Pretensions and Delusions

Testing remote app

2011-10-19T06:09:00.001-07:00

Just testing posts from my phone.

Self-Assessment, and Surprises.....

2011-05-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

I got my final grades today: a B+ on the Investigative Research unit, resulting in an overall grade of A- (GPA of 3.7, CEU of 10.4). Not too shabby, really--I thought I would have scored a B to a B+. I cede my doubts to the judgement of the professionals.

I've been busy trying to tweak my resume ( I don't mean to gush, but the Resume Builder at LinkedIn Labs rocks--I am very happy with the results), and I when added the "Skills" feature, I found myself amazed at what is considered a skill (Objectivity is a skill? Really??), and just how many I actually have (my resume lists 19). I never thought I possessed so many--and these are just the ones that come to immediate attention.

All this time, I thought myself without marketable skills; now, I discover that I've had many skills all along.

It makes me wonder--what else about myself am I taking for granted?

The Fat Man speaks...

2011-05-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

First off, the breaking news is that Usama Bin Ladin is wormfood. Whether true or not, I cannot say, but CBS apparently thinks that US Forces in Afghanistan have the body. The President is supposed to be giving a press conference shortly. We'll see.

I've started a new blog/journal: The Fat Man Speaks... is to be my "Professional Investigator" journal, where I intend to post on what will (hopefully) be work-related issues. I will probably still be keeping Pretensions and Delusions for more personal issues (such as ranting over "Dilbert Moments"); I want to keep my personal life separate from my (hopefully) future professional life. I also hope to use the new journal as a networking tool, and an advertizing platform. We'll see how this works out.

23:15--It's official: UBL has run up the curtain, and is singing soprano with the sinners.

First, they came for Asimov's...

2011-04-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

...and then they took down Analog...

I used to post frequently on both the Analog and Asimov's fora, back when I had the crazy idea of becoming a writer. A troll posting child porn has taken down both. These are the days that try men's souls...

Which way did she go? Which way did she go?

2011-04-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday was our on-foot surveillance exercise; the class was broken into 3-man teams, given the description of the target, a recent photo, and the location the surveillance was to start from. Follow the target for two hours, record their movements, and report back for debriefing. Get a photo for extra credit. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

I picked up my target the moment she arrived-- she was wearing a maroon sweater that stood out rather well. Arrived at the CambridgeSide Galleria Foodcourt at 13:02hrs, three year-old daughter in tow, and proceeded to sit down to eat lunch. At 13:20hrs, she and her daughter left the food court and entered the H&M department store on the first floor. At 13:25hrs, the target left H&M, and proceeded towards the escalator bank; I waited for them to round the corner, then moved to follow...

...and promptly lost them. They were out of sight no more than 10 seconds, and *poof*!--Gone.

The next two hours was a fun-filled thrill ride of locating the target, losing the target, re-acquiring the target, and worrying that my ham-handed actions had gotten me burned.

I don't care what Hollywood says--this shadowing/surveillance stuff is &^%$#@! hard!

Class Exercise-- BU PI100

2011-03-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Live from 808 Commonwealth Ave. We're covering Social Media & Networks, and how to build our own blogs.

Professional Investigator...has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

2011-03-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

Still alive, for those of you who read my Journal-- it's been about 5 months since I last updated.

Since I'm half-way through the course, I thought I might fill in one-and-all as to my mad scheme; I've made no secret of it, having shared the info with my immediate social circle and family, but I think it's about time to spread the word around to all my acquaintances. After all, some of you might be future clients.

I am currently studying at Boston University's Metropolitan College, in the Center for Professional Education. It's a certificate program, as opposed to a degree, and the course I am studying is Certification in Professional Investigation. In short, I'm studying to be a PI.

Now, I know most of you are saying to yourselves the same thing one of my friends said to me when I told her what I was doing: "But Dennis--you look nothing like a private detective!" Well, that's mostly true--I look nothing like the stereotype of private detective, which is what most think of when "PI" is mentioned; I look nothing like Phillip Marlowe or Mike Hammer, or like most of the characters that have graced the pages of detective novels down through the years.

I do bear an unfortunate similarity to the circumference of Nero Wolfe; on the other hand, I have a better mustache than Thomas Magnum.

The truth of the matter is the modern professional investigator looks nothing like the stereotypes we're all familiar with--it's more important for a PI to be smart and skilled than tough and physically aggressive. Smarts I have, and I'm working on the skills.

Mind you, it's not quite as easy as taking a class--in Massachusetts, you must either work for a licensed PI, or for an attorney (or legal firm) that employs PIs for at least 3 years before you can apply for your own license (that's the broad outline of the license requirement; there's a slightly different set of requirements if you come from a law enforcement background). After that, it's another set of hurdles before I reach my long term goal, of becoming a Certified Criminal Defense Investigator (CCDI). Along the way, it's constantly keeping up with new techniques and new laws, new practices and new information. You can't sit on your ass on this kind of job--well, maybe during surveillance...

So, why am I doing this? A lot of reasons--some practical, some emotional/psychological, and at least one spiritual.

The practical reason is the easiest to explain: our economy has taken a severe hit, and I'm worried about layoffs. I wanted a skill-set that made me "untouchable"-- that is, gave me employment that can't be outsourced, digitized, or automated. I'm a little old (and a bit too clumsy) to become a plumber's apprentice, so when I saw the add for this course, I jumped at it.

The emotional/psychological reason...well, I think anyone who has read any of my journal knows about the mid-life crisis I've been experiencing. Some guys deal with it by buying a car--I chose a change in career.

The spiritual reason I'm not really sure I'm ready to discuss yet. Maybe in a later post.

And now, you know. I'll be writing more later--including a post about an ethical right hook the chief instructor threw the class about two weeks back. It's a nail-chewer.

The return of an unwanted aquaintence.

2010-11-09T16:57:00.000-08:00

I decided to sit on this until after two important family functions passed (I didn't want to upstage my cousin, my brother, his wife, or my nephew), and until after I had consulted with a specialist as two what course of action I should take. All this has taken place, so, time to spill the beans:

About a month and a half ago, something odd was detected during one of my regular CT scans; after several more scans and an extremely painful biopsy, the conclusion was pretty inevitable.

Igor is back; my cancer has returned.

The good news is that Igor hasn't returned as quite as pervasively as before--there is one 2cm by 1cn tumor in my liver, as opposed to the eight large tumors that I originally had. There are a few tiny cells that do fluoresce under PET scan, but are too small to see with CT or MRI scans, so the one "large" tumor is the only one of real concern.

The bad news is that the tumor is deep within my tumor, and after consulting a liver specialist today, the risks of surgery far outweigh any benefit. So, it's another six months of chemotherapy.

In addition, it turns out that I have an "artifact" on my spleen (early I had been that it was on my liver, but the specialist reviewed the MRI, and concluded that it was, in fact, on my spleen). It does not fluoresce under PET scan, so it is currently considered benign. Currently.

So, it's back to the grind: chemo on every other Monday, carry around a diffusion pump until Wednesday, and then wait for the symptoms to wear down. For six months.

So it goes.

For most of History, there have been only two classes;...

2010-08-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

...a thin layer of rich aristocracy, and a large population of subsistence-level poor.

It would appear that we are headed back to that historical model:

In case that doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A&feature=player_embedded

Now, this is poetry

2010-06-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Creed
by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin

We believe everything is OK

as long as you don't hurt anyone

to the best of your definition of hurt,

and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and

after marriage.

We believe in the therapy of sin.

We believe that adultery is fun.

We believe that sodomy’s OK.

We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better

despite evidence to the contrary.

The evidence must be investigated

And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes

UFO's and bent spoons.

Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,

Mohammed, and ourselves.

He was a good moral teacher though we think

His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-

at least the one that we read was.

They all believe in love and goodness.

They only differ on matters of creation,

sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing

Because when you ask the dead what happens

they say nothing.

If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its

compulsory heaven for all

excepting perhaps

Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson

What's selected is average.

What's average is normal.

What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.

We believe there are direct links between warfare and

bloodshed.

Americans should beat their guns into tractors .

And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.

It's only his behavior that lets him down.

This is the fault of society.

Society is the fault of conditions.

Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that

is right for him.

Reality will adapt accordingly.

The universe will readjust.

History will alter.

We believe that there is no absolute truth

excepting the truth

that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,

And the flowering of individual thought.

If chance be

the Father of all flesh,

disaster is his rainbow in the sky

and when you hear

State of Emergency!

Sniper Kills Ten!

Troops on Rampage!

Whites go Looting!

Bomb Blasts School!

It is but the sound of man

worshiping his maker.

A fundamental failure of the law....

2010-05-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

...that's how Newt Gingrich described the Arizona illegal immigration law.

Yes--that Newt Gingrich.

For those who can't see the embed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV3HHloJxSo&playnext_from=TL&videos=sAUek3W-UD0&feature=sub

I'm not too thrilled to pick up 12% of the debt of Greece.

There are days I shouldn't be allowed to answer the front door...

2010-03-18T17:05:00.001-07:00

...and today was one of those days.

I've been a bad boy.

I was down at the front door, picking up the mail, when this really cute blond came up to the door, and waved to me through the glass. I didn't recognize her as one of the other tenants, so I opened the door and asked, "Can I help you?"

"Hi, I'm Cathy. I'm going door-to-door talking to people about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Would you like a free copy of the Book of Mormon?"

Ah, a Mormon. "Nah. I already have a copy from the last missionary I scared off."

She didn't even blink at that. "Oh, that's great! Have you ever considered coming to one of our meetings?"

I looked her over as she ran through her speech; early twenties, slim, about 5'6" or so. Nice figure, and her hair color looked natural. Typical conservative blouse and skirt combo, with white sneakers. I figured she had just started her missionary work, and had come from the Midwest rather than Southwest--her skin tone was almost as pale as mine, which would be murder in Nevada or Utah.

It's been a while since I had a run-in with a Mormon missionary, so I was mentally digging through the back of my head looking for one of my old standbys to throw them off, and I was having some difficulty remembering the name of the conman who snookered their church back in the 1980's, when...

Look, this was entirely out of character for me--ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you: my biggest problem is that I'm entirely too passive--especially when it comes to women. I actually have difficulty asking women for their names, for Christ's sake!

So, what happened next, well...maybe it was the combination of the meds I took for my hypertension & hypothyroidism and the heparin they used at the doctor's office, or maybe because the doctor's visit had gone so well (the blockage at the end of my catheter seems to have dissolved--they were able to get a positive blood return when they flushed the port), or maybe it was just plain old hormones getting the upper hand....

"You know, that's a nice outfit you're wearing."

That stopped her dead in her tracks. "Oh. Umm...thank you." I saw her hand go up to brush her hair back.

"Would you like to come upstairs and see how it looks on my living room floor?"

Her hand stopped in mid-stroke, and I thought her eyes were going to pop right out of her head. Myself, I could feel a blush racing up my face, and my jaw drop open over what I had just said. Part of me was bracing for a slap, but there was another part of me saying C'mon--say yes.

Well, there was no slap--she spun on her heel and speed-walked away, looking over her shoulder at me a couple of times to see if I was following her. She did stop at the end of the block and give me a long look, but she was too far for me to see what kind of expression she had. I sort of half waved at her, and she vanished around the corner. I assume that her partner (Mormon missionaries usually travel in pairs) was around the bend, because I didn't see her nearby.

I doubt she'll be back.

A return--of sorts; and a look at things to come...

2010-03-13T01:36:00.000-08:00

First off, I owe an apology to those few who read my LiveJournal/Blogger entries; I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth--I've simply have developed the bad habit of not writing. Given the brief and instant nature of commentary on Facebook, long essays simply felt, well, long, and sloth has always been my bane. Mea culpa.

That being said, I expect to migrate to a different platform in the next year or so. I am considering a career change, and as part of that change, I will have to "press the flesh" in the electronic media that we know as the Web--and, to be quite frank, LiveJournal and Blogger simply will not fill the bill.

Not that I will be deleting said blogs--I still like to keep track of things that happen amongst my wide-flung circle of acquaintances, if for no other reason than you are all such interesting souls. You help me think outside the box, and that is a skill that I value highly--I hope others will as well.

