Good Mail Day

It was a very good mail day! Today I got my paystub, which is not actual money (it having already gone into my account) but is still nice, and my Denver Botanic Gardens membership card, and a CD all the way from Europe sent by my wonderful friend Vince.

Hold fast to the law
Of the last cold tome
Where the earth
Of the truth lies thick
Upon the page
And the loam
Of faith
In the ink
Long fled
From the drone
Of the nib
Flows on,
Till the last
Of the first
Depart
And the least
Of the past
Is dust
And the dust
Is lost
Hold fast!
Gormenghast!

I'm listing now and it is making me pretty darn happy along with a glass of port and some nice cheese.

Considering Vehicle Purchase

I am seriously considering the purchase of a new car. Why? Because buying now may be paradoxically safer than waiting until I have more money later. If inflation takes off then money I am currently saving towards a new car right now would be partially wiped out. On the other hand if I can get a fixed loan from my credit union or whatever other financing group I would be protected. Provided I also could save a near equal amount as a hedge against the much more frightening prospect of deflation.

I could also, slightly, reduce the amount I spend every month on gasoline if I purchased a more efficient car. I currently get about 28 miles per gallon and given my moderate driving habits I can expect to do slightly better than the EPA rating for a car. If I got one of the new Priuses I could halve my gas expense at the cost of a higher car payment than if I got a less expensive vehicle (as I would want to get it a Prius would cost about $23,348). Also, I have heard there is a waiting list.

On the other hand I could get the nearly as efficient new Honda Insight for just $20,769. Given Honda's ability and reputation I expect that it would be just about as well made as the Toyota. The only reason to go with the Prius is that it is a third generation of an existing car where they've worked out the bugs rather than essentially a completely redesigned model. Plus I've heard good things so far about the things they're doing to make the Prius more reliable, like eliminating belts.

Possibly more practical would be getting a Honda Fit ($15,706) or a Toyota Yaris ($15,288). Of the two I would probably lean towards the Honda going for a bargain price car. Really it is the much more likely option, but it would probably only give me a marginal improvement over my current gas mileage.

Repeal in 2012?

I am increasingly comfortable with the idea of a ballot initiative to remove the anti-same sex marriage amendment from the Colorado State Constitution. I've looked at the numbers myself and read an analysis by Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com that is even more optimistic than my own. He has the break over point as being in 2010, that is if the anti-gay marriage initiative was on the ballot next year rather than back in 2006 it would have failed. My own numbers seem to be a bit more conservative, I put the break over year as being 2014.

The thing is that with all these numbers the situation at the time can overwhelm demographics. I mean by this that even if Nate is right that we could have a lackluster liberal turn out in 2010 in Colorado due to uninspiring candidates or disillusionment with the folks we elected last time.

My impression is that the best early date would be 2012 if President Obama is popular and we could reasonably expect high turn out among gay allies. If not we'd have to put it off until 2014 or 2016. The same would seem to hold true with California, which Nate Silver puts in the same category as Colorado. Personally I think that California is a bit more likely to get an early date done due to the gay rights groups out there being fired up to win and on the ball with figuring out how to run a better campaign.

And if it succeeds it might finally give everyone a reason to approve of higher numbers to change the constitutions of both states.

Marcus Brigstocke

My first exposure to the humor of Marcus Brigstocke was in a you tube video created by a fan by adding (a somewhat mediocre) collage of images to a radio program.



It is not an exact representation of my views. Well my serious views anyways. But it does get my general point of view about religion across in a humorous way. Not in a way that I would share with, say, my parents or someone else I liked a great deal who I knew to be seriously religious. I could see where some religious people would have a nice laugh about this much the same way that I would laugh at jokes pointing out the (well known) foibles of Atheists, but it isn't entirely fair. That said most humor isn't fair and it amused me.

Yes, I realize that if religion actually went away it would not mean a new era of peace and prosperity. It would just mean that people who wanted to beat up someone they do not like would need to find a new excuse or rationalization as to why it is okay. But I have every confidence that people would find a way and possibly even to pretend that it was better for the person being killed than to go on living in his mistaken beliefs. People are amazing at what they can rationalize. But it is a nice little fantasy that maybe if normal, sane rational religious people stopped going to church because of the irrationality of their leaders we might actually get a better world.

Remembering Oatmeals Breakfasts Past

I seem to be thinking a lot about food lately. Food and memory seem to be intertwined for me, which should not be surprising since memory is largely about being able to find food. And I'm hardly the first to make the connection between food and memory, Proust famously started remembering things because of petite madeleines.

I am mostly remembering all the camping trips I took as child and young man. Today it was seeing the packages of instant oatmeal in all their flavors that brings back those mountain mornings. I remember that I had a definite hierarchy of which packets were better or worse. I liked the apple and cinnamon ones with their funny little bits of dried apples and the fake dairy powder. The 'maple' flavor was okay, but even back then I had a preference for fruit. Terrible was if I got stuck with a packet of plain. I think I recall liking the peaches and cream flavor okay. But apple was definitely tops. The flavor I saw today was strawberry and I don't recall that one specifically, but I suspect I disliked it for not tasting either of real strawberries or artificial in a way that appealed to my childish palate.

I remember specifically that we'd bring water to boil, rather quickly at over 2750 meters in elevation (9,022 feet), and then carefully pour it into the bowl. I always wanted just enough to moisten the oatmeal and not enough to make it goopy. My mother liked it a lot better when it was more like traditional oatmeal, I wanted it to be almost like oatmeal cookie dough in consistency. Plus without as much water it could be eaten faster since not as much heat would be transferred. Perhaps my aversion grew out of an early experience of trying to eat hot oatmeal on a cold morning too quickly.

I cannot say which camping trip it was specifically, but I remember it was in the beat up camper that my father had before he got the big trailer. It seemed to be at Steamboat Reservoir, but we went there so often it could be a composite memory rather than one specif instance when I got the oatmeal just so and was quite happy with it.

Tomorrow I shall have peaches and whole milk on my oatmeal. Yes. That sounds like a good idea.

Home Made Pickelhaube Helmet

Funny thing seen at work today. A guy with a pink motorcycle helmet with a black spike like a Pickelhaube (those old Prussian/German army helmets). When I walked by him I realized that the spike was in all probably a very thin butt plug. I found this more amusing than anything else and I assume the vast majority of people would never realize what the intended purpose of the spike on his helmet was.

Absence of Gum

Usually the presence of something triggers a memory. How much longer does the absences of something take to make someone remember? I noticed the other day that Trident no longer sells cinnamon gum. That was the kind that my paternal grandmother almost always carried. I have a lot of memories of her giving me a stick while we rode around in her big van in San Diego. She often sang part of a song that I thought was a lullaby while driving.

"Down in the valley, valley so low
Hang your head over
And hear the wind blow"