Look, all I ever promised was 100 words.

Here’s a sentence I never thought I would find myself typing: A team of scientists in Hoboken have developed technology that creates entangled photons 100 times more efficiently than previously possible. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what this might mean for the future of quantum computing. Now let’s all acknowledge that while this is seriously cool science news, the inclusion of the phrase “in Hoboken” adds an inappropriate yet undeniable element of dopey humor. Also, the word “acknowledge” looks so funny when you type it out that I had to spell-check it twice. Okay. That’s all I got.

Your Monday Boggle

You’ve no doubt heard about the rare conjunction in our skies of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, two well-known planets famous for such interesting features as spots and rings, respectively. They’re just lining up from our perspective, of course, not actually getting close. I looked it up – they are about five times as far from one another as Earth is from the Sun. Also, Jupiter and Saturn together contain over 90 percent of the planetary mass in the solar system. So, they’re real far part, and they’re real big. In comparison, the largest omelet ever made contained 145,000 eggs.

Also, a bug up my butt.

I hate to keep harping on this but it’s been a thorn on my side and a bee in my bonnet for an awful long time now which is the failure of hovercraft to ever deliver on their potential to be our cool futuristic transportation technology of tomorrow. What can be said of a culture that allows the pioneering early work of such giants as Thornycroft and Cockerell to languish fallow and neglected but that we had greatness within the span of our grasp and blithely frittered away their priceless legacy. I should have ordered the plans from Popular Mechanics.

absolute zero

so me and gus and phil were sitting around talking about what we might compose next and gus said he’d go cage one better and write a piece with four minutes and thirty-four seconds of silence but phil said you’re missing the point he said i’m going for four minutes and thirty-two seconds which yeah that was okay until i said i’d just composed a piece called 00:00 which was absolute silence for a period of no duration whatsoever which was so good that we just sat there for a moment and listened to it an infinite number of times

A History of Innovation. A Heritage of Excellence.

The golden age of the heroic lone inventor has passed. No more pioneers like James Spangler, who invented the “suction sweeper” which so impressed his cousin that she got her husband, William H. Hoover, to invest in it. No more John Logie Bairds cobbling together televisions out of tea chests and sealing wax. Now they’re just tweaking old ideas. Like for instance the first electric car, the Flocken Elektrowagen, came out in 1888. So okay, there is this one guy on YouTube who’s selling a lump of rubber to chew on to develop a stronger jawline, but that’s just sad.

I've no wish to bohr you, but

One of the nicest consequences of quantum uncertainly is that under currently accepted theory you most certainly can have your cake and eat it too. Which is great, because physics is not always your pal. Like Feynman diagrams, which as I understand it can be read in either direction, so cause becomes effect and vice versa. So maybe you’re drunk right now because of the hangover you had tomorrow. All of this complicates linear storytelling. Not that I’m bothered since I’m one of those rare people who can live without a narrative. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Another little jab

“Polio wasn’t so bad, I just loaded up on vitamin C and chicken soup and watched a lot of daytime TV for a couple days,” said absolutely nobody ever. Yet I just heard that something like 50 percent of Americans say they won’t get vaccinated against COVID-19. They’ve heard it causes autism or socialism or something. While there’s probably a wide range of opinions among anti-vaxxers, I know for sure they all have one thing in common: They’ve never had smallpox. But look. Maybe they’ll take the vaccine if we put it in Kool-Aid. They got no problem drinking that.

the possible

Suppose your personal political philosophy is slightly to Trotsky’s left. That’s fine. But let’s don’t forget that digging in your heels means you’re getting nowhere. Here’s a tortured analogy: We got a bunch of hungry guests at the table waiting for supper. And we have plenty of beans and rice, but I’m like, “These nice folks deserve a big ham or roast turkey.” And you go, “Yeah, they do, but what we got is beans and rice.” And then I say, “That’s not good enough.” See, theoretically I’m a visionary, but on the practical level I’m saying, “Let ‘em starve.”

