Boom

a sunny day

As of this morning, I have officially been blogging for 10 years. The first entry wonders if I will keep doing it (that has now been answered). The second entry--posted an hour or so after the first--has this to say: Props to My Brother for helping me sort out the mysteries of html tags. If you run across a tank of ether, send it to him for me.

To the best of my knowledge, none of you ever ran across a tank of ether. What good are you? Well, nevermind. Onwards into The Future! Where I hope you are less useless! 

Lately there has been a lot of frustration (and occasional fury) around my house, thanks to the ongoing desire to pay income tax. Weird, right? Currently, Seattle's sales tax nudges up to nearly 10% on everything but food; it's substantially more for booze, smokes and hotels, while being nonexistent on Little Debbie snacks and soda. Our car tabs are so low that southend bus service is getting cut, again, and because our property value has dropped, our property sales tax is the smallest it's been in years. Every few months, the state, county and city all revise their budgets to spend even less on crucial services. A handful of zillionaires tried to get the state to charge them income tax; a different handful of zillionaires successfully fought off that idea. I really believe--and this is being demonstrated every day now--that tax-and-spend government systems work pretty well. While we're not being shown this daily, I believe that the tax part should mean that the richer you are, the higher percentage of your income you pay, and the poorer you  are, the less you need to contribute to the state treasury. 

Usually at the Sweetie-Boom house, I'm the more furious of the two resident humans. The tax inequalities and the refusal of suburbanites to pay a more equitable share has driven Sweetie to hardcore bitterness. He's come around to the idea that smaller communities should get what they pay for. King County adds far more money to the state budget than other areas--but our funds typically go to pay for schools and roads and government in rural counties, where voters routinely shoot down attempts at tax increases. In other words, the liberal tax-and-spend urban residents are funding the infrastructure for people who are acting against our own best interests. He's right, this is dumb--but it's not a particularly nice way of thinking. And when he's talked about it to folks other than myself, people seem to take it as rather mean-spirited, when we should all be in this together, and won't someone think of the children, and so on.  

I realized today that I am happy to pay a share for people who can't financially contribute to the state's income; the poorest counties are the responsibility of all, to make sure our broke-ass farmers and fishermen and non-casino-having Native Americans and unemployed lumberjacks and laid-off millworkers don't starve, and to help their kids get through high school at least. But I am not happy to pay a share for people who won't contribute fairly (like the border-dwellers who skip down to Oregon to buy everything they own, tax-free), and I am really not happy to pay a share for people who not only won't contribute fairly but who continually insist they're already paying more than their fair share and vote against any sort of changes that would results in something a little closer to a 1:1 ratio for dollars contributed to the state treasury and dollars received from the state. 

I wish Washington had more candidates for office that were running on tax reform platforms. For now, there isn't really anything that can be done about it except to fund Seattle-centric charitable organizations, and to make this point to every non-King County resident I meet.  

 

on death and astonishment

It's closing on 3 years now that I have continually had at least one friend undergoing cancer treatment. No immediate relatives, but I'm also not talking just about "people I know"--I mean "people I see and talk with regularly, whom I quite like and some of whom I also work with regularly." In one case, I mean "a person I consider a family member even though she wasn't legally." Thanks to recent surgical results, two friends will be spending the next six months in chemo. A third, the mother of a dear friend, will be starting her second round of chemo shortly. 
Not that it changes a thing, but I am fucking tired of it. Is this what the future looks like, where someone I care about is always really sick? Neat.

My 20s now seem like an underappreciated cheerful break (which might well be true for most people's 20s). By the time I graduated from high school, I'd had 13 friends killed in car accidents and 3 friendly acquaintances had killed themselves, in addition to the deaths of my favorite uncle and my two favorite (really, my only likable) aunts. I was, shall we say, a rather justifiably goth teen. Two more high  school friends died (more car accidents) during our freshman year in college, and a boyfriend was hospitalized for craziness. Then during my 20s and early 30s, the only real health problems were my own back (non-life threatening, just hideously painful), an undiagnosable thing cropping up in my dad that's led to impenatrable speech, kids of two good friends being born with serious and life-threatening birth defects, and some devestating drug addictions in friends. Mid-30s brought minimal crises across the board, and I had the massive surgery that started the process that fixed my back. A few chronic health issues started popping up in friends and family--but nothing in comparison to the last 3 years, which has been an unending wave of cancer. 

I was astonished earlier this year when a friend (my age, give or take 6 months) wrote about our recently deceased mutual friend: it's the first time in her life she's lost someone she's close to. Really? How is that even possible, what with people's tendency to drop dead all the time? But then, there's the example of my own darling husband, whose pop had a kidney removed 20+ years ago (cancer) and a serious hospitalization some time later (related to post-surgery complications). Aside from that close call, his one experience with this sort of fear is the death of his godmother (and his mom's dear friend), which happened, give or take, he's a little vague, 20 years ago. (In both our cases, the death of our grandparents affected us only in relation to how those deaths affected our parents.) 

