There is no way to tell this story without sounding racist, so i shall just tell it.

We’re at Red Mtn Park. A girl maybe 7-8 starts talking to us – “she should be careful, that slide is slippery”, “my brother had to leave because he is allergic to your dog”. and such. I notice the girl is with 2 women with strollers, and a boy maybe G’s age, and a girl like 3 or 4, and they are talking in Spanish. not a usual sight in this park, but whatever. G is playing, I am drinking from a waterbottle, and G is playing, and I am giving her some, and we are putting it down next to the slide, and playing, and drinking and playing and putting it down next to the slide. G takes a lap around the volleyball court, the grassy areas, the swirly ride thing. we are maybe 100 ft from the slide, and we are gone like 5 minutes. And when we get back, I go look for the bottle cause G has been running and is thirsty. And the Mexican group is leaving.

and so I say “excuse me!”

and then i say “did you perhaps pick up a water bottle?”

“excuse me, do you have a water bottle that does not belong to you?”

“Hello, I think you took my bottle?”

and the Mexicans keep walking away, oblivious to me, or ignoring me, hard to say. and G is with me and what am I going to do run across the parking lot and get in their faces over a waterbottle? and i wonder if perhaps maybe i made a mistake, and misplaced the bottle, and by escalating this might be perpetuating an incredibly racist situation and experience. and why should I treat these people any differently than a white kid who took my bottle, and who’s parents I would ask to look at their kid and get my bottle back, because kids make mistakes and we need to teach em not be insane and the parents need to help each other out. And some dude is reading at a park bench and adamantly refusing to look up. and fer crissakes I get waterbottles all the time for free. And if you willingly allow yourself to be the victim of a crime, you are enabling that crime.

Whatever. i got G to deal with.

We walk back with Kila to the parking area, maybe 5 minutes, and then I think what the hell let’s cruise down the street and see if they are there. And they are – half a mile at least down Recker, which yet again you don’t often see in this neighborhood.

I don’t want this to get crazy, I don’t want to get in their faces, just do what is right and make the kid do what is right, so I pull slowly up to them but stay on the other side of the street so there is 25 feet between us at least. And I say “Excuse me, do you have my water bottle. I think you have my water bottle. Can I please have my water bottle back.”

Finally, the women stop and look up at me.

Wow!

Let’s just review this post and see how many times I was trying to non-confrontationally get their attention. Not paying attention, no speak ingles, ignoring? I do not know.

The woman says to me “I no speak English.” I point to the 8 yr old and say “she has my water bottle.” The woman sorta looks at the kid, looks at me, starts to walk away, and I point and say “ladron.”

Finally, the girl turns and you see she is holding my water bottle. The woman gets it, scolds the kid, hands the bottle to me. I say “gracias” and drive away.

WTF?

Was the kid doing what kids do? Did the kid learn this from her parents? She surely understood me.

There is no way to tell this story without sounding racist.

• They have video in the daycare at the gym, that feeds their internal system, and you can watch G play while on the stairmaster. its awesome! its guilt-inducing when she looks sad.
• NFL announcers blathering on about Shawn Alexander having an exceptional second half and a poor 1st half: “he’ so tough, that soft-cast must have been bothering him before half, he got it together at intermission.” HE GOT A FUCKING SHOT, HE DOESN”T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME NOW!
• Suckers. today at the veggie stand the women bagging wanted to give G a sucker. She was a senior, G is cute, can you feel the love in this room. My first thought was, no it will take her forever and goo up evertying. which was the point when you are old and grew up when things were slow and scarce. walking home an hour from the store with a sucker would rock. So, I pulled the sucker off the floor of the car, cleaned it up, left it in a bowl of water where she has been gradually sucking it off.
• That was not funny!
• Fatass is personal; neurosis is universal.

I have sold a bunch of stuff on Ebay lately. It started with the fork from the Heckler, and then once I got all into it I listed a few other old mp3 players, wireless gear, and snowboard gear.

With the fork, I had to recoup a couple hundred, so I studied what they went for at the cheapest retail outlets as well as used and new on ebay. The best bet of moving something is to offer it below everyone else with a “Buy It Now” option. A buyer might get it cheaper, they might wind up paying more, but at least its done with no screwing around. Apparently this is a pretty decent strategy, since I moved 4 items this way within a few hours of listing. To figure out your price, I’d hit the bottom edge of the market\ebay prices, and then back out the fees   to arrive at my listing\shipping prices.

