Tannishblog

It was nice to get away from the News on my run North. Thanks to my new Creative Zen Jukebox (MP3 player), I tuned out the world. Driving a noisy truck and listening to the radio gets annoying fast. This new toy enabled me to just plug my ears and drive 940 miles in two days without contact from the world outside. I’m a bit leary about not being able to hear a siren, but sitting in the cab of a diesel cab-over design is quite noisy, so I might not hear anything anyway. I know I can’t hear my cell phone when it rings whil I’m driving (a collective sigh of releif from the peanut gallery) A nuclear blast could’ve happened, and if not too near, I wouldn’t have known until I got home. I had a chance to switch on the TV in the hotel but, for those who don’t know me yet, that’s like asking me to dance on a highway - naked. No appeal there - for anyone!

Besides, I just discovered the book “Cluetrain Manifesto“, and I’m liking it! So here I find myself in a strange town reading in a restaurant with earbuds in. How strange is that? Have you seen anyone do that lately? Outside of midterms in a college town, reading in public is not generally done. People my age don’t usually walk around plugged in unless they’re on a treadmill.

Also, there are logistical difficulties in trying to eat a double cheeseburger while reading a fresh book. the burger is too big for one hand, and the oversized paperback is too big to comfortable read with one hand, so to avoid getting grease smeared on the book, I either read six words per bite, or I eat very slowly. At one point, I had the book wedged under my thigh to hold my place between bites. Must have looked comical.

But then I’m used to being the odd man out. I had fun and got the job done, coming home safely. that’s what matters.

Time for another business run to the Twin Cities. I leave tomorrow, and should get back Tuesday night, just in time for my daughters last junior high orchestra concert. I’ll try to look for something interesting to comment on during the trip, although I-90 and I-94 are beginning to look mighty familiar these days. Maybe this time I’ll remember my camera and stop to take pictures of the rock formation off the highway just north of the Wisconsin Dells…Fort Dixon? I don’t remember now.

Anyway, I’ll be back on Wednesday for blogging.

My good friend, Rebekah shares few of my views. I love her anyway. She posted a lengthy comment to my “Bills’ bill” posting. Let me first say: Thank you, RK. I’ve been thinking for a while that you’ve given up on me, hands in the air in exasperation (this might do it, though).

To whomever else might stumble across this post, I say this: My opinions are just the vehicle with which I try to home my writing skills. As a whole, they’ve never been too popular, but I don’t mind. From the depths of my ignorance, to the limits of my meager education, I try - with good intention - to be thoughtful and -provoking. It’s not my fault that the thoughts I provoke are sometimes homicidal. Below, I respond to her comment, placed here mostly because it’s too big for the comment section, and partly because my other three readers might benefit from a clearer understanding of my muddled mind-set. Here goes:

“It’s likely that up to two-thirds of the land freed up by President Bush’s action will remain roadless,(opening ~39 million acres available for roads)” Dr. Burnett added. “The new rule simply promotes healthy forests (this is how the administration speaks of toadying up to logging interests), prevents catastrophic wildfires(deemed catastrophic because of all the rich folk’s homes nearby) and nurtures species enhancement(?), rather than tying the hands of professional forest managers with a top-down, one-size-fits-all, Washington-mandated, hands-off forest policy.”

Exactly how does building roads and the subsequent enviting in of forestry interests “nurture species enhancement?” There’s been a big deal lately about a certain woodpecker in the southeast that has thought to be extinct. Its miraculous comeback was noted on lands the feds have designated as “hands-off” for decades, lands which now are in danger of being reopened. I’m sure the fact the woodpecker has somehow survived is a direct result of its being left alone and having its habitat untouched for years.

Also, it is a well known fact that forest fires are good for the forests. Such is nature’s way of creating healthy woodlands and clearing the fround for regrowth. In many ways the detritus created by forest fires promotes life in ways applied forestry cannot. It makes me wonder at the outrageously ego-centric assumption that the earth cannot exist without mankind’s help. It had done well for most of its history without the destructive, self-absorbed machinations of the human race. Likely it will heal itself after we’ve died off.

Bottom line: I firmly believe there are too many humans on this planet, that we are careless and/or foolish in our habits, and that we all need to try any and all attempts to lighten our footprint on this, our only planet. If that means more government intervention, then fine! Unless and until people do the right things on their own, which is unlikely.

Shakespeare’s Sister calls him “Mr. Moustache.” To me he looks like a human-pit bull hybrid, some kind of early genetic engineering mishap. My daughter thinks he should dye his moustache.

