Get a Message to Trieste!

I'm trying to get down last night's dream -- easily the most spectacular, detailed, realistic opium-dream I've ever experienced -- before the Person from Porlock (in the form of my Physical Therapy nurse) gets here...

I knew I was in for a wild night when, turning off the bedside light, I closed my eyes and began to watch a series of pictures that appeared in my mind, images that I could manipulate and morph in any way I pleased. Velazquez' Las Meninas as drawn by Ralph Steadman. In the style of Goya's Los Caprichos. As imagined by Roz Chast.... No, I don't mind the occasional Vicodin at all, thanks very much...


A visitor to my house shows me a device, made possible by a new branch of information science called Telluric Information Analysis (can I get a giggle, Chumps?). It has now become possible to map the real-time flow of information, from person to person, over a geographical area. The device resembles a notebook computer. On the screen is a grid, five units high by nine wide. He centers the grid over my part of Virginia. He maneuvers the map so that my house is at 0,0. The map extends past the Potomac, just into Maryland. Then he explains that he's going to enter concept x at my house, and equal-and-opposite concept z at coordinates 5,9. Opposite ideas at opposite corners of the map. He clicks "Start."

Concept y spreads from my house outward toward Maryland. Concept z spreads in the opposite direction, toward my house. "Now watch, as they meet..."

Swirling colors show the opposite ideas flowing from person to person, meeting, conflicting, conjoining, swirling into anarchy, becoming new ideas, canceling each other out, new wrinkles raiding into the map and changing the whole landscape... But then finally, after a wonderful light-show, stasis. The whole map is a uniform blue.

"My God..."

"Yes. It never changes again after that."

"But this means --"

"Yes. That's when it ends."

Cut to the the campus of Kenyon College, summer of 2007. It's the 25th Reunion of the Class of '82. A music festival is in progress, many colorfully dressed musical acts are performing on many small stages. The atmosphere is closer to Burning Man than some stodgy Establishment college reunion -- arty, self-indulgent, decidedly highbrow. I'm watching the Orchestra of the College (which, parenthetically, doesn't exist), dressed in fanciful Victorian military uniforms, playing pieces by Hindemith, Schoenberg, Webern. I'm plotting with the Musical Director to borrow a couple of clarinets, an oboe, a bass, some brass, to play an arrangement of "Sgt. Pepper" that I've worked up but never heard live musicians play. I've commandeered an empty stage for the purpose, made signs, passed out flyers...

Someone runs by in a panic, holding a Telluric Information Analysis device. It is glowing bright blue. Everyone understands exactly what it means. I turn to a friend: "Keep a weather eye out for squalls, amigo. See you in Trieste."

(Here's the Person from Porlock. Dammit. Woof -- she put me through the wringer... Ouch!)

The weather report is dire. Epic electrical storms, unlike any human has ever seen -- although perhaps a familiar sight during the Cretaceous Period -- are expected in the next 24 hours. Word goes out: The desperate object of survival is to get to Trieste, where the New Human Race will hunker down and eventually emerge, blinking, into the new sunlight. Anyone who doesn't make it to Trieste, is, well, a goner.

(Why Trieste? Search me. But Trieste it is...)

A mad automobile ride across a panicked American suburban landscape. I am in a Mercedes with two Egyptians, agents on God-knows-what recondite mission. They are headed for Washington, there to join with the unseen, unknowable forces arranging, sub rosa, passages to Trieste. We careen down suburban roads, where families are milling on their lawns, in a state of complete panic. One of the agents screams at the other, who's behind the wheel: "Do not slow down! For anything, do you understand?"

A child wanders into the road. Goes under our wheels. I look back out the rear window: Dead. Smashed. Parents, already in a state of madness, shriek their rage at us as they recede into the distance. I think, Yes. That's what it's come to. There's no going back now. In the far distance, enormous storm clouds, purple, flashing with lightning, bigger than anything anyone has ever seen, gather and begin their march toward civilization.

The Egyptians are now in Fairfax, VA, still careening madly through snarled and angry traffic, still leaving the broken bodies of incautious pedestrians in their wake. Panic is general. Gunfire. Arson. Looting. We take a cloverleaf turn too fast (Route 50 at Gallows Road, if you're keeping score) and the car smashes through a guardrail and plunges...

(I watch the concrete wall approach. I see the cruelly hard imperfections in the concrete.)

plunges...

(The road has yellow stripes painted on it. Why?)

plunges...

Two hundred feet to the highway below. The impact throws me from the vehicle, safely onto a grass embankment. I inspect the car. The Egyptians are nothing but charred bone. Too bad, you leadfooted bastards. I'll try to get your message through, but I'm making no guarantees.

A short walk from the accident scene, I come across a stationery store. I recognize arcane signifiers in the signage: It's a safe-house. I go in, and find many of the same Kenyon crowd, along with some people from my current life, co-workers, friends, are milling around. The leadership is trying to get though to those same forces arranging passages to Trieste, but current conditions make it impossible. Some of the folks in the room are embracing, saying their goodbyes. Hopelessness pervades. It's too late.

I leave the shop, to scout conditions. I look into the distance. The storm clouds are upon us, it's an utterly spellbinding sight: Buildings are exploding, entire roads are being ripped to shreds by lightning, debris is flying everywhere, human body parts are beginning to land at my feet.

I go back into the shop: "Did anybody make it to Trieste?"

"I don't know. God, I hope so..."

Home Again, I Can Groan, Scratch, and Talk to Myself

Wounded animals crawl away to find a comfortable place to die. When confronted with a deteriorating hip-joint (a condition that would have no doubt meant a slow and painful death in hunter-gatherer days, and a fractious and drunken premature senescence in the days of unscientific medicine), I too crawled into something of a protective shell.

Chores that I used to approach with something approaching joy, or at least enthusiasm -- walking to the mailbox, fetching the morning paper, mowing the lawn, walking the dogs -- became something to be avoided, or, worse, left undone completely. This avoidance-of-enjoyable-things has a terrible psychological effect; one can easily see other, even more vital tasks, like bathing or eating, dropping off the list. The inevitable outcome of this process is death. I'm terribly grateful that I live when I do, where I do, under the economic circumstances I enjoy, and with the people who love me and help me and protect me. In another time and another place, this bad hip could easily have killed me, slowly and painfully.

Monday I entered the hospital in a state of terrible emotional turmoil. I was terrified, frankly, by the thought of what was going to be done to my body. (It was a grave mistake, of course, visiting that Edheads site and watching the process of the surgery. I should, in retrospect, have never looked it up at all; it only added to my terror -- those stupid Flash cartoons haunted my dreams, they did -- without giving me any useful information.)

The operation was, as many of you who've experienced it assured me, quite unremarkable. I was completely unaware of anything being done to me -- all my Jacob's Ladder nightmares had been unnecessary. They put you out, zip, zam, zowie, you're awake again. Only now you're in quite a lot of pain.

I never want to go through those first 24 hours again. The hospital pre-op support staff make a great buzz over a device they give you to "control your pain": Essentially, you are given a handheld device that allows you to administer yourself a minuscule dose of morphine every six minutes. I can understand how the idea of this device gives comfort to someone about to undergo major surgery, but now with the experience on the rearview mirror, I call it a fraud. The device gives you no immediate feedback whether the dose was administered or not; you click the button, and something goes buzz. Nothing else happens. It gives you no timer, no visual confirmation that you've waited the proper six minutes. In a state of narcotic alteration, time is extremely subjective, and unless one watches a clock for six minutes -- a ridiculous task to ask of a narcotized person -- one has no idea when a dose has actually been successfully given. If you fall asleep and can't push the button (family members are prohibited from pushing it for you), you're SOL. When you wake up again, predictably in agony, as the morphine has worn off, you have to accurately self-administer three times -- over 18 minutes, during which you can't fall asleep again or pay the same penalty -- to get yourself back to painlessness. I lay for hours, drifting in and out of sleep, grinding my teeth at the knowledge that I was caught in a trap of user-hostile design. (Designers of medical devices, call me. You'll find my consultancy fees amazingly low for your industry.)

During this time, I came to heartily detest another device, this one attached to my feet. It is supposed to massage your feet to prevent blood-clots -- an entirely laudable task, I suppose, but in practice an inflating bladder squeezes one foot and then the other, each time emitting a thunderous popping noise. After a few hours, this became profoundly irritating; it's like being poked at with a stick every time you begin to find health-restoring sleep.

