ultra marathons

reading the newspaper this morning, i ran across yet another article on Dean Karnazes, the ultra runner whose recent book, Ultramarathon Man , is just hanging on to the NY Times Best-seller list for Hardcover Non-Fiction, at #34.

i've read lots of coverage of Karnazes recently, who without question is super badass. his goal has long been to run a 300 mile ultra marathon without sleeping. this seemed a pretty good goal, and he's attempted it a couple of times at least, once running 262 miles.

well, this seemed pretty damn impressive to me, until this morning when i read, for this first time, about Pam Reed, an ultra runner from Tucson who not only has already run 300 miles , but also has won and set a women's course record in what is widely considered one of, if not the, most difficult running race in existence, the Badwater Ultramarathon , a 135-mile run from Badwater, Death Valley, the lowest point in the country, to the slopes of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the lower 48.

without taking anything away from Karnazes, who is certainly amazing (and a freak, like Reed, and like all ultra runners) it's hard for me to understand why i have heard minimally about Reed. is it that Reed hasn't written a book and gone on a 40 city promotional tour for it (i don't think so: i'd read all about him before the book and the tour). or is it gender?

bank troubles

bad day in bankland: today I was notified that my online account access has been suspended for Wells Fargo. and Regions Bank. (but they kindly offered to let me unlock my online access by inputting my ATM card number and PIN.) and UnionPlanters Bank. and M&I Marshall & Ilsley Bank. (where the hell is that? looks like the UK.) and "Bank of the West" wrote on behalf of WaMu (how nice of them!).

and to top it all off, I can't use ebay anymore because i've used false or misleading contact information. (ebay was so worked up about it that they notified me twice.) dang.

who falls for this shit? apparently enough people to make it worth the time of the scammers, since these seem to be increasing every day.

thoughts on the new papa: Pope Benedict XVI, a.k.a. God's Rottweiler; Nazi Youth and multi-talented Nazi soldier

So, let's review:

• He was a Nazi.
  
• BUT BUT BUT! he deserted.
  
• Well, yeah: in late April or early May 1945. For the historically deficient among us, the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945. Hitler killed himself on April 30, 1945.
  
• Ratzinger was in Hitler's Youth, but got the benefits thereof (not being jailed, persecuted, or killed for refusal to pariticpate) without most of the obligations (attending regular meetings) when the first of many patrons, a Nazi mathematics professor, arranged for him to receive tutition scholarship payments without having to attend meetings and gatherings.
  
• Then Ratzinger served in the flak, or German anti-aircraft corps, guarding a BMW engine aircraft plant.
  
• Then they went a couple of other places: Unterföhring, northwest of Munich, and briefly to Innsbruck.
  
• From Innsbruck, his unit went to Gilching to protect a jet fighter base and to attack allied bombers as they massed to begin their runs towards Munich. At Gilching, Ratzinger served in telephone communications.
  
• After his unit was released from the flak, he was drafted and entered the Reichsarbeitdienst (RAD). Apparently Ratzinger's main duties were setting up setting up anti-tank defenses (read: landmines and minefields) to prepare for the expected Russian/Allied invasion; however, the RAD has such varied duties as supplying frontline troops with food and ammunition, repairing damaged roads, constructing and repairing airstrips, constructing coastal fortifications (including the Atlantic Wall), manned fortifications, and helping to guard vital locations and prisoners.
  
• Non-combat roles included training as anti-aircraft units and deploy,emt as RAD Flak batteries. (Sound familiar?)
  
• Several RAD units also saw ground combat on the eastern front as infantry. As the German defenses crumbled toward the end fo the war, more and more RAD were committed to direct combat. In the final months of the war the RAD formed 6 major frontline units, which saw heavy fighting.
  
• Ratzinger was released from the RAD, and promptly was drafted into, and entered, an infantry unit. He was in the infantry until his desertion.
  

BUT BUT BUT no sweat: even potential critics are falling over themselves to apologize for his Nazi past: "Membership in the Hitler Youth doesn't disqualify someone from being Pope," Efraim Zuroff (a 'Nazi hunter' and director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.)

