ceremonies have changed greatly from Joseph Smith’s time. But Masonry had a resurgence in popularity around the same time that many of the ceremonies in the temple began. This section on the original ceremony for a man joining the Mormon priesthood and donning the sacred undergarments was very interesting:

“The Masonic square and compass were cut into the garment on the breast and a slash was made across the knee. In the beginning the cut across the knee was apparently deep enough to penetrate the flesh and leave a scar, but this practice was eventually abandoned as a result of protests from the Mormon women. There was also a slash in the garment across the abdomen, symbolic of the disemboweling that would be the fate of anyone who revealed the sacred secrets.”

 excerpt from No Man Knows My History, by Fawn M. Brodie

Smith had recently become a Free Mason along with most of his trusted leadership, and was deeply interested in the rituals associated with the group. However, I am willing to assume that the difficulty in finding out more about the sacred undergarments today (as a non-Mormon friend of mine in Salt Lake strives to do) is a result of dire consequences warned to new Mormons even now if you reveal any sacred Mormon secrets. Sorry anyway, Brian, and good luck.

• When you procrastinate something you’re expected to have ready for a meeting, you look foolish.
• Hives can be caused by anything. I.E., your doctor can’t tell you whether your virus, probable bacterial infection, or a new, unknown allergy is why your head is swelling, sore and itchy all at the same time.
• Hives leave by the swelling and blotchiness slowly traveling downward…so if today your upper eyelids are puffy, tomorrow your under-eyelids will be puffy, and then your cheeks, and you’ll be generally scary looking for a three or four day period.
• Aspirin does not go well with low blood pressure. Unless feeling like passing out all day is your bag. On a positive note, ibuprofen does not seem to share the same effect.
• Medical science is still unsure how to tell when a regular cold becomes a bacterial infection. So, the decision to use antibiotics when you’ve felt sick for several weeks is still a gamble. (15% are bacterial, but an additional percentage seem to heal faster with antibiotics).
• Long-term mohawks have a peculiar growing pattern in which the short hair immediately next to the ‘hawk grows faster, and in unpredictable directions. Owners of said mohawks are sometimes resistant to getting a trim, since they don’t regularly see it.
• Listening to the Blagojevich recordings will not give you any juicy bits to share, just make you additionally disgusted at the corruption.
• When you’re offered a job that isn’t a good fit on the same day that 68,000 jobs are lost across the country, your best option is to take it and put up with it.

I woke up this morning to read in the paper that there was a shooting at my brother’s work. I immediately called him, since the vague article suggested there was an employee fatality. He answered, pretty shook up. They sent all the employees home after the shooting at 7:30am. While he wasn’t in the building at the time, he was walking up to it, and heard the gunshots and watched people burst out of the building in panic. He’s OK, but one of his bosses died. The shooter, also an employee, was killed in a firefight with a police officer down the road. There’s a lot of messed up details and he’s pretty upset that someone could go off the rails like that on a pretty good boss. It sounds like there were a lot of witnesses. I hope counseling is provided for all employees who need it. It’s a small community, and it is likely that both people were well known by most of the town.  I hope they support each other with dealing with this unexpected violence.

UPDATE: My brother is still pretty shook up. Many co-workers have quit, making his job more stressful, and he had to remove graffiti left by the shooter. All the employees are supporting each other, though. He may still decide to quit (he had lots of valid reasons before this happened), which he has my full support on.

We’ve gotten very little snow here so far this season. Which is a shame, because the most notable thing about the weather has been the howling, gusty winds. Snow is much better than wind – and certainly better for tourist dollars, which the state could definitely use.

If there was one major difference in voting here than in St. Louis, it was the lack of crazy long lines. This is most certainly due to Colorado’s policy of providing multiple sites and multiple days for early voting. Missouri, however, continues to only allow mail-in and regular poll voting. When we voted in Missouri in the last presidential election, Sam and I waited well over an hour to cast our votes. There wasn’t any particular problem with the machines, ballots or poll workers, but the sheer number of voters crammed into one location for one day made it long and annoying.

