Outside my window

I actually have a whole series of images from this perspective, but today's is the only one I have handy. (In part, this is because the previously trustworthy of our computing life, the eMachines desktop, is starting to die. It's got the dreaded "running super extremely unbelievably slow" problem, and regularly has to be hard-shutdown, and restarted. I've backed up almost everything, and am about to resort to extreme measures.)

Anyway, here is what it looks like right now:



The ridge of snow up on the rail shows two amounts of snowfall in the last 48 hours. I shoveled in the evening on Monday, and then again midday yesterday. The taller amount of snow shows what we have received since Monday night, the slightly lower amount since Tuesday afternoon. Pretty scientific, huh?

Anchorage's bore tide

A good explanation can be found here. For those considering a visit, this would be less than a half hour drive from our home.

What's So Special About the Turnagain Arm Bore Tide?

Well, it’s huge—one of the biggest in the world, actually. Also, all other bore waves run up low-lying rivers in more southerly latitudes. The Turnagain Arm bore wave is the only one that occurs in the far north and the only one bordered by mountains, making it the most unique and most geologically dramatic bore tide in the world. It’s also amazingly accessible: you can see it by road along its entire 40- to 50-mile length. And it’s a wildlife-spotting opportunity: harbor seals often ride the tide into Turnagain Arm. Beluga whales may come in a half hour or so later once the water gets deeper.

Tattoos and Chinese characters

My friend Brian has this really extraordinary tattoo that wraps most of a lower leg: "non-violence" in fourteen different languages. This got me to thinking about Chinese characters, which led me to this really excellent website explaining and discussing Chinese characters and language.

No, mom, I'm not seriously considering getting a tattoo. But if I do, I'll send a picture to you right away.

On a happier note :

Bog Monster is actively fermenting. At least in the sweet wort, the peat flavor isn't nearly as profound as I thought it would be. The whole shebang ended up with a vastly higher OG (1096!) than I intended, as it boiled for almost an extra half hour while we screwed around with proofing the Safale US-05.

Today's This I Believe on NPR

This responds to the former interrogator who NPR's Weekend Edition's Liane Hansen calls "Alex Anderson." Speaking under a made-up name to protect herself, today's This I Believe commentator just about made me physically ill with the vile propaganda she spewed. If you were lucky enough to miss it, you can read the text at that link, and also listen to it for yourself.

Her self-justifying, hateful nonsense was deeply, profoundly offensive. While I basically found almost every line disgusting, I'll give a few of the highlights:

She claims that "I don't have any torture stories to share. I think many people would be surprised at the civilized lifestyle I experienced in Guantanamo. The detainees I worked with were murderers and rapists." I'll try to put aside that these three sentences are so inherently contradictory as to make almost no sense. Worse, they indicate that she is either willfully and wantonly ignorant, in the most bizarre, dishonest, and hypocritical tradition of the Bush administration, or simply an outright liar, if she has no "torture stories to share."

"Alex" says she served a year in Iraq as a military interrogator, then returned for a year as a civilian contractor, supposedly because she didn't feel like she'd done enough to make a difference:

"First I served as a soldier for a year, and then returned as a civilian contractor because I felt I hadn't done enough to make a difference the first time."

Hmmm... are you sure that you didn't just want to get paid a hell of a lot better to abuse people and engage in "torture lite"? See, e.g., former US Army interrogator Tony Lagouranis, in his outstanding and brutally honest book Fear Up Harsh, An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq. He writes about a civilian contract interrogator he calls "Eliza" who could quite easily be the despicable woman talking on This I Believe:

"Eliza was former military intelligence. She'd left the army and then came back to Iraq with a private firm, making somewhere between a hundred and two hundred thousand dollars per year to do the same thing we were doing. (Actually, these contractors did a lot less; they didn't have guard duty, latrine duty, or any other of the little bullshit jobs that the army uses to put you in your place.)"

She makes the preposterous suggestion that everyone she interrogated at Guantanamo were "murderers and rapists":

"The detainees I worked with were murderers and rapists."

But as bizarre and offensive as the commentary was on the whole, the really revolting part was while she talks about how "You never forgot for a moment that, given the chance, they'd kill you to get out" she nevertheless describes her interrogation, and her "clients" conditions, as basically a highly paid (for her) or all-expenses paid (for the prisoners) pleasure cruise:

"We'd meet, play dominoes, I'd bring chocolate and we'd talk a lot."

Yes, really: that's a copied and pasted quote. I couldn't make that up if I tried.

