Triangle Man Enjoys A Beer At The Beach

Drinking cans of Amstel Light on the beach was an afternoon staple. The Dutch had colonized the Virgin Islands when the Danes cold not get anyone to immigrate there to run the spice plantations that were manned with slave labor. Amstel is brewed in The Netherlands, and is one of the least expensive - and most drinkable - beers on St. John. Glass is of course, prohibited on the beach. The last time I had Amstel Light was some 20 years ago when I unknowlingly walked into a bar in Chicago Wrigleyville's Boys Town area on Lincoln one rainy afternoon about 20 years ago with Skeets and Sam so that Sam could talk to one of her friends who worked there / danced who was having some social crisis. It was the only bottled beer that Chicago bar / club served, so it was with some reluctance that I agreed to Amstel last week, but hey, it's been 20 years, these were cans (not bottles). The sun was intense - we went through 2 spray on cans of factor 50 sun block, one large Coppertone SPF30 bottle, and several other small sizes of 15 & 30 block... and a case of Amstel Light.

Rain, Drink, Snorkel, Rain, Drink...

Our week in St.John with our close friends Tim & Jill was quite rainy, but also alot of fun. Dr Desert Flower and I learned to snorkel. Tim & Jill had been there the year before & "knew the island" so Tim piloted the Jeep Liberty rental over snaking, hair-pinned, narrow, steeply inclined, vaguely maintained mountain roads adeptly, and guided us to the beaches:

• Monday, Salt Pond - we saw sea turtles! urchin, coral, sponges, and many, many fish

• Tuesday, Hawksnest - choppy seas, too rough for me to snorkel, and then it rained
• Wednesday, Cinnamon Bay - it rained after being there less than 2 hours
• Thursday night, Maho Bay - went on a sunset cruise on the 23 foot sloop "Pepper" (more on that later)
• and finally, on our last day of snorkeling, Trunk Bay - awesome snorkeling in the Nation's only underwater National Park trail

The week went sort of: Rain, Drink, Snorkel, Rain, Drink... [repeat]. Cruzan rum is bottled on St. Croix Virgin Islands, and it pretty darn cheap ($9.99 a liter) and delicious. Unlike Bacardi, Cruzan gives me no "bolt gun to the forehead" headache. It rained like a biblical flood the day we arrived, and waited for our luggage to offload from the ferry in a downpour. Then Sunday night, we tried to eat a new beach-side cafe called "The Spyglass" and it was akin to The Bishop's last golf game in Caddy Shack with torrential winds blasting the entire bar - a soggy credit card receipt, blown back hair, soaked clothing, after 10 minutes and 4 fish tacos, we sought more secure shelter. Monday morning the radio announced that St. John had hit a new record 1 day rain fall! Lucky us!

Maintaining a good face mask seal for snorkeling is easier when your face is not covered in sun tan lotion. Snorkel first, apply sun screen later. Spit in your mask, and smooth out the mucus-y spit with your fingertips. Think that's gross? Ok, then enjoy the fog that will fill your mask. Put your fins on IN the water, not ON the shore, and in waist deep water to aid in buoyancy. Face the shore - it's easier to walk backwards in fins. Swim calmly and slowly, and not flailing about, and fish tend to i) approach you curiously, ii) use you from shelter from predatory birds overhead, or iii) ignore you completely and go about their business iv) use you as a hunting blind to circle around and eat some of the tiny fry that have formed a huge school on the other side of the floating biped. Having a respiratory infection with a cough is NOT conducive to enjoyable snorkeling, as coughing up mucus and blood into one's snorkel is unpleasant and attracts the wrong kind of aquatic life - better to rest upon the shore and get your lungs' capabilities back to normal. If you've never snorkeled before, splurge on a good snorkel with a valve that pops shut when it submerges. It helps to minimize the amount of "salt water nebulizer" effect of gurgling and inhaling stray sea water (those of you with small children or severe asthma know what a "nebulizer" is).

Don't bother packing an umbrella. It's just dead weight, and you won't have it with you when the tropical rains blow in. If you do keep it in your hand, that hampers your beer, whiskey, and rum drinking, and it'll get blown away / inverted by the tropical winds. Leave it at home. We over-packed, by a factor of two - dragged home a 50 pound checked back of clean clothes & yoga mats. Completely unnecessary. One large checked bag is all you need for a week on St.John. More on that later... many posts to come!