The Eye of the Hurricane

The dogs on my block were loud, then quiet. Our ears popped, the rain started, the wind picked up and the lights went out. The storm came sideways and what could bend bent and what couldn’t broke. It was loud, then quiet. Everyone came outside to stand in the street and look at the sky. We agreed that this greenish orange purple light was like nothing we’d ever seen. I said, “So this is intermission,” and our neighbor laughed politely. Then I said, “How do we know when it’s over?” And she said, “I think they ring a little bell.”

becalmed

I just want to mention that this cup of coffee is delicious. My chair is comfy, the dogs are calm and quiet. There’s a banana waiting in the bowl that looks perfectly ripe. The weather is clear and dry and sunny with a slight breeze. I suppose I could seek out and respond to some irritant or other to offer a proper rant, but that doesn’t seem necessary just at the moment. Maybe I deserve a day off. Maybe you do too. We’re all doomed, of course, but right now this is shaping up to be a really nice day.

The datums are in

Look, Lambeau and the Superdome are not stadia. “Octopus” is an English word; the plural is “octopuses.” You’d only need to say “octopi” when serving insalata di polpo to Julius Caesar, who I believe mostly spoke Greek anyway. Octopuses are one of those things that don’t really taste all that much like chicken. In that group include two funguses, hen-of-the-woods and chicken-of-the-woods, both of which taste a great deal like mushrooms. Some people call iguanas “gallinas de palo,” tree chickens. Iguana meat is not thing I have actually eaten, but I have been advised that it tastes just like octopus.

Gilding the Lily

A cowboy needs a cowboy name. That’s why the first cowboy movie star, Max Aronson, called himself Broncho Billy Anderson. Leonard Slye is not a cowboy name; Roy Rogers is. Rory Calhoun was Francis Durgin, Michael Landon was Eugene Orowitz. (Tom Mix was born Thomas Hezikiah Mix, which is so great I’m sort of bouncing in my chair here.) So anyway, there’s this cowboy actor named L. Q. Jones. You’d recognize his face in a second – he looks more like Sam Elliott or Dennis Weaver than they look like themselves. But get this. His birth name is Justus McQueen Jr.

You can thank me later.

I need to tell you about a peculiar coincidence that has come to my attention. After scads of contemplation and a great deal of introspection, I have come to the conclusion that the things that I want to have happen are also exactly what God wants too. I don’t claim to be a special or superior person; all I’m saying is this curious correlation between my desires and the will of our Creator is an interesting phenomenon that might inspire discerning folks to seek me out for advice so as to avoid an eternity in the fiery pits of Hell.

Ka-Ching!

Money is convenient because if you get a job painting a restaurant you don’t have to carry home like 70 chicken fried steaks and several enormous tubs of potato salad. Money is weird because if you’re a musician a big chunk of your pay comes from encouraging people to drink themselves to death. Money is dangerous because it lets you enjoy the labor of people half a world away without looking them in the eye. I’m more and more starting to think that money is powdered violence – dried out and ground up and sanitized so the smell isn’t so bad.

These pearls ain't gonna clutch themselves.

The disasters don’t even have the decency to wait for each other to finish anymore. All the wrong people keep dying. And apparently the best way out of this hole is to keep digging. We talk about how terrible 2020 is but look, was racism less systemic in 2019? Climate change less threatening? The wealth gap less unbalanced and health care less broken? All of a sudden this year are mean people meaner, poor people poorer, crazy people crazier? No. But we’re noticing. So maybe this isn’t the best year ever, but you have to admit it’s got our attention.

Family in the Wind

Oh for crap’s sake. There’s another hurricane coming. The good news is we may finally get a chance to eat those tinned Vienna sausages we laid in for the last storm. Those little dudes are simultaneously disgusting and oddly appealing, like Abba or Circus Peanuts. It would be amusing to take a few cans to Austria and see how actual Viennese people react to them. Meanwhile, the hurricane. There’s an F. Scott Fitzgerald story where two tornados in rapid succession devastate a small town. And one character says, "This is worse than a calamity. It's getting to be a nuisance."

Oh. And a mint.

I don’t want to brag (I want to brag) but (because) I think I may have timed this exactly right. I showed up for the first round of aperitifs and as trays of piping hot canapes were emerging from the kitchen. I got a good seat. The soup was delicious, the salad superb. There was fish and fowl and meat. Two kinds of potato, three kinds of bread, then some cheese and fruit. Now I think I might have time for a nice dessert, a coffee, maybe even a cigar before excusing myself just as the check hits the table.

