A Cotton Candy Sweet As Gold Christmas Parade Miracle

I attended the Richmond Christmas parade with Lara and Megan at 10:15 this past crisp Saturday morn. On the way there we walked by the Richmond Coliseum and I pointed out to Lara the tree that was in the building across the Coliseum’s entrance.  A car then came screaming down the street headed the wrong way. As if the fact that none of the signs were legible to the driver, there were also directional arrows for traffic flow painted onto the street.  Surely the driver must’ve known what was up.  I shrugged it off, guessing that perhaps they had thought that 10:15 on a crisp Saturday morn was a fine time to imbibe mimosas and get behind the wheel.

We were a block away from the parade street when we saw a mother and child briskly walking away from the parade with the mother hollering on her phone.  “The answer is NO. I told you NO! Why you gotta keep asking me when I feel that way?”

Perhaps it was the Christmas spirit moving through my sarcastic and jaded bones, or the kid who was being dragged along, but I felt like performing an act of kindness for the woman in some way.

“Looky here, Big T,” I pictured myself grabbing the phone and saying into the receiver, “No means no, you dig?”

But if experience has taught me anything, it’s usually that my version of helping people results in them getting royally pissed off at me. Besides, who wants to be pummeled when you’re a block away from a Christmas parade full of hope and goodwill? That would just make for an awkward story. “Say, what happened to you, Trey?” “Oh, I went to the Christmas parade and got beat up. Pass the salt?”

I hopped across the street with Lara and Megan and folded out the camp chairs.  The Christmas parade was slated to start at the Science museum about 2 miles away, and we had arrived somewhat late so that by the time we would set our chairs up, the Christmas parade would be close and prevent us from wondering aloud if the street we were on was the one that had the 12 homicides in a 10 day stretch that allowed Richmond to become the US’s number one homicide capital, leaving the mediocre runner up slot to be pawed all over by Detroit and Saint Louis.

Nothing much happened for the next 30 minutes, so we began people watching, and it was heartwarming to see all the different people lined up without caring a jot for who they stood next to. The lady with a purple streaked pompadour and tattoos covering every inch of skin? Why, she was standing next to a small child wearing a hat in the shape of a chimpanzee’s head, and they both turned to each other and smiled.

 Things got interesting when we saw a family making their way through the street on hoverboards. Instead of deftly snaking their way through the crowd with smug looks on their faces (“Walking? Hah! How plebian! Out of the way, you!”), they were moving in a herky-jerky fashion with their knees bent, and their eyes wide eyed and glassy with fear.  My concern about the safety of the boards was confirmed when the wife’s hoverboard decided it had had enough of carrying her for the past mile, and bucked her off face forward onto the street. But instead of being sensible and just picking herself and her child up and start walking, she brushed herself off and continued on with the lethal hoverboard.

A large man in a Washington Redskins jacket and a black trash bag full of something, began eyeing the crowd and determined that this was a good place to stand and started to shout: “Cotton candy, sweet as gold, let me see that tootsie roll!” He then started pulling out pre-filled bags of cotton candy from the trash bag and stapling them onto a stick that he had brought.  “Here Big Daddy!” he boomed to Megan, “Here’s some cotton candy! Watch my stuff! I’ll be right back!”

Megan stared down at the cotton candy with a look on her face that said, “What the hell just happened?”

“Don’t even think about eating that until he comes back!” Lara said.

Suddenly the crowd started clapping and cheering, and the Christmas parade began making its way down the street.  After the first two floats, I noticed something odd about it. “No candy being thrown out?” I asked Lara. “Probably for safety. They don’t want kids to run out into the street and get run over.”

Call me old fashioned, but when I was growing up, a Christmas parade always had candy for the kids, but the kids would always go home empty handed.  It was a very cyclical manner of candy giving, I suppose, but we came to view it as yet another Christmas celebration.  Our grandfather would take us to the parade, and the EMTs and hospital staff would always be the first to start, followed by the Kiwanis Club.  They would begin tossing out hard candy that we would scoop up with gloved or mittened hands.  Next would come the police, followed last in line by rows of fire trucks.  The fire trucks would wait until just the right moment before laying on their air horns and all the children would drop their fistfuls of candy and slap their palms to their ringing ears. 

“I don’t understand why you children always drop your candy every year. It’s not THAT loud!” my grandfather would state. “Can we go home? I’m thirsty” I would cry.  “Of course it isn’t Thursday! It’s a Saturday!” he’d reply.

I shook my head in a wistful manner, reminiscing on my Christmas past.  What other kinds of fun were these kids missing out on? And besides, who was going to teach them that axiom “The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away with a mighty blasting of horns?”

Something seemed strange about this Richmond Christmas parade. It wasn’t just the floats driving past that had little to do with Christmas, like the Celtic cloggers decked in purple, or the marching bands that played Jidenna’s “Classic Man” and Silento’s “Watch Me.” It was something else. The floating, inflated Kermit seemed to share my feelings. Instead of drifting down the street, standing pat and waving his hand in season's greetings, he was hunched over with a hand on his stomach as if recovering from a serious bout of Montezuma’s Revenge, and another hand on his face as if he were saying, “Oh god, I can’t believe I was talked into this. No, I’ll be fine, just get me to the end of the parade!”

Was this what I had come to see? A woman get bucked from a hoverboard? A gender-blind man selling a seasonally inappropriate candy? A 15 foot high amphibian in gastric distress? What this parade needed was a Christmas miracle to restore my faith in all the future Christmas parades. But alas, my heart dropped when the end of the parade came and the only Santa I saw was on an HCA float, lying still and entirely comatose on a gurney next to a smiling and alert Mrs. Claus.  A long pause followed, and I turned to Lara and said, “I think this is their way of saying Christmas and the parade are officially dead. Let’s head home.”

As we folded up our chairs and started walking off, music began playing and another float came on by! The parade wasn’t over! Christmas wasn’t dead! Did it matter if the people on the float weren’t sure what was going on? Or if they had no signs to inform the public that they weren’t just grabbed off the street at the last minute as a filler for the parade? Of course not! What I had just received was my Christmas parade miracle at exactly the right moment. Lara and I held hands as we watched the parade continue to ramble on by, before deciding to leave early and beat the traffic.

It's That Time of Year Again

It's that time of year again and hunting season is upon us. That means I've got to attempt to repair a small split in my dad's old 12 gauge semi automatic shotgun and get back on the shooting range to practice for deer hunting.  I don't particularly enjoy target shooting with my Remington 700 BDL .270. It kicks, it's deafening, and it enjoys expensive ammo. That's pretty much why I purchased a 10/22 so that I could practice shooting without selling a kidney.

The last I can recall, I was feeding it Hornady 130 grain SST type ammo and it was grouping about .5 MOA. I still have a box of Remington Accutip which uses the Hornady SST bullet, and I suspect it's made at Hornady's plant, but I plan on trying to purchase some more Hornady ammo and Winchester ballistic silvertip to see what kind of groupings I get.  But I still need to take it to the range to see if I need to make any scope adjustments before hunting.

I recall the different ammo I've tried over the years with much umbrage. Winchester X, Remington Core-lokt, a South African imported type that was designed for thin skinned African game and utilized an all lead bullet and slightly reduced powder charge, Remington managed recoil, Federal Fusion...they all stunk to varying degrees. The Federal Fusion stunk the worst...I was managing something along the lines of 4 to 5 inch groups at 100 yards, and more often than not the third bullet would get thrown will nilly over the paper. But the Remington Core-lokt was somewhat decent and consistently averaged 2" groupings at 100 yards.

So what does this mean? Nothing, really. Just that Hornady SST bullets are very favorable to my gun for whatever reason and they're effective. Just looking on the internet for a particular brand of ammo will yield two camps, those that state "I was able to group 10 shots within a gnat's hair at 500 yards" and those that rebut "the results of this ammo make me thing my rifle sneezed all its bullets out over the target."

Right now I'm reading Jack O' Connor's book "The Hunting Rifle" and I'm curious as to what he says about bullet types. 