Back From the Virgin Islands

Back from the Caribbean late late last night. Still finding sand in unexpected places. Much laundry to do, snorkel equipment to rinse, email to catch up on. Sunburn avoided. Many fish, iguanas, rain storms encountered. Much Cruzan rum, Marker's Mark, and 5 hour energy drink consumed. St. John was fun. St.Thomas (St.Trauma) I can do without, but it is the gateway airport for those of us without our own 100 foot yachts, helipads, or corporate jets.

Many more postings coming later this weekend and week. (new category "Caribbean" created)

No "Polish Wedding!!"

We watched (on Netflix) "Polish Wedding" last night on DVD. Movie SUCKED. No wedding, no Polish speaking whatsoever, mis-leading DVD sleeve, misleading Netflix trailer summary. Gypsy music instead of Polish music. Every character unlikable. Miserable plot. That's 2 hours of our lives we'll never get back. I cannot recommend it, to anyone.

Vanity Kills?

In the tiny tiny bathroom in the villa where we are staying, the switches are labeled as such...

Garlic Is Powerful Stuff

Anti bacterial, anti viral, anti fungal... it's good stuff (link here). And, when I was a kid, I remember an episode of "The Night Stalker" (link here) where Kolchak had to go into a junk yard, open up a coffin in a hearse that had a resting zombie in it, put garlic in the zombie's mouth, and then sew the lips shut "to kill it" - so it may have anti-Zombie properties too!

Check out the herbal remedies for athlete's foot and head lice, in the link above.

Ain't No Sunshine

Bill Withers is a musical genius - in his simplicity, his insight, his humanistic perspective.

Always Wear Clean Underwear

When I was a kid, my mother used to often tell me "When you go on a trip, wear clean underwear. You never know if you might be in an accident, and you don't want the paramedics to see you wearing dirty underwear." My brothers and I used to joke about it, but it had a broader point, which the RNC revealed today. Don't do / say / reveal your hidden agenda, your secret ugly side, your most racist and basest fears & fear mongering - it might just get published for the whole world to see.

Yes, it's fine for "angry tea partyers" (AKA racist Americans, disenfranchised libertarians, or just the plain easily mislead simple masses) to paint the President of the United States, Speaker of the House (number two in the line of Presidential succession) and Majority Leader of the Senate as the evil Joker from Batman, Cruella DeVille from 101 Dalmatians, and Scooby Doo. But when the RNC, the official embodiment of the minority opposition party (or "Shadow Party" as they so awesomely say in the UK) officially promotes such sophomoric attempts at caricature and claims that moderate Democratic proposals are "socialism" and an "evil empire"- it's like showing their stripes.
You could say like a zebra or tiger revealing it's stripes, but I prefer to think of it like the brown stripes on whitey tighties that a paramedic finds when they have to cut off the clothes of a barely conscious accident victim. The Accident didn't cause the brown stripe, no. They just always had that nasty, ugly underside, and it was just a mater of time before it revealed itself.

Sure, the Republicans claim it was "all in fun" and that it was just to try and persuade some wealthy donors... but really, you know, it goes to character. They co-opted the same misguided and misinformed images and language seen ubiquitously at Tea Bagger rallies, and called them their own. Way to go RNC! And those Republican mouth pieces who keep spouting the lies that "the Tea Party movement is not a conservative movement, it is bi partisan" - how long are you gonna keep up that line of malarkey?

Funny Or Die - On Financial Reform

This video (link here), courtesy of Dr Zaius, is hilarious! Excellent reunion with every SNL presidential impersonator, ever, plus Jim Carrey as Reagan, in President Obama's nightmare.

1-866-544-7573 - toll free number, call your Senator today

Bunning On Empty

Rachel Maddow's chronology of Senator Bunning's hypocrisy and stupidity was accurate yesterday. She gets her facts straight, 99.97% of the time.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Pay-as-you-go... yeah right Bunning. And no reconciliation to be used to pass BIG legislation, Kyle, Hatch, McCain, and Alexander? Oh Pleeeeeease!