Her basic theme is the "redemption" she received through torturing, oops, interrogating people:

People say, "Hate the sin, not the sinner." That is easier said than done, but I learned that there is true freedom in accepting others unconditionally.

Uhhh, yeah: it's easy to accept someone unconditionally when they are imprisoned, and sitting across from you shackled while you interrogate them.

She tells one of her PRISONERS (I summarily reject her glibly describing her dominoes and chocolate party partners "clients") that her God expects her to "...love my neighbor as myself. That means you." Loving your neighbor as yourself means interrogating them while they are imprisoned and held incommunicado, without contact with their families, or legal representation, or basic civil and human rights, halfway across the world from their homes?

Nearing her conclusion, she writes that "My clients may never know this, but my year with them helped me to finally heal. My nightmares stopped." Well, "Alex Anderson", it sure is nice for you that playing dominos and eating chocolate with involuntary guests at your little Gitmo tea parties helped you heal. But how do you think this quality time felt for the prisoners?

I've listened to a lot of these "This I Believe" segments on NPR. They've been touching, poignant, banal, fascinating, and funny in turn. But this offensive, loathsome, hypocritical, dishonest propaganda makes me sick.

I'm quite sure that "Alex" doesn't care what I have to say (though she's certainly welcome to contact me through this blog, and I'd be happy to chat.) But while she might "believe we help to redeem each other through the power of acceptance" I should assure her that I won't be helping her with redemption by accepting her evil acts or her bizarre, dishonest story about them. She is going to need to look to her God that tells to her love her prisoners as herself for that redemption.

Some thoughts from my e-mail with E

(a.k.a. my favoritest and bestest sister)

First, a Utah Phillips qoute:

But if it's true the only real life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?"

Next, a couple of the things I told her I need to go do: tunnel a hole in the door frame of the man door between our garage and the side driveway, so we can more easily plug in the engine block heater of the car. Welcome to Alaska.

Finally, tomorrow's homebrew:

Bog Monster

Roughly:

8# Crisp Maris Otter
1# organic white wheat
1# 10L crystal
1.75# peated malt

mash 149*F for 60 min, mash out 170*F, batch sparge

60 min: .25oz Columbus 13.7% pellet
40 min: .25oz Columbus 13.7% pellet
20 min: .25oz Columbus 13.7% pellet

Safale US-05 rehydrated

Should only take about a year in bottles to be drinkable. Yum!

Use a cloth bag!

Speaking of shitty carbon footprints...

Here are my 2007 flights, so far:

Alaska, and elsewhere

I know that some of you occasionally see vestiges of my e-mails to you show up in this blog. For better or worse, it's when writing generalities about ANC, and what I'm doing, that I realize I should probably blog it. So I guess you could be happy that what I was writing to you seemed interesting enough to me to share it with eveyrone, right? The next couple paragraphs are (somewhat edited) versions of an e-mail I just sent.

Life in Anchorage remains fine. It's in the low 20s, crisp and clear. The snowy mountains across the way look like they have movie lighting on them, with a low sun shining under a layer of haze. We're waiting for Alyeska to re-open, after last weeks unseasonably warm temps (mid to high 40s was standard) melted all the snow. In our front yard, the ice and snow that covered the gravel is all gone, and only remains over the "grass."

Outside my window, the birds are doing acrobatics. I guess I'm thinking they might do better by migrating south, but they do make for entertaining diversions when I see them out of the corner of my eye. I'm mostly working on asylum and political protest stuff, and home improvement and homebrewing.

Last week I flew to Georgia for the annual SOA Watch vigil. Just before that I was in Sacramento, and in the weeks before that Atlanta, DC, and Boston. On Saturday night I'm flying to Arizona. My carbon footprint is really sucking, but life is definitely not boring.

Homebrewing:
recently bottled and kegged: Belgian pumpkin ale; imperial porter
recently racked to secondary: rye DIPA
planning: Bog Monster (two pounds of peated malt in a ~14 pound grain bill!)

Okay, I need to finish catching up on e-mail, and then make sure my folding bicycle fits in its suitcase, and see if I can fashion a relatively solid set of towing wheels to tow the suitcase with the bike.

Travelin'

In the Alaska Board Room in Seattle now, at the tail end of a long trip (ANC-BOS-DCA-ATL-ANC.) Confidential to the guy in the blue fleece with "UCI" on the back of the collar, sitting at a work desk on the ground floor, screaming into your bluetooth headset: we don't need to hear it, and at least a few of us had a good laugh at your expense when it became clear that it's your mother you're screaming at.

