Baked & Broiled: Misery in LA

Turn me over, I'm done. The temperature today hit a record high of 113 degrees in LA (that's 45 C for the rest of the world). According to an LA Times online article, there has never been a higher reading since record keeping began in 1877. And where I sit, in a non-air conditioned home office located in the hotter spaces closer to Pasadena, I am sure it's 115. Pure misery.

What did we Angelenos due to deserve this? Wasn't last years Station Fire punishment enough for our indiscretions? Isn't the prospect of being governed by Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman?

Perhaps this is payback for our gentler, cooler than usual summer. If so, couldn't payback be given on the installment plan, with a warmer than usual winter? We could handle that. But to hit us with every degree missed over the summer all in one week? That's cruel and unusual.

If anyone reading this is a practicing shaman or rainmaker, please conjure up some relief for dear old Greater Los Angeles. We'd pay you back if we could ...

Edge Grip

I'd been up that road before, and I knew its twistings well. So I don't know what it was that threw me off my game that day, when I found myself blasting along on my Kawasaki and entering an uphill left too quickly. Perhaps it was the time of day, with shadows from the hillside and the trees obscuring my usual visual cues. Maybe the too-heavy lunch I'd just eaten clouded my brain.

Whatever the cause, I found myself in the corner and beyond my usual turn-in point, facing an unpleasant date with a ditch, or perhaps a tree.

Years of riding, however, have equipped me with unconscious reflexes that take over when my heart's in my throat and I'm puckered so hard when I come off the bike the seat's coming with me.

In what was probably only a moment but felt like a glacial age, I leaned the bike over on it's side, keeping just a touch of throttle (it was an uphill left), and held it there until physics worked as we all hope it does and I sailed out of the turn, accelerating uphill, slightly stunned but unscathed and happy.

Later, at a stop for gas, I looked at my tires and noticed the left side rear showed wear to the very edge, which almost never happens to me, and the front was there too, which never happens. That wear was testament to the marvels of modern rubber compounding and tire construction, which had just saved my ass from an unpleasant wilderness journey/ life flight helicopter ride.

When I leaned my bike over, the tiny strip of rubber on the edge of my tires kept about 800 lbs of bike and rider glued firmly (enough) to the road. Edge grip the racers call it. Without it, those daredevils can't run the lap times required to win, losing a tenth of a second every lap. Without it, I'd be a Christmas ornament, hanging in the Angeles National Forest.

Edge grip may be a racer's friend and fresh tires my best insurance policy, but it occurs to me the concept extends ...

Perhaps our President is suffering from a lack of political 'edge grip'. He's missing that tenth a lap he needs to reach the finish line. If so, it would be nice if his 'pit crew' slipped on a new set of grippy 'tires' and found him that extra confidence he needs to ride through the tighter twists and turns of governing.

Number 299

It seems only a short while since I began to place a few notes in this space. That was back in October of 2008. But today's is the 299th.

Somehow, 299 sounds more significant to me than 300. Maybe because '300' has been overused recently, or maybe it's just a feeling of impending change, like reaching age 29 felt more significant than 30.

Anyone reading this now, and who may have dropped by from time to time to see what I was up to, might have noticed that the rate of postings here has dropped. Travel and paying work have intervened. But the reason might also be that 300 posts across nearly two years is more than enough, and reaching 299 has raised the question.

What is there left to say? Readers will know (or think they know) my politics. And that is what occupies my free time most these days - agonizing or commiserating over the political foibles of my generation.

When I do turn off politics or the economy, it's possible my musings over other subjects reach no audience at all. Does anyone out there care what I think about 'The Directions of Time'?

In the end, this process is just entertainment and a form of therapy. If after I post number 300, sometime in the next few days or so, I still find pleasure and intellectual engagement in it, and if there is possibly another 300 in the tank, then this blog will continue.

But don't be surprised if number 300 leads to only a few more, and then none at all, if the spirit isn't there. Time is increasingly precious in my life, and I have little of it to waste.

Readers may come and go, but the Writer must always be there ...

Of Mice and Ms. O'Donnell

I was taking my usual anti-hypocrisy therapy - watching 'The Colbert Report', that is, when up comes this bit on how Fox News (and O'Reilly specifically) was declining to air an embarrassing appearance of Christine O'Donnell on Fox News circa 2007. Of course, Mr. Colbert aired the piece O'Reilly wouldn't, and it was a doozy. It depicted Ms. O'Donnell, then a chairperson for some watchdog group or other, claiming that scientists had genetically engineered mice with human brains.

Colbert turned it into a laugh, of course, but I must say the piece left me feeling dread - a deep and anxious dread. Can a substantial minority of people in these United States really want to elect someone with idiotic opinions? Ms. O'Donnell's comments were at best uninformed, at worse gullible and stupid. Does energy, youthful enthusiasm, and looking good on camera trump intelligence, thoughtfulness, and competence in the people we seek to lead us?

The dark night of the soul I spent pondering these questions left me wishing Ms. O'Donnell's observation was correct, and we had some viable murine candidates to choose from ...

Tea and Simplicity

I don't consider myself a nuanced political thinker. In discourse about anything political I can be rated on the subtle thinking scale somewhere between Plato and Fox News. Closer to the Fox News end, really, but sadly not close enough. I am too agile a thinker to truly grasp one of the major recent developments on the political scene ...

