Posted inDogs

What you’re missing if you don’t have a dog

Oh, you poor cat owners. If you came home late tonight from a class, as I did, your pet probably greeted you with a meek “Meow” (if he or she even deigned to wake up). You then poured some kibble in a bowl, went on to prepare your own dinner, and now you and your cat likely are sitting in front of the TV, kitty contentedly purring on your lap. How sad. You are missing out on the "joys" of dog ownership (note the ironic quotation marks.) Let me give you an example of what having a dog can add…
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Posted inMiscellany

Cutest baby in Salem

I ran into the daughter of a friend yesterday at the 10th anniversary celebration LifeSource Natural Foods was putting on. Her baby was happily mouthing one of the free pizza samples. The sight brought back memories of how much work our washing machine put in when my own daughter was that age. Pretty quickly—instantly, in fact—the conversation turned to what also, if I were the baby’s mother, would be the first words out of my mouth when I met an acquaintance with my baby in tow. Heck, they’d be the first words when I met a stranger too. “She won…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

We’re coping in our own ways

Everything changed post-November 2. The world is different now. Much scarier. But as Mark Morford says it so well in his inimitable style, the Neo-Con and Christian Right terrorists win if we moderates and liberals don’t go about our lives with energetic confident abandon. Just because the nation’s Moron/Genius Bell Curve had a marked deviation from normal on election day doesn’t mean that those who voted for Kerry have to be affected by the idiocy of a majority of voters. So Laurel and I are successfully coping in our own ways, after a few days of post-election did-that-really-happen? attempted withdrawal…
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Posted inEntertainment

“Before Sunset”

I couldn’t help but think of “My Dinner With Andre” as we watched “Before Sunset” at Salem’s one and only artsy film theatre, Salem Cinema. “Before Sunset” is almost non-stop conversation between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy). Appropriately, and as she usually does, the Salem Cinema proprietor came into the theatre to talk about the movie before it started, one of the many things I like about how she runs her business. Currently two movies are being shown concurrently, so she also plugged “The Story of the Weeping Camel.” Glancing at the small audience she said to a…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Need to find my Inner Canada

The last thing Laurel said last night before she went to sleep was, “We’ve got to move to Canada.” And the first thing she said upon waking up this morning was, “I’m going to stay in bed all day with the sheets pulled up over my head.” Diagnosis: severe post-election-stress syndrome. No doubt lots of other Kerry supporters are feeling the same way today. I’m in a bit better shape than Laurel, but I’m scheduled for my annual physical exam this afternoon and had to be honest when I filled out the “Review of Systems” section on the Patient Health…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Can’t believe I canvassed for Kerry

After I made my commitment to motionlessness with Move On PAC phone canvassing, I can’t believe that Laurel was able to drag me out Saturday morning to do door-to-door canvassing for the Democratic Party’s Carry Oregon campaign. But here’s the proof, sort of. Laurel is barely visible on the far right, and I’m hidden behind the camera, per usual. We were instructed to meet at a south Salem school at 10:00 am to get our marching orders from the party organizer in the middle of the photo. She tried to hand both Laurel and me a clipboard, meaning that we’d…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Geekiest electoral-vote predictor site

I’ve made the rounds of quite a few sites that predict the outcome of the presidential race. My favorite, because it is the geekiest (and consequently, most believable) is the geekly named "Electoral College Meta-Analysis." It’s the product of a Princeton professor whose specialties are biophysics and neuroscience. Dr. Wang says that he makes heavy use of probability and statistics in analyzing complex experimental data, so I’m ready to believe his regularly updated meta-analysis of state polls. Especially because today he is showing Kerry over Bush, 281 to 257 (with undecideds included). If you visit his site, scroll down to…
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Posted inRecreation

Police do read weblogs

Sender: “Black Butte Police” Subject: “Weblogs” This header definitely caught my eye as I scanned my Outlook inbox for new email messages. What had I done? And why was the Black Butte Police force coming after me for doing it? I skipped past the daily deluge of plaintive missives from the Kerry campaign, Democratic Party, and MoveOn.Org to click on this mysterious communication. The message was short: “By the way, we do read weblogs! Your citation will be forthcoming….Just joking. Gil Zaccaro, Chief Black Butte Ranch PD” I was immediately appreciative to Chief Zaccaro for adding “just joking.” But now…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Philosophy

Please God, no more sky-pointing

Last night I decided that a total eclipse of the moon was more common than the Red Sox winning the World Series, so I dashed inside at 8:00 pm to finish watching the real wonder of the evening. The last innings were as satisfying as I had hoped. For while my Red Sox fandom only began eight games ago, when they were down three-zip to the Yankees, it has been as genuine as it has been brief. It’s easy to like a team that calls themselves “idiots.” The linked article says, “Last year's Red Sox used the theme ‘Cowboy Up’…
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Posted inHome life

Well, that was fun

Getting there right on time and then waiting for three hours. Uncomfortable chairs. Having to fill out forms that ask personal questions. Outdated reading material. Other people being called while you sit…and sit…and sit. Why, I found that jury duty is just like going to the doctor. Except you go to the doctor because you have a problem that needs to be fixed. With jury duty, the problem is that you are there and you want to be somewhere else. At least, this seemed to be the case with all of my fellow jury duty selectees this morning, and it…
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Posted inHome life