Narcotics being what they are, another problem went quickly from mild irritation to deep agony: I lost the ability to control my urinating muscles. I didn't become incontinent; quite the opposite. I lost the ability to pull the trigger, if you follow. I strained and strained, concentrating as hard as I could, bathroom taps going full autosuggestive blast, and produced -- nothing. I first pointed this out to the nurse on duty at about 4PM on the day of surgery; by midnight I was in exquisite agony. I had the temerity to ask this officious nurse -- a person I will not remember in my will -- for a urinary catheter; you'd have thought I'd asked for a tracheotomy kit to play with. I was informed that a catheter was quite out of the question -- imagine that! A patient trying to direct his own medical care! Who does he think he is, Ben Casey? When finally the dam broke somewhere deep in the lobster shift, I filled one and a half 1000-cc. urinal bottles. The relief was indescribably delicious. Sexual doesn't even come close.

About 24 hours into the stay, my physical capabilities began to improve drastically. During the morning physical-therapy session, if the PT nurse asked for 10 reps of thigh-lifts, I gave her 20. Asked to walk 150 feet, I did 300.

You see, two bits of information had made themselves known to me. First, I'd cottoned on to the hospital's criteria for the release of patients from the Total Joint Center: Once you can do so many reps of the exercises and have walked so many feet (and you aren't running a death-fever from some flesh-eating streptococcal infection and haven't ripped your own sutures out), you are free to go.

The second piece of intelligence became abundantly clear when the first tray of food was set in front of me. It consisted of a dreadfully watery "soup" with some disintegrating gray vegetable matter sloshing about in it; some deeply nauseating tuna-and-diet-mayo lolling about on a bed of wilted lettuce, and a chunk of bread with the consistency of a well chewed piece of Juicy Fruit but with none of the flavorful appeal, accompanied with approximately three molecules of generic margarine. No salt. One package of three-year-old ground pepper. I'll freely grant that my appetite was pretty well shot by the dope, but even if I'd just come in out of the snow after chopping a cord of wood and raising a new barn for the Clodfelters, this grub would have had me throwing my plastic spork across the room and looking up the Suicide Hotline.

Clearly, they were trying to starve me out. So with each painful leg-lift, each abduction/adduction stretch, each heel-slide, I whispered to myself, Chicken Korma. T-bone steak. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. And with each ten yards I managed to hobble on the walker (Jesus Christ, was there ever a more humiliating device?) I essayed images of Afghan flat-bread straight from the Tandoori oven, of basil-rich lasagna with a rough Chianti, a loaf of San Francisco sourdough bread... So crusty.... Soooo crusty....

My stratagem seems to have worked. I got out 24 hours early.

Suckers!

I'm back at home, "resting comfortably," as the kids say nowadays. I spent all day today luxuriating on my bed, desultorily answering emails, catching up on the blogs, deliriously lifting my leg and letting it fall again. I have a home-care nurse who comes in and checks for those death-fevers and unripped sutures, and another who gently leads me through PT exercises meant for someone twenty-five years my senior. I am, in short, a pig in shit.

I've weathered it, baby! Officious nurses, burst bladders, being poked at with a stick when I try to sleep, and food that would have been scorned on an eighteenth-century whaler two years from port.

And most gloriously of all, I have a future. I can contemplate anything again. I'm planning this summer's garden. I'm talking up a ski vacation next spring, a walking tour of Europe, a bicycle trip across the Andes, kite-surfing from Jedda to Calcutta and back again. No, most of these won't happen, here's the important part: I can pretend that they will!

In My Room

It's the waiting that's the hard part, isn't it...

The time before my hip-replacement surgery has been passing with a weird combination of glacial slowness and the inexorability of a supertanker. Just a week ago, I had a whole week to wait, and now I have a whole thirteen hours to kill. It feels like both an eternity and an instant.

Narcotics add immeasurably to the strangeness. Yesterday I was reading in bed, and closed my eyes for a few minutes, and began to have incredibly vivid and bizarre imaginings, dreamlike but not a dream. Since I was completely awake, I could control the images that were roiling in my head: Now think about sex, I told myself, and zoom up came these hyper-real pornographic eyelid movies. Now think about flying. Now think about going to work but forgetting to get dressed.

I really understand junkies.

In order to make the time pass this weekend, I whipped up this little number in the studio. I think it sums up my emotional state pretty nicely.

Play "In My Room" (pops).

For no particularly good reason, I wanted to use every electric guitar I own in this piece. Maybe I just wanted to feel them all in my hands one last time, I don't know. I'm playing the lead part on my beautiful blonde Epiphone Sheraton (my favorite guitar, I think, when all is said and done -- it looks a lot like the guitar John Lennon played during the rooftop concert in "Let It Be"). The second lead (the Carl Wilson voice, if you like) is my Epiphone Les Paul, a sunburst-finish beast. I don't know why I don't use this axe more often; it's just that the Sheraton is such a playable, seductive thing that I always reach for it when starting a recording. The tremelo doo-wop arpeggios are supplied by my Japanese Stratocaster, which I've given Fender Noiseless pickups and a much better pickup switch than the piece of junk it came with. I don't play this one much because the Floyd Rose whammy bar it came with makes it a major pain in the ass to tune, and my picking style often pulls it sharp.

I'm particularly fond of the double-stop bends in the second phrase of each verse ("I can go and..."). That's one guitar, no overdubs, man. I bend the A string a whole step, and the D string only a half-step. Your astonished applause humbles me. Thank you. Thank you very much.

All right. Twelve hours, now, before I depart for the hospital. Needless to say, no bloggage will be forthcoming until at least Wednesday, but I'll be taking copious notes when I'm not being flensed or hammered at or stretched or lectured to. Morphine drip. Morphine drip. Morphine drip....

Now think about walking without a cane...

Kodak in the Autoclave

Hey, here's a little suggestion...

Are you bored at work? Feeling underutilized, not contributing your fair share down at the ol' Jay Oh Bee? Feel the need to take on a little extra labor, put in a few more hours, firmly affix the old schnozz to the grindstone?

Here's what to do:

Tell your employer you're planning to go on short-term disability for a month.

You know all that work that won't get done in your absence? Hey! I, your employer, have got a corking good idea! Do it all now, instead!

The only reason I haven't climbed a water-tower with an RPG launcher this week is that I'm so hammered on Percocet that I couldn't find a water-tower. I wonder -- entirely as a goofball exercise, and not with any actual concern for accuracy -- just what a quality expert would say about the Passion for Excellence my output has exhibited this week.

In other news, I've decided I'm going to bring my camera along to the operating theater Monday. I'm gonna slip it to a nurse or the anesthesiologist or somebody : Psst! When they get the femur dislocated, mind taking a few snapshots for the old Flickr page? Come on! It's reasonably sterile!

Not because I particularly want the photos, mind you. I just want to see what they say.

The Parlous State of Our Nation's Highways: An Update

Perhaps there is some hope for our Great Democratic Experiment after all.

I came home from work this afternoon to find a handwritten note in the mailbox, on the stationery of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. It was from Supervisor Sally Kurtz, who represents the Catoctin District on the board.

It was, of course, in response to my vengeful screed from a few weeks ago, in which I spoke bitterness about the awful design and dreadfully vague and inadequate signage
surrounding a newly reconfigured intersection in my town -- an intersection that I and several others unthinkingly blasted through on the morning of its unveiling, to the consternation of the local gendarme.

In her note, Ms. Kurtz supplied her home phone number -- her home phone number, folks! -- and asked me to please give her a call at my convenience. And so, with a few samples of my freshly acquired collection of early 21st-century Percocets beginning to make their life-sustaining ministration to my ravaged and grateful central nervous system, that is what I did.

Ms Kurtz, a funny and very amiable person, clearly has had her patience with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) tested to the breaking point. This county -- for the last ten years and until the recent housing bust consistently rated one of the fastest-growing in the country -- has had its fair share of nightmarishly snarled traffic. She informed me that she has set up a meeting with our local VDOT District Engineer to discuss not only the intersection that brought me into conflict with the Heat, but also several other cases of inconsistent and vague signage -- including one in which some people were killed in an accident some miles from here. My letter, she said, would feature prominently in that conversation.

Supervisor Sally Kurtz: My Kinda Politician.

