Dish washer

The majority of houses have a dishwasher.  It is generally accepted knowledge these things are for washing dishes.  Most would not try to catch a razorback with a fishing pole or try to open a beer bottle with a Howitzer anti aircraft gun.  Most!   I have a fancy laboratory dishwasher at work and for a mere $12,000 this stainless steel juggernaut will clean the chrome off of a bumper hitch but the point is you do not put a bumper hitch in a dishwasher. 
The older I get the more particular I become about the loading of a dishwasher.  First lets get one thing straight.  Doing the dishes is not simply loading the dishwasher any more than doing laundry is mostly throwing a bunch of cloths in  the washing machine a pressing start.  Doing dishes involves cleaning the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher, loading the dishwasher with hopefully dirty dishes in an orderly fashion to maximize the cleaning efficiencies.  Engineers have spent decades designing and fidgeting with water jets as well as the soap to ensure we have clean forks and spoons.  What good is a spoon that ends up in the back of the dishwasher, stuck on the drain.  Only really short people can reach all the way back past the pointy things sticking you in the chest to retrieve a fork that somehow jumped out of the silverware tray. 
Lets talk about things that should not go in the dishwasher.  Anything made of plastic except the giant plastic ladle with the flat burned edges from scooping spaghetti sauce out of a frying pan.  Most cheap plastic cups, bowls, and flatware will fly like confetti inside a dishwasher and the bowls and cups fall only to collect soapy water that spills all over the floor when you open the door.   There is a undefinable hunk of plastic stuck in the back of my dishwasher.  This multicolored blob has melted itself in a donut configuration around the center sprayer that is supposed to transport water to the top shelves. 

 Do not put anything made of wood in a dishwasher.  Most wood products are not really wood and it will disintegrate under the heat and moisture.  A wooden spoon is usually several pieces of wood glued together.  A cutting board will become Jenga blocks if you put it in the dishwasher more than once.   A wooden bowl will be fine beaver food after two washings in the Whirlpool Potscrubber II.  I used a freshly autoclaved wooden spoon to scoop clabber off the bottom of a Greek yogurt container.  The dry, open pores of the fine wooden spoon sucked up the fromaticum like a New Guinea bower bird on crack only to become embedded nearly permanently in the crervasses.  After two more washing in the dishwasher, some bleach and a little heat, the spoon was clean.  It was sawdust but it was clean.  I have seen rags, flipflops, car parts, children's stuffed animals and once a cat in the dishwasher.  Rumor has it you can cook tuna or any north Atlantic whitefish in a dishwasher.

As I mentioned earlier with the Potscrubber II, you can put pots and pans in the dishwasher.  Just because something fits in the dishwasher does not mean you should put it there.  My ass once fit in the dishwasher but I never washed it in there.  An average frying pan takes up a third of the space and if you put it on the bottom rack of the dishwasher, it blocks most of the water for the entire load.  Your dishes will not get clean and there will be indistinguishable bits all over you dishes.  I thought the goal of this noisy, heat mongering torture chamber was to clean you dishes.   (and now some really short sentences) So? Yeh! Hmmm.

Deodorant

No such thing.  I stink.  I put on the deodorant thick this morning.  With all the waxy gunk, my under arm areas are stuck to my chest.   Now I have to go wash up in the restroom.  I have meetings that I am now not attending unless they are outside and I can get down wind.
I read up about the stuff and it is supposed to keep "odor producing" bacteria from growing.  That is advertising genius.  It is a factual possibility but in really it is panda poo. 

It is only Eleven AM.  I must go.

Humorless

I watched Comedy.TV yesterday and laughed very little.  I felt the humor was either weak or tasteless, sort of like my humor.  I do not remember laughing yesterday, even when the cat had to get out of the kitchen quickly.  I thought about laughing when my son was decked out in his Indiana Jones getup and he was practicing sliding under the garage door as it closed on him.  He would throw the hat to keep the door open, do the slide, grab the hat and roll out of the way just before the giant slab crushes him.  

I was wearing my Oh Crap t-shirt and there were no comments or  stares from those who passed by.  I could feel the humor running out of the universe with a big hug sucking sound.   It was a slow sucking sound because I think a large celestial cat was stuck on the drain grid of the universe.  I felt only pity for the Walmartians and the Dollar Store devas.  I even watched three episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" only to agree entirely with Sheldon on all issues.  Well, I did chuckle when he was visited by his mother (Laurie Metcalf) as she cuts through his nonsense.