Thus Saith The Law

"Alright class, now settle down, settle down. I'm so glad all of you can make it heah in this abominable weather. Because in addition to being alive, it means you can keep on giving this fine institution your tuition money. Now, befoah we begin, I would like to thank that individual who placed a moose hat outside my office door. That is quite a fine specimen of that magnificent animal, and it's a shame that my wife won't let me wear it around the hawse.
Now, we left off with intentional torts, and we'll work our way through contracts and strict or absolute liability. Just a reminder for the intentional torts, that baseball player case that I described. Bull Moose Jackson, or it could've been Puny Pete or Slimy Sam Jackson for all I remember, was warming up in the bullpen and had to endure that most heinous unpleasantry. No, I'm not referring to in-laws visiting and then their car won't start when they're supposed to leave, I'm referring to heckling. Jackson had been traded quite a bit in the league and the heckler kept saying things like, 'Jackson, I'm surprised you know how to get home at night since you've been traded so often,' 'If it weren't for gravity, you'd have trouble hitting the ground,' 'I've read War and Peace quicker than your fastballs have gone over the plate.'
Well, Jackson had one more pitch before he got up on the mound. But something went awry! He became so confused, that instead of pitching to the catcher, he turned 180 degrees and watched his errant ball bounce off the face of the heckler! Well, Jackson said what you and I would probably have said under those same circumstances: 'Oh gee whiz! How in the world did that just happen? The earth's rotation must be kickin' today!'
Ah, but this is a case of intentional tort. We already covered the criminal aspect in the previous class, so we won't go over that here, but the heckler in this case is faced with a situation. The good news is that he will never have to worry about brushing his teeth ever again. The bad news is that his very favorite teeth are down the back of his throat. What do you do? You'd make the argument for an intentional tort and force Puny Pete to pay for the damages to your favorite teeth.
Now, this leads into a case that features that wonderful institution Virginia Tech. And this case would probably have Thomas Jefferson decomposing in his grave. Wait, I meant rolling in his grave, I'm sorry. But it features libel, of a most serious nature. A university administrator committed some sort of offense in the eyes of a student newspaper editor. Now, it wasn't really an offense, but the perception was there. So, he used his position as editor of the newspaper to put the administrator's full picture above the fold, and this is extremely serious, now, with the words in bold, 'DIRECTOR OF BUTT LICKING' right below the fold. The Supreme Court of VA declined this libel case on the grounds that it should be common knowledge that there's no official post in VA Tech's administrative capacity for butt-licking.
For a contract, you have to have an offer, acceptance, and consideration. Let's say I want to have a hawse built, and there's a graveyard in my backyard. Here, let me draw it for you. See? Right there. But it's not just any graveyard. There's something odd about it. The mounds are about 10 feet wide, and rather large, and the headstones have rather unusual names on them. Names like 'Jumbo' and 'Mojambo.'
'Well that's interesting,' I tell myself. 'Their parents must've been those free spirited types.'
So anyway, I have the contractor build my house, and all is well and good. But as I'm sitting down to watch Lawrence Welk for the evening, there's a loud knock at my door. I'm not expecting company, so I ignore it or hope that my wife will answer the door. But then there's a loud crash and a pack of peripatetic pachyderms crashes through my living room! Did you all understand that? I said, WILD AND ENRAGED ELEPHANTS ARE INTERRUPTING LAWRENCE WELK IN MY HOUSE! As it turns out, that graveyard in my backyard is an elephant graveyard and my house is directly in their path! Now, I didn't know about it, and the contractor didn't know about it. It was not part of the contract. It was not part of the consideration. Generally, these things are settled by either a gentlemen's agreement or by amending the contract due to the circumstances. Um, this case, or situation rather, was based on a movie called Elephant Walk that featured Elizabeth Taylor. It's a good movie. And then when the elephants start tearing down the chandelier it becomes an even better movie.
And now we move onto strict liability. Strict liability means that even if you do absolutely everything correct, and through no fault of your own, something goes wrong within your area of responsibility, you are still responsible. Let me illustrate this for you. Let's say I have a 200 foot tall magnolia tree. That's a big tree. It's too big, in fact. I'm very concerned that the neighborhood kids might try to climb this tree and reenact Jack and the Beanstalk, but simply wind up hurting themselves. So I hire a tree removal service to come out. They take one look at it and say, 'Well that's just too damn big,' and then hand me a card for a demolitions expert. 'Gee,' I say, 'I'm not too sure about this, but if he's the top dog in his field, who am I to argue?'
So the demolitions expert comes out to my hawse, determines he needs about 300 pounds of TNT to get rid of this mammoth tree, and sets the timer and detonation wires. He does everything right. No mistakes. But as soon as he pushes the plunger, a bluebird happens to fly by the tree. But wait! A few hundred yards down the road, there's a tractor-trailer carrying several atomic bombs! And they're armed, because the airmen who were supposed to de-arm them forgot! The bluebird goes flying across and into the windshield of the tractor-trailer and now I no longer have to worry about my tree or debating a meals tax or a new baseball stadium in Shockoe Bottom because there's now a giant crater where it would go. The demolitions expert did everything correctly, but because of strict liability, he is still responsible. All right, now, for next class we'll go over 'Machine Gun' Kelly, Ma Barker, and 'Squirrel-Toothed' Alice. Ya'll have a nice weekend."

Chris Schwarz's Traveling Tool Chest

In the meantime since my last post, I've assembled the tool chest case, installed the top and bottom skirts, and completed the tool tray. The main reason for having the skirts is the way the chest's case is constructed; dovetails can only go together in one direction, and by default, can go apart the same way. By alternating the way the dovetails go on the skirts with the dovetails on the case, it effectively traps the chest case so the sides can't bow out and fail.

Although I'm pretty sure Chris Schwarz looked at several antique examples of tool chests to come up with his design, the most puzzling thing about the chest was the bottom skirt. When I was first reviewing the sketchup model for the chest, a cursory glance at the bottom skirt made me think that it was similar to other bases I'd seen for case pieces with rabbets on the inside and the chest would slide down and be glued and possibly nailed to the bottom. Moldings would follow to cover up the transition from case to skirt. 

Not exactly. The bottom skirt slips down around and lies flush with the bottom battens, but it's simply glued to the case sides. Hmph.

Although I've been able to get away without measuring through the use of dividers, story sticks and what not, pinch rods would've been extremely helpful for getting a tighter fit on the skirts. They're just two pieces of wood with a fastener in the middle to hold them together, allowing you to measure inside cases with them and then transcribe to a piece of wood for cutting. I can't recall how many times I've used a ruler or tape measure only to have a parallax error rear its quarter inch long head on the piece I've cut.

For the bottom skirt, I measured carefully, cut the dovetails carefully, screwed up an entire set of the pins carefully, and then carefully swore as I attempted to wrangle glue and bar clamps on the skirt while manipulating it into place.

For all the difficulty, the only gap on the bottom skirt measures a hair less than 1/32". That's nothing. The wood will probably shift more than that over the changing seasons.

I glued the top skirt flush with the top of the case and omitted the back board of the skirt to allow the lid to pivot down.

I used Tavern Green milk paint on the chest since it's what was on hand, and applied two coats on the front and sides, and a thin wash coat on the back. I thought it looked fine, just a little plain, so I stenciled a scrolling vine sort of pattern on the front and then painted it with acrylic paint and soft camel hair brushes. I think a stiffer brush is in order. The camel hair brushes might be more suitable for water colors on parchment instead of wood. I had a lot of trouble getting crisp lines with the liner brush. It acted more like a mop in that it would refuse to release the paint until I'd press down about halfway to the ferule. Of course, this splayed out the brush hairs and made the line a lot thicker than what I wanted or needed. If I had to do this again, I'd cut out stencils from cardboard or thick paper and tack them down just to get clearly defined borders and lines. Once the acrylic was dry, I applied two coats of butcher block oil (which is really just a thinned varnish) to darken the milk paint and give it a slight sheen.

The only things left are to make, fit, and install the lid, install handles on the side, and possibly make another tool tray.

Stenciled

Painted

Painted and varnished

close up

Call Me Queequeg

I finally finished cutting out the pin boards and tail boards for the tool chest. Because my workbench is a dinky little affair, clamping up anything in my vise over 5 inches wide is just asking for trouble.
I love trouble. I was thinking about getting my middle named changed to Trouble, but the amount of paperwork that was required was too much trouble. Oh, sweet irony!
Frank Klausz wrote an article in Popular Woodworking magazine about the joys of continental frame saws aka bow saws. He stated that for any material thicker than 1/2" he uses a bow saw. Because my tool chest is a bastard child of red oak, eastern white pine, and hard white ash, I knew that using an ordinary dovetail saw would try my patience. About two strokes of the saw for the hard woods, and one stroke for the pine, was all I needed to get down to my baseline. I used a coping saw to clean out the waste and a chisel to clean up.
I was blown away by how fast it was.
Yesterday I assembled the case and today I'll cut plywood and nail on the bottom including the battens, or rot strips, that span the bottom's width.
When the boards weren't assembled, I could easily stack them up leaning against the wall.
But as soon as the dovetails were cut and the fit perfect and square, I assembled the case to lessen the likelihood of the boards warping or doing other sorts of crazy things. Because of limited space, I had to put them in the study right behind the computer. Every time I glance over my shoulder I see this massive wooden box that always makes me thing of Queequeg and his coffin. Like the novel, I'm sure this coffin will turn out to be a lifesaver for my tools and space.