In Colorado, there’s a two week period where you can vote prior to the election. There tend to be 4-10 voting sites per county and you can vote at any of the locations within your county, between the hours of 8am and 5:30pm (hours differ slightly by county). Despite urging from multiple friends to take advantage of this, I had much more time available on voting day itself, and held off voting until this morning. And it paid off! 30% or so of registered Colorado voters had voted early, (67% in one county) making my trip to the booth smooth and simple. I took longer to fill out the ballot with its dozen amendments than I did waiting in line. Across the county, poll workers were complaining of being bored, because there weren’t that many voters trickling in today. (Turnout overall is still expected to be high, just distributed through early, mail-in and traditional voting). Compare this to reports from St. Louis:

“Problems persist at Velda City city hall tonight, where more than 200 people still waited to cast a ballot as night fell and the closing of polls neared. The wait: still about 5 hours.” – STLtoday.com

Even the exact polling place I used to vote at had long lines. A friend emailed me:

“We waited four hours in line to vote this morning! We arrived just before 6:00. The polling place didn’t actually open until 6:30. And then there were not enough election workers in place to move things along.”

I’m not so much feeling voter outrage as thinking that I’ve observed an easy solution to this. Missouri (and the rest of the non-early-voting country) would be much happier with early voting. It makes it easier on poll workers, on voters who can’t get time off on voting day easily, on people with unusual work schedules, on voters who like to vote early, and even people like me who stubbornly insist on voting the old-fashioned day-of way.  Demand more voting days, MO.

It’s not often that I find fiction interesting. When I do pick up a novel, my hopes are that it won’t drag on making me glance at the pile for the next book on my list, which is much more likely to be a non-fiction account of something interesting. I won’t go into my full rant about non-fiction vs. fiction, but it is unusual for me to dwell on a novel and its characters for a while after reading it. That’s what makes Blindness, by Jose Saramago, so different.

Set in an unidentified city, with unnamed characters, and with what would otherwise be an annoying lack of grammar or identification of the speaker in dialogue; the book examines what would happen if an unexplained, very contagious outbreak of blindness broke out across an entire population. Described by those afflicted as a “milky sea”, they are at the mercy of those who can still see, and the quick-spreading epidemic doesn’t inspire charity. This is made all the more interesting to me since my last position dealt extensively with vision – one of the few medical complaints that has as much subjective data to it as objective. Everything we do uses information from sight – especially interaction from other humans.

If such an epidemic really happened, would society survive? We treat blindness in its current forms as a disability, but expect that those with it can lead pretty normal lives, with jobs, relationships, and often a decent ability to live on their own. But if everyone was blind, would this still be the case?

More importantly, in the face of a major crisis, how do those who are determined to keep their humanity and compassion do that against those who would take advantage of each other, with no witnesses so to speak. The results leave me spooked, and yet the book feels completely realistic – some characters are prepared to change their lives to deal with a new and urgent need to depend on others and provide for others in turn even when dignity fails.  And at the other end, horrible, horrible acts are committed when people know they’re not being watched – literally, not seen, not identified and therefore it is almost impossible for these characters to feel guilt.

I also chose to read this book just before embarking on a long road trip/vacation that I think applies. Except for the first time I took this trip, I have been fortunate to be almost completely surrounded by people who express humanity to the fullest: super welcoming, eager to give new people warmth and laughter, work hard together, and solving problems for the good of the group in times of crisis. But this is by far not the norm in any society, and the fragility of group governance is all too obvious if you look around wherever resources are scarce. I am looking forward to the trip, and the confirmation it provides that I can identify and learn from those people who see crisis as a time to improve things, in an environment that doesn’t have any natural consequences for those who choose to instead screw their neighbors.

I should point out that Blindness did win the 1998 Nobel prize for Literature, which is an indication of greatness – and that I loved Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, not that the books are similiar, though both examine humanity in crisis. Both are definitely recommended reading, even if you also prefer non-fiction.

So let’s say you bought boots: nice Doc Martens, a few years ago. They were great boots – worn to the point that the soles were slick and the heels were cracked. But as good, well-used boots go, they are particularly useful in very dirty and heavily worked situations. So when you volunteer as a fire suppression team member at a bonfire-like event in a part of the country susceptible to wildfires, it’s not surprising that your duties include lugging heavy, water-filled hoses around, keeping the embers from landing on people; and using a pike to knock down too-tall parts of the burning structure. After several hours of this, the boots (and your clothing) are soaked – and aren’t done any favors by being wadded up in your luggage for a flight the next day. And if you’re particularly slow about unpacking all your things – a week in a plastic garbage bag tucked in your duffel won’t do these boots any favors. In fact, they might look like this:

Just a warning, kids: even good boots go bad. The mold won in this case, but Sam gave them a good life before they were consumed.