Fascinatingly, the mail brought another letter, this one from the Office of the Governor of Virginia, over the signature of the Secretary of Transportation. The nub of the thing was that VDOT had reviewed the design of the intersection -- created, apparently, by a local developer and not by VDOT itself -- and had concluded that it was "of a quality acceptable to VDOT." Apparently, the safety of the intersection had already been brought to VDOT's attention, and "as a result, additional signs were installed, pavement markings were modified, and a variable message board was added." (The variable message board, the Secretary did not go on to say, was removed after a couple of weeks.)

"These changes," the doughty Secretary concludes, "should eliminate any safety concerns."

I love the wording of that. The changes may or may not improve the actual safety of the intersection -- only time will tell if they do -- but boy howdy do they eliminate my concerns.

The Secretary concludes, "It is a difficult balance to provide motorists with information about a traffic pattern change and keep it concise enough to be understood as traffic moves at various speeds along a highway." I would like to engrave these words on a brushed-aluminum plaque and post it prominently at the entrance to every reputable industrial-design school in the world. It's a wretched surrender, an abject admission of defeat, to a simple problem of design. A second-year student of Human Factors Engineering could find a way to advise motorists, in clear and absolutely unambiguous visual language, of traffic changes ahead. It is a despicable capitulation, a rank failure of imagination.

Pain

In exactly one week plus a few hours, my body is going to be disassembled.

Oh, they'll put it back together again, no doubt, perhaps even in the right configuration. But in place of a failing left hip, I will have a titanium femoral ball connected to a long spike driven deep into the barrel of my femur. The ball will rest in a metal cup that's screwed into my pelvis, which will have been routed out to accept it.

In order to get at this peccant part of my anatomy, the leg will have to be -- there's no delicate way to put it -- taken off. Disconnected. Dissected. A large incision, some eight to ten inches long, will be made in my ass and thigh, muscles will be parted from their moorings, tendons and ligaments snipped, and the leg dislocated in a mighty heave that no doubt will require the amassed strength of every man-jack in the operating theater.

I picture my anesthetized body lying supine on the operating table, my leg cocked off at some bizarre and unnatural angle that it was never meant to describe, the ball-end of the femur exposed to air it's never met before, and to the surgeons' carpentry tools. Like a well-roasted chicken, I imagine, the drumstick-bone poking out through lacerated dark meat.

That I have agreed to allow this drawing-and-quartering of my body, and this sawing and chiseling of my skeleton, is a measure of what I'm willing to do to make pain go away. I had an operation back in June to try to save the hip, and since August I've taken two Voltarens a day to keep the inflammation down. For the most part, the drug had its effect, allowing me to function in a more or less normal way, as long as I took it easy and walked with a cane. Every once in a while I'd forget to take a pill, and the returning inflammation would remind me, like taking a rolled-up newspaper to a naughty puppy, just how thin is the line of chemistry that stands between me and serious agony.

Now, with surgery a week off, the doctor has ordered me to stop taking any sort of analgesic that might interfere with coagulation, and once again the pain is returning like a freight train. Sitting, standing, lying, walking, each presents its own unique little punishments. Through a stupid series of miscommunications, I wasn't able to get a prescription for Vicodin this weekend, and right at the moment I'm one sore naughty puppy.

Pain makes you withdraw from the world, and I'm very angry at it for that. I'd have loved to have gone to the antiwar demo down at the Mall this weekend, but even a leisurely walk around the Capitol with some like-minded enthusiasts would have felled me like an ox. I don't walk the dogs. I don't roller-blade, my once and (D.V.) future favorite pastime. I don't hike my mountain. Many things have been taken from me by pain.

I want them back. God damn it.

Bang & Olufsen?!?!?

I barely know him!

NewCritics

Over at NewCritics (which I've added to the ol' Blogroll, along with a link to the John Crowe Ransom MySpace page) I've posted an appreciation -- a way of avoiding saying "a good long wallow in amateur humor-analysis" -- of a B. Kliban cartoon that nearly caused me to wet trou in that halcyon year 1975.

In Loving Memory

Since I've been soaking in all this death lately, I've been giving thought to preparations for my own demise. In particular, I've been pondering a good epitaph for my gravestone. For many years, I'd wanted "Little. Yellow. Different. Better." but it occurs that that might not age too well.

I think I've settled on a better one:

Here Lies
Neddie Jingo
1960 - 20XX

What the hell was all that about?

Off to revise my will...

Arlington

We buried CDR C. Chase Porter, USN (Ret., Greatest Generation) yesterday. Arlington National Cemetery. Military honors. He now lies next to his wife Dorothy, who died years ago.

It was an utterly lovely ceremony. They really lay the Nation's Heroes to rest in style. The funeral cortege was met by six sailors in impeccable peacoats and Dixie Cup caps. As we emerged from our cars, these men began the most amazingly formalized... I think dance would probably not be a word they'd approve, but that's the thing it most closely resembled to this civilian. Not a movement did they make that wasn't accompanied by some ornate flourish of hand or knee or ankle, motions of ceremonial, formalized theatricality, all of course in absolutely perfect martial unison. I was utterly transfixed by these flourishes -- which, I think, is their intended effect.

They formed two rows of three, crowhopped into formation an arm's length apart, surrounded Chase's coffin and, with glacial deliberation, carried it to the gravesite and laid it carefully, reverently, on the bier, suspended over the grave. They then began another stanza of the dance, this one centered on the flag that draped the coffin. Their hands and elbows began extremely slow, deliberate movements that were punctuated by snaps of sudden, violent motion, accompanied by more theatrical gesticulations. Military Kabuki.

They stood with the flag suspended between them over the coffin. The chaplain, a gentle, kind-looking soul, made a few tailored remarks, and recited the 23rd Psalm, which even to an old reprobate existentialist like myself is a mighty powerful bit of poetry: "...Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever."

We stood for Military Honors. I noticed off in the distance, perhaps fifty yards off, a Naval detachment that I at first thought was on some other task. But no: "Aim! Fire!" Seven rifles reported. "Aim! Fire!" Seven more. "Aim! Fire!" The last cracks reverberated into the distance, and a bugler, a similar distance away in the other direction, played "Taps."

At this point, there wasn't a dry eye graveside -- my own certainly not excluded.

More Military Kabuki: The flag is folded into its triangular shape. The sailors look as though they're playing an incredibly ornate, formal game of Cat's Cradle, their arms interweaving in their martial, snapping dance. The flag, now in its tightly packed, lovingly folded bundle, is now presented to my sister-in-law -- and the dance is over.

We walked slowly back to our cars, in varying states of bewilderment, grief, relief. I looked at the graceful, rolling Arlington hills, covered with their precisely planted white rows of stones, thought about how many times, how many hundreds of thousands of times, this tightly scripted piece of theater had been played in this place, how much raw grief, like torn flesh, had spilled in this place. Ours was a mellow grief; Chase lived a long and full life after his military service, raised a family, enjoyed his grandchildren. But on our slow walk out, as I conversed lightly with the chaplain, he gestured toward another part of the graveyard not far off, nearer the river, only half filled with stones, and said simply, "The Iraq fallen are over there."

I can't even begin to imagine the anguish that ground has seen.

A History-Mystery!

Remember this thing?

David Mull's chimney-stack, built sometime between 1759 and 1775. It sits at the southeast corner of my lot. Part of my house was built with the logs that were taken from this one-room log cabin and moved uphill in the 1870s, perhaps when the stream it sat next to dried up, or when the ground became marshy:


Just to the southeast of that chimney-stack runs a stone wall, which I believe (from the will of Mull's son, also named David) dates to about 1812, when the younger David died and divided his land up among his sons and daughters. Here's part of it:



Now, if you follow that wall to the south, you come to the corner of my lot. (You'd better do it in January, because if you try it in July, the dense undergrowth will make you one sorry and scratched-up hombre.) When I first tried this, a couple of years ago, I was rather surprised to find a gate at the southeast corner.

I was surprised because, at first glance, there's absolutely no need for this gate to exist at all. None whatever. It doesn't open out to a road, and it would appear to the casual eye that it would have simply led one into an empty lot -- one that has never been developed, as far as my researches have shown.

Here's one of the gateposts. Wonder Woman is examining the other:



Now, it can't be that old: Unfinished wood just doesn't last that long out in the forest, unprotected from the elements. But look at it carefully: It doesn't look manufactured. I would guess that a modern, milled post wouldn't have open mortises that have to be closed by a clapped-to second piece of lumber; I would think that a gatepost like that, if modern, would have those mortises mechanically routed through the center of the main piece for strength and durability.

