As I sat working at my computer the other night, I became aware of a presence in the room where there should have been none. When I work at night, it is in a darkened office, illuminated solely by the light of the monitor. No one else in the house was awake. The dog was asleep on his bed in the garage. I should have been alone. Was there an intruder in the house? I turned to the door and illuminated by the night-light in the hallway was a small figure, slim, like the aliens in Close Encounters. My heart skipped several beats. It was brandishing a weapon. No it was clutching a yet smaller figure..a green one...a stuffed Grinch!
"Grandpa?"
"Why aren't you asleep sweetie?"
"I'm thirsty."
This was an old tactic. He really wasn't thirsty. It was a last, desperate attempt to push back the veil of night...to steal a few more momemts of awake before the sandman descended upon him and dragged him kicking and screaming to the land of pleasant dreaming. I knew how to handle this. I've been well trained.
"Okay. Get back in bed and I'll get you a glass."
"Okay."
He turned and headed across the hall to his room. I arose and was about to head to the kitchen for a sippy cup of the desired drink, when he stoped me.
"Grandpa?"
"What?"
"You don't need to get a cup."
"Not thirsty after all, huh?"
"No I'm still thirsty."
Okay, this was getting a bit weird. I wondered if he was sleep-walking or something.
"Then why don't you want water?"
"I do want water."
"Then why don't I have to get it?"
"Because there's a bottle of it in my backpack."
With that, he entered the bedroom and crawled back under the covers. I turned and followed.
"Okay. Where's the backpack?"
"Right there."
And he pointed to it, sitting right against the bed where he lay, not ten inches from his head. It was more obvious by the second that, as I had suspected, his true motivation wasn't thirst, but unwillingness to give in to sleep just as yet.
I opened the Scooby Doo backpack and sure enough, a bottle of water was in there. With a single twist of the wrist, I had the cap off and had the bottle in his hands. Like I said, I was trained.
Thirst wasn't an original plot twist for him. But the backpack next to him bit...that was new. Usually the excuse was that something he had to have was hanging just beyond his reach. This was bolder...more in my face. I was filled with a foreboding about what it might mean for the future. He took a single sip and handed me back the bottle and settling down beneath the covers took a parting shot.
"Grandpa?"
"Mmmm?"
"Can I play on your pluter?"
"No. It's way past your bedtime and I'm working on it. Night night"
"Night night...Grandpa?"
"What?" I said, struggling mightily to contain the growing exasperation in my voice.
"Can I watch a cartoon?"
Okay...two parting shots. I dropped the hammer.
"No. And if you don't go to sleep right now, I'm going to have to call your teacher."
"No no. I'll go to sleep grandpa."
I kissed him goodnight for like the fifth time of the night and he turned over clutching Grinch. I replaced the bottle in his pack...and stared at if for a long moment. Boy, did that take me back.
I began to reminisce about my late teen years when my close friends and I would take camping weekends into the wilderness of the High Sierras. Those were the days.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Beast In The Crosshairs-High Sierra Adventure 2
I was 18 and immortal. My buddies and I had decided a camping trip to the High Sierras was in order. We had a full week off from Trade Tech, where we were studying to be tank mechanics. There was a major shortage of them, since the "Bradley" was a whole new kind of armored vehicle and no one knew how to fix one. We saw a need and decided to fill it. But it was spring vacation, and this weekend, we would take on the wild. For the next three days, we would be campers...outdoorsmen...hunters!
We were all three of us, avid campers and each had a specialty. At least one of us, Jim, could catch fish. But not me. I couldn't catch a fish stick at Vons. Terry was the cautious one...the one with the compass and the topographic maps. Not me. I was into dead reckoning, which seemed appropriate since I was the marksman. I had the Ruger 10-22 semi-automatic carbine with the 4 power Tasco Scope, and the bears had better not venture onto our turf. (In truth, the 10-22 wasn't powerful to kill a bear...only piss it off. But maybe it was loud enough to scare one away.)
The end of March in the High Sierras was not like spring in Southern California. It was more like the dead of winter in the Ukraine. As we drove up Highway 395 towards the little town of Bridgeport, the temperature seemed to drop by the mile.
We had driven all night when we finally parked our Corvair Monza. The poor little car was wheezing like a Model T in a Betty Boop cartoon. We parked just outside the Twin Lakes campgrounds. This place was the last link to civilization before entering the Hoover Wilderness.
We couldn't leave the car at the campgrounds, since they were still closed for the winter. We picked a spot off the road between some trees a couple hundred yards before the parking area. Actually, we didn't pick the spot. Jim was driving, hit a patch of ice and skidded into a snowdrift just off the road. Our decision had been made for us. We had parked.
We gathered the gear and set off on the first leg of the hike. Since we couldn't enter the Twin Lakes campground...chain link and nasty warning signs impeding our path...we had to circle around behind it. This meant to reach the trail and the wilderness sign-in, we had to circle the smaller of the Twin Lakes. This was easier said than done.
The far side of the lake, the area we had to traverse, was a snow-covered 30 degree hill. To get to it, we had to backtrack about a quarter mile to the south end of the lake. Then we had to climb about 200 feet over about a quarter mile more. And we did this, starting at 7500 feet, at 5 A.M., in 11 degree weather and sleep-deprived. A perfect beginning for our "High Sierra Adventure."
We gasped and grunted our way up the hill and began the long and treacherous traverse along the back side of a frozen lake. The ice looked to be only inches thick. One slip and we would be teen-sicles. I was the lucky one. I had an unloaded rifle. Unloaded, it was a walking stick.
All three of us wore snow-shoes. Jim and Terry, being smaller than me, wore "Bear Paws," a kind of compact..strapped to the boots...modern day nylon grid, designed to spread the weight over a larger surface. I had an old pair of Alaskan snow shoes. They were as long as skis and clunky and difficult to walk on. But they kept me from sinking into the snow.
I was about half-way across the length of the lake, when the tip of my snowshoe snagged on a branch protruding from the snow. I fell and began to tumble down the hill toward the frozen lake. I was maybe fifty feet from certain doom when as I rolled past another branch, I slammed my rifle across it and broke my fall. I got to my feet, dusted snow off me and proceeded to catch up with my companions, who hadn't even noticed my near fatality.
We proceeded without incident to the sign-in station. There, a 6 foot long, carved wooden plaque mounted on rough-hewn logs proclaimed: "Hoover Wilderness." It was at about knee-level. In the summer, one could walk beneath it.
In the summer this trail could be travelled on horseback. In winter, sled dogs would shy away. But not three adventurous teenagers. We signed in...so that if we never emerged, they'd know who the decaying bodies were...and entered the woods.
I still remember how mysterious and dangerous the forest seemed to become the instant we passed the sign. We had gone from civilization to who-knows-where in a single step and headed confidently along what seemed to be a trail.
The trail was a bit of a sticking point on which we were kind of unsettled, since the it was covered with some seven feet of snow. But the forest canopy spread here and appeared to continue doing so for the limited distance that we could see. So we followed it, looking for Barney Lake, a favorite fishing spot of Jim's. We guessed that we could make it in about seven hours. The trail petered out at the first clearing. We had travelled all of about half a mile.
Seven hours and several map/compass consultations later, we had no idea where we were. Terry, as it turned out, was about as good at map reading as I was at fishing. So, I took point and headed for the only mountain we could see all through the hike. After about another two hours, we emerged into a snow-covered meadow. Terry immediately set about getting his (and our) bearings.
"So, are we near Barney Lake?"
"I think so."
"How far?"
"Near as I can figure, about 12 feet."
Turns out we were standing atop the lake. It was covered with snow. Standing in the middle of a frozen lake wasn't the ideal objective for this trip, so we decided to find a place to camp. Unfortunately, everything was covered in twelve feet of snow. We retreated into the woods until we found a spot where an evergreen had spread wide enough to make a clearing beneath itself. It was surrounded by a protective wall of snow. This was to be our campsite.
So far, no sign of bears. It never dawned on any of us that they might be hibernating this time of year. We hung our packs high in the tree so that if a bear did happen on our camp, it couldn't get to them. Then we scrounged up some dry wood, built a fire and settled in.
That night, I came face to face with the beast. I was awakened at about 3 a.m. to a rustling sound coming from the general direction of where we hung our packs. I had my rifle at the ready next to my sleeping bag, as well as a four cell flashlight. Carefully, I slipped the 10 shot rotary magazine into the receiver of Old Betsy. (That wasn't really what I called the gun, but I should have. It was what Davy Crockett called his long rifle. That was me that night.)
With caution borne of trying not to alert the bear, I turned on the flashlight and held it against the underside of Old Betsy so that it pointed where I pointed the gun. I began to scan the general area of the tree. Nothing. I surmised that perhaps the bear had climbed the tree, so I shone the beam up into it. Still nothing. But there was that rustling sound. Something was at our packs. Jim had mostly fishing gear and a few cameras in his pack. Terry had the cook stove and more camera gear in his pack. I was carrying the freeze-dried food and the cook kit in mine. Mine was the obvious target.
There was the rustling again. Something was definitely at my pack. But what? A bear cub? I heard scampering away from the pack. Seemed too big for a bear cub. Then it moved back toward the pack. Whatever was up there was fast. I could hear the clatter of the mess kit moving about. The pack swayed some, dangling from the branch as it was. I shone the light on the top of the pack. Suddenly, the culprit showed itself. It was the most gigantic and vicious squirrel I have ever seen. It sent a shudder of fear down my back to see it poke it's head from the top of the pack. It climbed from within and sat arrogantly atop the pack staring back at me.
