Rotorglow

So, I've been a little slack about recent developments, and to the 5 of you who read this, I'm sorry about not blathering more frequently. But I'm off to Minneapolis for Joe and Leah's wedding this weekend and I need to hail a cab at oh-dark-thirty (uff-da!) tomorrow morning and pick up Clampants and Wife in Kendall Square, so we can catch a plane from BOS.

I reckon I'll have a variety of stories to tell when I get back on Sunday.

So....I'm back from Minneapolis. A grand time was had by all--especially me, apparently. I know I mentioned I'd tell stories, but I need to do some more fact-checking before I file a report. Suffice it to say, the ceremony was very nice, and the reception was splendid fun. The only real problem is that I became separated from my camera toward the end of the night, so I have no pix to show yet. I'm hoping the camera will make an appearance soon.

Before the wedding Kat drove me over to St. Paul to visit the house I lived in when I was 2, which was pretty neat. But the pix are on the camera, wherever that is, so....yeah.

Ah well. More soon.

EDIT, 1055, 6/12/06: Leah called me yesterday to say she was picking up the camera and the rest of my belongings, and will store them safely at Joe's parents house before bringing them back east when they return from their honeymoon. So....great f'n news.

decreasing danger
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 14 Jun '06, 11.30pm EDT PST.

These are the warning labels on the back of a mobile electronic traffic sign--the kind that usually says something like, "Mass Ave under constr until 2019. Expect Delays. Seek Alt Route" or "Be Safe. Enjoy The Prom. Belmont PD."

I was struck by the strange regularity of the decreasing size of the labels. At first I hoped they were just different translations of the same "do not stop cooling fan with face" warning. But they were actually different warnings, of varying severity.

This one is currently on Garden St. near Harvard Square. Inactive, for now, but still dangerous.

So, I'm listening to this week's Robot Radio show, and Tim and I got to talking about it. Whether he knew it or not, he summed up the nature of job satisfaction perfectly, of course:

(11:02:24) Tim: I want a job where people hand me records to play
(11:02:40) Tim: and I can't accept them because I am currently mixing and drinking a beer
(11:02:46) Tim: "Just set it down over there"

I could argue that test driving or something along those lines might do the trick too, but I don't think that would be any "better" than playing records.

I thought I had a lot of specific stuff to report, but I'm only coming up with a few things. Over the weekend Tim, Kat, Albert and I went to my friends Sam and Jenny's wedding. Some of you will recall that I left my camera at the last wedding I attended, so I don't have any pix, but the ceremony was lovely, the reception was great (and informative, as we all found out some amusing details about Sam's high school days), and the afterparty, soaked in 16 flavors of Rogue, was super.

I did some driving around to clear the head and grind the rust off the brakes, and wound up out in the suburbs for a cookout and (as it happened) to help give one Rocket J. Dog an entirely-unappreciated (by him) bath.

I took the long way home in the evening, and after a similarly frivolous top-down errand this evening, some things came into focus in new ways:

No night is too muggy for wind-in-the-hair motoring. No matter how hot the day is, by 9 or 10 PM, the weather (and traffic) is totally perfect for tooling around. Can't sleep because it's 81° in your apartment at 1AM? Go for a drive. Etc.

Convertibles make everyone think you want to talk to them. This is rarely the case, in my experience. There are exceptions, of course. The occasional "nice car" is harmless and welcome, and the brief exchange I had last night with the guy in the awe-inspiring '64 Galaxie 500 convertible was facilitated by having our respective roofs down. Convertibles are also great for spotting The Ladies, on account of there being no blindspots when the roof is down. (As The Robots have been known to say: "HEL-loooo!") But they also attract attention from clowns and weirdos, like those 2 lunkheads in a muffler-less 4-cylinder Ford pickup (sorry I didn't keep racing you guys, but I really don't have anything to prove to potheads in pickups, and running red lights isn't cool), or the club girls in a Maxima shouting "FATE! IT'S FATE! YOU KNOW YOU THINK WE'RE SEXY! IT'S FATE!" Um....yeah.

(By the same token, I realize that being cute probably attracts attention from clowns and weirdos too, but...)

There's also the matter of yelling at traffic, as I'm known to do. When the roof is down, other people hear you....

So, they're not really great cars for urban Shy Persons. (Urbane shy persons probably handle things better.) But, to cite one relevant example, those muggy middle of the night rides make it all ok.

Separately, if you're a law-student honky in a polo shirt, and you're flossin' a slammed G35 coupe with 20" polished rims, you really should ditch the HLS baseball cap.

Now, I know I'm a honky, and I myself am flossin' 17" polished rims (which look as blinged-out on my little car as those dubs did on that G35--it's all about the proportions).

