Kevin Speaks

Trust me, it all makes sense!

Archive for category Events

Cleaning and Kitties

Jan 29

Posted by Zero in Cats, Events, Nonsense | 1 Comment

Whole house vacuum, including furniture relocation, corners, and deep crevice extraction: 5 hours

Mopping of all non-fabric surface areas (approximately 900 square feet): 2.5 hours

Deep carpet cleaning for all carpeted surface areas and two large area rugs (approximately 600 square feet): 2.5 hours

Time to recover from cat urine fumes every time I emptied the carpet cleaner: approximately 3 minutes per empty x 4 empties = 12 minutes of my life I’ll never get back

Morale damage when I found my cats getting cozy with freshly cleaned laundry: -24 points, inspiring immediate panic, rapid pulse, and short breath.

Tigerlily is happy!

Ralph is so cute!

Stick with goldfish, people.

Tags: , , , ,

First Ski of the Year!

Jan 24

Posted by Zero in Events, News | No Comments

I am considering resigning my position as “Premier Beach Bum of Northwest Washington” and applying for the “Premier Ski Bum of Southwest British Columbia” position.

David‘s birthday was on Friday, the 20th, and he kindly invited me to tag along for the ride — a day at Cypress Mountain, and then another day at Grouse.  It was my first visit to Cypress, but I can PROMISE you it won’t be my last — if nothing else, I want to go back so I can see this view in person:

Bluebird View from Cypress Mountain

What I saw while I was there mostly looked like this:

When we were done, we did the best we could to squeeze all the rainwater out of our gloves and hats and pants and underpants and retreated to the car.  On the way, we were nearly skewered alive by 40mph sleet, which undid all the squeegee work we’d just finished at the lodge.  In the car, I sacrificed my vintage copy of Star Trek 5 (The Paperback) to soak up the 6 gallons of ice-water that proceeded to dribble from our clothing.

Bottom line: while the slopes themselves were awesome as long as you didn’t stop moving long enough to cool down, the frigid dismount was excruciating.  I consider myself relatively impervious to foul weather; by the time I got in the car, I was on the brink of crying like a little girl.

Also, I did my first black run.  On accident.

It was kind of painful.

That night, we determined that we would do anything we had to do to avoid slush, which is why we hit Whistler instead of Grouse on Saturday…  along with 25,000 other skiers and boarders, 4,000 marijuana legalization activists, 2,500 french language snobs, and a contingent of 1,800 Baptist ministers who had been tragically misdirected on their way to a bible conference in Memphis.

Despite an early start, lousy road conditions and congestion turned the trip into a 2 hour and 45 minute slog from North Vancouver.  Somehow, we ended up behind a white van with a “School Bus” label.  Someone had scratched the words “Fun Bus” into the thick layer of dust and grime immediately below it.   Here’s how the boys from the “Fun Bus” roll:

when you have to go

When you have to go

Although I was initially disgusted by this, I did eventually plow the flex into a snowbank, haul myself over the guardrail, and find a nice patch of virgin snow protected from the view of passing traffic.  It was a euphoric moment, and I suspect I weighed about 12 pounds less when I got back into the car.  Hey, less weight means less fuel burned on the way up the mountain, right?

In Whistler, it took nearly another 2 hours to load my EDGE card, rent my gear, and wade through the long upload lines from Creekside…  but then, miraculously, we were standing outside Raven’s Nest looking down Expressway.  With contented sighs, we exchanged satisfied looks and pushed off.  Aaaaaand down I went like a sack of potatoes.  And again.  And again.  Turns out one of my skis wouldn’t fit properly into my boot so that I could turn left, but not right.  Bad start!  Fortunately, David had the patience to analyze the situation (it was the ski, not the boot) and figure out which adjustment made the difference.  He tightened the length binding by one setting, and everything worked.  It required one more adjustment later in the day, but seemed solid enough to trust, even on moguls.

Whistler truly is a magical place.  On this particular day, there was a curtain of grey cloud over its midsection.  Below that, the village was getting a light but steady deluge of big, wet flakes, and the slopes were just a teensy bit slushy — you wouldn’t get wet falling into them a few times, but you could feel the snowmass hugging your skis.  Above, a high overcast broke occasionally to reveal patches of blue sky, the wind from the southwest was irregular, gusty, and bitingly cold, and the snow was perfect, perfect powder, drifting deep on the fringes of the runs.  Occasionally, coming down, you’d pop through a gap in the cloud layer and and see the whole valley stretched out below you and…  oh, that is magical.  I can’t find a picture online that does it justice.  You can’t fit that much of creation into a 12 or 15 megapixel box and call it anything more than a mnemonic.

After a greasy Village lunch, we barely managed to get back up  the mountain  in time to ski down to Creekside where we were parked.  We had just left Midstation down Crossroads and were just turning onto Franz’s trail into the first direct sunlight of the day when — with a click, clack! of finality — my ski binding flew off.  Which is why  I ended the trip scooting down the last 2,000 feet or so on my butt.  Using one ski as a sled and the other as a hand-rail, I could at least make good time on the steeper slopes, but it was not exactly what I’d call a dignified exit.