Alright, in the interest of accuracy, it wasn't all that big. And it was actually frozen with fear in the beam of my flashlight...a deer in the headlights of an approaching car. But the little bugger was eating my freeze-dried food! It sat there, atop my pack, chomping on whatever it had gotten from the packets inside. What was I going to eat now?
I had only one course of action. I carefully drew a bead on the little scavenger. I lined that beast up in the cross-hairs of my scope, intent on blowing him back to whichever tree in hell he came from. I squeezed the trigger. Blam! One shot found its mark.
That mark was about a foot below the squirrel. I put a hole through the middle of my backpack. My companions awakened suddenly at the sound and for a moment, general panic ensued. When I explained what had happened, we pulled my pack down out of the tree. My bullet had passed though all three nested pans of the cook kit and through the only package of freeze-dried food the squirrel hadn't gotten into. Worst of all, marksmanship took a drubbing. Resigned to solving our food dilemma in the morning, we all laid back down to sleep, but I was troubled. How could I have missed so badly? In the distance, I was sure I could hear squirrel laughter.
By morning, Jim had a solution to our food problem. He was going to fish. I asked how he planned to do that in a lake covered with 12 feet of snow. His idea was to take a branch., strip it and sharpen it, and plunge it into the snow to the lake surface. The he'd build a fire, heat the tip, poke it through the ice, drop a line and catch fish. I was amazed. It was at once, brilliantly simple and the stupidest plan I'd ever heard. But, having none better, I shrugged my accord and he set about looking for a straight and stout limb.
Meanwhile I examined my rifle. At first glance, nothing looked wrong. But on closer inspection, I saw that the scope had been knocked seriously out of alignment. I did a couple of test shots, and it was consistently shooting about a foot below where I was aiming.
Only three days earlier, I had aligned those sights so that I could put ten shots practically through the same hole in a fifty foot target. Then it came to me. The day before, that gun had saved my life! I must have knocked the sights out alignment when I broke my fall down the hill by Twin Lakes. Idiot!
What a trip. No food. A navigator who couldn't find his way out of a sleeping bag. A lunatic trying to catch fish that were probably down there laughing at him, and me...Daniel Bonehead, frontiersdweeb. Thank God there were no barns in the vicinity to test my marksmanship further. I wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of one.
A few hours later. Jim returned with his catch. It was the branch. So there we were. No food. No fish. And facing another night with lots of neither. We decided that the smart thing to do was head back down the mountain and get to our car before nightfall. We had just about enough time to to do that. We could drive down to Bridgeport, get a meal and a motel room and head for home the next day. At least it was a plan. We packed up and headed out.
Terry, who had spent the morning pouring over his maps was certain he had the best route and foolishly, Jim and I let him take point. I mean, neither one of us had done anything particularly brilliant in the last couple days. The downhill journey should be easier too...and faster.
Seven hours later, we were lost. Not real lost, but Terry's route had taken us over a fall of snow that we had to dig ourselves out from, across a stream we had never crossed, and into a part of the valley we had never seen. Worse, a storm was coming in and it was getting dark fast. We decided to set up camp and stay another night in this God-forsaken wilderness. Oh. And we were hungry.
Again, we found a small clearing under a tree and again we scrounged up wood to build a fire. Night fell like the blade of a guillotine. We sang campfire songs, told ghost stories and toasted marshmallows...Yeah, right. In sheer exhaustion, we all fell into a deep sleep. And the storm came in. Overnight it dropped to three below zero. And when we awakened in the morning, our little clearing under the tree was surrounded with a four foot high ring of snow.
Terry left his boots out of his sleeping bag and they were frozen solid. We had to roast them over the morning fire to thaw them out. We melted some snow into water, imagined ourselves drinking hot coffee, packed up and set out.
Things looked familiar right away. That hill! That's the one that was on the right when we headed up the draw. In the morning light, we soon figured out exactly where we were. It helped that we hadn't gone fifty yards before we found the cabins of the Twin Lakes campground. Slapping ourselves mentally, we hiked another couple hundred yards to the Corvair. At least we thought it was the Corvair. It was actually a five foot mound of snow. We dug it out, loaded it up, and had our first good luck in 50 hours. It started.
We headed into Bridgeport for breakfast. Jim wanted trout, understandably. Terry opted for pancakes. I ordered squirrel. I had to settle for bacon and eggs.
I carry many memories of that trip...mostly painful ones. But the one I have kept close to my heart these many years...and I still cling to it today as strongly as I did then, is the knowledge that that damned squirrel was eating freeze dried cottage cheese. I can almost hear the kaboom as he drank his first sip of water and exploded into a million little squirrel pieces. That's my fondest memory of our High Sierra Adventure.
We were all three of us, avid campers and each had a specialty. At least one of us, Jim, could catch fish. But not me. I couldn't catch a fish stick at Vons. Terry was the cautious one...the one with the compass and the topographic maps. Not me. I was into dead reckoning, which seemed appropriate since I was the marksman. I had the Ruger 10-22 semi-automatic carbine with the 4 power Tasco Scope, and the bears had better not venture onto our turf. (In truth, the 10-22 wasn't powerful to kill a bear...only piss it off. But maybe it was loud enough to scare one away.)
The end of March in the High Sierras was not like spring in Southern California. It was more like the dead of winter in the Ukraine. As we drove up Highway 395 towards the little town of Bridgeport, the temperature seemed to drop by the mile.
We had driven all night when we finally parked our Corvair Monza. The poor little car was wheezing like a Model T in a Betty Boop cartoon. We parked just outside the Twin Lakes campgrounds. This place was the last link to civilization before entering the Hoover Wilderness.
We couldn't leave the car at the campgrounds, since they were still closed for the winter. We picked a spot off the road between some trees a couple hundred yards before the parking area. Actually, we didn't pick the spot. Jim was driving, hit a patch of ice and skidded into a snowdrift just off the road. Our decision had been made for us. We had parked.
We gathered the gear and set off on the first leg of the hike. Since we couldn't enter the Twin Lakes campground...chain link and nasty warning signs impeding our path...we had to circle around behind it. This meant to reach the trail and the wilderness sign-in, we had to circle the smaller of the Twin Lakes. This was easier said than done.
The far side of the lake, the area we had to traverse, was a snow-covered 30 degree hill. To get to it, we had to backtrack about a quarter mile to the south end of the lake. Then we had to climb about 200 feet over about a quarter mile more. And we did this, starting at 7500 feet, at 5 A.M., in 11 degree weather and sleep-deprived. A perfect beginning for our "High Sierra Adventure."
We gasped and grunted our way up the hill and began the long and treacherous traverse along the back side of a frozen lake. The ice looked to be only inches thick. One slip and we would be teen-sicles. I was the lucky one. I had an unloaded rifle. Unloaded, it was a walking stick.
All three of us wore snow-shoes. Jim and Terry, being smaller than me, wore "Bear Paws," a kind of compact..strapped to the boots...modern day nylon grid, designed to spread the weight over a larger surface. I had an old pair of Alaskan snow shoes. They were as long as skis and clunky and difficult to walk on. But they kept me from sinking into the snow.
I was about half-way across the length of the lake, when the tip of my snowshoe snagged on a branch protruding from the snow. I fell and began to tumble down the hill toward the frozen lake. I was maybe fifty feet from certain doom when as I rolled past another branch, I slammed my rifle across it and broke my fall. I got to my feet, dusted snow off me and proceeded to catch up with my companions, who hadn't even noticed my near fatality.
We proceeded without incident to the sign-in station. There, a 6 foot long, carved wooden plaque mounted on rough-hewn logs proclaimed: "Hoover Wilderness." It was at about knee-level. In the summer, one could walk beneath it.
In the summer this trail could be travelled on horseback. In winter, sled dogs would shy away. But not three adventurous teenagers. We signed in...so that if we never emerged, they'd know who the decaying bodies were...and entered the woods.
I still remember how mysterious and dangerous the forest seemed to become the instant we passed the sign. We had gone from civilization to who-knows-where in a single step and headed confidently along what seemed to be a trail.
The trail was a bit of a sticking point on which we were kind of unsettled, since the it was covered with some seven feet of snow. But the forest canopy spread here and appeared to continue doing so for the limited distance that we could see. So we followed it, looking for Barney Lake, a favorite fishing spot of Jim's. We guessed that we could make it in about seven hours. The trail petered out at the first clearing. We had travelled all of about half a mile.
Seven hours and several map/compass consultations later, we had no idea where we were. Terry, as it turned out, was about as good at map reading as I was at fishing. So, I took point and headed for the only mountain we could see all through the hike. After about another two hours, we emerged into a snow-covered meadow. Terry immediately set about getting his (and our) bearings.
"So, are we near Barney Lake?"
"I think so."
"How far?"
"Near as I can figure, about 12 feet."
Turns out we were standing atop the lake. It was covered with snow. Standing in the middle of a frozen lake wasn't the ideal objective for this trip, so we decided to find a place to camp. Unfortunately, everything was covered in twelve feet of snow. We retreated into the woods until we found a spot where an evergreen had spread wide enough to make a clearing beneath itself. It was surrounded by a protective wall of snow. This was to be our campsite.
So far, no sign of bears. It never dawned on any of us that they might be hibernating this time of year. We hung our packs high in the tree so that if a bear did happen on our camp, it couldn't get to them. Then we scrounged up some dry wood, built a fire and settled in.
That night, I came face to face with the beast. I was awakened at about 3 a.m. to a rustling sound coming from the general direction of where we hung our packs. I had my rifle at the ready next to my sleeping bag, as well as a four cell flashlight. Carefully, I slipped the 10 shot rotary magazine into the receiver of Old Betsy. (That wasn't really what I called the gun, but I should have. It was what Davy Crockett called his long rifle. That was me that night.)