A Necessary Tool Chest or the Many Layers of the Onion

This summer has been fairly mild and extremely wet. That's great for me, because I'm used to places that are drought plagued with the mercury regularly getting past 95 degrees before 9 o'clock. What's not great is the amount of standing water I found in the crawlspace of our house. I had about 20 board feet of white ash that was stored there due to lack of space, and as I inspected it, I found a massive infestation of wet rot. I yanked the boards out in a hurry and flooded them with ammonia in the hopes of killing off the mold and spores. After about two weeks, I think these boards are done. On two boards the mold has disappeared with only discoloration remaining, but the rest are starting to fruit again and because the mold or fungus has its own root systems, they're warped horribly in patchy spots.

Grumbling, I went down into the crawlspace again after pulling out the boards only to discover that the wet rot had spread to Lara's books, our lawn chairs, carving blanks, leg blanks, and practically anything that could support its growth. Armed with rags and a large bottle of ammonia, Lara and I cleaned all her books and assorted items of the mold, while I controlled my gag reflex. The aroma of ammonia, common blue mold, and damp books made me feel like I was trapped in the inside of a wedge of brie.

I thought the worst was over. The damaged wood was all tossed, salvageable wood was salvaged, and I was opening the door to the crawlspace regularly to try and air it out. I was working on another table and opened up my plane chest to grab my jointer only to discover that all my planes had rusted. Because the bottom is a groove fitted into the chest, the planes are up about about a half inch from the ground, and I figured they would be alright from any dampness in the ground.

Clearly that was incorrect.

I'd previously attempted to build a tool chest with overpriced, low quality wood from Lowe's. This, compounded with the fact that I didn't know to use bar clamps for edge jointing, resulted in boards that resembled very large serving platters more than anything else. Ultimately I used this wood for drawers and the like.

But this time is different. I've got three panels glued up and will put the fourth one together sometime today. Once everything is assembled, I'll nail the bottom on and start putting my planes and other tools in there. The bottom and top skirt, drawers, and lid will all come later. For right now I just need a safe place to keep my tools before they're expensive lumps of rust. 

The Joy of Milk Paint

I've been working on a couple of shaker side tables with the hopes of selling them in one of the several galleries dotting the greater Richmond. It's great, because the side table offers a little practice in mortise and tenon joinery, dovetailing, half-blind dovetails, and working with proportions.
I know working with proportions sounds odd, but that's exactly what sets Shaker furniture apart from a generic, genre-defying piece. The most recent table I've completed has the drawer widened and the depth lessened to give it a little bit of airiness, but now that I think about it, it's probably an unconscious reaction to my second table I built that I have informally dubbed "crate on legs."
For the run of tables I'm building, I bought one board of 8/4 white ash stock specifically for making legs. But as soon as I saw the board, I knew there was no way I could use a film finish. The 8/4 board had several knots, waney edges, and a slightly grayish hue to it that obscured the grain. What happened is that I got a board that was cut very close to the heart, or it had an ingrown branch near the center.
My only option is to paint them. Oil-based paint is fine, but there's nothing exciting about it. So I turned my eye to milk paint.
Milk paint, so called because it uses slaked lime to bind to the milk protein casein, is a great water-soluble paint that leaves a thin, matte streaked finish to a piece. It doesn't completely obscure the grain, and the paint texture isn't exactly smooth, but the real clincher is that it mimics the look of painted antique furniture that you've seen, more than likely because those antique pieces were painted with milk paint. The grainy, streaked surface provides enough visual variation to give the piece character, and the tactile feedback from stroking it reminds you that you're touching wood and not plaster.
I've been using milk paint for almost a year and my enjoyment has increased with every use. Milk paint comes in powdered form. I use an 8 oz mason jar and mix equal parts water and powder and shake it as Mike Dunbar described in his thorough article in Fine Woodworking magazine. I sand between coats and stop at three. After it's dried for a few days, I'll rub a paper bag over it to dislodge any caked paint and to smooth out the surface just a little. You're left with a thin paint that will develop a nice patina with wear and time.
The positives:

1. Texture
2. Color
3. Paint coats won't chip easily, they'll wear instead
4. No Volatile Organic Compounds, unlike oil based paint, so you can paint to your heart's content, even indoors, while retaining most of your brain cells
5. Looking at Mr. Dunbar's chairs, you can layer different color coats to mimic patina
6. Cleaning paint brushes only requires dish detergent and warm water

The negatives:

1. Not exceptionally convenient. If you mix the paint by stirring, you'll need to strain the clumps of undissolved paint from the jar. If you mix by shaking, you need to wait at least an hour for the froth to settle down
2. The lime in the paint can burn your skin. I've never had this issue, only a mild itchiness, but if you're of the persuasion that flings paint everywhere, I'd wear a face mask so you don't burn your eyes
3. It doesn't bind well over other types of paint. You'll need to strip or scrape away the old paint to bare wood prior to repainting
4. Difficult to strip. The only solvent that can strip milk paint is lye which is extremely caustic

You can see what all the hoopla's about, in addition to the colors, here and here. I'm very partial to blues and reds.

Freakonomics falls flat

I finally got around to picking up that fabled book at the library. The one titled Freakonomics that asked such tantalizing questions as "Why does a drug dealer still live at home with his mother?" So I sat down to begin reading it and put it down in favor of finishing another book. When I returned to this book with a fresh mind, I was able to finish it with a feeling of drudgery rather than of being an eye witness to an expose.
The book doesn't tie together each chapter, but it isn't supposed to and we are warned of this. We're also given a snippet from a glowing review of the book at the start of each chapter as if to constantly remind us that the book is great stuff. There's just one problem.
Most of the links tying the juxtapositions together ("How is a schoolteacher like a sumo wrestler," "How is the Ku Klux Klan like a group of real estate agents") are so spider silk-thin that you could make the assertion about practically any two groups.  Answers: they both have incentives to cheat, and they both closely control information.  How broad is that paint brush?
What is interesting about the book is the information it provides in the chapters, and not necessarily the conclusions. Through the chapters, we learn the issues involving teachers cheating for EOG testing, how the decline of the Ku Klux Klan was precipitated by Superman, reasons for decline of crime, and children's names being a reflection of the socioeconomic status they belong to.
The chapter that I enjoyed the most dealt with crack cocaine dealers. The bulk of the chapter was based on field research conducted by a grad student in the Chicago area who actually embedded himself into a gang to  understand how it operated. And as he found out, it closely mirrored a franchise, where the local gang paid a percentage of revenue to the head gang in order to operate under their name.
The end of the chapter segues into the following chapter dealing with declining crime. The reason for this, the authors conclude, is that people were having more abortions which effectively brought about the reduction in crime since there weren't as many kids in the next generation growing up into criminals. The authors compare different cohorts in different states to show that the crime reduction was correlated with the legalization of abortion. States that legalized early noted a decreased drop, and states that legalized later noted a drop after their legalization.
I remember reading this and thinking that something didn't really jive. Attempting to control for a bunch of different factors in a study is hard enough, and it wasn't stated just how long the study was conducted, nor did it point to any other study supporting their findings. So I read the conclusion with not just a grain but a spoonful of salt.
The Economist published an article on the same issue that arrived at a different conclusion. Conducted by two economists in Boston, they found a flaw in the test conducted with the authors' data and discovered that the effects of abortion on crime were cut in half with the original data and reduced by two thirds when using updated numbers. The economists ultimately decided that they couldn't answer the question of whether abortion reduces crime or not in the scope of their study. A statistician would put it bluntly as a "failure to reject the null hypothesis," which means that you can't prove your alternative hypothesis, which in this case is abortions cause fewer crimes.
Overall the book fell flat for me. The title is misleading; it should read something like, "Pell-Mell Random Factoids." The most exciting thing about the book is the questions asked on the dust cover. The answers, however, are far more routine. I believe the authors are trying to convey some of the principles of economics in an interesting setting, but like I said, the conclusions they reach as to why these things happen isn't really groundbreaking. Nothing exciting, new, or revolutionary is put forth in the book. My recommendation? Pick up Milton Friedman's Free to Choose instead of this book. 

