Posted inEntertainment Home life

American Splendor/I learn to wash lettuce

Recently we rented a DVD of “American Splendor,” a great movie about the life of Harvey Pekar, who wrote comic books about the life of Harvey Pekar, and who appears in the film at various times playing himself, Harvey Pekar, while at other times an actor (Paul Giamatti) plays the life of Harvey Pekar. All this intermingling of real life and cinematic life reflects the theme of the comic book (called, naturally, “American Splendor,” like the movie), which could be stated as: life is art is life is art. Laurel didn’t like the film as much as I did, perhaps…
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Posted inHome life

I’m the king of the world!

King of the world, that’s who I am all right, in my own mind at least (where it counts). For I have replaced a rusted-out leaking drain on our laundry room sink, notwithstanding my normally plumbing-challenged handyman skills. There was something tremendously fulfilling about successfully dismantling the decrepit parts and installing the fresh new parts, adding the dollop of plumber’s putty, tightening the, um, whatever-you-call-its that needed to be tightened, turning on the water, and hearing the water run down the drain with nary a drip. The list of those I’d like to thank for enabling me to achieve this…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Caveat subjector

OK, “subjector” isn’t really Latin, but I wanted to add a P.S. to my last posting about subjectivity, and “let the subjective person beware” sounds so much more profound in pseudo-Latin. I’ve been thinking that my Howard Dean-like cry, “scream your subjectivity to the sky!” needs a qualifier: make sure you allow everyone else to do their own screaming along with you. This, it dawned on me as I did my deep thinking while driving around today, is what makes the difference between irritating ranting and raving (per conservative talk radio) and interesting dialogue and discussion (per public broadcasting). A…
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Posted inSustainability

Relativity and sustainability

When I turned to the Opinion section of the Statesman-Journal this morning, the main editorial was called “Fairview plan would pay dividends for city.” Since Laurel and I are investors in Sustainable Fairview Associates, the LLC (limited liability company) that is trying to purchase and develop the 275 acre Fairview property, naturally I was interested in what the newspaper had to say. On the whole, I had to agree that the sustainable community that hopefully will emerge at Fairview is a wonderful opportunity to showcase Salem and spark the local economy. But since we’ve been so intimately involved with this…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Cancel conservative cranks

I’m all for free speech, but that doesn’t mean I have to listen to, or read, all the hateful crap that conservative cranks, um, crank out. As I’ve observed before, conservative “talk” radio really doesn’t involve much talking between two people. Rather, the talking is almost entirely one-sided, with the cranky host using the public airwaves to rant and rave about his or her personal feelings, and having the power to shut off the voice of any caller who doesn’t adhere to the Republican party line. Wednesday afternoon, while driving around in our Toyota Prius, I allowed KXL’s Lars Larson…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Secret of happiness revealed

An editor of a (non-commercial) spiritual magazine asked me to write an article for the upcoming issue. A friend had suggested to her that some of my HinesSight postings might provide fodder for the article, and she found my Mini Cooper ravings, which she thought might indeed be massaged into something approaching a mixture of humor and wisdom—likely more the former than the latter. I took her advice and just finished my mini opus, “Secret of Happiness Revealed.” It ties together the gist of several of my postings into an examination of the deeper meaning of Mini Cooper longing. Much…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Here comes the sun…appeal is done

Yesterday was bright for us for several reasons, not least of which was the Marion County Commissioners’ 3-0 rejection of the Nielsen’s request for them to hear an appeal of the denial of their lot partition request that Laurel and I have been fighting (along with other supportive neighbors) for what seems like eternity—but hasn’t been quite that long, I’m sure. We got ourselves down to the Commissioners’ meeting room at the ungodly hour, for us, of 9:00 am, wanting to be there in time to hear Roger Kaye make use of the public comment time at the beginning of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Oregon, we (don’t) love dreamers

If you don’t live in Oregon, you may not know that our new marketing/branding slogan, or tag line, is now “Oregon, we love dreamers.” Yeah, right. Oregon loves the predictable, the status quo, the uncreative, the simplistic answers to serious problems. Clear evidence for this is tonight’s apparent 60-40% defeat of Measure 30, the 2003 legislature’s hard-fought bipartisan solution to our budget problems that was referred to the voters after an out-of-state anti-tax group stuck its nose into Oregon’s affairs. Because most people are selfish, and don’t bother to inform themselves about complex issues, it looks like 60% of the…
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Posted inSustainability

What Mars? What environment?

I enjoyed the terminally cranky, but (almost) always enjoyable Mark Morford as he shared his latest rant on Bush’s anti-environmental policies. It truly is amazing, how the right wing has made conservation anathema for conservatives. Shouldn’t conservatives be committed to conserving? You would think so. My dear deeply conservative mother, who had me reading National Review before Anderson’s Fairy Tales, or so I remember in my increasingly muddled recollections of my childhood, was thrifty and concerning about waste in that good old-fashioned New England fashion. If she were alive today, I think she would be writing empassioned letters to the…
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Posted inEntertainment

Cold Mountain

Whew…just got back from seeing “Cold Mountain,” and I’m exhausted. Almost feel like I’ve lived through the Civil War, though I don’t think the actual Civil War lasted as long as the movie. Or maybe it felt that long to me because the only major battle scene was right at the start, and the remaining two and a quarter hours mostly featured Jude Law walking, extremely slowly, back to Cold Mountain and Nicole Kidman, while Kidman learned from Renee Zellweger learned how to live just fine, thank you, without a man around. Proving that Laurel’s liking of any film is…
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Posted inPlotinus Writing/Weblogs

