Weather Vein

Whoever thought up this week's weather for San Diego needs to have their head examined.

Check it.

As I write this, it's 61 degrees (16, if you're Meg, who is brought to you by the letter "U".)(And while I'm at on the subject of Meg, I should suggest that you go vote for her in the Best New Blog and Best Personal Blog categories.).

But notice the bright red letters "Severe Weather Alert!" Apparently, we may have...shudder...FROST.

ALERT ALERT ALERT...SENSITIVE OUTDOOR PLANTS MAY BE KILLED IF LEFT UNCOVERED. Jack Frost is on a rampage in Southern California, and he may do a drive-by on yo' garden, and shit.

Apparently.

I'll contrast this with the weather in Casper, Wyoming, which is also listed in fair condition...at 20 degrees (-7, if you're Meg), with temps expected to dip down to -1 (-18...yeouch, Meg) over night. And no severe weather alert.

See, we're Weather Pussies here in SoCal.

I predict a run on plastic sheeting at Home Depot today.

Precipice

I woke up this morning in the middle of a conversation with one of my characters. I savored the talk...I like the man...and when I got up, I was on fire to begin writing the first chapter of Tale of the Tiger.

I got up and got dressed, mulling over this first conversation in my mind.

I found my copy of The Bridge Across Forever, then rediscovered my twenty-five year old copy of A Gift of Wings, which I set out on my coffee table to read later.

I realized that I'll need to do laundry today, so I sorted some of the dirty clothes, and loaded the laundry basket.

It was still too early to start the washer, so I went to the Vons to get a cup of coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast.

When I got home, I checked e-mail, replied to a post in one of the flight simulation forums I frequent, and read a couple posts in another forum while I ate my breakfast.

I fired up the sim and did some flying, not for fun, but for the photo opportunity. I'll be making some title art for Tale of the Tiger, and I needed a few screen shots to work with. The flying part added another .7 hours to my log book.

And now, I am writing this post.

Really, the things I will do to avoid sitting down to actually write.

Richard Bach wrote in his essay It is said that we have ten seconds, "...the only time I can write is when some idea is so scarlet-fierce that it grabs me by the neck and drags me thrashing and screaming to the typewriter. I leave heel marks on the floors and fingernail scratches in the walls every inch of the way."

This morning, I know exactly how that feels.

I love the creative process, the feel of writing, the way my fingers flow over the keys, the soft clickety-clack of the keyboard as my thoughts move from someplace other through my mind and out my fingers to become perceptible shapes on the screen.

It's the starting I hate.

What must a bird feel, standing on the edge of its nest, wings outstretched tentatively, with the unfamiliar beckoning touch of the wind ruffling its feathers?

I'll get there.

Of Words and Wings

I’ve had a couple ideas today…pretty good ones, if I do say so myself. The first involves embarking on a new writing project, one which I’ll share with you as it’s being written. I wasn’t quite ready for this one when NaNoWriMo started, or I’d have attempted to write it there. Thinking about it now, that’s probably a good thing. Even now, the story is still developing in my head.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I love airplanes. I always have – according to my mother, the first word I ever said was, “airplane”, though apparently the pointing (and undoubtedly the wild gesticulation) was necessary to understand the context of my toddler’s unskilled articulation.

I eventually became a pilot.

And then, after a couple near-mishaps caused by my own failure to account for the inattentiveness of others (or simply by that inattentiveness, depending on how you look at it), I took a break from flying. By the time I was ready to go back to it, the world – my world and the version of reality that I subscribe to most of the time – had changed and I could no longer afford to fly as often as I’d need to in order to be any good at it.

I never gave up my love of airplanes, though.

To keep my navigation skills sharp, I began practicing with computer-based flight simulators, and eventually made a virtual flight around the world.

Once in a while, someone with a similar love of aviation and a remarkable level of skill and patience will produce a simulation of a favorite airplane, and unintentionally (or intentionally, depending on how much credit you give the developer) inspire me. This has happened three times now: with the King Air I flew around the world, with the Spitfire I haven’t yet given up writing about, and this week with a 30’s vintage de Havilland biplane.

These airplanes capture my imagination and become the keys to a vivid, virtual world that extends beyond the limits of the simulation, beyond my time at the computer.