I think it's handmade, in other words. And older than -- well, certainly older than me.

And it's a tantalizing hint that there are ghost-roads around here that we can no longer see.

Here's a rough, not-to-scale map of the relevant section of my lot:



The road marked "Modern" in this map is actually very old indeed; we have indications that it might be Payne's Ferry Road, built in the 1740s. It leads down to the Potomac, and for some part of its life actually went all the way to Harpers Ferry. "Modern," in this case, means still in use.

I can't eliminate from my mind the question, Why does that gate exist? When did it stop being used? What was it used for? How was this land configured and used before it stopped being farmed? When, for that matter, did it stop being farmed?

For a hint on that last question, here's a photo looking back through the gate toward the cabin:



There are many extremely mature hardwoods directly in the path that connects the old cabin and the gate; they've got to be more than 100 years old. Another data-point: The stone wall is quite clearly finished on either side of that gate, meaning that the gate itself was always intended to be there, from the date of the erection of the wall.

My belief (I guess you'd call it a hypothesis) is that that gate was the main entrance for this homestead, and access to the house through what is marked on my map as the "modern driveway" began in the 1870s, when the original homesite was abandoned and the house moved uphill. The former "driveway" (for lack of a better word) went through that gate and along the east wall.

But that demands an answer for an extremely tantalizing question: Why there? Why would you build the main entrance to your homestead where there doesn't appear to ever have been a road?

The answer, of course, is that a road once was there! Some 100 yards or so from that gate is the old Ebenezer Church Road, which is still visible in spots where it goes up and over Short Hill. I'd bet any amount of money that the 1812 directions to what would eventually become Jingo Acres went, "Pass Jacob Virts' place, and hang a right when the road starts to go uphill."

Here's about where you'd have taken that right:


So: What I need to know is, How old are those fence-posts? Short of, I dunno, carbon-dating them, I have no scientific way of knowing. I know that different kinds of wood decay at different rates, and the fact that the posts have stood upright rather than lying horizontal may very well have contributed to their longevity. But the answer to that question would tell me a great deal about what I want to know about my home's shadowy past.

Later Edit: Some of you asked about the nails and other hardware holding the parts of the post together. Here's another view, taken from the outside angle, that shows the hardware a bit better:


The nails are round-headed, galvanized (? at least not rusted through) and pretty clearly modern. The wire is also still pretty robust, but interestingly, the staples holding the wire in place are very rusted and nearly crumbling.

The Bunny Man: Ned Ludd of the Exurbs

This morning a friend, citing my near-pathological loathing of the exurbs mushrooming in the farthest reaches of the Washington metro area, sent me a link to a truly strange and compelling story.

There exists among the schoolchildren of the Washington area the urban legend of The Bunny Man. It tells of a deranged killer who escaped long ago from a local mental institution; this person's particular mania manifested itself first as an obsession with rabbits -- locals reported finding hundreds of butchered and skinned rabbit carcasses -- and later with the adoption of a bunny-rabbit costume, worn while wreaking murderous havoc among, oh, you name it: lovers parked in cars, children lost in the woods, solitary motorists -- the usual urban-legend fare. His ghost is confidently reported to return every Halloween night to a certain bridge between Clifton and Fairfax Station his foul murders to perform -- making the bridge, naturally, a favorite "I-dare-you" spot for intrepid local teens.

I hadn't ever heard this legend -- though born on K Street, I grew up far from here and spent only brief periods here during my years of susceptibility to urban legends. However, this afternoon I mentioned this story to a young designer I work with, and he immediately knew what I was talking about: "Oh! That's the Bunny Man. Everybody who grew up here knows that one!"

A local librarian, Fairfax County Public Library Historian-Archivist Brian A. Conley, decided to investigate this legend and see if he couldn't find a source for it. The link my friend sent me this morning is the story of his investigation.

I'll spare you the details of the librarian's story (you can read the whole thing here -- and trust me, it's a fascinating one), save to say that he did trace the legend to a pair of reports that appeared in the Washington Post in October of 1970. In the first story, a man in a bunny costume appeared out of nowhere on Guinea Road in Fairfax, accused the car's occupants of trespass, and heaved a hatchet through the car window. No one was harmed. The second story states:

A man wearing a furry rabbit suit with two long ears appeared — again — on Guinea Road in Fairfax County Thursday night, police reported, this time wielding an ax and chopping away at a roof support on a new house....

Thursday night's rabbit, wearing a suit described as gray, black and white, was spotted a block away [from the location of the first incident] at 5307 Guinea Rd.

Paul Phillips, a private security guard for a construction company, said he saw the "rabbit" standing on the front porch of a new, but unoccupied house.

"I started talking to him," Phillips said, "and that's when he started chopping."

"All you people trespass around here," Phillips said the "Rabbit" told him as he whacked eight gashes in the pole. "If you don't get out of here, I'm going to bust you on the head."

Phillips said he walked back to his car to get to get his handgun, but the "Rabbit", carrying the long-handled ax, ran off into the woods.

And an Urban Legend is born...

While investigating these incidents, a county investigator was told that someone who worked at a development company had received an irate phone call from someone calling himself "the Axe Man." The Axe Man had said, "You have been messing up my property, by dumping tree stumps, limbs and brush, and other things on the property."

Look at one detail of the second story: The house the Bunny Man chopped at was new but unoccupied. Before the Second World War, Fairfax County largely resembled where I live now: Rural, sleepy, bucolic. I remember seeing a 1930s photograph of Tysons Corner -- the intersection of Chain Bridge Road and Lee Highway -- and it was... a gas station. After WWII, developers began to make inroads into the county to build homes for the hundreds of thousands of government workers who served the newly exponentially larger postwar federal government and its attendant Military-Industrial Complex. Tysons Corner is now a gigantic, hideous miles-wide morass of concrete and glass, and is home to two of the world's largest shopping malls.

The investigating librarian concludes:

Who was the Bunny Man, and what was he trying to accomplish? Sadly, we will likely never know his identity. Likewise his true motivations are known only to himself, but there are a few clues contained in the foregoing sources. On October 18 the Bunny Man accused Robert Bennett of trespassing. On October 29 the Bunny Man told security guard Paul Phillips that "You all trespass around here," and on November 4, the self-styled "Axe Man" accused the unnamed representative of Kings Park West Subdivision of dumping debris on his property. If we assume that all three incidents involved the same individual, then it appears that this young man was disturbed by the development of the area. Said development was extensive in 1970, too....

Being forced to watch helplessly while the face of your community changes around you can elicit strange behavior in some people.

And how!

Anybody have a bunny costume lying around you're not using?

(Concise summary of the Bunny Man Legend at Wikipedia)

Ah, But I Was So Much Older Then

From The Rocking Vicar: The earliest known (1851) photo of Bob Dylan.

Bad Shit

On my most pessimistic days, I can't scotch the dread that Seriously Bad Shit's a-Comin'.

I used to be able to pooh-pooh myself out of the idea -- just the usual, residual Former Doper Paranoia -- but I admit that occasionally the whole Global Warming/Fundy Nutjob/Peak Oil/Protofascist Right Wing/Loony Jihadist/Incredibly Stupid President ball of wax just jumbles all together in my poor little head and I just can't avoid the fear that we're headed pell-mell for a long, slow-rolling Katrina that leaves us all foundering in shit.

Saturday's balmy 75-degree weather played on the evening news like it was the greatest midwinter gift anybody's ever had. People out biking and sunbathing and marveling at the budding blossoms fooled into emerging. Me, I was quaking in fear all day. Absolutely immobilized, horrified. Yeah, yeah, I know, El Niño, not Global Warming, blah blah. Didn't stop me from fantasizing the complete and utter destruction of the hardwood forest on Short Hill. Didn't stop me from picturing palm trees in Purcellville. Polar bears dying on melting ice blocks in the ocean. Maniac religious cults, maddened from hunger and boredom, roaming my road looking for people to either convert or kill-- doesn't make much difference to them.

It says something about the times we live in when an unusually warm day in January can trigger that kind of panic.

Then I go and read this interview with Chris Hedges, author of the newly published American Fascists. Hedges, the former NYT bureau chief in the Middle East and the Balkans, knows as well as anybody the warning signs of Bad Shit. And he's not afraid, not too polite, to call a Fascist a Fascist. He describes the interior emptiness that drives people to its dubious comforts:

For me, the engine of the [Christian Fascist] movement is deep economic and personal despair. A terrible distortion and deformation of American society, where tens of millions of people in this country feel completely disenfranchised, where their physical communities have been obliterated, whether that's in the Rust Belt in Ohio or these monstrous exurbs like Orange County, where there is no community. There are no community rituals, no community centers, often there are no sidewalks. People live in empty soulless houses and drive big empty cars on freeways to Los Angeles and sit in vast offices and then come home again.