Setting the snark aside, John Bolton looks mean. I’ve come to take great stock in how faces look in repose. The tendency over many years to frown, scowl, or to smile has an effect on facial musculature, sending a unique message about the emotional predisposition of the personality inside. In a relaxed state, the face holds the form of its predominant expressive posture.

Here we see him listening. He is not aware of his expression, therefore it reveals his spirit. Clearly this is a man with dark thoughts. As I look into his eyes, I see a man that is quick to anger, a man who spends a lot of time frowning. I see a stern, resolute personality that is not in the habit of flexibility.

Here is a poor, government-issue photo of him smiling. Even through the graininess of the photograph, his smile seems foreign to his features. Does his smile reach his eyes? One can’t tell from this shot, but I’m betting that he doesn’t do this a lot.

My point? Is this the kind of man you would assume has the capabilities to soothe arguments and calm people, to effectively find common ground between conflicting agendas and to bolster a sense of fairness and - dare I say - diplomacy? (NOTE: The above query is not rhetorical.) According to NNDB, these words are attributed to Mr. Moustache:

“If the UN Secretary Building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. There’s no such thing as the United Nations.”

Kind of gives the term “credibility gap” new meaning. From the same site, there is a quote attributed to Jesse Helms:

“John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world.”

Am I alone in thinking that, as Good and Evil goes, American might, just might, be on the dark side? Strands of Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” plays in my head as I write this.

The Washington Post has the score on the Senate non-debate of Bolton’s nomination to the non-existent United Nations. (I wonder how much he’ll make working for an imaginary organization. How can I find a job like that?) Kudos to George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) for exhibiting backbone:

Bolton “is the poster child of what someone in the diplomatic corps should not be,” Voinovich said in a blistering speech that surprised even Democrats with its ferocity. “I have come to the determination that the United States can do better than John Bolton,” he said, adding that he thought Bolton’s behavior at the State Department would get him fired in the private sector.

In support, committee chairman, Richard G. Lugar (R-Indiana) says the following:

“Bolton’s actions were not always exemplary,” and “his blunt style alienated some colleagues,” Lugar said. “But there is no evidence that he has broken laws or engaged in serious ethical misconduct.”

As endorsements go, this is fairly weak. How can a “blunt style” positively affect a diplomatic career? I’m a blunt person. I can tell you first-hand that this does little to promote harmony against differing factions or to promote confidence in tender negotiations. From my personal experience, this bluntness will adversely affect the role Mr. Bolton plays in the UN and undermine the already tenuous position in which the US finds itself.

For the past week I’ve been having wierd dreams.

No, I don’t drink. And I gave that other stuff up a while back. Maybe that’s the issue: I’m too damn sober lately. More probably, I’ve been reading too much Dark Matter on the Internet and then going to sleep. If you want to depress yourself read this. If you want to anger yourself read this. Or have I got it backward?

Anyway, the text of these two powerful articles have been swimming around my subconcious for a few days, resulting in the afrementiond dreams and a two hour fugue state this evening that started with this:

The New Dark Ages began somewhere in the early 2010’s in America. By then, the Christian Dominionists held firmly the legislative branch of their government, beginning a reversal of 80 years of social Democratic reform. Over the next ten years, borders were closed, and faith-based organizations won support for the reworking of the education system, forcing many minorities off campus, nation-wide.

I call the article Future Imperfect, if you want to read more…

I've never spoke to this man, but I call him a friend. My wife and I saw him speak in a crowded university gymnasium in Chicago. On a sweaty late-summer night we witnessed his monks chant and sing to a crowd of impetuous, murmuring westerners and calmed them en masse into a state of peaceful receptiveness I'm sure few had ever experienced. People were overflowing, sitting in the aisles as other weaved through, shifting another inch tighter together to fit another person nearby, all in an atmoshpere of calm anticipation. Soon, he came to the stage. Draped in a brown robe, he sat cross-legged on a cushion surrounded by younger, brown-robed figures. A small, elderly man who spoke in a quiet tenor that, even amplified, required close attention to hear. That was part of his purpose, I think now; to force three thousand bustling Americans to attend to his words he delivered them quietly. And we listened. For almost three hours, Thich Nhat Hahn delivered his speech to the American people - about politics, about war, about living in an age of globalism. Mostly, he spoke of peace. And we listened. "Thich Nhat Hahn (pronounced Tick-Naught-Han) is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. During the war in Vietnam, he worked tirelessly for reconciliation between North and South Vietnam. His lifelong efforts to generate peace moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. He lives in exile in a small community in France where he teaches, writes, gardens, and works to help refugees worldwide. He has conducted many mindfulness retreats in Europe and North America helping veterans, children, environmentalists, psychotherapists, artists and many thousands of individuals seeking peace in their hearts, and in their world." Today, I'm reminded of him as a quote of his passes my virtual desktop:

Understanding and compassion are very powerful sources of energy. They are the opposite of stupidity and passivity. If you think that compassion is passive, weak or cowardly, then you don't know what real compassion is. If you think that compassionate people do not resist and challenge injustice you are wrong. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I call this man friend because this man "gets it". He knows how to live. Thich Nhat Hahn knows life because, through his experiences during the Viet Nam war, he became intimate with death. through his experiences in that war, he came to know peace. He knows life because as a Buddhist, he has trained in compassion, universal love, and has tamed his own mind. This man, whom I've never spoken to, is my friend because he is the embodiment of Peace. And we all need peace.

Coming to a wallet near you: The National ID Card! With advances in technology that the Third Reich only dreamed of, we are now capable of indexing and tracking every single American citizen. All this in the name of National Security, without any evidence that IDing every citizen will actually make us more secure.

Evidence exists to the contrary: “The REAL ID Act requires driver’s licenses to include a “common machine-readable technology.” This will, of course, make identity theft easier.”

What a pity that our incumbent leaders are so adept at the destruction of Democray while spending billions of our money on wars that promote Anarchism in the name of Democracy. If there truly was a Satan, as so many people believe, He’d be laughing right now.

P.S. It may not be too late to jump on the bandwagon.

Bill Clinton, as part of his legacy, passed a bill that protected 58.5 million acres of pristine national forest land from future development. Today, George We-hate-trees Bush is taking a blow torch to Bill’s Roadless Forest bill. By allowing Left-coast governors the choice whether to bulldoze more trees, our Favorite Shrubbery is washing his hands of the consequences - both real-world and political. Also, as corporate money is tossed into the fire, less money will go farther when applied as leverage on the State level. Think of this as a localized Ad campaign, where the money is targeted more efficiently. Clever, that. Any political ashfall will likely only affect local and not national seats, so the Red party can stay in power in 2006.

Don’t let anyone tell you these people are dumb.

From LA Times:

The administration is replacing the road ban started by President Clinton with a regulation that gives governors considerable influence over the fate of federal backcountry, most of which is in the West and Alaska.

The administration has been signaling its displeasure with the roadless rule for several years, and late last year proposed the policy that was formally announced Thursday.

States will have 18 months to petition the federal government to open the lands to roads and development or to keep them protected. The final decision will be up to the secretary of Agriculture.

The road ban, considered the most sweeping conservation move of the Clinton administration, set off a round of lawsuits still playing out in courts. Some Western governors and the timber industry condemned the prohibition, saying it had carved a huge wilderness area out of public lands that should be open to a variety of uses.

In announcing the new rule, which will take effect in a few days, administration officials said they hoped it would resolve conflicts by giving states a voice.

From the Philadelphia Enquirer:

The new rule gives governors of pro-development Western states greater say over forest management in their states. Environmental groups fear that will lead to development that threatens fish and wildlife in pristine areas.

Because of market forces, the first intrusions into the forests will probably be by natural-gas-drilling rigs rather than chain saws and timber mills, according to economists, forest scientists and industry officials.

Either way, change is likely to come, if slowly, to some of the 58.5 million acres that the Clinton administration in its waning days put off-limits to development. The new state-by-state rules will affect no more than 34.3 million acres because the 24.2 million other acres have other development bans that are not being lifted, Bush administration officials said.

Finally, Grist Magazine says:

The Bush administration last week gave the heave-ho to the sweeping Clinton administration roadless rule, which put some 58.5 million acres of national forests off-limits to development. In its place, a new rule will put 34.3 million acres of that land back into play, at the discretion of governors, who will have 18 months to petition the feds either to open national-forest land in their states to development or keep it protected. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey claimed that “the way [the Clinton rule] was done developed a substantial amount of ill will.” As more than 90 percent of the public comments on the Clinton rule were positive, while more than 95 percent (nearly 1.8 million) on the Bush rule were negative, said “ill will” likely came primarily from the oil, gas, logging, mining, and road-building industries. Said a spokesflack for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, “We have to find ways and work with local communities to evaluate these lands and see if they are best for oil and gas activities, recreation, whatever.” Whatever, please.

