The Aerie
Last week a bunch of Moldy's friends got together to take him to see what was probably the last available screening of
"House of 1000 Corpses". Directed by heavy metal rocker Rob Zombie, it's an homage film to 1970's sexploitation and slasher movies, and as one IMDB reviewer put it, if you're not pointing at the screen every few moments and saying "That's an homage to the graveyard scene from 'I Eat Your Flesh'" then this probably wasn't the movie for you.
But it was the movie for Moldy, who has been an ardent fan of macabre
films his entire life (we once went to meet Vincent Price at the St.
Paul Student Center -- nice old man).
Unfortunately the only theater left showing it was up in Elk River, a
good 50 minutes outside of town.
So at 6:00 p.m. last night, his wife Blondie had Moldy ready -- in his
black jeans and T shirt he was Da man. They have a friend called Irish
Dave who works as a bouncer at 1st Avenue (where Blondie works), and
he's been a prince about helping move Moldy around (Moldy is 6' tall).
He showed up, just a tad late, and we hauled Moldy into the shotgun
seat of my van. I volunteered to drive my van which worked out very
well, all six of us fit comfortably in it.
We got up to Elk River about 10 minutes late, Moldy already annoyed at
missing the opening of the film. Getting him out of the van and back
into his wheelchair was a bit of a trick, and then I went to park the
van.
Well, as it turns out when their friend Bonnie got into the theater
first (while the rest of us were unloading) we discovered that they
had CANCELLED the showing of the movie... because nobody else had
shown up! She spoke to the manager, explained Moldy's situation, and
the theater agreed to run the movie! So we had a private showing.
The movie, well, it was a series of 70mm celluloid frames projected
one after another upon a blank screen. Maybe an afficionado of 70's
sexploitation films would have been in paroxysms of joy -- maybe Moldy
was in paroxysms of joy for all I could tell -- but I was both bored
and appalled. But it finally ended after the last gallon of fake blood
had been emptied, and we loaded Moldy in the van for the long trip
home.
It was during that trip, with Moldy fairly exhausted, that some of his
deterioration became clearer. Yeah, he was in a wheelchair, yeah, his
hands have started to curl up, and yeah he's a little slow now, but
he'd seemed pretty much Moldy. On the trip back, however, he said,
"You'd never guess how much the freeway weighs!" Apropos of nothing,
it halted conversation while we all tried to figure out how to reply.
Tim finally said, "You know, I'd never thought of that before," and we
continued talking. Later Moldy blurted "The silly defense car drove
through the onion!" and repeated himself clearly when asked what he
had said.
The problem, of course, is that he's trying to say one thing, but his
neurons are scrambled so that the ideas aren't connecting up to the
right words. Imagine how frustrating that must be!
Then when we got him back to his apartment (Irish Dave having returned
to await us), Moldy collapsed while getting into his wheelchair, his
weakened legs unable to support him. Dave and Blondie (she's a
strapping 5'11 herself) managed to get him up into his wheelchair, but
it was clear he was exhausted.
So it was nice to get him out and about. I guess on Memorial Day
nobody was available, and he missed a beautiful day of weather when he
really really wanted to get outside. So it was nice to get him out for this.
Thursday night Tim and I stopped by to hang out with him for a while and we picked up Famous Dave's (as opposed to Irish Dave) barbecue. Moldy tucked into his with impressive gusto -- whatever else isn't working right, his appetite is sure on track!
Well, I'm back from my sort-of-kinda vacation.
[cw1.jpg]
The story is that my wife sold a contract for a children's book. She
decided to use the check to do something that she had always wanted to
do: take a week away at a retreat in order to write. And, being
generous, she wanted to give me the chance to do the same thing (petty
persons might suggest that a quid pro quo was involved, but I
strenuously deny such suggestions). So I, too, received a week away at
a retreat in order to write. She went one week, leaving me with a
business and kids, and I went the next week, leaving her with her day
to day routine, less me.