With caution borne of trying not to alert the bear, I turned on the flashlight and held it against the underside of Old Betsy so that it pointed where I pointed the gun. I began to scan the general area of the tree. Nothing. I surmised that perhaps the bear had climbed the tree, so I shone the beam up into it. Still nothing. But there was that rustling sound. Something was at our packs. Jim had mostly fishing gear and a few cameras in his pack. Terry had the cook stove and more camera gear in his pack. I was carrying the freeze-dried food and the cook kit in mine. Mine was the obvious target.
There was the rustling again. Something was definitely at my pack. But what? A bear cub? I heard scampering away from the pack. Seemed too big for a bear cub. Then it moved back toward the pack. Whatever was up there was fast. I could hear the clatter of the mess kit moving about. The pack swayed some, dangling from the branch as it was. I shone the light on the top of the pack. Suddenly, the culprit showed itself. It was the most gigantic and vicious squirrel I have ever seen. It sent a shudder of fear down my back to see it poke it's head from the top of the pack. It climbed from within and sat arrogantly atop the pack staring back at me.
Alright, in the interest of accuracy, it wasn't all that big. And it was actually frozen with fear in the beam of my flashlight...a deer in the headlights of an approaching car. But the little bugger was eating my freeze-dried food! It sat there, atop my pack, chomping on whatever it had gotten from the packets inside. What was I going to eat now?
I had only one course of action. I carefully drew a bead on the little scavenger. I lined that beast up in the cross-hairs of my scope, intent on blowing him back to whichever tree in hell he came from. I squeezed the trigger. Blam! One shot found its mark.
That mark was about a foot below the squirrel. I put a hole through the middle of my backpack. My companions awakened suddenly at the sound and for a moment, general panic ensued. When I explained what had happened, we pulled my pack down out of the tree. My bullet had passed though all three nested pans of the cook kit and through the only package of freeze-dried food the squirrel hadn't gotten into. Worst of all, marksmanship took a drubbing. Resigned to solving our food dilemma in the morning, we all laid back down to sleep, but I was troubled. How could I have missed so badly? In the distance, I was sure I could hear squirrel laughter.
By morning, Jim had a solution to our food problem. He was going to fish. I asked how he planned to do that in a lake covered with 12 feet of snow. His idea was to take a branch., strip it and sharpen it, and plunge it into the snow to the lake surface. The he'd build a fire, heat the tip, poke it through the ice, drop a line and catch fish. I was amazed. It was at once, brilliantly simple and the stupidest plan I'd ever heard. But, having none better, I shrugged my accord and he set about looking for a straight and stout limb.
Meanwhile I examined my rifle. At first glance, nothing looked wrong. But on closer inspection, I saw that the scope had been knocked seriously out of alignment. I did a couple of test shots, and it was consistently shooting about a foot below where I was aiming.
Only three days earlier, I had aligned those sights so that I could put ten shots practically through the same hole in a fifty foot target. Then it came to me. The day before, that gun had saved my life! I must have knocked the sights out alignment when I broke my fall down the hill by Twin Lakes. Idiot!
What a trip. No food. A navigator who couldn't find his way out of a sleeping bag. A lunatic trying to catch fish that were probably down there laughing at him, and me...Daniel Bonehead, frontiersdweeb. Thank God there were no barns in the vicinity to test my marksmanship further. I wouldn't be able to hit the broad side of one.
A few hours later. Jim returned with his catch. It was the branch. So there we were. No food. No fish. And facing another night with lots of neither. We decided that the smart thing to do was head back down the mountain and get to our car before nightfall. We had just about enough time to to do that. We could drive down to Bridgeport, get a meal and a motel room and head for home the next day. At least it was a plan. We packed up and headed out.
Terry, who had spent the morning pouring over his maps was certain he had the best route and foolishly, Jim and I let him take point. I mean, neither one of us had done anything particularly brilliant in the last couple days. The downhill journey should be easier too...and faster.
Seven hours later, we were lost. Not real lost, but Terry's route had taken us over a fall of snow that we had to dig ourselves out from, across a stream we had never crossed, and into a part of the valley we had never seen. Worse, a storm was coming in and it was getting dark fast. We decided to set up camp and stay another night in this God-forsaken wilderness. Oh. And we were hungry.
Again, we found a small clearing under a tree and again we scrounged up wood to build a fire. Night fell like the blade of a guillotine. We sang campfire songs, told ghost stories and toasted marshmallows...Yeah, right. In sheer exhaustion, we all fell into a deep sleep. And the storm came in. Overnight it dropped to three below zero. And when we awakened in the morning, our little clearing under the tree was surrounded with a four foot high ring of snow.
Terry left his boots out of his sleeping bag and they were frozen solid. We had to roast them over the morning fire to thaw them out. We melted some snow into water, imagined ourselves drinking hot coffee, packed up and set out.
Things looked familiar right away. That hill! That's the one that was on the right when we headed up the draw. In the morning light, we soon figured out exactly where we were. It helped that we hadn't gone fifty yards before we found the cabins of the Twin Lakes campground. Slapping ourselves mentally, we hiked another couple hundred yards to the Corvair. At least we thought it was the Corvair. It was actually a five foot mound of snow. We dug it out, loaded it up, and had our first good luck in 50 hours. It started.
We headed into Bridgeport for breakfast. Jim wanted trout, understandably. Terry opted for pancakes. I ordered squirrel. I had to settle for bacon and eggs.
I carry many memories of that trip...mostly painful ones. But the one I have kept close to my heart these many years...and I still cling to it today as strongly as I did then, is the knowledge that that damned squirrel was eating freeze dried cottage cheese. I can almost hear the kaboom as he drank his first sip of water and exploded into a million little squirrel pieces. That's my fondest memory of our High Sierra Adventure.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
My Ultimate Humiliation-Based On True Events
Perspective has its advantages. The old saying about 20-20 hindsight is absolutely true. If something could have been handled differently, one can pinpoint that very thing and make the "pin-pointer" feel like an imbecile for not seeing then, what is so obvious now.
For me though, there is a greater purpose...and that is embellishment! With embellishment I can take a mundane moment and make it magnificent. I can make memory mountains out of memory molehills...I can make a walk in the park, a grand adventure in an uncharted jungle. But even more importantly, embellishment gives me the power to make the painful funny...or at least less painful.
I have borne the burden of that painful moment in time for a long while, searching for a way tto share with some sympathetic soul my story, and in that sharing, ease my humiliation and pain. I have finally named that moment. That name is... MY COLONOSCOPY!
I didn't mean to take you by surprise. I'm certain you are already wincing from images that word has elicited in your mind's eye...images of bare posteriors in medical gowns open to the back, lined up awaiting their turns in depressingly curtained medical suites replete with vile instrumentation and tools of torture.
These are visions that you neither enjoy nor wish to have stuck in your brain. (Imagine "It's A Small Small World" running through your head for days on end.) Let me assure you that no unspeakable horror you may conjure, can even begin to mirror the desperate anguish of the actual experience. For me, the reality was horrific, embarrassing and of course, painful. Or at least that was how it was until I took a look back on it. Here's how I see it now.
I made a serious error in telling my doctor that my family history included some Cancer. Based solely on that statement, she made the decision that to prevent outbreaks of that heinous disease in me, I must be publicly humiliated and probed mercilessly every 10 years until the end of my life. As I drove home, depressed, I was certain that that end would be coming very soon, not from Cancer...but rather, embarrassment.
Fortunately for my psyche, I belong to Kaiser Permanente, a massive HMO that moves at the speed of wind erosion. I had time to mentally prepare for the procedure while bureaucracy ground along. It was a long time...a very long time. The "Hundred Years War" went faster. Pluto's orbit is faster. I can stand still at nearly twice the speed.
I spent the intervening time practicing yoga, meditating, repainting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as stripes...and when I reached my 137th birthday, I received a letter with my referral date. It was hand-written on parchment with a quill pen. And the date was still six months off. I was required to phone and schedule a class.
I called and was informed that there was some risk to the procedure, and since I would be sedated, I had to take a group class about how to prepare for any potential problems. Seizing on the obviously illogical, I questioned my being required to learn the details and pitfalls of a procedure I would sleep through. And since I could have no control over what went on during the procedure, I wasn't sure I wanted to know the risks. I would sleep through them too.
The nurse said the risks were very small, but by law I had to be informed of them. Again I questioned how law enforcement could possibly be interested in what went on beyond my sphincter. And I assured her that if it was a risk of humiliation, I already knew all about that one. I was always the last kid picked for softball in elementary school and no class at Kaiser could ever fix that. And I began to cry.
But she wasn't buying and mumbled some prepared answer about informed consent. Before I could protest further, I was scheduled for a class two weeks prior to the procedure. This made me happy, since I would now be able to age several more decades before the probe. I asked if I could just come in and sign the consent form but was told no, because I had to learn how to use the Golightly. "Golightly?", I asked of the hangup click and dial tone.
I have come to agree with Einstein...whose name shares its letters with most of mine...that our movement through time is relative. Except that for me, the entire process seemed to work in reverse. I should have had eons before that class, but dreading what was before me, caused to time to compress and slip by at breakneck speed. My wait lasted about as long as it took to melt a Popsicle in the summer heat.
The time for the class arrived and for some reason I cannot explain, the normally heavy traffic heading to the hospital was unusually light and I arrived early. I suspected that this was due to some little-known corollary to Einstein's theory, but who cares anyway?
Myself and about a dozen other stony countenanced victims-to-be were treated to a slide show about the possible things that might go wrong during the procedure. Yes I said a slide show, as this was before the age of the Power Point presentation.
