A Pilgrim’s Digression

I’ve been hanging on to this poem for awhile now; I could never get it just right, and I still feel like it’s unfinished.  But I am tired of looking at it every day.  It’s a variation on the method used for a prose poem I wrote back in 2004, A sanguine enthusiasm ensued.  In this poem as well, I simply took words and phrases from news stories of the day and assembled them in unusual ways.

A Sudden Quotidian Specificity

There’s nothing wrong with a self-congratulatory wallow
After a remarkable turnaround.
Such extended, repeated public displays
Are part of our post-feudal doctrine
Of national economic health.
In the latest example,
Republican hopefuls
Climbed .04 percent in January
Via strong arm tactics and threats.
Meanwhile, embarrassed House Democrats
Remained sealed within a perimeter cordon.

I have bad news for you, however.
George Bush, chief executive of Autonomy Corporation,
Says, “There is no left left.”
“May I comment on that?” asked Mr. Guiliani, looking grim.
The horror.

The empty niches
Of the dollar menu
Complicate further action.
There is no silver bullet.
Will the Iraqi government find its way?
Elsewhere, Detroit has a black cloud over it
And there is doubt the brand can live on
Even as a nostalgia product.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan
A content explosion is happening.
The steam will make separating the skin from the flesh easy.

When a journalist tries to pack too much information into a sentence, it can leave the reader feeling as if he or she has fallen into an overstuffed armchair.  It’s difficult to get out, once you’re in.

I get impatient with sentences that are too long, or that try to tell me too much at once.  As an example, take the following sentence in the Washington Post’s obituary for John Updike, written by Matt Schudel.

John Updike, whose finely polished novels and stories exploring the virtues, vices and spent hopes of America’s small towns and suburbs earned him two Pulitzer Prizes and kept him at the pinnacle of the nation’s literary life for five decades, died yesterday at a hospice near his home in Beverly Farms, Mass.

If you’re a reader like me, you didn’t even read the part between the commas.    You can’t even speak the sentence all in one breath.  There has to be a gasp for air in there somewhere.

I know journalists write within defined word limits, but do they have to add every single relevant detail to the first sentence?  From what little I know about the subject, the first sentence in a news story is called the lede, and it should set up the story to come accurately and precisely.

Yet somehow, I think a lede ought to be considered a failure if readers skip the content in order to get to the end.  “John Updike died yesterday at a hospice near his home in Beverly Farms, Mass.”  That’s what most of us read–the rest of it, we skim.  “Pulitzer Prize”  blah blah blah…”finely polished novels” blah blah blah…

John Updike is dead.  There’s your lede.

It seems ironic, too, that what I would consider a bad sentence leads a story about the death of a man who, the journalist himself says, “may be the finest prose stylist of his generation.”

Myself, I was never able to enjoy an Updike novel.  I read that his books were rife with sex, but I could never read far enough in any one of them to get to those good parts.

Maybe I will give him another chance, now that I’m a little older.  Really, beyond the sex, there wasn’t much about Updike that would appeal to young people.  He really didn’t write about young people and their angst.  Middle age angst was more his subject, so Updike may be more to my liking today.  If any of my readers can suggest a place to begin reading him, I will gladly take suggestions.

Following are some tips for how I make my perfect cup of coffee at home.

1. The brand of coffee isn’t that important, though I’ve never liked Folgers. I use Eight O’Clock Bean, but I grind my own. I set the grinder on the finest grind available, usually Espresso grind even though I am going to use it in a drip coffee maker. Maxwell House is good coffee, too, but coarser; I usually add an extra scoop or two to heighten the flavor.
2. Keep your coffee pot clean. There is nothing worse than a cup of coffee that tastes mildewy because of an unclean pot. Wash the carafe and filter basket regularly, and run some vinegar or special coffee pot cleaning solution through the pot at least once a month to kill the evil things that can grow in the pump and tubing.
3. To measure the coffee, I use a 2 Tbsp. scoop. For every two cups of coffee, I add one heaping scoop, so for a 12 cup coffee pot, that means 6 scoops or 12 Tbsps. The “heaping” part is where things can go wrong for you.  I’ve made so many pots, good and bad, I know exactly what a “heap” should look like, just like my grandma knew what a “pinch” or “sprinkle” meant in a recipe.  It will take practice to get it right.
4. If you take cream with your coffee, use only half-and-half. Any of the substitutes, such as Coffee Mate, are nothing more than dyes, in my opinion. Powdered Coffee Mate is just plain wrong and should not even exist in a perfect world.  It doesn’t even dissolve properly.  These artificial creamers do not add anything to the flavor, but real half-and-half actually does contribute to the experience of a cup coffee. As for flavored creamers, why? Why would you do that to a perfectly good cup of coffee? I drink coffee for the taste of coffee, not for the taste of vanilla or Baileys Irish Cream.
5. Sugar in coffee is a matter for individual taste. I used to be dead set against it, but I’ve had to accommodate my wife’s tastes. If I’ve screwed up the coffee to water ratio and made a pot of stronger than usual coffee, I don’t mind a little sugar in mine to cut the bitterness. Typically, I forgo sugar, however.

