Month: February 2009

My iPhone vibrated and chimed to let me know a text had come in.

I was sitting at my desk at work, so I dug the silver brick out of my pocket and looked to see who had texted me.

The screen just showed a phone number, which meant that the person wasn’t in my address book. The text mentioned a birthday party for the sender, tomorrow night, at a bowling alley. It had the look of something sent to a bunch of people, a blast group text, rounding up a posse.

I had, just a week or two ago, done some cleaning up of my address book. Had I mistakenly deleted someone who still texted me? I couldn’t think of anyone – the list of texts I had received in the last few weeks had names and pictures attached to numbers; it looked complete.

Was this from someone I hadn’t talked to in a long time? A girl I had dated once or twice and then fallen out of contact with? Did I get included by mistake? Was this spam?

So many questions. I tried Googling the number, but nothing turned up.

I walked over to my friend Ken’s cube, sat down across from him. “I just got this text and I don’t know who it’s from.” I showed him my phone.

“It could be spam,” he suggested. “Replying might sign you up for something.” He shifted to his Announcer Voice. “Congratulations, by reying to this text you are now the proud recipient of a lifetime subscription to the ringtone of the month club, billed in one lump sum of $999.99!”

“Who, me?” I smiled.

“Did you try Googling it?”

I nodded. “I should just reply like I know who it is. Maybe mess with ’em a bit.”

Ken gave me a blank stare. “Or you could just tell them that your address book is messed up and you don’t know who it is.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” I was smiling, still. “You and your whole ‘be honest and straight-forward’ kick!”

Ken turned back to the computer he was working on, quickly. A bit too quickly; he betrayed a little frustration. “Whatever. Just reply.”

“This could very likely be a wrong number, or someone I removed from my address book for a good reason,” I continued, only half-serious. “It’s entertaining to play around a little.” Meanwhile, I was already keying in a reply – an honest and straight-forward reply, explaining that I had messed up my address book and did not know who had sent me the text.

Ken said, “You’re going to mess something up and piss someone off, just because they invited you to a birthday party! I just do not get you sometimes!” He was a bit rant-y.

“I like things that are entertaining. And if they’re not already, I like making them that way. What can I say?” I was needling him a little, even as I hit send on essentially the text he suggested I send.

“You’re trying to make it a better story. When it’s already a good story to begin with.”

“May-be,” I conceded.

Soon enough, the reply came back: it was a waitress at the Limelight, a restaurant I eat at frequently. I sent a quick “Oh, hi! Happy almost-birthday!” back to acknowledge I’d gotten the text. Nice!

Good thing I hadn’t carried through with my random anarchy plan…

I haven’t been getting out much. Except for my regular Friday nights out with the guys to see Battlestar Galactica’s final episodes at the Bagdad Theater, and my obsession to become a regular customer at the Delta Cafe, and getting to and from work, I haven’t spent a lot of time outside of my apartment.

I’m not sure why that is: a long, cold winter; most (but not all) of my friends living in other counties and me not having a car; the pressure of financial tightening as the economy worsens; or even grumpy-old-man-ism, a preference for being inside and away from strangers.

Perhaps none of these. Perhaps some of them.

I’ve even had invitations from new friends to hang out, spend some time, be social and have fun. Some, like Neva’s birthday party, I accepted. But several I have not. It’s not them; it’s most definitely me.

I lack the energy to dig into my own motivations. I think I’m afraid to find out what they are. At least, I think that, I don’t know for certain. Because… I’m afraid to examine my own motivations. Duh. QED.

I haven’t run in over a week. Last week, after feeling some pain in my groin for several weeks, I finally got up the courage to visit my doctor to figure out what it might be. My fears ran rampant, as you might imagine, considering the sensitive area the pain was in. But it turned out to be a simple ligament sprain, a “sports hernia”, requiring nothing more than some prescription NSAIDs and rest. My doctor, Dr. Carl, once he’d eliminated all other causes, demonstrated definitively for me that that was all it was – he literally put his finger right on the tendon and the spot where the pain originated from, and further demonstrated that rest would relieve the pain.