The place we went to was called [1]Clare's Well. It's basically a
hobby farm run by some Franciscan nuns. It's a pleasant place, but it
was extremely disorienting for me, a type-A personality and atheist.
It offers "hermitages" to people for $50 a night, including meals.
Hard to beat!
The "hermitages" are clean, well-kept little buildings, with
electricity and baseboard heat but no running water. There was an
outhouse very near my hermitage, but it was rather oddly built into a
sharp slope. This meant that the breeze hitting the back of the
outhouse actually blew in through the bottom and came up through the
seat. There are a lot of reasons why wind should not blow up through
the seat of an outhouse, but I won't explore them any further. Suffice
to say I did not use it any more often than I had to. (On the other
hand, why WOULD anyone use any outhouse more often than they had to?)
My hermitage (I didn't get to inspect the others) was spartan by
vacation standards, but luxurious by college dorm standards. It had a
kitchen area to the right of the door, a woodburning stove, a desk, a
bed with trundle, a loft with a futon, and a closet for clothes that
also contained a large plastic thing that turned out to be a modern
chamber pot.
In the fridge were only a small amount of olive oil, a mostly-empty
jar of peanut butter, and another jar of granola. That's not to say
there should have been more in there, but it seemed weird to run the
thing just for those items. Otherwise the kitchen included several
packages of tea, oatmeal, and popcorn, so I was never short on snacks
although variety was naturally limited.
Beside the creaky bed was a tiny night stand holding an antidiluvian
bedside clock. This thing was so old that the white glow-in-the-dark
coating on the hands had turned brown -- the same brown of the clock
face. Therefore it had the odd characteristic of being a clock that
you can read in the dark at night, but not in daylight.
Having settled in I went to lunch at the main house, which meal turned
out to be in its execution (if not in its content) very much like
every other meal. We all introduced ourselves if new persons were
present, and everyone spoke very quitely and nicely. The nuns were all
very nice and the guests were nice too, and everything was so very
nice that I just about wanted to scream. But I contained myself and
maintained propriety as best I could, despite several provocations.
One of the nuns announced in the midst of a conversation "Well that's
why I'm against abortion..." I refrained from piping up with a
reply... It seemed rude to come out as a pro-choice atheist while a
guest in their home, even though I was actually not a guest. But it
was their home. Things were blurry.
The meals were all delicious, home made food, and there was always
plenty, with the staff urging brownies and bars on me to quell any
late night hunger. The water was astonishingly bad. I grew up (in
part) on a lake in outstate Minnesota, and I know from rusty, mineral
filled water. This had my teenage water beat by a mile. During the
week they mentioned that they had had a new well dug after the last
one froze the year before.
"How is the water now as compared to the old well?" I asked, wondering
if maybe they'd hit a rusty patch in the aquafer.
"Oh, it's much less rusty than it was."
I think my eyebrows must have flown off my head like those of a
cartoon character... MORE rusty? The stuff had the consistency of
syrup as it was!
Aside from the meals and the nature of the room, there's not a lot
else to say. I did get a massage, but I found it somewhat lackluster,
due in no small part to the fact that it's been so long since I worked
out that my muscles had little to gain from the experience, being soft
and putty like.
I spent the week writing, and the time rocketed past at supersonic
speed. Every day seemed to be about two hours long. I would wake, eat
some oatmeal for breakfast in my cabin, write til noon, eat lunch,
write, eat dinner, write and go to sleep. Zoom. Zap. Before I knew it
my week was up! I didn't get everything done that I'd wanted to, as
regards the writing, but I didn't waste any time (I'd deleted every
game from my computer before leaving), so I can't complain.
The final night I forced myself to relax a bit -- particulary because
it was clear I wasn't going to make my big writing goal of finishing
the book I'm working on. I went for a walk around the pond, took a hot
tub bath, etc. But Friday morning, I was ready to go home, and I left
before lunch instead of sitting through one more breathlessly pleasant
meal.