All that being said, I would like to draw your attention to something I predicted would happen about a year ago. As I recall, John C Wright asked those who read his journal what we felt would happen in the US in the near future ("near" approximating the next 100 years). My prediction was that population density would increase in our cities, even as the overall population of our country would decrease; I based that prediction on the historical model of the Roman Empire, which (and I admit, this is pulled from my freshman history classes long ago, so the details might be off) experienced a overall population decline even as they experienced an increase in urban density, as the unprotected members of the empire--then bereft the protection of the Legions--withdrew from the rural settlements to the safety of fortified cities. Indeed, the situation grew so bad that cities themselves contracted in order to form a more defensible perimeter--Lyons of France, if I remember correctly, sub-divided and sub-divided again to shorten the length of wall they had to defend against invaders. I held a year ago (and I still feel so today) that our urban centers would experience a similar phenomenon--even if for different reasons.

This tidbit gives me reason to hold such a view: Dessert: Deconstructing Detroit.

Mayor Dave Bing is proposing to abandon large swaths of the city, move the few people remaining to more functional neighborhoods, tear down the buildings left behind and let what's left become forests, pastures and farmland.

The consolidation, aside from eliminating square miles of eyesores, would cut the cost of services like police, fire, snow removal, water and sewage.

Already people are said to hunt pheasants in abandoned neighborhoods, and Detroit-grown produce is sold in farmers markets. The markets are important because not one national grocery chain has a store in the city. Soon, if the city wants to have food, it may have to grow its own.

I remember when Detroit was still the center of our automotive industry, and the nucleus of the nation's economy. I imagine many a Roman patrician wondered at the decline of Rome and Milan, as well.

We do, indeed, live in interesting times.

Oh yeah--that "Blog" thingamajig...

2009-12-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I don't really have an excuse, save that life has been kinda busy of late. Christmas is upon us, and with it the usual madness. I've also been working on a few side-projects--one that I hope will grant me some credentials to fall back on should I find myself unemployed in the near future. Still, I should keep up my blog, if for no other reason than to provide a platform for putting my wild ideas out in the open where I can contemplate them.

On ClimateGate: The significance of the scandal isn't that the data was hidden, manipulated, and/or destroyed, but that the peer review process itself was being manipulated. What does it matter that the consensus is, when only one opinion is presented, and all other opinion has been prevented from getting equal air time? See also The Smoking Gun at Darwin Zero.

On Tiger Woods: "A man is only as faithful as his options." ~Chris Rock. While there is much truth to that, it must be noted that Tiger Woods was granted those options by the women who slept with him.

On Copenhagen: I note with considerable irritation that the conference on global warming has, between air travel and limo rentals, generated a larger carbon footprint in a day than most of the countries represented generate in a year.

On the Fort Hood Massacre: Sooner or later, we are going to have to admit what has happened.

On the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy: De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum~ Chilon of Sparta (556 B.C.)

Until next time.

Paris Hilton--International Spy?

2009-10-11T20:13:00.001-07:00

Well, no-- not really.

Hilton faces criminal corporate spying charges

Hilton Worldwide, the American hotel behemoth, could face criminal charges of corporate spying, on top of a civil case brought by its rival Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

It emerged that a federal grand jury is investigating the company and several of its former executives over claims that they engaged in the “wholesale looting” of confidential documents in order to help it to launch a rival brand to Starwood’s W Hotels. The investigation is being conducted as part of a Department of Justice inquiry into the allegations made by Starwood in a civil case in April.

The grand jury will review the evidence from the investigation, which is being handled by the US attorney’s office in Manhattan, and will determine whether there is a criminal case to answer.

According to The Wall Street Journal, prosecutors are considering “an aggressive approach” to the case, which could involve bringing criminal charges against both the hotel chain and the executives involved.

9/11 tribute by Andrew Klavan

2009-09-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

Cycles 10-12, and a Miracle

2009-07-29T12:42:00.000-07:00

Cycles 10-12, and a Miracle

My apologies for not making a blog entry in so long--things have been stressful and distracting. Poor excuses, but, there you have it.

Cycles 10-12 were pretty uneventful; there has been a rise in my blood pressure, which I attribute to the Avastin and the general effect of my veins shrinking. Benign hypertension, my GP called it. Another pill to swallow in the morning.

I had an..interesting...experience with the nurse at my GP's office; a reaction that I will have to explore more fully in the future.

A CT Scan followed Cycle 12, and showed no spread and no growth in my cancer. Then, this little gem gets slipped into the conversation while discussing the CT results: "You know, some of what I see here could just be scar tissue."

Now, this was something that had not been suggested before: I had been told, after my consult with the liver surgeon, that my cancer was chronic--that I would have to undergo chemotherapy for the rest of my life. I was resolved to that. I understood the odds: average life expectancy for stage 4 adennocarcinoma is two years post diagnosis, and that only 8% of those diagnosed live 5 years or longer after the cancer is discovered. I checked my skin every morning for jaundice, and got used to the fatigue and nausea. I was getting myself ready.

I had never considered being cured. Statistically, it's a remote possibility, but that "remote" is pretty remote--better to focus on keeping the monster at bay, than to waste time and energy focusing on the next-to impossible. So when my oncologist suggested that some of the cancer might be dead, I felt a little shocked. Then, I felt scared--I had had my hopes raised and dashed before, and I was none too eager to go down the same route again.

So, I asked for an MRI to find out how much cancer was left in my liver. The doctor was reluctant at first, and with good reason--the liver doesn't handle radiation all that well, particularly after an aggressive course of chemo. But not knowing is the worst thing, so I insisted.

The MRI was more uncomfortable than noisy--lying with my arms raised over my head aggravates my shoulder, which is still tight from the damage I did to it back in the 90's. 20 minutes in and out, and the most taxing part was trying to find a vein for the IV. Three days later, I get the phone call from the oncologist.

"I've looked at your films, and it's...interesting."

I hate pregnant pauses--especially on this subject. "Well, is it interesting good or is it interesting bad?"

"Well, the interesting thing is, I can't see any cancer in you liver."

That will bring you to a dead stop. A little too good to be true.

Time for a second opinion: the liver specialist, who had seen the lesions on both lobes of the liver and explained why I couldn't undergo surgery. I was supposed to see him today, but he was called away by an emergency operation. I was, though, able to talk with him this morning before he left for surgery. His conclusion: no visible cancer in the liver.

It's a miracle.

Of course, it's not over yet--I have a follow up with a new oncologist in August, when I'll undergo blood-work to check for cancer markers in my blood. After that, probably a PET scan a month or so down the road to confirm the diagnosis. But, as of right now, as far as medical technology can determine, I'm cancer free.

It's a miracle.

Muwahahahaha!--Death to Edward Cullen!

2009-06-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

With a tip o' the hat to Sqt at Fantasy & Sci-Fi Lovin' News & Reviews.

The End of Cycle 8 & The Start of Cycle 9: Anaphylaxis

2009-06-02T17:54:00.000-07:00

I had thought that I had written on Cycle 8, but given what happened yesterday I suppose that is just as well. Cycle 8 went as usual, with the exception of a blood pressure spike near the end of the course. At the time, both my oncologist and the R.N. attributed the spike to a combination of the Avastin that was added in this cycle and the narrowing of my veins and arteries by the over-all chemotherapy. I noticed the effects of the chemo lasted longer this round--usually they fade by the Saturday or Sunday after the clinic, but Cycle 8 kept the fatigue and neuropathy going up until this past Friday, with a couple of nosebleeds to keep me on my toes.

Yesterday, Cycle 9 started with a twist; about an hour into the procedure, I felt a wave of heat begin from the back of my head, sweep over and down to my chest and arms. My skin began to prickle and redden, like a bad sunburn, and I could feel my pulse start to race. I was so distracted by the itching of my skin that I didn't even think to pull the emergency cord next to my chair. By the time my nurse stopped by to check on me, my skin was breaking out in hives and I was beginning to have difficulty breathing.

"Are you feeling OK?"

"I think there's something wrong."

Five minutes later, after about 25ml of Benadryl and a steroid I don't remember the name of, I was breathing easier, and cooling down. The nurses told me my blood pressure had jumped to 153/96, and that I had suffered an allergic reaction to the oxaliplatin. Apparently, one can develop a sensitivity to the chemical if one is exposed long enough, and I apparently hit my threshold. Anaphylctic shock ensued.

The Benadryl pretty much wiped the floor with me--my head was swiveling like my neck was a bag of ball bearings. I mostly slept through the remainder of the chemo, waking up every half-hour or so. By rights I shouldn't have been able to sleep at all--my sleep apnea should have made it pretty difficult, and Benadryl makes my condition only worse. But the O2 supply they had me on must have provided enough force to keep air flowing through my airway, and keep me stable.

Where I go from here, I can guess--but I won't know for sure until my next meeting with my oncologist. The most likely course that I can think of is that the oxaliplatin will be discontinued. But I don't know how important the oxaliplatin is to the overall treatment, so that's just a guess. Perhaps the dosage can be changed, or staggered out over the next three cycles. I'll just have to wait and see.

The End of Cycle 7 & No More Mr. Nice Guy

2009-05-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

I'm just about through the effects of my 7th round of chemo. Once again, the fatigue and nausea were the worst elements, with the neuropathy almost non-existent in my hands and feet ( possibly due to the increasing warmth of the late spring, but there were still enough cool days to note the neuropathy's absence ) and only minimal amounts in my throat ( what little I experienced was from drinking something cold tonight, and it was barely noticeable ). The "fast dose" of 4FU and Oxaliplatin seems to be doing as expected: 2-3 days of heavy symptoms, followed by rapid fall-off on days 5-7 and a week almost symptom-free. The effects are still cumulative, so I do not know if it will hold to this pattern; I imagine by cycle 11-12, I'll be very happy to get it all over with.

A frank discussion with my oncologist last week; my situation is, for the foreseeable future, chronic--I will not be eliminating Igor's leftovers through surgery, but through the full 12 cycles of chemotherapy. She knew that the odds of a surgical solution were poor, but chose to let the liver specialist make the final judgment. A bit passive on her part, and I would have accused her of passing the buck, were I not able to see the value of giving me the most optimistic outlook possible. Still, I'd like the hard truth to the hopeful possibilities--I need to know where the monster is strong as well as where it is weak if I am to destroy it. "Know thy enemy, know thyself, and you shall be victorious in every battle." ~Sun Tzu, The Art of War ( yes, I know I mangled that quote--give me a break, will ya? ).

For good or for ill, a ran across a self-help book entitled No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover, and found a rather dark reflection of myself in the doctor's of "Nice Guy Syndrome"--not a perfect reflection, mind you, but one close enough to shock and anger myself into some serious contemplation. I've said before that Igor had awakened myself to the fact that I had sleepwalked through most of my life; now, I have to wonder as to what effect that sleepwalking through life has had on my current predicament.

Consider: it is a well-established fact that one's mood can have and effect on one's well being--there's the placebo effect, the power of prayer, positive re-enforcement, and so on. Lord knows, my cancer had a definite impact on my emotional outlook--so much so that, prior to discovering that I had cancer, I was seriously convinced that I suffered from serious psychological dysfunctions. But what about the impact of years of negative emotions and dysfunctional beliefs upon my physical being? As anyone in my family can attest, my life has rarely been a happy one. Could the pent-up anger and rage over my failure to live my life have triggered a physiological response?

In short, could I have caused my own cancer? Is my cancer some wildly strange attempt by my subconscious to commit suicide? Can a person become so despondent that they could will themselves to death? Or is this some absurd attempt on my part to give some greater meaning to the incident of my illness, to give it some existential credence? If it can be caused by sheer force of will, can be destroyed the same way? Can changing my life now, to live as I have wanted to live my life, save my life?