But then not even Plato would understand the current 'Tea Party' movement.

No amount of erudite political acumen could fully explain the phenomenon. It helps to just blank your mind, go with the flow, and become a receptive receiver. (Hey, it works for Fox!)

For, you see, this Party is not about 'Tea', as in 'let's all have some nice tea and crumpets', which sounds a very constructive act - rather it's about tearing down and throwing out. Cleaning out the governmental closet, as it were, and maybe throwing out the baby with the bath water too.

My original concept of the 'Tea Party' was as a political umbrella for people who were upset with the growing national debt, and all the bad things that make it grow. With a few people added who were disaffected with the partisan shout-fest in Washington.

Partly true, no doubt, but not true enough ...

In reality, or so it seems to me, the Party of the Tea is about über-libertarianism and constitutional absolutism, the latter concept something I thought abandoned after Burr shot Hamilton. To the Tea Partiers, the Constitution is carved in stone, like the 'Ten Commandments', and largely by the same Author. To them, there is no room for interpretation or logical expansion in the language of the Document. What it says it says, and how it was first interpreted is what it means.

To those Tea-ers, their fundamentalistic interpretation of the Constitution leaves many modern governmental functions without basis or reason for existence. Goodbye Medicare, Goodbye Social Security. Neither are in the original mandate. Ditto the Federal Reserve. Supreme Court? Only if it's not 'activist'. Space Program? There will be no 'Right Stuff' unless it's for common defense.

About all that would be left the federal government is to provide for the national defense, build some roads, and levy a few taxes.

But wouldn't that leave a lot of gaps in our society's safety net? What about caring for the elderly, the disabled, or the impoverished sick? The Tea Partiers will tell you that is up to the individual States to implement, if they really think it necessary. No matter this was tried back in the Confederation experiment, post-Revolution but pre-Constitution, and found not to work very well at all.

I guess the Partiers just want to be able to have somewhere to go if the State they live in decides to pass a law they don't like. The more those hated laws are made at the state level the more options the Partiers have to move and still stay in the US. Slick, especially if you own your own U-haul.

As I said, though, I may have this all wrong. I may be figuring in too much complexity in my analysis, when it's really utterly simple. And I don't own a U-haul.

How to Gain Weight

We have a family friend who lately has taken to exclaiming she can't gain weight, no matter how hard she tries.

I've offered to be her 'weight-gain' coach, but she is skeptical. Needlessly so, since, Dr. Nick from the Simpsons aside, I am perhaps the foremost expert in adding pounds quickly.

I will reserve an exhaustive list of helpful tips for paying clients, but for those of you with a taste (ahem) for building flab DIY, I can provide a little guidance:

Exercise - don't do any. Period. When getting out of bed in the morning, don't jump up, roll slowly onto the floor. Never walk when you can get a ride. Sit. Sit. Sit. Never leave your bed or sofa on weekends, except for emergencies, or to buy smoothies.

Eating - do it constantly. Always have candy handy between major meals - preferably candy containing peanuts or peanut butter, but any nuts will do when embedded in the right chocolate. Speaking of PB, try peanut butter and cheese sandwiches (good on Rye) for a snack. They pack a powerful caloric punch and tend not to rot easily, so you can carry a spare wherever you go. [Warning: better have some full-fat milk available to wash it down, since a gob full of cheese and PB on Rye can be a choking hazard.]

Drinking - read the labels. Some popular drinks can be ridiculously devoid of useable calories. If you are old enough, don't plan to be driving anywhere, and aren't in danger of addictive behavior, go with some alcohol. Typically very high in calories, especially those thick, 'heady', imported beers, it's just the sort of thing for those long sofa-bound weekends. If you are a teetotaler, then run (scratch that ... drive) to your nearest smoothie vendor and get whatever is on the menu with 500 calories or more. They'll have plenty of options, and you can eat one of your spare PB and Cheese on Ryes while you drink, to enhance the bloat.

And remember the one ingredient in every successful weight gain program: Ice Cream. No other foodstuff gives you so much fat per bite, except, well ... fat.

With these pearls of wisdom, can you believe our friend refuses to take me seriously?

Happy Eating!

Lead Balloons and Hot Air

When listening to Newt Gingrich, or just about any other conservative talking head, I am reminded of the physical contradiction they personify: they produce a lot of hot air, but nothing rises.

Not a single constructive word comes from their mouths, at least while in front of the cameras, though they say they have answers to all our problems. Of course, the answers they most often give are 'dump the current administration', and 'start over - with us'.

But what, you should ask of them, will you do when you are back in power? What miracles will you work to save us?

So far, I haven't heard an answer from any conservative pundit or politician interviewed on TV, in the print, or on the web. Nothing except the usual talking points, dumbed down to provide no detail: Cut spending, Cut taxes, Keep America Strong, Save the Family. Ok, but please tell us: Where, For Whom, How Will We Pay For It, and Whose Family?

Their words are just pumping Hot Air into Lead Balloons, with the hope those blunt and heavy objects will roll over enough Democrats to get the Job Done in the midterm elections.

To be brutally fair, there's been an excess of heated air escaping from a few liberal pundits too, but they get less TV exposure, so have a far weaker physical impact: a limpid wind furling cardboard sails.

But two wrongs don't make a Right, my mother always told me, and I'll bet two wrongs don't make a decent Left, either. In the end, nothing rises ...