Next time, I’ll have my way with Franz.  Until then, I will nurse my bruised buttocks and search for the passport and two phones I lost on my way home =(

Tags: , , ,

Occupy What, Exactly?

Oct 27

Posted by Zero in Bad Personal Philosophy, Events, Politics | No Comments

The Occupy Wall Street movement (or the larger movement formerly known as Occupy Wall Street) has drifted on and off the front page so many times now it’s almost like deja vu.  I mean, didn’t we already read this headline?  But it refuses to die (2 of CNN’s “Latest News” category are devoted to it as of five minutes ago) and I for one am glad.  NOT simply because the opposition movement has generated such an excess of amusing imagery and countermemes:

I Am the 2%

My Father is with the 1%

99% of us died in the making of Episode VI

Although, obviously, it’s done plenty of that.  I approve of this movement because, if you peel back the thin layer of frivolity and pseudo-anarchist revelry that reflects back so much of the media light thrown its way, there are some truly novel features underneath. This movement has a sense of ambition I haven’t seen in public protests in my lifetime: they want to occupy EVERYTHING! And not just occupy it; they want to humanize it, make it serviceable, and to declaw and domesticate the systems they perceive as preying upon the masses. The confused but consistent impetus towards fundamental social and economic transformation in this movement is really quite quixotic. And quixotic is charming!

I have not slurped the delicious milk of humankindness for a long long time and I'm going to make sure you know it, punks

As always, idealistic missions collectively pursued are ready fodder for specific types of attacks: to individualists, they are often seen as “lazy,” to traditionalists, generally “impractical” or “wasteful,” and to political conservatives, they often appear (shudder) “socialistic.” Which is why counterattacks against the 99% meme tend to be so dour, so stingy, and so darn tootin’ self-righteous: they are usually aimed by very serious, generally self-sufficient people at folks perceived to be frivolous at best, and thieves and highwaymen at worst. Yet another example of the old robbers-of-the-republic myth. It is a sad disservice to the multitude of legitimate victims of one of the worst economic climates of the century that merely voicing their woes can lead to accusations of fundamental worthlessness, communist leanings, and congenital warts.

One of the hallmarks of the Occupation movement to date has been its vagueness about what, exactly, is being occupied, what exactly is to be accomplished. I must admit that I doubt the possibility of “success” in the terms an activist might paint them: the banks and moneyed interests will probably not be overthrown, recessions will probably prove immune to political exile, and the Universe will almost certainly not become a fundamentally kind and gentle place. Most likely, nature will remain not only amoral but generally damp and clammy as well. Even worse, regardless of innovations in antimalarial technology, mosquitoes will definitely continue to thrive somewhere on the planet.

However, I also doubt the movement’s detractors’ implicit claim that talk is cheap, useless, or even dangerous. We should talk about things, and at great length. And working together to make the world a better place isn’t just something for college students to theorize about between liberal arts classes: it’s an obligation of every major thought system the planet has ever seen, including capitalism. Experimentation is part of the imperative of our humanity in just the same way that self-improvement is a mandate of the gods of our mothers and fathers. On these precepts, any voice that says or implies “put your heads down and work” should be rejected. The work of free people should be done with heads up and eyes open. And any voice that says “be quiet, you have no right to speak” should be reviled. Speech is our birthright, and silence is death.

If the occupation has done nothing else, it has occupied our collective thoughts for a while — and that is, perhaps, the only important thing. May the Occupation remain thought-provoking.

Tags: , , , ,

A Ridiculously Brief Defense of “Alternative Medicine”

Oct 13

Posted by Zero in Bad Personal Philosophy, Events, News | No Comments

Well done, Mr. Jobs.

Well done, Mr. Ritchie

Steve Jobs’ death has prompted widespread and popular sorrow (Dennis Ritchie’s death a few days later has been widely regarded with silence, which is sad in its own right). Steve wasn’t even 60. The fact that he succumbed to modern humanity’s scourge — cancer — instead of dying a “natural” death of heart failure or catastrophic aneurism, has provoked a sense of injustice from many people. That includes the fellow that penned this lovely little post in the immediate aftermath of Jobs’ passing, “Steve Jobs Succumbs to Alternative Medicine.”  With all due to respect to Mr. Dunning, Respectful Insolence’s post on the topic was much more nuanced than yours — but I digress.

I was shocked to see Steve Jobs’ untimely death blamed, without reservation, on the quackery that is “alternative medicine” — referred to here as though “alternative medicine” were a single, uniform entity instead of the rag-tag lost brigade of wishful thinking, innovation, philosophical excess, and common sense that it is.  As a number of voices chimed in with an excerpt from Tim Minchin’s Storm: “”You know what they call ‘alternative medicine’ that’s been proved to work? Medicine.”  Well said!