As I divided my time between the slide show and gazing about the small, dimly lit room, two things became evident: 1) Facing this procedure required a level of courage. Everyone else sat motionless and looking like the stone heads on Easter island. And...2) Most of the possible things that might go wrong during the procedure involved some sort of mistake by the doctor administering the probe. I wondered why Kaiser would place my ascending, transverse and descending colons in the hands of an incompetent.
At the end of the slide show, the nurse had us sign the informed consent form. which basically said that we, (hereinafter called the victims), held Kaiser, (hereinafter called the tormentor), blameless for anything that might go wrong during the procedure on or in any area of our lives for the rest of time.
Essentially, the form we signed implied that if the victims were say, to be killed by the tormentor during a home invasion robbery, we would have no legal recourse...not that that would matter to dead people. I suppose that's a bad example, since it would never happen. Doctors never make house calls anymore.
Then we were each given a prescription for "Colyte," and told to proceed to the pharmacy in the next building where for the sum of $13.00, we would get what we needed. Both the figure 13 and the "get what we needed" statement bode badly I thought. The implication was that I would be dealing with a pusher who only dealt with the unlucky. Not far off in that assessment.
I had to ask the question. "What happened to the Golightly?"
"Colyte is the generic equivalent."
"The other one sounds so much more gentle."
"We don't use that anymore."
"What's it for?"
"Weren't you watching the slide show?"
"Uh...some."
"Well, you drink it to clean out your system for the procedure. You'll like it. It's pineapple flavored."
"Pineapple doesn't agree with me. Are there any other flavors?"
"Nope. Just pineapple."
"What if it gives me heartburn...pineapple usually does."
"Oh believe me. Heartburn is one thing you won't get."
And she smiled in a way that said I was in for it. I wished I knew what "It" was. I soon found out that I didn't want to know.
I purchased the "Colyte" and a perky pharmacist's assistant told me that I needed to drink the entire thing the night before the procedure. She then handed me an instruction sheet and an empty gallon milk container.
When I asked her where the Colyte was, she replied that it was in the container. I looked carefully and found about four ounces of an ominous powder at the bottom of the jug. All I had to do was add cold water and shake it up...Oh yeah, and drink an eight ounce glass of the mixture every fifteen minutes...Oh yeah, and stay close...very close...to a toilet.
"You'll like it. It tastes like pineapple."
Ten days later, I began a fast. This was part of the instructions that came with the Colyte. I could only have clear liquids for 48 hours prior to the procedure. And nothing red. I don't know why, but I'm guessing that red liquids taste better than colorless ones and therefore would make the fast less annoying. I also wondered what the point was to have a procedure that someday might save my life if I died of starvation preparing for it.
We'll skip over the Colyte night, except to say that it was absolutely the worst pineapple drink I ever tasted. Not even the perspective of hindsight can erase that awful pseudo-pineapple taste. That bad joke on the taste buds is forever burned into my sense memory. The very thought of it reviles me and sends me running for a glass of lemonade.
But admittedly, it did have the desired effect. Although desired is not how I would characterize it. I spent six hours racing to and barely making it to, the bathroom. Eventually, I just put a few select copies of Scientific American on the sink and skimmed articles about Colon Cancer. I needed some serious motivation to face my tomorrow.
Bright and early, my wife and I arose and headed to the hospital, my colon fully cleansed. I looked forward to the moment I would be allowed to eat solid food again, being at death's door from starvation. I was oddly at peace knowing I would not be allowed to drive home, since I was to be placed in a "twilight sleep" with Demerol.
We arrived at the hospital and were quickly ushered into a locker room where I was told to remove everything except my socks and put on the supplied hospital gown, open to the back. My gown was one of those new cheery ones. It had been laundered dozens of times and had faded greatly. Mine looked as though it had branding irons and hot pokers adorning it. At least that's how I remember it. My wife says it was golf clubs. And my socks didn't match.
Soon, I was in pre-op. Here, they made me sign another disclaimer. I think this one absolved them of all responsibility if they inadvertently sucked the life out of me while administering the Demerol.
The anesthesiologist came in and introduced himself. He said I would likely stay asleep throughout the procedure, but if I experienced any discomfort, I could ask them to increase the dose. He then inserted the needle. It hurt. So I asked him to increase the dosage. And by the way, he was lying.
As I slipped off into another world, the last thing I remember of the moment was the gurney moving.
I can only speculate on what happened next. I believe I was mistaken for a tire...(a white-wall of course)...because someone inserted an air-hose into me through a valve that should never be used for that purpose and began to pump me up to 32 p.s.i. I awakened in severe lower gastro-intestinal discomfort. I begged the doctor for more Demerol. He said I already had more than he liked giving me, and that the air would soon distribute itself throughout my colon and the pain would ebb.
I was devising various kinds of revenge for the anesthesiologist, when the pain began to ebb and I found myself distracted by the video screen directly in front of me. Navigating the twists and bulges of my colon was a camera. It was as if we were spelunking a cave on the National Geographic channel. I was all pink within and clean...and frankly kind of boring. I asked the doctor if he could turn to the Sci-Fi channel. The nurse, who had been staring intently at places I usually reserve for only my closest companion, snickered. Then I wondered aloud if maybe this was the Sci-Fi channel and she laughed out loud. I was just starting to appreciate having an audience when the camera abruptly reversed direction. And as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. I slipped gently back to sleep.
When I awakened, I was back with my wife in the post-op room. I felt fine, except that I was still inflated like a parade balloon. The doctor arrived and pronounced my intestines clear of any signs of disease. He asked me to pass gas. I begged his pardon. He replied as if I hadn't heard him, adding that when I was able to do that, he could release me. I pushed against the discomfort and a familiar little sound convinced the doctor that I was recovered enough to leave.
Discharge signed, I went into the changing room and a few minutes later, we departed. Still, I was full of air. But the doctor had assured me it would work its way down in short order.
For me though, there is a greater purpose...and that is embellishment! With embellishment I can take a mundane moment and make it magnificent. I can make memory mountains out of memory molehills...I can make a walk in the park, a grand adventure in an uncharted jungle. But even more importantly, embellishment gives me the power to make the painful funny...or at least less painful.
I have borne the burden of that painful moment in time for a long while, searching for a way tto share with some sympathetic soul my story, and in that sharing, ease my humiliation and pain. I have finally named that moment. That name is... MY COLONOSCOPY!
I didn't mean to take you by surprise. I'm certain you are already wincing from images that word has elicited in your mind's eye...images of bare posteriors in medical gowns open to the back, lined up awaiting their turns in depressingly curtained medical suites replete with vile instrumentation and tools of torture.
These are visions that you neither enjoy nor wish to have stuck in your brain. (Imagine "It's A Small Small World" running through your head for days on end.) Let me assure you that no unspeakable horror you may conjure, can even begin to mirror the desperate anguish of the actual experience. For me, the reality was horrific, embarrassing and of course, painful. Or at least that was how it was until I took a look back on it. Here's how I see it now.
I made a serious error in telling my doctor that my family history included some Cancer. Based solely on that statement, she made the decision that to prevent outbreaks of that heinous disease in me, I must be publicly humiliated and probed mercilessly every 10 years until the end of my life. As I drove home, depressed, I was certain that that end would be coming very soon, not from Cancer...but rather, embarrassment.
Fortunately for my psyche, I belong to Kaiser Permanente, a massive HMO that moves at the speed of wind erosion. I had time to mentally prepare for the procedure while bureaucracy ground along. It was a long time...a very long time. The "Hundred Years War" went faster. Pluto's orbit is faster. I can stand still at nearly twice the speed.
I spent the intervening time practicing yoga, meditating, repainting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as stripes...and when I reached my 137th birthday, I received a letter with my referral date. It was hand-written on parchment with a quill pen. And the date was still six months off. I was required to phone and schedule a class.
I called and was informed that there was some risk to the procedure, and since I would be sedated, I had to take a group class about how to prepare for any potential problems. Seizing on the obviously illogical, I questioned my being required to learn the details and pitfalls of a procedure I would sleep through. And since I could have no control over what went on during the procedure, I wasn't sure I wanted to know the risks. I would sleep through them too.
The nurse said the risks were very small, but by law I had to be informed of them. Again I questioned how law enforcement could possibly be interested in what went on beyond my sphincter. And I assured her that if it was a risk of humiliation, I already knew all about that one. I was always the last kid picked for softball in elementary school and no class at Kaiser could ever fix that. And I began to cry.
But she wasn't buying and mumbled some prepared answer about informed consent. Before I could protest further, I was scheduled for a class two weeks prior to the procedure. This made me happy, since I would now be able to age several more decades before the probe. I asked if I could just come in and sign the consent form but was told no, because I had to learn how to use the Golightly. "Golightly?", I asked of the hangup click and dial tone.
I have come to agree with Einstein...whose name shares its letters with most of mine...that our movement through time is relative. Except that for me, the entire process seemed to work in reverse. I should have had eons before that class, but dreading what was before me, caused to time to compress and slip by at breakneck speed. My wait lasted about as long as it took to melt a Popsicle in the summer heat.
The time for the class arrived and for some reason I cannot explain, the normally heavy traffic heading to the hospital was unusually light and I arrived early. I suspected that this was due to some little-known corollary to Einstein's theory, but who cares anyway?
Myself and about a dozen other stony countenanced victims-to-be were treated to a slide show about the possible things that might go wrong during the procedure. Yes I said a slide show, as this was before the age of the Power Point presentation.
As I divided my time between the slide show and gazing about the small, dimly lit room, two things became evident: 1) Facing this procedure required a level of courage. Everyone else sat motionless and looking like the stone heads on Easter island. And...2) Most of the possible things that might go wrong during the procedure involved some sort of mistake by the doctor administering the probe. I wondered why Kaiser would place my ascending, transverse and descending colons in the hands of an incompetent.