Explanations are in order

I’m starting to think that language was invented because people needed an effective way to avoid communication. Like, when people say “It’s simple,” they mean “It’s complicated.” When they say “It’s complicated,” they mean “I don’t have time to explain it to you.” When they say “I don’t have time to explain it to you,” they mean “I don’t understand it myself.” And by the time they get around to actually saying “I don’t understand it myself,” it’s because they’re finally ready to admit to themselves that they don’t understand it themselves. That’s when you say to them, “It’s simple…”

Joe the Sea Lamprey

Practice makes perfect. For over a year I’ve been studying Spanish online. As a result, I’ve become quite adept at studying Spanish online. Someday I hope to say something in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking person. That’s the long-term goal. Anyway, the other morning, I was tasked with translating this sentence: “She is lost and needs help.” I typed, “Ella esta perdido y necesita ayuda.” I was immediately corrected – it should actually be “Ella esta perdida y necesita ayuda.” And I thought to myself, “For gosh sake! This is no time to quibble about grammar. She is lost and needs help!”

The Google Glass is half empty.

You know what’s uncomfortable? Standing in one place for an extended period of time. After just a little while, you want to either sit down or walk around. To facilitate this, we have chairs and shoes. Combining the best of both is the bicycle, which allows the user to (sort of) sit down while (kind of) walking around. So anyway, somebody finally realized that the Segway was a terrible idea and they’ve stopped making them. Which, hmm, why didn’t more people buy a complicated expensive machine to do something that can achieved better, cheaper, easier? Consumers can be so fickle.

potatopotatopotato

Hey! Great souvenir idea here: “My Grampa visited Sturgis, SD, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt… and COVID-19.” One thing about Harley Davidson owners, they’re loyal. They show the kind of brand affinity you normally see in preteen boy band fans. (Does anybody sell Harley puffy stickers and scented erasers?) Thousands of them were last seen racing off to their annual camporee (Well, not racing, actually. These are Harleys, after all.) to exchange anecdotes, tall tales, and of course deadly viruses. In a week or two, be on the lookout for some real bargains in slightly used motorcycles.

Hey! Here's an idea!

There’s this little fly, so tiny that even ants don’t bother with it. The female fly pokes a hole in an ant and lays an egg in there. The maggot eats its way up through the ant until it gets inside the head; the ant remains oblivious. Later, this maggot somehow convinces the ant to leave the nest and find a nice moist place, then releases a chemical that makes the ant’s head drop off. The maggot snuggles down in there to metamorphose into adulthood. My point being, I guess, that you shouldn’t trust everything that goes through your head.

Screw it. Here's the OED's 100 most common English words.

the be to of and a in that have I it for not on with he as you do at this but his by from they we say her she or an will my one all would there their what so up out if about who get which go me when make can like time no just him know take person into year your good some could them see other than then now look only come its over think also back after use two how our work first well way even new want because any these give day most us

Some of my best friends

People who claim to be colorblind say there’s no difference between Black and white people but I call bullshit. I can name three differences right off the bat. First, the darker your skin the better you look when you go bald – less like a peeled egg. Number two: the potato salad. My experience has been that Black people potato salad is smaller bits, almost mashed, while white people potato salad is more chunky. I like it either way. And then third is how much less likely it is for a white person to get shot dead for a burned-out taillight.

What my brain does when I'm not using it

First it’s art, then it’s craft, then it’s shtick.

Humming into a pocket comb is one of those things that sounds good on paper.

At its extreme, a lack of integrity can be so absolutely guileless that it’s actually a form of authenticity.

Pete Best, Stu Sutcliffe, Brian Epstein, Murray the K, Billy Preston. By my count, Yoko is the 10th Beatle.

Pretty disappointed to learn that a squirrel gun is not at all what I had imagined.

I have all the symptoms of hypochondria.

Holy crap! I just realized that it’s called a halter because it stops the horse.

