Hail to the Chief

Within months of moving in to my condo, I found myself on the resident Board. After being on it for four years (and dealing with one crazy neighbor too many) I decided it was time for an exit.
That was six months ago. Nobody wanted the position. Eventually, we talked someone into taking it, a guy whose parents also live in the building and who would be moving in to another unit at some point (after he finishes rehabbing it). So I stayed on as interim vice president.
Now our board president has resigned, as he is moving out. Which makes me interim president.
Why is it that the responsibilities I really want are so hard to acquire, while those that I would rather avoid end up in my lap?
Outside, a crew is setting up for tuckpointing work. That's right, I came to power right at the moment when we are starting our most costly project in years.
Figures.

Which West Wing Character are You?

(Note - lots of pop-ups on the site linked below.)

R. insists that I am Toby. Perhaps. But not today.



As the captain of the Bartlet Administration's boat, the chief of staff is a work-a-holic. As the captain of the Bartlet Administration's boat, the chief of staff is a work-a-holic. Although he is sometimes haunted by the demons of his past alcohol and drug abuse, because of his character and perserverance there is no one more admired on the staff than he.

:: Which West Wing character are you? ::

Book Review: JPod

The latest offering from Douglas Coupland reminds me of a Harry Potter novel. Lots of pages, reads quickly, and chock full of magic spells and teen angst.
Oh, wait, the characters in this book are not teens. Yet they all seem emotionally frozen at a certain point just shy of adulthood. Which is odd, since topically this is a kind of sequel to Microserfs, which dealt with a younger group of coders entrenched in the tech industry. But the characters from that earlier work seemed more emotionally stable, better able to handle the plot twists and turns that the "everything including the kitchen sink" author threw at them.
Trying to describe the plot of JPod is like attempting to guess the next song that your ipod will play in shuffle mode. Almost everyone I know who has an ipod claims that it takes on some sort of personality, favoring certain artists or genres, as if it had moods of its own. JPod reads that way, shifting from moments of fantastical escapism to bleak social commentary and then off to some twenty page mind game.
The characters? I have no doubt that people in this industry possess some measure of personality quirk that makes them both good at what they do and prone to interesting adventures or random flights of thought. Coupland tries to flesh out his characters through various personality defining quizzes and games that are the stuff of the viral e-mails that circulate amongst people, theoretically filling in the blanks on their background with various factoids and traits. What starts out as an amusing shortcut in character development devolves into a pattern of lazy writing, with a structural familiarity that induces the reader to pass over it like so much spam. When one takes into account the actual use of spam as a filler device peppered throughout the book, Coupland's technique here causes the narrative to collapse in on itself, merging what he wants the reader to know about the characters with the random noise.
And what of the Coupland doppelganger, the deus ex machina author himself? He is the least believable, most reviled character in the book, yet essential to the resolution of the "plot". Writing yourself as an ass doesn't exclude you from scrutiny, nor does it work as a device of creating and resolving tension in this story-line.
Overall, I was simultaneously amused by this hefty lightweight novel and disappointed that Coupland felt the need to structure it like some weak maze game. Pushing your characters through various levels, finding power-ups, hidden doors, and magic faeries to move the plot along is cute and all, but I expect better from Coupland. Turn on a light, sir, lest you be eaten by a grue.
Rating: three of a kind.

The man with the electric head (7-9)

The man with the electric head has made some observations.
If he happens to lean too close to the monitor, he has to degausse it.
He can use his electric razor one, maybe two days before it needs to be recharged.
He can tell the time on a digital clock in the next room.
When he's bored he will ride the train, sitting there flipping the pages of a book while mentally scanning the phone or PDA of whoever is nearby. He has noticed that people predominantly use their camera phones in bars. If he concentrates he can change the ringtone. Sometimes he considers memorizing the numbers of the women he finds attractive, but he knows that he would never call them anyway. If only he could use his particular skill to meet people. He has searched on-line, wondering if perhaps there was a subculture of people like him, but so far, nothing.


The man with the electric head is single again.
He told her, and thought she was okay with it. She seemed to be at first. But then the other night they were bored and sitting around watching TV; she had the remote and was flipping channels and he kept flipping them back. And just like that she stood up, announced that it was all just too weird and she didn't think she would ever learn how to deal with it, and left.
He didn't even react. For a split second she may have hesitated, waiting for him to protest, but he had already sunk into the familiar numbness, the scene playing out in his mind the way it had several times before then. The first time he was angry, the second time he was bitter, and after that it was just part of the routine.

Later, trying to get the experience out of his system, he will sit in front of the computer, start up a blank page in Word, and watch as torrents of letters flood the screen, digital screams and self-recrimination filling the space. After a while he will save the file, with her name, and the date.


