Painting at Night

So you've heard the expression "As exciting as watching paint dry"?

Okay; that's what I'm doing. I'm sitting at the computer downstairs waiting for the paint to dry on the interior of the porch door in the living room so I can slap on the second coat...and, yeah, it's that exciting. So I'm at the computer blogging and free-associating.

But it's not all boredom and painting everywhere. Pobaby would remind us that, it's August, so, hey, it's Armed Forces Day! Go, go, People's Navy! Happy 80th Birthday, Glorious Defenders of the Liberation of the Masses.

Speaking of China - and who isn't - the ass-kickin' gals of the U.S. Women's National Team play their last tune up game this weekend before jetting off on their quest to regain World Cup glory. Follow every throw-in, every training session and all the whacky antics of the Girls of Summer right here on their very own blog. It's about what you'd think, except I'm not sure I want to know Carli Lloyd eats toast for dinner.
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As you can see, the new deck is in. Audie, our Deck Master, is proving to be...well, let's just say between us that Audie isn't exactly the longest plank in the deck, shall we? If the inspector shows up again and Audie and his guys haven't covered the spoil dirt - again - I'm gonna start getting miffed. Veeeery miffed.

What IS this white pock-mark below, you ask? Good question. That's a trap, you see. It's a powder trap, for...for things that get trapped in powder. The Peeper and Mojo put it there to see what kind of footprints will be there tomorrow morning. Hmmm... Not sure what to say about that. Silence may be best.

You should really read this post over at Fred Clark's slacktivist. The man is a terrific writer, and his annotated "Left Behind" is worth the price of admission alone; but the above-referenced piece is a very thoughtful exposition of what the Founders meant when they prohibited "cruel and unusual punishment".

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Oh, yick. Fat Nitty just brought in a ginormous moth and is tormenting it. Oh, and now she's eating it...ewwww. God, cats can be gross, and the Nitteous One is a very catty cat.

Oh - funny Peeper story. We went to Starbucks Sunday a.m. and he got a milk (in a paper coffee cup) and a chocolate cookie. Drank the milk, ate about half the cookie. Somewhen between our return and the final placement of the last laminate floorboard the cookie disappeared, never to return.

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So Monday morning I get a call; Mojo distraught, Peeper in tears. Can't find the cookie - tragedy, disaster, horror. They look everywhere, no joy. So Mojo tells me, later, that as they're searching the Peep finds a tiny brown crumb on the living rooms floor.

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"Look, Mommy, a crumb from my cookie! It's pointing to the kitchen! That must be where the cookie is!"

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Sad to say, no cookie. But a great story.
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Well, the tasty moth is devoured down to the last crunchy bit of antennae-y goodness and I have to go paint. G'night.

Monday morning free-association

Lovely quiet weekend: Mojo slept in, Peep and I went off to Starbucks for our coffee-and-milk and pastries. Cleaning, laundry, a little home improvement. The biggest excitement was a double-bill of action;

1. We found a new Diego adventure at "the movie store" and celebrated by watching "The Tapir Adventure", like, six times.

2. We all held down Fat Nitty Kitty (who had gone to the vet in a pillowcase; yes, I know, but we're cheap and we only have one cat-carrier and Lily, who is a total freak about the vet gets that) and I got out the fabric shears and cut out the little matted fur-and-dirt tags she gets on her furry black cat ass.

Euuugh. She wailed and tried to scratch, after which the ungrateful beast disappeared for the rest of the day.

Here's Shea with his new blanket: Mojo is trying to fit the bright orange blanket binding (not yet in picture) while Fireman Peep guns for me with his shoot-the-ping-pong-ball firetruck. "Shoot the ping-pong ball? Huh? Oh, well...go figure...

Mojo sewed a beautiful cover for the Ikea chair..and – only seventeen more days until the Portland IKEA store opens…seventeen more days…only seventeen more days…

Brazil wakes up and looks around for some more South American booty to kick in Copa America 2007. Mojo and the Peep go to the pool on Sunday so I can watch Argentina pound Peru: the Argies v. Mexico on Wednesday should be a terrific game.