Is Showrooming Really so Bad?

For those of you who follow business news, I'm sure you've heard all about showrooming and Best Buy's plan to unveil store kiosks sometime in the future to combat showrooming.  Showrooming is something we've  all probably unintentionally done before, and I'll give you the following scenario:

You're in the market for a new set of speakers and you go to the local electronic goods chain to see what they have. The store's great because you can see side by side comparisons, the sales staff answers your questions, and you can try the speakers out. Then you get down to brass tacks and find out how much it costs. Always the conscientious shopper, you decide to hold off for a few days to see if you can find a better deal elsewhere for a lower cost. If not, then you'll simply come back to the store and purchase the speakers. When you get home you go on the internet and see that not only can you buy the same speakers from Amazon, but you can buy them for 10 percent cheaper than the store's price.

Congratulations, you've entered into the brave new world of showrooming.

Businesses say that this is a bad thing; they're having to pay for the stores, the sales people, and the inventory only to have people come in and test products only to buy them elsewhere. In other words, businesses are bearing the cost of this benefit to consumers. Is this bad? It sure is if you're the brick and mortar store. But it's great if you're the customer! You're effectively saving whatever the price difference is between the online store and the local store. And what if that price difference would be a deal breaker at the brick and mortar store? You're still able to make the purchase because of the online retailer. Economists might say that showrooming increases consumer surplus at the cost of producer surplus and allows more marginal buyers into the market. The layman would say that it allows more people to buy goods at a lower price than what they'd pay.

Some might say that this is unfair, but quite honestly this is no different than any other competition a B&M retailer would face. Prior to online shopping, customers probably did the exact same thing that they're doing now by shopping around for the best price. I think the only difference is just the volume of sales being completed online.

So what could be the outcomes for B&M retailers that are combating showrooming and online retailers?

1. The B&M retailers launch their own online stores and duke it out with Amazon and their like until one emerges victorious.
2. B&M retailers lobby congress for some sort of online sales tax. The losers would be the consumers who can't buy goods for cheaper and online retailers.
3. B&M retailers get better at controlling their costs or more effective management of inventory so that they can offer their goods at competitive prices compared to the online retailers.
4. B&M retailers effectively go out of business or convert to serving specialty and niche markets with online retailers servicing the majority of consumers. Due to the increased volume of sales and required costs to support it, the online retailer is forced to increase prices.

I'm sure the permutations and different combinations are more numerous than the four I've listed, but one thing is for certain: consumers will be able to determine the outcome by their purchasing preferences and their willingness to pay.

Fun with History

For the last couple of days I've been reading a book by Patrick Dillon detailing the so called Gin Craze that London went through in the early to mid-eighteenth century. It was very interesting in describing how it began from the Dutch development of distilling wine to becoming widespread problem, and then to slowly declining. What was most interesting were the vivid descriptions of the usage of gin and its effects. Most people weren't just getting drunk off of gin; they were drinking it until they would pass out, work only enough to get money to purchase more gin, prostitute themselves until they could purchase gin, and then sell the clothes off their back to acquire even more gin. Parliament passed several different Gin Acts, but the most restrictive one effectively outlawed gin with absolutely no change in gin consumption.
Mr. Dillon doesn't ignore the parallels that England experienced to the USA's 18th Amendment which prohibited alcohol, and then the subsequent drug wars in both countries, but points out the similarities in terms of the actions the governments took and the similar ineffective results.
I never remember history being this exciting. The USA went through a whiskey rebellion in the late 18th century because of a tax imposed on distillers. The only problem is that the government conveniently ignored the fact that they were taxing a bunch of pissed off people, who then physically demonstrated just how pissed off they were. This sounds exciting, doesn't it? And I think most of history is, but the history I remember was extremely different, especially 11th grade US History.

Mr. Merret was our history teacher with a penchant for pleated pants, striped shirts, and garishly colored ties. He would walk in as we would be seated and say, "Awrightnowchirrenletsgitstaaahted." This would always prompt a couple of confused stares and "huh's" to be muttered, so he would take a deep breath and repeat, "Ah saaaaaaid awrightnowletsgitstaaaahtedlearningboutthathistooooory!" Bloody rebellions were summarized down into the simple facts that they had occurred and were put down and that life continued. Occasionally some point would excite Mr. Merret and he would start waving his arms around which would hike up his shirt and display his fleshy white belly. But more often than not, we had to make our own fun in history class. And consequently get into trouble.
"CAMERON! BRADLEY! WHY are y'all taaaaahlkin'? Ithoughtisaidididntwanttohearno taaaaaahlkin'!"
"Oh, we weren't talking Mr. Merret. We were singing."
"...Oh. Ok. Now as I was sayin'....CHAAASTOWN wastheporthathadthemostsugarexportsin-"
"Mr. Merret, where is Chastown? Isn't it in Bolivia?"
"OfCOURSEitsnotinBolivia! This is US HISTORY! It's in So' CarolIIINA!"
"Oh, ok, Charleston."
"Yes! That's exactly what I saaayed! Now if we-CAMERON! BRADLEY! WHY are y'all taaaaahlkin'!"
"We were just discussing the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, Mr. Merret."
"Yes! And what an act it was!"
"....Oh. Ok. Nooooww second to port Chastown was Nawlins."
"...That's in...Idaho?"
"NO IT'S NOT IN IDAHO! HOW CAN A PORT BE IN A LAND BOUND STATE!"
"Well, there's no such thing as a dumb question! Where is it?"
"It's in Looseyanna."
"WHERE?!"
"IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE MAP! RIGHTTHERENEXTTO ALYBAAAAAMMA AND TEXASS!"
"Oh! Louisiana! Ok, I think I understand now. I'm going to make a hundred on the next test, don't you worry Mr. Merret!"
"[indecipherable mumbling] Awright, now if there aren't any more questions, can we PLEASE continue?!"
"Mr. Merret, why didn't economists step in and point out that a tariff act would effectively raise the current prices of goods in addition to lowering consumer surplus? Why didn't they point this out? Why didn't the Federal Reserve Bank step in sooner for the Great Depression? WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE?!"
Mr. Merret would pause, face flushed, and would begin waving his hands, exposing his belly, "AH CAIN'T DEAL WITH ALLTHISNONSENSEYOUCHIRRENAREEXPOSING ME TOOOOO! Y'ALL DRIVE THE POPE TO DRAAANK!"
And it was usually at this point that the bell would ring and we'd all hightail it out of there before detention could be awarded. So although the history was rather dull, the process of learning it was the most exciting.

Ignorance Is Bliss

Way back in the day when I was a junior in high school, I was taking AP English/Lit my fall semester. We were just wrapping up The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when a fellow student in my class mentioned a one man play that he was part of that revolved around Huck Finn. He asked if he could perform part of the soliloquy for the class. My teacher agreed. So we all hunkered down and anticipated a good performance.
We were NOT disappointed.

"All my life revolved around the stage, and my dream, nay, my destiny was to see my name on Broadway's marquis under the title of Huckleberry Finn. Auditions were coming up in a month, and I rehearsed every day knowing my good work would be rewarded. I would burst out of the tub, saying, "HI! I'm HUCKLEBERRY FINN!" Whenever I would get home from school, I wouldn't just walk through the door, but I would make an entrance, 'HI! I'm HUCKLEBERRY FINN!' But one day I had a huge break. My parents were having a Broadway producer over for supper that night. This was my big chance. I dressed up in filthy coveralls, painted freckles on my face, and I waited until he came in and yelled at the top of my voice and lungs, 'HI! I'm HUCKLEBERRY FINN!' But I knew that success wasn't built on rote memorization of lines, but also improv and dancing! So I began to do a soft shoe number as the producer looked on with a blank face. I began doing a tarantella, and then whirling like a dervish, screaming, 'I'M HUCKLEBERRY FINN! I'M HUCKLEBERRY FINN!' I collapsed, out of breath, drained of emotion poured into that performance, and the producer looked at me and then at my parents and said, 'Gee, I didn't know your son was special.'"

At this point the student paused and looked around at the captive audience in the classroom. No one was laughing. I remember thinking to myself, "Boy, that punchline stinks!" With no response he continued.