In the last month or so, Sam and I have explored and embraced three unique new tastes. In my case, I discovered a love for coarse-ground mustard (especially on a soft pretzel) and that Kalamata olives are actually pretty similar to capers, which I already put on a surprising number of foods. Sam is pushing me to accept green and black olives into my heart, but let’s not go crazy here…black olives simply don’t impress me on pizza, which is where I usually encounter them. And as for green olives, well, this is sounding more and more like a plot to get me to join Sam in his petty crime of stealing one or two olives from grocery stores’ olive bars. Kalamatas, however, I can incorporate into interesting dishes.

Sam, on the other hand, has a different new condiment love. It’d be an exaggeration to say he puts it on everything, but pizza, soup, pasta, bagels, chik patties, and maybe salads at least. It’s called Togarashi, or sometimes Shichimi Togarashi, or sometimes “Japanese 7 Spice”. In short, it’s a spicy powdered mixture that includes chiles, salt and seaweed. We discovered it through its requirement in a ramen-based soup, and since then, it’s dominated Sam’s foods. While it falls within my spice tolerance, I think most foods don’t have to have a delicate combination of chiles and seaweed to finish them off. Hey, to each their own.

On Thursday Madalene and I went to see the Olympic torch come through town. The torch is stopping at cities around the world, and is relayed from important person to important person as it is run, by hand, through each city, burning brightly.

The torch ran down Delmar Ave., near our house. We casually wandered the block down to the street, and then stood around for a bit as motorcycles and police cars drove down the street, heralding the approaching torch. An assortment of Samsung sponsored vehicles, including an H2 Hummer, blared music as they trundled along as part of the procession. Finally, a lady holding the torch and flanked by BMW motorcycles ran past. We clapped, and on the procession went. Then we got some sandwiches.

If that sounds a little anti-climactic to you, then you’d be right. It was all quite casual, and there weren’t many people out. The cheering when the torch passed was moderate, and the parade around the torch was measly at best. The torch itself was pretty neat though, a well crafted wood and aluminum device, with a sleek look.

I rememeber when I was in Elementary school how the Olympics was the biggest event I could think of. Each classroom chose a sport to follow, and we made charts of the progress. We dressed up in costumes of our favorite countries (at the time, my favorite country was Australia) and acted out the opening ceremonies. We even tried out different olympic events like long jump and soccer. The Olympics, and the events proceeding it, were several weeks of Olympic fever at my school.

But this event was rather lackluster. It was neat to see the torch being run along, but I was surprised at how little excitement there was, and how unexcited I was. Oh well.

Who here played Mario Bros. 2 in the US when they were a kid? Good game huh? Sure it was creepy, and filled with weird stuff that doesn’t make any sense (not that the original Mario made much more sense), but it was charming in its own way. Well, the reason the game is a bit of a black sheep is that it was originally called Doki Doki Panic, and was released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System, which was an NES addon that included a floppy disk drive. I’ve never even seen one in person.

The game was bought by Nintendo, redesigned, and released as Super Mario Bros. 2 here in the US. All they did was tweak the graphics and music, and ended up with a final product. The original game is quite a bit weirder though, and just as amusing.

If you want to learn more about it, or get a ROM of the game so you can play it on your emulator, check out Poprocks and Coke.

After Monday’s debacle concerning the untimely consumption of an insect and Tuesday’s unceasing rain, I spent most of Tuesday playing Playstation games on my PC. The emulator project ePSXe has come along very well, and now plays most games very well. I’ve been enjoying Legend of Mana, which is a continuation of a game called Secret of Mana that I have fond memories playing with Dustin back when we were rotten little youths. I’m not usually into games much, but sometimes, when the weather is bad, I like to just kick back and do something unproductive for a little while.

However, the real reason I’m making this post is to bring forth more information about the amount of insect parts found in common foods. Through Madalene, I got some good links, and some good information.

First, the amount of insect material in food products is governed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN). They regulate all sorts of things related to food safety, but the documents we are interested in concern the Food Defect Action Levels program. This regulates the amount of insect parts, foreign plant matter, rodent filth and rotten parts that food can contain.

