Winter Olympics

The good news is, the rain stopped this afternoon. That's also the bad news. We are in the process of setting a record for the longest winter, as defined by days between the first measurable snow and the last. The graceful snowflakes look so delicate like little gymnasts gyrating down, but sadly, they are sticking the landing.
We've tried all our affirmations like, "Live in the moment," and  Ram Dass's "Be  Here Now," but so far the response seems to be, "This moment kind of sucks, I want to be where Ram Dass is."

Strange Days

Spring, "for want of a more scathing term," continues. Today we had rain, snow, and hailstones the size of tears. Now the forecast calls for record breaking snow this weekend. To be sure, any snow at this point would be record breaking, but they seem to think there will be more than just any.
In Washington, D.C., the cherry blossoms have come and gone, fertilized, no doubt by Fox News's coverage of Benghazi. A friend told me that so many former Republicans (like me, disgusted by its turn from small government to crony capitalism, corporatocracy, obstructionism and loony conspiracy theories) have left the party that soon all that will be left will be angry old white men. If Fox news advertisers (Aricept, AAGReverse Mortgages.) know the demographic of the people they're advertising to, they're apparently angry about, well they probably can't remember what exactly they're angry about,  but with the money from their reverse mortgages and their Medicare purchased scooters, they could present a formidable, if somewhat risible, march on Washington.

We Could Have Had It All

 We just watched a show about former developer/Governor/Secretary of the Interior, Wally Hickel. If we'd listened to him, we could have been Norway. With Parnell, we'll be Nigeria, without the scam income.

Even Though These Are Just Tweets, You Can Still Sign The Petition To Save The USPS

Sign to save the postal service. Even galley slaves don't want the boat to sink.goo.gl/dH7Qy#USPS #NALC # #WhiteHouse
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 10, 2013

Given the outrage and time devoted to Benghazi by Fox and Republicans, you'd think 4,487 Americans had never died in Iraq.#Foxnews #Iraq #
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 8, 2013

Stratfor says: "let Iran get sucked deeper and deeper into the Syrian maelstrom, not the United States"stratfor.com/weekly/america… #Syria #war
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 9, 2013

It's Not You, It's Me

Just a regular day off, took Karen to get her pump filled but the medicine wasn't there. Now I'll have to take time off from work to do the thing I scheduled six weeks ago for this day because it was a day off. Now we're attempting to get her some X-rays. Meanwhile (literally meanwhile, they answered while we were back in the room) I was on hold with one of her providers for 35 minutes because my insurance EOB said that they needed more information from them, but the provider said that the insurance company never told them that, they told them they were denying the claim. Who to believe? I went back to the insurance company web site, but every time I tried to check Karen's EOB's, I got logged out because they insist on me and my wife having separate web accounts, but clicking on the link automatically input my credentials, even though this morning it didn't.
After that I'm redoing my sleep study, which I apparently failed,  to tell me that I'm tired and cranky from sleep apnea, not because everyone around me is irritating.

To "All Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark"

Maybe I have adult onset attention deficit disorder, or maybe my junior high school teacher was right when he said, "You're not as funny as you think you are,"  but lately I can't seem to come up with a whole post, which means I'm ready for my Twitter close-up

Coldest spring ever. Today we had a wintry mix: rain, snow and despair twitter.com/hartofak/statu…
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 4, 2013

Today, I told a customer, "I don't want to look stupid," but then I nailed it.#customerservice
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 4, 2013

Today some people filled out Voice of the Employee attitude surveys at work. I'm holding out for an exit interview.
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 4, 2013

Get It While It's Hot

It's finally almost spring up here and the air is a miasma redolent of melting dog poop. As the snow and its winter's accumulation melts, it forms puddles, lakes, cauldrons of postmordial soup. I was pretty proud of postmordial, and was looking forward to tying it together into a whole post. Here's another line of that stillborn post, "How come they say that politicians only tell voters what they want to hear, and yet I never hear anything I like?"
But as I tweeted this morning,

At the time, it felt like I was awake from 3am-4:30am, but now it feels like I didn’t sleep at all.#insomnia #sleep
— David Hart (@hartofak) May 2, 2013

By the way, if you're not one of my twitter followers, and I'm pretty sure you're not,  that's an example of what you're "missing".

H.P. Lovecraft Said, "Searchers After Horror Haunt Strange, Far Places." Or They Can Just Go To Wall St.

This morning I listened to an episode of Frontline that was scary enough to have been written by Stephen King. Apparently, 401K's and mutual funds are not designed to save money for retirement, unless you're talking about the retirement accounts of mutual fund managers. Using administrative fees, asset management fees that would make a leech blush (and if a leech blushes, it's your blood rushing to its face) and marketing fees (essentially charging you for the cost of selling their fund to you in the first place) they have designed a system where the investor provides all the money, takes all the risk and gets thirty percent of the gain. What you think is a Real Estate Investment Trust, is an ice floe for you and your family to float on into retirement.
The happy ending to this ghastly story is that there is an alternative, (and here's why I'm mentioning it) that I've been recommending for years, low fee index funds.