Running is my anti-depressant, on top of allowing me to eat donuts for breakfast and not gain weight and giving me an excuse to be outside and active. Take away my running and I fall inward.

Luckily the waiting and resting is over. I’ll be able to run again soon. And hopefully my mood and my energy will return.

And hopefully I can lose the several pounds of… um… fuel… I’ve gained in this short time.

I think the lack of energy is contributing to my blogger’s block lately, too. It’s harder for me to come up with a post a day. So excuse this free rambling. I’ll be back on track soon enough.

Spring can’t get here fast enough, for so many reasons.

I think I first heard the term “zombie lies” from Duncan Black. That link goes to top hit for “atrios zombie lies”, not necessarily the first instance of him saying it, by the way, and I’m not saying that he invented the term. But he uses it often, and it always seems to refer to the same idea: a zombie lie is an argument or idea that has been thoroughly debunked and refuted, time and time again, and yet still seems to have people in the public sphere promoting and defending it.

Like the zombies of fiction and fantasy, you can’t put them down. No matter how many bullets you put in them, no matter how many times you stab one, they just will not die.

And the zombie lies seem to revolve, politically anyway, around conservative policies and themes. Like the whole “Social Security is going bankrupt!” zombie lie. You hear this a lot. You heard it from President #43 right after he was elected in 2004. You hear it even today, while we are in the middle of an economic disaster caused by tax cuts and deregulation. But the fact of the matter is that Social Security as currently structured will pay out full benefits until the year 2041. Y’know, somehow I think we have some time to deal with the “problem” of a fully-funded safety net for retirees and the disabled for the next 32 years. Maybe we could be focusing on the more immediate problems right now?

Another zombie lie is related to, and in argument against, the just-passed mostly-spending bill in Congress, and can be summed up in the phrase “government should be run like a business!” This zombie lie includes the idea that “we’re broke – we shouldn’t borrow any more!” It’s a bit more insidious because individual Americans can certainly understand their own household economics: when income decreases, spending should likewise decrease. You don’t borrow money when you’re broke. The reason this is a zombie lie, though, when applied to governments and larger economies is that only the government is large enough to absorb the costs of infusing new capital, in the form of spending, into an economy in an effort to reverse an economic depression. If no individual is spending any money because of a depression, it takes the government to step in and make things happen.

How do we know that this is true? Because FDR’s New Deal spending is what got America out of our Great Depression. In fact, when FDR gave in to some “fiscal conservatives” in Congress and cut taxes and decreased spending, in 1937, you can plainly see that those cuts reversed the gains from the previous spending. It may seem counter-intuitive to those of us who are clipping coupons and cutting back personally, but if we want to get out of this economic nightmare, we should be cheering the spending portions of the stimulus bill that just passed, and should be booing the Republicans who forced a bunch of tax cuts into it.

Just look at how great President #43’s tax cuts were at sustaining and building on President Clinton’s budget surpluses. Oh, wait. #43 turned a $127 billion dollar surplus into a $455 billion dollar deficit.

We need more spending; and because #43 left us in a hole with his tax cuts for the rich and his wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan that costs us billions, and the free money give-away to banks and financial institutions (which I will admit, President Obama supported at the time and is continuing), our situation is far more dire than it should have been. But that doesn’t take away the proven fact that building infrastructure and putting more capital and money into the economy is the answer, in a nutshell.

Luckily, that’s what President Obama is proposing. Sadly, the Republicans seem to want to obstruct that spending and, in some cases, Republican state governors are considering refusing the money. That’s about as willfully destructive and ignorant as they could possibly be.

Y’know, just like zombies.

Sorry I don’t have a real post for you this morning. I’ve been sleeping.

Got home last night from work, and was immediately tired. Well, I’d been tired all day, and had a bit of a headache. I barely had any energy but forced myself to get a load of laundry done (a bunch of black t-shirts, actually) then crashed on the couch and watched a little bit of recorded TV (last week’s Clone Wars) and then… drifted into bed.

