Nails

So, what is it with builders and nails? Nails used to have meaning; they used to have value, a few strategically placed nails could put a wall up that that you could hang an elephant from. Now, one can’t take a wall down without pulling out eleventy-zillion nails; nails at angles nails on top of nails, nails that go through a piece of wood into thin air and hold nothing. Many of the nails are bent and just pounded in not even going through the piece of wood they were meant to hold to some other piece of wood and around that nail will be hundreds of nails, apparently in an attempt to ensure that something is holding the piece of wood to where is needs to be.

I would blame it on that use of nail guns, which can in the blink of an eye deliver up to 600 nails a minute into any unsuspecting piece of wood, rendering it unfit to even hold the nails. No, this trend seems to have started before the nail gun became ubiquitous. It is, though certainly a more modern trend, possibly dating to the 90s when laws were changed that required homes to contain sufficient metal to prevent aliens from reading our minds.

My home, built in the seventies but with upgrades dating from the twenty-first century is one example. There is sufficient metal in the form of nails in some of the additions to block out even the most persistent of alien probes (anal, though might be an exception). In fact the nail-to-wood ratio in my house is such that even after all of the wood is gone, as in eaten by termites, there are still a sufficient number of nails to ensure that even a cockroach couldn’t crawl through without being impaled. Certainly, no radio waves can make it in or out, which explains why our cell phones barely work and the rise of cable companies, as it was no longer possible for radio waves to reach the antennas on top of our televisions, no matter how many acres of tin foil were put on them. Cable, which could penetrate the walls and bring in the signals were needed to breach the gauntlet of nails.

The advent of the pneumatically driven air gun has just exacerbated the problem. Now, even the most incompetent of nailers, those that spend more time smashing their fingers with the hammer than actually putting a nail into the wood, can, within a few minutes put so many nails into one spot using a nail gun that they have to drive back to the hardware store and buy another million rounds just to put up the next 2x4. Also, half the time that nail gun drives the nail so far through that wood that to get the nail out requires digging a few feet into the wall of the neighbor’s house.

One of the hazards that firemen face when a modern home burns down is the mass of molten metal that flows freely into the streets like lava, burning the tires of their trucks and if they aren’t careful the their boots. But, if something were to bring your house down around your ears, for example a magnitude 80 earthquake, then you could be assured of not having to suffer for days buried under a pile of rubble waiting for some rescue dog to find you. Chances are you would be already impaled by millions of 16 penny nails; those nails that were holding the vanity in your bathroom to the wall.

Signal

There is nothing more ubiquitous than the turn signal on a car. I mean even if there is no AC there will be a signal; even the engine is not required but the turn signal is. So, why don't people use them more often? I had a friend in New Jersey tell me that he didn't use his signals because he never wanted to let anyone know what his intentions were. 

Well, hell that is the entire reason for signals - to let the other drivers know what you plan to do; why you are slowing to a snail's crawl 2 miles before your turn. That way at least the person behind you could then decide if they want to pull over and have lunch while you proceeded with your turn. 

I hate it when I pull up to an intersection with a stop sign for my direction, but none for the other direction and have to wait as a car that is barreling up the road at light speed decides, at the last minute, to turn at the intersection rather than go through it, without at least letting me know they are turning. I could have been half way to Cleveland had they just let me know. 

The kicker, though is that here in New Mexico the turn signal has lost all its meaning. Most drivers don't use theirs and those that do more often than not, have no intention of turning. They just forgot turn off the signal the last time they used it in 2002. So, one really does have to wait to see the other driver's intention. 

I don't know how many times I have seen an Albuquerque driver turn his right turn signal and then go left. Sometimes, while cruising along the highway someone will signal that they want come over. So I slow done to let them in and in response they do one of two things either slow done or change their mind. With former about half the time I half to almost come to a complete stop, while moving in 70 mph traffic before they change lanes. In the second case they appear to change their mind, turn their signal off and just as I begin to speed up to get passed them they change lanes right in front of me, going 20 mph slower than I am causing me to have to slam on my brakes and hope that the car behind me, which is going warp speed doesn't lodge themselves in my tailpipe.

