Dog years

See it? Don't miss it.

Synopsis: "Ben 39, Leo, castrated mongrel needs love, G.S.O.H essential."


DOG YEARS


Link to Dog Years 2. "It's definitely a dog day afternoon for one mutt who gets a surprise visit from his vet's finger."

Official Dog Years site here.

Sink hole

Whew! I thought my camera died this morning but this test photo confirms otherwise. I did, however, fail the first maxim of troubleshooting. Always begin at the simplest, most obvious point. After much mucking about, M. Lee came in, pulled the battery and reseated it. Thank you, Mr. Lee.

And it's not just me that gets in a cluster fuck over thinking things. I knew a guy who drove himself beyond despair wrestling with a fucked up computer. He couldn't, wouldn't, take a break and come back fresh the next day. He had wrestled with it for three long days by the time I dropped by. I can take no credit for solving the problem. It was pure luck and, in fact, it even seemed to make matters worse when I happened to notice that the damn thing was just switched off.


But sadly, half way through the year, I have blown my New Year's resolution to keep my office organized. My other desk is in no better shape. In fact, I am surrounded by desks and they are all cluttered. This is very bad. My office is a sink hole. I had a little reprieve in Seattle but the minute we got back home, I fell into my old ways, go to Huffpo and comment, check my blog stats, back to Huffpo, comment, Daily Kos, stats, tinker with photos, stats, blog post, stats, email, stats... It was so much easier in Seattle. I actually made some progress on a poem I've been working on for a while. I am in big fat RUT. When I'm alone, I'm in bad company. Set it here. Lay it there. Pick it up in a minute. Lies. All lies. And I fall for it every time. I hope that when, if, we go to Central America this fall, I will shake off some of this crust. When all else fails, travel.

Lonesome George

We're home from Seattle to Lonesome George calling from the rooftop. I've never mentioned him before, though I've meant to. Lonesome George is the one poor fellow who does not have a mate this year. He spends a lot of time on the rooftops calling out over the valley while the quail couples wiggle and snuggle in their dirt baths below. The one mitigating thought I have is that Lonesome George could fly away and win a mate somewhere else if he wanted to. Perhaps he likes his home more? It is pretty sweet between Dwayne's giant, sprawling willow tree of life and the Bird Park. It is good to be home.

Frank and Sukie

I couldn't resist teasing Frank and Sukie with toast the other morning but they know I'll succumb to their charms and share bites so are quite willing to play along with the game.

UPDATE: I did an annotated version if this video but it only plays on YouTube.


Tasty bites

Seattle seagull french fry party

Seagulls love french fries and I like feeding them. Together we make a perfect loop.



UPDATE:
As Don mentioned in the comments, the party's at Ivar's. I should have included that. So go there. The seagulls are waiting.

Seattle walkabout, part 1

Seattle hillside in the spring.

The dogs and us are finally settled into something of a routine here in Seattle. We have become a tight little pack taking lots of walks and even a few rides in the car for good measure. That's the high point, even for Frank who, I am told, doesn't generally like going in the car. We are flattered. Plus M. Lee and I have managed to take long walks on our own nearly every day, mile upon winding mile, so here are a few more photos from those.

Seattle Public Library. I've posted photos of both their weird escalator art and the delicious red hallway during other visits here. They are part of my regular loop. The face in the elevator was not particularly welcoming but I took her picture anyway.

Also, this rust stain on the sidewalk in Chinatown caught my eye. It looked like a forlorn ghost which made me think of my grandfather who used to live in this neighborhood during the final days of his alcoholic life.

Then this hotel lobby also seemed haunted. Perhaps my grandfather stayed here from time to time during those last sad years, when he could afford a room. In my mind's eye, I could see him carefully descending the stair, hand on the railing, briefcase in hand, going out into the day to sell ballpoint pens from from it. Five for a dollar. We used to correspond occasionally.Perhaps a letter from me was waiting for him behind the desk when he came back in the evening.

You gonna eat all that?

But none of this seems to occur to Suki or Frank. Dogs are good company for a melancholic like me.

Science and the art of making dogs smile

We are at my brother's house in Seattle for the next few weeks, taking care of his dogs Frank and Suki, while he attends a conference in the UK. The weather is fine. Earlier this month the area made headlines for being "colder than Siberia", but not this week. Heat wave and clear blue skies. Even Mt. Ranier is out. Lucky us. It's 40 degrees cooler in Southampton. I feel kind of bad for my brother and his wife but hey, they're Seattleites. They may not even notice. So I'm sitting in his office staring at the titles on the bookshelf. However I arrange them in my mind, they suggest strange poetry.