Well, okay: but how about Hitler's Youth, then a Nazi anti-aircraft unit, then a Nazi laying minefields against an Allied invasion, then being in the Nazi infantry?

Planned next installment: from Nazi youth, to hypocritical elitist intelligentsia. (Fun fact: Ratzinger speaks ten languages, including German, Italian, fluent French, English, and ecclesiastical Latin. Fun sidenote: Ratzinger, in the heady days of Vatican II, when he was considered a liberal, once denounced the use of Latin at Mass as archaic, but now he digs it, and reportedly plans to give his first homily in Latin.)

baseball!

i love it. it's the only sport i bother to follow, and it defines early summer days like this: bright, sunny, 80 degrees, mid-april, with the A's vs. Angels game on the radio, 0-0 in the bottom of the 8th inning, runners first and third.

i went with E & K to the A's home opener last monday night, to see them get their ass handed to them by the Blue Jays (10-3.) the game was a lot of fun to go to, despite the abysmal fans we were sitting around in the cheap ($10) seats. the most represented population seemed to be stupid little hoodlums, who clearly didn't know anything about baseball other than it provides tough gangsta caps for them to color in all black with sharpies and wear backwards. several stupid, rude assholes in our section smoked constantly despite people asking them nicely not to (which would have merely complied with the rules at Oakland Coliseum, oops I mean Network Associates Coliseum, oops I mean McAfee Coliseum.) and for that matter, the Coliseum's smoking policy results in the entire View Level (read: cheap seats) concourse being like a pub. oh, actually, you can go to any pub in Oakland and revel in the smoke-free atmosphere since 1995. i think i'll send the Coliseum a nastygram.

homebrew: Decomposed Saint IPA! (and Terri Schiavo)

S and i bottled the homebrew yesterday. (well, actually, i did most of the bottling, as he had to drive his kid back to the kid's mom's house.) it turned out sweet and strong, with an unnaturally high final gravity (1.026). notably, though, we didn't put in nearly enough plain water to the primary fermentation, so this probably contributed to bizarrely high gravity readings.

about a week ago, the time had come to name the beer. i wanted to name it something pretty messed up (those who know me can email me for the story). S balked a little, and we discussed a story he says he saw in the news about the pope, that if his body lies in the grave for three years, and they dig it up, and it isn't decomposed, then it's evidence of his being a saint. so we named the beer Decomposed Saint IPA. (if you can believe it, this was a little less spooky than what i wanted to name it.)

here's some information on this idea of el papa and other would-be saints defying the laws of science and nature:

slate.msn.com/id/2116395/:
"If John Paul II is eventually canonized, he might not have to worry. Some Catholics believe that the bodies of saints are "incorruptible." That is, they never decompose."

that Slate page links to a seriously bizarre page about "Incorrupt Bodies of the Saints", which links to another bizarre, as well as silly and longwinded, rant, found by clicking on the "Terri Schiavo, Saint?" link. i don't even want to provide hyperlinks here, since i don't want to make it easy for them to track back to my blog. i also don't want to be directly responsible for your having wasted four to six minutes of your life reading that crap that you'll never get back.

all digital wedding photography!

a couple of weeks ago, i photographed a wedding. (entirely in digital, which i think is the way the entire industry is doing to go in the next few years. i'm a little shocked it isn't already going that way.) i can do it MUCH cheaper than traditional photography with the lack of overhead from film, processing, and a darkroom, and so i can pass that on to the client. for example, this last weding ended up costing the clients $568, for almost six hours of photography, and around 2,000 images. (no, that's not a typo: 2,000.)

i just finished the basic post-processing (separating wheat from chaff, red-eye reduction, selecting certain photos i think are particularly interesting, etc.) whew.

a little more for tonight, and then some sleep!

p.s. if you or someone you know is getting married, i'll travel to interesting places for no or little additional cost! (no additional cost if i can justify the travel as a fun vacation for me, and a little additional cost if it's an exceptionally expensive place to find accommodations.)