I make it a habit of using my turn signals when I drive. I even use them when I have no choice but to turn to the right, as in I am driving down the freeway and it makes a wide turn to the right; on go the signals! Some people use their signals to indicate that they are about to stop. Oh, the will eventually make the turn but when that will happen is something they haven’t yet decided.

It may be time for kids to learn the old fashioned was to indicate which direction they are turning; left arm out the window – hey wait, here in Albuquerque that is a good way to lose an arm. NEVER MIND!

Sugar

Whenever I go to the pet store, as I did today to get some crickets for my arachnids, I like to go over to the cages that hold cats for adoption. There are often at least one or two cats, mostly older cats, for adoption. Today was no exception. Sleeping in the back of one of the lower level cages was an orange and black cat that woke when I started talking to her. I called out kitty, kitty, kitty, a few time and stock my finger into one of the holes in the Plexiglas face that provides air flow. The kitty got up and came over and stuck her head into my finger and enjoyed the scratching that I was able to give her. She moved along the front of the cage and I was able to scratch her body some. Just as I was beginning to move my finger to another hole closer to her head the sales person came with my crickets and I had to leave.

More often than not, these poor animals were abandoned by their owners. Left to fend for themselves or turned out by families barely able to take care of themselves; yet somehow they managed to bring these animals into their homes with little or no regard to their ability to take care of them. Also, more often than not these same people often have more kids than they can take care of and these cats and dogs are often given to the kids as pets. It might be wrong to say that the arrival of these animals at the pet shelters is a result of negligence and irresponsibility, but this is New Mexico, a state that rivals some third worlds in the number of animals that are abandoned to the streets. There is an epidemic of cats and dogs that breed out of the house all because the owners inability (and unwillingness) to have those animals spaded and neutered.

How man came to have dominion over this world and the lesser creatures is all a matter of your viewpoint. Was he given such by his creator or had he evolved to dominion via his own superior intelligence? Regardless, his responsibilities toward the lesser creatures of this planet have been far less that his supposed intelligence might dictate that he should have. How we treat our lesser creatures is a reflection of how we treat each other; and it is easy to see that we do a dismal job at both tasks. After all, study after study has demonstrated a direct connection between how some people treat animals and their socio-and psycho-pathic behavior (including narcissistic behavior); many of the most notorious serial killers admitted to committing acts of animal cruelty.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. – Mahatma Gandhi

My little dachshund Sugar is my daily inspiration. She cannot use her back legs in a normal way. She walks, in a fashion, in that she can get up on her four legs and move right along, but if she had an itch she could not use her back legs to scratch that itch. It is called it spinal walking. Recently, because the tile floors in my home are slick she has taken to scooting along on her butt, pulled forward by her front legs. But when it is time to go for a walk she is up and excited and no matter how far we walk, to the point that she is having trouble keeping her back legs under her, she keeps moving right along, even if it means dragging her butt on the pavement. She protests vociferously whenever I pick her up to carry her. She wants to be on the ground moving under her own power. She doesn’t know that she is crippled, that her back legs don’t work like they should. None of that matters to her when it is time to go for a walk. When I severely broke my leg a few years ago and could not walk except with crutches, I tried hard not to complain. How could I, when here was this little dog, which would never be able to walk normally, always ready to go and never complaining, except when being carried.

It is always amazing to me that animals that are treated with such inhumane cruelty will somehow find a way to wag their tails for the very people that are committing the acts of cruelty. Dogs give unconditionally to their owners. Every day is a new day full of promise and everything is a favorite thing to do. How wonderful it would be if humans could adopt this attitude.

So, when I see these abandoned animals, living in a cage rather than in a warm loving home, it breaks my heart and makes me wonder about the future of the human race – especially in my home country. It is a reflection of who we are as a species.

Get up, be happy, be grateful, be joyous in life and give and love unconditionally – live like you pet.

Why I Read

I read to be entertained not necessarily enlightened but if along the way the latter happens then great for me! I do like reading the classics but most turn out to be disappointing works of snobbish blather. Two classics that turned out to be major disappointments for me were The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms; The Heart of Darkness, while better than the other two left me wondering why Marlow didn’t just kill himself. On the other hand, a good Orwell novel, short story, or essay is always great – we do, after all live in a 1984-esk world.

