The revolution has begun. Who knows if it will be televised?

Many years ago, I went to a Reduced Shakespeare Company performance. I think it was called "38 plays in 90 minutes." Pretty good stuff.

But, what I remember most about the show was the biography of one particular actor in the company. In keeping with the overall wit of the play, this guy, along with letting us know that he grew up in Detroit or wherever, was an ardent proponent of feeding toilet paper over the roll instead of under. I agreed with him then, and I still agree with him now. Passionately! So much do I agree with this approach that I have, in fact, been known to take other people's rolls of toiletpaper off of the dowel and rearrange the configuration if I happen to see they employ the under technique. Obnoxious? Probably just anal (pun works just fine, I think, though it may be a bit heavy-handed).

Anyway, a former student of mine (with a fine wit, I should add) sent me a link to a site where this theory has been unpacked in great detail. Geometric visuals are included. It's certainly good for a laugh, and who knows, it may even turn you into a true believer.

To read the piece click here .

Man, it's been a long time. Where does the time go?

Well, I've been doing a fair bit of writing, just not of the blog variety. Mainly fiction. This is all well, I suppose.  But, I'm hoping to get back to this site, as I miss the ritual.

As for other hobbies, I recently purchased an old Caddy that I am now in the process of pimping (see below photo). Any suggestions for my new ride?

I fell to a considerable culinary low the other night when I came home and ate, for dinner, a six pack. Mind you, I refer not to the typical six pack association, namely liquid bread. Rather, I consumed bread that was spongy and represented the tops and bottoms of White Castle cheeseburgers. Affectionately known as ‘sliders,’ for reasons that are often disputed, these comestibles can be downed in two bites if you’re feeling well-mannered and one if you’re feeling more rapacious.

I felt lousy, both spiritual and physically, after I ate the first two. After four I was genuinely embarrassed. And after I loaded numbers five and six into the microwave, I was disgusted at myself. Nevertheless, I plowed on and finished the lot.

Do I get high marks for a balanced diet, you ask? Well, the burgers had onions on them. The veggies, the veggies...

As the Columbus-based company musters their litigation team to press suit for defaming their product, they should at least know this is probably not the last time that this author will eat this time-honored offering frozen food aisle. Alas, supply is rendered redundant without demand. Of course, no longer being a bachelor makes my case all the more pathetic.

A while ago, April of 2006 to be precise, I posted a picture of myself after my annual shaving of the beard. The cowboy aesthetic was the result.

This past spring I broke new ground, and I even got a little publicity from Firehouse Moustache Wax on their website for my efforts. Be sure to scroll down to see what I have coined, "The Mephistopheles."

I summoned the courage to walk around in public in Burlingame, California for a day with this do. At one point, K and I walked past a restaurant and everyone dining next to the window stared and pointed. Later, friends of ours in Potrero Hill said that the fifteen or so miles between the airport (Burlingame) and San Francisco made all the difference with respect to reception. Apparently, fewer people would have looked askance at my whiskers had a been tromping around the Haight.

Reminds me of the time I marched around downtown Austin in a Mexican wrestling mask...

The Moustache Wax is a great product by the way. I highly recommend the Wacky Tacky.

A great quote from Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea:

“It was a beautiful place – wild, untouched, above all untouched, with an alien, disturbing, secret loveliness. And it kept its secret. I’d find myself thinking, ‘What I see is nothing – I want what it hides – that is not nothing’” (87).

Considering the fact that he was held captive for six years, I was amazed at how composed Tom Sutherland sounds at times in his compelling memoir At Your Own Risk. Co-written with his wife Jean, the book chronicles the family’s courage and resolve in dealing with an awful byproduct of Middle East conflict. Sutherland, a former Colorado State Professor, traveled with his wife to Beirut to serve as Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences. He was kidnapped by Islamic Jihad and used as a pawn in that organization’s political struggle to effect for the release of prisoners in Kuwait.