The strategy worked great for the fork, where it went for $455 w. shipping, and I had about $45 in fees. For the other items, the strategy was sound but the results less pleasing. My items were worth about $20-30 w. shipping. but after fees for ebay, paypal and UPS (which have gone up lately!), I was making around $12-$15 an item. The time to research, photo, list, box and ship an item was about an hour each. Not bad when I cleared $410 for the fork, but stupid when I made $40 for the other 3 items combined.

So why sell your crap on Ebay?

Financially, $12 an hour is stupid for me. A business is in a different position, they have their process streamlined. Or, I guess if yer sitting home with time on your hands, its a different story. But for me, Ebay tickles my notion of found money! I had crap, now I have almost 40 clams!!

This also feeds the idea that my shit is not worthless. Something I had, and used, and valued…I do not want to throw out. Even if it is almost worthless (or worth only $12), the idea of selling makes us feel better about upgrading or sending it away. The value is preserved, on some level, along with your pride.

Finally there is the idea of The Game! How MUCH can I get for this? How smartly can I work the system? Its the Seller’s version of “YOU WON!” How do you win when the only lazy-ass thing your lazy ass did was hit the button to “buy it now”!?! Ebay convinces you that you have vanquished and conquered — its brilliant!!! Next time I’m checking out at the grocery store, I’m going to shout “I WON!!!” “Congratulations! I’m a Winner!”

The most important question: does my selling on Ebay benefit the economy as a whole? My $25 of gross per item contributed about $11 to Ebay, Paypal and UPS. Instead of going in the garbage, it spurred commerce. Is this better than giving it to Goodwill? I thought most things I give away to Goodwill probably go wrongly labelled and become junk; the financial incentive for me is the tax benefit. My $25 dollar item gets claimed at more like $50, netting me the same $12 or so when all is done. So the economy is probably a wash. Byron acutely suggested, however, that well-run charities have experts who know how to pick through your stuff and get the most value for it. I hope so — that way I could get all the benefits of Ebay, make the same money in write-offs, spend none of the time, and genuinely help someone who needs charity. I like this interpretation!! I must run it by my genius wife.

Crock pot cooker is the coolest thing in my kitchen in a long long time

This article on espn.com is funny as hell. Eli Manning in cruisers!!

Thai curry paste is the missing link for good thai cooking at home.

Waste not want not: I needed some planks for the attic, found them while I was cleaning the garage.

The Eagles will be better after releasing Jeremiah Trotter, but it may take awhile.

Thomas Harris did a good job with Hannibal Rising. He resisted the urge to make it cheesy, and worked hard to define the character.

This is the rattlesnake I almost ran over last week:

This happened like a month ago, and it took me about 5 times longer to write this entry than it actually took to buy the car.

We’d been hemming over buying a commuter car for 2-3 weeks. So about 10:30 on a Saturday morning and with half a mind, I cruised some carmakers websites and wrote down some numbers. The pattern of cost-quality-mpg was so clear and unsurprising, it really deserved only an hour of research. At the bottom end you get good mileage for a shitbox that is terrifying on Phoenix’s highways for about 16k. In the middle is a Corrolla with better quality but low-end interior and the front of the downward curve for mileage for about 21k. At the the top you get a good-but-not-great mileage nicer car like the Acura TSX, aka Honda Accord wid bling. Or for a little less you get a hybrid Civic or Prius, its shitbox feel with great mileage, and you get to save the planet.

So I thought, anyway, and was intending to buy the Honda Civic, which would be the best of the hybrid shitboxes for less than the Prius. Then we drove a Prius and it was not such a bad ride, nowhere near the Acura, but nice(er) then the Corolla ever was. Compared to the Civic, just on paper it was clearly 4th gen from-the-ground-up design over the Civic’s converted-design v1. And the hatchback would let me fit a bike without a rack (or so I thought, but for yon babyseat), while the Civic didnt even have drop seats cuz that’s where the hybrid equipment sits. It still seemed too pricey for the ride, which while better than the Corolla was not 8k better, since the interior was still cheap-feeling. So, its all about the mileage…that is where the money went. 50% better at least than the Corolla, or $500/year for gas at $3/gallon. 10 years to be a good purchase stricly on value, with today’s gas prices. Assuming gas goes up…its a good purchase.