At the end of the slide show, the nurse had us sign the informed consent form. which basically said that we, (hereinafter called the victims), held Kaiser, (hereinafter called the tormentor), blameless for anything that might go wrong during the procedure on or in any area of our lives for the rest of time.
Essentially, the form we signed implied that if the victims were say, to be killed by the tormentor during a home invasion robbery, we would have no legal recourse...not that that would matter to dead people. I suppose that's a bad example, since it would never happen. Doctors never make house calls anymore.
Then we were each given a prescription for "Colyte," and told to proceed to the pharmacy in the next building where for the sum of $13.00, we would get what we needed. Both the figure 13 and the "get what we needed" statement bode badly I thought. The implication was that I would be dealing with a pusher who only dealt with the unlucky. Not far off in that assessment.
I had to ask the question. "What happened to the Golightly?"
"Colyte is the generic equivalent."
"The other one sounds so much more gentle."
"We don't use that anymore."
"What's it for?"
"Weren't you watching the slide show?"
"Uh...some."
"Well, you drink it to clean out your system for the procedure. You'll like it. It's pineapple flavored."
"Pineapple doesn't agree with me. Are there any other flavors?"
"Nope. Just pineapple."
"What if it gives me heartburn...pineapple usually does."
"Oh believe me. Heartburn is one thing you won't get."
And she smiled in a way that said I was in for it. I wished I knew what "It" was. I soon found out that I didn't want to know.
I purchased the "Colyte" and a perky pharmacist's assistant told me that I needed to drink the entire thing the night before the procedure. She then handed me an instruction sheet and an empty gallon milk container.
When I asked her where the Colyte was, she replied that it was in the container. I looked carefully and found about four ounces of an ominous powder at the bottom of the jug. All I had to do was add cold water and shake it up...Oh yeah, and drink an eight ounce glass of the mixture every fifteen minutes...Oh yeah, and stay close...very close...to a toilet.
"You'll like it. It tastes like pineapple."
Ten days later, I began a fast. This was part of the instructions that came with the Colyte. I could only have clear liquids for 48 hours prior to the procedure. And nothing red. I don't know why, but I'm guessing that red liquids taste better than colorless ones and therefore would make the fast less annoying. I also wondered what the point was to have a procedure that someday might save my life if I died of starvation preparing for it.
We'll skip over the Colyte night, except to say that it was absolutely the worst pineapple drink I ever tasted. Not even the perspective of hindsight can erase that awful pseudo-pineapple taste. That bad joke on the taste buds is forever burned into my sense memory. The very thought of it reviles me and sends me running for a glass of lemonade.
But admittedly, it did have the desired effect. Although desired is not how I would characterize it. I spent six hours racing to and barely making it to, the bathroom. Eventually, I just put a few select copies of Scientific American on the sink and skimmed articles about Colon Cancer. I needed some serious motivation to face my tomorrow.
Bright and early, my wife and I arose and headed to the hospital, my colon fully cleansed. I looked forward to the moment I would be allowed to eat solid food again, being at death's door from starvation. I was oddly at peace knowing I would not be allowed to drive home, since I was to be placed in a "twilight sleep" with Demerol.
We arrived at the hospital and were quickly ushered into a locker room where I was told to remove everything except my socks and put on the supplied hospital gown, open to the back. My gown was one of those new cheery ones. It had been laundered dozens of times and had faded greatly. Mine looked as though it had branding irons and hot pokers adorning it. At least that's how I remember it. My wife says it was golf clubs. And my socks didn't match.
Soon, I was in pre-op. Here, they made me sign another disclaimer. I think this one absolved them of all responsibility if they inadvertently sucked the life out of me while administering the Demerol.
The anesthesiologist came in and introduced himself. He said I would likely stay asleep throughout the procedure, but if I experienced any discomfort, I could ask them to increase the dose. He then inserted the needle. It hurt. So I asked him to increase the dosage. And by the way, he was lying.
As I slipped off into another world, the last thing I remember of the moment was the gurney moving.
I can only speculate on what happened next. I believe I was mistaken for a tire...(a white-wall of course)...because someone inserted an air-hose into me through a valve that should never be used for that purpose and began to pump me up to 32 p.s.i. I awakened in severe lower gastro-intestinal discomfort. I begged the doctor for more Demerol. He said I already had more than he liked giving me, and that the air would soon distribute itself throughout my colon and the pain would ebb.
I was devising various kinds of revenge for the anesthesiologist, when the pain began to ebb and I found myself distracted by the video screen directly in front of me. Navigating the twists and bulges of my colon was a camera. It was as if we were spelunking a cave on the National Geographic channel. I was all pink within and clean...and frankly kind of boring. I asked the doctor if he could turn to the Sci-Fi channel. The nurse, who had been staring intently at places I usually reserve for only my closest companion, snickered. Then I wondered aloud if maybe this was the Sci-Fi channel and she laughed out loud. I was just starting to appreciate having an audience when the camera abruptly reversed direction. And as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. I slipped gently back to sleep.
When I awakened, I was back with my wife in the post-op room. I felt fine, except that I was still inflated like a parade balloon. The doctor arrived and pronounced my intestines clear of any signs of disease. He asked me to pass gas. I begged his pardon. He replied as if I hadn't heard him, adding that when I was able to do that, he could release me. I pushed against the discomfort and a familiar little sound convinced the doctor that I was recovered enough to leave.
Discharge signed, I went into the changing room and a few minutes later, we departed. Still, I was full of air. But the doctor had assured me it would work its way down in short order.
We boarded the elevator and headed down to the ground floor. As we passed the third floor, all hell let loose from you know where. The tire deflated in its entirety. Thank God only my wife was on the elevator with me. I would have been mortified in a crowd.
The doors opened on the second floor and a couple of orderlies boarded. One turned to the other and said: "I wonder what they're using to disinfect these now. It smells like pineapple." Now, I WAS mortified. The doors opened on the ground floor and we slinked away, my wife giggling at my humiliation.
I now have something in common with Katie Couric. She gave the television audience a guided tour of her colon when she had her procedure. And though I had no television crew with me, I hope this gives you, the reader some insight into what you might face in the future. For me, I have to face it again in five years. I'm considering swallowing a glass eyeball beforehand. I'd love to see the doctor looking up me and having me looking back.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Further Clarification
I bought an airplane model recently. It was manufactured in the Republic of South Korea. The directions were translated in Borneo by a Komodo Dragon.
They were so unclear that I was fairly certain I was building a balsa wood and paper submarine. The description in step 14...which by the way came before step 12...consisted of the phrase: "After a time, constracted fuserage." It seems evident that the intention of the sentence was to show what the finished fuselage was to look like. But step 14 was about how to attach the "papre to the winges with the thinning grue."
That was as clear as it got. Normally, I would at this point be thanking the stars that the pieces were pre-cut. And I truly wanted to do so. But when I snapped out the components for the winges, they were of different sizes and the shapes didn't seem symmetrical at all. I decided that the plane must be designed to fly in slow circles so you couldn't lose it. I can accept that.
Having finished the winges, I must say I had built a handsome boomerang. And it only weighed about half an ounce. This was useful, since there were no instructions at all on how to attach them to the constracted fuserage, except an arrow that began at a corner of the sheet and snaked its way to the top of the fuserage, just behind the cockpit. The legend for the arrow simply read: "Frat spot." I opted to grue the winges to the frat spot on the top of the plane.
Now, this is a "ruber band power of plane" and near as I can tell, you have to attach the ruber band to the tail section hook and to the "spiner brades in the noses cone" before you cover the fuserage with paper. But step 16 tells you how and when to do that and I had a "constracted fuserage" after step 14,...which as we all know, came before step 12.
So, now I had a constracted fuserage with no motive power since the ruber band lay in the box and the whole thing was grued together already. But it looked very cool. The winges were at an odd angle to the body of the plane and the tail...it had no tail. The tail parts were not in the kit. There was a mention of the tail on the instruction sheet. It clearly indicated how to bend the "elevatings" up, to make the "plane arcing into higher post of the sky." It also indicated in centimeters the proper "angle for make winges tip apart." But there were no parts in the box.
There did seem to be an abundance of tissue paper to wrap the missing parts. So, I took a whack at it with my x-acto knife and the excess balsa from the parts I did have. I carved out what semed a fair tail approximation. This was fine. The way I cut out parts and the way the manufacturer cut out parts...we were neck and neck.
Soon I had a finished plane. And it was a beauty. I spray-painted it bright red and in honor of it's design, appropriately named it: "Ker-wham!"
I took it up on the roof of my parents' home since it had no ruber band power of plane, and launched it into the mild breezes of Long Island. It sailed exactly as expected, in a lazy left arc. Suddenly, like a cartoon character realizing it had run out of cliff, it stalled in mid-air. I could almost imagine it looking down and turning to look out at me with a nervous gulp. Then it took a perpendicular-to-the-earth nose dive straight out of a thousand dogfight movies. All it lacked was the sound of a dive whine. An instant later, it both lived down to and screamed out it's name. Ker-Wham became "Ker-Was," shattering into a million pieces, ironically, against the windshield of my Hyundai Santa Fe.
I decided at this point to write the manufacturer a letter to complain about the missing parts and the useless directions. They replied politely, with the following paragraph:
"It is painful to engage a fine costumer as you of such unhappiness. We will endeavour a kit of better behaviour and with more transliterred instractions."
I am not hopeful.
They were so unclear that I was fairly certain I was building a balsa wood and paper submarine. The description in step 14...which by the way came before step 12...consisted of the phrase: "After a time, constracted fuserage." It seems evident that the intention of the sentence was to show what the finished fuselage was to look like. But step 14 was about how to attach the "papre to the winges with the thinning grue."
