Flies and such

Dear Hank,

Re: Flies and such

September 18, 2011

In the original Unix operating system they had little pithy sayings called “message of the day” or in geek-speak “motd.” One of them was “Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas.”

Get it? No? Then you’ve never been attacked by a swarm of time flies obviously, similar to Hawkins time blackberries but different. Never mind, I digress.

Last evening a fly kept landing on me. It was a common ordinary housefly. It would land and take off. I could feel it. Sometimes I saw it and tried to swat it. I tried the direct slap approach, the grab just above it and watch it fly into my hand approach. Nothing worked. Then that night it kept up it’s assault. I decided to get out my latest weapon in the war on flying bugs, the electric flyswatter.

The idea is simple. It’s a miniature tennis style racket with strings of wire running horizontally in parallel to each other, load in two double A batteries and press the switch and the wires are turned into “wires of electric death” (my term not the company that made the device.) One swat, one contact and zizzz – he (or she) is dead. How cool is that?

The sheet that comes with this new fangled bug zapper warns you that this is not a toy and children should not be given it. I picture an episode of the Simpsons where they run around swatting each other and leaving red stripe parallel burn marks on each other. Or I can see trying to swat the fly and hitting myself, or my computer and shorting it out.

It turns out trying to have the swatter ready to go and seeing the fly is much harder than you would think. It reminds me of a scam ad I heard about as a boy: “kills insects on contact!” It was a block of wood and a mallet. Hold the insect on the block of wood and smash it with the mallet – simple. With my electronic swatter I end up “woofing” the air. The fly is still at large. But I haven’t put any burns marks on myself, or those around me, and I haven’t shorted out my computer. For all that I am thankful.

Gotta go, a fly is calling.

B

Charles Bukowski

Dear Hank,

September 14, 2011

I’m reading Hollywood by Charles Bukowski. His main character is Henry Charles Chinaski or “Hank” for short. It’s him in fictional form. Bukowski is one of those writers who somehow I became aware of. Actually, I’d say he was on the periphery of my awareness, like being aware of a town that’s next to the town that’s next to the town you think you passed through once.

I remember you told me about him, or mentioned him, or I asked you about him, and you aced like you knew all about him, without being able to tell me anything about him. I went to Barnes and Noble to see if they had any of his books and found a foot and a half of shelf space taken up by his works, all different! What to get? I couldn’t decide and walked out leaving them where they were.

Then we got an ipad; or is it Ipad? No, iPad –whatEver. After loading all kinds of stuff on it I tried loading some books on it. I then promptly started playing Fuzzle for five months. I’m just pulling out of that phase and began looking at a few of the “books” I downloaded in the initial stage of acquisition. You know that stage where you say to yourself, “Hum, I wonder if reading a book on this thing is any good?”

I originally bought it to try writing on it (It would be better than carrying a computer around.) That was a disaster. The keyboard was a display on the screen. It was too small, even when placed in the horizontal position and the keypad was way too touchy. If you so much as brushed the thing it would put letters on the screen. There was no click, no feedback that it got your keystroke, and most annoying of all if you touch typed it would jump around on the display. The paragraph you started at line eleven would end when the cursor jumped for some unknown reason on line five. Trying to correct things was hopeless, as was cut and paste. They had this little magnifying glass icon that you could scan over lines and try to place the cursor. You’d have better luck at the penny arcade three-hook grab machine.

One book I downloaded was Bukowski’s Hollywood. If you’re ever worried that you are becoming a drunk, read Bukowski, he’ll tell you what a lush really is.

At first Hollywood reminded me of American Splendor, which was about the guy who wrote the comic books about his life that he got others to illustrate and Paul Giamatti stared in the movie version. As I read along I’m saying to myself, yeah, yeah, yeah, what? If I stop reading and thought about what he is saying I realize how friggin’ crazy it was. This is a novel about the making of a movie and Chianski our protagonist is the writer for a movie, which a guy he knows, named Jon, says he wants to make. Chianski takes a distant view of the proceedings. No one is interested, at first, then someone is, then someone else is, then the first group isn’t. There are signing of papers then the deal falls through. Jon finds someone else but can’t get the first group to release the picture even though they don’t want to make the film. He threatens them by going on a hunger strike and saying he will start cutting off his body parts unless they release the film. He buys an electric chain saw and brings it to various meetings. If Jon isn’t getting what he wants he starts up the chain saw. What? How did we get here?