Jesus. There it is. Ashburn, Virginia. Mile after mile after mile of enormous, piss-elegant houses on a nightmare labyrinth of endlessly recursive streets, each one of them with three or four gargantuan flat-panel TVs spewing endless crap at the inhabitants.

I know that emptiness, dig? I fear that emptiness. I work hard to fill that emptiness with music and books and writing and loving and working. I understand how that yawning, unfilled nothing might lead you conclude that Jesus talks though your TV set, telling you to kill atheists, Muslims and fags. I've felt it. Driving through Ashburn, it shrieks at you from every phony brick facade, from every molecule of oil-depleting vinyl that wraps these thousands of hideous fuckboxes.

Just one economic bad patch, one big layoff at AOL or Verizon, one upward tweak of the interest rate on their jive-ass "creative" mortgages, one year of $10/gallon gas, one son or daughter killed in Iraq, one terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, one natural disaster -- and that's all she wrote. It's off to the MegaChurch, the only thing that provides any explanation that doesn't consist of "You bought that fuckin' huge house and those three SUVs and the jetski and the eight cellphones and the Sybian, asshole. Live with the consequences."

Hedges explains the appeal of Christofascism:

This is a world of magic and signs and miracles and wonders, and [on the other side] is the world you hate, the liberal society that has shunted you aside and thrust you into despair. The rage that is directed at those who go after the movement is the rage of those who fear deeply being pushed back into this despair, from which many of the people I interviewed feel they barely escaped. A lot of people talked about suicide attempts or thoughts of suicide -- these people really reached horrific levels of desperation. And now they believe that Jesus has a plan for them and intervenes in their life every day to protect them, and they can't give that up.

I'm getting that book.

Oh, and Jim Kunstler is a real cheerer-upper today, too.

Placidyl

I had an unfortunate run-in with a series of kidney-stones back in the early Aughts. The first one, easily the worst and most painful, stayed with me for a couple of weeks before it could be sand-blasted out of my ureter by a surgeon. I've not had one since, owing to some easy dietary restrictions -- no more than a pound of Cheddar cheese at one sitting, simple stuff like that.

The pain from those things is utterly spectacular. I'm not about to try to compare it to childbirth, an experience I've never undergone, but you fellas will get this: Take the pain from getting a seriously good, solid, expert kick to the nuts -- with its attendant nausea, vomiting, rolling on the ground, etc. -- and move it a few inches north, into your lower back. Now imagine that that pain will not recede, as a ball-shot will, and that you know that it will be with you for hours, days -- basically, until you can get to an emergency room and the sweet, sweet relief of Sister Demerol.

Just to function in that kind of pain, you need vvbvgbvbvc w

(Sorry, I'll start that again. I'm eating a bowl of chili as I type this, and some just went down the wrong pipe and came up again, spraying all over my keyboard, which just went from ordinary finger-goo gross to Oh, my God! You regularly touch that thing? That was me, dabbing a napkin betwen the V and the B keys to fish out a chunk of kidney bean... Now, where was I?)

Just to function in that kind of pain, you need some major help in the opiates department. The urologist gave me some of the Heavy Gear they regularly shoot each other for in the streets of Des Moines. I was to take it whenever the pain threatened to come back.

Soon thereafter, I was back at work, and the phone rang. A technical developer asked me to swing by his desk to discuss a design wrinkle. As I walked down the hall, I began to feel Seriously Strange. No bats hanging from the ceiling, no Yellow Submarines floating by, but I felt extremely dislocated in time, and I was completely disconnected from my feet. I simply floated along. I reached my colleague's desk, and he began to ask his question. I stood by him, watching his head undulating in my vision, listening to his voice bubbling up from underwater, watching his hands point to things on his computer monitor, and finally becoming aware that he had stopped talking and was looking at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.

I realized I hadn't heard a single goddamned word he'd said.

"I'm sorry, Dave," I mumbled. "I can't answer your question right now. I am way too fuckin' stoned." I went back to my desk, explained my problem to my supervisor, and went and lay down on the floor of my pod until the worst of the seasick, dizzy, overnarcotized feeling went away.

What I had done, in effect, was recuse myself from responsibility, recognizing that, in my lotus-eater's reverie, I was unable to make proper decisions. No shame in it; I was only doing what my physician had told me to do. The shit got on top of me. Then it wore off. Drugs do that.

Apparently this wisdom was not with Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist during the years 1971-82. During this time, in which Rehnquist was addicted to a powerful (albeit nonnarcotic) sleep drug called Placidyl (what evocative names these potions have!) the court ruled on abortion in Roe vs. Wade, on obscenity in Miller vs. California, capital punishment in Furman vs. Georgia, and perhaps most historically, on whether the President of the United States is above the law in United States vs. Nixon.

And he was ripped to the tits the whole time. When he finally tried to kick the stuff in 1981, staff had to chase him down in the hospital lobby in his jammies, where he was trying to escape due to "a CIA plot against him" and "seeming to see the design patterns on the hospital curtains change configuration." The MSM is silent on the question of whether a butterfly net was employed to pluck him out of the air, but the conclusion seems inevitable.

By the time he reached this state, he was taking 1,400 milligrams of the stuff a day, nearly three times the beginning dose. Whether or not Placidyl makes one feel as I did trying to answer Dave's design question I can't say; but if it had one tenth the effect on Rehnquist, his irresponsibility bordered on the criminal.

By the way, Buried Lede Department:

The FBI file on Rehnquist, released last week under the Freedom of Information Act, reveals that in 1971, as Rehnquist's confirmation hearings for associate justice approached, the Nixon Justice Department asked the FBI to run a criminal background check on at least two potential witnesses who were expected to testify against Rehnquist. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover approved the request.

In July 1986, when President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to be chief justice, the Justice Department asked the FBI to interview witnesses who were preparing to testify that Rehnquist had intimidated minority voters as a Republican Party official in Arizona in the early 1960s. According to a memo in the Rehnquist file, an unnamed FBI official cautioned that the department "should be sensitive to the possibility that Democrats could charge the Republicans of misusing the FBI and intimidating the Democrats' witnesses." But then-Assistant Attorney General John Bolton -- who more recently served as ambassador to the United Nations -- signed off on the request and said he would "accept responsibility should concerns be raised about the role of the FBI."

In the Final Analysis...

...I think it's fair to say that Saddam Hussein was not well-hung.

You Do Work Here...?

Saturday was Trash Day chez Jingo. Wonder Woman and I loaded up Truck-Truck* with the month's castoffs and made our merry way to the Loudoun County Landfill.

Saturdays feature the Household Trash Blue-Light Special down't the Dump. Other days, they weigh you on the way in, weigh you on the way out, and the difference determines the price you pay. Saturdays, with the big weekend rush, they charge a flat fee of $5 and forgo the weighing. This expedites the queue, certainly, and is a handy convenience for the Trash Do-It-Yourselfer.

On the approach to the entrance to the dump, a man stood accosting incoming vehicles, taking money from some and directing others, with burdens of something other than regular trash, to the scales. I rolled down the window, and said in my jocular Saturday way, "I've got some household trash to get rid of, and I've heard this is the place to do it."

Picking up on my jesting tone, he replied, "Well, only if you have five dollars!"

I reached for my wallet, fished out a sawbuck. About to hand it to him, I suddenly paused. My eyes narrowed and I said, mock-suspiciously, "Say, you do work here, don't you?"

Oddly enough, a similar thing happened at lunch. We were killing time between two of Freddie's soccer-tournament games, me, Wonder Woman, Freddie and the Matriarch. It was one of those chain places with antique-ish farming implements and sporting goods festooning the walls. I was well into a rather passable hamburger, having already three times reassured the oversolicitous waiter that yes, everything at our table was quite satisfactory and that we did not at this exact moment require any refills on our brimming drinks.

A rather large woman, wearing, I'm prepared to swear, not a single stitch of natural fiber in her somewhat severe clothing, approached our table. She caught my eye and enquired whether our meals and the service were to our satisfaction. (I'm being kind. I think she barked, "Everything okay here, folks?") Assured that everything was, in fact, no less than completely jake, she lurched on to other tables, frightening small children with her guttural obsequy.

