In A Land Called Honalee

We were heading back from lovely New Jersey (lovely in the sense that it could be seen in the rear-view mirror). We had received a very nice gift basket from my in-laws which contained, among other things, a large bar of Mandarin Orange and Bergamot Scented Soap. Given the length and scenic-ness of this drive, we will often discuss things, any things, just to pass the time.

Spouse: So what is soap, anyway? It's just lye and fat, right?
Me: Hmmm... do you know the chemical rule about "like dissolving like"?
Spouse: No.
Me: Well, certain compounds, like water which has two positive hydrogens on one side of the molecule and a negative oxygen on the other side are called "polar", and those compounds will only dissolve other polar compounds like salt, which has a positive sodium on one side of its molecule and a negative chlorine on the other side. Other compounds, like petroleum compounds, have their entire molecules surrounded by positive hydrogens and are called "non-polar". Those compounds can only dissolve or be dissolved by other non-polar compounds. When you boil a strong alkali like lye with fat, it forms chains of hugely long molecules that are in fact so long that they can be slightly polar on one end and slightly non-polar on the other, which is how soap can work by dissolving both.

Fascinating, no? Speaking as someone who once majored in chemistry, I can only tell you that any aspiring young chemist would have been riveted by this explanation. We're wild that way. Remind me to tell you about how Teflon was invented and how the Quaker Oats company made more money for several years from oat hulls than it made from the oats themselves.

At this point, you could literally hear her eyes roll up in her head. I had to grab the steering wheel and splash the remainder of my soft drink in her face to wake her up.

Spouse: When I ask you a question like that, I expect the answer to at least be entertaining.
Me: Oh.
Spouse: Even if you have to make something up.
Me: Oh. Um. Well.... Soap is actually dragon poop.
Spouse: There you go!
Me: The size of the bar of soap depends on the size of the dragon.
Spouse: I see.
Me: And the various scents come from what the dragon eats. Our new soap came from a breed of dragon whose diet consists largely of mandarin oranges and bergamot.
Spouse: Now that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

And thus our drive from New Jersey was made more pleasant. It was only later that I thought about adding some information on where liquid soap comes from, but I thought it best to leave that part out lest neither of us ever bathe again.

The Other Side of Being a Nice Guy

It seems that a lot of my posts are inspired by other posts, and this one is no different. Having just read Restaurant Refugee's post about the kindness of Metro employees and doing the right thing, I thought I'd pass along a little experience of mine from the other side of the coin.

I dropped by World Market the other day to pick up a bag of my favorite coffee, Costa Rican Terrazzu, on which I've been hooked ever since my vacation in Costa Rica. I go out of my way to get that coffee there because A) they carry it, B) it's cheaper there than anywhere else I've found it, and C) they have a coffee club which gets me every 7th bag for free.

The total for my coffee came to $9.01. I handed the lady a twenty, she handed me my change, and I headed out the door. Now I'm one of these anal-retentive people who has to have all of my money in my wallet in a certain order. All bills facing forward, sorted from smallest to largest. Needless to say, my change is never handed to me this way and I spend a few seconds turning bills around and rearranging them before putting them into my wallet.

I was doing this as I was strolling out to my car when I realized that I had $19.00 in bills in my hand. I had already put away the 99 cents. I must admit that my first thought at this point was an evil one: Wow! A pound and half of coffee for a penny!

Then I started thinking. I know, that'll get you every time. This lady's cash register is going to be $9.00 short at the end of the day. At the very least, she'll probably have to make it up out of her own pocket. If she has a history of this sort of thing, the consequences might be even worse for her. And I'll just be damned if I'm going to screw up my karma for a lousy nine bucks.

I turned around, went back into the store, and got back in line. When I got to the register, I told her that she had given me way too much change for twenty. I showed her the receipt and the $19.00 I still had in my hand. She was completely perplexed and got out a calculator. I told her that the correct change from a twenty for $9.01 should have been $10.99 and that she had given me an extra $9.00. From the way she thanked me, I'm guessing that this is not her first offense.

So she may not be the best cashier in the world, but if she gets in trouble, it won't be because of me.