The Elements... An Eternal Golden Braid... Rat's, Lice and History... The Origins of Order.... Catastrophe Theory... Turing's Delirium... Fermat's Enigma... Complexity... Something Under the Bed is Drooling... Fractals, Chaos, Power Laws... Chaos... Catastrophe... The Curse of Madame C... The Collapse of Chaos... Ecological Time Series... The Biology of Mind... Cognitive Ecology... Neurophilosophy... The Organic Machine... The Mathematics of Behavior... Principia... The Mismeausre of Man... Evolution of Life Histories... The Curse of Lono... Evolutionary Games and Population Dynamics... Endangered Species Recovery... Complex Stochastic Systems... Artificial Worlds... A Brief History of Time... The Future of Life... Tree Huggers... Groping in the Dark... Silent Spring... and this gem

The Great Salmon Hoax

Opening to a random page, I find my brother looking back at me from Chapter 7, The Rise of the Flow Theorists and the Fall of Science. Turns out he's one of the good guys after all. (The Flow Theorists being the bad guys, of course.)

First I need to establish one point. No matter what, I love my brother. So. When we were kids, we had a running debate, science — progress VS poetry — enlightenment. Occasionally it even got physical but then he also resorted to underhanded things to make his point, like setting a pan of chemicals on fire in the middle of my bedroom floor or tricking me into sniffing a concoction that smelled like farts. When we were in high school, I had an infuriating argument with him and the incredibly immature science teacher who lived across the street. They smugly claimed that science was superior because, one day, science would make X-ray sunglasses that would enable them to see though women's clothing. Turns out they were right, only it's the creepy government doing the X-ray spying and they are peeking through everyone's clothes.

Of course, when we grew up, the great debate became a running joke. We stopped looking at our differences and started focusing on our similarities but, given that he was (and is) the Principal Investigator Director of Columbia Basin Research at the University of Washington, I couldn't help but see him as one of the contributors to the river's salmon disaster. After all, the BPA (Bonneville Power Association), cut the grant checks and they are a murky government institution resentful of hippy-dippy concerns like eco-sustainability. But The Great Salmon Hoax brought me up to date on all that.

"Dr. Anderson is a chief target of the salmon managers, who have never forgiven him for producing CRiSP runs that showed that their salmon measures made no sense, and for proving that their FLUSH model made no sense either."

And this delicious comment:

"But mere ad hominem attacks have not silenced all the critics. Some, like Dr. Anderson, are even spurred to greater efforts."

Way to go, little brother! Too bad I read about it first in a book but then I suppose this still is a bit of a touchy subject between us.

But back to the Great Salmon Hoax.

"Recognizing the need to silence the pesky scientists in Seattle once and for all, the state and tribal harvest managers are in the process of slowly attempting to take over the most critical salmon research in the Columbia Basin, the efforts to measure survival through the river using PIT-tags."

To which my brother responded:

"The proposal lacks an ecological framework, ignores biological mechanisms, mathematical formalism, and hypothesis testing" adding that, "the experiment is beyond the capabilities of the Fish Passage Center, and that its "principal investigator, Michele DeHart, has no track record in research".

Just for measure, Al Gore agrees with him and the other pesky Seattle scientists, seeing them as part of the:

"solid base of support for the difficult actions we must soon take."

Now I understand. I asked Jim awhile ago how the salmon were doing. Yes. I admit it. I was being a bitch. He replied in very tired voice, "Oh... that river is hopeless. Better to just helicopter the fish somewhere else and start over."

Sad. At this point, even the oceans themselves, and all their vast and wondrous life is suffering under the boot of human stupidity and greed and rapidly approaching a condition from which there is no return.

Dinner party

"Go, go, go, said the bird:
human kind cannot bear very
much reality."
~ Burnt Norton, T.S. Elliot

Elliot was right, so back to the library. I think, after all, that this is one of the most important books on the shelf...

97 Ways to make a Dog Smile

#74 Call of the Wild
Make it a ritual during each full moon (or anytime you feel like it) to join your dog outside for a no-holds-barred howling session. Letting loose with a great howl is a liberating release for both of you."

Email to Suki and Frank
Date: Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 10:21 AM
Subject: woolf woolf

dear sukie and frank

we are in england - its a bit further across the lake from where we walked the other day. we visited a place called stonehenge today, it's a big circle of stones. From the best I can make out it is a ancient dog pee circle where the old dogs of old england would meet and exchange p-mail, You would really like it. And you could explain to me all about the messages left on the stones over 21,000 years, that's dog years of course.

I hear its hot in seattle, please keep cool and don't let asha and lee get lost in the park.

love the boss

Coin of the realm

We are off to Seattle for a few weeks to babysit my brother's dogs. I'd like to leave you with something besides political rants, photos of tombstones, secondhand store anomalies, and videos of crows eating naan but no time to search out this tiny world for something different. I will do my best, however, to entertain you from Seattle. In the meantime, here's a short movie based on tech support horror stories. Enjoy. Now, I've got to chop some peanuts for the 7 o'clock magpie. These days, she comes at 8. Birds aren't on daylight savings time, you know.

I leave you with a coin of the realm. Do with it as you will.

Bush can't buy a wave

Bush just can't believe these two guys won't wave back so, abandoning the Presidential facade, he gives them a second wave, this one designed to intimidate, if not charm, them into waving back but again... no response. Unable to let it go, he tries a third time to get their acknowledgment but they never give.


Ha ha, asshole.