Rain Rain Go Away

Trent Reznor's Down In It

Everytime I check this forecast... I start to hum this tune. Oh well...

Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Phoenix Symphony

2 weeks ago, on a Saturday night in February, Dr Desert Flower and I left a delicious crawfish boil at our friends' home in Gilbert to attend the Phoenix Symphony. Michael Christie was conducting Prokofiev's Symphony No 1, op25, and then another John Adams work (ugh! why is Christie obsessed with that guy!) Shaker Loops, followed by Peter and the Wolf (Peter i volk) op 67. with an "Oscar award winning film" by Susie Templeton. Well....

The Symphony No 1 was played superbly. It was engaging, dynamic, gripping. We thoroughly enjoyed it. Then, the dreadful Shaker Loops was trudged through. I found myself counting the pop-down sprinkler heads in the ceiling again, looking around the concert hall, impatiently enduring the quasi-minimalist work whilest looking forward to intermission and the pre-paid drinks I had awaiting us at the western entrance bar. Some cognac made me forget all about John Adams, ahhh.

After intermission, the playful Peter and the Wolf began. with a large screen over the stage showing the stop-motion animated short film. It was enjoyable - Christie kept up with the film nicely, and the animation was "cute", but as I look at my $62 ticket stub, I think "I paid $62 to hear Symphony No.1, be annoyed again by Adams cacophony, and then see a 30 minute film?" ...for that same price, I could have seen 5 movies at a theater, or paid my Netflix bill for 6 months. Oh well. It was interesting, but did not provide Dr Desert Flower or myself with $124 worth of symphonic joy. From the looks of the Facebook pictures of the crawfish boil after we left, I think we would have had alot more fun peeling shell fish and eating pinky-sized morsels of cajun seasoned food.

Tooth Brushing The Cat

We're in a constant battle here against cat hair. Our octogenarian and septuagenarian felines - though not long hair breeds, they're short haired shelter mutts - are a hairy bunch. Over the last 2 decades, we've accumulated the various brushes pictured to the right.

• The mitt is worthless.
• The old human hair brush worked but loaded up with dander and hair rapidly, and cleaning it was a pain.
• The red felt one was impotent on both cat and on fabric.
• The yellow "hair broom" is a joke - I want to give it to the beggar who hangs out at the I-10 stop light looking for handouts - it would work on windshields better.
• The light blue soft plastic one, absolutely of no use.
  
• The blue steel comb works pretty well, but you have to be very very careful not to tear into the cat's skin with it

The toothbrushes, we found, are some kind of feline craze - they find them irresistible. Brushing exposed canine teeth, whiskers, eye brows, ears, necks, backs, the cats LOVE them. (video link here) I've placed old, used tooth brushes around the house - in my office, at both ends of the couch, on my dresser in the bed room. I used to think that old tooth brushes were mainly good for cleaning automotive battery terminals and getting into little nitty-gritty places... but cats love them too. And after we use them on the cats, they tend to clean themselves more. Yes, that can lead to more hairballs - but it also decreases the hair tumble weeds incrementally, and makes gathering up the hair with the Lint Wizards, more manageable.

Sharlet's Family, A Depressing Read

I finished Jeff Sharlet's The Family last month, on the flight home. It IS well researched. It is very thorough. It is an interesting and revealing read... but damn, it's depressing to know that so many powerful, oligarchic douche bags are members of "The Family" - and then last month President Obama attended the "National Prayer Breakfast" that "The Family" puts on. Ugh! The more I think about it, the darker my mood gets - so I am going to pretend I didn't read it, or that it was a work of fiction, or that... better yet... a new dawn of transparency and democracy is upon us, devoid of the pure evil that is American fundamentalism.

Yeah, that's the ticket! And have you met my wife... Morgan... Morgan Fairchild?

Wimpy Forks Spoil A Meal

If you think you're running an "upscale" restaurant, make sure you check your eating utensils, that you offer your customers, and throw away the very thin, very ductile, ridiculously low strength forks. The kind of wimpy forks that bend when stabbed into meat or veggies that have any resistance to them. The kind of bendable forks that are easily flattened, or bent at unusable angles, or have tines that taper (to catch & pinch your tongue) or are mis-aligned. These forks suck.

