Irrelevant Cheetah

As I was leaving work last night, I stopped in the bathroom to wash my hands. I looked into the mirror and glimpsed something out of place in my hair. With a little digging, I managed to dislodge and identify it. It was a pine needle – one that had definitely not been there before.

When I discovered it and began wondering about its origins, I first thought what any normal person would think: “Hmm. I must have been abducted by aliens, taken to an area rich in coniferous growth, probed, had my memory altered, and then brought back to the office.”

There are a few flaws in this hypothesis, however, not the least of which was that, upon further reflection, I determined that I did not have any episodes of ‘missing time.’ I had a twenty-minute span that was sort of fuzzy, but that also coincided with my boss talking to me about third quarter projections and so forth, so that could be explained away.

So, after more serious thought, I think I have discovered the only reasonable explanation for the pine needle in my hair:

I’m obviously turning into a tree.

There have been, as yet, no further symptoms, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before bark starts to grow on my fingers and I start losing the will (and ability) to move from a certain spot. I can only hope that I choose a spot that has a nice Southern exposure and decent wireless access.

I’m aware that it’s not going to be comfortable. It’s going to be hard to type, and it probably won’t be long before I start developing an irrational fear of axes and Christmas tree lights. Nevertheless, I intend to chronicle faithfully my transformation into Pinus Monticola for your amusement and edification. Please excuse any typos that will inevitably be cropping up, as I lose feeling in my limbs (ha! I said limbs!) and start dropping pinecones onto the keyboard.

And please, before you buy a Christmas tree this year, find out where it came from, would you?

So what is it about a sore eyebrow hair? Why can’t I just leave it alone? If I don’t touch it, and think about something else, it quits bothering me. So you think I’d make an extra effort to think about chimpanzees, or whipped cream, or Homer Simpson in a skirt, or something. But no, my internal dialogue goes something like this:

So which hair is sore again?

Is it this one? Or this one? Nope! There it is! OUCH! Yup, still hurts!

Now, is it this one? Or maybe this one?

…ad infinitum…

Yeah, that’s all I got. Pretty sad, I know. Good thing I’m not paid for this shit, eh?

Lynn Viehl at Paperback Writer posted this, and I just had to share. Isn’t this the most awesome example of world-building you’ve ever seen? If you’re a writer, doesn’t it just get your creative juices flowing?

Now I want to read a story or a book set there. Wonder if there are any. If there aren’t, I wonder if the artist would let me write one.

Oh, and by the way: Paperback Writer is an excellent blog by a working, hugely prolific writer. Worth checking out.

I was thinking about Superman’s origins the other day.

Specifically, I was thinking about his father. Tall…compassionate…genius…bearing a striking resemblance to Marlon Brando… As a leading scientist of Krypton, he must have been aware of the existence of hundreds – if not thousands – of alien races. He had access to technology that could store the Library of Congress on a postage stamp.

So what the hell made him choose Earth as a foster planet for his son?

I imagine it went something like this:

Lara: Oh, no, Jor-El! The planet is exploding! We have to save our son from certain doom!

Jor-El: That’s all right. I know just where to send little Kal-El. There’s this place called “Earth.”

Lara: Wait a minute. You told me about Earth. Didn’t they just crawl down from the trees? Like, less than a million years ago?

Kal-El: Well, yes, but –

Lara: And didn’t they just nail some poor guy to two sticks of wood because – and correct me if I’m wrong, here – he had the audacity to suggest that his species should quit killing each other?

Kal-El: Well, yes, but –

Lara: That’s what I thought. He’s not going. How about Beta Reticulus Prime, instead?

Kal-El: No, that’s no good. They’re a plant-based intelligence, and Kal-El is allergic to spinach.

Lara: So Epsilon Six, then.

Kal-El: Nope. The average size of an adult Epsilonian is six inches tall. He won’t fit in. Listen, Earth would be okay. It’s got a yellow sun.

Lara: Meaning?

Kal-El: He’ll be able to fly. He’ll be invulnerable. He’ll be like a god.

Lara: Didn’t the guy they nailed to a cross have some special powers, too? Fat lot of good it did him, didn’t it?

Kal-El: Look, Lara, Krypton is going to blow up any minute. We have to send him. Don’t worry – nothing will be able to harm him.

Lara: You’re sure?

Kal-El: The only thing that could possibly harm him would be if some pieces of Krypton became radioactive and managed to find their way to Earth, which is 56 gajillion miles away from here. What are the chances of that?

Lara: All right. Let’s send him. What are we going to send him in?

Kal-El: That’s the best part. See, I modified the dog’s travel carrier. He’ll hibernate the whole way there, not aging, and he’ll have enough water when he gets there!

You know, it probably wasn’t anything like that at all. Forget I said anything.

Those of you reading this in places other than the U.S. may not know that last Sunday was Father’s Day here. It’s a day when we traditionally give our father an ugly necktie and thank him for participating in the process of raising us even though his part was over after the DNA donation.

Several weeks ago, in anticipation of this holiday, my wife asked me what I would like for a gift. I asked if I could go hurtling down a river at breakneck speeds, surfing over rocks and narrowly avoiding death as I cruised through canyons a mere ten feet wide.

After some thought, after some reassurances that I would, indeed, be using a flimsy rubber skin filled with air to perform all of the above activities, and after checking to ensure that my life insurance policy was still in effect, she said “Okay.”