Not expecting a pat on the back here or anything, it was just the right thing to do. Just sharing a glimpse into an otherwise uneventful life.

A Rose By Any Other Name

The three of you that still bother to read this space on those rare occasions that I'm inspired to post something will have probably realized by now that I have what I like to call "opinions" when it comes to rock & roll music. I like to call them "opinions" because others tend to call them "boneheaded ideas about trivial things that you insist on talking about even though no one cares a bit about them but you."

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself alone at home on a Friday night. I immediately lapsed into a behavior that has been performed by bachelors since the dawn of time: I picked up the remote and started surfing channels. Friday night programming being what it is, my eye was caught by one of those interminable "list" shows that are the programming mainstay of VH1. This one was a repeat of "The Top 100 Hard Rock Songs of All Time."

[Self-Awareness Caveat #1: I do realize that I am not VH1's target demographic.]

I figured that at the very least I'd probably get to hear a few good songs and see how much I agreed or disagreed with their list.

[Self-Awareness Caveat #2: I do realize that my taste in music is quite different from the people who voted for the songs on this list (See SAC #1, above).]

I really have no right to complain about anything on the list, since A) due to SAC #1 I was not even aware that I would have needed to go to VH1.com and vote and B) my vote would probably have not made one whit of difference in the results. Still, I have to wonder about some of the songs that ended up on this list.

Now at this point, you're probably asking yourself, "How can he possibly be critical of others when he's watching something as brainless as VH1?" My answer to that is to cite the argument that is so frequently and eloquently stated by my friend Urban Bohemian:

"Shut up. "

I was actually sailing along through this show, amazed and horrified at times that songs such as Rob Zombie's More Human Than Human and Rollins Band's I'm A Liar were included, but somewhat mollified that songs like Deep Purple's Smoke On The Water (one of the talking heads said, "This song has an opening riff that even your grandmother knows"), Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird ("For the rest of your life, whenever you go to a concert, some idiot's gonna stand up with a lighter and yell, 'FREE BIRD' somewhere in the audience"), The Kinks' You Really Got Me, Led Zeppelin's Kashmir, The Who's Don't Get Fooled Again and Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida were on the list. You have to take the bad with the good.

So you know how this works. They cover 20 songs in an hour and they show 5 hours in a row to cover all 100 items on the list. I came in somewhere in the 80's, so I watched over 3 hours of this stuff waiting to see what the voters at VH1 thought was the greatest hard rock song of all time. Quite frankly, I'm not sure that I could come up with a single song that I think is "the greatest hard rock song of all time." I'm not sure that I would even try to pigeonhole certain of these songs into the category "hard rock."

But I do know this: No song by Guns & Roses qualifies as the greatest hard rock song of all time, and certainly not Welcome To The Jungle. Heck, that's not even the greatest Guns & Roses song of all time, and I don't know that many Guns & Roses songs.

I had some stuff in here about my personal opinions of Axl Rose, but I decided that they probably had nothing to do with the music. I'll just toss this out as trivia to any who may not know: Mr. Rose chose his stage name only partially because his real last name is "Rose." The main reason was because it's an anagram for the words "oral sex." Guess he didn't want to be known as Earl Sox or Ax Loser.

There must be tens if not hundreds of thousands of songs that could qualify as "hard rock." Look at some of the giants of the genre: The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd... the list goes on and on. Groundbreaking is what most of these artists were.

Guns & Roses? Really?

Geek Humor

Given Mike's recent post describing engineers, and given the brief discussion I had with LiLu and Lemmonex at the most recent happy hour about really enjoying bad jokes, I thought I'd take this opportunity to pass along a couple of geek jokes from my past.

Now you'll need to be something of a geek to get these, and at least one of them comes from days as a chemistry major. I feel compelled to tell you up front that these are not particularly good jokes, so if you groan, I'll know you got them. If you laugh, I'll suspect you're just being kind.