But I'd never go to law school.

It took 40-some-odd miles, and 6 or 7 onramps, but I finally shook the crappy mood I'd been in most of the afternoon and evening.

There are 11 hairballs in the hallway outside my apartment, visible from my doorway. There are four others in the staircase leading up to my floor. And due to crosswinds and air pressure effects, one found its way under my door into my apartment. All of them are from the piano-playing cat across the hall.

Early in the morning a couple of days ago I had a dream that I was giving Carmella Soprano advice about credit cards. Tony was there, but didn't say much.

Today is the longest day (and shortest night) of the year. Which means the days start getting shorter.

I read a compilation of letters and emails by servicemen and -women in Iraq that appeared in a recent New Yorker. (The article itself doesn't seem to still be online, but there's a related multimedia presentation of some of the pieces, read by the authors.) Boy, do I feel discouraged about the shit-soup Our Gubmint has cooked up for us over there.

I wish mis-aimed headlights could be added to the list of evils that threaten Our Nation. You know, so we could wage war on it.

I first learned about Sealand, the micronation a few miles off the coast of England, in an article in Wired a few years ago, just after I'd finished reading Neal Stephenson's wonderful book Cryptonomicon.

I thought Sealand was one of the coolest things I'd heard of in a long time, a weird pseudo-state caught in the confusion of international law and border technicalities. It used to be a British naval defense rig during WWII. It was abondoned in the 50s, and taken over in the 60s. After some (dubious) legal precedents establishing sovereignty were set, Britain expanded its territorial waters out past Sealand. Meaning (the theory went) that Britain would rush to the defense of Sealand if anyone came after it, since such an incursion would bring the invaders within Britain's territorial waters. Through the years there've been coup attempts, hostage-takings, fake Sealand passports, coinage, governments-in-exile...The works. How awesome is that?

Sealand was a data haven, housing servers thought to be outside the reach of various national laws (based on the de facto sovereignty Sealand had established over the years). Cryptonomicon mentions a data haven, in a micronation in the Pacific, vowing not to snoop on the data stored on or passing through its server vaults underground. I thought the coincidental timing of having read Cryptonomicon and learning about Sealand was pretty slick, and cemented for me the legend of both Wired and Stephenson (who wrote one of my favorite magazine articles ever, a 60+ page ad-free masterwork on the laying of transglobal fiber optic cables, for Wired, in the mid 90s). Point is, I loved the idea of a place whose laws specifically prevented the indiscriminate snooping on data.

And speech.

(For more, check out the terms of service for Sealand's state-owned hosting company Havenco.)

The horrors of warrentless wiretaps and other crimes against the Bill of Rights were theoretical and unlikely back then (it looked like Al Gore would win in 2000...), but I remember feeling that legal protection for data security seemed like a good idea anyway.

Another thing about Sealand that resonated for me is that it's really close to a part of England in which I've spent a lot of time. It's 7 miles off Felixstowe, near Ipswich and Woodbridge, where some 2nd cousins of mine have lived for a long time, and whom my parents and I visited a lot when I was a kid. We used to go sailing on the river that connects Woodbridge to the North Sea. Etc.

Now, I haven't been back there since I learned about Sealand, but I remember standing on that (inhospitably cold) coast around there and looking out and seeing ships moving around on the horizon. Maybe I saw Sealand too on one of those trips as a 5-year-old.

Sealand caught fire on Friday, and a variety of firefighting equipment rushed to the scene, but the rig's condition is uknown. The one occupant was airlifted to Ipswich for treatment of smoke inhalation.

And the prince of Sealand vows to rebuild.

This is the kind of thing one finds when one Googles oneself:

"Chris Welbon on Cinglular"

Whacky. I do remember saying that, though.

From Donnellon's column today:

"Hate the DH as you should, but understand as long as their league has one and yours doesn't, you are playing with one bat tied behind your back - and maybe both hands, too."

IMG_5462.JPG
Originally uploaded by rotorglow at 28 Jun '06, 9.22am EDT PST.

I'm very happy to report that Joe and Leah brought my camera back safe and sound. Big ups to them for that, because without their help (and their wedding reception, for that matter) we all wouldn't be able to see this picture of Tim, caught in the act of catching people in the act.

More to come.

If I see you in the hall and say, "Hey, how are you?" I probably don't actually want to hear that you're "hungry" or "tired, hot and cranky."

But it's my mistake. So I'll stop asking, since I can't seem to count on you to stop answering.

And for fuck's sake, clean up the cat hair.

He whose friends have gas or charcoal grills is a rich man indeed.