I have never done it before, and now I’m hooked. I went whitewater rafting on Father’s Day, and I can’t wait to go again. I went down Sixmile River, a Class IV-V river located about 100 miles south of Anchorage. I have a waterproof housing for my camera that’s designed for scuba diving, so I took it along, hoping to get at least a few pictures of the event. I didn’t get as many as I wanted, probably because it’s difficult to take a snapshot when your camera is strapped to your life jacket and you only have a few seconds to squeeze off a shot before you enter the rapids at speeds approaching Mach 3, but I got a few.

First, a shot of the surrounding scenery that I was completely unable to appreciate, since our guide was giving us the safety talk about how to stay alive should our raft overturn:

Next, a shot of relatively calm water after the first canyon and heading into the second:

Next, an illustration of how most of my pictures came out that day:

And finally, a shot of me after the second canyon:

All in all, it was a blast. The water was freezing (about 35 degrees F/2 degrees C) but my drysuit worked like a charm, and I didn’t get cold at all. I only ran two out of the three possible canyons, but I’m already planning another trip so I can run all three. Now that I have some idea of what to expect, I’ll try to get better pics of the next trip.

Finally. I knew it wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but I’m back. Miss me?
There’s a few changes, obviously, and I’m still working out kinks. The blogroll? Yeah, that’s first on my fix-it list. Another change is that this is now a do-follow blog, meaning links (to your blog, for example) in comments are followed by search engines, making them all worth something in the great search for Google rankings.
So that’s it for now. My DNS changes are still propagating, meaning that I could go offline again at any moment. So if you see this post, please leave a comment so I know it’s working.
Thanks, all, and it’s good to be back.

Irrelevant Cheetah is going offline for a few days. I’m switching webhosts (finally.) I’ll be able to add a few widgets, track my visitors and search patterns better, and in general just be able to manage my blog better than my current host allows.

Because I’m running Wordpress, I should be able to save everything here – blog posts, comments, etc. – and bring it up on the new host. Because I’ve never switched before, however, it may take a few days to get all of the bugs out. Hopefully, there will be no major issues, and I’ll see you in a few days. Also hopefully, those of you using feed readers won’t have to make any changes, and I apologize if you do.

If for some reason it comes back online and I have no idea who you are, however, well… you know what happened.

Not long ago I was reading the back of the can of Lysol (I’d rather not disclose why I was reading it) and I saw the following: “Lysol brand disinfectant spray kills the HIV-1 (AIDS) virus.”

So I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s obvious that Lysol knows something the drug companies don’t. If I were to suddenly become HIV positive, I know what I would do: I would immediately start mainlining Lysol.

Apparently it takes a special kind of mind to think of these things.

At the risk of sounding like an ad for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, many things are good when mixed together. I like peanut butter and jelly. I like vodka and orange juice. Mashed potatoes and gravy, chocolate and peanut butter – they’re all excellent.

But my current addiction is trail mix – the kind with peanuts, cashews, raisins, almonds and M&Ms, and I want to know: When I reach into the bag for a handful, why is it so hard to get an evenly mixed group of items?

The perfect handful would be, obviously, one peanut, one cashew, one raisin, etc. I know that’s asking a lot, however, so I’d be happy with a relatively random grouping. I can even live with not getting an M&M in every handful, since the M&M is obviously a poorly represented demographic in the trail mix.

However, here’s what happens. I’ll reach in and pull out a fairly random handful, which makes me happy. But then, even as I chew, sighing contentedly, I reach for another handful, to be greeted with four cashews. Or a peanut and three raisins. Or – I kid you not – eight M&Ms and a lonely little almond. Then I am no longer happy, and I am forced to replace some of the items and search for others.

There are reasons for this, you know. First of all, I don’t want to reach the bottom of the bag and be left with nothing but cashews. I want to make sure there’s an even sampling all the way to the bottom of the package. Getting too many raisins early on virtually guarantees a dearth of raisins later – not a pleasant thing to look forward to.

But most of all, I do it because I want a sampling, dammit. That, after all, is the reason for trail mix in the first place, is it not? If I wanted a handful of raisins, I would go buy a box of raisins. I want to feel the flavors and textures mingle and socialize as I chew, as if they had been chosen by a master chef. So I’m left throwing almonds back into the bag while I decide if I want another peanut or perhaps a cashew with this handful, and I can’t help thinking that snacking should not be this much mental work.

Perhaps it’s time to switch to something less OCD-conducive, like Doritos.

I am ashamed to say that, despite having lived here in Alaska for nigh on fifteen years, I had never been to Fairbanks. This was a situation my wife was determined to change, and this past weekend, she finally succeeded.

In the closest thing either of us has had to a vacation in more than two years, we made the six-hour drive up to Fairbanks to see an old friend of hers. On the way we passed Denali - Mt. McKinley to you all from the lower 48 – another sight that I am ashamed that I had never seen.

The rankings? There were several. Her friends were awesome and generous and I would visit them again. Four stars. Fairbanks is a nice, small town. I even got to see what they laughably call “downtown”: two four-story buildings. Three stars. The mini-vacation was much-needed and left me feeling less likely to hose down the office with a fire extinguisher while laughing and cursing in Klingon. Four stars.

On the way to Fairbanks, Denali was completely shrouded in clouds and mists, such that we didn’t even know which way to look for it, much less be able to be awed by its presence. On the way back it was slightly better, but only by a tad, and any pictures I would have taken of it would have left you wondering why I had taken snapshots of a particularly large hill. And after we left Denali, it emerged majestically from the clouds when we were about fifty miles away – not close enough for any spectacular photos. One star.

What good is it to live within hours of the highest mountain on the continent when you can’t even see it?

On another note: I hope you all accept this excuse for me not responding to comments, posting, commenting, etc. I had 103 unread posts to read this morning and I had to go back to work. I’ll get back to reading/commenting/procrastinating soon – I promise.