1) An engineer and a mathematician are interviewing for the same job. First to be interviewed is the engineer. The interviewer says, "I have a question that I like to ask in order to help determine problem-solving abilities. Suppose there's a fire in my trash can and there's a bucket of water on the chair next to you. What would you do?" The engineer says, "I'd pick up the bucket of water and pour it on the fire." The interviewer says, "Good, good. Now suppose the bucket of water is next to my desk and the trash can on fire is on the chair next to you. What would you do?" The engineer thinks this is sort of ridiculous, but says, "Why, I'd pick up the bucket of water and pour it on the fire." The interviewer says, "OK, good. You can go. We'll be in touch." Next up is the mathematician. The interviewer eventually asks him the same question, "Suppose there's a bucket of water next to you on the chair and the trash can beside my desk is on fire. What would you do?" The mathematician says, "I'd pick up the bucket of water and pour it on the fire." The interviewer says, "Good, good. Now suppose the trash can on fire is on the chair next to you and the bucket of water is next to my desk. What would you do?" The mathematician says, "I'd move the trash can to the side of your desk, move the bucket of water to the chair next to me, and that would reduce it to a problem I've already solved."

2) An engineer and a mathematician are converging on a pretty woman. The mathematician says, "You know we can never actually reach her." The engineer responds with, "Yeah, but we can get close enough!"

3) Werner Heisenberg and Rene Descartes are ordering lunch at McDonald's. The counter person asks Descartes, "Would you like a hot apple pie with that?" Descartes answers, "I think not" and he disappears! The counter person turns to Heisenberg and says, "Did you see that?" Heisenberg answers, "Maybe."

4) Three Native American women had children. The first gave birth to a little boy on a buffalo skin. The second gave birth to a little girl on a mountain lion skin. The third one gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, on a hippopotamus skin. This just goes to prove that the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws of the other two hides.

5) [For my finale, the only thing I learned from 3 semesters of calculus] What do you get when you cross an elephant with a rhinoceros? You get an elephant times a rhinoceros times the sine of theta. What do you get when you cross an elephant with a mountain climber? You can 't do that because a mountain climber is a scaler (scalar).

Please don't beat me up at the next happy hour.

Thanks for all the music, Mr. Paul

Les Paul (1915 - 2009)

Making an Informed Decision

I suppose it's possible that at some point in my life I will cease to be amazed at how some people get by in the world, but I'm beginning to lose hope. I'm just back from lunch and this is the conversation between a Subway employee and a customer just behind me:

Customer: How much is a 6-inch tuna?
Employee: [pointing at the menu just over her head] Four dollars.
Customer: How big is it?
Employee: How big is a 6-inch sandwich?
Customer: Yes.
Employee: Um... 6 inches?
Customer: You mean, like, onetwothreefourfivesix?
Employee: Yes.
Customer: Oh. In that case give me two foot-long Spicy Italians.

I think this might qualify for a page in one of my favorite blogs.

Try as I might, I simply cannot fathom the thought processes, if they can be called that, of the customer while this conversation was taking place.

Did she think she might confuse the employee into giving her two foot-long meat sandwiches for the price of one 6-inch tuna? Is there some form of "6" besides onetwothreefourfivesix that I'm not aware of? Does anyone really walk into a Subway thinking to themselves, "I'm gonna have either a 6-inch tuna or two feet of Spicy Italian"?

Isn't this like getting all the details for a one-way flight to Atlanta and then buying 2 round-trip tickets to Omaha?

It makes me wonder if she asks the person at Home Depot how tall their 8-foot stepladders are, or the person at the 7-11 how much a 32-ounce Big Gulp holds.

Life just shouldn't be this difficult, people. I'm only thankful that she was behind me and not in front of me.

No, I'm also thankful that I don't work in retail.

A Touch of Gray

But I feel I'm growing older,
and the songs that I have sung
echo in the distance like the sound
of a windmill going 'round.

--Deep Purple

I find that as I'm getting older, the reminders that I'm getting older become more and more frequent. I'm not talking about aches and pains or the fact that I'm slowing down. I'm not talking about those little grunting sounds I make every time I sit or stand. I'm not talking about the fact that I don't dare eat pizza after 8:00 PM any more. I'm talking about simply having conversations with people

This actually came to mind after reading some of the comments on Shannon's blog in which she referred to the 1976 movie "Logan's Run". Some folks had no idea what the reference was all about, and that really surprised me since I saw that movie in the theater when it was initially released. It takes a while for it to settle into my brain that that was 33 years ago and that a very large percentage of the population wasn't even born then.

