Category: Life

The headline of today’s Greene County Commonwealth took me aback:

Briefly.

I knew the head of development over in Republic shared my last name, but she is no close relation, and we’ve never run into each other.

The paper is reporting above the fold that she left her job three weeks ago, but it certainly makes it out like there’s more to the story.

Hopefully, not enough that people will come banging on my door for anything.

This weekend, my beautiful wife and I attended the Springfield Contemporary Theatre presentation of Black Comedy.

In this comedy, a British sculptor named Miller is going to have a busy night: In addition to meeting a wealthy collector who can make his career, he’s also meeting the father of his fiance. To tony the place up, he’s borrowed some furniture from his antique collector neighbor. Before any of the important people arrive, however, the power goes out and his flat is left in darkness. His neighbor returns early and an ex-girlfriend show up, and a comedy occurs in the dark apartment.

As staged, the play took place in the blacked out apartment, but to the characters, it was darkness. At the beginning and end of the play, when there is light, the actors moved in darkness. This allowed the audience to see a lot of the slapstick tumbling and precise movement where the characters could not see anything. The performances were good, and the lead–Miller–was outstanding.

The Springfield Contemporary Theatre is celebrating its 22nd season, but I’d never really heard of it before. The venue is a very intimate little room downtown, with about a hundred seats. Maybe. We sat in the third row, and we could easily have shaken hands with the actors. A number of the theatre patrons knew each other, and it was the most intimate setting for drama that I’ve ever experienced. It was a smaller venue than the theatre company I volunteered with in the last century, where they played to church gyms which were cavernous by comparison.

Now that I’ve found this little theatre group, I’m going to have to attend it frequently.

Someone was cleaning out a computer room and gave me a little plastic box for 3.5″ floppy disks. Probably as a gag.

However, I have far more twenty-year-old disks that can fit in it.

I pretty much have all my old downloads from BBSes circa 1991 as well as driver disks for every component I bought from 1990 through, what, 2003 when CDs replaced the floppies.

So the little disk holder was cute, but someone really misunderestimated my pack rattery.

Every week, our church has a Children’s Bulletin with puzzles aligned with the message to preoccupy young people in the service.

This week, children were invited to help align the Stargate so Jesus could go free the Israelites from their slavery under the space-god Ra:

Well, that’s what it looks like to a certain kind of science fiction fan/fellow who always wanted to be more like James Spader.

I guess in reality, the children are supposed to skip to every something letter to spell out a bible verse.

Mr. Hill just celebrated 20 years of blogging. Me, I’ve only been at this stream for 13 years, but I’ve appeared online for almost twenty years myself.

Here are a couple of early bits elsewhere:

Role Playing Research in the newsletter of the Central Nebraska Writers Network.

Meeting Robert B. Parker at Bullets and Beer, a Spenser fan site from way back.

After almost 20 years of working on the Internet and blogging and whatnot, anyone who Googles me is going to find a lot of feldercarb out there.

Continue reading “THIS LAUNDRY TRICK WILL CATCH YOU BY SURPRISE EVERY TIME!” →

Continue reading “THIS ONE TRICK CAN SAVE YOU TRILLIONS OF (ZIMBABWEAN) DOLLARS ON YOUR NEXT PAINTING PROJECT!” →

On Thursday, Lileks bleated about a label he found in an antique store:

Antique? I used to work at Drug Package, Inc. What does that make me?

Back in 1996, I after a string of retail jobs, I answered a blind box ad in a newspaper for a warehouse shipping/receiving guy in O’Fallon, Missouri. I went to what might have been a poke-him interview, where a blue collar job poster wants to know why some college puke applied for it. The guy asked what I hoped for in the future, and I said I’d hoped to be promoted to printer.

So he hired me as a printer, and after a couple of weeks I was operating a Didde-Glaser 175 two-color Web offset printing press with a turn-over bar for two-sided print and perf wheels.

I was printing prescription blanks and forms; the labels came from lithographic presses elsewhere on the floor.

I worked that job for two years because I’d told the guy hiring me that he didn’t have to worry about me taking the training and going elsewhere right away (I promised to stay a couple years, so I did). The job was fortuitously placed; although it was forty-five miles from where I lived in South St. Louis County, it was a little less than half way to Columbia, Missouri, where the girl I was dating at the time lived (it was an hour home or an hour and a half to see her, which I often did). And that relationship worked out even though the job was not the longterm thing for me that it was for the others there (one fellow had worked there since the War, and the war was not Viet Nam or Korea).

At any rate, it would be odd to see things related to one’s adulthood coming up in antique stores. Although, as a frequent visitor to antique malls, I realize that the stuff one finds in them is often thrift store items with higher prices. Also, Drug Package has been in business for over 130 years, and the label Lileks found bears the St. Louis location on it, and from what I understand, Drug Package moved to O’Fallon in the 1960s or 1970s. So perhaps I’m not that old after all.

So Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were very windy down here in the Ozarks. It always gets pretty windy during the springtime, and this El Niño-inspired winter, it’s been springlike and windy. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we had pretty solid blowing with some gusts prolly up to 40 miles an hour, and there’s not much on the west half of Nogglestead to slow them down. On Wednesday morning in the freezing twilight, I went out to my truck, parked in the driveway, to get my sunglasses; I’d left them in the pickup on Tuesday after having picked the children up for school.

As I opened the truck door, a veritable whirlwind of Pokémon cards whipped up and out across the front lawn. The boys had left them in the truck after their trip the evening before, and the surging wind caught them and threw them across an acre of land. So I did slammed the door and chased the blowing cards. Gotta collect ’em all.

When all was said and done, I could barely close my frozen fingers around an inch and a half stack of the cards.

In the days in between, I’ve continued to find cards in the yard.

I’m trying to collect them before the children realize what happened to them. More importantly, before any blow into the farm road slightly ahead of a tunnel-visioned second grader and a septic pumper truck.

I’ve never played Pokémon. But I have lived it.

Concept for a movie. Okay, not a movie, but a great climactic chase scene:

The good guys and the bad guys are at a construction site. The bad guys try to flee in one of those tractor-trailers pulling an oversize load excavator. The good guys pursue in another of the same. After jockeying for position on the way out of the construction site, the bad guy climbs out of the cab and makes his way into the cab of the excavator and starts it up. As he starts trying to use the excavator to attack the other truck, good guy #2 (Mel Gibson as Martin Riggs again? One can hope!) climbs out of the cab of his truck and does the same, and we’ve got two excavators fighting from the back of trucks as they twist and turn on mountain roads. Box. Office. Gold.

I bet this is how Michael Bay works.

It’s funny how my brain sees things in patterns, detecting similar things and assigning significance to them. I’ve written a little before about Jeopardy! being the nexus of all human knowledge, but that was really an example of it. I’d see something on Jeopardy, and then my brain would flag it when I saw it again, usually soon thereafter.

Yesterday, I got a dose of this brain matchmaking.

I went to the library with my children, and there’s a Rubik’s Cube, something I hadn’t seen for a while. Then we go to the dojo, and one of the kids there is playing with a Rubik’s Cube. Have they become the thing again?

So I read the latest issue of St. Louis Magazine, and one article ("Selling Grant’s Farm") mentions the addax (an antelope with twisting horns). Then I read the latest Forbes magazine, and an article in that magazine ("In The Oil Bust, This Texas Tycoon Sees A Land Of Opportunity") also mentions the addax.

So not only did I see two things in different places, but I did it twice.

Perhaps there’s a Philip K. Dick-style novel in it somewhere.

Spotted at the Walmart:

The boxes on the top shelf contain 44 bags. The boxes on the middle shelf contain 36 bags. At the same price.

Yes, one has force-flex bags and the other has scented bags, but I saw the same thing for each corresponding type (that is, there were boxes of 36 scented bags for $6.98 and boxes of 44 force-flex for $6.98, but they weren’t together for a quick snap.

Perhaps it’s a tax on people who don’t look at the boxes and shelf prices carefully.

All I know is that it made me pause for longer than it should have when I was trying to just get some garbage bags. I looked like a discerning refuse containment customer as I looked very carefully to see what the heck was going on and why the different-sized boxes had the same price. And I couldn’t find an answer.

It’s probably that the smaller boxes will be replacing the larger at the same price, but they’ve got both slotted till they sell out of the larger quantity boxes. I think so because I’m cynical.

After a number of months away from the gym, I’ve returned this week Monday and Tuesday and coupled some weight lifting with martial arts classes at night.

Current status:

After a brief workout this morning at the YMCA, I grabbed a cup of coffee for the ride home. When I got into my truck, I realized that the normal small-sized Styrofoam cup did not fit exactly in the cup holder; there was a little space between the edges of the cup and the edges of the holder. Enough room for the cup to slide around and slosh the interior of the console and between the seats with house blend.

This was my ride home:

That’s from the film License to Drive, a 1988 film that was on Showtime, so I watched it a lot, especially since I didn’t have a license to drive and didn’t have anything else to do down the gravel road called Ruth Drive in House Springs but to watch the films on Showtime over and over again. I’m not saying it influenced me heavily, but I wrote a Commodore 64 program that simulated the computer written portion of the test in the film, and I was so smitten with the young Heather Graham that I married the first hot chick named Heather that I dated.

At any rate, I didn’t spill a drop of the coffee, either.

So, elsewhere than Dustbury, Charles said:

"So this is 'over capacity'. How wonderful!" ~ nobody, ever

— Charles G Hill (@dustbury) January 18, 2016

Immediately, I thought of this exception:

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 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.

Although, to be honest, it’s not directly “”So this is ‘over capacity’. How wonderful!” But it’s close.

