Day of Plenty

Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

I have no idea what I'll feel like later today, but odds are that it will include numb and blind. The United States Grand Prix is this weekend (held at that most hated of tracks, Indianapolis Motor Speedway), which means the American TV coverage will be extensive. The Speed TV people, a proud subsidiary of Fox, who normally only show one hour of practice, qualifying, and the race itself, are inflating their coverage quite a bit. They want to make the USGP a wildly successful event, gain tons of American support, and promise something on the order of eleven hours of coverage, some of which has already occurred.

So, I have that to look forward to today, but that's not all.

Also, of course, there are two quarter-final matches for the World Cup.

And, the start of the Tour de France.

My poor TV.

Additions and Corrections

Damn. I'm never going to get to that post about my second-favorite metal.

In an attempt to be pithy and use one of my dad's trademarked phrases, I made a glaring error in yesterday's post. I implied, or, maybe, outright said that I would be saddened if the poor people never got to enjoy stuffed hummingbird tongues or sculpted radishes, and while that's true, I certainly don't object to anyone eating them.

There is, after all, such a thing as the good life, and one of the rewards for doing well in this world is being able to enjoy things others cannot. That may be sad, too, but something about supply and demand enters into it, I guess, and there just aren't enough truffles to go around.

There's nothing inherently wrong or unfair about being able to eat beluga caviar while others subsist on millet. What does upset and sadden me, though, is division of society or the world based on the staples of life. If there is a better grain of wheat, I think it shouldn't be reserved for those who can afford it. I'm rather unhappy with the "let them eat cake," idea.

I admit I applaud the efforts of those who, in the past couple hundred centuries, have modified crops and livestock. I'm certain that billions of lives have been saved by their work, and would never look down on those who've created the abundance that's now possible, nor those who eat it. Classes of food disturbs me in a political sense as smacking of elitism, but that's my problem.

On a completely different note, I'm experimenting tomorrow. I traditionally whip up a chicken soup when I'm feeling ill, but the organic leeks in the store looked so tender and fresh, I'm making it tomorrow, when I presume to be healthy. It can be said that I've never fully tasted my chicken soup, but between the gorgeous leeks and fresh, organic barley, I'm set to see if what I've depended on for the past thirty years to cure me tastes anything like I've thought it should.

Maybe I'll have that soup, and a side of Vidalia onions.

Market Maven

Today I rode over to my local supermarket, something which is certain to guarantee a wide smile for the manager. I don't say that because the sight of me on a bicycle with a plastic crate on the back is all that heartwarming -- though it is -- but more because I'm nearly the worst shopper, ever.

I typically wait as long as I can before heading out to buy groceries. I'd hate for the world to end just buying a bunch of food I'll never enjoy, so I wait until the last possible minute before replenishing my supplies. This typically means I'm hungry as hell, which is just what the supermarket people love.

That, plus my list -- if I bother with one -- is designed for maximum store profit. Instead of clipping coupons or looking at sale advertisements, I tend to plan rather generically, and my list is more likely to include "dinner" as an item than, say, pork chops. This gives me great freedom, and whatever looks good or catches my fancy is what I buy.

And, when I'm hungry, even food I can't fathom eating looks good.

This supermarket, Vons, goes by Safeway in the rest of the US, I think, and in the past month or two, they've discovered the increased profits that organic offerings generate and have begun rolling out a huge line of privately-labeled organic goods. Instead of a cute picture of a bountiful valley with a smiling, rising sun like my vitamins have, this label has no pictures. The organic goods are distinguished by the letter O, albeit a fancy, modern looking one.

The simple labeling is fine with me, and I have no doubt the food is manufactured by one of the three corporations who supply something like eighty percent of the nation's organic goods. The benefit for me, other than the carbon, is that as a new item, the organic stuff is introduced at a lower price than the more familiar brands. This means my unsalted butter costs less than what I usually buy, but I do lose the fun of seeing what that Indian maiden's breasts look like.

I picked up some organic onions and also some Vidalia ones. The Vidalias, for me, are a greater sign of summer than watermelon. When they arrive in the stores, I know it will be getting hot. They're wonderful onions, and I've heard you can eat them just like an apple, but I haven't tried that yet.

Maybe I'll try that later.

The organic things that were introduced a couple weeks ago are now, naturally, more expensive than the national brands they compete against. Just like drug dealers, the market knows the benefit of getting you hooked cheaply. The added expense always concerns me because I can't help but think of a more divided world. I wonder, in fifty years, if there will be one class of food for sustenance and another reserved for those who can eat better than the unwashed masses. I envision some cross between Soylent Green and ramen for the world's poor, while others enjoy stuffed hummingbird tongues and hand-picked and sculpted radish flower salads.

That's a world that would sadden me, even more than this one does.

Making Me Look Good

Years ago a place I worked had one of those inspirational-type posters near the supply room, the kind that printing companies give away. This one struck me, though, and I'm sure it's because I could rationalize the saying on it to put myself in the best possible light.

It was more vertical than horizontal and read from top to bottom. What it said was something like this:

Small minds focus on people
Medium minds consider events
Large minds deal with ideas

Of course, I took to that like a wolphin to water.