The man with the electric head dreams in split-screen.
He doesn't know how else to explain it. Sometimes he will wake up in the middle of the night aware that he was having two dreams simultaneously; surreal and distinct imaginings competing to be remembered in his now-conscious state.
Another odd thing is that one dream is always in color, and the other in black and white. He has a theory, though. Perhaps the left and right sides of his brain are competing. Maybe they always are, maybe that is where the electricity comes from. Constantly at war, each side synaptically discharging volleys at the other, producing more energy than his skull was designed to contain. Is it just a fluke of nature, or a condition that would lead to split personalities in anyone else? Then it occurs to him that he does have a split personality, projecting normalcy to the world, hiding his talent (or curse) the majority of the time.
He goes back to sleep, dreaming an amusement park in the desert; dreaming a spring day with technicolor maple seeds helicoptering down on him like nature's confetti, trees marching, marching, tendril roots a flurry underneath their bulk, gliding down the parade lane, all is quiet save for leaf rustle and seed flutter...

Book Review: The Areas of My Expertise

Having just now at this very moment (or at least within the past several millenia) completed digesting Mr. Hodgman's epic compendium, I now offer my thoughts on the experience and conditional recommendation, as is the custom in this historical moment and also as is required per the by-laws of the Opinion Entitlement Act of 1998 (1).
"The Areas of My Expertise" (John Hodgman, author, ninja) represents an important addition to the sum of human knowledge, and is likely to supplant lesser sources of information in the near future, especially if the screeching owl outside my window and the obese boy on the lawn whose face is smeared with butter and stray corn kernels are to be believed. While nothing Mr. Hodgman narrates here (I say "narrates" because it is obvious that these are not so much his own words and thoughts so much as those of the spectral reincarnation of hobo king Joey "Stink-Eye" Smiles) can be considered to be actual "truth", the metaphorical resonance of the material cannot be denied. And that is just what lies on the surface; careful readers who plot the various footnotes throughout the book on a world map (circa 1592) will be pleased to discover a helpful plotting of various sea-monsters and bottomless pits that they will then be able to avoid. Also of note is that if one were to translate the list of 700 hobo names into their Smurf equivalents and then convert them to binary, the result would be the calculation of pi to the 9,999th digit (2).
One should both read and discuss this book in hushed tones (reading it thusly will remind you perhaps of sitting near the beach as the water gracefully laps against the shore and will calm your mind in such a way as to allow full concentration) and never, ever, leave it unattended amongst the mentally infirm or ultra-conservatives (the Lycanthropic Transformation Timetables alone, in the wrong hands, could be the death of us all).
After reading this book, if you feel that I have been wrong in encouraging you to do so, I will be inclined to strongly protest for at least five minutes before feebly breaking down and offering to make it up to you through the performance of various soul-crushing chores and/or donning a hamster outfit and scurrying through pipes for your amusement.
Rating: full house

1. The Opinion Entitlement Act, Article II.b: Everyone is entitled to your opinion, even if nobody asks for it.
2. 7

The man with the electric head (4-6)

The man with the electric head hates going to the dentist.
Those new machines that they use pick up a distinct and unnerving aura that confuses the hygienists and the doctor. The machine is adjusted, another "x-ray" is taken, and then another, until finally they go back to the original and work off of that.
There is also the fact that he is phobic about the dentist's office. The sounds get to him first. The scrapes, like steel chalkboards. The whine of the drill, at a pitch that osciallates in such a way that he wonders if he has been unknowingly drugged. Then the smell, the slight burn as bad tooth is removed, a pit created for the silver filling yet to come. The shots of novocaine, the numbness, those are the things he can live with. He can stand the pain. The spots dancing in his eyes; closing his eyelids shut to eliminate the spots only to perceive a black-white shifting dance in his mind.
And the spitting. Little whitish chunks mixed amongst the blood and drool. Momentarily awful, but even that he can deal with because he knows that the end is near when it's time to spit.
He wonders if having an electric head makes the novocaine wear off faster.


The man with the electric head had a theory.
What if the government implanted something into me, he thought.
He was going through a conspiracy phase, and wasn't sure if he rented all the X-files DVDs because of it or as a reaction to his mood.
He was working a summer job in a retail warehouse at the time. One day, when most everyone had gone home, he held up one of those bar-code readers to his head and tried to scan himself. But there was nothing. Except that he broke the scanner; after that everything it scanned was a coffee table for $129.99.
He couldn't even balance a book on his head for more than a few seconds, so it seemed unlikely that he was a coffee table.


The man with the electric head had other talents that were unrelated to his electric headedness.
He had a knack for making nice flower arrangements out of those cheap little bunches of flowers from the grocery store. This was a useful talent, in theory, though each girlfriend who received those bouquets had a variety of reactions. There was suspicion (what is he apologizing for that I don't know about yet?), guarded enthusiasm (is he gay? bi?), sneezing (oops...allergies), defensiveness (you think you're getting some because you brought these, don't you?), and every so often actual appreciation (seriously? are you a male from this planet?).
It was one of those things he refused to become jaded about in the midst of all the other relationship games; actually, it was one of the only things.
He also gave pretty good footrubs, which were greeted with far fewer negative reactions.

