Occupation of Independence

I was caught being pessimistic again: I was mocking the predicted historic storm as a farce, but in fact we got 3 millimeters of rain. Believe it or not, a person can feel grateful and satisfied with that. It is impressive to see a puddle or two. Why talk about the weather? "Weather talk" seems trivial because of how it is presented on television: "stayed tuned for the forecast of the upcoming weekend, after this word from our sponsor." Will there be a 30% chance of rain? This is the purest nonsense. Just think of the hours wasted in front of electronic screens, watching crap like this! But try living in a bleak desert like Arizona. It is amazing that any plant or animal can live in this god-forsaken wasteland. And yet human life goes on in a more or less normal fashion, thanks to technology, petroleum-based transportation, and an economy that can take advantage of it. I am ready to leave a town that thinks such things are evil. It is a town of yoga instructors, art

  I gave up a little too quickly. The great and mighty storm predicted by the weather media finally buried us under life-threatening, historic conditions: Maybe the governor will call out the national guard! But all facetiousness aside, it is mid-March and we are 18 miles from the Mexican border. So Arizona deserves some praise for this. Still, it would be nice if this amounted to more than 0.01" of water.

  Since I bad-mouth certain states, it is gratifying to seize on opportunities to praise them. AZ has had a cool winter, and now a couple cold spring days coming up, right at the switch-over to Daylight Savings Time, which Arizona doesn't do. How is that for a lot of praise in one sentence? It would be nice to praise it for some winter rains, but I'm afraid this winter was a dud. I am not being facetious. Daylight Savings Time is ridiculous. It is the fiat currency of clocks.  

Recently I have been helping somebody on projects with their house. It has made me appreciate how short-lived most consumer crap is, these days. That is not exactly news, but the extent of the problem is appalling. Especially electronics and plastics. Neither of these two categories is very repairable to the average person. In contrast, wooden things are wonderfully repairable.  When working with older houses you have a chance to notice another syndrome: 'mission  creep!' You start off to address a specific symptom and then one thing is connected to the next thing; and in no time, you have stepped into a quagmire. You have almost forgotten the original symptom! The more experienced the handyman gets, the better he gets at seeing this syndrome almost in advance! That is what I find perversely fascinating: with hardly any solid evidence, the handyman is already "smelling" a quagmire coming on. (What exactly is happening there? It is probably similar to the pattern rec

  One of these days, when I grow up, I will stop blowing up with enthusiasm over some new thing, only to be disappointed later. That is the way I felt about audiobooks, which only recently I was wildly enthused over. How many words have to bounce off your eardrums before you just say "Oh will you just shut up!" All those words. The narrator might be really talented. But stop burying me under all those words, please! I have always had this problem with the world of books, and it doesn't matter if they are delivered to the customer through the eyes or the ears.  In fact it is tempting to use 'obscene' to describe excess verbiage. Have you noticed that people who read too many books tend to talk in long paragraphs of stilted, oxygen-deprived English, instead of the way a sensible person talks: in short lively punchy clauses? _____________________________________   It was probably no accident that I had those thoughts about excessive verbiage as trekker after trekker