"Do you suppose she works here?" I wondered aloud.

The incident inspired a train of thought. Suppose, just suppose, that one were to enter some restaurant, dressed in one's best managerial orlon and a natty little clip-on tie, and, without attracting the attention of the staff, proceed from table to table interviewing the customers: "Is your meal to your satisfaction, sir?" "Everything to your liking, ma'am?" "Can we get you anything else, folks?"

What a wheeze! A-and wouldn't it be great to find a table where the service has been lousy, the food worse, and the customer satisfaction level at a historic low? "This soup is stone cold, our second course is forty-five minutes late, and I can see the waiter out in the parking lot smoking a cigarette!"

What a chance to go all Basil Fawlty on his ass: "Oh, Jesus Christ, these people! You try managing this pathetic bunch! God damn it! I've told them and told them -- but do they listen? Oh, no!" I can imagine the hysteria in my voice rising with every utterance: "And the people we get in here! God almighty, they think they're the goddamned Queen of Sheba, demanding this and ordering that, acting all fucking put out because we use the wrong kind of fucking oil for Darling Little Madison's fucking peanut allergy! Go to hell! Just go straight to fucking hell!"

I reckon I'd have about four seconds to reach the door. Piece of cake.

This is something I'm going to have to do before I die.

-----
*Let's go riding in my Truck-Truck
Let's go riding in my Truck-Truck
Let's go riding in my Truck-Truck
Then we'll come home and fuck!

I Have Lost the Remote

Somewhere between December 22 and Christmas Eve, an anomaly in the Space-Time Continuum caused the remote control for our family's TiVo unit to disappear from the face of the earth. We have ransacked the house, torn apart the den, rifled the laundry-baskets, scoured the kitchen, combed the bedrooms, trashed the closets... Nothing.

Anomaly in the Space-Time Continuum. It's the only possible conclusion. I imagine our poor little TiVo remote now orbiting some desolate moon of a sunblasted planet billions of light-years away, its infrared signal emitting pathetic little bursts, perhaps changing channels in alien households below, their many-tentacled inhabitants wondering why the hell their slimy, fanged version of David Letterman keeps spontaneously changing to their slimy, fanged version of Geraldo Rivera. They write angry slime-mails to their cable providers, complaining about the poor service; the cowed cable companies, using the most hypersophisticated tracking gear, trace the offending infrared emissions to my poor little TiVo remote in orbit. Dammit, they think with their slimy brains, That's the third time this week!

I worry about anomalies in the Space-Time Continuum that cause common household items to disappear without a trace to orbit around desolate planets. What's next? The toaster? The coffee-grinder? If these anomalies in the Space-Time Continuum keep popping into peoples' homes and making off with our remotes, toasters and coffee-grinders, I think our vaunted American quality of life might suffer. An angry Letter to the Editor is in order. I'm composing one now:

The Editors:

Somewhere between December 22 and Christmas Eve, an anomaly in the Space-Time Continuum caused the remote control for our family's TiVo unit to disappear from the face of the earth. This trend must be stopped, or our vaunted American quality of life will suffer....

I think I have hit upon a fiendishly clever way to get our remote back, though. After I finish composing this missive, I will pop out to Best Buy and purchase a new remote, at hideous expense. The instant I crack the plastic shell packaging on it, there our old remote will be, in some spot I've ransacked four times before. Hello, Remotey, I will say. Welcome home! Did you enjoy your trip to Grabulon-Zeta? Did you happen to see our toaster there?

Later Edit: MegaLOLs! Went to Best Buy, as threatened. Bought a replacement Universal Remote that the pimple-bearded youth thought would work with our TiVo. Twenty-five clams, not too bad. On the way home, the cellie rang. Wonder Woman. Freddie had that instant found the remote on a shelf in the back of the den where we store our video collection. I am so convinced that the purchase of the replacement remote had exactly the anomaly-reversing effect that I predicted that I'm writing off to the Amazing Randi as we speak.

Olden Times and Ancient Rhymes

Well, I think I've learned something about myself over the last 24 hours -- namely, that I should stay the hell away from John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" this year. It came on the radio while we were driving into Leesburg to pick out a coffin and make funeral arrangements for Chase, and I blubbered like a baby:

And so this is Christmas (war is over)
And what have we done (if you want it)
Another year over (war is over)
A new one just begun (if you want it)
And so happy Christmas (war is over)
We hope you have fun (if you want it)
The near and the dear ones (war is over)
The old and the young (now)

As some of you know, I've been working with Glue Birl on a little Secret Xmas Project of our own:

Does that Birl have some pipes on her, or what?

(Yes, examine her closely -- there she is, festooned with pipes covering ever inch of her body: tobacco, plumbing (PVC and copper), organ, |||||...)

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the tune, and the spirit in which it's offered.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

(Glue Birl! Next year: "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)." Whaddya say? We'll dig up a choir somewhere!)

Charles Chase Porter, 1922-2006

My father-in-law, Charles Chase Porter, died this afternoon of complications from Alzheimer's Disease. His death was as comfortable as these things can be. My wife, who attended him daily during his long decline, held his hand as he passed.

I remember very clearly a family gathering that took place not long after that awful disease began to take its hold on him. He always insisted that we say Grace before holiday meals, and always took it upon himself to lead the family in prayer. He always began it, "Our Heavenly Father," and then delivered some sweet little homiletic sentiment. This time, he said, "I hope we all lead lives as wonderful as mine has been, and that we always remember them."

I can't think of a more fitting tribute to the battle he fought during his declining years, a battle no one can win. He knew that his identity, his very self, was slipping away from him, becoming erased by this horrifying disease, and he had the presence of mind to tell us he hoped it didn't happen to us.

My wife called me at work this morning. She had taken our daughter with her for a quick visit to see Chase before finishing up some Christmas shopping. Wonder Woman has spent enough time with Alzheimer's patients in Chase's ward in the last three years that she knows perhaps better than many doctors the signs of the Final Days. Chase had, a day or two before, suddenly sat upright from his bed and attempted to walk. The staff were encouraging, thinking this was a sign of improvement. Wonder Woman knew better: That was just what Mrs. X had done a day before she died last September, just what Mr. Y had done on his penultimate day in March.

It was clear to her and to the medical staff that he was going to die soon. She asked me to arrange to get our daughter out of there; she didn't need to watch her grandfather die. My mother obligingly agreed to pick her up and take her to her house. I had a consultation about a root canal scheduled in an hour; when that was done, I was going to get to her side. But as I was making my way to the dental surgeon's, the phone call came. He was gone.

I went to the home. His door was closed. I knocked. Wonder Woman opened the door to me. It was just her and Chase's body. We hugged, said I love you. We sat, waiting for the Hospice-care people to come and tell us what to do next. She held his hand. She stroked his hair. She tried to get him to close his eye. She spoke to him as is he were still in there: "See? My husband's here. Somebody's going to take care of me. It's OK, Daddy. It's OK."

I sat there, loving her. Just...loving her.

Grr!

Folks: Don't mean to go all Lenny-Bruce-Cranky, but I do have a (small, but loyal) local readership, and this thing has really pissed me off. Local folks: Both of you should write similar letters -- or, hell, just copy-and-paste this one. You've probably either gotten a ticket or been killed by now anyway.

Sent this off this afternoon. I think it speaks for itself.

20 December 2006

The Hon. Pierce Homer
Secretary of Transportation, Commonwealth of Virginia
202 North Ninth St. - 5th Floor
Richmond, VA 23219

Dear Sir;

This morning at approximately 10 AM I was issued a citation by an officer of the Virginia State Police. The citation was for “failure to observe a highway sign,” specifically a “Do Not Enter” sign that had been posted the day previous at the corner of Broad Street and Route 287 in Lovettsville in Loudoun County.

This would be unremarkable but for the fact that while the officer was issuing my ticket I noticed that three other motorists were being cited for the same offense, and a fourth committed the same error a few seconds after I did.

In my professional life I am a designer of computer interfaces. This discipline has taught me the humility to know a simple truth: If five well-intentioned people commit the same error within the space of ten minutes, the fault is not with the people but with the design.

Sir, I put it to you that the design of the traffic triangle in Lovettsville, which opened yesterday, is bizarre, hopelessly unintuitive and – please mark my words well – potentially lethal.