Tai Chi cures jury duty blues

Tai Chi, it works. After a month of once-a-week classes, and some episodic at-home practicing, a real test of Tai Chi’s efficacy came this evening. For at 5:10 pm I listened to the recorded message at the Marion County jury duty office. And at 5:11 pm I was seriously bummed out. “Those called for jury duty on Tuesday, October 26 with numbers from 1 to 315 are to report by 8:00 am.” My number is 75. Bummer! 8:00 am. Double bummer!! I’m usually not even out of bed by then, much less meditated, showered, fed, dressed, and drived (to downtown…
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Posted inHome life

I go dumpster diving

I spent about eight hours yesterday dumpster diving. Or, more accurately, dumpster loading. With a few other folks I helped a friend get rid of lots of unwanted stuff that was clogging up her carport and basement. My job ended up being the trash arranger. People would leave junk on the end of the industrial-sized dumpster, and I’d walk back and forth with loads of discards, carefully placing material for maximum space utilization. This is me and my dumpster early on in our relationship. We got to know each other much more intimately as the day wore on, which ended…
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Posted inHome life

The Tao of tree debris

Into everyone’s life a long-standing large oak someday will fall, either literally or metaphorically. And likely, more than once. For whatever lives will die. What seems so strong, so dependable, so firmly rooted that we can count on it to be a lifelong faithful companion—at any moment it may topple over (hopefully when we’re not leaning on it). A few weeks ago one of our ancient oaks, perhaps several hundred years old, fell into the branches of a neighboring oak tree. Growing in a semi-wetland, its roots rotted. Several years ago we had cleared the area of blackberries. Who knows?…
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Posted inHome life

Harmony finds a home

I’m pleased to report that Harmony, my art purchase at the Sisters Harvest Faire, has found a home. Harmony has been migrating from outside to inside, from vertical to horizontal, and doesn’t seem to have minded all this instability. Of course, what else would you expect from Harmony? Laurel, though, hasn’t come home yet from an all-day workshop in Portland. Since she is the final arbiter of art placement both within and without the Hines household, an end to Harmony’s wanderings is not yet guaranteed. My plan is to remain silent and let Harmony herself gently announce her presence on…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Political potpourri

I really have to start getting my mind focused on more important things in life, like the Red Sox - Yankees game tonight (every fall I briefly become a baseball fan for the seventh game of championship series). But first I’ve got to share a potpourri of political postings. Wow! Maria Shriver must have taken the pledge at Votergasm.org, which I talked about yesterday, one step further. Votergasm wants people to withhold sex from non-voters, but Maria reportedly did the same for a husband who told people to vote for the wrong person. Arnold Schwarzenegger is saying that “Bush has…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Sex for voting

The folks at Votergasm.org have come up with a brilliant idea that is sure to sway the swing(ing) voter. If you choose the “American Hero” option when you take the Votergasm Pledge, this is what you commit to: I pledge to have sex with a voter on election night and withhold sex from non-voters for the next four years. OK, sign me up, since Laurel mailed in her ballot today. Votergasm offers two other options for the less patriotic, and reveals a hitherto hidden Constitutional right in a “disclaimer” section: Per the U.S. Constitution, children conceived on election night are…
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Posted inEntertainment

“Saved!”

“Saved” is one of those damn-the-hypocrites movies that is most enjoyable when the viewer doesn’t consider that the hypocrites being damned might well include himself or herself. Laurel and I certainly enjoyed watching fundamentalist Christians get skewered in this newly released DVD. But adhering to the adage, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone,” the film also made me consider to what extent I believe I myself am saved (leaving aside the more basic question of “from what?”), and others aren’t. When I watched the student assembly in American Eagle Christian High School, filled with “Praise Jesus!” calls…
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Posted inHome life

Motionless with MoveOn Pac

I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill while our traditional Sunday whole wheat spaghetti dinner is cooking, so I’ll use it to assuage my motionless-with-MoveOn Pac guilt. Right now Laurel is on the phone fulfilling her volunteer duties, making phone call after phone call to registered voters in our precinct who have been identified through some mysterious computerized process as possibly leaning toward Kerry, but not particularly likely to vote. I hate to call strangers. I don’t even like to call friends all that much. I like communicating via weblog postings and email much better. So if you’re a voter in…
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Posted inPhilosophy

I become a Taoist

I’ve decided to convert to Taoism. In accord with the spirit of my new faith, I’m taking my conversion pretty lightly. Probably I’ve always been a Taoist. Probably everyone is. But who cares whether what I just said makes any sense or not? This is the nice thing about Taoism. One of the early Taoist sages, Chuang Tzu, is called the “genius of the absurd.” He’s famous for saying that he dreamed he was a butterfly, then awoke and was himself again. But he didn’t know whether formerly there had been a man dreaming he was a butterfly, or if…
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Posted inMiscellany

Don’t pass up these great Internet gifts

Thank you, o gloriously generous Internet! For today I received two great gifts from you: (1) a free download of the beta Google Desktop Search, which is so wonderful I would say I am speechless, if it weren’t for this posting; and (2) a link from a fellow Oregon blogger that led me to The Smoking Gun story, “O’Reilly Hit with Sex Harass Suit,” which contains marvelously explicit descriptions of the sexual fantasies Bill O’Reilly purportedly shared with an unwilling staffer. The Google gift seems to work precisely as promised. After this teeny-tiny (for what it does) 400kb download installed…
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