Which segues back into No More Mr. Nice Guy; for the longest time, I have been a "Nice Guy"--it's what was expected of me, and--to believe Dr. Glover--what is expected of most men. But as the saying goes, "nice guys never win"--and that is so true that it hurts. A "Nice Guy" never gets what he wants, but what he is settles for. He always plays it safe, and suffers as a result. He appears honest and trustworthy, but he is deceptive and distrusted. In short ( there are a lot more characteristics I could list, but you get the idea), a "Nice Guy" is just a guy--he is never a man. And that's really my problem--I've lived my life as a guy, instead of living my life as I should have, as a man. I hated living my life as a guy--and I don't want to die the same way.

I guess it boils down to what Andy Dufresne said in The Shawshank Redemption: "Get busy living, or get busy dying." I know which one I'm going to be doing.

The Quitter

2009-04-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

Something inspirational, for a change. With a tip o' the hat to The Art Of Manliness

The Quitter

By: Robert Service

When you’re lost in the Wild, and you’re scared as a child,
And Death looks you bang in the eye,
And you’re sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and . . . die.
But the Code of a Man says: “Fight all you can,”
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy to blow . . .
It’s the hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.

“You’re sick of the game!” Well, now, that’s a shame.
You’re young and you’re brave and you’re bright.
“You’ve had a raw deal!” I know-but don’t squeal,
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit:
It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.

It’s easy to cry that you’re beaten-and die;
It’s easy to crawfish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight-
Why, that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each grueling bout,
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try-it’s dead easy to die,
It’s the keeping-on-living that’s hard.

Oh, Lovely...

2009-04-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

From the Wall Street Journal (4/18/09):

WASHINGTON -- Two Chinese-based firms shipped contaminated heparin to the U.S. between 2007 and 2008 and one company lied to federal health regulators about their role in the matter, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

The contaminated heparin, a widely used blood thinner, didn't reach any patients because the FDA stopped all the shipments at the border, according to FDA spokespeople.

I get a dose of Heparin at the end of each chemo cycle to insure that the catheter in my neck doesn't get blocked with coagulated blood. Nothing like these kinds of stories to re-affirm one's faith in modern medicine. :p

How They Get Away With It.

2009-04-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

Bill Moyers interviews William K. Black

I think I speak for many when I express myself thusly:

Will it come to this?

2009-04-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

(Again, hat tip Chaos Manor)

To urban hunter, next meal is scampering by

Beasley, a 69-year-old retired truck driver who modestly refers to himself as the Coon Man, supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.

Homo evolutis, landmines, and what everyone forgets about evolution

2009-04-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/463

(hat tip Chaos Manor)

My only comment is that there is something that most people forget about evolution--it has nothing to do with progress. Mr. Enriquez makes a number of assumptions in the end of his lecture that are not scientifically derived, but are faith-based: that the universe exists for a purpose, that species evolve into better forms, that new species must necessarily supplant old species, and that evolution is good.

There is nothing wrong with having faith--it's an important part of our psychology and intellect, and because we hold certain things to be true on faith we have been able to accomplish amazing things, such as civilization and science. The problem arises when we want to believe things are true, even in the face to the contrary facts--we've seen this in such things as Young Earth Creationism and Global Warming, in Socialism and Eugenics. We lose our ability to be objective far to easily, and the words "What could it hurt?" are far too often followed by "How were we supposed to know?". Mr. Enriquez may believe that the Transhumanist wave of the future is inevitable, and he may be right--be neither he nor I nor anyone else knows that for a fact, and we all need to stop in our race to answer the question "Can we do this thing" to answer the more important question "Should we do this thing?".

The future is a choice we have to make--or the future will be chosen for us. Failure to think this through will lead us from dancing in the fire to tap dancing on landmines.

Igor Revisited.

2009-04-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I just spoke with the liver specialist--there's good news, and there's bad news. The good news is that I do not have to undergo surgery next week. The bad news is the why I don't have to undergo surgery next week: based on the results of the PET scan and CT scan that I underwent in January, the liver specialist has determined that the cancer is in both sides of my liver, and that surgery would not help me at this time. The plan now, after speaking to my oncologist, is to resume and complete my chemotherapy program, then see how the cancer has responded. I will probably have to undergo surgery at some later date, but it's best to let the chemo do its work first.

Igor is proving to be tenacious.

I have to confess, when the doctor told me that the cancer was in both sides of my liver, I felt a thrill of terror. I'd like to think that I can face this with some dignity and restraint, but I'm hearing those dry bones squeak by a little too often for my comfort. I'm not Randy Pausch, folks--I've got things to do yet, and the thought of not getting them done before it comes time to punch out the time clock fills me with a terrible sadness.

I also have to confess a certain level of anger; up until today, I was led to believe that the cancer was limited to only a portion of my liver, and that this ordeal might be over before the end of the year. Now I find out things are a bit more serious. Shouldn't the specialist been consulted before I was taken off chemo? Granted, all I've lost is a week or two, but given how hard it was to schedule the liver consult, why couldn't they complete the course first? And why hasn't there been any follow-up scans? Shouldn't the most recent data be available for the specialist to examine before surgery was scheduled?

Ah well--water under the bridge.

I suppose I should be thankful--at least I have health insurance. And a job--for now.

LiveJournal seems to be down...

2009-03-09T16:32:00.000-07:00

...so I'll post this here for now.

The Chinese are getting aggressive again: Chinese "harass" US Vessel. I remember the seizure of a US Surveillance plane after Bush the Younger was elected; perhaps this is Obama's "Chinese Test", or a prelude to it--one can hope that he will handle it better than his predecessor did.

Of course, if one is going to be confronting opponents, it would be wise to avoid offending friends; the President seems to be doing poorly in that regard.

Found this neat little website thanks to The Art Of Manliness--Joe's Goals; an on-line spreadsheet that allows you to keep track of how well you are meeting your personal goals. Easy to use, and it can be incorporated into your blog to show your readers how well (or poorly) you are doing. Very cool.

Edit: LiveJournal is back up.

Notes from the Dog Watch

2009-02-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

Chemo--round two

Tuesday was my second round of chemotherapy--four hours at the clinic, and then the diffusion pump for 46 hours. The clinic was busy, no doubt because of the holiday the day previous.

As per the first round, the noticeable impacts were delayed until I got home. The fatigue set in pretty slowly, coming to full force around just about quitting time Wednesday. By the time I got home, the only thing I wanted to do was sleep--which is why this is being written at 0100hrs. instead of some rational hour. My insomnia lost the battle around 1730, but I rarely sleep more than six hours at a stretch anymore, so the Dog Watch and I are familiar.

The nausea is mild right now. Finally figured out that my prescription for Lorazepram couldn't have been sent electronically: because the medication is a controlled substance (low doses reduce nausea, while higher doses remove anxiety). The hard-copy the doctor had handed me two weeks ago was the actual script that I needed to pick it up.

The neuropathy is stronger this time, and it is manifesting in my throat; when I drink something cold, I experience mild pain and constriction in my throat, just above the adam's apple. I would describe it as swallowing dull thumb-tacks, but it's a bit milder than that. I'm trying to stick to warm and room-temperature beverages for now. Makes taking my meds in the morning a little tough, but I manage.

Currently reading (or, trying to read) two books: Book in a Month: The Fool-Proof System for Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Victoria Lynn Schmidt, and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray. Ms. Schmidt includes an interesting chapter on goals, with a very useful (at least, to me it seems quite useful) motivational exercise which is to visualize one's life from it's far end--old age--and think about what one would feel not written the novel that you want to write now, and to use the emotional impact to help drive one to write the novel. I have seen this same exercise used elsewhere, and the idea of using that future pain to motivate oneself away from a course that leads to it. The trouble for me is holding onto the memory of that future pain, of remembering just how bad it will be if I don't make serious alterations to my life in the here and now. Laziness settles in very quick. So, sometimes, sudden, radical changes are needed to force me onto a new course of action, to jar me out of my complacency and get my as moving.

I think I'm about due for a radical change.

"They can have any color they want...

2009-02-17T16:37:00.000-08:00

....so long as it's black." ~Henry Ford

I'm sorry for anybody offended by the following, but...

Remember When Motherhood Wasn't Controversial?

Parker probably figured the news would be non-controversial, given that the fresh-faced Los Angeles Sparks forward and Olympic gold medalist is happily married to Sacramento Kings forward Shelden Williams. Both earn more than enough to support a family: Parker alone reaps millions on and off the court as one of the most celebrated women athletes in the world.

But Parker’s pregnancy was not greeted with the same approval and tolerance that many of today’s child-bearing sexagenarians and single mothers by choice enjoy when they form their families. Instead, Parker was blasted by fans and pundits for becoming a mother at age 22. Critics bemoaned her selfishness in putting maternal ambitions ahead of her team’s 2009 season prospects. Others lamented her foolishness for starting a family when she should be living a strings-free existence oriented around her glamorous career.

What the fuck?

Who the hell tells a woman that she has to put her career ahead of her family? I mean, this is a married woman, who is--along with her husband--financially well off, with a home of her own; this is not Nadya Suleman by a long shot. Yet, she's getting shit for putting her "maternal ambitions ahead of her team’s 2009 season prospects."?

I thought that one of points of feminism was that women should have the choice to pursue a career or be a mother or any other thing they wanted--when did that change?

“My whole career has been trying to please people in basketball,” Parker, a 22-year-old newlywed, said Friday in a telephone interview. “Now it’s time to please myself.” She added, “For me, family has always come first.”...

W.N.B.A. Commissioner Donna Orender said her initial reaction to Parker’s pregnancy was a quiet sigh of resignation. Then she thought of all the women in the more traditional workplace struggling with the issue of when or if to start a family, and she realized that Parker’s pregnancy provided a perfect modeling moment.

What the fuck?

Words of Power, and the Ensorcellment of Minds

2009-02-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Mike Hume, editor of spiked!, has written a very timely article on the new free speech wars--timely in that there is currently a clash over the use of a word between two of my LiveJournal friends.

The following quote is very telling:

Now it seems that words themselves can be seen as inherently evil, regardless of context. This looks more like a modern version of the Middle Ages when people believed there were ‘words of power’ that, whether uttered as a prayer, a spell or a curse, could themselves alter real lives and situations.

Words of Power are dangerous things; they remove our free will, because they train us to react by reflex rather than through conscious thought. They dis-empower, because they create "automatic victims", people who are victims without their knowledge but with their volition. They do violence to language, because they steal context and meaning from our speech. Worst of all, they destroy trust, for we place those who use such words in the category of Outsider, while at the same time we demonstrate our autocratic impulse--obey, or be punished.

To create Words of Power is to ensorcell one's own mind. It took centuries to break ourselves from such self-enslavement; it is a shame than we have fallen so easily in so short a time. We are becoming peasants again, and most cannot see anything wrong with that.

If I should ever call myself an intellectual, may the Earth swallow me up!

2009-02-10T17:15:00.000-08:00

I have never been comfortable with the idea of being an intellectual (as opposed to being intellectual; the latter is, in my mind, synonymous with cerebral, to which I confess my guilt), predominantly because I associate the word with the concept of the Ivory Tower--isolated and inexperienced in the realities of the world, blind to one's own short-comings. Yet, from time to time, I have to wonder if being an intellectual is a thing to be avoided, and my discomfort the product of my middle-class origins; a prejudice that I indulge solely for appearances sake.

I find the following from John C. Wright to be piercing in its clarity:

A central conceit of any intellectual condescension toward the lives and philosophies of the world is that the intellectual alone is clear-eyed enough to see the falsehoods that have deceived the common man. An intellectual is defined by this one characteristic: he is a man who thinks he is smarter than all his neighbors, instructors, and forefathers, and sees through all their sacred beliefs as contemptible falsehoods. The leitmotif of all intellectualism is contempt.

Contempt--a function of pride. Pride is the most dangerous sin of all--for it most readily leads to the Fall.

No wonder Socrates spurned praise, and admitted to knowing only that he was an ignorant man--it was a far safer course for his soul.

I, Cyborg

2009-02-01T07:55:00.000-08:00

A bit sore this morning; I underwent surgery on Friday. For the record, I would much rather be knocked out than undergo "conscious sedation" again--I had a near panic attack when the surgeon touched my neck. Not pleasant.

I am now the recipient of a single-line power port in the upper right area of my chest--about an inch under my right collarbone. The port is a titanium disk, with a catheter running up and into my jugular vein. This is to allow easier access for the administration of my chemo meds--once I start the 5FU and Oxaplatin (sp?), my veins (not very accessible to begin with) will shrink.