If you want to read a nice little article about the process, check out this Salon article called Bug heads, rat hairs—bon appetit. It is a pretty funny little read.

If you want some more detailed information, the main document, for your reading pleasure, is called the FDA/CFSAN Defect Action Level Handbook and it is quite an interesting read. For instance, here are the tolerances for peanut butter:

• Insect filth: No more than 30 insect fragments per 100 grams.
• Rodent filth: No more than 1 rodent hair per 100 grams.

• Grit: Gritty taste and water insoluble inorganic residue may not exceed 25mg per 100 grams.

  However, this last line is what I find most interesting (emphasis mine):

  DEFECT SOURCE: Insect fragments – preharvest and/or post harvest and/or processing insect infestation, Rodent hair – post harvest and/or processing contamination with animal hair or excreta, Grit – harvest contamination
  SIGNIFICANCE: Aesthetic

  Aesthetic? Well, I suppose its true, despite what some may choose to believe, a few rat hairs and insect legs isn’t going to hurt anybody! You might find it a bit bizarre to be eating insect crap, but really, its a small thing to our bodies. In fact, I’m willing to bet that decreased usage of pesticides and an increase in ‘organic’ farming techniques will only mean skyrocketing insect part levels in food. I’m not bothered by that prospect overly much. I don’t fancy eating bugs, seeing as how I am a vegetarian, but at the same time, a realization has to be made that bugs are everywhere, and invariably will end up in whatever you are eating. It isn’t cruel, its just the nature of being an insect who can crawl into anything, has 300 babies at a time and lives for two weeks. Plus, caterpillars have as much protein by weight as beef, but with much less fat, 10 times as much iron, and many other vitamins as well. I suppose accidentally eating a few isn’t really that bad of an idea.

  However, this still doesn’t address the question of how the insect parts are counted. For that, we need to look to another document, called the Macroanalytical Procedures Manual. This document contains procedures for doing all sorts of filth-tests. For the most part, it seems simple filtration serves to identify insect matter and excrement in the food products. Also, various methods of digesting the food product in acids, and then separating any undigested material (such as the insect heads). Happy reading.

  

Last night Madalene and I went over to Caroline’s for a little get together. The highlight of the evening came when a girl named Randy brought over a watermelon. Watermelon is one of my favorite foods, simply because of how fun it is to eat. Randy admitted that she wasn’t safe around knives, and suggested I help her get the watermelon open so we could eat it.

Now, as a little aside, I want to mention something primal that lives within all carnivorous animals. A desire to take something, bash it open and eat it raw by shoving one’s face into it and pulling out mouthful after mouthful of red dripping goodness with one’s incisors. Its an instinct that can’t be ignored. I however, have a little problem. As a vegetarian, I choose not to bash open and eat animals, which are the kinds of things one might think of when they get the urge to bash something open and feast on it. Watermelon however, is a perfect food to smash open and eat with one’s bare hands, scooping handful after handful of red dripping goodness from its center. That is why I like watermelon.

With that in mind, we began to search the house for implements suitable for opening a watermelon. Caroline’s house (which is also Dennis’s house, even though he isn’t in town at the moment) is a unique place of both sophistication and savagery. They didn’t seem to have any suitable knives for some reason. The best knife we could find was a 4 inch paring knife. Hardly appropriate for opening a watermelon.

A little more searching revealed a boon. Caroline is of viking heritage, and as such, owns a few weapons that emulate the types her ocean-faring ancestors would have wielded. One of these weapons was a huge claw made from welded steel, with three wicked tines, each over two feet long and 3/4 of an inch thick. The ends of each tine had been crudely sharpened and firmly welded to the steel hand grip. Here was our watermelon opening tool.

Feeling like Wolverine, I picked up the mighty claw. With one jab, I skewered the watermelon on the tines. I hefted it high and shouted a primal scream, as the others gawked from outside and took pictures. I carried the wounded melon out onto the porch, set it down, and began to jab at it furiously with the claw until we were able to rip it into two pieces. With the aid of the paring knife, I hacked off several large hunks of melon, handing them out to the waiting tribe. We ate well that night, with juice dripping from our faces and hands, and the soiled claw set off to the side, waiting for its next victim.