This time, I’m going to share the story that comes out of this world with you, right here.

If there’s one core truth to creativity, it’s that inspiration never comes from just one place. Just like the people who access creative thought, ideas are the sum of many experiences, many lessons.

Four of Richard Bach’s early books hold a special place in my heart. Biplane and Nothing By Chance were first-person accounts of two summers Richard spent barnstorming…flying his biplane around the mid-west, selling rides for $3. Those experiences helped him form the basis for his best-seller Illusions, a copy of which sits on my computer desk nearly all the time. Finally, A Gift of Wings is a collection of essays about flying, mostly non-fiction. It was reading A Gift of Wings that led me to finally seek out a flight instructor, and the day I flew solo was also the day I wrote Richard a thank you note for encouraging me to fly.

I’ve been asked a good many times over the years why I’ve never gone back to real-world flying. I have invariably given some bullshit answer about the cost of flying, just as I did earlier in this post (and just as I did when asked over lunch this afternoon), but the simplest truth is that I haven’t gone back because I don’t want to. There are other things that I hold more important at this point in my life, and for now, I’m perfectly happy to enjoy my flying from inside my head, while seated at my kitchen table.

You could see this as compromise if you want to, and perhaps it is. As Richard notes in The Bridge Across Forever, “The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.” While I whole-heartedly agree, I refuse to accept that compromises must shatter dreams.

And that leads me to my second idea, which takes the form of a question: What dream have you set aside to make room for other things of equal importance, and have the compromises you’ve chosen shattered or merely postponed the realization of your dream?

While you’re thinking about that, I’m going to be writing about flying and other things in a new feature I’m calling Tale of the Tiger.

The View

Yes, this is it...the view from my desk. No, there are no whales in this picture.

We have shy whales in Southern California.

Opposing Mirrors

I watched a news piece about Michael Richards this morning, this one about his phone call to Reverend Al Sharpton’s radio show.  He wanted to apologize, again, for his outburst at the Laugh Factory last week, and the Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t let him.  

Now, I am the last person to condone an outburst like the one Richards treated his audience to, but I do wonder what really started it.  As with other “revealing” videos, the crucial minute or two at the beginning…the inciting event…is missing.  All we see is the reaction, and blameworthy as it may be, I wonder if what set him off wasn’t equally reprehensible.

Whenever someone crosses a line and enters a realm of Public Unacceptability, most people around them point their fingers and yell, “Ah-hah!  See?  See?”  The finger-pointers forget that something came before, something that drew the offender out, and something came before that, and something before that, and so on, and so on, like the reflections in two opposing mirrors.  Every one of us has a hand in it, no matter who we are or what we have done or where we live: in a moment of surprise at another human being’s carelessness, who among us hasn’t blamed it on the most obvious difference between us and them?

We see it everywhere, if we’re paying attention: Palestinians suicide bombers kill Israelis whose military kills Palestinians.  Shi’ites burn Sunnis alive after Sunni militiamen murdered hundreds of Shi’ites.  

Retaliation is not always so brutal…it very seldom is.  Have you ever sped up to avoid letting someone into your lane on the freeway?  Answered a telemarketer’s pitch with a tirade?  

The Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t let Michael Richards apologize because according to Sharpton, Richards has the power to help others heal from the effects of racism, and until he does something worthy of that ideal, there can be no apology.  

Doesn’t that just up the ante?  What can he do to help begin the process of healing, if no apology will be accepted?  

It surprises me that a man of faith would overlook the fact that spiritual and emotional healing cannot begin without forgiveness, and that forgiveness is impossible when the aggrieved insists that the apologist is being insincere.  

For some of us, the grievance becomes more important than any remedy.  We clutch at our anger, fearful of relinquishing it without knowing how to replace it, like a drunk holding tight to his brown paper bag.  

I don’t have any answers.  My thoughts on the subject only lead to more questions, except perhaps for this one: My world will be a vastly different place when I believe that every apology I receive is sincere.

How's Yours?

When I wake up most mornings, I have ideas in my head.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, this is usually a good place to grow them, but not such a good place to keep them until they’re needed.

I digress.

Mornings.

Ideas.