I am now a cyborg. Where is Sarah Connor?

Igor the Sequel

2009-01-25T15:18:00.000-08:00

I still have cancer; there's a group of lesions on one side of my liver that are cancerous. I have a hazy memory of my surgeon telling me that he had done a biopsy of the one lesion that he could find while I was opened up, but I was so stoned from the pain meds that I can't remember what he said the results were.

The good news is that, assuming that the chemo slows or shrinks the lesions, they can remove that side of the liver (the liver is the one organ in the body that regenerates) and hopefully eliminate the cancer once and for all; that, of course, assumes that the cancer hasn't set up shop in another organ (I'm still waiting to hear from the oncologist on the full PET scan report, but if she had seen anything serious I think she would have contacted me directly either yesterday or today).

It does mean more surgery, recovery, and another round of chemo treatments. I'll probably be in the hospital for a lot longer this time round--the doctor I spoke to said that I would have to do my recovery in the ICU.

All in all, '09 is going to be an interesting year for me--and I mean "interesting" in the sense of the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times".

What do ya do with a drunkin' sailor?

2009-01-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Drunken Spartan

Worksafe, but it's one hell of an earworm.

The Tiger and the Strawberry

2009-01-13T21:19:00.000-08:00

Back at work. Still healing--it's a little annoying having to change a dressing in a Men's Room at City Hall. I found one that offers some privacy, but it's in a high-traffic area, and there are frequent knocks at the door. There is also the question of sanitation--the last thing I need is an infection. The alternative, though, is to have the drainage soak through--which is, to say the least, messy.

I've been neglectful of keeping up my postings on my mirror blog (http://pretentionsanddelusions.blogspot.com/); given what happened to my JournalSpace account, that's poor housekeeping on my part. Must keep on top of that. Granted, I've only made two posts more on my LiveJournal than on Blogger, but little details can get lost, and sometimes they count more than their size would imply.

As to whether or not You-Know-Who was reading my blog, nothing more has come of that brief impression I had on Nov. 8th. In addition, she deleted her blog--whether that was due to what I had written, or out of boredom on her part I do not know. Given her genuine shock on discovering that I have cancer, I suspect that my earlier suspicion was in error, and that she never read what I wrote. It's a pity, because I enjoyed her infrequent posts, despite the naivety she sometimes displayed.

So it goes.

On the matter of the opposite sex, I have found myself stuck on a delima: to date, or not to date--that is the question (my apologies to the Bard). Given that I have a potentially terminal disease (and, putting aside my intention to survive said disease), would it be right to begin a relationship with the intention of finding a mate? Even being up-front and honest about my condition (something that simple decency demands that I must do), do I have the right to subject anyone to the impact of my cancer? What kind of impact would it have on my hypothetical other, and do I have the right to subject them to that, or do I have a duty to refrain from that level of intimacy until such time as I can ensure that my illness would not cause pain to another--even if that refrain lasted until my demise?

Some of you may have heard one variation or another of the story:

The Tiger and the Strawberry

A man was walking across a field when he heard a rustling in the tall grass beside him, and turned to see the hungry eyes of a large tiger staring at him. The man began to run, fear giving him greater speed and stamina than he knew he possessed.

But always, just behind him, he could hear the easy breathing of the hungry tiger. Finally, the man stopped, not because his strength had failed but because he had come to the edge of a high cliff and could go no further. "I can let the tiger eat me, or take my life in my own hands and jump." The man turned and saw the tiger slowly walking toward him, licking its mouth in anticipation. Resolved to take his own life, the man stepped to the edge of the cliff and bent his legs to jump, when he suddenly noticed a thick vine growing out of the side of the cliff, several feet from the top.

Carefully, he let himself drop down the cliff face, catching hold of the vine as he slid past, and thanked God when it was strong enough to support his weight. Hanging now, the man looked up and saw the tiger's eyes peering over the edge of the cliff. It roared down at him, then began to pace back and forth along the top of the cliff. For the first time, the man looked at the vine that had saved his life. It was thick enough for him to wrap his legs around, resting his arms, and long enough that he might be able to let himself far enough down to jump safely to the ground below.

And the moment he had this thought was the same moment that he saw the second tiger, pacing back and forth at the foot of the cliff, licking its mouth, and looking hungrily up at him. Well, thought the man, if my strength and the strength of the vine are great enough, perhaps I can outwait the tigers. Surely, they'll go someplace else to eat when they're hungry enough. And the man prepared to settle in for a long wait.

His preparations halted quickly, however, when he heard a scurrying, scratching sound close to his own face. Glancing upwards, he saw two mice, one white and one black, emerge from a small hole in the cliff. They made their way swiftly to the base of the vine, and began to gnaw through it with their small sharp teeth. There was nothing else he could do, a tiger above, a tiger below, and the vine that kept him from their jaws about to break.

The man was closing his eyes to begin his prayers, when he noticed, a little to his right, a tiny patch of red color on the face of the cliff. He reached toward it precariously, pulled, and brought his hand back beneath his eyes. There, in his palm, was a luscious, red strawberry. The man swiftly pressed the strawberry between his lips, onto his tongue, and hanging between those still visible tigers, he enjoyed the finest , juiciest, sweetest meal of his life.

"Ah," he thought, as the vine began to give way, "what a wonderful strawberry."

This is, I believe, a Buddhist story, and the moral would be: remember to value each and every moment of our lives and never lose sight. I think there's a considerable value to that viewpoint.

The problem is, my inner Stoic keeps me wondering if the man had the right to take the strawberry. It sounds ridiculous, but it's an idea I just cannot shake--perhaps that strawberry was not his to take. Imagine if a gourmet chef had happened upon that strawberry, and had used it to prepare a dish that brought delight to others--would that not be a better use for the strawberry than one last brief pleasure for a dying man? Or would it? When do the dying have a greater claim than the living, and vice-versa?

I don't want to spend the rest of my life lonely.

I don't want to hurt anyone with my death.

This is the shit that keeps me awake at night, and I think I can hear the tiger rustling in the tall, tall grass.

Still sucking wind past my teeth

2008-11-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

The word this far...

...is just more of the same.

I had the MRI yesterday (well, Thursday, depending when I post this). One thing I will confirm--that sucker is LOUD! Even with earplugs and a set of headphones, the clicks and hums of the machine were deafening. I can't say that I felt much in the way of discomfort; when I was inside the doughnut, I had the strong sense that I was inside a spacesuit a la 2001; A Space Odyssey. The worst part was when the contrast was injected, and I experienced a wave of nausea.

A dillemma; I am neither so naive to believe that true love is going to fall into my lap; neither am I so sanguine as to believe that love is beyond my reach. What to do? What to do?

Recently acquired Carmilla: The Return, and the first chapter demands a worthy antagonist. A stereotypical vampire hunter, complete with cliched phrases like "Your kith shall be avenged."
Too cliched, or not cliched enough? How does one determine how this should play out?

Yet more poking and prodding come Monday.

Night Light-- a marvellous little horror story.

2008-11-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

I wish I could write like this; the inversion of one of man's most primal fears--fear of the dark--into a thing of comfort and safety is an act of dark brilliance (yes, yes, I know--obvious pun, but it works). I am in awe of this of this storyteller's art.

Why can't I do this? I feel like an ape in a cage, forever looking out at a thing of painful beauty, forever beyond my reach.

In other news, Igor's biopsy results came back, and it is definite--I have cancer. To be specific, I have Invasive Adenocarcinoma; a rather pedestrian strain, but still serious enough to require serious treatment.

Underwent CT Scan on Wednesday--not an altogether unpleasant experience (my doom & gloom side expected quite a bit more discomfort, but it was thankfully absent). The barium drink that one has beforehand was not the chalky mess of previous years, but a rather bland fruit smoothie. Making sure one drank one bottle in 45 minutes, then a second in 45 minutes was a bit discipline-intensive, though--who really times how long they take to drink something? The contrast dye for the upper thorax was an experience, though--if that warming sensation is supposed to compare to a shot of whiskey, then I ain't drinking the right sour mash, brother!

And if that is what a "hot flash" is like, why don't I see more women suddenly running around going "Help! HAAAAALLLLLLLP!!! I'm on FIRE!", because that's what it felt like. Going through that on a regular basis would drive me crazy!

On the subject of the opposite sex--I think She might be reading my journal; when she stopped by the desk last week, I got the distinct impression that she had a great deal to say to me, but didn't quite know how to do so.

And I find that oh, so interesting.

Happy Birthday...Like your present?

2008-10-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

There's a line in the movie The Mothman Prophecies where Richard Gere's character, finding out that his wife (Debra Messing) has an inoperable and terminal brain tumor, states: "It was like the universe opens up and points at you and says "AHH! There you are! The happy couple--I've been looking for you! "

Bearing that in mind--

Friends, allow me to introduce you to my new companion, Igor. More of a squatter, really--I know that I didn't invite him in. He lives down in the basement.

Ugly little spud--sort of the mating of a mutant oyster and rancid pile of gristle.

Igor, be nice and say hello.

yeearghsplxxx!

You'll have to forgive Igor; he lacks what we sophisticated types (you know, beings with oppositional thumbs and whatnot) call "the social skills." You can't really expect that much from him--his basic goals in life are eating, growing, spreading out, and killing off his host; that doesn't exactly make him a candidate for the Blaine School of Charm and Poise.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Igor is the name I've given the melanoma that was found in my sigmoid colon on Friday. It's large enough that they cannot get a sigmoidoscope past it to check the rest of my colon, it appears to be malignant (they won't know for certain until the biopsy results come back on Wednesday), and it's ulcerated (which is why they were checking me out in the first place).

I have cancer. The Big C.

I have to say that I've been handling it rather well; I managed to get about ten feet from the Endoscopy unit before I had my moment of panic, terror and shame. Since then, I've been pretty calm about it--it almost feels like the time I was in a car accident ('04, I think) and the car I was driving was spun 180 degrees by the impact: you have this strange, disjointed sensation of floating where everything is still, like the world itself is holding its breath.

Of course, my family has been incredibly supportive, which has cushioned the blow considerably. The real test comes tomorrow, when I have to tell my co-workers that I go under the knife in 2-3 weeks, and will be absent for about 4-6 weeks afterward. Following that will be a course of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, with the attendant negative effects.

The irony? Tomorrow is my fortieth birthday. One hell of a birthday present, isn't it?

So it goes.

About the Girl...

2008-10-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

About the Girl...

A short time ago (roughly a month), a LiveJournal commenter posted the following under my "The Perspective of a Human Toothache" post:

So what happened?
So what happened with the woman at work you're interested in? Don't tell me you wimped out.

Don't ever put her on a pedestal- it's not fair to you or her. She wipes her ass with the same toilet paper as the rest of us. And it's not fair to her to put expectations of perfection on her- she can't possibly live up to them.

If she's married, if she's involved, if she's just not interested- that's one thing. But give it a chance or you'll hate yourself later on.

And if it does end in heartache, you'll be where every, EVERY other guy (and girl) out there has been. And you'll get over it.

Some say love is blind; others, that it is selectively nearsighted. But lust is dominated by the physical senses, and just as it is best to observe a fire from a distance, so to with lust, lest one be consumed by either. Perspective is what I sought, and I believe that I have found some. I decided to do some amateur sleuthing about the object of my desire, and I discovered some things.

For starters, I discovered that she maintained a blog. Stephen King wrote that "Writing is the closest thing we have to telepathy," and I quite agree: we express ourselves quite differently when we write, using a wider vocabulary and syntax, and delving into deeper feelings and beliefs (and expressing those feelings and beliefs) than we do when we use the spoken word. Sometimes this is because of our internal editors, sometimes it's because of cultural or social norms; whatever the case, a written journal is a good window into the interior of a person. So, I delved into what she had wrote--and that's when I uncovered some things...