I can guarantee this will work... but only once


And particularly appropriate because, if you look back to the scientific revolution as it intersects with medicine — especially in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th — you will see an ironic trend.  Medicine — you know, bleeding, trepanning, the obvious truth that miasmas caused infection, and an extreme paranoia on the topic of masturbation — was confronted by an implacable sequence of “alternative medicine” based, not on the time honored tradition of the medical trade, but on scientific fact.  Many of these scientists were accused of quackery.  Many unavoidable deaths were blamed on “alternative medicine.”  The close-mindedness of traditional practitioners is often lampooned in costume dramas. They make quite excellent minor villains AND double as comic relief!

My point here is not that we should thrown down the walls of our skepticism and embrace every nutty theory out there (personally, I find the ideas that water responds to written words reflecting human intentionality, most purgative diets, and almost all homeopathy offensive in their nuttiness).   But conversely, discarding idea B or practice Y out-of-hand because they don’t fit into the canon of accepted treatment methodologies is by definition close-minded.  Everything must be proved and nothing can be assumed. And, no matter what the anti-mad-hatter types are saying in these blogs, the idea that diet and health are linked is an EXTREMELY SOUND medical theory. Can anyone honestly argue that Jobs’ belief in this link was nonsensical? Perhaps even more importantly, consensus in the medical community is a conundrum — developing the “proof” to determine whether a treatment is viable and productive can take, quite literally, generations. Let us remember that lobotomy, trepanning’s smarter, better-dressed city cousin, achieved its heyday in the 50s and 60s — the same time period that brought us widespread television, the first computing devices, xeroxes, and modern bureaucracy. This was “alternative medicine that has been proven to work.”

I’m sorry Steve Jobs is dead: I think he would have been well-advised to have pursued the Whipple procedure early instead of delaying 9 months, and as Mr. Dunning rightly points out, there is no evidence that diet effects the type of carcinoma Jobs was originally diagnosed with. Until a decade or two ago, the Whipple procedure still had catastrophically high mortality rates; enough to give pause. It is entirely possible that he was surveying exactly the history I’ve glossed above when he…. hesitated. But Jobs was never one to accept common knowledge at face value; Apple’s success can pretty accurately be described as an alternative technology being presented in an alternative way. I would sooner blame Steve (if blame is even necessary) for choosing to pause, than to blame “alternative medicine” — crackpots, visionaries, and pioneers alike — for daring to be alternative.

ADDENDUM: If you are an adherent of homeopathy, purgative diets, or writing love letters on your water bottles so your water will feel good, I apologize for targeting you above. I still think you’re crazy, but hope you won’t feel to bad about it =)

Tags: , , , , , , ,

An Old Favorite

Aug 30

Posted by Zero in Events, Poetry, Travel | No Comments

So, I’m in Texas.  In the heat.  The dry, baking heat.  The killing, inescapable, merciless heat.

Actually, the heat is surprisingly survivable — not just because of the A/C, though it is necessary, but because after a while you just get used to it.  It’s 96 now, but just a few minutes ago I was commenting on how much cooler it is tonight than it was last night.  A few nights ago I had to get into a hot tub (it was 97 at the time) because the pool was too chilly.  It’s funny.

The landscape here is a tinderbox, arid forest stretched thin over the skin of the rolling Texan hill country — quite beautiful, but with a strange air of fragility.  The property I’m on — the Wizard Academy — is breathtaking.  It has been built with a remarkable attention to and depth of detail.  Check out the pictures.

Anyway, the founder — Roy Williams — was talking about poetry to Poem and I (well, more to Poem — I tried getting my toe in the door a couple of times with no luck) about whether or not her name had conditioned her to live or occupy a certain identity, and whether some of that identity may be based on a misunderstanding of what poetry can or should be.  He recited an abominably fatalistic Frost poem which prompted me, in a few spare moments, to look up a few poems I used to love and whose titled happened, through some fluke of neurochemical luck, to stick.  Here’s the one that leapt out at me:

Stone
by Charles Simic

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.
From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.
Good stuff.  I need more.

Tags: , ,

Samwise is Sad

Aug 4

Posted by Zero in Cinema, Events, News, Nonsense | 1 Comment

So, the markets are a complete disaster area today — even gold is down, and marginal safe haven commodity silver (SLV) has bombed atrociously just after climbing out of the crater of a crash from two months back.  But I had to laugh when I looked at CNN and found them reusing an image which first appeared the other day:

Markets dive on economy fears

Doesn't this guy look a little familiar?

This guy looks just like someone we know well — someone we know and love from cinema! It’s…

Samwise Gamgee having a bad day

Seriously, this guy — crumpled, despairing, on the edge of tears — looks just like Sam after Gollum convinced Frodo that Sam wanted the ring for himself, up above Minas Morgul.  Samwise the Grave, trapped in a bull pit, watching money flow out of the market and into mattresses across the world.  Poor guy.

If hardship brings out the best in us (as Americans often say, although often at the wrong moments), the stock markets often bring out the worst in us: fear and greed.  This July definitely belongs to fear, almost as much as all of 2009 did.  Fear is a destructive force all it’s own.  If only these issues could be solved with a short sword and a little starlight captured in a vial of mirror water…

Fight on, Samwise!

Tags: , , , ,