Usually, when I wake up full of ideas, they’re Work Related, because chances are that I brought a problem home to sleep on, like a college student with a garage sale bean bag chair.

I used to have ideas in my head every morning, but these days, Tuesday ideas are buried in an avalanche of rhythms after my Middle Eastern drumming class on Monday evenings. Two hours of drumming on Monday, and I hear Chiftetelli and Maqsum and all the rest in my head until they fade to echoes sometime on Wednesday.

Friday morning ideas…ahhh, Friday….these are the most wondrously frustrating ideas of all. Friday morning ideas are shouldadones. Now, if you have a functional mind (and quite possibly if you do not), you know what shouldadone ideas are: they begin with, “Oh, nuts! I should have…”

You have to be careful with shouldadones, because they can lead to paralyzing self-doubt. To question what you did by comparing it to some hypothetical thing you didn’t do is to stand on the crumbling edge of an intellectual abyss. It is very likely that you will fall, screaming, into the void that is insecurity until you finally come to rest, limbs akimbo, at the bottom of self-loathing.

I awaken on this edge every Friday morning.

I awaken on this edge every Friday morning because I am studying improvisational comedy on Thursday nights.

This edge is exactly where every student of improvisation should live.

Every single class offers me a moment when I chose something but could have chosen something better. For example, last week, we began with a game called, “How’s Yours?” in which one person leaves the room and the rest of the group chooses something everyone has. The person who stepped outside is then invited to return and guess what the thing is by asking each member of the group, “How’s yours?” and getting one word answers in reply:

“Empty.”
“Outside.”
“Metal.”
“Functional.”
“Mechanical.”
“Downstairs.”

If you haven’t guessed that the answer was “clothes dryer”, don’t feel bad; neither had I at that point. “Outside” threw me off. And while that answer was true for the classmate who gave it (as it is for me, come to think of it), it put me off track for a while.

When my buddy Bear went out, someone suggested “hair dryer”, which I thought was a good idea because it was so close to the first game that it might be more challenging. Also, I immediately came up with a one word clue that I thought might be funny: unused. You know, because I shave my head, and all.

Let me just say now that I am a dork, because obvious is almost never funny.

Bear came back and got these clues:

“Plastic.”
“Mechanical.”
“Unused.”

At which point, Bear asks, “Is it a hair dryer?”

He probably wouldn’t have needed plastic and mechanical.

On Friday morning, I woke up with a number of better clues in my head: Lonely. Shelved. Silent. Dusty. Disconnected.

Most learning happens when we make mistakes. Not necessarily big mistakes; learning can happen with all mistakes, large or small, if we’re paying attention and we let it. And by paying attention to the things we didn’t do, we can learn a lot.

So these Friday morning Shoudadones are a fantastic opportunity for me to learn about the imperfect way my mind works. Improv is all about embracing imperfection and running with it; when you think about it, that’s what life is all about, too. It’s not just okay to screw things up – it’s expected. And, it’s better when you do.

As my improv teacher says, “Dare to suck big!”

Babel

You must.  See.  This.  Movie.

Credo

-- I believe that before you see a William Shakespeare play, you should read it all the way through.  Out loud.

-- I believe that it should be against the law to drive while holding a cellular phone to your head.

-- I believe that you can trust God, but that you cannot trust anyone who puts a “Trust God” bumper sticker on their car, at least where driving is concerned.

-- I believe that Truth is larger than both Science and Religion, and that neither Science nor Religion, separately or together, possess all the tools required for enlightenment.  Something else is necessary, but I’m not sure what it is.  If I find out, I’ll let you know.

-- I believe that how you end a relationship is even more important than how you begin it.  

-- I believe that a sense of humor can’t happen without a healthy intellect.  I’d rather meet someone who’s funny than someone who’s smart, because funny is a two-fer.

-- I believe that coffee dates are pointless, because you can’t make an informed decision about your second date in the time it takes to sip down to the foam, even if you order a venti.  A good first date should last at least four and a half hours.

-- I believe that people with shared childhood experiences can love each other more deeply than people who don’t go back that far, and that’s why you should try to find the things you both did as children, even if you didn’t know each other then.  I played the violin.  How about you?