Anchorage, for now

I just looked out the window at what I thought was a bird, then realized it was a leaf, falling from a tree, but fluttering at length. It really reminded me of the plastic bag dancing scene in American Beauty.

Back from a lovely wedding celebration in Maryland a couple of weekends ago, I'm off to Boston tomorrow. Then DC. Then Atlanta. Then back to Anchorage.

We got our first real snow night before last, and by real, I mean just an inch or two, but enough to stick to the ground. The mountains I look out the window at as I sit at the computer, in the Chugach range, are now pretty much covered with snow.

D.C., D.C., oh how you annoy me

I had an excellent time and J and C's wedding ceremony. It was truly beautiful, and had loads of great people, in a gorgeous setting. I was up until 1:45am looking at stars, and since I didn't want to interrupt people sleeping in the barn, just laid out in the passenger space of the ridiculous SUV I was given at Alamo. It was just about the comfiest sleeping I've ever done in a car, though.

Lots of good conversation and good people. I was the bartender for much of the night, and helped people imbibe with the extensive good booze to be had, including lots of outstanding merlot from Trader Joes, and a couple of organic wines. The potluck was excellent, too: lots of vegan goodies. It was designed as a way of contributing and sharing with our community, and it was wildly successful.

Had a great time this morning helping clean up, including moving straw bales on J's bike with the fantastic work trailer attached. At one point, we moved five bales with it, and it wasn't particularly difficult.

At DCA now, awaiting my first flight DCA-SEA, and then on to ANC with mom. See you in Seattle, mom!

At SeaTac, and why [some] Horizon ramp agents suck

After flying in last night and spending the night in a priceline hotel, I'm back at the airport to continue the journey to DC for the wedding of two friends. I ended up getting lucky with my flights: I was booked on AS 162, didn't get on standby on AS 96, got rolled over to AS 148, but then AS 96 went mechanical and they had to swap equipment, and AS 162 was delayed, so of the three ANC-SEA flights, I got lucky with Door #2.

The bus from SeaTac to downtown Seattle, #174, was damn near intolerable. Since the #194 "express" (a very relative term) doesn't run after about 9:15pm, I had to take #174, the milk run. In was a nasty slog, with about half the bus yammering loudly into their cell phones (many of them ramp/handlers for QX, i.e., Horizon Airlines) and then yammering excitedly to one another about what they'd just yammered about on their cell phones. One of the worst offenders moved to jam in next to me, in a sideways facing seat that is already somewhat cramped due to the metal poles, and remained there until he disembarked, despite there being at least half a dozen available seats immediately nearby.

Two of the QX ramp agents actively tried to cut in line getting on the bus (for no apparent reason, since the bus was not full, and there were only about a dozen of us unlucky enough to be standing there and waiting for it.) A moderate bit of stinkeye and asserting myself prevented both, at least from cutting me off, though they actively cut several other people.

Confidential to Horizon Airlines (and/or Menzies, if QX ramp work is also subcontracted to Menzies, as AS is): you might want to ask your employees to take off their company clothing before acting like complete asshats for 45 minutes in public.

In other news, I spent about 45 minutes at the Alaska MVP/First Class ticket counter with an extremely pleasant employee, while we sorted out my fouled up reservation. Because a multi-city itinerary (totally legal, and booked through alaskaair.com) included two ANC-SEA and SEA-ANC trips over a week, when I boarded the first of these legs the computer decided to 'use' both of my roundtrip sets of flight coupons. Like I said to the agent, if you can have one cookie, why not have two?

In the Board Room now, enjoying the free wifi, free Alaskan Amber, free chips, and awaiting the free veggie chili. Gotta fill up before the 5.5 hour SEA-DCA flight!

Travel

Lots of it coming up soon. Happily, a couple of complimentary MVP upgrades just cleared on Alaska. I had exit row seats, so I would have been reasonably comfortable leg-length-wise, but it's nice to also have the seat width and not have encroachment from my next-door-seatmates.

Speaking of chest thumping right wing Christian conservative no-bid defense contractors:

Specifically, of Blackwater USA, the mass murdering American defense contractor solely run by Erik Prince, a right wing Christian conservative wingnut with strong ties to the Bush administrationS:
"No doubt about it, if you shoot everyone around you, you reduce the risk that you will be shot."
-Daniel Schorr, NPR (10/01/2007)

Settling in

I've had a break from EMT training for most of the last week due to scheduling and logistical issues of the instructor. It's been nice, and has allowed me to get more done around the house. I've worked through most of the list that filled amost an entire side of an envelope, and am now on to mostly puttering-level tasks.