I think I make a pretty good cup of coffee, but it should be said that not everyone agrees. My Mom, Dad, and Grandpa all say I make it too strong, as do my sister-in-law and brother-in-law. They won’t drink my coffee, and if I even act like I am going to make a pot of coffee in their house, they usually stop me.

My wife and mother-in-law, however, prefer my coffee to that of Starbucks.

I don’t do anything special to make a good cup. I grind it fine, and I brew it strong, with special attention to the scoop per cup of water ratio. And that’s really all you need to know about preparing the perfect cup.

I tend to write about coffee quite a bit here at my blog. If I don’t write about it directly, it’s always there nonetheless, like the cigarette between the fingers of Edward Murrow’s right hand.

Coffee is ubiquitous in my life and in my writing.

I make a pot of coffee first thing in the morning at home; sometimes I make it the night before and set the timer so that it is ready when I get up.

Sometimes I make another pot later in the morning. Then I make another in the afternoon, sometime after lunch. Then I make another pot in the evening after dinner.

And sometimes, I make a pot late in the evening, before bed.

A 2.5 oz. bag of coffee might last a weekend in our home, more or less.

I’ve been drinking coffee since I was about eight years old. As best I recall, I drank my first cup while fishing in Ontario with my Dad. The mornings on the lake were cold, so he allowed me a cup of black coffee and a piece of lemon pound cake to warm up. A good combination, that.

Admittedly, I’ve come to realize in the years since that Dad’s coffee is terrible. Usually when people say coffee is “terrible” they mean that it is too strong. This is my Dad’s reaction to Starbucks coffee. Therefore, you can guess that the coffee Dad makes is pretty weak.

By my standards, you can recognize a bad cup of coffee by the way the cream swirls when you add it to the cup of coffee. If it looks like you just poured milk into a cup of vaguely brown water, that’s a bad a cup of coffee.

The cream should mingle with the coffee like brown and white oil paints mixing to a golden tan.  When brewing a pot of coffee, the coffee should be dark and slightly foamy, not tea-like in clarity.

Read more…

Here’s an interesting article about the Obama staffers reaction to a White House IT infrastructure that is just a little antiquated.

Mac-savvy Obama staffers frustrated with legacy White House.

I was particularly amused that anyone would be surprised that government computers would be running MS Office 2003.  Welcome to your United States government, Mr. Obama. You are now entering a world where computers do not get updated with the latest indisensible software as soon as it is released.  Windows XP is only now being rolled out to end users in my organization, and many of us have been waiting over a year to have it installed on our PCs (my unit is still using Windows 2000).

As for Macs, yes, some of us use Macs.  We have a Mac workstation in my office that we use for AV editing and conversion.  Our Macs are even on the Windows network with a dedicated staff of two people to troubleshoot all the Macs in the organization (admittedly, there aren’t many).

The ironic thing about the Mac is that while we peons are stuck using Dells running an operating system Microsoft stopped supporting years ago, the head of our agency uses a Mac, as do his staff and department chiefs.   It sorta reminds me of how Senators also have this privilege of using whatever hardware they like.  Senator Kennedy’s office is a Mac office, for example.

Anyway, yes, it is always shocking to enter government service and discover just how much it lags behind the rest of the world.  However, I don’t think it has much to do with the need to preserve records.  The way it has been explained to me is that it is first and foremost a security issue–government IT waits for an operating system or piece of software to be out in the wild, exposed to threats, for several years before it is installed on government machines.  In that way, exploits are exposed and patched before any government systems are damaged.

I also think government is just slow as molasses about changing anything, adopting any new technology or way of doing things.  Everything has to go through a complex security screening and approval process.  I have been waiting nearly a year for the open source image editor GIMP to be approved for installation on my telework PC.  Supposedly it’s still going through security screening.

Another way it was explained to me, and this does not exactly ring true given government’s pension to blow a budget, is that by waiting until an operating system or piece of software is obsolete, government saves money on the upgrade (which is iteself obsolete by the time government buys it, i.e. Windows XP).

Government worried about saving money?  I don’t think so.  I think it has to do more with the way government works and the long approval process.

I’ll be pleased if the White House becomes a Mac-centric unit of government.  It may mean more change is coming for the rest of us, too, but I’m not going to back up my files in preparation for an upgrade just yet.  I’m still waiting for my Windows XP.

Starbucks, we’re through.  I can’t do this any longer.  No, no…it’s not me.  It’s you.

Like Loretta Lynn sang so many years ago, “It’s funny what success has done to you.”