-- I believe that the only thing more humbling than the recognition that your child is smarter than you are is the realization that your child is growing into a strong, compassionate, sensitive, loving adult.

-- I believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman, unless one spouse happens to be of the other gender.  Vive la similitude!

-- I believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is not unconditional: If you want to own a gun, you need to be a member of an organized militia, which includes the active and reserve military, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, a law enforcement agency, or the police reserve.  If you still want to own a gun, but you don’t want to join one of these organizations, you should still be allowed to keep your gun…in Afghanistan.  Or maybe you can go help put a lid on things in Darfur.  

-- I believe that rights are always attached to responsibilities.  To earn the right, you must live up to the responsibility.

-- I believe that infidelity always has consequences; even if your partner never knows, you do, and if you let yourself off the hook, it’s at the expense of who you were.

-- I believe that mystery is what keeps our minds engaged.  “What you see is what you get” is boring; give me an enigma to explore.  

-- I believe that the deeper one delves into one’s personal Truth, the greater the relevance one’s art will have for humanity.  

-- I believe that shared laughter is an irresistible turn-on.

-- I believe that a person’s past is what makes them who they are, and that their choices today make them what they will be.

-- I believe I’ll have a cup of coffee.

The Dark

The human mind is sometimes very cruel.  Mine is, at least.

Since the split with Sihaya, my sleep has been…irregular, at best.  I did not sleep at all the night she was making her decision, and since then, I’ve managed perhaps one full night.  

It hit me on the way home after improv on Thursday night that it had been exactly two weeks since I’d been relatively happy, and I got home with no desire at all for sleep until exhaustion overtook me at 1:30 am.  I had to be at work by 7, and that was made doubly painful by the fact that it was a government holiday, and therefore a day off.  

I held off on napping all afternoon, refrained from going to bed early, desperately hoping to avoid a protracted struggle to return to a normal circadian rhythm.  I went to bed at 11:30, only a little late for me, and looked forward to a long night’s nap.

Instead, I awoke at 5 from a hideous dream in which I sat helpless in the passenger’s seat of a car while a woman I love tries desperately to get in out of the radioactive rain that came after a nuclear holocaust.  In the dream, the door is locked, and I cannot figure out how to unlock it.  Even if I could, I can see that she is soaked to the skin, and I know that she is already dead; if I succeed in letting her in, it will kill me, too.  I am left with nothing but to stay in my seat, a passenger in an unmoving and unmovable car, unable to look away as my lover uses her last gasping breaths to plead for my help.  I know there is no where else to go; the whole world is awash with the same toxic horror that is killing her.  I know also that there is only so long I can stay in the car, and yet I haven’t the courage to go out in the rain and comfort her.  I awaken to the sound of my own voice: Oh, no.  Oh, no.  Oh, no.

I shall not be going to Tai Chi today.  Last week, Sihaya moved from her usual place in the front row to the back.  I had told her, the day before we broke up, that I can’t look at her in class; she’s distracting.  I had intended it to be a compliment, something flirtatious.  She is, after all, beautiful, and the woman I most desire.  I love watching her, but if I permitted myself to do so, I would learn nothing of the form.

But my comment, combined with my presence in the class, caused her to change the way she learns, and I have no wish to do that to her.

It’s beginning to get lighter now, the sky overcast with a purple-gray that is almost lavender.  The birds on the morning shift have begun to show up for work, and as usual, they seem to have had too much Starbucks.

I’ve written before about how remarkable it is for me to even remember my dreams; even so, I wish that my dream had not been so vivid.  I know that I should feel a triumph of sorts, another victory over the pain in my past.

I don’t.

I miss my best friend too much.  

Things I Don't Understand, Part 3

It has been a while since I wrote about things I don’t understand, and since I had the chance to read an old, long-forgotten Lewis Grizzard book, I thought it would be a good time to write Volume 3.

Our Fascination with Celebrity White Trash.  Yahoo! Entertainment News has ten (TEN!!!!) links to stories detailing the Britney Spears – Kevin Federline divorce.  Shit.  Eleven. There is an entire section of Yahoo! Entertainment News devoted to FULL COVERAGE: BRITNEY SPEARS.  I will not link to that page unless they link back to mine.  I wasn’t able to find a single story online today about the failure of a proposition which would have placed limits on Eminent Domain in California, but Britney is everywhere.  And just to show you how fickle the American Public is…I was also unable to find any stories about the upcoming TomKat nuptials. Mmmmmmaybe the whole Britney Divorce Cataclysm ain’t such a bad thing.