The 2007 Tour de France kicks off with a couple of incredible sprints: Fabian Cancellara of Team CSC blows away the peleton with his monstrous Swiss ass-kicking in London; then Robbie McEwen proves that he is, in fact, the fastest man in Le Tour by getting up off the pavement to win Stage 1 in Canterbury. Great coverage at Versus or here at Steve Gilliard’s Group NewsBlog site. Vive le Tour!

I love old movies: if I had to spend a month on a desert island with only one website to read every day I'd probably choose the Self-Styled Siren. I get as big a kick out of Lombard, Tracy and Hepburn, George Cukor and John Ford as I do out of anything coming out of Hollywood today.

So it wasn't exactly a surprise that Mojo and I watched "Road Show" on TCM Saturday evening. What's not to like? Adolphe Menjou as the goofy "Colonel Carroway"? The lovely and tragic Carole Landis as - wait for it - "Penguin" Moore? Patsy Kelly (the Rosie O'Donnell of her day) as the "comic sidekick" Jinx? Lots of outstanding Hal Roach slapstick?
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The surprising bit came right near the end of the film, when the "Colonel" directs Penguin's traveling carnie to his eccentrive nephew's estate. He directs the carnies to loot the produce from the fields, which the starving carnies ("Penguin" appears to be better at filling out a blouse than filling a Big Top) gleefully do. Right in the middle of this, with the rapacious hordes racing about, the Colonel beckons to a handful of black carnies. "The watermelons are over there, boys..." he says, at which point they scamper off in a lather of bug-eyed Samboesque excitement.

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There's more of this stuff: cowardly "darkies" terrified of the carnie lions; another black actor stealing chickens...I know, I know, this was standard fare for the 30s and 40s. Still. Mojo and I did a "take" at the screen and burst out in horrified laughter. I'm talking total "WTF?" moment. Peeper was actually angry that we were "laughing at people" - we've told him that it's not nice to mock people by laughing at them (rather than with them). Wow.

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When I read the news sometimes I despair that people seem insistant on repeating he same stupid thing over and over. It takes something like "Road Show" to put this in perspective. Yes, we're still pretty fucked up about race. Yes, we could be doing more. But no, we don't have the pop culture image of cowardly, chicken-stealing, watermelon-gobbling darkies any more. Americans in general don't expect to see that stereotype as a casual gag in a B-picture any more. A lot of the world still "enjoys" a casual, everyday, offhand racism. We've managed to make the whole notion as wierd and as improbable as Morris dancing. And that, my friends, is a very Good Thing.

2007

...will be warmer then 2006. I suspect there will be much more of the same stuff we saw in 2006, except less of Brittany Spears' vagina. Sweet Baby Jesus.

...should damn well see impeachment proceedings against the Fool on the Hill, who is starting to remind me of Nixon in the old joke: Ford; see no evil, Carter; hear no evil, Nixon; evil.

...will be the Peeper's fourth birthday! Yaay, Peep!



...will be another year in Iraq.

...will be another Republican lawyer quail season, so Deadeye Dick Cheney will have to check the bag limit. They're fairly easy to hit but real hard to clean...

...will be the Women's World Cup in China. Go, you US women!

...will be Mojo's 41st birthday - and my 50th.

...should be the year we hold our daughter Mei-mei for the first time.

May the coming year bring you and yours love, peace, happiness and goodwill.

The Boys in the Truck

Twenty years ago this week we drove the HQ-52 Goat down to Venado drop zone for a simple DZ coverage. And there they are, the boys in the truck, waiting for the C-130 to return to pass another stone or two of paratroops. So, where ever you are, SGT Guerra, Docs Alderson, Varney, Echevarria...hope you and your wherewithal are enjoying a peaceful, well-loved "holiday week".