Now, I don't have many illusions about the compatibility of my worldview with those around me--I'm a conservative Roman Catholic in a post-Christian country, a republican disaffected with all our current political parties (and worried sick about the direction my nation is headed in), and a social Conservative in one of the most Liberal cities in one of the most Liberal states of the whole country. So I'm used to a difference of opinion--sometimes a radical difference of opinion. And in reading her blog, I could see that she holds some different opinions than I do--no surprises, and nothing beyond the pale. But, there were a few things that gave me pause.

One of these was an incident in which her girlfriend begged off a night out to be with her boyfriend, and the object of my interest responded to the effect of "I can't stand a woman who can't do anything apart from her boyfriend". Now, had there been some indication that this was a repeated occurrence--that her girlfriend ditched her quite often--I would see this as a justified expression of frustration; the problem is that I got the impression that she was simply upset that her friend chose the boyfriend over her, and that implies a level of pettiness that I find very unattractive. There were a few other posts that raised warning flags, but it is that one that stands out the strongest.

The most recent thing, though, occurred today, as she passed my post this afternoon; it wasn't so much what she said as how she said it, and in parsing her tone, I came to the realization that she thinks I'm Harmless.

Ouch.

Now, for those of you who don't know what I mean by Harmless, allow me to let you in on a secret: women have a grading scale for men, ranging from Yes, Oh, Yes!, Yes, Maybe, No, Oh, Hell No!, and Harmless. I think the categories are pretty self-explanatory, and it should be noted that there is a considerable shifting from one category to another (you'd be shocked how fast one can move from the Yescategory to the Oh, Hell No! category--sometimes on nothing more than a look). But the worst category for a guy to find himself placed in by the object of his affection is the Harmless category, because it basically says that she doesn't consider you mate-worthy material in the least. You're a big ol' teddy bear, and while she might luv her widdle teddy bear, she will never love that man, never share herself with that man in the way only two people can. She won't commit to spending the rest of her life with him, have his children, grow old with him, or die with him. A guy in the Oh, Hell No! category has a better chance by an order of magnitude than a Harmless guy does. And when you get to my age, if you've any sense left in your head, those are the things you're looking for in woman. You realize that you've more years behind you than before you, and that you need someone to hold you when the lights go out and the demons come. As of right now, she doesn't think it worth her time to be that woman to me.

But, as the sages say, "Despair is a sin". What is true today may be something entirely different tomorrow. Hope is eternal. And, while the rose may have thorns, it still smells just as sweet.

As Billy Pilgrim would say, "So it goes."

And so, the hachet shall swing...

2008-10-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

...and land where it shall.

The latest rumor that is a bit more than rumor: all City departments that use overtime have been called to the carpet, and told to "make do with what you have"--politico-speak for "your overtime is gone". This includes Custodians, which means that circumstance must be dire; the SEIU can rally thousands for protests, and shut down Government Center a few years ago in one such demonstration. If Menino is willing to alienate SEIU...

As to my own department, it's a bit more iffy; assuming that the 10 lucky souls currently undergoing SPO training will be hired by the City, then the OT is gone. If not, we'll have enough OT to keep most of our heads above water (in this kind of work, you don't live off the milk, you live off the cream). My worry is what kind of pressure the disappearance of OT will have on the other members of our unit, and how management will exploit it.

So it goes.

Because they have such very good names...

2008-10-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

(With a tip of the hat toward John C. Wright):

This video was made a year ago.

Yesterday, the Governor of Massachusetts announced that he was going to cut 1000 state jobs and $1 Billion from the State budget.

This afternoon, the Mayor of the City of Boston announced there was to be a hiring freeze for all City jobs. Layoffs are rumored to be in the wind.

And this is just the beginning.

We live in such interesting times.

More on the Financial Crisis

2008-10-04T14:45:00.001-07:00

A little too fast-paced, but you can pause/rewind.

Also, a transcript of The Giant Pool of Money. The authors of the episode--Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson--now have a podcast and blog called Planet Money. Worth checking out.

Edit: And one more: Run For Your Lives!

*Sigh* I wish I had bought gold when it was $400 an ounce....

$70 Trillion Dollars

2008-09-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

The best explanation for the Credit Crisis that now grips the the world (and yes, this is a world-wide phenomenon--the ripples are just beginning to spread) that I have found is an episode of Chicago Public Radio's This American Life entitled: The Giant Pool of Money. It's available through iTunes for $0.95, and believe me, when you hear what happened, it will take your breath away.

$70 Trillion Dollars.

The Crisis of '08--A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

2008-09-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

I really don't have much to say that smarter people haven't already (and in some cases, for years), but I think the following sums up my opinion:

Good Lord, I miss Lileks

2008-09-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

James Lileks is the master of the fisk: She should never have said, "Sexual inadequates that they are."

The Money Quote:
You have to love the “Sexual inadequates that they are” line as well; if there’s one thing that’s amused me in the last two weeks, it’s the screechy distaste of Ms. Palin coming from men who embodied the Modern Alda Paradigm of masculinity, which is to say they are nervous around cars, think guns are icky, had their own Snugli, have wives in corporate jobs who make more money than they do, and still get dissed behind their backs because they can’t figure out how to make the bed. The Lost Boys, if you will. Now, some women can’t stand Sarah Palin for their own reasons, personal or ideological; same with men. Some men, however, are made deeply uneasy by her, because she’s the one who ignored the sensitive poet-guys in high school for the jocks.

(...)

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly.

“Cleverist” is a matter of opinion, but I’d suggest that when Mark Steyn gets a haircut, the shorn pieces fall to the floor and form, at random, cleverer observations in the form of Chinese characters.

(hat tip Kathy Shaidle; why aren't you reading her blog?)

For the record--I would rather be stricken with the worst case of gout in all of recorded human history than put my child in a Snugli; if I should ever be blessed with fatherhood, I will transport my children thusly:

Lone Wolf and Cub:Baby Cart From Hell

What man doesn't want a baby cart with spring loaded naginata, twin tantoin the handlebars, bullet-proof iron plating, and concealed musket calliope with a drawstring trigger!

Now, who does this remind me of?

2008-09-07T16:38:00.001-07:00

Somebody famous, I'm sure...hmmm....

(with a hat tip to Kathy Shaidle)

My thoughts on the Palin nomination

2008-09-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

First off, let me get it out of the way: Sarah Palin is the Vice-Presidential Candidate, not the Presidential Candidate. Anyone stupid enough to scream "She's not experienced enough to be President if McCain dies in office" (or any variation of that meme) ignores the fact that the same argument applies to Obama in deuces and crowns--and Obama is shooting for the driver's seat from the get-go.

Second, attacking the woman through her children is the behavior of villains, not heroes; it is a rather hard sell to suggest that the Democrats are the "good guys" representing the best interests of the American people when they and their supporters (the most tangible example of whom the do represent) are attacking motherhood:

This abortion prohibitionist hag won’t cut it among women with brains.And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.

To be fair, Obama has tried to reign in the Kos Kids and their also-rans, but the faithful don't seem to be listening. Even Michael Moore (yes, that Michael Moore, folks--broken clocks, and whatnot) has pointed out how self-destructive this is getting:

But before everyone gets all smug and self-righteous about the Palin selection, remember where you live. You live in a nation of gun owners and hunters. You live in a country where one out of three girls get pregnant before they are 20. You live in a nation of C students. Knocking Bush for being a C student only endeared him to the nation of C students. Knock Palin for having kids, for having a kid who's having a baby, for anything that is part of her normalness[sic] -- a normalness[sic] that looks very familiar to so many millions of Americans -- well, you do this at your own peril.

There's a good reason why this kind of warning is falling on deaf ears, and it is graphically summed up in this image:

And that's an attitude from 1976, folks. There is a fundamental disconnect between the metropolitan base that supports the Democrats and the bulk of the country's population located in the Heartland, and it is a disconnect that is widening at an alarming pace. In the short term, I fully expect to see as many as 5% of the electorate to vote Republican this year out of sheer spite for how Palin--and by extension, the values she represents--have been treated. In the long term? Sorry, but my tea leaves just aren't that good.

Third, we can now dispense with the illusion that Democrats represent the best interests of women.

When the spokesperson for the National Organization for Women comes out and states: "She's more a conservative man than she is a woman on women's[sic] issues. Very disappointing.", it's time to turn up the house lights, turn the chairs up on the tables, and begin swabbing the floor, because the show's over and it's time to go home. Simply because Palin is pro-life, she doesn't represent a woman's position on womens' issues? Archie Bunker wasn't that narrow-minded.

No, when it comes down to it, the selection of Biden as Obama's running mate came down to a question of what special interest group was going to have their say; and in the end, women lost out. The Democrats may talk the talk, but it is the Republicans who walked the walk, and that will have consequences down the road for everyone.

Don't get me wrong, folks: this is still a choice between the lesser of two evils (McCain is not about to flop over, no matter how much scaremongering the Kos Kids and HPosties do), and it is still Obama's race to lose. But even if they push Biden down a flight of stairs, adding Hillary to the ticket now (not that she's about to such a thing--she has a legacy to protect) will only highlight the pandering all the more. And it's that pandering that has turned off so many--the same "many" that Obama needs to win. The Race is in a dead heat, with a full two months to go, so we had best brace ourselves for much more of the same that we have seen in the past week.

The ancient Chinese curse reads: "May you live in interesting times".

Don't we, though?

Am I evil for laughing at this?

2008-08-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

"When you have to shoot, shoot, don't talk. " ~ Tuco, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

(edited because I got the quote wrong. :p)

Enough of The Bullshit.

2008-08-13T19:27:00.000-07:00

We, the peoples of the West, have no business in intervening in the Caucasus. Period.

Much has been said about the conflict going on in Georgia--and for the most part, it has been bullshit. Some of the same people who got us involved in Iraq (and who have been pushing us to "do something" about Iran) are calling for "intervention" in the Georgian-S.Ossetian-Russian conflict. The proposal is that we don't let the Russians get away with it--that we do "something" to punish the Russians....

...Well, punish them for what--stopping a massacre in South Ossetia? Because on August 8th, that was exactly what was happening; talks between S.Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Georgia broke down over the fears that the Russians were about to sell the Ossetians and Abkhaz out to the Georgians (in return for a Georgian pledge to not join NATO). The S. Ossetians sent some artillery Georgia's way, and the US-trained-and-equiped army invaded in a decidedly medieval fashion, complete with large-scale civilian casulties. You didn't see that part reported in the front section of the Western media--not sexy enough.

After what happened in Kosovo in 1999, the Russians had no choice. The loss of the Southern Caucasus would have a blow too severe for not-too-steady-state to have survived. The South Ossetians were their clients; to allow them to be massacred would have doomed any diplomatic credibility left after Kosovo. All this should have been obvious to the various players on the geopolitical field--including the US State Department, who have been caught with their pants down around their ankles so many times in the last 20 years that they should be better known as "The Bare-Ass Society", and whose primary function these days seems to be making our government look like a bunch of dolts.

Georgia is not an ally--and never will be. The suffering in Georgia will be bad--but nowhere near as bad as what the Ossetians were suffering at their hands. The US has no strategic interest in the Caucasus, the Europeans are too dependent on Russia for fuel, and the Central Asian republics have no force projection capability. The Us and Russia have far more in common than not, and we have both benefited as friends far more than we ever did as enemies. We owe the Russians for our actions in Kosovo--we are responsible for the poisoning of that relationship, not they. And last, but not least, the cherry-on-top-of-the-sundae reason to stand back:

Russia has 20,000 functioning nuclear warheads, and the means to deliver them anywhere in the world.

Enough of the Bullshit! I will not advocate a course of action that will leave my country--and a good portion of the world--a radioactive dustbowl. I have lived through one Cold War, I have no desire to die in a second.

Sympathy for the Devil--Well, for Dr. Horrible

2008-08-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen it yet:

If that doesn't work, then go to the source at http://www.drhorrible.com

Leave to Joss Whedon to leave you rooting for the bad guy. Or was he? Lord knows, I was eager to see Capt. Hammer get thrashed by the end of the 1st act, and by the third act, I wanted him severely hurt--as in maimed, son. You can't help but sympathize with Dr. Horrible, even though you know you shouldn't.

Don't you just love moral conflicts.