Where I slept for twelve hours.

Had a dream about shopping for a VW Jetta that I was sure I couldn’t afford. Had another dream about moving into a new house that I, also, couldn’t afford. I think those dreams stemmed from the conversation at lunch about the economic crisis our country, and the world, is going through.

But beyond my vague remembrances of dreams, being in bed was a half-day of oblivion.

Now I’m over-tired and stiff, muscles sore, and a bit sweaty (I didn’t turn down the heat before sleep so it’s too warm in here).

And now, I’m off to work.

In case you liked my latest in the “Motels and Hotels I remember” series, you may want to read the past installments.

I’ve added a new tag, so you’ll find all the previous posts here.

The new Dell laptops we (the place I work) are buying have biometrics built-in – fingerprint readers. You’ve gotta figure that’s pretty secure, right?

The folks at Mythbusters have successfully beaten fingerprint readers, though, a couple of years ago.

Myth Busters-Finger Print Lock – video powered by Metacafe

Wonder if fingerprint readers have gotten better since then? I don’t know, but my guess is, no. Not in retail off-the-shelf laptops anyway.

Last night, after having a great time at nevafeva’s birthday party in NE Portland, I faced the downer of a long bus ride back to Sellwood.

Bear with me for a little Portland geography; surely most everyone who reads my posts already knows this but just in case, let me set the scene. The majority of all bus routes in Portland pass through, or end in, downtown. The first part of my bus journey was on the #6 bus, which basically traveled up and down the north- and south-bound highway of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, before hopping over the Hawthorne Bridge into the downtown bus mall.

Then, to complete my journey from one end of Portland to the other, I had to grab the #33, which hopped back over the Hawthorne Bridge to drive south-bound highway of McLoughlin Boulevard, where I debark and enjoy a half-mile walk to my little apartment building o’ fun.

Two boulevards, two straight shots, each with a juke into the city center. Easy-peasy, right? I should be home in a flash, right?

The first part of the trip went smoothly. I love people watching the folks who ride the bus late on a Saturday. The attractive young girls who are going to a dance club. The middle-aged men who still think they’re young men talking to the young girls. The older lady, drunk out of her mind, just riding around for something to do. Just another bunch of damaged humanity (including me). I felt a kinship with all of them, but sat in my seat and watched.

I debark downtown, and check the schedule on my iPhone. Side note: I found the best iPhone app for anyone in Portland who rides a bus. Last Friday, the website I have been checking for TriMet bus arrival times went away – I got a 404 error. So I poked around Apple’s App Store and found a long list of iPhone programs for transit times. Our local transit agency actually has an API to let others use their schedule information, which explains all the Portland-specific iPhone apps I found. The top rated one was called PDXBus, and it was free, so I downloaded it.

It’s full of features! Bookmarks for most-used stops, it can show multiple stops on one page, it lets me organize and arrange the bookmarks and rename them, it uses Core Location to show me the closest stops to me in case I’m in an area of town I’m not familiar with. It even has a built-in blue flasher that I can use to flag down buses at night.

Last night, though, iPhone told me that I had a 35+ minute wait for the next leg of my trip home. It was cold and I was tired and did not feel like standing in the wind for that long, so I walked 6 blocks to the only open coffee shop I could find, the Starbucks at Pioneer Courthouse Square, which was open until midnight. On my short walk, I was asked directions, as I normally am whenever I walk anywhere. I must look like someone who knows where things are. I accidentally gave incorrect directions (no, seriously, it was accidental). Got a small coffee, had to wait a bit while it was finishing brewing, was offered an Americano instead (no, I’ll wait for the brewed coffee, thanks), texted goodnight to my bestie, Tracy, found out the wifi at Starbucks wasn’t working (which matters much less since I bought an iPhone), and then walked the six blocks back to the bus stop.

And got asked directions once again. His Spanish accent was thick so I had a hard time understanding what he was asking for but we eventually got it sorted out and I pointed him in the right direction.