Patrimony

The thing I use most that I got from my father, is a heart full of hate.
You know how sometimes when you say things like, "You might be surprised how little protection a debit card offers," you really mean, "I was surprised?"
Well, I was. On Friday morning, my credit union called to say it looked like there had been some unauthorized charges to Paypal on my account. I wasn't sure at first because I had used Paypal to send  a small donation a few days earlier to a charity set up to help victims of the Boston bombing. When they told me it was five hundred dollars, and that it was from that morning, I was all, "I'm pretty sure I would have remembered that," so we agreed that those charges were fraudulent, they canceled my debit card, and I went in and got a new one. I changed my password at Paypal and my credit union and thought I was done with an irritating chapter in my life. But as Faulkner said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Even though they knew on Friday that the charges were fraudulent, they are still letting them clear my account, and tell me that I can't even begin the process of getting the money put back until they all clear. So, to this point, there is a total of more than $1200 missing from my account, and I have to hope that  merchants used by criminals aren't indolent as they ravage my credit.

This Post Rated NC-17 For Language

Thanks for asking, nobody; my daughter and her husband who live in Boston are fine.
Back in the 70's, the Russians invaded Afghanistan and set up a brutal puppet government (think, Chucky). We helped insurgents to drive them out, obviously making us friends of Afghan freedom.  In the 90's Russia suppressed a liberation movement in Chechnya by leveling the capital, killing Chechens indiscriminately, and then setting up a brutal puppet government. So, 9/11 and now a Chechen bomber in Boston. And they say Americans are bad at geography.
I heard a little bit of the Fox News coverage of the bombing aftermath in Boston. They reported that it was possible that some people might want to use the situation to score political points. They even gave examples that  people could raise, like,  did the democratic mayor of Boston and the democratic governor of Massachusetts lift the "shelter in place" order too soon, or did the Obama government fail to protect the nation? And why weren't any drones being used?
Speaking of the nanny state (well, we weren't, but I'm sure someone on Fox is, or will be) is it a coincidence that the liberal state of Massachusetts pronounces the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency as Meemaw?
Many analysts say that Al-Qaeda has been degraded to the point that it is hard for them to launch major attacks and that they are calling on their supporters to launch lone wolf attacks on their enemies. These attacks don't pose an existential threat to America, but they are designed to, you know, terrorize. At this time, it looks like that's what happened in Boston. Can I just say, though, "Fuck you." You're going to kill some random strangers to scare us? That's what we do. After Columbine, Aurora, Tucson and Sandy Hook, you're going to throw a pressure cooker at us and bring us to our knees?  In the four months since Newtown, there have been 63 children murdered in this country and over 3500 people of all ages murdered.  If you want to shock us, maybe pass gun control.

Bias Confirmed

No matter who turns out to be responsible for the cowardly attack in Boston yesterday, I'm pretty sure I already didn't like them. Terrorist attacks are designed to terrorize. Well, duh. So the response must be to act as if nothing's changed. In my case, I can do both because I was already terrified of pressure cookers.

Or Get A Blog, Loser

I could be biased because I work for the Postal Service, but I think if you want to "send a message," you should write a letter.

Asking The Hard Questions, Then The Rhetorical One

Is conciousness chemistry? Does it arise in the brain? Can it be identified on MRI's or by the new BRAIN mapping initiative? If we create computers modeled on the brain, will mind and awareness follow? And, if we can do any of that, could we use that new understanding to see if we could make it arise in Alaska politicians?

When I Was A Boy, April Wasn't Interminable, But Now I've Put Away Childish Things

The other day, I said, "April is the cruelest month," to someone. They asked what that meant, and I had to admit, that I had no idea, but that I knew it came from a poem by T. S. Eliot, maybe The Waste Land. I went on to admit, that I had never understood what any of Eliot's poems meant, not even the ones from Cats. Today, I looked up the Waste Land and I was right on all counts; the poem does say that about April, and I didn't understand any of it. I remember that we studied it in high school, and back then, I even bought a book of Eliot poems. But that was when I thought I was going to be one type of person, but instead I became the Manqué Man.
The poem starts out "April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire." So far so good, but that's followed by several lines of apparent gibberish and German, and then something we can all get behind, "I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter."
I want to go south for the winter, and I'd like to read much of the night, but probably not Eliot because his poems are too dense, or I am.
As for why I'd like to go south for the winter, the whole April thing came up because it's been snowing so much here lately after having been briefly spring-like. Yesterday it snowed a foot, and the Weather Service says another, bigger, storm is looming. Looming? Doesn't that sound a little portentous for a weather forecast? Besides, nothing  good ever looms. Probably because good things don't even approach, they tend to recede, or crumble into dust. At least if April has anything to say about it. And apparently, I owe February an apology.

What's That Thing You Get If You Do, Or, If You Don't?

Karen can barely walk without her walker. When she tries, she often falls, including the time during the winter when she tore her rotator cuff and did some other damage to her shoulder. The rotator cuff tear will not heal without surgery, but if she has surgery, she will not be able to use her walker for at least three months. Which means she will almost certainly fall, and probably damager her shoulder. Probably requiring surgery...