Published are many of Sutherland’s letters to his wife in which he seems to escape the horror of his situation by speaking to the logistics of petty issues his life back in Colorado. For example, at one point he reminds his wife to put antifreeze in the dishwasher of their mountain cabin save the pump from the winter cold. Talk about maintaining a stiff upper lip in the face of crisis. Alas, Sutherland is a native Scotsman!

Here’s another quote that stood out to me, one that also deals with his strategy for maintaining sanity as a kidnapping victim. With a week to go before another school year starts, this one seems really appropriate:

“People ask me—‘What was the key to your survival?’ And I struggle with that question. Could there be one thing most essential? Surely it was a complex that can hardly be analyze—a mind kept active, wonderful family, mutual support, the luck of relative good health, perhaps sheer Scottish-American cussedness on my part, or the lack of an acceptable alternative? But one thing I know for certain is that reading ran like a powerful thread through those years keeping me in the world, stimulated and going. To read was to live, and even today as a free man I live a fuller life with that reading done in captivity and all it meant as a part of my total experience. For I have forever in my mental bank the Old Testament wars, the Yorkshire moors, the banks of the Seine, the Russian prison, the dark halls of Glamis Castle, the intrigues of Casey’s CIA, and all the rest that I can pull out at will to contemplate” (287).

I asked the clerk at the hotel if people swim in the Great Salt Lake or if this activity is akin to swimming in the East River.

He looked at me with unease and said, “Ah, not really. Back in the old days people would swim in it. But, it’s kinda nasty now. There’s all kinds of algae and scum floating around.”

I was a bit disappointed, and I asked him if it made sense to go out there anyway, just to see it, you know.

“Oh, definitely,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

He gave me directions, and I said in closing, “Is it true that you float as much as they say you do?”

“Yeah, as far as I know,” he said with a lack of confidence that told me the algae and floating scum had always been too much of an impediment to seeing for himself

***

When we came up over a small ridge in the Great Salt Lake State Park and saw a beach, we were elated. We had left our bathing suits in an outside compartment of our suitcase just in case. We parked. We thought about it. Should we change? Won’t we be uncomfortable on the flight home? We’ll just put our feet in.

We talked about the essential need to see what the Romans are doing whenever you’re in the great and ancient city.

Almost everyone who was frolicking at the edge of the lake was a foreigner: Japanese, Mexican, German. We laughed. Typical!

It was hot outside, and the water was cold. I believe that you can only wade in so far before you must make the plunge. There is no such thing as a gradual entry. Plus, if I plunged in with authority, I would really be able to get a sense of the saline buoyancy...

Good press for community colleges in The New York Times: click here .

It amazes me in this digital age that there are still answering machines that cut a caller off after about thirty seconds of talking. I have heard plenty of debate about whether digital photography is superior or inferior to its film-based predecessor. However, I have never heard a digital photographer complain about not having to go out and constantly buy film to support his habit, if you catch my drift. Outfit yourself with a large memory card, and then you can snap shots as you please. Delete them if you don't like them. Unless you are on safari, chances are that you are not going to run out of memory before you have a chance to upload the photos onto your computer. Of course, once you transfer to your computer, you are back to a card with plenty of room. And the whole point is that you have plenty of room. You've paid for this in advance; therefore, you don't need to be frugal when shooting.

So, why isn't this same approach taken with answering machine. I, for one, have a unit that is close to ten years old, a veritable dinosaur in tech years. It is reliable, though, and it never cuts people off. Today, I called to leave a message on a machine and wasn't even longwinded. I was cut off well before I had left the most important bits of information. This feeling is a bit like having a door closed right in your face. I called back and was cut off for a second time.

I am sure Seinfeld has done a sketch on this; I didn't follow the show that closely. If only I were trying to negotiate a date, the whole thing would be a dead ringer for the painfully embarrassing scene in Swingers.