Meanwhile in the news, our Decider-in-Chief appears to have given what in Arabic is called "the finger" to his daddy's old counsellors on the ISG, choosing rather to throw the iron dice one last time. Who'd have thought there would be a time when we had a Chief Executive who made us long for the likes of Franklin Pierce and Calvin Cooledge? Who knew?

A giant sinkhole opens in the street next to Buckman School, swallows city truck. Cool! Had to have been piping - Buckman Pool has been notorious for leaks for years. What a hell of a big fix, though...wish my firm had a piece of this. Plus it made a great TV news story. Hell of a visual, ain't it?


I've been enjoying the time at home with little Pea, but he's been enjoying having Daddy around so much that I actually had to take Peep to daycare to get some time to just clean the house. What a mess! So the laundry is done and folded and put away, the beds made, the dishes done and the floors are vacuumed and the toys (mostly) put away, I've had some time to just sit and think, to post to Intel Dump, and to try and fight off this damn cold. Ugh. By tomorrow I hope to be feeling better enough to get outside and either bird or hunt the wily duck. Depends on the weather. The good weather for winter birding is poor for hunting, and vice versa. I wonder if those Pine Grosbeaks are still around somewhere? That'd be even nicer than a plump grain-fed greenhead in the oven...

Time to go and lie on the couch and read the new Laurell Hamilton. Parenting is hell, hell, I tell you.

Monday morning free-association

That's Jumpmaster Chief on the right, trying to contort myself to look around the ass-end of a CH-47 heavy lift helicopter to clear Venado Drop Zone in Panama, 1986.

Amazing when I think that it was twenty years ago - it seems like I could blink and wake up in the tall tropical billets with Echevarria and Varney and Black and all my compadres from the old 2/187th Infantry. The world changes and we look about us in confusion and dismay. Who is that looking back at me in the mirror, and why has he lost that bright fierce certainty he had...seems like just a moment ago? Where did it go?

Is there anyone who thinks that Dick and Dubya's Big Iraq Adventure is going to end well? It sickens and saddens me to think of the many people: the little Iraqi boys and girls, the American troopers so far from home...all of the men, women, boys and girls locked in this Totentanz that shows no sign of drawing to a close.

Damn, Barbara Stanwyck was an elegant woman.

Why it is that frightens little peepers in the early morning hours? And why can they get back to sleep so quickly, while mommies and daddies lay awake thinking for hours?

Look at this face. This is the face of a little boy who has been told that he will get to ride a big steam train next weekend: not "this day", next weekend. And as any three-year old knows, tomorrow may never come.

Spaeaking of trains - thanks to the good people of the Oregon Railroad Heritage Foundation. We rode "Old No. 700" yesterday and had a wonderful time. If you're in Portland next weekend, stop down at Oaks Park and enjoy the big steamie. Little Pea loved the engine, loved the cool old Pullman compartment, loved the ride, loved Santa, loved his candy cane, loved the little whistle he got at the end...just loved it, period.

Why would a kid need a cell phone? Just thinking, Lorrie over at Clueless In Carolina got her daughters one. God, I'd love to get rid of mine... But I could see the idea of being able to reach out and touch The Pea when he was off running with his little friends, five or six years from now. All I'd need is a distant-phone location GPS function on MY cell - so you guys are over at Joeys, huh? Busted, boyo!

Who spends time thinking up toothpaste flavors?

After "Miracle on 34th Street" and "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", what the hell remains to be said? "Deck the Halls"? WTF!!?? Who the hell thought THAT crap was a good idea?

"Woof! Woof! That's my other dog imitation."

The curving place above her hip; how utterly, sensuously delightful.

Well, the rains are returning and I am leaving, departing for a week and a half of drilling (on all things) a barge moored in the heaving waters of Haines Inlet. So I'll be away for a while. Y'all come back, now, hear?

Next time: Seriously, no shit, really tropical fun with spies...

Better Thee than Me...

So we've had our November gorgefest, in which the sacrifical Turkey takes upon itself the Sins of the world, dies, descendeth into the Oven, and on the third day reappears as bilious torpor, commercial excess and football.