The Marine.  Who the hell green-lighted this little gem of a movie?  Oh, wait.  It’s produced by Vince McMahon.  Never mind.  (Side note: As a screenwriter, I hesitated to ask “who the hell”, and had edited out “the hell”, in case I should ever find myself pitching to that producer and he or she didn’t have much of a sense of humor.  I put it back in because it’s not likely that I will ever pitch to Vince McMahon.  Ever.)

Why We Aren’t Out Of Iraq Yet.  I mean, shit, the Democrats won the mid-term election on a platform of “End Bush’s War NOW!” and they’ve had control of Congress for oh, 25 hours as I’m writing this.  Why are we still fighting in Iraq?  I’m opposed to the war in Iraq, too, but it’s not that simple, is it?  Announce that the troops will be home by 1 November 2007, and you’re almost guaranteed to get 2,800 more of them killed before it’s over.  They’ll be lame ducks in the extreme sense of the word, unable to achieve anything more lasting than a desert tire track.  I have a suggestion for getting them home safely and quickly: without any advance notice, have the troops simply bug out for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, all at once, and as fast as they can go.  It took what, five days to get to Baghdad from Saudi and Kuwait in 2003?  And that was when they were going towards the people shooting at them.  I bet they can get the hell out of Iraq in two days, three at the most, without getting anybody killed at all.  We should probably tell our folks to leave behind the hammers and saws and paint brushes they were using, though, because the Iranians are going to need that stuff to finish rebuilding where we left off.

Explaining

On Saturday morning, Sihaya and I perched on a picnic table, waiting for our Tai Chi class to begin.

“Everyone asked about you at Bill’s retirement party last night,” I said.

She nodded, knowingly. Thoughtfully. “Have you gotten tired of explaining, yet?” she asked.

I sighed. How should I answer that? “There’s not much to explain,” I said, flatly.

I wanted to ask if she could offer something for me to say when people ask why she’s not with me at social functions any more, but I knew that she couldn’t.

At least, not one she’s willing to share with me.

I wanted to tell her that I don’t say much because I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable around my friends and family if she changes her mind.

I had a sense that something was happening with her for a week or two before she lowered the boom. She’d been distant…loving, but lost in her own thoughts, which she attributed to two funerals in two days and the anniversary of The End of Her Marriage. Two Thursdays ago, she missed our good night call. When I called her at 11, she didn’t answer, and the next day she explained that she’d stayed late to talk with her dance teacher, which sometimes happens.

Her e-mails that Friday were terse, the polar opposite of the warmth she’d conveyed in all our daily exchanges since that first introductory e-mail. She seemed distant, scattered. We agreed to see each other that night, that she’d call when she left work so that we could watch Game 5 together…we planned for me to bring dinner.

When she called, it was already the fourth inning, and she suggested a total change in plans. She’d come to my place, maybe we could go out for dinner someplace where the game would be on. I suggested a place to eat, and she had trouble remembering it, though we’d eaten there two weeks before. She seemed lost.

When she said she’d still have to go home and feed the cats after we had dinner, I suggested that we go with the original plan and let me bring dinner to her. She was clearly tired, and I didn’t want her to have to face the drive home after dinner and the game…it seemed to me that she wouldn’t be able to really relax at my place if she came down, so I pressed her to go with the original plans. She agreed. (Besides, we hadn’t seen each other since Sunday, and that had been very brief…I missed my Sweetie, and I wanted to spend the night. There was Cuddle Time at stake.)

When I arrived with dinner, she was clearly tired. She greeted me with a very long, sad hug. And then another.

After dinner, she quietly said that she hadn’t been so depressed and sad since before her marriage ended. She couldn’t explain what was causing her sadness, this time, just that she felt that she was losing herself in the relationship. “I think…we…should…stop seeing each other,” she said.

There wasn’t much conviction in her voice, and as we talked, she began to reconsider. She asked me to stay the night…not to have me there, but because she didn’t want to be alone.