In Memoriam- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Poet of the Gulag

2008-08-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

This article by Canadian writer David Warren is one of the best salutes to Solzhenitsyn that I've seen on the web since that literary giant passed last week. The Gulag Archipelago was a hard but worthwhile read, and a persuasive testament to the horrors of the Soviet Empire.

Rest ye well, O mighty spirit.

----------------
Now playing: Robert Rich - Bioelectric Plasma
via FoxyTunes

The Vanity of the Modern Age

2008-07-25T21:52:00.000-07:00

Three misogynists assault the beliefs of 1.31 billion people world-wide

Of course, the media won't call it that, but hey--it's only Catholics that are getting slammed, right? Never mind that the whole question of female ordination was settled in '94 by Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, never mind that these women essential espouse a misogynistic world-view (Man is a Woman! Woman is a Man! Equality is identity! All are interchangeable, none are unique!) Never mind that they deny the inherent dignity of women and men, the unique but compatible function of each--oh no, we will have our fantasies, and damn the costs!! Who cares about the facts--give me what I want, damn you!!

I wish I could say this is a surprising and new development, but it's old, so very old. We live in an age of barbarism, conning itself that it is Enlightened. The results are all too predictable.

May God grant that they repent of their misogynistic ways before Judgment.

What makes a martyr?

2008-06-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

What kind of person sacrifices everything for a stranger? What would make a man or woman give up everything--family, friends, home, comfort, even their own life--for a person or a group that he or she has never met and might never meet?

What does it take to become a martyr? A real martyr--not a poseur, someone who shouts "Look at me, am I not wonderful, am I not the morally superior! "--but someone who honestly pursues a goal without caring about the cost to themselves or to the lack or any reward; what makes such a person?

I have an image of a character in my mind--a man who gives up everything, travels far from home, and great risk to his own life and sanity, all for a group of people who he has never met, who may regard him with hostility (if not outright violence)--and I am struggling to understand the why of this character. If I don't know the why, how can I know what he will do during moments of crisis?

Dive Bomber Attack

2008-06-21T15:50:00.001-07:00

What is it about a new car that attracts birds to shit on them?

*Sigh*

I miss the hawks that used to circle my end of the neighborhood; ever since the crows drove them off, I've noticed lots more bird plop on the cars around my condo. I keep a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels in the car all the time--I have to wipe off the crap every morning. The hawks kept the bird population in check, and without them its an avian crapfest around here.

Speaking of wanton bowel movements, what in the world motivates someone to excrete in public? During the Celtics victory parade, we had both men and women using the Plaza as an open latrine. Seriously--WTF? If this is a society without shame, then I'm of the opinion that a little puritanism might be a good thing. I doubt that the pinnacle of feminism is a woman squatting in public--I expect that sort of behavior from men.

(Great, now I sound like a crotchety old man.)

The Perspective of a Human Toothache

2008-05-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy month.

Usually, I start with the bad--get the ugly out of the way, and enjoy the good that follows, that sort of philosophy--but I think the big deserves first billing.

I bought a car.

Buying a car is still something of a rite of passage amongst Americans--independence, mobility, and a sense of control of one's own life, that sort of thing--but you can dodge around that on Boston thanks to the MBTA. Still, even at its best, the T will not get you everywhere in the city; you still need a car to get around. Working as many hours as I do, I've got plenty enough squirelled away to put a down payment on a car. I couldn't afford a car prior to now--too many bad choices in my past, and too much time making up for them. So, without too much drama, I decided that it was now or never.

I'm now the proud owner of a 2007 Toyota RAV 4, color Nautical Blue. Not all the bell and whistles that I could have gotten, but, hey--who gets everything? I have the CD player, so I can play music on my way to and from work; there's just something about cranking AC/DC as you tool down the Pike that's just so satisfying. It would be a lot more satisfying if I didn't have to pay $4 a gallon for gas, but like I said--who gets everything?

I also joined a gym. Nothing fancy, just the basics. I need to get off my fat ass and burn off some of this fat that is weighing me down. Three times a week on the treadmill--it may not be much, but its a start. After a while, I may need to upgrade to to another gym. Cross that bridge when (and if) I come to it. At my age, I don't see much need for more than a basic workout.

I also bought myself a claddagh ring--a symbol of what I hope to be a new beginning. New beginnings deserve a tangible symbol, and an old one will serve quite well. Besides, I do intend to start dating again.

As to the sour, things haven't improved at work. Just as stressful as before, with additional frustrations to boot. I haven't had a month go buy this year without being sick. Too much work, not enough rest.

One of my co-workers suffered a seizure today. I saw him slump over before my eyes, and never felt such a sense of helplessness. I was still shaking by the time I got home. I'm not really cut out for this kind of work. If there hadn't been a nurse nearby, I'd hate to think what would have happened. On the other hand, I do tend to over-estimate my impact while over-blowing my capacity to screw up--the consequence of having a sadist for an inner critic.

I've also become...well, call it an infatuation, call it a crush, what have you, but I've become...interested in a woman at work. Barely notices me, and she is way above my station. Ain't it typical? Still a starry eyed teen at heart. My head knows better, but when does the heart listen.

Fool and Fool again. I never do learn. It's going to end it heartache--it always does.

So it goes.

Happy Black Noodle Day!

2008-04-15T18:42:00.001-07:00

Once again, I have managed to complete and mail my Income Taxes (both State and Fed) by the skin of my teeth. You'd think I'd get the damn thing done ahead of time, given that my brief stint of unemployment has taught me a thing or two about being prepared. Some habits still need shaking.

Yesterday was "Black Noodle Day" (also known as "Black Day"), a South Korean and Japanese tradition for those who didn't give or receive Valentine's Day or White Day (3/14) gifts; the members of "Unit Solo/Solo Regiment" get together and have a meal of white noodles in black bean sauce. Personally, I think it should be celebrated on 4/15 in the US, so we can commiserate the annual big bite taken out of our collective posterior by the State and Fed. Might as well combine our heartache with our financial pain.

Off to cook up some spaghetti.

Well, it could be worse.

2008-03-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

Well, it isn't influenza--at least, not type A or B, the two "big guns" of the viral world. It's some viral doppleganger, and while it probably won't kill me, it's making me as sick as a dog.

There have been a number of deaths in Suffolk County due to complications arising from influenza infections; since I'm not the healthiest of individuals, I was genuinely worried about dying. Fortunately, I don't have anything in addition to the flu like staph or pneumonia, so while I may feel like I'm dying, I'm not.

Such is life.

Scared.

2008-03-23T11:13:00.001-07:00

Feeling really bad.

I think it's the flu. Going to the emergency room. Kinda scared.

No. Really scared.

Pray for me, and may God keep you all from harm in those empty places we must walk.

Foamy the Squirrel ate my breakfast...

2008-03-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

...and chased it down with half a liter of Dickle's No. 12. Greedy bastard.

Weird dream of the week: I dreamed I was sitting in a snowfield, trying to warm myself in front of a dead campfire. Turns out, the furnace died that night, and the temp dropped to about 60 before my sister came home, and re-lit it. I distinctly remember the smell of a smoking match as part of the dream.

It's been a rough stretch; more downswings (not as bad as before), more adjustments to the medication ("I'm over-medicated?"), and the death of a colleague (I did not know thee well enough, good Spike). And, as everyone knows, it's been more winter than spring this March. Meh.

I need a car. As much as I don't want all the attendant hassle that come from owning a car, the MBTA just isn't cutting it for me when it comes to getting everything done. It's a 40 minute/hour-and-a-half ride into work and home again, and because of the limitations of the bus network in Boston, I end up turning down a lot of OT.

I also need to start dating again. It's been 8 years since I had a romantic/amorous/other-than-platonic relationship with a member of the opposite sex, and I'm tired of being lonely. Time to stop being afraid of being hurt, and get back into the world. That may mean making some lifestyle changes, like moving. All the more reason to get a car, I suppose.

Just finished Summer of the Apocalypse by James van Pelt; a pretty sharp contrast from Cormac McCarthy's The Road, what with the flashbacks used to tell the story in Jim's book. It wasn't till I read a review for Cowboy Bebop that I realized why--in the Cowboy genre, the hero never looks back, and looking back is an essential part of Eric's story. I like the book, but I think that Jim could have delved deeper into the relationship between Eric and his wife, and the tension between Eric and Troy could have been better shown than told.

Next up is Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by J.J. Adams.

Not an auspicious start...

2008-02-03T19:05:00.001-08:00

2007 was not a very good year for yours truly.

It's beginning to look as though 2008 will be just as rocky.

I mentioned that I felt "down" around my last birthday; in truth, it was a bit more than "down"--a lot more. It was bad enough that, when I relayed my experience to my doctor, he ordered some blood work done up, post-haste. Nothing like hearing that you're going to get stuck with a needle to improve one's mood.

I have dysthymic disorder, which is a continuous low-level depression punctuated by occasional deep spells like the one I experienced last year. My doctor thinks that it's a result of my hypothyroidism, and has doubled my medication. Failing that, therapy and anti-depressants are the order of the day. I have noticed some improvement, but I also fought off another spell half-way though the month. From my perspective, my hypothyroidism might by exacerbating something that I have suffered from for many years.

I'm not thrilled about going to therapy. Part of my problem is that my inner critic is a sadist, and while a therapist can point out that my life is dysfunctional, he cannot grant me absolution for my own part in making it so. I had therapy while in grade school, and I'm still fighting the same demon.

And losing. It's a sad thing to realize that I haven't had a day without pain since 1976.

Of course, it could be a lot worse; a friend--someone who I've come to like and respect greatly--is undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments to prevent a pre-cancerous mass from closing off one of her carotid arteries, thereby causing brain damage. She's in a lot of pain, and there's nothing I can do to ease it.

And, to top it all off, the Patriots just lost to the Giants, 17 to 14. Peachy.

New Year, New Year, hard upon my heels!!

2007-12-30T20:41:00.000-08:00

Busy, busy, busy. 50-60 hour work-weeks do not leave much in the way of intellectual energy, I'm sad to say.

Tomorrow, I hope to post some resolutions that I can keep. I plan to sneak a few minutes here and there to draw up an organized list. At least, that's the plan; plans and yours truly have a distressing tendency to part company all to quickly.

Boston Latin Academy Class of '87 20yr. Reunion

2007-11-25T19:26:00.000-08:00

Last night was the 20 year reunion for my High School class, Boston Latin Academy's Class of 1987. Not sure how many turned up--at a rough guess, somewhere between 30-40 people. You could roughly split the class into two groups: those who had radically changed, and those who looked almost exactly the same. (Seriously folks--some people just don't seem to age!)

It was a good time, all around. I forgot how much I missed some of these people. God, how the old memories flow back.

I needed that, badly. I feel almost human again.

A summation in my absence.

2007-11-09T08:45:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit busy. Not much of an excuse, but it's the only explanation I can offer at the moment.

Birthday #39 came and went without to much to-do. To say that I've been down is a bit of an understatement: the more I take stock of my life, the more I wish I had made much different choices, and the more I dread what's to come. I have also been thinking of "her", of how much I miss her, of how I didn't deserve her, and how I will never meet another like her. I am growing more and more aware of just how lonely my future is going to be.

I fear Winter has come to my soul, and the storms that blow through bring winds more bitter and sharp than any before.

It has finally turned cold here in Boston--no more Indian Summer, now comes Old Man Winter. Naturally, in keeping with the logic of the bureaucracy of the City, my winter gear has yet to be issued--the vendor is waiting until enough orders come in to warrant issuing the gear. They have my size in stock (surprising, given my girth), but I can't get it until everyone submits their paperwork and gets their measurements in. Under better conditions, one of the sergeants would take the officers down to the vendor during the work-day; but given the fact that 1) we don't have the vehicles to transport personnel, and 2) we can't afford to spare the man-power during the day, it simply isn't going to happen.

Meanwhile, the days grow colder, and I ache and shiver in kind.

Dear God, I feel old.

The most Politically Incorrect thing I've ever seen...

2007-10-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

Right up there with Monty Python's Flying Circus.

In Memoriam

2007-09-11T16:36:00.001-07:00

Thanks to PeregrineJohn for this montage.