Know Free Lunch

So you’re walking through the park and some people are having a cookout. The tables are loaded up and everything looks and smells incredible. Somebody sees you standing there and they say, “What are you waiting for? Make yourself a plate.” So you do; there’s so much to choose from and it’s all delicious. And next time you walk past this big cookout, you make yourself another big plate. It gets to be a regular thing – it’s actually your favorite place to eat. So, the question is, when are you going to bring a dish?

That, friends, is an analogy.

There. Now you know.

Okay, okay. I think I got this. Folks noticed that some really big items acted differently than their science math said they would, specifically that galaxies behaved like they were much more massive than they really were, and they theorized that there was some invisible extra stuff that only showed up as mass, which isn’t weight but might as well be. It was like the butcher’s thumb on the scale. They called that undetectable cosmic thumb Dark Matter. Then some other people said, no, it’s just that gravity acts different when things are extra heavy. Or, you know, massive. Whatever.

Essential reading

Apparently, this country can run pretty much okay when a major proportion of the bourgeoisie stop showing up. They can sit at home and order takeout and just leave the proletariat to handle everything. I wonder what happens next? On an unrelated subject, I need to mention that Friedrich Engels had the most epic beard ever. Seriously, every other Communist beard is a timid dusting of pubescent peach fuzz compared to his awesome whiskers. I tried pointing this out to some associates, but try having a serious political discussion with people who think “Trotsky” is a cute reference to diarrhea.

Swift Thinking

Look, I’ve done the math. About 13 percent of us are African American, about 60 percent are white. So, to be fair, how about if every time we kill one Black person we also kill between four and five white people – the actual goal would be to achieve a ratio of about 4.6/1. In the squad room, it would be like, “Okay, people. Let’s stay safe out there, and let’s all try to hit those quotas.” I can hear the complaints already: “This used to be a great job, but I’m thinking of quitting because who needs all the paperwork?”

World's Worst Jew Quotes Talmud!

I’m hoping this isn’t like pet rocks and hot yoga. Not like Cabbage Patch Kids or Beanie Babies or the big Quinoa Scare of ’07. That this is the real deal and not a Geldof Moment. See, adrenaline is one hell of a drug, shouting is fun, outrage is contagious. Don’t let’s let this end up under the bed like a dusty Christmas guitar. “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not expected to complete the work, but neither are you permitted to abandon it.”

I'm itching to write this.

As one symptom of testosterone poisoning, many male humans grow hairs out of the bottom half of the front of their heads. A lot of us periodically remove this growth with tiny knives. And although most people would say we are beardless, we are technically sporting an extremely short beard. Not little boys, though. They are exempt. Many young men wear their beards longer to look more grownup. Bald men wear beards to at least have hair somewhere. And I think maybe old men let their beards grow because they just can’t stand to look in the mirror any more.

Numbers don't lie, but I'm not a number.

It’s Decoration Day. We should all be out tending the graves of the fallen, or at least eating grilled wienies and potato salad in the park. We should be pitching horseshoes in our shirtsleeves and yelling at the kids to stay away from the water for an hour after eating. We should at least be grateful for advances in civilization. For instance, every participant in the Great War died, and most all from WWII. Many survive from the Korean Conflict, and even higher percentage from Vietnam. So it can be shown statistically that each war is safer than the last.

Speaking Parenthetically

I’m out walking the dogs again. (I wouldn’t want my readers to think I spend all my time walking [because I also spend time feeding {and picking burrs from dogs} dogs] dogs.) I have a full life. I’m standing in the street, one pocket containing plastic bags for poop, another with nutritious peanuts for my friends the crows. I am under a tree, torn as to which way to proceed – the dogs are tugging in opposite directions. A little fat gray bird above me is emitting one chirp every two seconds. And I think, “That thing needs a fresh battery.”

For shame

People say they can tell when their dogs are ashamed but I have my doubts. Your average dog brain is about the size of a cue ball and just as smooth, lacking convolutions wherein regret might lodge. Humans on the other hand have all these notches and crannies that promote the construction of narratives. That means as we get older we build a richer story, gain a sense of perspective. So instead of tormenting yourself about some dumb or unkind thing you did last week, you can torment yourself about some dumb or unkind thing you did 50 years ago.

Our Wacky Planet!