Got to the stop and the bus was already there, laying over until time to leave. Hopped on, started people watching again while surfing to kill the time. A driver and 15 or so people just wanting to go home, or somewhere else at least, on a Saturday night.

The driver was tall, and white-haired but strong looking, and when it was time to go he pulled out into traffic sharply and crisply. Turned onto Madison to cross the bridge… then just kept going straight.

He should have taken the off-ramp down onto McLoughlin and continued south. He didn’t.

A passenger walked up to the front of the bus to ask him about this mistake, which is always a touchy situation. If the driver is defensive at all, or the passenger is rude at all, it can turn into an argument. This passenger was deferential enough, or the driver was humble enough, to avoid that. “I’ll just have to go around the block to get back on track,” the driver said.

So we continued onto SE Hawthorne, crossed Grand Ave., went one block up and turned right. Now we were parallel to McLoughlin and two blocks away. It’s a little complicated by the fact that the major streets are one-way onlies, but the very next right-hand turn would have gotten the driver right back on track.

He kept going straight.

I kept quiet, but made eye contact with a couple of my fellow passengers. We wanted to see where this was going. We didn’t want to point out that the driver was lost. Well, I did, but I did it on Twitter.

After just a block or two, the driver was screwed, because McLoughlin becomes a raised thoroughfare with no on-ramps. Now, when he got to an intersection and looked right, he could see that he had no way to get back on McLoughlin and back on track. Now, his little GPS unit was beeping at him that he was seriously off course. Now, he (or at least I) could feel the tension of all the passengers wondering where the hell we were and where we were going. A girl who had been talking on her cell phone to a distant friend started narrating the streets we passed, trying to figure out what the score was and how much longer until she reached her destination.

I thought ahead and realized that the driver was going to have to zig-zag through inner Southeast and past the TriMet Center garage, along SE 17th, before he could get back to the normal route. And so he did.

Because the boulevard is one long multi-lane highway, even with this long detour, the driver only missed one stop. Still, I felt bad for anyone who was waiting at that stop for a bus home; the next bus to pass there wouldn’t do so for another hour, and that was the final trip of the night. They’d be waiting a long time, and with no word about what had happened. Maybe they (these hypothetical people I’m picturing) saw their bus pass over the bridge – I’ve stood there at that stop and I know that where this bus had gone was in line of sight from there. How frustrating that would be, to see your bus be so wrong, knowing the next one won’t show up for an hour or more…

Such is life when one relies on transit.

Friday morning and I approach the coffee cart in my building’s lobby. The coffee cart girl sees me coming and smiles.

“Good morning,” I say, hopefully brightly but probably, considering the early hour (at least an hour before the normal opening hours for my office), more likely mumbled and blurry.

“Good morning, sunshine!” she replies, her smile wide in her freckled face.

I laugh. “Sunshine? I like that.” I move around to the side where the row of brewed coffee [things] are arrayed. I get a medium cup and start to fill it with half decaf, half macadamia chocolate flavored coffee. “Actually, though, my last name is Moon, which is pretty much the exact opposite of sunshine.”

She’s not facing me; she’s setting out the trays of donuts, wiping down the counter. The cart has just officially opened for the day. She laughs, too. “So, then: goodnight, Moon?”

“Ha, ha! ‘Goodnight, Moon. Goodnight, cow jumping over the moon.'” I recite back at her, and she and I finish speaking the last sentence in unison.

“I loved that book. It was my favorite book when I was a little girl.”

“Mine, too,” I say, still smiling. “For obvious reasons.” I pull out my wallet and lay down some money for my coffee, and pluck a donut, a giant apple fritter, from the tray. “But I really wanted to get my hands on Harold’s purple crayon. Or run away with Max where the wild things were.”

“Ah, but do they have donuts?” she asked.

“Wild things don’t need donuts,” I said. Nor do they need friendly cute redheaded coffee cart girls, I thought as I wished her a good morning and walked away.