You can’t make me a decent cup of coffee anymore.  You don’t even listen when I tell you to leave room for cream.  You’ve tried to keep me happy with your terrible sandwiches, your “perfect” oatmeal (I know it’s just instant oatmeal from a package, you’re not fooling anyone), your stale baked goods.  Just today, I asked you for a turkey club and you gave me a turkey, pastrami, and pepper jack cheese sandwich with a spicy, roasted tomato dressing.

Starbucks, that isn’t a club sandwich.  Your sandwich sucked.

The truth is, I haven’t been coming around as much because I’ve been seeing someone else.  Her name is Wendy.  She’s a redhead, and she makes a terrific chicken sandwich.

And as for coffee, I’m through trying to find satisfaction in a diva like you.  I’m looking for a solid relationship that will stand the test of time.  I’m looking for ordinary coffee.  Just coffee, in a non-biodegradable styrofoam cup, a common coffee such as one might find in a diner or gas station (if one can even find a diner anymore).

The problem is, even gas stations sell so-called “gourmet coffee” these days.  But it’s fake gourmet, and I know it, so as long as I know I’m being lied to, it’s alright.

Yeah, I know you don’t care.  You’ve got men lined up around the block waiting to throw money at you.

I just wanted you to know we’re done.  I may come around for a cup of coffee sometime when I’m desperate, or someone gives me a gift card for my birthday, but don’t expect to see me much anymore.  Feel free to serve the next person in line.

For much of the day, I’m going to be sitting in front of the TV, switching back and forth between Fox and CNN. I’m not sure why…nothing is really going to happen until noon, when the new President delivers his address. But I feel like I need to be watching it, if I can’t be part of it personally.

Watching these shots of the enormous crowds on the mall, I’m glad I’m not there, but on the other hand everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. It looks more like a sporting event than a political rally.

Incidentally, I heard on the CBS news last night that there will be 5,000 Porta-Potties on the mall. The shots I’ve seen today confirm that. Fox did a shot of the parade route looking up Pennsylvania Ave. from the roof of the Newseum, and there was a line of what looked like 50 Porta-Potties on the sidewalk near the art museum. When you look at the crowds, you wonder if 5000 cans will be enough.

One other thing I heard on the CBS news last night: there was a group of people boarding a bus for the drive to Washington. They had no hotel reservations, no tickets, no idea what they were going to do or where they would even park their bus once they got there, but they were going nonetheless. I wonder if they made it. Supposedly the Metro lots were full before dawn this morning, so I don’t know where they could possibly park a charter bus and make it into the city.

I have found the perfect site for White Elephant gifts, fitzsu.com. You will never find a site that offers more useless, overpriced crap, and all of it guaranteed to tell that special person in your life, “I really didn’t put much thought into your gift, so I went for something exotic in a lazy attempt to make you believe I care.”

Imagine their surprise when they open their gift and discover you bought them this gorgeous set of chopsticks and goldfish lilypond chopstick rest. It’s a bargain at $16.00 per set of chopsticks.

And for the book lover in your life, why not go all out and buy them the Book Brush. All of us who own books know how frustrating it can be to dust our book shelves with a cheap, clean paint brush, or one of those Swifter dusters. For just $80.00, the Book Brush will make dusting books so easy you’ll probably buy more for every room in the house.

But I have to say, my favorite of all the items for sale at fitzsu.com is the gorilla ashtray, and it costs just $38.00. I am actually thinking of taking up smoking again just so I can have a use for one of these. I mean, you put your cigarette in the gorilla’s mouth, and you’ve got a smoking ape! Everyone loves a smoking ape! They’re hilarious!

Just a warning to my friends: now that you know where you’re Christmas presents are coming from next year, you’d probably better do something to break off this friendship over the next 12 months. That is, unless you want to be the proud of owner of a Bubble Wrap Wall calendar.

As the George Bush presidency enters its final week, it looks like we are going to be treated to daily retrospectives, some of them provided by the President himself.  Interesting that no one seems to be particularly nostalgic, least of all President Bush himself.

As a friend told me, you look in his eyes and you can tell he’s already thinking about the fishing trip he’s going to take as soon as he gets back to Texas.

Really, I think the only retrospective that I’m really interested in right now is what the President himself thinks about his eight years.  Everyone else made up their minds long ago–for that matter, George Bush did, too, but it’s still interesting to see if his mind has changed any, now that he can for all intents and purposes speak honestly and openly.

Are we really surprised to discover that, no, nothing much has changed inside that thick skull of his?

Read more…

After nearly five years, I figure it’s time to change the look of my blog.  For one thing, the Rubric theme I used for most of those years was not upgradeable except via manual coding.  It did not support Widgets or Java, and frankly, I was anxious to add some eye candy, such as menus that fade in as you mouse over.

The theme I chose isn’t exceptionally pretty; it’s called iNove, and it’s just functional.  I like functionality.  All I need is for something to work.

Anyway, we’ll see how it wears after a few weeks.  At the very least, the “Random Post” widget in the sidebar should provide some fun reading when I’m bored.