Trying to tell anyone about this book is hopeless. They either become bored or disbelieving. Maybe, it’s they’re bored due to disbelieving. I can picture their eyes glazing over as I begin to tell them. I picture a younger me trying to talk more excitedly about the book and my speech speeds up. This has the effect of driving my audience to look for escape as I trip over my words, mash them together as salvia gathers at the corners of my mouth and I begin to foam. Now, whoever was listening is thinking about when their last rabies shot was. I realize the hopelessness of trying to tell them anything and don’t say anything. I think about what would happen if I said, “You know I’m reading Bukowski’s Hollywood. It’s about the making of a movie. A Guy has a chain saw and if he’s not getting what he wants he threatens to cut off a body part…” Bingo, glaze over, duck and run, Warning Will Robinson!

But like Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail, which was described by the chief staffer of Muskie’s bid, as a fictional account of the political campaigns that season and one of the most accurate accounts, Hollywood, even though it is a work of fiction, and even though it sounds outrageous, I got the sense that yes, in fact Hollywood no doubt works this way. It makes me wonder if most of the people running the business are manic-depressives, or are they just hugely delusional?

Dear Hank,

I’ve had discussions with people whose political views aren’t necessarily in line with mine. I’m always curious when someone makes what I think is a scurrilous and/or factually inaccurate statement or maybe it’s a plain mean spirited comment.

Typically, these statements are made in passing in another conversation.

I used to ignore these comments or I’d make some retort.

The response I’d get would be very personal. I’d be labeled and attacked personally with a “Oh, you’re just a ...”

I’d ask for a fact that supported their position or a reason. Facts were vague; reasons were non-existent or non-sensical. I was puzzled. Why the personal attacks? Why the lack of facts and reason to back up their off hand mean spirited comments?

Then it hit me.

These people are prejudiced bullies.

They are trolling to find others like them self and failing that they hope to dominate the conversation with their views.

I’ve decided I’m not going to let them do that.

I’m standing up for myself.

I’ve found when you stand up to the bullies they get strangely silent.

They probably go somewhere else to troll.

End of Days, Hurricane Irene

Dear Hank,

I know you’re busy burning down a man and all that but we got problems. There was this hurricane called Irene. We live on Hatteras Island and when a hurricane comes everyone scrambles to put their vehicles and trailers on high ground. Problem is this time most of the high ground got flooded. The highway to the island is “breached” in four or five places. So you know what that means? It means unless you have one of those James Bond cars that can drive on water you ain’t getting’ here from there.

From what I hear people are still dazed. We, personally, were lucky. We took our cars and our bodies off the island. We’re not allowed back on. They’ve got a curfew and ain’t lettin’ anyone on except emergency personnel, which is probably a good thing. Up north in places like Duck and Nags Head, funny names I know, they got tourists wandering around. Some of them are even going to the Red Cross relief centers to eat! Gives tourists a bad name.

We’re trying to figure out how we can help. Trying to organize efforts and locate stuff that can help. It’s hard because you don’t know where to start.

Someone suggested I write something using my “dry wit.” Soon as I wring it out, I’m going to do that.

But let me do what I can right now. There might be a much bigger problem looming than a hurricane. I’m talking the end of the world. Yeah, that’s right. Lots of folks have been saying the Mayan calendar says the world will end on December 21, 2012. Then they typically show an Aztec calendar. Makes you wonder how much homework they did. If it’s a reporter doing the story they then ask an “authority” that means someone who wrote a book. The “authority” then expounds.

Hollywood has had quite a field day with this stuff, as have the new age folks, the mystic folks, the spiritual folks, the “they must be aliens or visited by aliens” folks, and who knows who I missed. Oh yeah, people who have actually studied what the Mayan said.

Turns out most people who have written books on the subject seem to have read or understood little on the subject. Maybe, at best, they latched onto a small tidbit and ran with it. There is a fellow named David Stuart who has written a book on the subject. (The very fact he wrote a book on the subject makes him a expert, right?) Stuart also has a few other bon fides. He’s lived in Mayan villages as a boy. His dad’s an expert in the field and took David on trips to Mesoamerican sites ever since he could crawl. David was the youngest person ever to receive a Mac Arthur genius grant for his research. He put the last piece in the puzzle to solve how you read the Mayan glyphs. (80 to 90% can now be read.) He’s read and studied more about this stuff than probably anyone else. So what’s he say?

The Mayans mentioned the date in passing, once. There are no doomsday predictions. In fact, it’s not a total reset of their calendar just one part is reset of a much, much longer sequence. It seems that people are using this calendar and tidbits they’ve scraped up to say a lot about themselves and their beliefs – not the Mayan or what the Mayan said about the world.

Don’t worry, my next post will be much more self indulgent.