On our way home from Tai Chi that Saturday morning, she said that maybe we shouldn’t break up, that maybe what we had was worth holding on to. She asked for some time to herself to think, and the next morning told me that her decision was to stop seeing each other.

I was understandably shocked; just days before, we’d talked about the enduring nature of our relationship. I said some things in the moment that I regret, though not such bitter things as to be unforgivable, I think. Their memory will pass. They remain the only harsh words ever spoken between us.

The following Tuesday, we met at her place so that I could drop off some things of hers and I could pick up the last of my stuff.

We talked for more than two hours, calmly and respectfully. She allowed me to ask my questions, and tried to answer them thoughtfully and honestly. For all her trying, she seemed unable to offer more than, “I don’t know.”

I got the distinct sense that she was holding back, shielding me from something.

Coming, as this does, as we both recognized the end of the Limerance Phase of our romance, I wonder whether or not this is merely her way of processing the crisis of continuance that sometimes follows the end of the endorphin rush.

More than one of the people I’ve talked to think it is, or something close to that. Their opinions are based on what I’ve told them…as true an accounting as I can provide, to be sure…so I have some doubt as to whether or not they are simply reading my hopes.

Two or three friends have asked if I thought she had maybe cheated on me, and knowing my painful background with infidelity, is trying to protect me the only way she knows how – by ending the relationship to avoid reopening an old wound.

I must admit that the sense I have that she’s holding something back does make me wonder, but I would hope that she’d have given me the choice of how to process that information instead of assuming incorrectly that I’d be better off having such a decision made for me. No, I doubt that she’s been unfaithful.

And so, on Saturday morning, that conversation on the picnic table may have meant something deeper. “Have you gotten tired of explaining, yet?” I wonder if she was looking for common ground, something to grab on to before we spin all the way out of each other’s lives.

My answer, in the moment, must have stung.

Yes, Beloved, I am tired of explaining, when in the place of an explanation, all I have is the hope of us.

I love you, and miss you.

“When you find yourself
In some far off place,
And it causes you
To rethink some things,
You start to sense that slowly
You’re becoming someone else…
And then you find yourself.

Well, you go through life
So sure of where you’re heading
And you wind up lost
And it’s the best thing that coulda happened
‘Cause sometimes when you lose your way
It’s really just as well…
Because you find yourself,
Yeah, that’s when you find yourself.

When you meet the one
That you’ve been waiting for
And she’s everything
That you want and more
You look at her and you finally start
To live for someone else
And then you find yourself,
Yeah, that’s when you find yourself.”
-- Brad Paisley

And You've Already Paid Me For It

It isn’t that there’s a certain sweetness in it; it was very sweet.  

It’s that the vindication was so poetically understated.

I should go back to the beginning.  (Vizzini said, “If the job goes bad, go back to the beginning.”)

Two years ago, a colleague and former friend stood up in the middle of our annual professional conference, and in front of the entire body, stated unequivocally that my simple, already-paid-for solution to a complex problem was not viable.  “The last thing the Navy needs,” said he, ”is a couple of shade tree mechanics.”

I was, shall we say, discreetly offended.

For a while, my cubicle became known as “The Shade Tree”, and because I am a professional heretic, I continued to work through problems and introduce solutions…albeit more quietly.

I work for a small company that mainly provides training to the Navy.  I am employee number 7, and at this stage of our Global Domination Plan, there are ten other guys on the payroll scattered about the country.  The corporate philosophy explained to me when I joined the company was, “Do the work, and the contract will follow.”  My boss is a pretty savvy guy, and he long ago recognized that the most basic business credo of all (“Give the customer what he wants and he’ll keep coming back.”) begins with giving the customer what he wants.  My own personal approach to that has been to develop the things that Navy has paid for but deemed “unusable”.  I am, after all, being paid to train people how to use these things, so this part of what I do is in both our interests.

I have had a number of conversations that went like this:

“I have an idea for how you can make use of the Snarffblatt Gargleblasting feature,” I’ll say.

“No, you don’t.  That feature is broken.”

“Actually, it’s not.  Here’s what you—“

“Wait.  How much will this fix cost?”