Frankly, not being much of a videophile, it was actually pure coincidence that Shannon came up with a movie that I had just happened to see. Typically when I think of pop culture, I think of music which I dearly love and love to talk about.

Here are a few things I've mentioned in recent years and the responses I've gotten to them:

ME: I have "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" on CD.
RESPONSE: Who are they?

ME: Thought I might plug in a little Billie Holiday.
RESPONSE: Who is Billie Holiday?

ME: I'm looking forward to seeing Johnny Mathis this weekend.
RESPONSE: I know that name....

ME: Man! I actually got to see Leon Russell in concert last weekend.
RESPONSE: [blank stare]

Part of the reason for this is that most people aren't very interested in the roots of the music they choose to listen to, if they choose to listen to music. Part of the reason for this is that a lot of folks, unlike me, don't have the benefit of having older siblings and the music they listened to. Part of the issue is that my taste in music tends to run to those artists that make the Top 100, but rarely if ever make the Top 40. But if I'm honest with myself, part of the reason is that I tend to cling to these things from my youth like cat hair on a sweater.

I suspect that I could easily list off the pop/rock groups from the past 25 years that have intrigued me enough to actually purchase some of their music: The Dave Matthews Band, Green Day, Counting Crows, David Gray, Ozric Tentacles (find them on YouTube, they're pretty amazing), Flogging Molly, Collective Soul, Crash Test Dummies, Del Amitri, Gin Blossoms, Hothouse Flowers, Indigo Girls, Sass Jordan, Matchbox 20. There may be others, but the list is small compared to what I own from the 30 years or so before that. I'm surprised that I came up with that many, but 25 years is a long time.

So in the interest of higher education, I'm including these 4 clips from the artists I first mentioned. This is a tiny, tiny sample of the sort of thing I'm talking about, and these wouldn't even qualify as my favorites. They're all just very, very good. Perhaps you can hear the echoes of some of your favorites in their music.

I hope you enjoy.

Possibly the apex of '60s psychedelic rock -


Smooth, smoky, the blues done right -


An incredibly smooth voice. 73 years old and he's still got it -


He can't sing, but he can write and he OWNS the piano -

"I'm not quite clear about what you just spoke" - Crash Test Dummies

I would like to relate a conversation that occurred at last Friday's Blogger Happy Hour between Lemmonex, Malnurtured Snay, myself and another blogger whose name unfortunately escaped me. Bear in mind that there were a lot of people in a very small space and the music was thumping. I will try to relate this based on what I believe Lemmonex actually heard versus what was actually said:

Snay: This is [Blogger whose name I didn't get]. This is Lemmonex and this is Gilahi.
Blogger: [to Lemmonex] Oh! I read your blog all the time!
Lemmonex: Really! Thank you!
Snay: [to Lemmonex] You're fatter!
Lemmonex: [with a look that would have reduced a lesser man to ashes] I'm WHAT?
Snay: You're fatter!
Lemmonex: WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Me: [leaning in to Lemmonex's ear] You're fuh-LAT-er-DUH! You're flattered!
Lemmonex: Oh! Man, I was about to give you a lesson in what not to say to a woman.

And I believe she would have, too.

At least this is what I think Lemmonex heard, based entirely on her reaction. If I'm right, I think she showed admirable restraint.

It occurred to me afterward that there was no good way to mis-hear the word "flattered". Even if the "L" sound had come through, you definitely wanted to be sure that the "D" sound on the end was heard as well.

See what you miss by not attending these events? Not only was there music, good people, good conversation, and good booze, there was very nearly a murder as well.

So hey, let's be careful out there.

Random Bits & Pieces

A few random thoughts from my list of blog ideas. None of them seem to lend themselves to complete posts, so I'll just list them here.

1. Just in case you read this, Mb, I haven't forgotten that you tagged me for a meme, nor am I ignoring it. I'm just having a hard time finding the keepsake I wanted to talk about. Some keepsake, huh? I'll get to it, I promise.