Little Pea declined the stuffin', partaking of his usual abstemious pasta-and-milk. Although he DID throw himself into the Black Friday shopping mood, spending hours brooding over pictures of trucks, trains and other toys on Google, chanting the magic incantation: "I will save my money for that and that and that..." He doesn't really understand the whole idea of saving money, mind you - i.e. that you have to save four dollars for a four dollar toy. He still has faith in Republican economics, whereby you can take in a quarter and still afford to spend in the high eight figures because Reagan showed that deficits don't matter, y'know.

I am mildly depressed, and I'm not sure quite why. Could be the holidays approaching - I don't feel particularly holly and jolly. Could be the cold and rain. Could be a lack of exercise - I don't know, or I'd do something about it. I know that I'd enjoy a couple of comments here now and then. Just to let me think that somebody's reading this blog and enjoying my efforts.

But enough self pity. Let's take a moment to thank the 2006 Portland Pilots women's soccer team, whose great season as defending national champs (see above) came to an end yesterday. The NCAA had to gimmick the schedule so that they played all three of their playoff games on the road, ending with a holiday weekend game against a bigger, more physical team on their own rock-hard, blazing-fast pitch that magnified their strengths and Portland's every weakness. Great season, gals, great games. Heads up. You had a great run, and we'll be back on the Bluff next year to cheer you on.

Now I gotta go see if my son is pestering my head-cold-sick wife. The fun never stops here. Ask anyone.

Sunday Night Free Association

Do most adoptive parents have other kids? Because if they do, why do so many "IA Stories" talk about their kids crying/hitting/throwing things/vomiting and or defecating? I mean, I'm not trying to be a downer, but...if you take out that stuff what ELSE is there to talk about? The life of a toddler seems to consist of the above plus refusing to eat anything but sliced white bread with the crusts off and lightly dusted with exactly 2.3 grams of cinnamon sugar (today, that is. Tomorrow it will be something completely different)

Is there something in raising a kid that prepares you for running a country, and is that why most pre-industrial societies required you to be a patriarch or matriarch before you could be the Big Kahuna? 'Cause it's gotta be that there's something in you that gets callused over the octeenth time your kid says "I don't love you 'cause you're a bad daddy" that prepares you to say things to strangers like "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

Can you really trap GIs with beer? (see above) Okay, I know you can, but how cheap a beer can you go with and still trap enough to depress the population? Are we talking Steel Reserve or will Haffenreffer (aka the Big Green Death) or Milwaukee's Best work?

Does anybody actually remember BGDs? Talk about "dead drunk for two bits"...

Didn't there used to be a country called America, where the people there used to be proud of the fact that they stood up to tyranny, defied kings and their secret justice, their lettres de cachet and Chateaus d'If, that stood for justice before the law and freedom from the midnight knock on the door and the secret torture chamber?

Why are toddlers scared of taking a dump in the potty? Wassupwitdat?

Does anyone really want Barry Bonds to break the Hammerin' Hank's career HR record?

Who invented liquid soap? And why?

And how did Viveca Lindfors stay so sexy and cool all the way into her sixties, and was she or was she not the best part of The Sure Thing?

How can a three-year-old's feet stank like that?

Why is it that the barking dog next door can keep you up an hour between midnight and one and yet the dog's owners (fifty feet closer to the howling SOB) sleep like the dead?

Why the heck is Greg Ryan bothering scheduling those soccer powers Chinese Taipei and Iceland right before the Hexagonal? Is it doing the USWNT any good at all to hammer seven goals (or whatever the hell they put in the onion bag today) against the women's soccer equivalent of Brighton and Hove Albion?

It seems to me that I've spent so much of my life worrying and fretting about things I either don't understand or can't affect, and yet the big things, the important things, the life-and-love-and-death things seem to happen in their own way, regardless of what I'm thinking or doing.

Is there anything lovlier than the curve of her hip?

Paris Hilton. WTF?