It strikes me that there are worse ways to deal with the inescapable tedium of illness and death than too much coffee, writing bad poetry, listening to monotone singers, wearing a lot of cozy black leather and staring out the window for hours at a time. Maybe my teen self was on to something. Bonus: now I don't have to skip any classes. Additional bonus: I can just skip the bad poetry. Last bonus: overall quality of coffee has improved since the late 80s. 

science

My own science classes--which I stopped taking at the age of 16--show a condensed version of my entire education: when I was interested, which wasn't often, I was the best student in the class, and when I wasn't interested, which was most of the time, I cruised through with a C-ish grade and a fair amount of annoyance on the part of the teacher. What registered with me is that for the most part, science classes have a nice logical order to them, and most of the information makes sense as long as you're willing to go along with preconcieved notions like gravity. You can read about rocks and then demonstrate what you've learned with actual chunks of rock. You can read about where your appendix is, and then end up with a scar in the expected place when somebody takes out your appendix. For me, it was as clear as grammar (which makes you understood, and you can tell you're being understood when people don't misunderstand you) and far more clear than math (as a group, my math teachers were incapable of answering any question that began with "why?"). 

So even though I didn't pay that much attention, there's still plenty of information that sunk into my brain. When I talk to farmers and fisheries researchers about weather or botany or chemistry or microbiology that relate to their jobs, I can ask reasonably intelligent questions and follow their answers. I  can put their answers in context with not just science but politics and history and reach reasonable conclusions--which most often are "we don't know for sure, but we are learning things to help us understand." I like conclusions like that (ahem, math teachers). 

Thanks to global climate change, and the coming Presidential election that frames science as a political argument, my daily blog reading now drives me nuts. On one side, you've got a bunch of dopes who can read about rocks, and hold chunks of those rocks in their hands, and continue to insist that the rocks in their hands are behaving in ways that are utterly contrary to what they are supposed to do according to the book. That's willful idiocy (and my math teachers all say "ahem" back to me). On the other side, at least from what I read, you've got a bunch of other dopes, who read about the rocks and are interested, but who mislaid the actual chunks of rock they could use for testing because they're too high / distracted / politically focused / all of the above. They jeer about the first group--as they should--but they don't actually know what they're talking about, either. I would be astonished if most of them have read any actual research. It's generally very dry reading. I try to wade through it on occasion, because I know how sloppily translated science can be when viewed through the mouth of a politician. Mostly, the second group focuses on making fun of the first group, rather than focusing on making the science understood and approachable by all but a tiny percentage of folks--the ones in the first group. 

percentages

I am having a hard time reconciling my agreement that 'hell is other people' with the reality that I am in the 99%. 

utility

Just had a chat with Mr. and Mrs. Jessup, followed by a walk home with Sweetie that included more chat on the topic, which was our mutual frustation with digital service providers. For years, I had a ridiculous contract with Qwest, providing an acceptable land line and utterly terrible wifi service. During those same years, they (and other friends) suffered similar problems with the competion, Comcast, who provided terrible wifi and terrible television connectivity. A year or so ago, I gave up on the devil I knew, and switched to the other company, expecting awfulness but perhaps less awful awfulness (it couldn't get worse, right?). I've gotten greatness: reliable service, no billing problems, signal strength and speeds of what I was promised. Recently, the Jessup household switched over to Qwest, and all is beautiful. So, we're all happy now. But it doesn't make sense. 

In my head, digital services are like a utility company. Like water, sewer, gas, and electric, I use wifi every day. I want it to work properly every day. I don't have to sort out a crazy pricing scheme in choosing which size compost or trash bin I want: the bigger the container, the more money it will cost. Ditto with water and electric and gas--there's a base charge for gas, but everything else is pay as you go. And it all works, and there's a long advance warning when the rates will go up, and if you want to spend less, the various utilities will help you conserve water/recycle more (it's free!)/change to CF lightbulbs. Perhaps, like right now, there's a small leak in the water line by the sidewalk; we made one phone call, and we're on the list for repair. It doesn't matter to our bill at all. With electric, it'll go out for a bit in a winter storm, but there's no nonsense like "oh, when everyone comes home from work and turns on the lights, all our lights flicker." It just works. 

With wifi, and digital phones, and apparently cable television, it seems to work on a block-by-block basis. Qwest lied about service capabilities to me in two neighborhoods. A few blocks away, my friends get service that's at least as good as they were promised. With Comcast, the other hateful provider, we have utterly reliable service while theirs was shit. So the two companies both have absurd issues with their infrastructure, and hide those problems from their customers, and lie about capabilities and service areas and create insanely priced packages where a simple land line for a phone can be valued at anywhere from $10 to $80, depending on whether you're trying to subtract it from a package or purchase it separately. The business practices of both companies are terrible. There is no alternative, as far as I know. 