2. I've never been one to argue the relative benefits of animals, but I can't help but notice one thing: There are stores that successfully sell worms, leeches, and crickets, but people in front of the library have a hard time giving cats away.


3. University of Maryland University College - Is that the stupidest name for a school you ever heard of? For those of you outside of the DC area, this is a real school that advertises on TV constantly. I can't decide if this institution was founded by really forgetful people or stutterers. If they're going to reuse multiple synonyms in their name, they could have come up with a better acronym than UMUC: Maryland University Scholastic Institute College (MUSIC), Maryland Institute Scholastic College University for Education (MISCUE), Academic Scholastic School/Halls Of Learning and Education (ASSHOLE). You can see that the possibilities are endless. Why UMUC? They may as well have called it Maryland University University Maryland University University (MUUMUU).


4. You hear people say, "I couldn't believe my eyes/ears", but no one ever says, "I couldn't believe my nose!" Is your nose somehow more trustworthy than your other body parts? What about your spleen? Can you trust your spleen?


5. The best way to make the highest score you've ever had on any video game is to be playing it when your spouse/SO says, "OK, I'm ready to go now". And no matter how much you try to explain that it's your highest score ever and if you stop now you'll lose it and this is bigbigbigbig, it's somehow not as important to your spouse/SO as their sibling's wedding that you're already late for.


6. Didja ever notice that most people who talk about how much they LOVE New York City are the people who have left it? If it means that much to you, go back. The last thing we need here is yet another import telling us at every opportunity how the place they're from is better than the place they've chosen to be. And I don't care what you say, you always have choices. If it really means that much to you, you'll find some way to get back there. Otherwise, we just don't want to hear it.


7. Why are there no seedless lemons? There are seedless oranges, tangerines, watermelons (sort of), etc. We're always juicing lemons and having to pick out those slimy seeds. How hard could it be to come up with seedless lemons?


8. Really, on a purely objective level, how can you ever tell how contented a cow actually is? They pretty much look the same no matter what. How do we know the best milk comes from contented cows? Maybe the best milk comes from cows that are white hot with rage. We just don't know how to judge cow moods.


9. Geek Alert: If odometers were in binary instead of decimal, my car would have 63 miles on it. On the other hand, if they were in hexadecimal, my car would have 1,118,481 miles on it.

That's all. Any questions above are mostly rhetorical, but if you want to answer any of them in the comments, please feel free. Also, any more Maryland University College School Institution Maryland University University University University acronyms could be fun.

"Gimme a head with hair. Long, beautiful hair" - from "Hair"

I got a haircut last week.

I've mentioned more than once in this space that I wear my hair long. If I happen to mention a haircut to someone, they often say, "You get your hair cut?"

No. I let it grow down between my shoulder blades and by sheer force of my indomitable will I make it stop right there.

But even before it was long, I got the response that every guy on the planet who has hair has gotten. Walk into the office, your local bar, school, church, AA, whatever, and someone will inevitably say, "You got a haircut!"

Really?

What is it that makes people want to tell you something about yourself that should be pretty obvious to you? I used to think that perhaps I could stop this activity with smart-ass rejoinders.

"I got 'em all cut."

"No, I washed it in very hot water and it shrank."

Didn't faze anybody. After spending an hour in a chair for a wash, cut, and blow-dry, then shelling out a month's salary for the privilege of smelling like a French brothel for the rest of the day, people still felt compelled to tell me just in case I hadn't noticed.

A couple of years ago, I lost my mind one night and shaved off my beard. Everyone I met the next day said, "You SHAVED!"

"No, I just decided to grow it inward for a while."

"You have an uncanny knack for grasping the obvious."

"What was your first clue, my total lack of chin or the IV I'm attached to because of the blood loss?"

What's the special thing about changing your hair or facial hair that makes people feel they need to tell you what you've done to yourself? Nobody ever says, "You put on deodorant!", "You took a bath!", "You finally flicked that thing out of your nose!" It's the failure to do these things that elicits comments, and then it's usually behind your back. I'm tempted to start every conversation from now on with "Your hair is exactly the same!"

Just stop it. Resist the urge. Guys know when they've done these things.

You read my blog!