Why do so many of my countrymen not CARE that our leaders are lying to us and pissing down our necks and telling us it's raining? Why doesn't this really piss them off, too?

Is there a God? Does it matter?

When you die, will you know?

Why am I still awake wondering about this stuff?

"I woke up thinking about Turkish drummers...it didn't take long - I don't know much about Turkish drummers - But it made me think of Germany and the guy who sold me cigarettes who'd been in the Afghan secret police who made the observation that it's hard...to live...

Then I was reminded of the proprietor of a Vietnamese restaurant in Quebec who used to be head of the secret police in Da Nang - and it occurred to me I was thinking about all this stuff to keep from thinking about something else... Isn't that just what secret police are all about???" - Bruce Cockburn "Get Up Jonah"

Tie me up, tie me down

...to the struggle for the legal tender.

It's been crazy this week. Mojo and the Peeper are preparing for the Big Gappa Flight (their week-long sojourn to peeper-starved grandparents) while I've been working sun-to-sun for the nice people at ODOT. I've had a lot to do and a lot to think about: home, life, love, work, the capricious buggers at CCAA, the ponderings of the Rumor Queen, the latest from Karen (exhausted but happy) and Millicent (exhausted and not-so-happy). I've been trying to get ready for my GS 108 (Oceanography) gig at Portland Community College SE Center this fall, keep the company nuclear testing gauges from falling into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

I've been dong a lot of reading - from the bizarre and funny stylings of Carl Hiaasen (finished "Basket Case" in four hours waiting for the drillers to tun in casing and repair their cathead yesterday...I've seldom read an odder or more entertaining novel. The critter is worth it for the hero-beats-down-burglar-with-frozen-corpse-of-monitor-lizard scene alone) to the latest from Diana Norman and waiting impatiently for the latest from L. M. Bujold...

But what I havent had is time to do much blogging. In fact - I've got to run to work RIGHT NOW.

I'll be back, though. More H&I fire this weekend. Until then, stop by Chapman School to see the swifts. They're COOL!!

Slacker

I know, I know...I promised some penetrating political insight in the wake of "Bomber" Halutz' and his friend Dubya's Big Lebanon Adventure. Problem is...Deb and I went out to dinner at Roux last night. Albacore nicoise - blue point soft shell crab - God! I am in gastonome heaven. Plus we went to watch the sunset over the Secret Dog Place. And shopping at the Lombard Goodwill (where we came across the elusive Volume #13 in the White Squaw series ("Track Tramp") - perhaps the best of the "adult western" genre. Went to bed giggling over the railroad adventures of Rebecca and Mikey.

So.

Politics tomorrow.

"Have you ever seen the pistons
On the mighty C.P.R.,
With the driving force of a thousand horse?
Well, then you know what pistons are.

Or you think you do, but you've yet to see
The ins and outs of the trick
Of the work that's done on a non-stop run
By a fellow like Dead-Eye Dick."

Saturday morning 4am

It seems like everyone has an opinion about "What to do about Iraq".

This has been an extremely odd sort of war. It is a red-line issue between lefties like me and righties. My friend Tiger, who is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, has even lectured me about fighting guerilla war. Tiger's total military experience consists of watching "Band of Brothers", mind you. He's a lovely man. Like everyone involved in this debate, he becomes an instant military expert when the subject of Iraq comes up.

Me, too, of course.

My take? Well, IMO The real problem now (as opposed to the real problem up until a year ago, which was that the people trying to "run" Iraq - the CPA - were primarily party hacks chosen for their ideological purity and as fucked up as a football bat as far as actually performing as a civil government) is that the U.S. is neither in a geopolitical position to "win", or, in fact, even to determine the conditions of what a "win" is. The Iraqis are.

They had a nice little election, remember all those purple fingers?