Today's to-do list includes dragging our asses all over robin hood's barn, from the commissary for onions and bananas and tofu, to the BX for bookshelves, to the hardware store for a showerhead, and bed bath and beyond for non-slip strips (or a mat) to put down in the main floor tub. I also need to track down 3-way CF and dimmable bulbs, which are looking both not too common, and very expensive.

Here are a few (bad) pictures of the three moose that were wandering around at the edge of our driveway last week. A couple of days after watching these three, I saw the largest moose I've ever seen, walk through the other part of our driveway and then wander into our back yard. Unfortunately, it was dark and I didn't get any photos.

Thoughts on media, and what we've unfortunately been watching lately

1) 24 is comically stupid: it's preposterous idiocy for the post 9/11 right-wing conspiracy-theory wingnut moron crowd. It's astonishing that people think this show is good, or interesting.

2) 300 is far beyond comically stupid: it's nonsensical high-sugar junk food for the pitifully limited brains of the xbox generation.

3) 300 is stupid, 24 is stupid. Therefore, all shows and movies with numbers as the sole title are stupid.

4) Disturbia is very, very stupid. It's Scream meets American Beauty for the moron crowd, and yet another installment in the 'how difficult it is to be rich' genre.

5) Fracture is appallingly bad and unrealistic. All of the characters are embarrassing parodies.

Food for thought, since it's certainly not going to be very tasty

I'm going to be a judge of the homebrew competition at the Alaska State Fair this weekend, and while looking through the website came across the winners, for 2006 and all-time, of the largest vegetable contest.

A few interesting things show up, like how many records were set last year. Examples: 67&1/8" long gourd, 84 pound collard green, 96.95 pound kohlrabi, and the one you most often hear about: the 1019 pound pumpkin.

Then there are the records for the ages, like 4.5 pound rhubarb (1983), 39.5 pound broccoli (1994), 45.25 pound red cabbage (1994), 71.75 pound chard (1995), and 25.3 pound mushroom (1993).

See what you too could do with 18 to 23 hours a day of sun, two 1,500 watt heaters, a Visqueen tent, a forklift, and up to 120 gallons of water a day? Get busy!

One reason we're excited about the new house

(And hope it closes as planned, with any more turmoil or headaches.) I was just writing this in an e-mail to a friend:

So definitely think about coming up when you have time: we're really excited to have people visit. In a sense, we've never really had enough space to properly have guests stay with us, at least who didn't mind sleeping on the couch in the living room.

It got me to thinking about the places J and I have lived, and how we really haven't had space for people to stay, at least when everyone didn't wan tto be in every else's back pockets:

Denver: one bed, one bath
San Diego, OB: studio, one bath
San Diego, University Heights: one bed, one bath
Salt Lake City, downtown: three bed, two bath (but only for four months)
Salt Lake City: two bed, one bath

It'll be awfully nice to be in a decently sized place, three bed, two and a half bath, especially with a view like this:

Don't ask me why in the fuck I'm reading this stuff:

at 1:30am in Anchorage. And don't ask about the last several hours I just spent reviewing individual assessor and property records for the Mat-Su Borough. (And TGS, say what we will about Mat-Su, but damn they've got a nice website for reviewing other people's property records: about the nicest I've ever used.)

Then, after hours of reasonably productive web surfing, I fall into the all too common practice of fucking around for an hour or two on the web, and before I know it, it's 1:30am, and for a series of links and click-throughs that I could relate to you, Gentle Reader, but won't, I end up reading a blog about being a consultant. At least it made me laugh out loud, especially this part:

The Art of the Shnap
Shnaps are a great way to escape the pain of a local [consulting] project for 30 minutes to an hour. To take a shnap, you tell the client, “I gotta go drop a deuce, be back in an hour.” You head into the John, slip down your drawers, drop some kids off at the pool, turn off the alarm on your cellphone, put your head in your lap (don’t forget to flush before this step so you’re not huffing your own shit fumes), and sleep.

(In the original version of this post, I actually included a link to the blog that this was in, but decided to remove it. As I read further down in the blog, there was some offensive, racist shit that I didn't like.)

Okay, now I'm really going to go brush my teeth with the electric toothbrush that, after about six years of faithful service and hundreds of falls, has finally developed a large crack. But hey, it's still working!