The SFWA vs. EFF.

2007-09-05T17:09:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't heard of the kerfluffle over Scribd.com, Dr. Pournelle has a column covering the events thus far. For alternate takes, you might try Whatever (John Scalzi's blog), or Craphound (Cory Doctorow's blog). Slashdot also has something to say.

This is, to put it bluntly, a nasty mess. The end result, from what I can see, is that authors and writers can no longer count on organizations like SFWA for help in protecting their copyright. That, in turn, means that there will be less incentive for commercial production of intellectual material--because if there's one inflexible rule of economics, it's this: why should you pay for that which you can get for free?

Update: Craphound appears to be dead; Doctorow has an article up on BoingBoing.

101 Reasons to Stop Writing

2007-08-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

101 Reasons to Stop Writing (now moved over from their old digs on Blogspot) has an interesting essay on the fear of success entitled Clarion or Flatulence. I read 101 Reasons because it serves as a kind of Devil's Advocate to the urges of my ego--perhaps I have no business trying my hand at writing, and if I find a reason there that I can't overcome, I'll try something else. Lord knows, I don't want to be a security guard forever--just thinking about the future these days causes the lines from "This Is Your Life by Tyler Durden" to run over and over through my head:

This is your life,
Good to the last drop.
This is your life
and it's ending one minute at a time.

The dragons of despair and defeat lie in that direction. No, thank you, but no. That isn't my path. But I'm also not getting any younger, and--now, more than ever--wasting time is something to avoid.

The other reason I read 101 Reasons? Because it's all wonderfully black humor, full of sarcasm and wit, and it appeals to my own inner curmudgeon. The best line of the piece is: "This is why I’m firmly in favor of these excuses, because every excuse is the universe’s way of bopping the wannabe in the head and screaming 'The power of Darwin compels you!' ". Absolutely priceless.

Sabato

2007-08-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

Sabato.

Was there ever so surreal a Western as Sabato?

Christian Bale, Russel Crowe, have you considered?

See it, and consider the possibilities.

I'm not dead--not really...

2007-07-30T19:54:00.000-07:00

...but that would explain my blank, vacant stare, lurching step, and incoherent speech.

Still working. Still trying to write. Not getting much traction in either terrain. I discovered that I have no sick time or vacation time until my one year probation is over--which meant working a swap day with myself in order to attend my brother's wedding. Losing a day of in my 4-and-2 cycle is really exhausting. God help me if I get sick again.

I'm halfway through Sin and Syntax: A Guide to Crafting Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale, and, I have to admit, I've really forgotten a lot of English grammar since high school. I vaguely remember what a "dangling participle" is, but I had no recollection of "dangling prepositional phrase", or what the differences were between a restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, essential and non-essential clauses, and defining and non-defining clauses. I had to go back and re-read that chapter several times (and I'll have to do it again, I'm sure) to get a clue as to what those clauses are, but I do understand the overall point Ms. Hale is trying to make. More importantly, I'm glad Ms. Hale added the common sense rules in with the complex explanations--"Clarity trumps grammar", and so on. Ms. Hale uses a lot of dry humor throughout the book, making it a lot more readable than Strunk & White (although, in the latter's defense, it is meant as a pocket reference). It will be interesting to compare this book with Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

I read two of Cormac McCarthy's books over the past month. The Road and All the Pretty Horses are decent reads, but McCarthy has the same aversion to quotation marks that made my attempt at reading Ulysses so painful. Punctuation exists for a reason folks--I kept losing track of who said what in All the Pretty Horses, and it made the encounter with the Thief and the Old Man in The Road a bit disorienting. Both have unresolved endings, although The Road has a glimmer of hope in the ending paragraph. I don't normally read Westerns, so I doubt I'll be chasing down any more of McCarthy's previous books. I am interested in seeing if McCarthy will pursue any more work in the Horror or SF genre, because most "literary fiction" authors tend only to dabble (and as this review shows, they sometimes find themselves out of their depth). Hopefully McCarthy won't develop the same "I-don't-write-SF" affliction that plagues so many "lit" authors(*coughcough*Margret Atwood*coughcough*).

From the flu to near sunstroke

2007-06-25T13:09:00.001-07:00

Hard on the heels of the flu, I get one of the worst sunburns in years yesterday; pasty white boys of Irish decent are not meant to stand outside in the bright June sun. It wouldn't be so bad if the burn wasn't heavier on my right side than my left. I looked like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I feel a sudden urge to sculpt.

Did anyone get the number of the truck that ran me down?

2007-06-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Ugh...I feel like five miles of bad road.

Sometime on Tuesday, as I was running about and getting some much-delayed tasks done, I must have gotten exposed to a virus. When I woke up yesterday, I had all the usuall symptoms of the flu--headache, dizziness, ringing in the ears, stomach ache, flashes of nausea, and muscle cramps in my legs. I managed to tough it out at work yesterday, but I felt no improvement this morning, and banged in from work.

I'm getting old. Ten years ago I would have soldiered on and gone to work anyways. Just can't do that anymore.

I hate taking a sick day; I much rather cash them at the end of the year when the city offers to buy them back. To add insult to injury, I had to kick in my overtime--the overtime won't be so available in the future.

I just finished Gene Wolfe's Free Live Free, and I have to admit that I felt strangely cheated by the story; up until the last two chapters, I thought it was a fantasy instead of the science fiction story it is. Mind you, it's still a great story, but I would have liked to known what kind of story it was before hitting the end. But, hey--that's just me.

Still haven't received my uniform yet--I've gotten measured over at Doughboy's, but with the cadets going into the Academy this month, my order gets lower priority. I hate looking like a banker with a shoulder mike.

I also got measured for a tuxedo over at the Men's Warehouse--expensive, and a bit embarrassing, but it is for my brother's wedding next month so I can't exactly blow it off. With Frank tying the knot, myself and my youngest sister are the last to be unmarried. Hopefully, she will have more luck than I.

Landmarks

2007-06-06T19:15:00.001-07:00

I worked a detail assignment at Faneuil Hall today, manning the doors to the Great Hall for the Urban Sciences Academy graduation. One of the little-know things about Faneuil Hall is that the front of the building doesn't face the street (Congress St.), but in fact faces Quincy Marketplace. So, when people are looking for the Great Hall, they can get a little lost. Kids were standing on the steps, trying to give their friends landmarks to guide them to the right location. Over my shoulder, I heard one say, "Just look for the big white dude with glasses".

It's official folks--I'm a landmark.

My mom will be so proud. **rolleyes**

Moments of Levity

2007-05-31T20:04:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't post this.

No, really--I shouldn't. But I just can't help it.

Working the main lobby can be boring as dirt. Seriously--how entertained can you be by a parade of humanity's most desperate? But there are moments.

It was myself, Franco, Ellie, and Joe working the main lobby two days ago. Ellie was half dead from working an overtime shift the night before, and was sitting at the desk.

What happens next is childishly simple; I mean, it's kindergarten level-humor. Seriously.

But there was Ellie, sitting at the desk with her head in her hands, a heartbeat away from falling asleep. And Franco chose that moment to call the phone on the desk. And then hang up when she answered.

As I said, childishly simple.

But oh so simple.

Because the three of us were giggling like school kids who just gave the teacher a hotfoot.

I guess you had to be there.

Updates

2007-05-31T16:18:00.000-07:00

Still alive, still on the job (such as it is).

Still waiting for a uniform. Hell's bells--I got a radio in less time than it took to get a uniform. Right now, I look like a banker with a two-way clipped to his belt.

We are insanely busy these days--Saturday, we have between 40-50 overtime positions that need to be filled. That's more than we have officers in the department.

A loooong summer looms ahead.

Writing-wise, I haven't done diddly--I'm so busy, I can barely think. What reading I get done is done on the train to and from work--and I only manage a few pages at a time at that. Currently, I'm trying to digest Alastair Reynold's Pushing Ice. Finished John C. Wright's The Golden Age Trilogy just last week. I highly recommend the trilogy, but caution the reader that there is a lot of exposition (it is a post-Singularity series, after all). To be honest, his fantasy is a much easier read.

Hang in there folks.

Happy Hard Hat Riot Day!!

2007-05-08T20:05:00.001-07:00

Happy Hard Hat Riot Day!!

Well, I brought it on myself.

1. Do you outline?
Very rarely; seeing the guts of a story spread out for examination kills the mood.

2. Do you write straight through, or do you sometimes tackle the scenes out of order?
Usually straight through, although I have seen the ending of a story before the middle congealed out of random brain-flatulence.

3. Do you prefer writing with a pen or using a computer?
By computer--my penmanship is atrocious.

4.Do you prefer writing in first person or third?
First person. I have yet been able to properly capture the scene from outside the protagonist's p.o.v.

5. Do you listen to music while you write?
Very often. I'm a fan of the Chemical Brothers and the Crystal Method, and John Scalzi has made me an addict of the band Muse.

6. How do you come up with the perfect names for your characters?
A combination of word-play and names plucked from the phone directory. For example, the protagonist of TSOJIW is named John Littleton, which is word-play on his height (5' 9").

7. When you're writing, do you ever imagine your story as a television show or movie?
Often. I usually see scenes play out in my head before I ever write then down.

8. Have you ever had a character insist on doing something you really didn't want him/her to do?
No. To be honest, I'd be pleasantly surprised if they did.

9. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it?
Sometimes, but not often.

10. Where do you write?
Anywhere I have peace and quiet, and a flat surface.

11. What do you do when you get writer's block?
Grouse, grumble and worry.

12. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of wordcount, or as a percentage of the fic as a whole)?
I try for a steady 500 words per day, but I often fall short.

13. How many different drafts did you write for your last project?
Just two, and I should have done more.

14. Have you ever changed a character's name midway through a draft?
No, but I have done so when outlining.

15. Do you let anyone read your story while you're working on it, or do you wait until you've completed a draft before letting someone else see it?
No. 2nd or 3rd drafts are for review and/or critique.

16. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?
I'll celebrate when I'm published. Anything else is an extravagance unearned.

17. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?
One at a time. Ideas get written in the margin or on a piece of scrap paper, and transcribed later.

18. Do your stories grow or shrink in revision?
They grow. Editing is harsh work, but it has to be done.

19. Do you have any writing or critique partners?
No. I do it all solo.

20. Do you prefer drafting or revising?
Drafting. Revising is hard.

First Impressions on the New Job

2007-04-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

After a solid week of work at my new job, I can honestly say one thing for certain:

MY @#$%^&! FEET HURT!!

Quite a change, going from a desk job to being on my feet for 8-10 hours per day--particularly walking on brick and concrete. I need a better pair of shoes.

The second thing is, you meet an awful lot of interesting people at City Hall; in the past week I've met everyone from City Councilors to homeless vets, from police officers to transvestites. About 2,000 people pass through the main lobby every day--if you wanted to see a cross-section of the city's population, this is the place to be.

The third thing is simply a re-enforcement of something I've always known--people really don't listen. Tell a person to place anything metallic or electronic in a tray before walking through a metal detector, and they'll dump their cash and paperwork there as well. Explain that the department they are looking for is off to the left, and they'll head off to the right. You can have the "no weapons" policy in plain view, and people will still try to smuggle knives into the building--and then complain when you confiscate it from them. I can understand people getting a little confused when first, but when you get the same message over and over again, common sense should tell you to listen to what's being said. Then again, since when has common sense been all that common?

Ah, well.

The end of a long Lent

2007-04-07T18:17:00.001-07:00

It has been a very long Lent.

The good news is, I have a job; starting Monday I become a security officer for the Municipal Protective Service--the hollowed out remnant of the Boston Municipal Police. Not exactly what I was looking for, but at this point, I'll take what I can get. I have bills to pay.

First order of business should be going back to school and getting my Bachelor's degree. I've let it slide for far too long, and it cost me in terms of employability. It wouldn't hurt me to gain an associates degree in Criminal Law either--it's job related, so I might be able to write of the tuition on my taxes.

The second thing is to get busy writing. I've barely writen anything during the last six months. I'm never going to be published if I don't have anything writen, am I? Hopefully, now that I don't have to worry about keeping a roof over my head, I can get back to doing something creative. God knows, I'm sick of filling out job applications.