I tried doing some chalk drawing and thinking of Dick Van Dike doing chalk pavement pictures. ( "Mary Poppins" )   Jumping into drawings of another dimension always perks me up.  Humor is gone far away, not just around the corner for a smoke.  It usually hovers dimensionless overhead where I can pick gems as fruit from an endless row of pear trees.  I tried sanding wood, returning to the earth, smelling the evolution of a decades old oak, only to increase my carbon footprint threefold by burning the whole mess in my wood burning stove to provide meaningless heat to and unthankful landscape.  (By the way, the Senator, the 3,500 year old bald Cypress burned down over the week end)  I remember fondly the Senator at Big Tree Park's Joint in the Woods where I went to see the Winters Brothers Band (billed as jonny and edgar)  only to watch a sold out crowd of a thousand drunken dudes and dudettes throwing pine cones at Leroy and Daryl Winters singing Helen Reddy's biggest hits.  I laughed then but not now.
 

Silence is golden

Are you ever in a conversation and completely run out of anything to say.  I called up an old friend the other day.  I have not seen him in thirty years.  We have talked on the phone a few time over the years and I have felt I needed to reconnect with him and re-establish the good if not shallow friendship we had.
So I called him at his place of employment and said up front, "If you are busy I understand, this may be an extremely short conversation anyway."   After the hey how is it going I said, "I have been thinking about who I want to say hello to for this holiday season and your name was the first to come to my mind."  He replied, "That's great, I am glad you did."  I said to him, "If you or I run out of things to say we can just say, I think were done here" and let it go at that.  He laughed and explained that he does feel a little awkward talking to someone he hardly knows.  I reminded him of some of the awkward situations we shared and he seemed to relax.

I was at a meeting the other day and this person came up with an idea for information sharing and wanted to try it at this meeting.  She explained the rules of engagement and said, "Now, take five minutes to gather your thoughts and them we will use this technique and share our ideas".  Well, the five minutes seemed like a week.   "ok" she said, "lets start".  I thought I knew silence and what it sounded like.  It was so quiet I heard the pig valve clicking in the old guy sitting at the end of the table.  I heard the nose whistler in the next room.  I even heard the ocean waves crashing on the shore three miles away.  The lady's technique eventually worked well but at the end of the meeting I said to her, "Michelle, your greatest achievement today is that you created the worlds first instant, completely mobile sensory deprivation chamber".  Humor is lost on some people.
 
My dad impressed on me that if you do not have anything helpful to say, do not say anything.  He knew that given my propensity to say "anything that came to mind", I should have a few tools to keep me out of trouble.  I am not bothered by having nothing to say in a conversation.  I know that given a few seconds or minutes I will come up with something.  Look at this tripe I am writing now.  I have ran out of things to say twice so far.  I pause for a few seconds and off  I go.  There is a scene in "You've Got Mail" where Shopgirl is talking with Fox and she realizes she does not have anything nice to say to this man.  She just stops and says, "Hmmp".  It may have been in "When Harry Met Sally" I do not know now.  Listening acuity increases during silence.  The chances for making a verbal blunder are almost nil when there is no talking.  You can even hear one hand clapping in silence. 

The older I get, the more I want quiet.  I sleep with ear plugs.  I have taken sign language classes in case I lose my hearing.  Henry Limpet said, I wish, I wish, I wish I was a fish and he became a fish so I am not taking any chances with my hearing.  Some sounds, if not all, I can ignore for a while but it takes energy and creates stress to block sound.  My family and friends are hearing impaired.  The children are loud, the dogs are even loud. ( I haven't slept in 5 days!....My Cousin Vinny)  The cats sound like Lions.  The palm trees sound like  badgers have taken over a foil factory.  The louder the yelling, the louder the TV and the spiral goes up.  Sound travels in a straight line.  Straight into my nerve center.  There is a song called Silence is Golden and if you start singing it you will never stop, ever.

Nuclear Weapon Stuff

As a tenant of my blog and a ground rule for operation of such, I try to stay away from serious, injurious subjects like horrible deaths and melting parts unless I can be satirical and jaded and laugh a little.  Johnny Carson used to say, "It is hard to make jokes about Abraham Lincoln."  I feel that way about gross bodily functions and torture. 
Recently, the paranoid fringe, complete with their racist, prejudice, hate-mongering and bile spitting sociopathic bedfellows has concocted a nice story about Iran and nuclear war.  Last year we were worried about radical, independent Islamists creating "dirty" bombs and causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl but in L.A. or Cleveland.  A few years before that we were worried about the Freemen of Montana and the The Polygamist Scurge.  Before that it was about John Lennon or any Union sympathiser with skin darker than mine ruining our way of life by asking the world to treat all people fairly. 