While we went shopping for value, we both also really wanted to buy a hybrid. Even though the value was there, it would take years to see it, and it felt strange and moronic and extremely unsatisfying being willing to pay an 8k hybrid premium, most especially since the car was so ridiculous unsexy. If there had been a luxury hybrid…not some bloated landyacht like Lexus makes that still only gets mid-20’s…but a Prius-like efficiency with the boob-job of the Acura, we would have bought it. It would have probably cost around 38k, and that is a big ticket for what is still a small and relatively humble ride. But its the same premium you pay to get the “green Corolla XT”.

I hope there a lot of people out there like us, who have enough extra that they can make socially-conscious choices with their wallets. It is the demand from the non-shitbox drivers willing to pay for hybrids that will make a shitbox hybrid as affordable as a plain-old shitbox, and lead to more choices for non-shitbox hybrids, which is what will save the environment and drive political change. The income distribution in our country takes such a steep upslope into the upper middle class, that if you can afford to drive an Acura or a BMW or a Lexus, or a 40k Expedition, you certainly have the financial ability to affect a change with a green choice. Not everyone has that luxury, the moral choice is framed differently when you can afford the premium instead of scraping by on 50k-a-year household income. Which is why we both felt that we should put some money behind our cheap talk about living green and hating Bush and the gen X-white american-suburban sense of entitlement.

After the test drive, and reviewing what the Prius had over the Civic, the decision became so clear that I was ready to buy. What else was there…great value, best-of-breed, and all in under 2 hrs? I am still stunned by my own rapidity. I’ve been burning days researching a 3k bike…I spent an hour just that morning on Yeti’s website, struggling through a 2-year old review of the 575 written in French! I’ve been to soooo many shops looking for test rides, I’ve burned all the gas we’d save in a year with the hybrid. While on paper, this decision made simple sense, it seemed tremendously capricious and irresponsible to buy a car in 2 hours!!!! Salesman X is running around asking about finance rates and prepping the manage, and I tell Beckie we should just buy this thing and be done with it if they knock off some money, the honda is no-way going to be as good, and we’ll have spent time going in circles. And she reacts just like me: dont you think that is irresponsible to buy so fat? and I say yes but its 80% or better we will buy this very car in the end after running in circles at more dealers. Nod…so its time to see if we can get them to move: bring out the baby!

They get it that we arent thrilled with the tan color and not in a rush to buy, and say that they have a nice black one they can offer us, or they will make us a great deal on the dirt-colored one. I really wanted the dirt-coloerd one anyway; its cooler and doesn’t show the dirt. Meanwhile, Genevieve is rolling around on the garage floor and on the edge of a tantrum. Cmon, she’s having a fit and getting filthy, let’s do some research and get back to them later…” And he dropped $1300. Wow! from Toyota! Sold. 2 hrs.

gotta like the look of that plate.

there’s more to party hats then just slowing down and mellowing you out.   when you slow down, you see the details that make the simple things beautiful.   if you are lucky, some of that beauty and wonder stays with you and fills you with enough joy to carry you onward.

I watched the remake of The Longest Yard w. Adam Sandler. Some of it was funny, but it was the wrong role for Sandler. Cocky and dry humor is not his thing, Burt Reynolds stole the move as Nate Scarborough. Michael Irvin’s guest appearances was cool he is still in shape. a few parts better than the original I like how Crewe confesses to his team about throwing the game, and how they gatorade the warden at the end. A few places where they went bigger\sexier\moremoremore from the first movie was amusing like with the enormous convicts, but on the whole it wasnt much of a flick. It could have been a lot better. The Indian broadcaster alongside Chris Berman was a great idea wasted — what do you not have to do to play well off Chris Berman?

So why am I bothering to write a tepid summary of my thoughts about an average movie? The Blog made me do it!! OK its partly cause I wrote most of this over Memorial Day weekend when I was alone all weekend w. no one but a baby to talk to, but something about publishing your life is addicting, and not in a good way. I find myself watching things and thinking about how I will describe them, not just watching them. Its like a constant dialog in my head, what is going on along with what i will say about it. Its so contrived and so meta, its Scrubs and Ally McBeal and flashback-mashup storytelling all churned together. I don’t like it.