Your department has taken a simple four-way road crossing and for reasons I cannot fathom turned it into a difficult and dangerous mess. The new “Do Not Enter” signs that five people in the space of ten minutes failed to obey this morning are vanishingly small — extremely difficult to see from the other side of the highway. I also point out that this morning was clear and sunny; West Broad Street looks directly into the morning sun, making the signs not merely difficult but actually impossible to read from an hour after dawn until mid-morning on a sunny day. (Please see the enclosed photographs, which I took a short time after I was ticketed.)

The “Do Not Enter” signs are meant to prevent motorists coming from a two-way road from entering what has newly been declared a one-way road — in essence a T-junction that did not exist before yesterday. I must protest in the strongest possible terms: These signs are woefully — not to say criminally — insufficient warning to prevent a potentially lethal error by an inattentive driver who is not intimately familiar with the traffic patterns.

Another home truth I have learned in my life as a designer is this: If you design a saucer that looks like a cup, people will use it as a cup, and not as a saucer. It is useless to put a sign on your saucer. People don’t read signs. To transfer this truth to the matter at hand, the junction of West Broad Way and Route 287 is still visually indistinguishable from a four-way junction when approached from the west. That is why I, and four other motorists in ten minutes, erroneously used it as such this morning. The potential tragedy in this case, of course, is that misuse of a saucer is a trivial mistake. Plowing into a one-way street against traffic is anything but trivial.

While I was remonstrating with the officer this morning, he pointed out that warnings of a new traffic pattern had been posted for some time. I suggest to you and to whoever designs VDOT’s warning signage that there is a world of difference between the hopelessly vague “New Traffic Pattern Ahead” that was posted and the less concise but infinitely more informative “Warning: On Dec. 19 This Street Will Become a One-Way Street.”

To prevent others from making the innocent but possibly life-threatening error that I and at least four other motorists made this morning, and to rescue others from the personal embarrassment, expense and inconvenience of a traffic citation engendered not by malfeasance but by the dreadfully poorly executed reconfiguration of that intersection, I submit the following proposed changes:

1. An orange, diamond-shaped sign (see Photo 1) with a hopelessly vague warning on it (“New Traffic Pattern Ahead”) is absolutely unacceptable as the sole warning of an oncoming T-junction that continues to look exactly like a four-way junction. I suggest a reworded sign – much larger, with blinking lights and whatever other attention-grabbing devices can be appended to it: “Warning: Broad Street Ahead Is No Longer a Two-Way Street. Be Prepared to Turn Either Left or Right, But Do Not Proceed Straight.” This sign should be permanent.
2. Two large arrows that point left and right should be painted on the pavement of West Broad Street in light-reflecting paint.
3. The arrows should be reinforced with appropriate text on the road.
4. The “Do Not Enter” signs on the east side of Route 287 (shown in Photo 2) must be made much larger, must be illuminated, and must be reinforced with blinking lights. If a sign can be suspended over the road rather than posted by its side, so as to resemble a barrier, so much the better. I repeat in the most urgent terms I can muster: The near-invisibility of these signs will get someone killed.

Your prompt attention to this matter is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Nedward L. Jingo

Cc: Elaine Walker, Lovettsville Mayor
Scott York, Chairman, Loudoun Country Board of Supervisors
Sally R. Kurtz, Catoctin District Representative, Loudoun BOS
Editors, Loudoun Times-Mirror
Editors, Leesburg2Day

Supporting photos (click to enlarge):

Photo 1: Does this sign even hint that you're about to come to an extremely dangerous T-junction that only yesterday was a four-way junction? I think not, sir!

Photo 2: Can you read those "Do No Enter" signs? Can you even see them?

Did I Mention We're Chumps? Of Choice?

Will Divide, proprietor and chief bottle-washer at Huck and Jim, has posted a mindbendingly great summary of the second portion of Against the Day that we're group-reading over at The Chumps of Choice.

Chumps who may have forgotten about our Monday-to-Monday schedule, hop on over.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, we're group-reading Thomas Pynchon's latest doorstop, Against the Day. In a group. We're The Chumps. Of Choice. We're only up to page 50. You'll have no problem catching up. At The Chumps. Of Choice.

Head on over! Apply directly to the forehead!

Those Pesky Editors!

Wolcott's already had his fun with it, but I really really really hope that's an actual shot of the cover.

Because there's nothing -- that's nothing -- funnier in the graphic-design biz than getting a full shipment of books back from the printer, opening the box with trembling anticipation, and only then seeing the howling typo in the book's subtitle.

(It's published-on-demand, so the cover's probably a PDF file that can be instantly corrected. In the spirit of Historical Accuracy, though, I'll just grab the live version and reproduce below. Let the Schadenfreude begin!)

Pinochet Passes By

June, 1975: Santiago de Chile

Your Ned, the son af an American diplomat, is a sophomore at an international school at the farthest edge of town, in the Andean foothills. His anti-authoritarian teenaged years in their fullest pimply bloom, he insists, despite his parents' entreaties (or, who knows, perhaps because of them) on affecting the uniform of the Pissed-Off 1975 Teen: the long, ratty hair, jeans worn through at the knee, the general surliness.

In a fascist dictatorship -- gun emplacements on the public thoroughfare, DINA agents prowling the streets in unmarked cars ready to pounce and "disappear" you to torture chambers on Dawson Island, itchy-trigger-fingered Carabineros on street corners stopping any random passerby who looked vaguely "socialist" -- the Pissed-Off 1975 Teen look is the sort of thing that the Authorities lick their chops at. It's utterly impossible to understand, in a cosmopolitan democracy, the raw, adrenaline-pumping fear that can gnaw at your vitals when you can be hauled off the street at any instant for the way you dress. I'm sorry, punk rockers and Disaffected Victims of the Man: you can't know. There is no comparison. I came to dread with a sickly nausea those knee-trembling moments when a machine-gun-wielding cop would pick me out of a crowded sidewalk, step in front of me, and accost me for my ID: "A ver, joven..."

And I was safe! I was untouchable! I had Diplomatic Immunity! I had a diplomatic carnet de identidad that rendered me literally untouchable! Most of my friends were theoretically untouchable, too -- but try explaining that to my pal Joe, son of the Bolivian chargé d' affaires, who got his knee broken in just such an encounter. He'd forgotten his wallet. Boom. Rifle butt to the patella. Don't forget, punk.

The trip to school that year was a bouncy, uncomfortable ride with several other kids in the back of a covered pickup truck. A few families had banded together, hired a driver for the duty. Our outbound trip wound its way through Santiago's fashionable districts, picking up kids, then out to Calle Las Condes for the drive to the beautiful foothills.

One morning, we were going down a one-way street on our usual route. Minding our own business. Obeying the speed limit. Being good citizens. Out of nowhere, coming directly at us, came two motorcyle cops, gesticulating wildly -- get out of the way! Get out of the way!

On a one-way street. Going the wrong way.

Directly into oncoming traffic.

The motorcycles were followed by several police cars, Carabineros leaning out the windows, also waving their arms. One of the cars slowed momentarily, and a particularly vehement cop shouted directly into our drivers' face; apparently the rather deft dive the driver had made onto a spare patch of sidewalk hadn't been fast enough to please him.

Then a Mercedes limousine passed imperiously by, oblivious to the strewn traffic on either side of the quiet city street. A profile in an ornate military peaked cap, distinctive brush moustache clearly visible, adorned the opened back window. Generál Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, Presidente de la República de Chile.

It's a good thing those Carabineros were so preoccupied ahead, clearing the way for the Great Man. I'm not sure they would have taken kindly to the Pissed-Off 1975 Teen Neddie's upraised middle finger that extended from the back of the truck.

I hope dying hurt a whole lot, you rat-faced son of a bitch. I hope you suffered the tortures of the damned. I hope no one wiped your brow or comforted you while you suffered and died. I hope you died alone.

What the Thinking Man Is Thinking

The Buzzcocks were the thinking man's Clash. The Clash were the thinking man's Sex Pistols, and the Pistols were the thinking man's New York Dolls. The Dolls were the thinking man's Gary Glitter, and Gary Glitter was the thinking man's brother-in-law -- a fact that he's still trying to live down.

Audi is the thinking man's Volvo; however, unexpectedly, Volvo is also the thinking man's Audi. The Committee is working on that one. Airstream is the thinking man's Winnebago, when he can afford the gas. The alto saxophone is the thinking man's Stratocaster, but only when wielded by Ornette Coleman; in the hands of Charlie Parker, it becomes the thinking man's Les Paul.