That was as clear as it got. Normally, I would at this point be thanking the stars that the pieces were pre-cut. And I truly wanted to do so. But when I snapped out the components for the winges, they were of different sizes and the shapes didn't seem symmetrical at all. I decided that the plane must be designed to fly in slow circles so you couldn't lose it. I can accept that.
Having finished the winges, I must say I had built a handsome boomerang. And it only weighed about half an ounce. This was useful, since there were no instructions at all on how to attach them to the constracted fuserage, except an arrow that began at a corner of the sheet and snaked its way to the top of the fuserage, just behind the cockpit. The legend for the arrow simply read: "Frat spot." I opted to grue the winges to the frat spot on the top of the plane.
Now, this is a "ruber band power of plane" and near as I can tell, you have to attach the ruber band to the tail section hook and to the "spiner brades in the noses cone" before you cover the fuserage with paper. But step 16 tells you how and when to do that and I had a "constracted fuserage" after step 14,...which as we all know, came before step 12.
So, now I had a constracted fuserage with no motive power since the ruber band lay in the box and the whole thing was grued together already. But it looked very cool. The winges were at an odd angle to the body of the plane and the tail...it had no tail. The tail parts were not in the kit. There was a mention of the tail on the instruction sheet. It clearly indicated how to bend the "elevatings" up, to make the "plane arcing into higher post of the sky." It also indicated in centimeters the proper "angle for make winges tip apart." But there were no parts in the box.
There did seem to be an abundance of tissue paper to wrap the missing parts. So, I took a whack at it with my x-acto knife and the excess balsa from the parts I did have. I carved out what semed a fair tail approximation. This was fine. The way I cut out parts and the way the manufacturer cut out parts...we were neck and neck.
Soon I had a finished plane. And it was a beauty. I spray-painted it bright red and in honor of it's design, appropriately named it: "Ker-wham!"
I took it up on the roof of my parents' home since it had no ruber band power of plane, and launched it into the mild breezes of Long Island. It sailed exactly as expected, in a lazy left arc. Suddenly, like a cartoon character realizing it had run out of cliff, it stalled in mid-air. I could almost imagine it looking down and turning to look out at me with a nervous gulp. Then it took a perpendicular-to-the-earth nose dive straight out of a thousand dogfight movies. All it lacked was the sound of a dive whine. An instant later, it both lived down to and screamed out it's name. Ker-Wham became "Ker-Was," shattering into a million pieces, ironically, against the windshield of my Hyundai Santa Fe.
I decided at this point to write the manufacturer a letter to complain about the missing parts and the useless directions. They replied politely, with the following paragraph:
"It is painful to engage a fine costumer as you of such unhappiness. We will endeavour a kit of better behaviour and with more transliterred instractions."
I am not hopeful.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Carnival Knowledge
The Midway that is life. I misspent my youth traveling that hard road chasing a dream I couldn't define. I bounced from from one town to the next, scratching out a meager existence. When one does that, one expects every bump in the road. Such is the existence of a carny.
It was right about the time the Viet Nam war wound down. I was a kid of 17 during that stormy spring in '72. I'd split from home right after my senior year in high school, not wanting to go on to college and not wanting to have the discussion about what I wanted to do. Fortunately, the folks were so busy with their own self-centered lives, they never even noticed I was gone. I was blown away when I wrote them a month after I left and they replied that they thought I'd gone to summer camp. What? Did they think I was twelve? But, rather than try to make them notice me, I got my independence and left it at that.
Outside of Kansas city, along the banks of the Missouri river, I was sleeping in the shadow of a grain silo when a travelling show...a carnival, pulled onto the property and began setting up. Hungry and needing some quick cash, I joined up. I figured I'd work a few days and be on my way. A few days stretched into a few months and longer. I picked up the trade fast. I was a smart kid...or so I thought. I think if it had been a few hundred years earlier, my fellow employees would've been pirates. That's all we were...land pirates...who paid taxes...sometimes.
Anyway, we were setting up on the outskirts of a small Missouri town. And the wind was kicking up so strong that we couldn't hardly keep the joints in one piece. Every time a roustabout'd get something nailed down, a big gust would come along and blow it all to smithereens.
Then, this "Reverend Michael" showed up. No one saw him arrive. He was just there. And with him came the eerie calm. And I mean it was eerie. No wind. No sign of any kind of weather. Just calm. It was like we were setting up in a big empty room. While he was on the grounds, we got nearly everything operating except for a couple of the big rides. And those could be set up in a hurricane. Which is lucky, because it got that way later.
The Rev went right to the manager's office and asked if he could arrange for a church charity bazaar with us. The boss agreed right off because a couple thousand extra customers was hard to turn away.
Also because the boss knew a mark when he saw one. He told the Rev he'd split the take 50-50. 'Course the boss never intended a 50-50. The Rev'd be lucky to get 10 percent. And I suspect that the boss meant to pocket the whole nut and light out.
Most of the crew were alright with that, being carnys. For them, real satisfaction came from wringing that last buck out of a mark who's trying to win a bear for his squeeze. But we didn't rip off each other. That just wasn't honorable. Also, if you stole from another carny, or the boss, you just might end up under the wheels of the last eighteen wheeler to leave the grounds. I guess carny morals were what you'd call...modifiable. I wasn't all that comfortable with the boss' plans, but I needed the money.
The Rev left and the winds came back full on strong, just as we were setting up the big rides. I was feeling uneasy about that. Word came down to "gaff" the games. They were going to be flat. No one would win. We were gonna burn the lot of them. The Larry's in this town could be bought off for a few bucks in patch money. It didn't take much juice to buy off a cop in the Midwest. But those winds. They made it real hard to do anything right...or wrong even.
The weekend came and the townspeople came with it. Simple, church-going folk. I didn't see the brewing storm. No one did. This little town was gonna be trouble. I just didn't know that it would come in the form of a girl named Lizzie.
I was running the Tilt-A-Whirl. I could usually collect about twenty bucks in loose change from the cars at the end of a night. I remember that my father had a big overstuffed couch like that. When I was a kid I could dig through it for nickles and the occasional dime. The Tilt-A-Whirl paid better.
I was bent over pulling out a quarter stuck behind the seat from its hiding place. It was a really uncomfortable position. With my arm extended that far back behind the seat, I was forced to turn my head towards the safety bar. My view of the world was sideways and horizontally bisected.
As I sweated and strained to reach the payoff, into that odd world view walked half a pair of the most beautiful gams history has ever recorded. I had to assume the other half was just as spectacular. When I finally pulled my arm out, I had not only the quarter, but a dime stuck to it with chewing gum. It was turning into a good night. When I stood up and gazed at the gorgeous face body attached to those legs, it turned into a great night.
"Hi," she said. "My name is Lizzie."
She said she was 19, and a bottler in the line at the local brewery. She said that she'd always wanted to ride a Tilt-A-Whirl. I stammered something about four tickets to ride and she lifted her skirt a few inches...I think four. That was good enough for me. I opened the gate and led her to the cleanest car on the ride. This kind of dame didn't sit in puddles of Dubble Bubble.
As the night wore on, she rode the ride at least a couple of dozen times. She kept smiling at me. And each time I saw her, I got the feeling that she was interested in something more than just the ride. Then she asked me to ride with her. No one else was in line, so I agreed. We got into the car and the self-timer started it up. As soon as the ride began to move, so did Lizzie. She was all over me, kissing me and putting her hands on places I wouldn't touch myself.
By the time the ride stopped, I was more exhausted than I thought possible. But this girl, she just stood up, smoothed out the wrinkles in her poodle skirt and hopped off the ride. She asked me if I'd win a bear for her. The winds had started up again big time, and people were taking shelter in their cars and most of them were leaving. I couldn't refuse...I didn't want to.
The midway was a ghost town, so we headed over to the ring toss. The game was nearly impossible, since the rings were only a 32nd of an inch larger than the bottles they had to land on. If they didn't land absolutely perpendicular, they bounced away. People won at the game maybe one time in ten thousand. I laid down my dollar and got three rings. I noticed that the winds were howling all around, but not at the booth where we stood. Lizzie kissed the rings for good luck and had me throw them all at once. All three landed square on a bottle. We won three giant bears. The rousty working the booth was dumbstruck. And Lizzie? She just wanted to go to the dart toss.
The calm that was with us at the ring toss seemed to follow us to the darts booth. The balloons attached to the cork board stopped blowing around and just hung there. Again, I laid my money down. I got three darts and again. Lizzie kissed them for luck. She told me to throw them all at once. Pow-Pow-Pow. They all found home and three balloons hung deflated and lifeless. This time we got three giant stuffed snakes. The boss came running from his trailer. He wasn't happy.
He stormed up to us and demanded to know Lizzie's game. She told him she was just feeling lucky and added that she was the Reverend Michael's daughter. I began to see a pattern but I didn't know the half of it. The boss blustered that the wind was forcing the show to close early and she'd have to leave. Then he turned to me and fired me on the spot.
Lizzie turned to me and keeping her voice low, told me to get as far away from the carnival as I could, then she turned on those gorgeous ankles and walked off in the other direction. As she did, the wind swirled up behind her, the calm she carried with her following her off the lot. I practically ran the other way, fighting for ground with my every step through the increasing winds.
When I finally passed the rent-a-fence that surrounded the carnival grounds, the winds suddenly and completely died out like they were never there. I turned around. And as I did, the winds inside the carnival rose to tornado force. In seconds, the entire carnival was swept up off the dirt field as though it was a train layout and vanished inside the twister, never to be seen again.