I'm not complaining -- almost every problem I had with the place (and
they were few) were problems I brought in with me -- but it was a
relief to get away from the concentrated niceness and intense
pleasantness of the experience, and back to the stress inducing whirl
of mind-numbing annoyances that the Real World has to offer.
About the only thing I can ACTUALLY complain about would be the noise.
I know I tend to associate rural farms with quiet, well no such luck.
The Guinea hens waddling around the place each make a noise like a
bicycle with a bad wheel. The cows in the neighboring pasture (20 feet
from my cabin) could eruct a MOO at any time, day or night, including
3 a.m. And the DOGS, the DOGS within five minles had this "101
Dalmations" midnight bark going on! If I didn't get to sleep by
midnight, I didn't get to sleep until 2:30 a.m. Barking here, barking
there, barking nearby, barking in the distance. Who ever knew dogs had
so much to say to one another?
"Rowr! Hey guys, what's up?"
"Rowr rowr! Not much! Rolled in a dead fish today!"
"Rowrf! Tell us more"
"Rarp! Tell us all about it, in detail!"
"Rowr rowr! Well, to start with it was maggoty!"
"Rowrf!" "Rarp" "Rowr!"...
Aside from that, it was a very nice, pleasant experience. And an odd
way to burn a week really quickly.
But now I'm back, and doubtless in a week I'll wish I had never left!
[2]Last
Just to prove that my life isn't an endless cycle of gloom and work, I
actually had some fun this week.
[1][P5150002.JPG] First was the lunar eclipse, which I'd really rather
present in all its own entry... but then what can I say that fill an
entire entry about a lunar eclipse? It was... cool!
For the first time in I don't know how many lunar eclipses, time and
circumstance conspired for excellend Midwestern viewing. The weather
was pleasant, the sky was clear, and there was no wind at all. I broke
out the tripod and digital cameras and got some 16-second exposures,
and the leaves on the trees weren't blurred at all. That's a calm
night!
[P5150007.JPG] So I stood outside for over an hour (when, to be
honest, I should have been watching the kids -- they stayed up till 11
p.m. on a school night!) grabbing snapshots of the lunar eclipse as it
progressed, and playing with different settings on my digital camera.
At one point I think I adjusted one setting too many, because the
focus went kaput and it wouldn't focus on infinity anymore! I'll have
to figure out what went wrong...
Then Friday my spouse returned home from her week-long writing
retreat, to my great relief. Being a working single parent is HARD!
[P5150009.JPG] After I'd spent the week home with the kids, she was
willing to let me go see "The Matrix Reloaded" last night. I didn't
want to go alone, so I tried calling a couple of friends but they were
both busy. Then as I was actually driving to the theater I called our
friend Debbie. I had been initially reluctant to call her because she
had for years forsworn ever visiting the Mall of America, rightly
considering it an abomination and canker upon the landscape. (I of
course have much weaker convictions and frequently visit the Carbuncle
of the South Metro Area). But I figured, well, the movie is
everywhere, and if she doesn't want to go to the MOA we can always
catch a show somewhere else.
Despite her objection to the MOA, despite having only two minutes
warning (really), and despite working both Friday and Saturday, Debbie
dropped everything (in this case, gardening tools) and I picked her up
and off we went. Impressive flexibility!
[P5150015.JPG] That's what friends are all about!
So with her dinner of popcorn and soda in hand, we went to see The
Matrix Reloaded -- having to sit in the neck-straining front-row in
order to find seats together. Her recollection of The Matrix was weak,
and she had a tough time remembering why what was happening was
happening, but she enjoyed the movie and had a good time.
When we left the theater I proposed dodging in to a showing of X2,
which was starting at 11. I really expected her to say no: she'd had
no dinner, she had to work both Friday and Saturday, and she was
tired. She went for it! So on our illicit two-for-one we went to see
the sequel to a movie she'd never seen.
[P5150070.JPG] It was a great time! We didn't get home until 1:30 in
the morning, but I really enjoyed her spontanaeity and enthusiasm to
have fun.