Okay. So. Norway is not the tulip and windmill country. It is not the flatpack furniture country. It is not the sauna country, the marijuana country, or the mermaid country. Not the wooden shoes, not the Legos. When you think about Norway, the two words that spring to mind should be “toxic mucus,” because Norway is home to the bootlace worm (Lineus longissimus), maybe the longest animal in the world. Like, 150 feet long and about a quarter inch thick. It feeds by squirting poison snot from its nose to immobilize its prey. I just thought you’d want to know.

From Wikipedia... really

“Crossover thrash … is a fusion genre of thrash metal and hardcore punk. The genre lies on a continuum between heavy metal and hardcore punk. Other genres … such as metalcore and grindcore, may overlap with crossover thrash. The genre is often confused with thrashcore, which is essentially faster hardcore punk rather than a more punk-oriented form of metal… The "-core" suffix of "thrashcore" is sometimes used to distinguish it from crossover thrash and thrash metal, the latter of which is often referred to simply as "thrash", which in turn is rarely used to refer to crossover thrash or thrashcore.”

Blue Monday

Colloidal silver is tiny bits of silver in a liquid suspension, marketed by some quacks and charlatans as a cure for HIV/AIDS, shingles, herpes, acne, cancer, and prostate troubles. It doesn’t work. But in sufficient doses, it does lead to argyria, where your skin permanently turns a grayish blue color. Which is weird, but safer than big doses of Hydroxychloroquine, which can destroy your retinas or stop your heart. So what would be fun is if the president started saying that this stuff cured Covid-19. Because after that it would be easy to identify the people who take him seriously.

cien palabras

The computer keeps teaching me Spanish, and I’m currently proficient enough to construct the sentence  “Nadia nunca nada con nadie,” which means “Nadia never swims with anybody,” a thing which I will probably never need to say. I’ll persevere, though, because knowing a foreign language may eventually prove useful. Like, imagine you were traveling in Germany and some new local pals suggested you do some souvenir shopping at a little place with a sign that said “Gift Hut.” Cool, right? No! Don’t do it! In German, “Gift Hut” means “poison hat” and that nifty Bavarian fedora will kill you dead.

I'm no critic, but...

Submarine movies are rarely particularly good, and they’re all pretty much the same. They have to shut off the motors and be real quiet and sweaty while the air goes bad and the enemy drops depth charges. Most naval-type story lines are not my cup of tea, except pirate movies when they run their hands through the treasure. Also, I hate when they make you think it’s going to be a monster movie but it’s actually an old dark house mystery with a snooty aunt and a plucky gal reporter. But you know what’s the worst of all? Lumberjack adventures.

Unintended Consequences

The French Quarter is shut down, and the rats don’t like it one bit. They’re scurrying around wondering where all the food went. To quote the mayor,  "What we have seen is these practices are driving our rodents crazy." (I think referring to them as “our rodents” is a nice bit of inclusivity.) So the city is putting out Warfarin to kill them. But my thought is a lot of these rats have been overindulging  for years on fried oysters, etouffee, red beans, beignets.  A little dose of blood thinner may be just what they need to extend their lives.

finger on the pulse

I’m so ahead of the curve I’m in my own back pocket, so fashion-forward that last week’s styles are already retro-chic, so on-trend that tomorrow has me on speed dial. Right now, my chosen beverage is lukewarm tap water in a Dixie cup, but I’m only breathing craft air. Music on vinyl? Not so much. I’m into a band so hip their new release is available only on two-inch 24 track or Edison cylinder. But I liked their earlier stuff more. Before they met each other. And actually they were best when they had another name and completely different members.

Stop your tittering.

Boys, stop that giggling or I shall have to separate you. As I was saying, the tufted titmouse is not a mouse at all, but a charming little bird in the tit and chickadee family. Its familiar song can be described as a lilting “peter, peter, peter” – Boys! I’ll not warn you again! – a lilting “peter, peter, peter” in the trees. It is not to be confused with the edible dormouse, a small rodent that was considered a delicacy by the ancient Romans. It is consumed to this day in Slovenia, where the fur is used to make traditional hats.

It was a living heck.