The perhaps one dollar saved, on each fork (if you make the wimpy ones out of recycled, stamped, 21 gauge cheap Chinese stainless with a high lead content) will not prevent your establishment from pissing off customers, driving away potentially big tippers (my son works in a restaurant, I appreciate a good food service), and ultimately leading your business to mediocrity or failure. Splurge a little, get the cast Korean forks, or some Eastern European ones - finding American made silver ware is incredibly rare now a days.

Dr Desert Flower and I tried to go to the Saddle Ranch Chop House last weekend here on the west side of town. Slow service. Wet / sloppy table upon arrival. Remarkably small wine glasses serving average tasting cabernet. Edible main courses, and knives that were both stout and sharp, but forks that had the strength of a wet noodle. Really, at a "Chop House"? Followed by more slow service when it came time to pay the check - we gotta start carrying more cash and using plastic less when dealing with barely capable service personnel. And when did it ever become acceptable to cut denim shorts so short that the cotton pocket linings don't just hang out a little, but flop around completely? And jean waists so short that they require mons waxing? Being dressed like a tart doesn't compensate for incompetent customer service, in this old man's perspective. We won't be going back to Saddle Ranch, even if they get better forks.

Dear President Obama, 1 March 2010

Dear President Obama,
I've always believed that through informed satire, excellent points can be made very clearly. Two of my favorite comedians recently said:

"No matter what you do, the Republicans are not going to let you into the station wagon."
- Jon Stewart, 28 January, 2010 [re - 'The Wonder Years', where Fred Savage keeps trying to get into the car driven by his douche-bag older brother who will never let him in]

"Obama’s like a guy in college who spends a whole year, wasting it, trying to hit on Ellen DeGeneres." - Bill Maher, 26 February, 2010.

You held the cordial seven hour health care summit last Thursday. That's very nice of you. Now, stop being nice, stop trying to "win over" any Republican votes, and (as Andrew Sullivan says frequently) Pass The Damn Bill. Summon up your best Lydon Johnson, and get 51 senators to vote for it. Make sure it is a Democratic Bill, and not some awful gift to corporate America. If you gift the plutocrats, corporate titans, and self-serving for-profit companies, the Republicans will be laughing behind your back, and kicking your party's sorry ass in 2010, 2012, and 2014.

One American dies every 12 minutes from not being insured, 45,000 a year (123 a day). One in 3 bankruptcies are health care related. A large percentage of home foreclosures are a result of health care costs. It's a growing cancer, and a cure needs to be implemented, stat.

Remember, my dear President - the first winning candidate for federal office I ever voted for - that the majority of Americans DO NOT HAVE a health care system. The majority of Americans have private insurance through their employers that are for-profit companies. The poorest of the poor have Medicaid, sure. And those over 65 have Medicare, yes. And all the Federal Employees (one of the largest employers in America), yourself included, have an awesome array of insurance choices from which to select coverage for themselves and their families. But this is NOT a "health care system". This is a patch work of limited safety nets for those employed in small companies - at least until they are dropped. It's an under-funded mandate that is loathed by Republicans for the Medicaid patients who are only lacking bootstraps by which to pull themselves up. It's an under-funded mandate that senior citizens LOVE on Medicare, but in which the providers have found all sorts of loop-holes to exploit, and which is NOT available to anyone under 65. And then, there's some 30 to 50 million tax paying Americans, who have no insurance whatsoever, and no "health care system" that can, or that will, step up to assist those people in their time of need.

The United States is unique in this selfish, uncaring, go phuck-yourself social perspective. Every other industrialized, democratic nation in the world has a health care system, a medical social safety net, that cares for its sickest citizens. Yes, some of them are better than others but the UN ranks America at # 37. Thirty seven, really... something to be proud of? No, not at all.

So please, stop trying to placate the obstinate party of "No". Put some tort reform in the bill so that the one half of one percent of health care costs that the CBO projects can be saved will be saved, and the John Edwards of the world will have a little less income from chasing ambulances - sad that as a nation, we graduate more lawyers every year than we do engineers, or scientists, or doctors. Include the tort reform, and ability to 'buy across state lines' with good regulation, AND a freakin public option that everyone can buy across state lines, and have it voted on and passed and signed by you in the rose garden before Easter. Then, only 4182 Americans will be dead this month, for lack of insurance between now and then. Yep, more than were killed by fundamentalist fanatics on 9-11 - but you can do it. You need to do it. Please, get it done.