And in a quick display of karmic balance, I'll now spend today
emptying out the room that flooded last Wednesday whent he sump pump
jammed.
But it's a beautiful day for it!
P.S. Anyone who appreciates the female form will appreciate Rebecca
Romjin-Stamos' reprisal as the shapeshifter Mystique in X2. There was
a whole scene where Ian MacKellen, as Magneto, is seated discussing
well, something... while Mystique stands beside him, visible only from
knees to neck. I have no idea what Magneto said!
P.P.S. I'm going away for MY retreat this coming week, so unless I
happen to toss another entry off tomorrow, no updates for a week! Now
you'll have to reshape your expectations about what to do with your
time...
[2]Last
Not many updates this week: my wife is a hermit.
She's off at a hermitage in outstate Minnesota, taking a five-day
writing holiday. So I'm at home with the kids, which is an interesting
experience. But it's not that hard: the twins are getting big and even
my youngest is becoming more independent.
Along with getting older, they're also getting stinkier.
I had the twins take showers this morning before school because, well,
they needed them. Then they had "track and field day" at school. And
after school, soccer lessons. The end result? They smell like
linebackers after a game. Another shower tomorrow morning I guess.
So I get up with them in the morning, get them organized and fed for
school, and see them out the door. Unlike their mother, I do not walk
them to school. It's only ten short blocks (about three long blocks)
and I charge the twins with holding their younger brother's hand
crossing the one mildly busy (four-way stop) street.
I have been walking over to retrieve them from school, though. Not
because they can't walk home, but in order to check out their schedule
books as they exit the school. So far, two days out of two, I've
caught one or both of the twins leaving homework notes in the school
and sent them back for it. Today I sent back my daughter to get one
item, only to have her lose another item on the way. By the time she
figured out that she'd left THAT item in the bathroom, it was half an
hour later. But a lot easier than going all the way back and forth to
the school!
Tomorrow I have a late-scheduled meeting (I can only work 8 to 2
daily), and I'll probably catch them at the park or my neighbor's who
I've asked to pick them up from school.
Last weekend was Moldy's last party. Going against his wife's explicit
instructions, I invited a bunch of former high school classmates. It
was amazing to see not only all the former St. Francis people, but
also all of the people who turned out for Moldy's party. Dozens of
people were gathered in their small apartment, and dozens more
gathered outside under awnings in the pouring rain where an immense
feast was spread under tarps.
Fudge! I just wandered into the laundry room where, following some
instinct, I gave the sump pump a jiggle. It must have been jammed: it
immediately gushed forth an immense, incessant volume of water. Way
too much water. So I stepped into our "new room" (the expansion we
added a few years ago which sits lower than the rest of the basement).
Sure enough, there was a half-inch of water in the whole thing! Such
are the joys of home-ownership...
Anyway, I grabbed some [1]photos of my old classmates. Lots of amusing
then-and-now shots.
And last Friday I accidentally blew a client meeting while snapping up
some [2]photos of the early spring bloom along the river. The
unretouched green of the grass, and the contrast of the spring leaves
against the damp bark of the trees are some of my favorite spring
scenes.
Enjoy! I'm gonna grab a mop...
[3]Last
If I ever get rich, I've decided, I'm going to fund a foundation with
a really weird name, then I'll sponsor Public Radio.
It seems to be all the rage.
Listen to Minnesota Public Radio, and you'll hear some great
sponsorships. There's [1]"The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation," for example. Hey, I have nothing against them, they look
like swell people... but, what's with the name? I have to assume they
are trying to carefully distinguish themselves from other
organizations, such as the John E. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation, a much different group that sponsors National Pubic Radio
as well as NXMBLA and baby-eating cults.
Then there's [2]"Lou [stop] C. [stop] Kerr [stop]", of the inimitable
Kerr Foundation. Again, great people, good causes... but why do they
hate radio announcers? The enunciation is so tortured you half expect
to hear Uday Hussein in the background with the whip. Anything less
than a full stop between syllables turns the donor into "Lucy Kerr"
and there goes the grant next year.