Not cited: All those business people and MBAs who think that too much traffic is a good thing because that’s a lot of customers and brand loyalty who won’t immediately abandon you for TheOtherGuyzWidgetz.com which is still operational. Also, their solution to the problem is to tell someone else to solve the problem, and that seems rather easy. Especially when they say that and try to convince the underlings that that moisture they feel is not rain, but anointing oil.

So I noticed one night that one of the tail lights on our Toyota Highlander was out, and it’s due for licensing this month, so I figured I’d better replace it pronto. One of the license plate lights was out, too, and the auto service center offered to fix it for me for elebenty billion dollars.

I stopped at the local Pep Boys and picked up replacement bulbs, no problem, although they’re sold in two packs. So I quipped to the clerk that I wouldn’t own the vehicle long enough to need the second bulb. Hah. Events would prove otherwise.

You see, aside from the recent experience I had wherein I managed to shear off a bolt while changing a tire, turning a simple procedure into a tow-and-repair situation, I figured it would be no problem in replacing the bulbs. Why, the vehicle has a little hatch in the cargo area that gives the user easy access to the lights. Listen, son, I’ve replaced a bunch of parts on cars with few problems, including batteries, head lights, tail lights, a radiator, a starter, brake pads…. Although I don’t pretend to know what I’m doing, sometimes I’ve fumbled the pieces into place right and only a few times have made ghastly but fortunately not deadly errors.

So, in the comfort of my garage, I popped open the little hatch, and:

That’s almost what it looks like except the hatch that gives you access to the light bulbs is far smaller, so you have to work with fingertips at awkward angles and no strength. The individual lights are in little sockets that screw into the assembly. To replace it, you unscrew the socket, pop the old bulb out, pop the new bulb in, and screw the socket back into the assembly. Done!

Well, it’s a lot easier to explain it after you’ve done it successfully or even watched a YouTube video on it. I’m sure I looked like a thoughtful monkey as I stroked my chin and tried to suss it out without breaking anything.

Eventually, after the monolith appeared and Strauss echoed in the garage, I got the new bulb in, put the socket in, gave it a little turn, and put the head lights on, and…. Nothing. Well, not nothing, but no tail light.

So I gave it a little turn and started to pull it out, when….

The light bulb, which I hadn’t completely popped into the socket, dropped into the tail light assembly, between the lens and the thing you see above with only a small hole a little bigger than the light bulb at its narrowest. I thought about I could try to get it out: I used to have a computer part tweezer that had long pinchers; I could put some tape or adhesive on a stick; I could try to vacuum it out with a shop vac. Or, heaven forbid, I could take the whole tail light assembly off and take the lens off to get it out.

Or I could do the Brian J. thing.

So I put the second, what I thought was superfluous, light bulb in the socket very tightly (hey, it snaps when it’s all the way in! how clever!) and then recognize that the socket is keyed with two smaller notches to ensure you can only fit it in the right way to make the electrical connection when you screw it in, screwed the socket in correctly, and tried the head lights. The new tail light worked.

I figure the small bulb is not large enough to damage the inserted bulb, the assembly, or the lens itself. The real question is whether the rattle will drive me nuts, proclaiming my vehicular maintenance ability deficiency for everyone to hear (or at least for me alone to hear like the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart").

My beautiful wife was the first to drive it, and she said she didn’t hear anything.

But the next morning, I heard it. The rattling of the Tell-Tale bulb!

So far, though, it’s not enough to make me want to tear apart the tail light assembly completely.

Instead, I’ll just turn the music up.

I noticed too late that this bag of charcoal was a limited edition.

I might as well have just set the contents on fire.

Not only did I not notice it was a limited edition, but I did not use it for its designed purpose of tailgating which might put me in violation of Federal law.

The new bags of Morton System Saver II water softener pellets come in new, easier handling packaging!

Of course, that’s 25 pound bag of pellets for the same price as the old, awkward 40 pound bag.

You know, designers and copywriters can sleep at night. They’re not really lying. They’re just putting the best face forward on a corporate decision.

Me, on the other hand, I’m just a consumer. I have to deal with this nonexistent inflation. If only I were the type of person influenced by exclamation points, perhaps I’d be a happier person.

When this song comes on the radio:

And a cherubic voice from the back seat says, “Why does he want to drive 55?”

Now, if we still lived in St. Louis, I might be able to parry this off by referring to Interstate 55, but not here in southwest Missouri.

Instead, I have to tell him about the 1970s, the Arab Oil Embargo, and arbitrary limits enacted by the Federal government through chicanery and the threat of withholding money from the states and their dependence upon that system of wealth redistribution for basic government services.

The past was a strange place. No stranger than the present, actually, but exotic because it was a different strange.

Spotted at Walmart yesterday (but before the fusillade):

Christmas stakes.

For when you have to kill a vampire but want to remain festive.