I was the only one who didn't go with it. It was like a scene from some tacky science fiction movie. I couldn't believe I was living it.
For the next few weeks, I bummed around the town, searching for Lizzie and the Reverend Michael. No one knew where they were or even who they were. No one in town ever heard of them. Eventually, I moved on, the bears and snakes my only proof that the carnival ever even existed.
As I hitched across the state, one day I happened on a travelling tent show. It was headlined by a preacher named Reverend Billy. He was a real fire and brimstoner. I sat through three of his meetings and finally got a personal audience with him. When I asked him about Reverend Michael, he told me he'd heard of Lizzie and her father. They'd been killed during a melee at a crooked carnival some twenty years before and rumor had it that their ghosts moved from show to show, saving the souls they could and sending the rest straight to wherever damned carnies go.
I suppose I learned a life lesson from it all. I settled down, went to school, got a law degree and became a prosecuting attorney. I've put away more than one sleazy carny in the last 35 years. But I've never forgotten Lizzie and that amazing night. In fact, when she left me, my wife said I was obsessed with that girl and I guess the shrine with the stuffed bears and snakes was a bit much.
I always wondered what became of Lizzie, because I never really believed the ghost stories. But I could never explain what happened that night. I always half expected that one day, my doorbell would ring and there would stand Lizzie, looking for the stuffed animals. I even bought the land on which the ill-fated carnival had set up and built my home there...Just in case.
Then, on one particularly familiar and stormy evening, came a knock at my door. When I opened it, looking not a day older than when we spun madly on the Tilt-A-Whirl, stood Lizzie. She hadn't aged a day. She still had the hottest legs I had ever seen. But the poodle skirt was now an ultra short mini and she wore tennis shoes with workout leggings around her ankles.
There was something else. While the trees in the neighborhood swayed broadly in the high winds and their leaves blew all over hell and gone, my property was as still as death. A sailing ship would've drifted aimlessly with the swells in the becalmed atmosphere around my house...if my house had indeed been floating in water. Lizzie greeted me warmly, kissing me like she had on that first night. I invited her in. We sat, reminisced...though to be sure, we had little to reminisce about, having spent only the one evening together so many years before. I knew what she wanted. I was only waiting for the question. The she asked it.
"I came for the stuffed animals. May I have them?"
I'd thought about this moment for years. Maybe there was something truly magical in her involvement with the games. I didn't really know. But I did know this. I'd laid my money down and I did the playing.
"Not a chance babe. I won that stuff fair and square."
With that, sweet Lizzie became a creature of howling wrath. She rose up into the air, shrieking at me.
"Someday you will pay with your soul!"
She and crashed her way out through the front window screaming more awful epithets at me as her anger grew.
I called out after her: "You've got nothing on my ex!"
Trembling violently in mid-air from her horrific rage, Lizzie's true spirit burst forth and she turned into a swirling mass of unearthly evil vapor, disappearing down to the depths of hell through holes in the sewer access in front of my house. (We use to call them man-holes, but in the "Politically Correct" 2000's, even a harpy can sue you.)
As I age, I now dread that "someday" when she and I will meet again at the entrance to her domain. But I am resigned to it. Such is the existence of a lawyer!
It was right about the time the Viet Nam war wound down. I was a kid of 17 during that stormy spring in '72. I'd split from home right after my senior year in high school, not wanting to go on to college and not wanting to have the discussion about what I wanted to do. Fortunately, the folks were so busy with their own self-centered lives, they never even noticed I was gone. I was blown away when I wrote them a month after I left and they replied that they thought I'd gone to summer camp. What? Did they think I was twelve? But, rather than try to make them notice me, I got my independence and left it at that.
Outside of Kansas city, along the banks of the Missouri river, I was sleeping in the shadow of a grain silo when a travelling show...a carnival, pulled onto the property and began setting up. Hungry and needing some quick cash, I joined up. I figured I'd work a few days and be on my way. A few days stretched into a few months and longer. I picked up the trade fast. I was a smart kid...or so I thought. I think if it had been a few hundred years earlier, my fellow employees would've been pirates. That's all we were...land pirates...who paid taxes...sometimes.
Anyway, we were setting up on the outskirts of a small Missouri town. And the wind was kicking up so strong that we couldn't hardly keep the joints in one piece. Every time a roustabout'd get something nailed down, a big gust would come along and blow it all to smithereens.
Then, this "Reverend Michael" showed up. No one saw him arrive. He was just there. And with him came the eerie calm. And I mean it was eerie. No wind. No sign of any kind of weather. Just calm. It was like we were setting up in a big empty room. While he was on the grounds, we got nearly everything operating except for a couple of the big rides. And those could be set up in a hurricane. Which is lucky, because it got that way later.
The Rev went right to the manager's office and asked if he could arrange for a church charity bazaar with us. The boss agreed right off because a couple thousand extra customers was hard to turn away.
Also because the boss knew a mark when he saw one. He told the Rev he'd split the take 50-50. 'Course the boss never intended a 50-50. The Rev'd be lucky to get 10 percent. And I suspect that the boss meant to pocket the whole nut and light out.
Most of the crew were alright with that, being carnys. For them, real satisfaction came from wringing that last buck out of a mark who's trying to win a bear for his squeeze. But we didn't rip off each other. That just wasn't honorable. Also, if you stole from another carny, or the boss, you just might end up under the wheels of the last eighteen wheeler to leave the grounds. I guess carny morals were what you'd call...modifiable. I wasn't all that comfortable with the boss' plans, but I needed the money.
The Rev left and the winds came back full on strong, just as we were setting up the big rides. I was feeling uneasy about that. Word came down to "gaff" the games. They were going to be flat. No one would win. We were gonna burn the lot of them. The Larry's in this town could be bought off for a few bucks in patch money. It didn't take much juice to buy off a cop in the Midwest. But those winds. They made it real hard to do anything right...or wrong even.
The weekend came and the townspeople came with it. Simple, church-going folk. I didn't see the brewing storm. No one did. This little town was gonna be trouble. I just didn't know that it would come in the form of a girl named Lizzie.
I was running the Tilt-A-Whirl. I could usually collect about twenty bucks in loose change from the cars at the end of a night. I remember that my father had a big overstuffed couch like that. When I was a kid I could dig through it for nickles and the occasional dime. The Tilt-A-Whirl paid better.
I was bent over pulling out a quarter stuck behind the seat from its hiding place. It was a really uncomfortable position. With my arm extended that far back behind the seat, I was forced to turn my head towards the safety bar. My view of the world was sideways and horizontally bisected.
As I sweated and strained to reach the payoff, into that odd world view walked half a pair of the most beautiful gams history has ever recorded. I had to assume the other half was just as spectacular. When I finally pulled my arm out, I had not only the quarter, but a dime stuck to it with chewing gum. It was turning into a good night. When I stood up and gazed at the gorgeous face body attached to those legs, it turned into a great night.
"Hi," she said. "My name is Lizzie."
She said she was 19, and a bottler in the line at the local brewery. She said that she'd always wanted to ride a Tilt-A-Whirl. I stammered something about four tickets to ride and she lifted her skirt a few inches...I think four. That was good enough for me. I opened the gate and led her to the cleanest car on the ride. This kind of dame didn't sit in puddles of Dubble Bubble.
As the night wore on, she rode the ride at least a couple of dozen times. She kept smiling at me. And each time I saw her, I got the feeling that she was interested in something more than just the ride. Then she asked me to ride with her. No one else was in line, so I agreed. We got into the car and the self-timer started it up. As soon as the ride began to move, so did Lizzie. She was all over me, kissing me and putting her hands on places I wouldn't touch myself.
By the time the ride stopped, I was more exhausted than I thought possible. But this girl, she just stood up, smoothed out the wrinkles in her poodle skirt and hopped off the ride. She asked me if I'd win a bear for her. The winds had started up again big time, and people were taking shelter in their cars and most of them were leaving. I couldn't refuse...I didn't want to.
The midway was a ghost town, so we headed over to the ring toss. The game was nearly impossible, since the rings were only a 32nd of an inch larger than the bottles they had to land on. If they didn't land absolutely perpendicular, they bounced away. People won at the game maybe one time in ten thousand. I laid down my dollar and got three rings. I noticed that the winds were howling all around, but not at the booth where we stood. Lizzie kissed the rings for good luck and had me throw them all at once. All three landed square on a bottle. We won three giant bears. The rousty working the booth was dumbstruck. And Lizzie? She just wanted to go to the dart toss.
The calm that was with us at the ring toss seemed to follow us to the darts booth. The balloons attached to the cork board stopped blowing around and just hung there. Again, I laid my money down. I got three darts and again. Lizzie kissed them for luck. She told me to throw them all at once. Pow-Pow-Pow. They all found home and three balloons hung deflated and lifeless. This time we got three giant stuffed snakes. The boss came running from his trailer. He wasn't happy.
He stormed up to us and demanded to know Lizzie's game. She told him she was just feeling lucky and added that she was the Reverend Michael's daughter. I began to see a pattern but I didn't know the half of it. The boss blustered that the wind was forcing the show to close early and she'd have to leave. Then he turned to me and fired me on the spot.
Lizzie turned to me and keeping her voice low, told me to get as far away from the carnival as I could, then she turned on those gorgeous ankles and walked off in the other direction. As she did, the wind swirled up behind her, the calm she carried with her following her off the lot. I practically ran the other way, fighting for ground with my every step through the increasing winds.
When I finally passed the rent-a-fence that surrounded the carnival grounds, the winds suddenly and completely died out like they were never there. I turned around. And as I did, the winds inside the carnival rose to tornado force. In seconds, the entire carnival was swept up off the dirt field as though it was a train layout and vanished inside the twister, never to be seen again.