"SO! You don't want to laugh. DON'T YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER SOMEONE TELLING A VERY GOOD JOKE! YOU KNOW WHAT, I CAME UP HERE AND POURED MY HEART OUT FOR YOU BASTARDS AND THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS JUST TO APPLAUD OR PERHAPS EVEN SMILE ON YOUR !$#%!@ FACES! I'M HUCKLEBERRY FINN! AND THAT DOESN'T EVEN GET A LAUGH! WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT?! I'M GOING PLACES! WHEN YOU MORONS ARE AT YOUR MISERABLE, SOUL-SUCKING, 9 TO 5 JOBS AND WONDER WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN, YOU'LL OPEN UP THE DAMN PAPERS AND SEE MY FACE UNDER THE WORDS 'BIG STAR.' NOW LAUGH!"

At this point he went around the room and pointed at people, screaming "LAUGH! LAUGH! LAAAAAAUGH!" I was completely enthralled. This was great!
After about 5 more minutes of this, his face went from a puce color to its normal hue, and he ended with his arms wrapped around his chest and stared at the floor, and mumbled to the teacher, "Well, that's about it."
I stood up and applauded along with rest of the class's stuttering clapping. As we shuffled out of the classroom, one of the girls in the class turned to me and whispered, "Oh my god! I can't believe that just happened!" I turned back to her and said, "I know! What an act! That guy is going straight to Broadway!"

It wasn't until much later that I realized he'd figuratively flipped his lid. But during that performance, I was utterly spellbound, utterly ignorant, and utterly happy.

A Zen State of Mind

Sometimes the only thing standing in the way of a problem and its solution is a good night's sleep. I've often had trouble understanding certain concepts or problems and have woken up the next day to readily understand and solve them. Nothing has changed except perhaps your brain is more engaged or you've digested all the different views, but you feel sharp and focused and everything falls into place.

Woodworking is a lot like that, especially working with hand tools. Combining your focused mind with your hands allows you to enter into a zen state of mind.
Since I don't have any woodworking projects in progress, I've been practicing joinery. But earlier this week, I was practicing cutting tenons by hand in a spare hour before work with horrible results. To be fair, a 700mm length bowsaw with 9 tpi web is quite a bit larger and coarser than all but the absolute largest tenon saws. My saw drifted left and right and back and forward and produced tenons that looked like they'd been cut with a woodchipper. I was convinced the problem wasn't with me, but it was with the saw that had to have been dull.

Today I sharpened most of my saws and was putting off sharpening my bowsaw with the joinery web in it. I paused for a moment and figured that I would try cutting another tenon to see just how dull the saw was. But I cut a perfect tenon with no problem.
The only thing that changed is that I was focused on cutting the tenon instead of getting ready for work
I often experienced this problem with guitar playing when I was beginning. But once I actually started setting time aside in my day to practice, I was able to focus and get better. All the little things that I would have to obsess over became second nature so that I could focus on what the song was supposed to sound like.
The same thing's happening with woodworking; nothing's changing, I'm just entering into a zen state of mind.

How the Conquistadors Inflated Their Economy

One day I realized I had absolutely no idea how businesses, banks, or the financial world work. That annoys me. So I read an Idiot's guide to economics from the library. The book was pretty dry, but it was a down and dirty quick guide to most of the concepts of economics. Then I started reading a macroeconomics textbook, and now I truly know the meaning of dry. One of the concepts discussed in both books was fiscal and monetary policy. An IS-LM curve (Investment-Savings; Liquidity Preference [money demand]-Money Supply) was introduced which shows how equilibrium exists between the commodity market and the money market with interest rates and income plotted out on the y and x axes respectively. But another idea was introduced which is still an odd concept to me.

And that is the velocity of money.

Simply stated, velocity is equal to the nominal GDP and divided by the money supply, or V=PQ/M. 

And MV=PQ is another way of stating the formula.

So is M=PQ/V.

I remember reading about how the Spanish discovered the Americas and brought back so much silver and gold that it caused rampant inflation for their economy. But being historians, the authors never discussed why that happened. I think the simplest definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few goods which leads to an increase in the price based off of a supply and demand curve. 

But the equation actually shows why inflation happened. Instead of Q increasing, prices increased. Although you would get a higher nominal GDP based off of higher prices, your real GDP would deflate.

So why wouldn't velocity increase with an increased money supply? Velocity is the amount of times money changes hands in the year per unit of currency. So a huge increase in money supply wouldn't necessarily correlate with an increase in velocity.

So, if that's the case, why wouldn't Q increase instead of prices with the GDP being equal to the change of the money supply and velocity of money?

I'm not totally sure, but I think if a large amount of money were flooded into an economy it would take several years of investing in order to actually raise production of goods. If the Spanish explorers were to start buying boats and farms after coming back from the Americas it might take several years before they could start growing wheat or catching a bunch of fish with a fleet. While the money supply exceeds the demand though, prices increase with inflation as a result.

Out of all of this, the takeaway is that by controlling the money supply you can attempt to control prices to prevent a rapid inflation or deflation. 

Now my head hurts.

The Worst Christmas Songs

We're in that time of the year where you can't escape Christmas music. Whenever you drive in the car, it comes on the radio. Whenever you turn off the radio, there's music playing in the store. Whenever you leave the store and go back home, there are holiday jingles playing on the television. Whenever you turn off the television, you have the horrible songs still bouncing around your head. I've experienced quite a bit in my life, but there are certain things that make me want to claw at my face whenever I hear them.
And just to clarify, I claw at my face every single time I hear these songs.
1. "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas"
    Every little girl's dream is to have a wild, dangerous African animal for Christmas which is notorious for being extremely aggressive and flinging its feces everywhere to mark its territory. Oh? It's not? Well apparently it is for this horribly misinformed little girl. I don't understand how people think this song is cute. What the hell kind of a Christmas would they expect if this actually played out? What the hell kind of sicko parents or Santa would allow this to happen? I have a horrible image of a house with gaping holes in it, people flattened like pancakes, and feces absolutely everywhere. Street hardened policemen would poke their heads in to get a glimpse of the carnage, and immediately turn away to start puking and yell "OH THE HUMANITY!" Plus, what's with the creepy girl's voice? I know it's a child singer, but it still freaks me out. I'm pretty sure I know the reason why. After studio executives spent a day and a half of being told "that's a stupid idea for a song" by 8 year-olds, they clearly went with plan "B" and got an adult female to sing the song with a mask of helium hooked up.
2. "Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey"
   As if to differentiate that the song is NOT about a reindeer, the singer drove the message home with all the subtlety of a Mel Brooks' comedy. "HEEEEEE-YONK! HEEEE-YONK" is peppered throughout the song along with "JIGGITY JIG!" which isn't preceded by the old standard, "Home again, home again!" And then the singer can't remember the first words to each verse, so he just randomly fills empty air by yelling "LA LA LA LA LA LAAAAAA!" which apparently are sounds that only Italian Christmas donkeys make as opposed to those other jackasses. To be fair, Italy's Santa Claus legend does have him riding a donkey.  But if the Italian Santa had to ride a donkey named Dominick that sounded like an animal version of Ned Flanders ("Hidely ho! HEEYONK JIGGITY LA LA JIG!"), he would've traded him in for a Ferrari. Or a Fiat.
3. "Santa Baby" by Madonna.
   Madonna had a string of hits in the 80's and then 90's, but she's successfully transformed herself from an 80's sex icon to a real-life walking mummy these days. This song was recorded in the 80's by her, and she naturally wanted to try something different than her usual sultry approach. So she sung like a person who's just come out of a wisdom tooth extraction and still fully feeling the effects of the anesthetic. It really is different as a Christmas song, but you only listen to it halfway before you find yourself wishing that you could tell her, "Madonna, look, an 'A' for effort, but maybe you could just try singing it normally?"
4. "The Christmas Shoes"
    There's just something about this song that makes me want to crawl into bed and stay there for a week. I can't quite put my finger on it. It could be the street urchin protagonist in the song attempting to buy some sort of nice shoes, (he doesn't say what kind, but I always picture Air Jordan's or whatever Kobe Bryant's hawking these days) for his terminally ill mother, while his father is so overcome with grief that he's oblivious to everything and allowing his Oliver Twist of-a-son to roam around the city. It could be that the protagonist doesn't have enough money to buy the shoes and has to resort to begging instead of picking up aluminum cans and taking them to a recycling center. It could also be that the song sounds suspiciously like Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?"
5. "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"
    I understand what peace is fully. It's the absence of war. And I understand what Yoko Ono is. It's the absence of singing ability. Japanese and Chinese music sound atonal to me but that's because their musical scales are different from the western twelve note scale. And yes, the women singing do sound a tad like cats singing. But it works with their music. What doesn't work in this song is Yoko in the background warbling "WAAAAAR EEEEES OOOOOVAAAAH! EEEEEF YOUUUUUU WAAAAAAN IT! WAAAAR EEEES OOOOOVAH! NAAAAAAAAAAOOOOAAAAA!" I see it in my mind right now. John's hunched over at the console of his recording studio and the sound engineer is listening to the playback and says, "I don't understand, John! We've recorded this fifteen times and every single time once it gets to the chorus, I hear a high pitched whine in the background! It's not the equipment...but what is it?!"
6. "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"
    Don't get me wrong. My issue with the song isn't the lyrics but with Brenda Lee's vocal cords which seem to be suffering the same debilitating disease as the little girl who sings "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas." I mean, the Hall and Oates cover of this song was fine. Except for the video where John Oates gets all gussied up in a dress for the holidays. And the long, personal gaze that was shared between Darryl and John. That just makes me feel voyeuristic. And then I hear their cover and I start thinking about John in the dress and the stares that they gave each other. Actually, you know what, my beef is with the whole song in general, past to present and future.