Every generation has its cross to bear. Like, my grandparents had the Great War and Spanish Flu and their kids had the whole Hitler unpleasantness, and certainly I appreciate that many folks today are concerned about waves of viral infection scrubbing the entire human species from the globe although personally it’s too late for me to die young. But we boomers had our own trials. It wasn’t all Twinkies and Tang. It’s probably difficult for a person who didn’t come of age in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s to truly understand just how snugly our trousers fit back then.

In which Dave dreams big.

Travel is overrated. Most places are about the same notwithstanding variations in temperature and ambient light levels. But dang, I feel like I’ve been missing out big time because I’ve never been to Logan, Ohio. Friends, when the Reverend Paul A. Johnson died in 2010 he left a collection of about 3,400 pencil sharpeners which are now displayed at Logan’s Pencil Sharpener Museum. Plan your trip for Father's Day weekend to enjoy the annual Washboard Music Festival. (Logan is home to the Columbus Washboard Company, our nation’s only extant producer of said implements.) My bucket list has exactly one item.

an enviable lifestyle

There is this critter, a salamander, that lives in cold water in deep caves in the Dinaric alps. It’s called the olm, which is fun to say, and it lives its whole life underwater in the dark. It eats sparingly, sometimes going for a decade between meals, and it spends a lot of its time just relaxing. It’s very good at swimming but that’s not what it mostly does. It mostly rests, as I said. I like to think it has a rich inner life, that sober contemplation on being a blind pale aquatic amphibian is all the olm needs.

Sound and fury.

The author and critic Damon Knight generally gets credit for introducing the term “idiot plot” to describe a story that can only be sustained because the protagonists are idiots. If they weren’t, the story would be over. Like Superman, where, if you think about it, the moment Clark took off his glasses to clean them the whole secret identity thing would collapse although I myself wear glasses and so far when I remove them nobody has ever said, “Who are you and where did Dave go?” So here’s the challenge: Try to construct a non-idiot plot explanation for human history.

spores are yellow-brown and distinctly warted.

Commonly known as the tapioca slime mold, the species Brefeldia maxima is a nonparasitic Amoebozoan that looks, as you may have intuited from its name, like a slimy layer of white goo. It goes through a lot of interesting life phases, as do we all, but I want to highlight what they call the plasmodial phase, during which the whole damn thing is a single cell which can be like a yard across and weigh up to 40 pounds – a pale, brainless, soggy mass. They are most commonly found in forests after a rain, and in the United States Senate.

Bloody Kansas

Should I be upset that more people take off the day after Super Bowl than do Martin Luther King Jr. Day? Should I bother mentioning that by simply moving a space we can have a Sunday devoted to the Superb Owl? Or that adding a space can turn a well-known chicken franchise into Pope Yes? But that’s not what I want to discuss. I want to point out that although there’s a lot of loose talk about how terrible it is to be led by a stupid person there is little historical evidence indicating that smart people do any better.

Never ate the silica gel, though.

It was years ago when I first stepped over that bright line, and then there was no going back. I removed tag (under penalty of law), and began a life of unapologetic transgression. Before long I was leaping before I looked, putting all my eggs in one basket and then counting the chickens before they hatched. I went looking for trouble, made mountains out of molehills, put the cart before the horse. Once I judged somebody before I’d walked a mile in their shoes. And lately, I have been attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

The low-down on the load-out.

When I’m not writing the bestest little blog in the whole wide world, sometimes I am a bass player, generally defined as “someone who likes to hang around with musicians.” And I’ve made what I believe to be an important observation. People may be willing to accept and even embrace those with different skin tones, cultural heritages, political views, food preferences, hair styles, or intoxicant capacities. They can even coexist in harmony with those whose spiritual practices diverge broadly from their own. But everybody believes, deeply, that they know the one and only correct way to wrap a microphone cable.

Predictions for 2020

Nostradamus quit college when they closed the university due to the plague. Then his wife and their children died of the plague. So he invented a pill to cure the plague, which didn’t work but then neither did anything else. Later he wrote 942 four-line poems which prophesied our current world with astonishing accuracy. Here’s one:

“The sister's brother through the quarrel and deceit
Will come to mix dew in the mineral:
On the cake given to the slow old woman,
She dies tasting it she will be simple and rustic.”

Let’s see their so-called Science try to explain that!