Why can't these organizations use simple monikers, like "The MacArthur
Foundation" or "The Kerr Foundation"? Simple -- I think these folks
simply enjoy torturing Public Radio Announcers...
But of course, the winner has to be [3]The Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation. Everytime I hear that name, preadolescent boys are
snorting and giggling in the background.
"What should we name this thing?"
"*snort* I dunno! Uh... 'The I. P. Daily Fund?'"
"No, no, 'The Mike Easter Hertz Memorial'!"
I mean, c'mon. Didn't anyone at the Foundation say "Uh, Mr. Johnson,
are you sure 'Wood Johnson' is the best way we can distinguish your
organization from those of other Robert Johnsons?"
I suppose he may have replied, "Well, in my days of college hoops,
they called me the Blue Steal for my ability to steal the basketball,
what about that?"
I suppose in that case, "wood johnson" is preferable. It's still got
to be the silliest name since Wang Computers got bought up...
So when I become rich, what will I call my charitable organization?
"The Hugh G. Rection Trust"? Or maybe "The Ron Jeremy Endowment"? I'd
better put some of my people on it right away. As soon as I'm rich.
[4]Last
I'm getting too old for this sort of thing.
It all started last Wednesday, when I notified a client that an
authorized external scan of their firewall had revealed a
vulnerability. One of their computers showed up as heavily
compromised, a real hacker haven, a brothel of infestation by backdoor
programs and other vulnerabilities.
The next morning, at 8 a.m., I was on plane to their distant city. By
five p.m. preliminary discussions had been completed and (more
importantly) personnel had cleared out of the data center, so we could
begin searching for the compromised system. For reasons I can't go
into, the managers did not want the IT staff to know about all this.
So we started searching. Nothing was labelled. Cables led nowhere. And
the computer we were looking for wasn't listed on any network maps.
Hours of fruitless searching later, we started calling people one by
one, carefully descending the chain of management through trusted
persons.
Finally one fellow knew enough about the network layout to lead us out
of the data center, down the hall, into an unlocked lab, and up to a
patch panel that led us eventually to the culprit system. A phone call
to the responsible party, and the screensaver came off and...
It was a hxneypxt.
Sorry, replace the x's with o's, I don't want any search engines
drawing hackers in here.
A Hxneypxt is a computer set up to trap hackers by drawing them in
with FAKE vulnerabilities. In this case, it caught the security white
hats instead of the security black hats. Very reckless on the part of
the fellow who set it up, since you ARE attracting hackers -- just
because you don't get into the bait system doesn't mean you won't find
the vulnerable system right next to it and hack that.
I was majorly bummed. I'd been up about 21 hours and flown for six,
and I was out for blood, not simulated blood.
But it was better for the client that the vulnerability wasn't real.
They got a good education about security and an example of how hard it
is to do it reactively, and without the cost of an actual security
breach.
But I'm getting too old for this. After (only) 21 hours of work on
Thursday to Friday, it took me until Monday morning to recover. I
slouched through the weekend like I had a lead weight on my back.
Managed to get to the gym on Sunday only because the family dragged me
along with them. And got little done with any other things I wanted to
accomplish this weekend.
Sunday we headed over to the May Day festival. It was gray and
blustery and cold out, with gusts over 35 MPH. Nonetheless the mostly
left-wing paraders made the best of it, struggling into a headwind in
an apt metaphor of the political times. I was annoyed because I
couldn't find my digital camera in order to provide some pictures.
Still haven't found it in fact, I know it's somewhere around this pit
we call a home.
It's still cold and blustery today, but at least my brain feels like
it's firing on all three cylinders.
Sigh. I used to be able to work 36 hours and go out for beers
afterwards. Now a 21 hour workday flattens me for half a week. Getting
old sucks, but I suppose the alternative is worse.
Speaking of which, tomorrow it's over to Moldy's for a showing of
'Spirited Away'.
[1]Last