I rarely think of myself as having a large mind, but I've come to realize that most people are much more literal than I am. I didn't notice it until I was past my twenties and was associating with people outside my picked circle of friends. Now I see it everywhere, people who see only trees and who, frankly, think I'm weird. I don't see myself as any sort of genius, but I'm far more comfortable thinking of things as specific examples of greater ideas rather than taking them at face value as the things themselves. The things themselves usually bore me.

But, this isn't all about me. I have no idea who said it, but one other thing has stuck with me through the years. "Some things we remember for utilitarian purposes, some out of desire, and some are just random." I like that. It's true, too, that I remember things like how to tie my shoes because that's necessary for the well-dressed man, I remember kisses because I refuse to let them go, but a great number of my memories are fresh, are vibrant, and I have no idea why they, and not some other, have stuck with me all these years.

Maybe the juices and electrons all line up just right, and -- wham! -- instant memory, and something of no more intrinsic value than ten million other occurences on that particular day becomes part of my story.

Odd, that.

Time For A Confession

Other than a few, regrettable, lapses, I've managed to see all, or some, or part of every World Cup Match so far. This might lead you to conclude that I'm some wild-eyed football fan, but that's not true, or, at least, I don't think so.

I don't follow soccer at all when it's not the World Cup and couldn't name more than a handful of players. I grew up before soccer had become fashionable in the US, but I have a vague recollection of sometime in Jr High, around age thirteen, hoping to be a goalkeeper when I guess we tried it once in PE. I wanted to be a goalie not because of my lightning-like reflexes or the desire to wear those silly Mickey Mouse gloves they all do now, but because that would mean I wouldn't have to do any of that hated running.

I have no idea if I ever played as a goalie, or at all, but I've been a fan of the Cup for the past twenty years. For romantic reasons, the teams I prefer are Italy, Croatia, The Netherlands, and Brazil, and I think a couple of them are advancing. The US isn't, which is good news, because I don't want us to dominate another sport, and certainly not one we don't care about like they do in the rest of the world.

What's so special about the World Cup is seeing the passion, the fit men in shorts that don't look like culottes, the acting. To keep myself from knowing far too much about what's going on, I've limited my lifetime's viewing of the Cup to the Spanish speaking stations. It's much more like being there that way, without any annoying play-by-play, and I can imagine myself soaking in the sun and surrounding seated next to some particularly talkative Mexicans.

Yes, they yell "Goooooaaaal," but they also say "Ai-Yi-Yi," which I find charming. This year I've found an Asian station that broadcasts the Korean games, so I watch those, too, and am grateful I don't have to see any of it with English speaking broadcasters.

Today was a sad day for the Croats. They got eliminated, and my "official" jersey isn't even here yet. It's not the real one, it's the one they wore in the prelims, before FIFA ruled it illegal. It will still make a good biking shirt, though.

Key to Happiness

A lot of people, mostly optimists, consider this to be the best of all possible worlds, and I'm convinced the majority of them don't have to make their own coffee in the morning.

It's some sort of cruel trick that first thing in the morning, when my faculties aren't exactly functioning at their peak, that I need to make coffee. It's not among the more difficult things in my life, as I've seen when I make it in the afternoon or evening, but it's frequently a challenge when I first wake up. My coordination is bad then, unpracticed, asi it were, which doesn't bode well for glass caraffes and playing with boiling water. For reasons unknown, I can't successfully make my morning coffee without making more of a mess than if I were to make a pie crust.

And, it's not like this is something I'm unfamiliar with, either.

I haven't kept track, but I have a hunch about half my burns have come when making coffee. I know that, try as I might, I can't do it as quietly as I should, either, but that may just be because things sound louder without other, masking noises.

There may be something to this Starbucks phenomenon, after all. Too bad for me I'm boycotting them so that I can end up on the "win" side of at least one corporate tussle.

The Capable Man

It's been about a month without my computer, but I finally got it fixed, and I could only be happier if it all worked.

That it works at all, of course, is a testament to my abilities.

For several months I'd been having some disk drive problems and errors, the type of things that remind one of the acknowledged three states of hard drives:

* Hard drives that have failed.
* Hard drives that will fail.
* Hard drives that were retired in the course of a computer upgrade before failure.

After a few months of intermittant problems (mostly freezes), I started getting an ominous notice of impending doom during the Power On POST Self-Test (hee). This was remarkable, if only because I hadn't realized my computer could do that, could tell me such things, but there it was in black and white even before the computer booted.

That got my attention and sent me off to do non-computer things. I'd occasionally check, and the message would appear each time I turned the computer on (Backup now! Failure is imminent!), so I was reluctant to do anything with my machine. When I'd determined that the problem wouldn't just wander away, I went online and bought another drive.

Then I was away, and that's when the drive arrived. When I got back home, the error message stopped appearing (naturally), but I didn't trust my computer one bit. I was prepared to swap out the drive that runs Windows(tm), but a careful examination of the error message told me that it was the other drive, the one with Linux and FreeBSD, that was failing, so I needed to get smart, quick, and learn how to clone that drive.

Instead of doing that, which would be simple and brainless, I installed a later version of FreeBSD on the new drive and just cloned the linux stuff. To my amazement, it worked.

Kind of.

For the time being I'm having to boot from a floppy (need to write the MBR with the booting program) and can't print, but that ain't bad all things considered. I have a ton and a half of e-mail to go through, thousands of websites to visit, and new porn to collect.

I'll be busy catching up, but the good news is I have several entries for Crenellated Flotsam to write. It's good to be back. I've missed this.