Ontogeny recapitulates the thinking man's phylogeny, existence precedes the thinking man's essence, the personal is the thinking man's political, the Medium is the thinking man's Message, and a mighty fortress is the thinking man's Lord.

Women are the thinking man's chicks. The delectable skin of the throat is the thinking man's bodacious ta-ta, the graceful thigh the thinking man's Brazilian wax, the demure cleavage the thinking man's low-rider love-handles. Asses are the thinking man's tits.

The Epson Stylus CX5800F Inkjet Printer, Copier, Scanner, and Fax: Inkjet Printer (20 ppm Black, 19 ppm Color, 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi, 4" x 6" Photo in 48 seconds) -- $119.99 -- is the thinking man's Epson Stylus CX4200 Inkjet Printer, Copier, and Scanner: Inkjet Printer (20 ppm Black, 19 ppm Color, 4" x 6" Photo in 48 seconds, 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi) -- $125.99 with rebate.

George Clooney is the thinking man's puking little bitch.

The Staple and the Stage Hand

Rock and roll doesn't know it (I mean, what the fuck does rock and roll know?), but its finest and most emotionally acute writer is Bobby Lightfoot.

Jesus Christ. Please read this essay. Everything you need to know about the Rock-n-Roll Life is in here. The raging egos, the blistering idiocy, the desperation of the Thinking Person in the World of Unthinking People -- it's all in here.

I want to just hug him, hold his hand, mumble comforting words. It's OK, bro. I understand. I'm with you, and always will be. All You Need Is Love.

Why It's Called the Orchestra of Sweet Regret.

(By the way, every fuckin' word of this is true. He told me at the time. It's true.)

Launch the Good Ship Inconvenient!

Now, Everybody!

For...
the Chum of Chance is a pluc-ky soul
Who shall neither whine nor ejac-u-late,
For his blood's as red and his mind's as pure
As the stripes on his bla-a-zer immaculate!

And we're off!

Our Against the Day reading group, The Chumps of Choice (one of Will's, one of Will's!), has a spanking-new blog, and we're ready to begin the festivities!

Everyone who expressed interest in our little Online Pynchonian Experiment is invited to pop over to the Chumps of Choice blog and prepare for devilment and spifflication!

Your Humble and Ob't Servant will kick off proceedings next Monday, Dec. 11, sharp. Our first week we will be examining pp. 1-25 of Pynchon's latest doorstop, moderated by li'l old moi. The second week, with the sure hand of Will Divide on the tiller, we'll delve into pp. 26-56.

At this rate, we'll steam into the Aerodrome at the annual convention of the Garçons de '71 at approximately this time next year -- bloodied but unbowed, and replete with knowledge won and friendships solidified.

Will and I do have one major-ish concern: We need folks to step up and take over moderator roles. The duties will be as light as they can possibly be: You'll be asked to introduce a small (20-30 pages, max.) section of the novel, elucidate what you can, and throw out discussion questions to the group. You will not be asked to lead any discussions, mediate in any disputes, answer any imponderable questions, or pose nude for overhead balloonists' delectation. If you'd like to help with these tasks, please email me at neddiejingo at aol dot com -- or, for that matter, just indicate your interest in Comments either here or at the Chums of Chance blog, which you could do worse than bookmark right now.

I've begun a calendar for moderator duties (best viewed in "Month" mode); if you see an opening you'd like to volunteer for, please let us know through the methods outlined above.

We will do two weeks before the holiday break. We'll go dark from Dec. 24-Jan. 7, and pick up again after we've all thanked God for the delivery of Baby Jesus.

Later Edit: QRED poses an interesting question -- one that is quite revelatory about attitudes toward Pynchon:

Speaking as someone entirely unfamiliar with this author beyond the first 5 pages of this book, which I do not yet own, I have this one innocent question: Am I likely to relysh Pynchon if I could not finysh Myst?

Fascynatingly, the answer in Yes. Pynchon is not a puzzle to be solved. He quite deftly refuses to be solved. He is a novelist, not a game-maker. What he does, rather than set puzzles, is to ask questions that have no answer. In the words of Pynchon for Newbies:

Against the Day is a large and complex work. But one must be reminded that beneath the wide-ranging erudition and complexity there beats a rock 'n' roll heart, and the daunting mystery and "high seriousness" is counterbalanced by flights of zany (and often quite dark) humor. And, of course, there is simply the sheer beauty and breathtaking power of the writing, the subtly interwoven plots and themes, the rich detail and, as Penny Padgett (who helps maintain the Thomas Pynchon Home Page) put it, "the way you can find something amazing on just about every page, the way these amazing things have a way of connecting to each other, giving you that 'aha!' experience every time you look closer."

Yes, Myst, but so, so, so much more than Myst.

Join the Chumps of Choice!

"Don't believe what They tell you. Don't believe what you've heard, and here's what you've probably heard: Thomas Pynchon's novels are brilliant but difficult; the multiple plots twist and turn and rarely resolve; there are a gazillion characters; you'll need a dictionary and an encyclopedia to understand all the scientific metaphors and obscure words. This is the rap, and there is some truth to it. But it's not the whole truth, not nearly. As one seasoned reader of Pynchon put it, 'difficult, schmifficult!'"
-- "Advice for Newbies" at ThomasPynchon.com/HyperArts

Look carefully at that cover shot. See how, under the type announcing the title & author, some ghostly images appear? Its the title & author again, twice more, in different typefaces, straining to break the surface of the paper and be seen, but suppressed by the black gothic letters of the topmost words.

Isn't that intriguing? Don't you just want to grab Pynchon by the lapels and demand an explanation?

The cryptic (ho, ho) image on the front cover is only the first of hundreds of delicious -- and oh, so often unfathomable -- conundrums that lie in wait for the intrepid reader of Pynchon's latest. It clocks in at a mere 1,100 pages of dense type -- a mighty, mighty daunting prospect indeed.

And yet...and yet...

From the jaunty boys'-adventure-story parody -- The Chums of Chance! -- of the opening pages, I'm absolutely sucked in. I resist the urge to plow forward into it, enticed by the utter wonder of Pynchon's effortlessly mesmerizing virtuosity. I want to savor; Pynchon's no spring chicken, and at an average of 12-15 years between his books, we may not get too many more of them. I can't tell you the number of times I've had to set one of his volumes down after a careful reading and parsing of one of his knotty paragraphs and whistle in wonder: How the hell did he just do that?

And he's funny! Is there any other "serious" novelist who's as funny as Pynchon? I think not, sir! But the jokes are deeply embroidered in; often constructed so you don't get them until a second, third or fourth reading. In Gravity's Rainbow, we are informed that one Brigadier Pudding, a secret coprophile, has published a book on current events titled What Can Happen in Europe. Not until my third or fourth time through the book did Pudding's true title hit me: Shit Happens in Europe! O-or there's a long and ornately filigreed paragraph in Mason & Dixon, invoking the Greek gods of Love, the Air, and the Forest -- but when you parse it out and reduce it to its simplest expression, it becomes "Ass, Gas or Grass -- Nobody Rides for Free." Then there's the lovely scene, again in Mason & Dixon, of the collier Mary & Meg feeling its way out of port on a foggy morning, following the clanging bell of a Tagareen Man -- a ship-to-ship vendor -- and you wonder why you suddenly find yourself humming:

Hey, Mister Tagareen Man,
Play a song for me
In your jingle-jangle morning
I'll come following you...

I've been jawing with Will Divide over at Huck and Jim, as enthusiastic a Pynchonian as I am -- ask him about his M&D ampersand tattoo! -- and we got to thinking: How about a group read?

So that's what I'm proposing, here. Anyone within the Jingosphere is hereby invited to kick off your shoes, read a chapter or two, and follow along in the company of friends. I know at least some of you are serious fans -- show yourselves!

The way I think it'll work is, we "assign" a few pages, say 30-40, each week, and at the end of the week we pop in and discuss. Will and I are willing to provide our blogs for the forum, and any other participants who have their own blogs are encouraged to volunteer to host for a given week.

Come on! Any takers? It'll be fun!

I note that Against the Day already has a pretty ornate page at Wikipedia, and the intrepid scholars at HyperArts have started an Against the Day wiki that looks like a really great source of information.

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During the composition of this post, it occurred to me that a nice reply to that awful lecturing-nanny grammar book Eats, Shoots and Leaves might be Eat, Shit and Die...