If you don't, you're done, and your "brand" is done. November 3rd will be the beginning of your "lame duck" term. 2010 will be the start of the slide, and 2012 will hasten your party's irrelevance and impotence. Yes, you HAVE raised America's image globally, and fewer people hate us abroad now... but they don't vote in America. You have helped to avert a 2nd global financial depression, but 18 million Americans are still unemployed and your secretary of the treasury has on speed dial on his cell phone a dozen financial dirt bags from every incompetent and evil large bank who drove us into this mess. Why is he still around?

I'm still rooting for you, and hope you don't let Nancy and Harry drag their feet through the summer on this one. Get it done now. Get it done before many more 9-11 worth of Americans die for lack of being able to pay their corporate Masters.

- Joe

Happy Birthday Chopin!

Frédéric Chopin was born 200 years ago today in Zelazowa Wola Poland - and sadly died just 39 years later from tuberculosis in one of my all time favorite cities, Paris (link here). He always has been one of my favorite famous Poles, and a remarkable musical genius.

Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin Frédéric! Będziecie pamiętać na tysiąc lat.

Applebee's, Really Infiniti?

What an anti-incentive. An Applebee's gift card? Really Infiniti of Peoria? Can I opt for a wet bag of pig manure instead? Or perhaps a bag of broken glass? I'm sorry, but every Applebee's I've been to in the last 10 years has been a "only place still open / late night last option" decision. Surly bar tenders, soggy vegetables, over-cooked meat, low quality processed food, lack-luster dining experience, unpleasant in every-way possible. Applebee's is the only place in my adult life where I've left a "$1" tip after being extremely dissatisfied. Sure, it's cheap, but so is Walmart, and I don't shop there either, unless I'm looking for low quality, mass produced, cheap Chinese junk.

How about a free T-shirt, or gift certificate to somewhere I'd WANT to go? Or somewhere the "average Infiniti owner" might want to go? Epic Failure, Infiniti of Peoria. My recycling bin overfloweth.

Triangle Man

Last month's weather was fantastic for doing yoga outside.

This month is getting off to a very good start, weather-wise.

I gotta make sure that I don't do too much upper body work-outs to require a manssiere or bro later in life.

Unlike Puxatony Phil, when I see my shadow, I don't run back inside - but I did used to play ALOT of Sonic the Hedgehog on my son's 16 bit Sega years ago - does that count?

Throughout my post-work-day practice of yoga poolside today, I kept humming the TMBG classic: Particle Man. I hope I don't get hit on the head with a frying pan.

Back in Black

Understanding that black body absorption and radiation works much better than any other "color" in the spectrum, I picked up a quart of flat black paint at Ace Hardware last weekend. Applied with an old, cheap, Chinese brush this week to my solar pool heater, I "covered up" all the residual white glue remnants that stuck to the black poly coiled heat exchanger tubes, and painted the exposed treated plywood platform with about a pint, so it'll soak up as much Arizona sun as possible, and get as hot as possible.

It seems to have worked, because the striped tailed lizards - who began to appear 2 weeks ago - kept checking out the heater this weekend when it was sunny, enjoying as much adjacent heat as their cold blooded reptilian forms needed to be adequately spry and mobile in my backyard.
By 'subjective qualitative feel' the discharge water "seems" to be about 3 to 5 degrees F hotter than it was the week before painting. The dern pool is still between 62 and 65F - too chilly for swimming, even for this Lake Michigan veteran. But the heater discharge is in the upper 70s. Given enough time, it'll get warmer - day by day. Hopefully, by Easter (April 4th) the pool will be warm enough that swimming energetic laps will be possible! Il faut voir - parkalam!

So as we wait, day by day, BTU by BTU, it would be nice to have some good music to listen to... and ever since I started painting last Monday afternoon, this song has been running through my head, so I feel obliged to put up this Youtube link to one of my favorite Australian Bands: (yeah, their drummer is not that great, but it is fun music)