I’m having great fun! I finally get to write another story!

Let me fill in the backstory. I’ve wanted to be a writer since my teens. Always I’ve been daunted by my favorite authors and their works because I know I couldn’t write as well. Not to go into all my personal baggage, but I have spent most of my adulthood feeling inferior regarding this dream. In 1990, while my wife was pregnant with our only child, I brought out my underused Royal typewriter and actually wrote over 100,000 words in a vain attempt recreate myself in the light of impending Fatherhood. The story is called Frostfire, and is based on my previous experiences of creating D&D worlds. I told you I was a geek!

Frostfire was a healthy exercise, and I don’t regret the late nights clacking away and chain smoking (well, maybe the smoking thing). Creating a novel “on the fly” is perhaps the worst way to go about breaking into print, but I plead ignorance. What did I know? The linear limitation of a typewritten manuscript didn’t bother me much. As with most endeavors, I have to enjoy the process, or I won’t try; I am a Be-er, not a Do-er. By that I mean that I am more interested in the ride than the destination. I enjoyed the process of writing Frostfire, although the results were poor.

After a few halfhearted attempts at the old-school manuscript submission process, I and my wife turned our attention to the challenges all new parents face, and Frostfire soon defaulted to the closet. I still have a couple of copies of the 400+ pages of typewritten tripe somewhere in the basement.

Six years later - I bought a computer by then - I learn about a novel writing software called Dramatica Pro. It’s expensive, comprehensive, and it promises, through obligatory ad copy, to answer my unsung dreams. I scraped together the money (over three hundred, as I recall) and ordered it. It certainly is comprehensive; The program has a learning curve so steep it would flummox a lama. Even the freaking manual was hard to understand. Sure I could change settings in the program, create a unique “storyform” based on my vague ideas, but in the many areas where I let the program fill in the blanks, I remained stumped. It has a nice Q&A format, but without a strong understanding of the terminology, the questions might as well have been in Romulan.

The moral to this story: Don’t try to learn Photoshop without a design/photography degree, and don’t try to learn Dramatica Pro without a few literature semesters under your belt. I put the program away, only to break it out again when my muse seemed unstoppable. That is, not very often.

Fastforward to this week. I find in the local CompUSA a scaled-down version of Dramatica Pro called Writer’s Dreamkit. I guess the name tipped me off. For less that the price of Half Life 2, I can realize my dreams - again. Not being one to want to waste even my paltry
attempts at learning the first program, I paid and went home hopeful. Thankfully, I find myself sufficiently prepped for what the Dreamkit offers. This time, I set my sights a bit lower for the first run and I will attempt to write a simple story based on the archetypes. As Frostfire was intended as a young adult novel, so too is my new project - tentatively entitled A World Away. If this pans out, I’ll post it to one of my web sites and let everyone read it. Stay tuned.

Scanning the online news these past few days (yawn) brings me no muse. The biggest story seems to be the billions lost on supposed security tech. Bilking the Government. What’s news about that? I’m old enough to remember the thousand-dollar toilet seats in the pentagon’s budget in the seventies. The admission that our fearful leaders are failing at securing this great nation is likewise boring. I find it problematic that a nation can be buttoned down like that without massive fiscal losses by many major industries: Air traffic, logistics, tourism and hospitality just to name a few. These industries are just the sort of special interests that bought our government in the last two elections.

So I’m not surprised that Washington is pouring money into the toilet over Placebos of National Insecurity; these are the same people who poo-poohed the evidence of Al-Qaida’s intention in 2001. Now, in a fit of collective guilt, our administration is wasting money on silver bullets without need. This way, it looks like they care, that they’re concerned for their citizens in an upcoming election year. Who can fault them if nothing works? At least they tried. Now the American people are holding the receipts for bogus technology, and can be expected to gather more.

I would ask: Where’s the money coming from? China already has our economy by the gonads. Very soon it will fail to be profitable for them to continue bolstering our overspending - and at some point, we (and I mean our children) will have to pay them back.

None of that matters, really. The important thing is to continue the Rove, DeLay and Frist Circus of the Absurd well into the next congress. After all, Presidents and Veeps come and go - only congressmen can enjoy the benefits of careerism.

It’s all so boring! Wars, deficits, tax finagling, wreckless spending: Everything I read in the news is just so last millennium. How about something new?

Like peace.