I Had a Dog Her Name was Pepper

Usually when I think about where puppies come from, an image of a mother dog licking her little 'uns as they nuss her forms in my mind. But when I think about where my old dog Pepper came from, a black, slimy, oily creature crawling out from a rock or a swamp is the only way I can see how she was spawned.

We first got her back in the late 90's and we fittingly named her Pepper because her coat was flecked with white and black. The first couple of days she adjusted to the new environment but I remember one night vividly because she was lonely and wouldn't stop barking. I let her inside and she slept on my chest with her head tucked under my chin the whole night. "Perhaps this isn't so bad," I thought. And indeed it wasn't.

But later that morning I noticed something was off about her. When my golden retriever came in, happy to greet me, Pepper provided her own salutation by jumping up and biting the golden's tongue. And thus started the beginning of a wonderful friendship that subjugated my golden retriever's legs for Pepper's target practice and Pepper provided...come to think of it, it was just a one way relationship with Pepper getting the most out of it.

"Oh that's so sweet! See how they're playing?" my mother cooed. My sister Hope and I shared a worried glance as Pepper did her damnedest to rip the legs off of our poor golden retriever while growling "RAWR RAWR RAWR RAWR!" and with the golden jumping to try and knock Pepper over to get away. This went on for about a year until Pepper got spayed. Then she just sort of half-heartedly attacked our golden retriever and would occasionally wrestle with her, but you could tell that her heart wasn't into it and that she was just doing it for old time's sake.

But this wasn't the only incident that tipped us off that Pepper was different. After one morning of not seeing Pepper, I asked my dad if he had seen her at all.

"No, I haven't seen her [RAWF!]. I mean I can [RAWF!] hear her pretty clearly but I don't [RAAAAAWF!] see her at all."

"Well, [RAWF RAWF RAWF!] maybe she's just up close to the house [RAWF RAWF!], right up under the windows or something."

"She [RAWF!] could be."

"You know what? [RAWF RAWF RAWF] It [RAWF] sounds [RAWF] like [RAWF] she's [RAWF] under [RAWF] the [RAWF] house! [RAWF RAWF RAWF!]"

My dad and I grabbed some flashlights and pulled off the covers to the crawlspace and saw Pepper coated in dust and dirt and happy to see us. She came running out, leaped into the air, and then ran over and started chasing our golden retriever around the yard. My dad and I didn't see any openings in the crawlspace. Hope suggested that Pepper had attempted to use her magic and teleport, but instead of winding up in a McDonald's greasetrap like she had originally planned, she wound up under the house.

It was around this time that we realized Pepper was slowly trying to communicate with us. Whenever she wanted something, she would slowly extend out her right paw, touch us with it, and continue to do this until we petted her or got her what she wanted.

"What a smart dog!" we'd exclaim, and then look outside to see Pepper running in circles, viciously trying to eat her tail.

Intelligence was completely contradictory with Pepper. If she were outside and begged for food, sometimes we would give her some just so she would stop touching us with her paw. And if she really liked the piece of food, she would rush inside as soon as we would open the door, and then immediately lay down on her back. The first time I attempted to pick her up in this position she clamped down on my hand like a vise. A vise with sharp pointy teeth. After that we just coaxed her out with food, but the end result was the same. She got an extra piece of food and we got to enjoy all of our digits for yet another day.

Her breath started getting worse. A lot worse. "Get away from me dog, you've been eating garlic!" My dad would say. Naturally we gave her rawhides and nylabones to get the plaque off of her teeth, but the chicken liver flavor wasn't agreeable to her, so she would bury these in the yard until they acquired a musty, rancid flavor. "What is she carrying in her mouth?!" "It looks like an evil root!" We could practically see the saliva flowing out of Pepper's mouth as she carried an unraveled jet black rawhide to one of her hidey holes to enjoy in private. It seems we had an answer to her foul breath.

Or so we thought. One day I saw Pepper eating something in the liriope bushes on the outer edge of our yard. "That's weird," I thought, "there's nothing over there; that's just where they use the bathroom." Of course it didn't occur to me that dog refuse is indeed something. My older sister went running out, yelling "PEPPER THAT IS SO GROSS! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!" and Pepper did indeed stop and ran straight to Katie. Katie picked her up with the intention of putting Pepper inside so that she could get over whatever craving she was having for feces. Pepper was just really excited to see Katie and began licking her all over the face. "EEEEEEWWWWW" Katie cried and deposited Pepper on the floor while she ran to the bathroom to start pouring rubbing alcohol all over her face. Pepper looked around, saw me, and made a straight beeline for me. "AAAAAH! GET AWAY! GET AWAY!"

I took off. No way was that dog going to lick me after what she just ate. I ran from the living room to the dining room. Pepper thought it was a game and met me at the other door. "AHHH! GET AWAY! GET AWAY!" We played ring around the rosy with the piano, the dining table, the coffee table, the kitchen island, and individual chairs. Pepper was having the time of her life chasing me. I was running for my life, convinced that any part of my body that she licked with her tongue would develop some incurable fungus that would begin to rot and require immediate amputation. I finally jumped up on the kitchen table with Pepper staring up at me, convinced that we would remain like this until judgement day.

However my mom heard all the ruckus downstairs and found me biting my nails while hunched over on top of the kitchen table muttering, "humminahumminahumminahummina."

"YOU get off the kitchen table. YOU get outside right now." We both complied. But we explained what happened to our mother who suggested that we take Pepper to the veterinarian. "And make sure to clean Pepper's ears out before we take her, Trey."

I attended to the duty with a pair of Kleenexes. Pepper didn't seem to mind, but it was pretty gross considering the amount of hard, sable bits of ear wax that wound up on the tissues. My sister and mom took Pepper to the vet, and the vet suggested putting meat tenderizer on their dog food to prevent Pepper from eating her used food. Then he got down to brass tacks, muzzled Pepper, and began cleaning her ears out with a q-tip. "Oh gosh, your ears are dirty, girl!" the vet exclaimed. My mother and sister looked on in horror as q-tip after q-tip came out coated with some sort of coal tar. "I don't understand, my son said he cleaned her ears yesterday." "Well, dog ears are kind of s-shaped. The outsides of them look pretty clean."

And with that he turned to throw away all of the dirty q-tips. Pepper began shaking her head and loose ear wax flew everywhere, including on my sister's lip. "Thanks," she said, "by the way, you don't have any rubbing alcohol do you?"

I heard all about it when I got back and retold the story to Hope. Hope got a knowing look on her eyes and silently lead me to the garage where we had Pepper's chair. Pepper originally had a bed, but when my dad moved one of his old orange, green, and yellow striped upholstered chairs into the garage, Pepper claimed that as her little castle and would sleep in it every night. "It all makes sense now," Hope whispered, as if discovering the reason behind a thoughtless crime. I looked at the seat of the chair. A black, tarry substance in a Pepper-shaped ring was on the seat. I got a twig and poked at it. It was very firm but still gummy. "I think we've found an alternative for drilling crude oil," I remember thinking, as we could shear Pepper every summer and squeeze the tar out of her fur and just have that refined into asphalt and diesel fuel.

But alas, this alternative fuel was not to be. Pepper died shortly thereafter and was buried next to the legs of our gold retriever. I would often think about her fondly, remembering all the times I would pet her, and she would gently bite me to show her appreciation. Three years later, I was flipping through Popular Science and read an article about MRI research being conducted with dogs. The dog in the picture was getting a treat from a scientist, but the dog looked exactly like Pepper. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, when we interred her into the earth, she emerged from another swamp in California, looking for something stinky to eat and a pair of legs to bite.