Plotinus passed on

Anti-climatic but deeply meaningful: that’s how I recently viewed the slowly moving “…% complete” Norton Antivirus indicator as my rather large (2 mb) Return to the One file passed into cyberspace on its way to Charles King, the book designer who works with Unlimited Publishing—with whom I’m co-publishing the book, under the guise of Adrasteia Publishing, my newly established (and largely illusory) publishing identity. So now the book is out of my hands, though it will return to me, certainly, for review, proof-reading, and (ugh…) preparation of an index after the interior design is complete. After years of work on…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Entertainment Sustainability

On remaining in a room

Pascal said something to the effect that all of our miseries stem from our not being able to remain quietly in a room. I’ve always assumed that he meant in a room alone with ourselves, but lately I’ve begun to extend this concept in an unified effort to explain some seemingly unrelated phenomena and personal experiences. Such as…why John Kerry and John Edwards did so well in the Iowa caucuses…why I can’t stand going to meetings of Sustainable Fairview Associates…why Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson hit it off, eventually, in “Somethings Gotta Give.” Why? Because misery also is remaining in…
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Posted inMiscellany

Angry bed positions

It’s always a pleasure to get a fresh email message from Mil’s Mailing List (written by Mil Millington, the creator of Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About, a wildly creative and funny website that I’ve recommended before). Here’s Mil’s take on Angry Bed Positions. I think he has made a real contribution toward advancing mankind’s understanding of this little-studied, but hugely important, sphere of non-verbal human interaction.
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Posted inNeighborhood

Appeal successful!

All in all, a pretty good day for Laurel…and Brian, and the neighborhood. On my next walk up the driveway, to get the mail around 2:00, I saw a manila envelope from the Marion County Hearings Officer—the long-awaited decision on our long-fought appeal of the attempted Nielsen lot partitioning in Spring Lake Estates. First we had won; then on a first appeal by the Nielsens we lost; and now we had made a second appeal, which we were pretty confident about, since all the newly assembled facts were on our side. Laurel was nervous opening the letter, as was I.…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Front page Laurel

What a nice surprise, to be walking down the driveway after retrieving the Statesman-Journal newspaper this morning, idly glancing at a story on the front page about how the Salem’s new mayor is doing in her first year, and out pops a familiar name: Laurel Hines. I read, “Mayor Taylor seems to be too limited in her vision and too afraid of upsetting a few powerful business interests to lead Salem to a truly healthy future,” southeast Salem resident Laurel Hines said.” This was after the story began with a few positive comments, so Laurel got to lead off the…
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Posted inScience

Putting things in perspective

A few nights ago, when I was just about at the peak of my feeling-sorry-for-myself bell curve, since we’ve had to put up with snow/ice/power outages for a couple of weeks now, I picked up two science magazines that helped me put things in perspective. In the November 22 issue of New Scientist (a great weekly science magazine published in Great Britain, so you get a continental, meaning liberal/anti-Bush, perspective in the editorials) I read the cheerily titled piece, “Doomsday Scenario.” Here I learned that all of humanity’s advances during the last 10,000 years have occurred during wonderfully temperate, and…
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Posted inDogs

Kinky sexual behavior

With a title like that, I’m pretty sure this weblog posting will be read. Especially accompanied by the titillating (to dogs, at least) photo of Serena and her new canine boy-toy, Rocco. Yesterday, in freezing weather, made worse by an even-more-freezing wind chill, I dedicated myself to capturing this rather rare animal behavior: a spayed female humping away on a neutered male, who, by his expression, is either in a state of erotic pleasure or, more likely, complete bemusement. So here we are, with several inches of snow/ice on the ground, and freezing rain coming down right now, and we’ve…
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Posted inHome life

Goddess, hear our prayers!

Woke up this morning to alarm clock beeping…no reason to set it, except to be up in time by noon to watch Rose Bowl…no, didn’t set it…slumber thoughts slowly awaken: electricity is off, again!...then on, then off, then on, then off…now on, perhaps the Electricity Goddess has heard our prayers…must pray harder…would offer first-born son if had one…will you take a daughter, Goddess? Name is Celeste, lives in North Hollywood (just kidding C.; actually have offered to loan you to Goddess until cold weather is over)…already being blamed by Laurel for this snow event, just like last time: “You were…
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Posted inHome life

I’ve found my true love

It took almost all of 2003, but on December 30—yesterday at 5:00 pm—I found my true love. And the greatest thing about it is that Laurel embraced her also. A threesome! Cool! Also hot, because sparks fly when you touch her in a certain way. Her name? Electricity. Along with tens of thousands of other people in the mid-Willamette valley, we lost our power about 3:00 am early Monday morning. We got it back at 5:00 pm Tuesday afternoon. So we had some 38 hours to ponder how much Electricity does for us, and how under-appreciated she had been in…
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Posted inHome life

A sign we’ve been married 13 years

This is indeed a sign that our marriage is well into a second decade—when I went into Morlan’s Plumbing last month, ordered a “whisper quiet” Panasonic bathroom exhaust fan, and said, “It’s a Christmas present for my wife.” Strangely, the Morlan employees seemed surprised at this, and even told me that this was the first time they were aware of a ceiling fan being a gift. Well, they don’t know Laurel, and how sensitive she is to loud noises. She carries ear plugs in her purse, and puts them on in a theatre whenever a movie sound track rises above…
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