Maybe my statement that I don’t read to be enlightened is a little harsh. It is not that I don’t want to gain understanding of the world around me but I already live in that real world so that reading books that focus on the pain and suffering or torment of others is not quite what I am looking for when I read. I read to escape into another world. It is the same for movies, I would much rather watch a good action flick rather than a movie focused on a person suffering from cancer. Not that I am unsympathetic to that person’s suffering but I have experienced that in real life already; it cannot get more poignant than that.

I like mostly to read history and good biographies, but that is nonfiction. When it comes to fiction I enjoy science fiction and books a little on the edge between possibility and impossibility. I enjoy the books by Dan Brown; the slight reinterpretation of history. In that category are the books of one of my favorite authors Steve Berry, whose main character Cotton Malone chases around the world staving off cataclysmic disaster.

I remember the first book that really drew me in, The Count of Monte Cristo. It took me two months to read – I am a slow reader, but took me to a world of adventure that I still remember. I have always wanted to go back and read the book but there are so many other books that need reading. I read that book in high school. Then I discovered science fiction and that became my joy. I mostly liked reading short stories because it meant that I didn’t have to commit to a long drawn out story that I might not finish. I was for most of my life a lazy reader. I read a lot of Asimov and Heinlein in college and whenever I actually took the time to read the books assigned to me in my literature classes I was always impressed how much I enjoyed reading them.

Somehow I managed to get through most of my English/reading classes in high school and college without ever reading all of the assigned material. This of course was before the age of computers and Google, so I couldn’t just go online and download the relevant information and generate an essay or pass a test. So, I didn’t have to do some reading. Sometime in the 90’s I finally started reading in earnest; at that time only history and biographies. I would put together lists of 10 or 12 books that I wanted to read and then just start reading. It might take me most of a year to get through the list but I do it and then when that list was complete I would make another and read that list also. Sometime in 2008, as a gift I was given my first Kindle reader, which by the way I still have. At that time the Steve Berry novel The Charlemagne Pursuit was being advertised on the radio station I listened to as I drove back and forth to Albuquerque for work. So, that became one of the first books I downloaded and read on my Kindle. It was also the book that got me hooked on Berry’s Cotton Malone character so I download the previous 3 books in the series and read them. I also downloaded Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (on my drive back and forth to Albuquerque I listened to his other books on audio – through Audible). I read a couple of Kurt Vonnegut’s books, A Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse Five; I followed that up later with Breakfast of Champions. Surprisingly I didn’t read any science fiction, except the pseudo stuff of Vonnegut. I also read history and biographies.

I am not always a big fan of multi-book series because one always has to read every book to reach the end. The Cotton Malone series is nice because each book resolves itself by the end. I enjoyed the Foundation series by Asimov but never went back and read the other 3 or 4 books in the series.

I have read hundreds of books (well hundreds may be pushing it but the number read is over a hundred!) since getting that Kindle. I rarely read actual physical books. I find that the print is often too small and though I use reading glasses the lighting makes it hard to read physical books. I still have a substantial library but when I read I usually read on the Kindle.

My taste in books hasn’t really changed I still mostly read nonfiction over fiction and mostly adventure fiction books, but I like to throw in a nice novel of a different style now and then. One of things I did do was subscribe to the digital version of the New York Times Book Review and every weekend I pursue it and read the more interesting reviews and often download the novel being reviewed and read it. The NYTimes Book Reviewed has introduced me to many novels that I would normally seek out and read and as a result I feel that I am better off for the experience. I recently started reading the books of John Le Carre. The language and the writing are so refined and though a bit dry the story is so well written that one easily ignores the dryness to get to the end of the book and to the resolution.

I usually have several books going at once but after a while I begin to feel guilty about not finish this or that book so I stop reading the others and concentrate on finishing each book in turn. Often it is hard to move on to a book that I really want to read knowing that there are other books that I really wanted to read, half read and waiting to be finished. Finishing a book gives one a great sense of accomplishment, though if it is a great story or a good biography, it is hard to see the story end or read about the death of a favorite person; I always cry at the end of a biography when the death of the subject person is described. Currently I am reading Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, which I discovered through the NYTimes Book Review; Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, in paperback; also in paperback, Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories (There is a whole series of these books dating from the 1930 through to the 1970s), and on my phone (Kindle for Andriod) Joseph Epstein’s Wind Sprints, Shorter Essays. I am sure that there are other books that I have on the hook that I have started and read several chapters into then put down to pick up later and maybe finish.