A Haunting from John Maynard Keynes

The Richmond Times-Dispatch had an editorial today about the dreaded fiscal cliff that's coming up in January unless the dunderheads in Congress and President Obama can get the lead out and agree on something to prevent the tax increases and the slash in Federal spending.
Several writers offer differing views on the best way to tackle this problem, but five of them stood out to me.
One writer says that it's not necessarily the deficit that's the issue; it's far better to have low unemployment and high growth. That certainly echoes Keynes's argument for Great Britain in the 20's and early 30's when labor unions where striking for higher wages and the government was attempting to return the pound sterling to prewar levels. The result was very high unemployment in industrial areas which resulted in the government giving them unemployment pensions. Having a decent growth and low unemployment would allow for more taxes to be raised while reducing expenditures on unemployment insurance and other subsidized benefits.
A second says that increased military spending will create jobs but up to a point. After that point it will lead to decreasing marginal returns due to crowding out of private sector investments. I guess that makes sense; why would you try to compete with the government on research when they've already awarded out contracts to defense contracting companies?
A third writer sort of states the untold truth: the debt ceiling is just a limit. I don't know how it's decided, but apparently it's been moved up and up for years. And the fact that the government can refinance it's debt doesn't necessarily mean that there's a point of no return. However, I suppose that weighs heavily on the amount of our debt compared to other nations with similar GDP.
And the last writers hash out another argument in reference to taxation. One of them states that taxing the rich in order to redistribute it to the poor is really just a government sanctioned form of looting. And as long as the rich remain rich, there won't be a problem. That just smacks of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and it's kind of true from that viewpoint. If you're successful and created your own money because you were the best and the smartest at what you do, does it make sense for the government to continue to draw on your wealth by an income tax once you've paid your taxes like everybody else? Wouldn't that just be penalizing you for your success?
The other writer takes a differing stand point from a practical perspective. He addresses the higher tax rate for the rich as just a simple balance: having tax cuts for the middle class would create more jobs and more growth, but the only way to get to that is to have a higher tax rate for the rich.

So there you have it. Five different ideas on the fiscal cliff and five differing opinions. I think Keynes would take pleasure in trading barbs with the writers.

A Simple Stool

I'd had a couple of pieces of red oak that I'd bought out of the assumption that I'd attempt to make some sort of furniture out of it. That assumption lasted for about an entire year until during my honeymoon I got the itch to be productive and start working with my hands again. I settled on building a stool out of it, simply because it's a lot easier to make than a chair, it's good practice for cutting mortises and tenons, and it's not going to take up as much space as a chair wood.
So I cut the stock to length, prepped it, squared it, and successfully cut the mortises and tenons over the course of two days. That's probably the fastest I've worked, and it's a nice change of pace from my agonizingly slow work habits of old. However, like all problems I've encountered, everything went to h when I attempted to glue it up. I sliced my palm and the entire thing's slightly out of square.
At least I'm learning. I'd done a dry fit of each individual tenon and mortise, but I didn't do a dry fit with all the mortises and tenons assembled together to see if it was out of square or if one tenon was too long, etc.
Still, it fit together flawlessly with the exception of one post and now I know to assemble the whole thing to ensure all components mesh as they should.
Right now I'm weaving the jute seat for it. I would've liked using Shaker tape for it, but I'm afraid that I haven't been able to find that anywhere.
What's next on the agenda? Well, I'll try building another stool, but this one will be three legged with none of the mistakes repeated.

I've hit the motherlode!

In terms of tea. Good Foods Grocery in Richmond recently renovated their Stonypoint center and one of the main benefits is that they still carry the nutritional yeast that smells like locker rooms. But, they also have loose leaf tea that's selling for rock bottom prices. I stocked up on Assam, rooibos, and an oolong that I think is Dan Cong or some other sort of high fired type oolong.
On a personal note my life is just plain getting weirder and weirder. I had the most surreal and bizarre job interview today that consisted of me misunderstanding every single thing my interviewer was asking because I couldn't understand him through his thick foreign accent. When it was over, I was frustrated and angry, but at the same time I couldn't help but think, "This utterly hilarious."
Sometimes I wonder if my life were turned into a movie everyone one would be laughing, but I'd be watching it, grinding my teeth, and grimacing.

A Yin for every Yang

Lara and I were sitting down to supper just the other night and she looked slightly worried. "What's wrong?" I asked. "Well, there's this old lady who works at the library...and she hates me for some reason. The first time I noticed it she was chatting up with some other old lady for all of about 5 minutes and then when it was my turn, she looked at me and the smile fell from her face to the floor. She grabbed my books, slammed them on the counter and didn't say a word to me the entire time. And then when I went back a few days later, she saw me again and told me to stop browsing through the books that were about to be reshelved. They were just returned! They weren't in any particular order! I don't know what I did to her or why she marked me like that!"
I reflected on that for a minute before returning to my volcanic heartburn burger and searched the recesses of my memory to see if I'd ever encountered anything like that before.
And that's when my flashback started.
Back in my halcyon days at UNC, a new dining hall, Ramshead, was opened up. Once inside its halls, you were assaulted by various forms of junk food that would guarantee a Freshman 50 instead of Freshman 15. Pizza, hamburgers, fried chicken, pasta bowls, and breakfast all day long were the staples of its fare.
But it also had a decent coffee bar with two tall urns, hot water for tea, and usually hot cider or hot chocolate when it got cooler. I remember walking over to the coffee bar for the first time and seeing him. He looked like an older, uglier, and cock-eyed version of Duke Ellington who glared over the students pulling cups of coffee from the pyramid he'd stacked. I dutifully waited my turn and reached over to grab a mug from the top of the pyramid when he noticed me and spoke: "Uh uh uh. Grab one from the bottom."
I paused. Everyone else was grabbing from the top thus ensuring a stable base was present to support the other mugs. And yet this guy wanted me to grab from the bottom, for what? In the hopes that I might cause his mug pyramid to collapse and proceed to get banned from Ramshead for causing a ruckus? I was on to this guy. Using my jenga skills, I slowly slid a mug from the bottom and poured a cup of joe. My eyes met his. He looked at me. And then his bulbous eyes focused somewhere around my belt.
I got the creeps and looked down too, only to see a tiny speck of coffee that had dribbled out from the spout of the urn. Understanding what his eyes were boring holes at, I began walking away.
"EXCUSEMEEXCUSEMEEXCUSEME! You made a mess! You need to clean this up!" he hollered at me, all while other students were trying to get the spout to stop spraying coffee into their overflowing mugs.
I looked around for a napkin, and not seeing any, I used my hand to try and wipe the drop off the granite counter top, but that only succeeded in flinging tiny brown specks on the floor and the urn.
"AAAAH! Stop that! You need a sponge!" and with that he slinked off to find a wet sponge, and I hightailed it out of there. I'd be more than willing to clean up a spilled drink, an overturned tray, but c'mon, I have to draw the line somewhere or else the first thing you'd see when you walk into Ramshead is me with a bandana on my head waxing the floor with the coffee guy standing over me shouting, "I better see my face in that floor by the time you're through! And next time I won't be so nice!"
I went back to my table and enjoyed the coffee and took it over to the dishes section and felt a horrible feeling. Like icewater in my veins. Like all the happiness and sunshine and fluffy puppies in the world had disappeared. I felt something like an ember on my neck and turned to see the coffee guy over at the coffee bar staring at me with a wet sponge in his hand. He continued staring at me with his eyes, twitched his pencil thin mustache, and then slowly squeezed the water out of the sponge onto the coffee bar.
I wasn't sure whether I should piss my pants or laugh. So I did both.
Walking back to my dorm with my jacket balled up in front of my crotch, I told myself, "Eh, this guy was just looking to push people around. He'll forget all about me the next time I go in and get coffee"
which unfortunately is along the same lines of "I'm sure my ruptured appendix will heal itself," or "perhaps that hooded man with the gun running straight towards me just wants directions."
The next time I went to Ramshead I was sitting down to a quiet supper after a 5 mile swim. I had a pretty decent view of the coffee bar, and was waiting for fresh urns to be brewed and brought out. I didn't have long to wait. I got up and wandered over to pour a mug only to have the coffee nazi walk across the room and yank both urns from the bar and place them under the counter. "Why did you do that?!" I sputtered.
"We need to make more fresh coffee and then we'll start serving thirty minutes prior to securing the ranges and grills."
"But I don't have time to sit around for 45 minutes for just one cup of measly coffee!"
"Measly!?"
"Well, I just want one cup, can you do that for me?"
And with that, he sighed, grabbed my mug, and poured something into it from underneath the bar that was completely out of my sight. He handed the mug back to me, smiled and said, "Enjoy!"
"Thanks," I mumbled and walked back to my seat. I looked at the liquid in my mug. I smelled the liquid in my mug. I took a small drop and rubbed it between my fingers. All of my senses were telling me that this was either used 40W heavy machine oil or coffee that had been boiled for about three days.
"What the heck," I told myself, "I need the caffeine," and poured cream into it. Dark particulate matter began floating up, displaced by the cream, and I took a sip of the substance. It reminded me of hot asphalt tar combined with burnt toast. I gagged it back into my mug and looked around to see if anyone saw that.
The coffee nazi did and he had an utterly disgusted look on his face with mouth wide open.
I gathered my tray while my tastebuds were reeling, and put it in the dishes section when suddenly World War III broke out in my stomach reducing me to take very ginger steps back to my dorm, not failing to notice that new coffee was put out 30 minutes earlier than promised.
After several hours worth of trips to the toilet, I had plenty of time to think and piece the facts together. But nothing definitively made sense. Why had this guy marked me as his mortal enemy? Did I cut him off in traffic? Step on his toe in the Harris Teeter? Was he back in his place right now sticking pins in a voodoo doll's stomach? Maybe he was just stressed out and lashed out at people. Who knows.
After that incident I stuck to eating at Lenoir where the coffee is fresh and piping hot. But with December exams the eating hours at Lenoir were reduced with mostly Ramshead staying open later. I had no choice.
Armed with excessive facial hair, bulky clothing, and a baseball cap, I strode into Ramshead, confident that the coffee nazi wouldn't recognize me. I even passed by him, and he looked up, puzzled and with a far off gaze as if he were trying to remember something, and then shrugged and returned to filling out his timesheet with coffee rings on it.
I snickered to myself and poured a mug of coffee and went to sit in the furthest room of the dining hall and saw that the jukebox wasn't playing. I looked around cautiously and thought, "What the hell?" which is along the same lines of "I'm sure if I ski down this hill I'll miss all those rocks and trees," or "do I really need fully functioning brakes on my car?"
I starting playing Judas Priest, Molly Hatchet, and Foghat, all while sipping my coffee. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blur streaming to the jukebox punching all of the motown hits. I peeked over and saw it was the coffee nazi who turned and looked at me. He had fire in his eyes and stormed back to his coffee bar and that's when it hit me. This guy just had it out for me because it was in his nature. He and I were entertwined in destiny's heartless spiderweb. He was my doppelganger, and I was the yin to his yang. And that's when a thought came to me. I marched up to him, put my cup down on the bar and barked, "This coffee is terrible!"
"I'm sorry, sir!" he whispered, to his utmost surprise. I put my dirty dishes away, leaving him puzzling over what just happened, and walked out of Ramshead, confident that I would never drink bad coffee and leave with soiled pants again.