Movie Review: X-men 3

The latest installment in the X-men franchise is a series of action sequences interrupted by dramatic fluff that adds almost nothing to the plot. Some observations (and potential spoilers; you have been duly informed):
- Not since "The Core" has the Golden Gate Bridge been so thoroughly mangled. Apparently there is some secret competition going on amongst the special effects houses to see who can wreak the most havoc on this San Francisco landmark. I expect that the next attempt will involve an anthropomorphic Golden Gate extending its cables into the city, lifting up the Coit Tower and launching it like a missile toward loathsome Los Angeles.
- There is a boy who is the "anti-mutant". Get too close and your powers fade away, temporarily. Apparently the "cure" is synthesized from the DNA or whatever of this boy. Anyway, we get an entire diatribe on the mutant cure, but nobody seems upset that a lab has locked up some little boy in a whitewashed room in the medically modernized Alcatraz prison.
- It's always cool seeing the name of someone you know in movie credits.
- How come all the people standing in line for the cure looked so normal? And is it just me, or is there a tendency toward blue as the preferred pigmentation of mutants?
- The scene of a young Archangel cutting off his wings was well done, and is about as deep as the movie gets in terms of character development/background (with the exception of the Jean Grey backstory). That said, a long series of shots showing various characters walking around or staring into nothingness with a mopey expression is pretty much worthless and happens too often in this movie.
- How is it possible that over the course of three movies they did not manage to give Storm/Halle Berry one decent line of dialogue? Is English supposed to be her character's second or third language?
Overall, if you liked the first two movies, go ahead and see this one.
Rating: three of a kind.

Do you regret not eating an egret?

The Amazing Regret Index.

geese

Yesterday morning, driving to work down Joliet Road.
The sprinklers are on, adjacent to the street, next to the Target.
And there are about 20 geese walking through the sprinkler shower, taking a bath.
It turns out to be a wearisome day, but at least I got to smile a little at the outset.

The man with the electric head (1-3)

The man with the electric head likes to have staring contests with parking meters.
He is developing his skills, gradually tuning in to the frequency of the meter, changing the number of minutes remaining. Most of the meters are set for a two hour time limit, but he bumps them up to the 9:59 mark. Then he sits on a bench across the street, watching as people park, walking up to the meter with a hand already in their pocket ready to fish out some change. Some smile broadly at their luck and skip away, others, presumably aware of the two hour limit, appear confused, sometimes tapping on the glass, occasionally shifting their gaze as if viewing the numbers from another angle will alter them.


The man with the electric head has an ipod that he never carries.
For as long as he remembers, there has been static in his headphones. It is only recently that he began to understand why. When he was younger, they took him to have his ears tested, and he could hear all the tones but still there was static. They ran further tests and still could find nothing wrong. Since he only had the problem when he wore headphones, the doctors convinced his parents that he just had a particular sensitivity and there was nothing to be done. Eventually the matter was dropped. It's really just an inconvenience, he thinks, and a shame really, since he can change the songs by just thinking about it. He could do it to the people nearby if he wanted, but he respects the music; he knows that he's not just changing a song, he's altering someone's mood as a result.


The man with the electric head has a new girlfriend.
It's been almost a month now. She seems generally happy, though she has started to chastise him for his relatively passionless kisses. He hasn't explained the problem to her yet, but will have to soon. He's never sure when to bring up the subject. The scent of burnt lip flesh from years ago keeps his desires in check; knowing that if he breaks his concentration he will come away physically unscathed but she will not. If he mentions the problem too soon, they think he is crazy, and he loathes the recriminating look if he waits too long, the sudden jolt away in the awareness of the heat and the light crackle. There is such a thing as too much passion. This he knows all too well.

Book Review - Saturday (Ian McEwan)

Over the course of what turns out to be a very long day, neurosurgeon Henry Perowne deals with war, love, growing old, confrontation, poetry, talent, memory, and Dover Beach. And that's just the stuff that is easy to categorize. My take on this tale is that it is a meditation on how one exists in the moment. It is also about the mechanisms we use to separate ourselves from our immediate surroundings. It's about how we connect to our physical and emotional self and what happens when we drift away. McEwan doesn't seem to be making any judgments about that drift, but it is integral to how the story moves along.
I suppose I'm being a little vague. I don't want to give away the story. What I will say is that despite a little too much effort to wrap things up nicely, it's a decent novel and worth your time.
Rating: full house.

Jackson Park

Took a walk around the Jackson Park area yesterday.

How does anyone live near Chicago for so many years without ever walking these paths?

Oh, yeah, because there's a slum directly to the south. Hey Daley, that's your next project; now that you've fixed up the Drive start working on the neighborhoods right off of it.

Our walk started near the triangualar section at the bottom center (where the "Golden Lady" (Statue of the Republic) resides), a little east then north along the path. Past a driving range (with some of the oldest bathrooms in the city?) then through a bird sanctuary. Turning west briefly, just south of the pond at the back of the Fine Arts Palace/Museum of Science and Industry. Then back south, through the island, with a visit to the Osaka Garden along the way.