And though I read to be entertained I cannot help but also be enlightened. It would not be a good book if one didn’t come away feeling as though they have a better understanding of the world around them!

Burritos and other hazards of driving in Albuquerque

The other morning as I was heading out the door for work I received a traffic alert via a text message. It is a service provided by a local radio station. The alert said that West Bound I40 was closed at Carlisle, the direction I would soon be heading, because of a loose animal. This was around 0640. I thought to myself that by the time I got there, I was going to stop at the store and get milk, the police would have the situation taken care of and while traffic would be slow it would be moving. I stopped at the store and got my milk and by the time I was getting onto the interstate at Tramway and heading west it was just before 0700. As I approached the Louisiana off ramp I noticed, on one of the electronic signs that hang over the interstate giving updates on traffic conditions a message stating, “In celebration of the interstate closure at Carlisle several Albuquerque drives have decided to have a mutli-car pileup to further upset your commute.” Clearly someone was looking for another excuse for being late to work. “Apparently those red brake lights really do mean traffic isn’t moving,” thought the person reading their text messages as they plowed into the back of one of the stopped cars.

Normally I would just slither along with the traffic in order to rubber neck but this particular morning I wasn’t in the mood. I was anxious to get to work in order to check out the cooling capacity of our new refrigerator by putting my newly purchased milk in it, and yes to have a nice cup of coffee with said cold milk. So, rather than sit in a line of slow moving traffic I got off the interstate at Louisiana. Driving down Central Avenue on my way to Yale Boulevard I drove passed the Frontier restaurant and it occurred to me that I had not had one of their breakfast burritos in a very long time. A quick U-turn at the next available left turn bay brought me quickly back to that breakfast burrito! My motto for the day was, “When life hands you lemons, have a breakfast burrito.” Wow, what a morning; first some milk for my coffee and then a delicious burrito for breakfast.

So, where am I going with this discussion anyway? Well, unlike most Albuquerque drivers who seem to be just scurrying around like cockroaches when the light is turned on, in their 2-ton death traps looking for their next accident, I am heading toward telling you just how bad the drivers are in this city.

You see, Albuquerque doesn’t have a traffic problem in the sense that there are too many cars for the carrying capacity of the roads, like for example Los Angles. No, what Albuquerque has is just a boat load of very bad drivers and for some reason they are always trying their best to be in everyone’s way, including their own. To give you some statistics, if you take any 10 drivers on the road at any given instant, 25 of them will be some of the most horrid drivers ever encountered. Now you ask, “How is that possible?”  It is possible because it seems that all of the bad drivers move here from every other place on the planet and then breed more bad drivers. But then you say, “No, that is not what I was asking, I was asking how is that 25 out of 10 drivers are bad? That just doesn’t make sense.” To which I answer, “You are right, it doesn’t make any sense to have that many bad drivers all in one place.” Now you are looking at me with desperate exasperation. “NO, NO, NO!” You yell, “I mean how is it possible to have 250% of all drivers being bad drivers?” Again, I have to answer, “Albuquerque is just unlucky I guess.” I mean New Mexico ranks last in just about every category including drivers. Now you are really irate, so you leave in a major huff, get into your car and drive off and engage in major acts of road rage, including driving headlong into the back grandma’s 1965 Lincoln Continental as she lollygagged down the interstate at 31 miles per hour. Your car never stood a chance and all the impact did to grandma was to knock her dentures out of her mouth; she’s still trying to find them.

Your funeral services would have been next Tuesday but the hearse carrying your coffin slammed into the back of a line of cars stopped on the interstate waiting for the police to round up some animal running loose in traffic with a what appeared to be a huge toothy smile – caused a hell of a mess – cars burning, including the hearse. I managed to get off the interstate at Louisiana and avoid the mess – and that is how I got my breakfast burrito! So, I guess I owe you a big thank you!

Happy Driving Albuquerque!