All the Souls

What do animals really think and feel?

Much has been written on the subject.

I don't have anything to add.

Yet I do wonder.

Roots of a Weed

"I would like to be a model in a science textbook."

Thus said the weed, just after I'd pulled it out of a planter pot, where it had been growing right against the inside surface of the earthenware container.

"Well, I don't really have access to any science textbooks," I replied.  "However, I can post your picture in my blog."

Though the weed didn't reply audibly, through body language, specifically its flat, diagrammatic appearance, it seemed to agree that this would be better than nothing.

In an attempt to do justice to this weed's aspirations to be the star of a science textbook, I did look up the following information:

** TWO HOURS LATER **     ahhhrrkgghk!   I can't find anything online that positively identifies the above weed.  So frustrating.  Ah well, I must give up for now, but I'll dream that perhaps this is a new weed and I'll receive the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering a new plant.

Hey! Where are you going?

It was their logo that first caught my eye and lured me into the Blind Lady Ale House on February 14, 2009, just two weeks after they'd opened.

The man was riding his bicycle into the ale house, and I simply followed him inside.

Later, however, I began to notice that the ads they were placing in CityBeat were irking me for some reason.

Where are you going, turn-of-the-century bicycle man?  You're riding away from the AleSmith Weekend!

Why did I feel so strongly about this?  Not sure.  I cannot recall exactly where I heard of this concept.  Certainly I didn't make it up.  Vaguely I remember reading somewhere that newspaper photographs are sometimes reversed, or "mirrored", to make the subject appear to be looking toward the center of the page rather than away.

So on June 28, 2009, I wrote a letter to the Blind Lady Ale House, specifically to co-owner Jeff Motch, the award-winning professional graphic designer who had created the logo.  Citing enclosed examples similar to the images above, I suggested that he design a new, complimentary logo, with the cyclist riding to the right, or toward the subject of any future advertisements.

There was no reply.  Which was kind of disappointing, though not unexpected.  Perhaps successful designer Motch thought "who the heck do you think you are?  Who is the professional graphic artist around here, anyway?"  Or then again, people good with art are often not so comfortable with words, so writing a letter in response might be quite a task.  Additionally, how many times do I respond to stuff I see online, much less by written word?  How often do I think "I'm gonna send them a ThankYou card", but then never do?  Often.

The main reason that I had no response, I figured, was that my idea was lacking in merit.  Does it really matter which way the guy is facing in the logo?  Evidently not.

Flash forward nine months to March 24, 2010.  Sitting in my PowerPoint 2007 class, the lesson asked me to include the following graphic on the left edge of my presentation:

"Next, to keep the viewer’s eye from traveling off the slide to the left, click the Rotate button and choose Flip Horizontal. "

Maybe my idea is not so crazy after all!

So right away, out of curiousity, I went to the Blind Lady Ale House BLAHG to look at one of their recent CityBeat ads.

 Cool!

Coming Undone

I am most certainly not a Korn fan, but must admit that I really like their video for Coming Undone conceptually.

On a Busy Street

On Amtrak this morning two men got on at San Luis Obispo.

These guys were exuberant, friendly, and full of life.

It took me several hours to piece together the clues that these guys had just been released from the San Luis Obispo Men's Colony.

Clues: (1) the fact they split up on the bus, not sitting together, (2) the guy behind me chatting up this girl across the aisle, (3) that both of them carried manilla envelopes with numbers written on the upper right corner (evidently personal effects), (4) the guy behind me telling the girl that he's sick of talking to guys all the time, (5) his also describing a situation where "he was there when the cops came" but was evidently innocent, so he claims, and (6) the other guy later at the Santa Barbara train station shouted out, "I been cooped up so long -- I don't mind the noise!"

Anyway, in the afternoon I was sitting for a while in the same car southbound on the Pacific Surfliner.  There are two things, gems, that I overheard which I would like to share, because I found them very interesting.

The first is a simple phrase.

One guy was ragging the other guy for his "bald head" (pronounced "bodd haid").  The bald guy responded with:

"Grass don't grow on a busy street!"

The second is a piece of street knowledge, or urban legend, or as the teller no doubt believes it, "just plain facts":

There's a Chinese technique where they shake your hand, and by pressing certain veins in your hand, it gives you a blood clot in the head.