I am living online at the expense of living, and recording my experiences at the expense of experiencing them. Somehow because every experience can be recorded, you feel like you’ve lost something if you don’t record it.   Even the ones that don’t really bare recording.   And somehow because I can register a domain name and run WordPress, I feel I am the Quentin Tarantino and Ridley Scott of my own domain.   Every lost post is now a lost masterpiece in my personal Oscar night.

Really most of this is just a mediocre movie.

chilling out while G is finally asleep, reading Wired, drinking some “Eve of vieve.” I love the firepit its very cathartic, relaxing to read by and watch, and the burning is like therapy. Today we are burning a root ball from something that deserved to die, some huge hunk’o’hunk of mesquite, and a broom I stole from the loading dock of a middle school in Arlington, VA in like 1993 when Beckie and I got in a huge fight and I went out and drove myself through a 12 pack in northern Virginia. That piece o shit has been with me for almost 15 years, the bristles are finally gone, and it will become one with the collective. I love that. The lawn chairs we bought in 1996 at the Street Fair in Tucson for $35 each are next…well, one went about a year ago, the one I’m sitting on is held together by a shred of a thread and one good wiggle its into the pit. Sweet. “burn motherfucker burn,” The Bloodhound Gang, ‘Fire Water Burn’, 1996.

coming back from Moab we gassed up in Tuba City, and there were 3 dudes hanging out in the shade next to the back exit of the quickie mart. Its about 1pm, one of em starts giving my friend Stan the pitch for a handout, he actually brings up how his people were the windtalkers during ww2 and how much America owes them, Stan escapes and he turns on me…drunk, slurring, telling me he had recently been up in Colorado working as a welder for $32/hr, but now he’s back here and broke. And apparently making a full-time job out of panhandling people stopping for gas.

So let’s recap: the man has skills that pay some good wages, but not in the middle of nowhere Arizona where no one is building anything. He knows about money, and a job, and how hard work equals good salary. He knows good work for him involves travel. He chooses to return to Tuba City.

I’d like to ride like Lance Armstrong, but not train. I’d like to be rich, but not work. I’d like to have a job that completely maximizes my skills, but be able to work from home. I’d like to bang the hottest chicks in the world, but do no situps, buy no flowers, and put up with no attitude. At the risk or massively over-generalizing, I am so damn tired of hearing complaints from Tribes or tribe members about how hard they have it cause they can’t escape the poverty and hopelessnes of the res, but, YOU NEVER HEAR THEM SERIOUSLY CONSIDER MOVING!!! Everything is a trade-off. You live where you call home, you don’t have a fixed schedule, or sprawl or pollution, you live around people you know and are part of your community, you don’t have gang crime and high property taxes and traffic, or work-related stress, no one says how great those things are on the res? The res has problems, but it also has attractions for some. Why is it that trade-offs are common sense, but both Native Americans and everyone else seems to ignore commons sense when talking about the res? Its like our collective hard-on for the small American farmer who is no longer efficient or particularly good in his chosen field or able to survive without intrusive government assistance — we have this sentimental or guilt-laden or simply co-opted view of an issue and want to have everything at no cost. We want Native Americans to be able to live on the res, but have it be like Scottsdale.

White people just enable this sort of thinking by not making the discussion about economics, and instead suggesting that we need to help the Indians, that somehow the way they are perceived to be living is wrong and must be corrected. The windtalking welder knows this quite well, it laced his entire pitch. He didnt say “can I earn some money from you”, he said his people helped America 60 years ago so should get paid now, that he didnt have work because he was in Tuba City not that work was unavailable to him. The problems we see on the res go with the lifestyle. The Tribes (generally) have made it really clear that they like their location and will go to incredible lengths to preserve their locations, that their homes and their connection to the land is the most important thing to them, that they are a community and not a group of individuals. Clearly, the people who choose their connection to their tribe as their social identification (as opposed to an unencumbered free agent in a liberal democracy…or, your typical mainstream American) don’t want the lifestyle changes that are the cost of higher standards or living and cures for many of their res’s problems. So why is there such a liberal guilt about it, and why do we look at drunk windtalking welder and think this is a problem with the res? Its what it is, its the trade-off, it will work itself out, or it won’t. Trying to fix someone is just hubris. Who are you to say its wrong? Who are you to say it needs fixing? And why should I pay to fix it for someone who ignores the economic forces that are as crucial to my way of life as his connection with his home is to him?