Hopefully we can all forget the Y2K concern (the geek software industry rising up to create the Dot com bubble) and now we have the Mayan 2012 ting.  I wish some of these disasters would actually happen so someone, anyone could say, "See, I knew it!".    (California and the San Andreas Fault is going to have the BIG dance this year.  I predicted December 2011 but I recalculated and my new prediction is "soon")  The problem is the average person in our blind, ignorant country does not consider the Tsunami in Thailand several years ago or the one in Japan as  End Times type occurrences but they were.  911 instantly killed about 3000 mostly American people and another  US soldiers 4,400 died in Iraq since.  At least 150,000 others (mostly Innocent Iraqi) were killed.  Really, you do not think that the people in Iraq have had the most horrendous ten years of any generation since Pol Pot.   

Let me be clear, Iran has enough radioactive and nuclear material to screw up the entire world and a conventional nuclear bomb would be a relief compared to a full out war and a dirty bomb.   Look at Afghanistan, Sudan and North Korea.  Instant incineration would be preferred to the current situations.   Not to mention Iran has the technical and scientific intelligence to wreck any major power with the"dirty bombs" or biological junk.  They have not engaged the infidels because they do not want to.  I also know from observation that "martyrdom is in the visions of the poor and the frustrated".  The leaders of these armies and governments (Syria, Hamas, Iran) enjoy being in charge and large.  They are not going to unleash a nuclear bomb on anyone because that will be the end of them and their families, probably horrifically.  In the next few years,  Iran will possess a deliverable nuclear weapon, regardless of what we as a country or a globe want or do.   The time has passed to convince them that Iran does not need a nuclear weapon to defend their borders.  They just may need it.  The US needed it to keep the Soviet  Union's socialist bent out of Cuba.   Boy, that was a successful policy.  A wise government would have insured that the Pittsburgh Pirates drafted Fidel Castro in the late 1950's and there would have been no socialist revolution in Cuba and subsequently South and Central America.

Way too much ranting for my health but remediation must continue.  Will Iran launch a nuclear attack, No.  Will someone, probably.  Will it be the end times, probably not.  Will it suck giant ones, yes.  Will I cry.  Yes. 

Clarity

I am always impressed when anyone makes a statement that seems so clear and precise that it sticks not only in my head but in my heart.  A good example is the first time I heard "Now, go and sin no more" or "I will fight no more forever".  I felt that way about "A well disciplined child will have scars".  Melville wrote it for Bartleby, "I would prefer not to".  There is little ambiguity when you read a sign that says "Proceed at your own risk!" and I always proceed in those situations.  Clarity does not judge or temper, it simply enlightens. 

My favorite definition for clarity is "freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity".   Please do not confuse this post with my desire to be clear, distinct or unambiguous.  It is a goal of mine to be understood clearly although there are times when I am intentionally not using clarity.  Another's imagination can be richer and more descriptive given the chance to fill in the gaps of vagueness.  "There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life".  Clear, simple and direct.  In some ways, the definition for clarity is clarity.  I am getting dizzy thinking about it.

My grandson has a response anytime he is asked to pick up his toys or clean up his mess.  He simply states "I can't!"  I figure he knows that "I do not want to" possess too much clarity and will not fly but if he physically can not do what is requested, he is clear for takeoff.   Clarity from a five year old makes me laugh.  Van Gogh had a clarity in his paintings.  Yellow was yellow, blue was blue, the ambiguity was in the viewers imaginative mix of light and color  not his color scheme.  "One" may be the loneliest number that you will ever do but "No" properly used possesses the clarity of the ages.  The 300 Spartans at Thermopylae said "Na" when asked to step aside.  Their position was clear.  When William Wallace mooned the forces of the Sixth Earl of Surrey during the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297, the clarity could be seen shimmering off the buttocks  of several thousand Scots.  Even though my grandson is mistaken about his ability to comply, he is very clear about his intentions. 

Sometimes, especially in the mountains about Cedar City, the air is so clear it hurts to breath in and the sky too bright to look upon.  I feel the same when I hear or see clarity.   The story of Jonah and the Whale possesses a clarity all its own.  God asked Jonah to go to Nineveh to spread His name.  Jonah did not want to because the Ninevites were ruthless, lawless, baby killing, stump training bastards.  Jonah heads in the opposite direction.  Somehow he ends up on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea.  That boat sinks and a whale (giant something or other) swallows him and spits him out on the shore and God repeated his wishes, "Go to Nineveh".  That is clarity.   