I think what I'm saying is that I want digital services to be public utilities. Wouldn't that be nice?  

what a good idea

When Sweetie and I were in Mexico, we loved the collectivo--the party bus-sized bus that we rode for less than a buck each, on quite a long trip from Tulum back to Playa del Carmen. Thanks again to Atlantic Cities, I just learned that Brooklyn has a (private, illegal) similar van program, the article focuses more on a licensed (but still, weirdly, illegal) company but mentions some unlicensed ones, too. Love this so much more than any taxi/towncar service, no matter how cool the app is; Seattle seems to be awash in such things lately. (The link has a wee bit of transit history, too, if you're nerdy like that). 

praise the lord and pass the cinnabon

I would not normally urge anyone to add to crap piling up in their inboxes, but I love the new Atlantic Cities site and appreciate the regular email with a quick rundown of recent stories. Today this struck me: a dead mall has nearly as many storefront churches as it has shops. 

Down the street a few blocks is a former grocery store. That grocery store sits just within the historic district zone, which makes teardown/redevlopment a little tricky for the average developer. The site itself has no historic value, but it's bound by the height and design restrictions of the rest of the area (which is a good thing). The grocery store closed down more than a decade ago--I think it was last a Grocery Outlet--and it's too small for a new chain grocery. (Also, no chain grocery really wants a small store in a generally poor non-white neighborhood). For a few years, it was a sort-of mall, with a handful of odd shops selling t-shirts and high end sneakers and music. One by one, those all disappeared. It's been vacant for at least 2 years now. And recently, it was rented by four  businesses--3 of them are pet-related (dog spa, dog daycare, pet food) and a church (evangelical south american of some variety--its name translates to Jesus Is the Light of the World Church, and they have services at odd times all week long, and the women and girls all wear long, lacy head coverings. 

I thought the combo was funny, and in a lot of ways a fairly good one--several shops and storefront church from a long stretch of street outside the historic district are now empty, and it's likely that a developer would love to put up a 6-story apartment building in their former single-story shops. And I found it amusing to imagine furious dog barking in the background of church services, or promoting one of those "we'll care for your pets after the Rapture" businesses to the churchies. I had no idea that these odd little churches were common enough to help fill a mall.  

play ball

Normally, I don't give a rat's ass about sports as a whole. I like watching an occasional football, basketball or soccer game, and love stumbling across my neigbhorhood pee-wee football games (muttering things about concussions under my breath). But there's no team allegiance--god, I mean, I live in Seattle, home of the most hopeless teams in existence (plus the Storm! go, Storm!).

So I wasn't sure I cared too much about the cover story in the new Atlantic: The Shame of College Sports. I started reading it last night while waiting for a (very tasty) apple pie to finish baking, and ended up finishing it this morning--it's long. The sort of long-ass magazine story that only a few publications still run. In my abbreviated college experience, I knew folks who were 'tutors' to the football team players, which meant the folks I knew got paid to write papers and supply test answers to the atheletes. This drove me nuts, considering the team was a Big Deal in national sports, and this is cheating. The football players in general sure had lovely, expensive cars, and clothing, and lived in a swank dorm with their own private caterers and workout facilities. And this story--you really should go read it--really got me thinking. I know the system doesn't do the athletes any academic favors, but this piece takes the side of the players in the face of the NCAA and the schools themselves. And reveals March Madness (in particular) as a money-making crock of shit that takes serious advantage of the players. I had no idea.

leaky

I am in full support of WikiLeaks. I doubt they care much about my support or lack thereof, but Jackass Joe's comments makes me want to build a server farm just for them and name the project Irresponsible American Company.

Geeks being who they are, I'm sure I'll have to get in line behind at least a few dozen other Irresponsible American Companies. Gentlemen, I salute you.

tsa

I won't be travelling anywhere 'til January, but I've been pondering the whole full body scan thing lately. Aside from finding the whole thing invasive to the point of insanity, I've had far more x-rays in my life than an average citizen. To the point where my doc and I have conversations about "is the information we could get here important enough to merit an additional x-ray?" rather than just "let's see what's going on." This began as a concern of hers, not mine--on the scale of Things to Worry About, x-rays rated somewhere below bed bugs, Vitamin D, and what I might want to eat for dinner tonight, down towards the spot reserved for wondering why all my brown wool socks are slightly different shades of brown in some lights, and fretting about whether they are properly mated to a sock of the correct shade.

Anyway, thanks to her getting me to think that perhaps I should try to have many fewer x-rays in the next decade than I had in the previous decade, I have already decided that I'll be opting out of the scan, at least as long as my local airport uses the backscatter variety. This means I get to have some sort of invasive groping procedure as an alternative. Debating between a) yelling "ow, quit it!" throughout; b) hollering "say no to touches" and "that's not my kid code" and variations on that theme; and c) singing Giovinezza and/or Cara al Sol during the procedure.

I was momentarily hopeful about Rep. Nutbar Paul's "American Traveler Dignity Act" (that link is to his showboating statement) and then I went to look at the legislation. Short, sweet, and nearly pointless: just like Mr. Paul, except for the sweet bit.

It is newly tempting to travel in nothing but a bathrobe and slippers, however. Much like the commando-style men in kilts, I guess. Anyway, I will be planning my January travel outfit with great consideration, and will also be sure to add an extra hour or so to my travel time.