Dear God, please don't let me screw this up.

And...Reee-jected!

2007-04-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

Still alive, still stumping around, trying to get a job; I had another one of those "WTF!?!" encounters with the City last week--more fuel for the grinding of teeth.

Got a rejection from Postcards from Hell for a piece of flash-fiction I whipped out when I discovered they were accepting submissions. The rejection was pretty nice, considering I wasn't expecting any commentary:

After careful consideration, we have decided to feed your story to the Lake of Fire. It's well written and entertaining, but more of a gazatteer entry than a story - describing one of the more humorous aspects of hell.

Minion
editor from hell

Maybe I can rework the story into an actual story. I though it was pretty encouraging that he held onto it as long as he did--I made it past the initial round of rejections. Silver linings and all that.

Pandemonium Books needs help!

2007-02-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

Pandemonium Books, the only Science Fiction specialty store (that I know of) in Boston, is having trouble paying the bills and may have to close their doors if they don't get an influx of cash soon. If you can, please pre-order a T-shirt.

Google Video: Bussard's Research into IEF

2007-02-07T17:05:00.000-08:00

Google has a video of a November 9, 2006 report by Dr. Robert W. Bussard on his research into the development of a working Inertial-Electrodynamic Fusion (IEF) Device--and you can tell, he and his team are close, oh so close to a working model.

The video is pretty technical, but the gist of it is that Bussard and his team may have found a way to create a sustained fusion reaction without toxic waste products. His current problem is funding--the physics problems have been solved, only the engineering problems remain. I seriously hope he finds funding soon; this is the sort of stuff that made people fall in love with Science Fiction in the first place.

From Earth to Mars in 4 weeks. From Earth to Titan in 52 days.

Congratulations, SFMurphy!

2007-02-05T16:08:00.000-08:00

My friend SFMurphy has just announced that his short story, Tearing Down Tuesday, will be published in Interzone Magazine.

Congratulations, Murph!

Welcome to the world, Allison Brown!

2007-01-24T23:52:00.000-08:00

Yet another addition to the family; Allison Brown was born Tuesday afternoon to my sister and her husband--their second child and daughter. I haven't seen her yet (they live out in Walpole, and yours truly lacks the services of a car), but I'm sure that there will be a pretty big family get-together soon.

That makes four nephews and two nieces so far; my Christmas shopping list is getting longer and longer.

Still squeaking by...

2007-01-23T15:09:00.000-08:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Moderate
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Very Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

(with a tip of the hat to Chaos Manor for the link)

Off tender toes and heavy boots...

2007-01-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

It would appear that I have stepped on someone's toes.

The someone, in this instance, would be Maria E. Alexander, author of several books (including Lost on the Darkside:: Voices From The Edge of Horror (Darkside #4) (Darkside), The Anthology at the End of the Universe: Leading Science Fiction Authors on Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Smart Pop series), Blood Surrender and others.) I subscribed to Ms. Alexander's plog over at Amazon.com as I do many author's plogs, mainly because I aspire to be a writer myself, and just as one studies better chess players in order to improve one's game, I thought that by listening to accomplished authors and writers will help in my own endeavors. The problem arose when Ms. Alexander posted on the "blasphemy challenge" that is circulating on YouTube. I consider the whole thing an empty gesture, the equivalent of an angry teen trying to shock one's parents by flipping them the bird, and I said so on her "additional comments" section:

The whole "blasphemy" thing is passe'; if you want to style yourselves as daring, then you have to put your ass on the line--and I see precious little of that from those who took the "blasphemy challenge".

I was not expecting such a venomous reply.

The following is my rebuttal to Ms. Alexander.
***

Maria E. Alexander wrote:

An anonymous non-fan of my last post cravenly posted to additional feedback the following comment:

First, I was unaware that the additional feedback posting feature was annonymous; I am Dennis J. Mahon, and I make no attempt to hide or conceal my identity. I certainly was not expecting so much venom and vitriol in response to a single sentence:

The whole "blasphemy" thing is passe'; if you want to style yourselves as daring, then you have to put your ass on the line--and I see precious little of that from those who took the "blasphemy challenge".

Would you allow me to rebut?

First I have to say that the atheists who took The Challenge weren't out to impress you.

Who, exactly, were they trying to impress? Certainly not Christians--one does not impress others by attacking them or their beliefs. It is the equivalent of expecting a parent to be impressed by the temper-tantrum of a spoiled child.

I know you think the world revolves around you, but Copernicus disproved that theory in the 16th century. (Someone had to break the news. Glad it was me.)

Well, I admit that I probably have more years behind me that ahead of me, but I cannot claim that I am so old as to have lived in the age of Copernicus; and, while I will admit that I do need to loose weight, I am nowhere near so massive that any astronomer would remotely consider me the potential center of the solar system.
(And, just a point--Copernicus did not prove the theory of Heliocentrism--he proposed the first modern theory of heliocentrism; it took the combined efforts of Galileo, Kepler, and Newton to prove the theory valid.)

Second, Christians happen to find this to be the deadliest act you can perform. Sorry if that bored you back into the closet, but they were the ones who were intended to appreciate the "ass laying" you are so jonsing for. If you think you're a Christian, and you don't think this is extreme enough, then please take your ignorance somewhere where it can be appreciated by people who aren't familiar with scripture.

Well, yes, it is the most deadly act a Christian can perform--as a final act of defiance; in order to meet the conditions of blasphemy as set by Matthew 12:30-32, such a denial of the Holy Spirit would have to preclude any possible act of repentance on the part of the actor (as clearly outlined in Matthew 20: 1-15)--in short, it would have to be one's final act, a deathbed proclamation, and the atheists in those YouTube postings hardly looked to be at death's door.
I also have to ask--what risk is the atheist taking when he or she makes such a proclamation? It is the equivalent of betting that Schroedinger's Cat will be found dead when the box is finally opened--your expectations of loss are rather low.
And I not certain why you are so certain that I am "jonsing for an ass laying"; I merely pointed out that this is an empty gesture on the part of atheists. You assume a great deal.

Second, atheists have always had their asses "on the line." To open your mouth and admit you're an atheist is to be one of the least trusted people in America, according to this poll to appear in the American Sociological Review. They are rated below Muslims, recent immigrants, homosexuals and other groups for being trustworthy.

Yes, because being considered "untrustworthy" is as perilous a state as being robbed of one's lands and life, as is the experience of many Christians throughout the world today. What utter tripe. If you are going to claim that you have suffered for your belief, I demand that you show me your scars. Admit it--atheists in the West have it easy; there are no calls for the beheading of atheists from the pulpits of Christian churches. And given the provocation that acts like the "blasphemy challenge", are you at all surprised that atheists are mistrusted?

Therefore, it's still socially acceptable to be prejudiced against atheists -- even moreso than gays and immigrants. Also, atheists are never elected to government office. This means that the people most likely to uphold the separation of church and state, and create policies that are fair to all and not just their favorite bible study group, are not allowed to govern.

Imagine that--a group that goes out of it's way to insult to earn the mistrust of the majority, wonders why the majority doesn't believe that atheists have the best interests of all at heart, and doesn't elect open atheists into positions of power. How surprising.

Further, I object to the "you" part of your cravenly posted message. (At least the people in the Blasphemy Challege said their names. You didn't.) You are assuming -- and remember, when you assume you make and "ass" of "u," and this is no exception -- because I'm defending free speech and respect for some of the most intelligent, good-hearted, sensible people in the world that I'm an atheist. I can't say that I am. But given the choice between their camp and yours (yours being the "anonymous ass" camp), I would happily join their ranks. In fact, I often do to weather the crazy-making non-thinking of religious people and the hippy-dippy crap-fodder of lazy agnostics and pagans.

The "you" in my statement was used in a generic sense, as in "You reap what you sow"; I suppose that it would have been clearer to use "one" instead:
The whole "blasphemy" thing is passe'; if one wants to style oneself as daring, then one has to put your ass on the line--and I see precious little of that from those who took the "blasphemy challenge".

I apologize for my lack of clarity. However, I must say that in your interview with the BBC you made it clear that you used to be a fundamentalists, and now you are "on the other side"; to what "other side" do you refer if not atheism? It would appear that you are guilty of the same thing I was--you assumed that your words were clear to all who heard them.
I wonder why you feel that you must "defend free speech" in this matter--I did not say that the YouTube posting be removed, nor did I say that the posters had no right to make such postings; I merely called them passe'. Just because one has the right to say something doesn't void the right of others to call him foolish for saying it. Otherwise you are declaring that free speech is the right of some, but not all.
As to respect, well, no--I am rather stingy with my respect, and one must work hard to earn it. I do not extend my respect to those who make empty gestures.

So, please go stuff the miserable stump of flesh you call your life back in the washing machine, microwave or whatever other brain-disabling device from which you've crawled. If you're oh-so-unimpressed with this plog, grow a life -- not to mention a spine -- and move on.

I did not say I found this plog unimpressive--I would not have subscribed were that so. What I said (and still maintain) is that the "blasphemy challenge" was unimpressive. I would have thought that an author would have better reading comprehension--not to mention thicker skin.

Because actions, not beliefs, are what make people what they are. And you have proven by your cowardly actions exactly what you aren't.

Indeed; and by the emptiness of the gesture made by the "blasphemy challengers", they have shown exactly what they aren't.

Next?

P.S. Any further messages left in the "additional feedback" feature will not be read. Go and unload your wad there all you want, but you're just dripping on your shoes.

Ah, well--so much for dialogue.
***

Normally, I go out of my way not to offend; but there are occasions when one must simply say the plain truth--and the consequences be damned. This was one such occasion.

Great Books and Genre Books

2007-01-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

Author John C. Wright (http://johncwright.livejournal.com/ ) has just posted an essay (broken up over six posts) on his journal concerning great books, science fiction, and why he believes the two are mutually exclusive. I highly recommended it to any and all interested in writing and literature.

Edit: Best to start with the intro, and follow the links embedded in that post-- http://johncwright.livejournal.com/69645.html

Happy New Year!!

2006-12-31T16:34:00.000-08:00

I realize that I'm a few hours early, but I figure it's better to get it in early than late. My ear infection is less painful now than yesterday, but I still hear ringing in my left ear, and I hear everything a half-tone lower than in my right ear. My head cold (which turned out to be more of a chest cold) has broken up a bit, so I am not quaffing as much DayQuil/NightQuil as I did earlier in the week. I'm beginning to think that the ear infection may have been acquired separately--possibly from the headphones at BPD when I went for the 911 Dispatcher exam.

All in all, I'll most likely be turning in early, so, once again, Happy New Year!!

Irony

2006-12-30T13:26:00.000-08:00

Irony: I had over 300 hours of sick time saved up from my time with the City, and I will be getting about a third back in the form of cash ("bought back" by the City, as it were).

Now that I don't need them, I've been hit with a crippling double-combo of nasty head-cold and painful ear infection.

Ain't it just grand? :(

Amongst the ranks of the unemployed

2006-12-28T16:44:00.000-08:00

From: Property and Construction Department
To: Mr. Dennis Mahon

Dear Mr. Mahon:

It is with regret that I must notify you that you will be suspendended from your provisional appointment a Computer Operator in the Property & Construction Management Department, effective at the close of business on December 29, 2006.

This termination of provisional employment is not a reflection on your work performance, but is necessitated by the reduction in force resulting from the abolition of the armed portion of the Boston Municipal Police Department. This reduction has required the City to reduce its number of employees, resulting in the abolition of positions within the Property & Construction Management Department. You are being separated from your provisional appointment in accordance of the collective bargaining agreement between the City of Boston and SEIU.

The rest is just about my "bumping" rights and recall lists.

The gist of it is. as of 23:30hrs tomorrow, I am amongst the ranks of the unemployed.

I've already started applying for other jobs, but the ones I'd like to have are well out of reach.

I suppose I could look on this as an opportunity-- Lord knows, I haven't had a vacation in years.

At least my health insurance will hold out until the end of January. After that, I'm without a safety net.

We'll see how it goes.

Test

2006-10-04T15:43:00.000-07:00