“Nothing.  I didn’t fix it; it wasn’t broken.”

“But it doesn’t work.”

“Yes, it does.  Check this out—“

“We’re not paying you to fix it.”

“I didn’t fix it because it wasn’t broken.  And you’re paying me to train sailors to use it.”

“Exactly!  This isn’t training, it’s fixing.  And besides, even if it wasn’t broken, we wouldn’t know how to use it.”

“That’s what I’m saying.  It isn’t broken, and I can show you how it works.”

“We don’t want to know how it works because we don’t know how to use it.”

“I’m trying to tell you how to use it.”

“No, you’re not.  You’re trying to tell us how it works, which is impossible, because it doesn’t work, because it’s broken.”

…and suddenly, I find myself channeling John Cleese: “I’m sorry, is this the five minute argument or the full half hour?”

The usual result of all this unrequited forward thinking is that my ideas are a year to two years ahead of the Navy’s, which gives the unfortunate impression that I am unusually smart.  

This week, the Navy came to me with a problem, and I presented a solution I’ve been working on for five years.  

The Navy’s response was essentially this: “Hey, cool!  This works!  Who knew?”

Uh, I did, thankyouverymuch.  

Hey, Leonardo da Vinci never got his airplane idea off the ground – it took a couple bicycle repairmen to make a machine that actually flew.  

Don’t discount the guys under the shade tree, is all I’m sayin’.

Stuck Hear In Irak

Oh, sure, he has apologized now, sort of. “Oh, sorry, I botched the joke.” Like we’re all at a big office party and slightly tipsy, and he’s the ditzy blonde who forgot the punch line to a knock-knock joke instead of a United States Senator.

Food for thought: It's a safe bet that at least three of the men in the picture above have college degrees, two of them earned while they were on active duty. Clearly, their command of the language is excellent: effective parody requires deep understanding of the subject. This simple response to Senator Kerry’s insulting remark is nothing short of brilliant.

John Kerry’s “botched joke” shows not just that he’s an arrogant asshole with a stunning level of contempt for the men and women in the military…who are at the same place in their lives that he was 40 years ago…but that he’s surrounded himself with people who share that arrogance.

He may have attempted to tell the joke, but he didn’t write the joke…and probably didn’t even read it until it came up on the teleprompter. And if, "Just ask President Bush," is all they could come up with for a punch line, Kerry needs a new writer. He might as well have just gotten up and said, "Yeah? Well...your mom wears, uh, boots! Yeah! And you suck, too!"

This is not the first time Kerry has made disparaging remarks about our troops. During his presidential campaign, Kerry said that President Bush was “spending like a drunken sailor.” An odd use of stereotyping from a guy who’s never far from reminding us all about his service in the Navy.

Kerry’s website talks about his service in Vietnam, but never mentions his antiwar protests after he returned home. There is heavy emphasis on his daring leadership as a riverine skipper, and a quote from one of his citations.

He’d like you to think that the lessons he learned in combat stand him in good stead today.

But they don’t.

If they did, he’d never say anything remotely insulting about those who serve or have served with honor, the way he did, and he’d make sure that his speechwriters understood that. He’d make it clear that he respects those who have chosen a life path so similar to the one he chose as a young man.

Instead, he aims the machine gun of his contempt and sprays us all with staccato bursts of rhetoric, the object of which is to point out that we ought to listen to him because he’s smarter than we are.

He did go to Yale, after all.

After Kerry made his “drunken sailor” remarks, I wrote him an e-mail (through his website) to express my displeasure over the use of such a stereotype. To me, the fact that so much of what he says he’s done involves fighting stereotypes only reinforces the hypocrisy of his ilk. America needs fewer John Kerrys, not more.

Three months after I sent my e-mail, I got a fairly lengthy response from the John Kerry campaign that read, in summary, “Thank you for your support. If you’d like to contribute to the John Kerry for President Campaign, please send your check to…”

The note was signed by a Jennifer somebody, and because there is an Immutable Law of the Universe that states that All Women Named Jennifer Are Cute, I considered hitting her up for a date.

That is, until I remembered that Republicans are better in bed.

Okay, I’d like to write more, but it’s payday and Vons has a sale on beer.