Just Like Doctor Seuss, Thing 1 And Thing 2

Thing 1:
I'm still wearing my event monitor. Before I got it, my heart was jumping around like a twelve year old girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Now, it's just humming along.  I'm not fooled; I know it's just biding its time. "The hearts of men, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead." So there's that to look forward to.

Thing 2: Sarah Palin is embarrassing, but she's no Don Young.

Diagnostic And Therapeutic

I'm wearing a Cardiac Event Monitor for twenty nine more days to see if when my heart flutters, it's just girlish enthusiasm, or something even more sinister. Since I've had it on, my heart hasn't skipped once; it's acting as if butter wouldn't melt in its mouth. I suppose if butter had never melted in my mouth I wouldn't be wearing a monitor at all.
Speaking of butter, naturally makes you think of pancakes, mostly because, what doesn't? The other day, I wanted to show Corinne my jug of IHOP syrup. I didn't see it in the cupboard, and I shrieked involuntarily,  "I've been robbed!" Luckily, I was wrong;  it was still there, but for a moment, I totally understood Gollum. It's not good for me, but it's Precious.

Hooray For Our Side

I spent an hour and a half carrying a  sign and waving at traffic today. Our group was protesting the elimination of Saturday delivery by the post office. We were across the street from a Wahlgreen's that had a sign with the temperature updated every two minutes. It briefly got up to 18º F, and then, like a ground hog with a shadow, quickly ducked back down. Where does the blood go when it's not in your fingers or your toes? Your brain, I suppose, because I certainly had a lot of random, disconnected thoughts while I froze in place.
I was reminded of the last time I waved a sign, and how well we did ending the Viet Nam war, just six years later. In retrospect (and prospect, and contemporaneously) I wonder if that war even made sense. We were fighting to stop Communism, but if truth, justice and the American way were so superior, wouldn't the Communists have realized that eventually anyway and converted? Or have been buried by us? And didn't that happen? But only after so very many bombs (and pilots) fell out of the sky.
Maybe, as free market believers, we should just mind our own business, and let the rest of the world mind theirs. It's hard to see why a Defense Department would have been bombing Baghdad, for example.
While I was at the rally, I met one of my blog readers IRL.  I've always assumed that when my count of page views went up, it was me revisiting a post I'm particularly proud of. But if he is reading it, maybe someone else besides me is reading it also. It made me rethink the whole Heffalump thing. I've always assumed like every one else, that when Pooh and Piglet kept seeing more and more tracks going around the tree, they were their own tracks. But did anyone really ever count? Was CSI: Hundred Acre Wood ever consulted? Or was it easier to just believe Christopher Robin, and did anyone ever think to ask, what were his motives in all of this?

The Chill(ing) Factor Or Zero =Nothing At All

It's approximately 0º F here, but factoring the wind, that gives us nothing to live for.

We'll Fix It In Post-

According to a recent study, empathy from doctors improves outcomes for patients. This makes the Atlantic story about doctors being replaced by robots such good news. Calling Dr. Cooper!

Now, something completely unrelated, today I heard a podcast about the first forensic scientist,  Dr. Alexandre Lacassagne. The takeaway for me was that so far, every bad thing that has happened to me has been pre-mortem.
And, a final unrelated fact: This Sunday, people are rallying to support postal six day delivery. Our local union president pointed out that ending Saturday delivery means ending the Carrier Food Drive which is the largest food drive in the nation. If you want to feed the hungry, support carriers.

The Results Are In

I had a large cup of coffee with dinner a few hours ago. I wondered if it would make it hard to sleep and now I know.

Mystic crystal revelation And the mind's true liberation

Right now, Mercury is in retrograde. To believers in astrology, this has great significance, but in real life it is a consequence of planetary motion around the sun. I was explaining that at some great length to Sarah, when her phone died. Of boredom, she was too polite to say.

I Also Didn't Mention The Drug Abuse

As we approach the equinox, every morning this week has been colder than the one before. At this rate, by the solstice, the air will have frozen, fallen like snow, and we'll be gasping like fish. Frozen fish.

Because, in some ways, I'm still the 14 year old boy that thrilled to the ride of the Rhorrim, and the death of the witch king of Angmar, I've been listening to some lectures from The Tolkien Professor. Tolkien, he says, thought that no one ever wrote a completely original story, but that all stories were the unrolling of a leaf on the tree of stories. That makes me feel better about completely ripping off Deepness in the Sky's concept of a freezing atmosphere. There was a lot more to that book, though. I completely didn't rip off the intelligent spiders part.

Saving The Postal Service

Forward

We sprang forward this morning and looking out the window, we saw a typical spring scene, snow falling. For those of you that want to enjoy adventure vicariously (the only way it can be enjoyed as far as I'm concerned) I've added a link to the sidebar. Sarah's high school Physics teacher is sailing to Tahiti. A classmate's father is going along as crew.