The problem that flows from this is that we are now ostensibly "guests" of a sovereign nation. One, moreover, that is getting heartily sick of getting shot over by American convoys and killed at American checkpoints and raped by American servicemen. This can hardly be considered a shock. Think of how you would feel if your little piece of America was suddenly overrun by a bunch of surly Shiite militiamen who threw up checkpoints at random locations, shouted at you in pidgen English and shot you if you misunderstood. Or their local allies raided your block and hauled off all the military age men, who, quelle suprise, turned up in a trash heap in a vacant lot with a nine millimeter trepanning job.

A nation that we are barely supporting, much less "reconstructing". Um, yeah, that sideshow stopped playing over a year ago. Haji and his unemployed friends are back to hanging on the corner hoping someone will IED those assholes from the 502nd PIR...

A "country" currently "governed" by a bunch of folks whose total experience in running a democracy came from watching old VHS tapes of Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" and the musical "1776" (the part where Mrs. Jefferson sings about getting it on with the Sage of Monticello, especially).

Folks who were held in a single nation by a succession of strongmen, and who, in many respects, lack compelling reasons to cling together:
- the Kurds want what they've always wanted, a nation of their own
- the Sunnis want the whole nut roll back, or at least a bigger share of the Iraqi pie than their demographics would recommend, and
- the Shiites figure that hey, one Iraqi, one vote, right, and there are more of them than anyone else, so it's their game, lock, stock and two smoking barrels.

Anyone figures out how to put these three pit bulls back into the sack and get a working sled dog team wins the Nobel Peace Prize and, no, I don't think that Dubya, McCain, Hillary and Ralph Nader together have that kind of intellectual wattage. The three main groups, plus all the other factions, plus the criminal gangs (lots of them in the mixer, too) are all working under the middle eastern principle - power to my group is power to me. A victory for my faction is a victory for me. And a defeat for my faction is defeat, disaster, destruction and death for me.

Right now the military strength of our Army and Marines is irrelevant to the Iraqis, except as dupes they can con into killing their factional enemies. Our supposed objectives of "democracy" are irrelevant to their goals of increasing their factional power.

We cannot maintain an occupation in this mess, other than by joining a faction (probably the Shiites) and helping them supress their enemies. And our hold on the Shiites fades as we clearly show we have little largesse to give and tilt towards the Sunnis to try and pacify Anbar province. Oh, yes, and make other dumbass geopolitical errors like allow our Israeli ally to paste Lebanese Shiites with CBUs. Sweeeeet. That's sticking your head so far up your backside you can see out through your molars.

We might "win" if we did this in such a draconic way that we made our name a synonym for atrocity, a sort-of 21st Century Attila. I doubt we have the political will for that. I hope we don't.
In short, we have completely screwed the dog through a "perfect storm" combination of pride, sloth, greed and wrath. The only deadly sin we missed was lust (oh, sorry, the boys from the Nickel Oh Deuce caught that one...).

Machiavelli and Metternich together would have a problem putting the Iraqi-Dumpty together. That was probably the most cogent reason I heard in the run-up to war for NOT whacking Saddam. It was because Saddam was Saddam not because he was Saddam, but because Iraq was Iraq. We've painted ourselves into this "Muslim democracy" corner and any effort now to prop up a strongman shoots our national credibility dead square in the ass.

Like I said: we're just screwed. The hard light of dawn is ramming through the tacky motel curtains, our head is pounding and our mouth feels like a cat has littered in it. As we grope and stumble to the musty-smelling toilet we can't quite remember how we got here, or why, but the faint lipstick traces on some pretty startling parts of our anatomy are pretty much a giveaway of what happened last night. And the sick feeling in our stomach is more than just last nights' bourbon, it has a lot to do with the growing horrific realization that our wallet and keys are nowhere to be found, our wife has probably already reported us missing and the meeting we were supposed to make at 8:30 is probably a wash, since the plastic clock-radio is blinking "11:00" in unforgiving red numbers. As we sink down on the nasty, crumpled sheets, head in hands, we are overwhelmed by two single, terrifying thoughts:

"Ohmigod what the hell can I do now..?"

"I am SO fucked!"