I was the only one who didn't go with it. It was like a scene from some tacky science fiction movie. I couldn't believe I was living it.
For the next few weeks, I bummed around the town, searching for Lizzie and the Reverend Michael. No one knew where they were or even who they were. No one in town ever heard of them. Eventually, I moved on, the bears and snakes my only proof that the carnival ever even existed.
As I hitched across the state, one day I happened on a travelling tent show. It was headlined by a preacher named Reverend Billy. He was a real fire and brimstoner. I sat through three of his meetings and finally got a personal audience with him. When I asked him about Reverend Michael, he told me he'd heard of Lizzie and her father. They'd been killed during a melee at a crooked carnival some twenty years before and rumor had it that their ghosts moved from show to show, saving the souls they could and sending the rest straight to wherever damned carnies go.
I suppose I learned a life lesson from it all. I settled down, went to school, got a law degree and became a prosecuting attorney. I've put away more than one sleazy carny in the last 35 years. But I've never forgotten Lizzie and that amazing night. In fact, when she left me, my wife said I was obsessed with that girl and I guess the shrine with the stuffed bears and snakes was a bit much.
I always wondered what became of Lizzie, because I never really believed the ghost stories. But I could never explain what happened that night. I always half expected that one day, my doorbell would ring and there would stand Lizzie, looking for the stuffed animals. I even bought the land on which the ill-fated carnival had set up and built my home there...Just in case.
Then, on one particularly familiar and stormy evening, came a knock at my door. When I opened it, looking not a day older than when we spun madly on the Tilt-A-Whirl, stood Lizzie. She hadn't aged a day. She still had the hottest legs I had ever seen. But the poodle skirt was now an ultra short mini and she wore tennis shoes with workout leggings around her ankles.
There was something else. While the trees in the neighborhood swayed broadly in the high winds and their leaves blew all over hell and gone, my property was as still as death. A sailing ship would've drifted aimlessly with the swells in the becalmed atmosphere around my house...if my house had indeed been floating in water. Lizzie greeted me warmly, kissing me like she had on that first night. I invited her in. We sat, reminisced...though to be sure, we had little to reminisce about, having spent only the one evening together so many years before. I knew what she wanted. I was only waiting for the question. The she asked it.
"I came for the stuffed animals. May I have them?"
I'd thought about this moment for years. Maybe there was something truly magical in her involvement with the games. I didn't really know. But I did know this. I'd laid my money down and I did the playing.
"Not a chance babe. I won that stuff fair and square."
With that, sweet Lizzie became a creature of howling wrath. She rose up into the air, shrieking at me.
"Someday you will pay with your soul!"
She and crashed her way out through the front window screaming more awful epithets at me as her anger grew.
I called out after her: "You've got nothing on my ex!"
Trembling violently in mid-air from her horrific rage, Lizzie's true spirit burst forth and she turned into a swirling mass of unearthly evil vapor, disappearing down to the depths of hell through holes in the sewer access in front of my house. (We use to call them man-holes, but in the "Politically Correct" 2000's, even a harpy can sue you.)
As I age, I now dread that "someday" when she and I will meet again at the entrance to her domain. But I am resigned to it. Such is the existence of a lawyer!
Sunday, May 13, 2007
So...What Is It With The Nobel Prize?
I've come to the conclusion that the guys who run the Nobel Prize committee are a bunch of elitist snobs. I mean it's one thing not to take my suggestions for making the prize more egalitarian. But it's a whole other matter when they ignore the suggestions completely.
I've sent them e-mail after e-mail carefully explaining why they had this whole prize thing all wrong. And how did they reply? They didn't. Not so much as a terse don't bug us. I mean what have they got to do all day that keeps them so busy, they can't take a moment to consider a logical and carefully laid out re-structuring of their entire organization. But you can judge for yourselves. Here's MY plan for the Nobel Prize.
First of all, give out the prize in smaller amounts to a whole lot more people. Make it like the Emmy's. If a team was involved, don't just award the medallion to the leader, give everyone a medal! How much trouble would that be?
And let them each have some of the money. I haven't seen an accounting of the kind of bucks in it, but if Nobel's trust is large enough, and I suspect it is, then they can keep the awards nearly as big and make a whole lot more people happy.
Next, broaden the categories to include things that real people actually accomplish. Sure, keep the prize for medicine. But make the prize for something that will actually help people and not for identifying some gene in a fruit fly that gives it the ability to know an apples from a tomato. (Hell, is a tomato even a fruit? And does a fruit fly even care?) The award ought to be for something like fingertip bandages. Now THAT deserves a prize something fierce.
And get rid of that physics prize. For God's sake, who cares if there are strings in the universe that finally, grandly unify theories that no one can follow. I mean, if it will take more energy than the universe has, to prove one of them, then the whole thing is useless anyway. What point is there to proving that light travels faster to Philadelphia or by skateboard? Might as well dump all the multi dimensional theories into a black hole.
And do the same with the math prize. We don't need to spend huge sums of money on super-computers that calculate pi out to its last digit. It doesn't have a last digit! And who cares anyway? You have to take stuff like that on faith...like God! It's never going to be of any real world value. And that's the point. These prizes are given for achievements that no one understands. They're decided upon by people that no one understands.
I mean, does anyone really understand Stephen Hawking? My pet marmoset speaks English more clearly than a physicist! A more obvious case of the fox guarding the Nobel hen-house does not exist. And neither do those inter-galactic silly string thingies.
They ought to be giving out an award to the guy who invented, like ,... asymmetrical headlamp design! I mean, that was practical! He took headlight bulbs, faced them away from the road, bent reflectors in all sorts of counter-intuitive ways , accounting for the refractive index of clear lexan and came up with headlight beams that defy logic...but work. Now that's Nobel-worthy!! (I don't even understand how he did that, but it's so much more real-worldly.)
Or what about the guy that invented magnetic clip-on sunglasses?
I think that the Nobels should be awarded for actual accomplishments...not attempts. Why give out a peace prize for only trying. If someone actually accomplishes peace, cut him a check. If he makes a worthy effort...he's an also-ran. Give him the hook, not a million dollars.
By committee standards, I should get the Nobel for "Scientific and Mathematical Skepticism."
So there you have it Nobel elite. A simpler plan. A plan for the 21st century! A plan for the common man (or to be completely fair, woman) I'll bet the Nobel TVQ would be a lot higher if you awarded it for things people actually care about. You maybe even could get a sponsor for the awards.
Or, you can keep things the way they are and remain a bunch of anal-retentive weenies.
I've sent them e-mail after e-mail carefully explaining why they had this whole prize thing all wrong. And how did they reply? They didn't. Not so much as a terse don't bug us. I mean what have they got to do all day that keeps them so busy, they can't take a moment to consider a logical and carefully laid out re-structuring of their entire organization. But you can judge for yourselves. Here's MY plan for the Nobel Prize.
First of all, give out the prize in smaller amounts to a whole lot more people. Make it like the Emmy's. If a team was involved, don't just award the medallion to the leader, give everyone a medal! How much trouble would that be?
And let them each have some of the money. I haven't seen an accounting of the kind of bucks in it, but if Nobel's trust is large enough, and I suspect it is, then they can keep the awards nearly as big and make a whole lot more people happy.
Next, broaden the categories to include things that real people actually accomplish. Sure, keep the prize for medicine. But make the prize for something that will actually help people and not for identifying some gene in a fruit fly that gives it the ability to know an apples from a tomato. (Hell, is a tomato even a fruit? And does a fruit fly even care?) The award ought to be for something like fingertip bandages. Now THAT deserves a prize something fierce.
And get rid of that physics prize. For God's sake, who cares if there are strings in the universe that finally, grandly unify theories that no one can follow. I mean, if it will take more energy than the universe has, to prove one of them, then the whole thing is useless anyway. What point is there to proving that light travels faster to Philadelphia or by skateboard? Might as well dump all the multi dimensional theories into a black hole.
And do the same with the math prize. We don't need to spend huge sums of money on super-computers that calculate pi out to its last digit. It doesn't have a last digit! And who cares anyway? You have to take stuff like that on faith...like God! It's never going to be of any real world value. And that's the point. These prizes are given for achievements that no one understands. They're decided upon by people that no one understands.
I mean, does anyone really understand Stephen Hawking? My pet marmoset speaks English more clearly than a physicist! A more obvious case of the fox guarding the Nobel hen-house does not exist. And neither do those inter-galactic silly string thingies.
They ought to be giving out an award to the guy who invented, like ,... asymmetrical headlamp design! I mean, that was practical! He took headlight bulbs, faced them away from the road, bent reflectors in all sorts of counter-intuitive ways , accounting for the refractive index of clear lexan and came up with headlight beams that defy logic...but work. Now that's Nobel-worthy!! (I don't even understand how he did that, but it's so much more real-worldly.)
Or what about the guy that invented magnetic clip-on sunglasses?
I think that the Nobels should be awarded for actual accomplishments...not attempts. Why give out a peace prize for only trying. If someone actually accomplishes peace, cut him a check. If he makes a worthy effort...he's an also-ran. Give him the hook, not a million dollars.
By committee standards, I should get the Nobel for "Scientific and Mathematical Skepticism."
So there you have it Nobel elite. A simpler plan. A plan for the 21st century! A plan for the common man (or to be completely fair, woman) I'll bet the Nobel TVQ would be a lot higher if you awarded it for things people actually care about. You maybe even could get a sponsor for the awards.
Or, you can keep things the way they are and remain a bunch of anal-retentive weenies.
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The Road Sign Trilogy
Nice Place To Visit But...
I Need To Charge My Cell
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