Friday Science: The Narwhal

I read three articles the other day and all of them were full of good and new stuff to me.  I am trying to recall what they were and hoping this writing exercise will jog my memory.  It seems like one of them had something to do with Da Vinci.  The other two had a more immediate life.  I even felt the subjects were on the tip of my tongue when I started writing.  Now all I can think of is narwhals and fungi which of course is about on par.

Narwhals are actually cousins of the Beluga whale except they have this quite abnormally large incisor extruding from the front of its face. ( For the longest time I thought these things were simply a myth or extinct)  This protrusion is not a horn but a tooth, like a pig's tusk and just on the left jaw.  There is a regular occurrence of two toothed narwhals but they are rare.  There was probably a three toothed one but it would just get stuck in the mud or accidentally jab itself in the side of some iceberg in hopes of scoring some points with the ladies only to be "baleen on a stick" for a killer whale.

Butt ugly Coelacanth

The tusk can be almost as long as the entire narwhal which I have to say is just dumb.  It goes along with the moose antlers of ridiculous size, the peacock feathers and the ridiculous looking nose of the proboscis monkey.  I can laugh along with God over the duck billed platypus and cry with Him regarding the Coelacanth but did Napoleon have a five foot sword dragging around in the dirt?  Maybe, but he was French.  It sort of reminds me of Little Jimmy Dickens trying to tune that guitar.  

Lets review and close this out.  I can not remember what I really wanted to write about.  I covered the Narwhal enough for any season.  I routinely laugh with God and I mentioned Little Jimmy Dickens.  That should do it for a Friday.

Go Carts

I never had a go cart growing up.  I never had a trampoline which is good because not only did I not know right from wrong, I did not know up from down or left from right.  I would have killed myself on a trampoline.  I was a pole vaulter and that was dangerous enough.  I learned to pole vault without a soft pit to land in.  I could always get Bobby to catch me but only about twice and then he was sore.   A gogo buggy would have been sweet although I would have ended up a mechanic or a welder giving away services for next to nothing like a tramp on a meth binge.  Only Lucifer's minions and other welders know what the hell is going on under that welding hood and they are not talking. I am guilty of asking the mechanic to "just check this and adjust that" and expecting not to have to pay for it.  I am cheap and abrupt.  We could never afford a go-cart.

I venture that 93 percent of all metal workers, mechanics and welders had a scoot car while growing up.  Where as, only 3  percent of accountants had rabbit runners when they were young.  (78 percent of accountants chewed the erasers off of all of the pencils in the first grade)   A go cart seems to say "ride me" but those words are muffled by all the rattling and it actually says "fix me".   I should have know this because our household had a buggy about ten years ago.  The wild riders and steep ditches finished it off.  The kids did not want to ride it any more with only three wheels and no brakes.  Imagine that.   I said, "brakes smakes, just lean on the axle, it will stop!"  Did I tell you, I bought a welding device last year.  Well, the helmet cost more than the welder and these cheap lightening bolts in a box do not come with instruction manuals so all I have done really is attach a fork to a pole and make a bolt stick up where there should not be a bolt.  Ignoring the burns on my fingers and my retina, it is way cooler than the dentist dremel attachment for the chain saw.

As a parent, I feel that I should give my child the tools and toys to create a healthful, safe environment to investigate the dangers and pitfalls of adolescent life.  A machete, a whip and  a go-cart work toward that end.  A pet wolverine or Tasmanian Devil would also work but they are endangered species and smell funny.  Within the first week of demolition derby, the cart will break.  The industry calls it a "break in period"(No Duh) where you are not supposed to stress the engine too much.  This new money pit does not have a tachometer, a speedometer or a pedometer.  It does have a sphinctometer which monitors the amount of money your parents have to pull out of their butts to pay for this most excellent of gifts.  The break in period is an industry term which is completely meaningless.  I remember a Volkswagen dealer telling me (back in the old days 1980), "Drive this Bug easy for five hundred miles and then you can run the piss out of it.  Curtis Lowe, the local expert on most things fun who lived under the sea grapes just north of the pier told me "If an ass-rocket last a year, it will last ten".  I was half way home before I realized he was talking about a go cart and not a girl.

After watching my son drive through the trees and around the house I waived him in to the pit for a little instruction.  "Son, believe it or not, this thing is dangerous".  He was not listening so I said, "Try this, give it just a little gas and run in to that fence over there".  To my surprise he did it.  As he accelerated too much into the fence, all I could think about was the obvious fact that he was actually listening to what I said.  He did not break the go cart, his ribs will be a little sore and the cut on his lip will heal in a few days.  "Son, take it easy on this thing for a few days and then Go Baby Go!