Why Computer Games Stress Me Out and How I Deal with It

I recently started playing computer games again. I often go through spurts where I'll play them frequently, and lay off for a month or two. This weekend I started up again, but mostly as a stress relief on my feeble attempts of replacing my brake master cylinder on my Taurus.
"!@#!@" I'd yell as my wrench slipped off the nut.
"&*^#@" I'd scream as the new master cylinder shot pressurized brake fluid over my transmission case and engine.
"!@#!@" I'd holler as the old master cylinder sprayed fluid all over the inside of the hood and my coveralls.
"You already used that one!" Lara would helpfully add.
I gave up and tightened one of the nuts on the master cylinder and drove to a garage going 15 miles per hour with the added excitement of Death riding shotgun.
Lara brought me back and for this afternoon I've been fitfully turning from my book on Arnold Rothstein to playing a Star Wars game that I'd bought two years previously.
The game is essentially one big capture-the-flag between two large teams with explosions, Storm Troopers, weapons, and Wookies. That in and of itself isn't bad, and a person would think it's a good way to relieve stress, or at the very least relive dorky pre-teen fantasies.
But there's a slight problem with the AI (artificial intelligence) in the game.
I'd often sneak up behind the enemy and get in a good position to wreak havoc on them, only to be undone by my imbecile fellow soldiers.

"HEY! Get out of here! This is my hidey hole!" I'd yell to the blocky soldier who proved to understand what I was saying a little too well and shoved me out into the open where I was easy pickings for the insidious Storm Troopers. I began conconcting back stories to explain this whenever it would happen which usually involved me winning a large sum of money in a poker game the night before from the jackass who shoved me out of my spot. Or, I'd been sleeping with his wife and he'd found out about it and was biding his time until he could seek his revenge. Or he'd soiled his pants and just needed a private place to change.

As you can see, this happened pretty often as the game went on, and I ran out of backstories and just accepted that there was a self-preservation aspect of the AI with the weird quirk that all the other soldiers viewed me as expendable. That's understandable.

But then the dunces just started randomly walking into my line of fire. "Darth Windu? More like Darth Windon't!" I'd cackle as I'd unleash a hail of hurt on dark Jedi and Imperial goons only to be interrupted by the lone moron Republic soldier slowly, ploddingly walk straight into my sights, while the rest of the soldiers with brains went around or behind me. At first I took a sympathetic approach. This soldier clearly had heard about the Rebellion all his life, idolized it, and lied about his age to enlist, and with dewy-eyed innocence, marched straight into battle. Perhaps he was mentally revisiting all the amazing worlds that he had seen after enlisting, while being utterly oblivious to the one where I'd accidentally shot him.

"HEY! Get out of here you dummy!" I'd yell to the computer screen to try and wake the soldier up out of his daze. But either due to shellshock or some sort of deathwish, he'd veer straight into my path of blaster fire. The second time it happened, the dewy-eyed innocent I'd imagined was now just a buck-toothed Star Wars version of Gomer Pyle who went around the battlefield, drawling "SHAZAM!" and after I shot him, "GOLLLEEEEE!" The third time, I imagined that this particular soldier had some strange unexplained magnetism to blaster fire, and imagined him bouncing back and forth between sides like a pinball all the while screaming, "IT'S HAPPENING AGAAAAIN! OHHHH NOOOO! LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS! LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS!" But with the fourth happenstance, I assumed they thought I had superpowers which included a reaction time of .0005 seconds and could clearly see them in time to avert fratricide.

They thought wrong.

This incident quickly devolved into just running out into open space in full view of the enemy and then...running in place. Meanwhile, the Storm Troopers would mercilessly mow the calisthenically oriented soldier down.

"I have to DEAL WITH THIS TOO?!" I'd spout. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!"

The answer was pretty clear. The Storm Troopers had done their homework and watched a lot of Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons and had gotten a big barrel of oil marked ACME, and proceeded to slick down certain patches of terrain. "Hah! Those rebel scum won't know what hit them!" I pictured them saying to themselves while hiding in the inky shadows.

But then I wondered if my soldiers were to blame for this nonsense. I could just see them now, huddled behind a big rock and trying to come up with a plan, "Alright, men, I'm all out of ideas except for one...we run out there...we get within five feet of 'em, and then...WE START RUNNING LIKE HELL IN PLACE!"

When I witnessed the initial event, I tried pushing the stuck/desparate soldier. This only made him start running into circles ("I'm getting dizzy! I'm getting dizzy!") so I attempted to push him again and was promptly rewarded for my efforts by him giving me a full dose of thermal detonator which made me ponder just how many soldier's wives I'd slept with in this stupid Star Wars game or if I was a really good card shark.

This is all compounded by the fact that throughout the game there are various vehicles strewn about which you can commandeer or fly. The controls to work these are rather difficult, and instead of swiftly dealing punishment to Storm Troopers while flying loop-de-loops, I drive like a little old lady with her foot on the brake pedal and the right turn signal on. "Whoops! I think those wing things were extraneous anyway," I'd murmur as I'd plow straight into the ground with my snow speeder. "Where is everybody?!" I'd wonder, as I'd attempt to turn around and slam into the ground, destroying my X-wing. "GET OUT OF THE WAY!" I'd scream as I carromed straight towards a bridge inhabited by Storm Troopers who would heed my warning and beat it, only to be replaced by my stupid soldiers, most likely screaming, "WE CAN'T HEAR YOU!" right up until I'd crash into the bridge blowing myself up with most of my stupid soldiers.

Right now I'm letting my blood pressure drop back down into the triple digits and giving my hoarse voice a rest.

But what can you do? With stupid soldiers like the one in this game, who needs enemies. And with a stress relief like this game, a difficult job is a task I would gladly turn to.