The teller of the story illustrated it well with gestures, pointing to the veins in his hand as he shook it in the air, and then at the side of his head as if it had a blood clot.  The listener seemed to have some difficulty believing it, so the teller said "It's what I just said," and repeated the information.  Then he elaborated:

Remember Bruce Lee, that old guy, was doing Kung Fu?  Well his grandfather told him, "you're distorting the traditional Kung Fu."  Because it's like a religion to them!  But he kept on with his style of fighting.  So they shook his hand, and they pressed a vein in his hand, and it gave him a blood clot in the head.  They say it was, what, an aneurysm?  Nah... they shook his hand, and they pressed a vein in his hand, and he got a blood clot in the brain.

The teller was completely serious, and told the tale with such conviction that I was nearly convinced as I eavesdropped upon the conversation from about 5 rows away.

Catnapper

Kidnapping, whether by force or persuasion, is still basically the same.

Catnapping, too.

Wendy and I have invited neighborhood cats into our place several times over the years.  We've had such distinguished guests as Sarge, Bear, Butch, Vanilla, and M&M.  We hope to invite the new kittie Black Dynamite over as soon as we get to meet him in person.

During these rainy winter weeks, however, there's been a shortage of cats.  They're staying inside because of the weather, I suppose.

In our housing complex, we're pretty fortunate because our unit is set back from the driveway, so that if anyone was suddenly standing outside our front window, we'd be alarmed.  Others are not so fortunate, such as the unit where M&M, Vanilla, and Black Dynamite live.  There's a walking path that goes right past their front windows.

Wendy and I were walking on this path the other night, and noticed that their window blinds were open.  The lights in their living room were ablaze.  I was walking ahead, and tried to peer in by slanting my eyeballs to the right.  Didn't see anyone, human or feline.

The sharper eyes of Wendy, however, saw something.  She called me back, "Look!"

"You can't be looking in people's houses!" I objected.

"There's no one in there.  Look!" Wendy replied.

So I looked through the window and sure enough, there was Vanilla, settling down for a nap on a soft white cotton towel placed on the back of the sofa for her convenience.

That was cool enough, but then what happened next sort of embarrassed me.  No humans appeared to "catch us", but still...

Wendy did her "kitty chirping", and suddenly Vanilla looked up and was staring back at us through the window.  I started heading back to our place, afraid that the owners would suddenly appear.

The next thing I heard, just seconds later, was the jingling sound that betrayed Vanilla's actions:  she'd jumped down off the sofa, bolted through her cat door, jumped the fence, and was now being petted by Wendy.

I turned back and got a few strokes of greeting in there, and then headed back toward our front door. 

Jingle jingle...  as was her custom, Vanilla was now following behind me, heading over for a visit.

We (or at least I) always feel a twinge of guilt when we play with our neighbors' cats.  They pay for food, shelter, and medical attention, while we just enjoy their company.

This night, however, takes the cake.  If I may blame the main perpetrator, Wendy:  she basically plucked that kitty right out of her own home!

Ah well, catnapping has its rewards... as long no one gets caught.

Fun with Time and Excel

This morning in Excel 2007 class I discovered a fun thing to do with a spreadsheet.

1. In the middle of the screen type the date of your birth.  In the cell to the right enter a zero.
2. In the cell below, type the date of your first birthday, and in the cell to the right, the number one.
3. Select all four cells and drag the fill handle down, using AutoFill to fill in future dates.
4. Select all four cells and drag the fill handle up to fill in past dates.

Here's an example for someone who was born on September 11, 2001:

In this example the dates are only extended 10 years into the future and 10 years into the past.  However, there's no limit to how far back or how far forward you can go.  On the spreadsheet for my actual birthdate I went as far back as my Dad's birth year and discovered that I was "negative thirty" (-30) years old when my father was born.

This is the first time I've ever thought of being a negative age.

Of course this exercise can be a tad bit depressing, too, if you go far enough into the future, bypassing the natural life expectancy of imperfect humans.  I see my parents dying... and I don't like it.

The positive thing, though, is this:  How many times do we hear people longing to "go back into the past" when things were nicer and they were much younger?  Well, with this method of "time travel via spreadsheet", you can spend a bit of time imagining old age, and then as you utter the above-mentioned lament, your wish can now come true!  You can "go back", so to speak, and tell your parents and others how much you love them.

I think I'll take the train and go visit my parents again, since I'm still unemployed and we've still got "rail miles" on our Amtrak credit card.

So that I can tell them something.