Tell ya what: I surely didn’t swap to short sleeves yesterday. Nope, no customary start of summer here. Yeah, mebbe 69°. and the wind was blowing maybe 10 miles per hour—I don’t know, I didn’t keep count. I had on a jacket even, lest I get chicken skin.

We have out-of-town guests. It’s now Monday, May 28, as I type. They’ve been here since last Thursday, and they’ll head home on Wednesday, May 30. Memorial Day.

By now it seems we’ve seen half of the museums in Santa Fe, NM. If you’ve ever been here, you know that’s a lot of danged museums. But I haven’t kept count. Yesterday, May 27, we went to Museum Hill to see the Museum of International Folk Art. While we were there there we had brunch, sitting at an outside table. It was too loud to sit inside, because some lady was playing patriotic songs on the piano. Outside? ¡Cold!

I’m about museumed out. Too much culture. Thankfully, so are our guests.

So next? We we went to an open house for a condo for sale. A good way too see what life is like in Santa Fe: appearance and price. Next, we went to a casino. Mi esposa and I are not habitual gamblers: we go maybe once a year, to remember how. I spent my allotted $21 on the penny slots. Then I entered a drawing for a free Harley, and received a token of $10 for free use on the slots. On that token, I won $127! The most I’ve ever won in a casino.

Today (Monday)? It’s the official Memorial Day. Believe it or don’t, I’m old enough that I remember when it was called Decoration Day. Its name was officially changed nationwide in 1967.

It’s a day when folks may change from long-sleeve brown shirts and blue pants to short-sleeve blue shirts and tan pants. (Or maybe decorate themselves with shorts, and go to the beach. Or decorate the skies with fireworks.)

Or else, they follow the example of the President and put flags and flower decorations at the marked places of dead folk, especially those who’ve served in the military. President Obama’s giving a prayer for peace at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Wikipedia says that the U.S. has 196,248 U.S. active troops deployed outside its states and territories. That count probably varies now and then. Maybe we’re keeping better count these days, and there’re no Unknown Soldiers.

Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_day

Maybe our troops should go home. They’re out-of-town guests.

¿k?

Yeah, well, I’d hate to see some of these little ants get to get to be big things. Know what I mean? Aints! Always hated ‘em, always will.

It’s that time of year again, time for all those little things to come out of their secret places and bug us out of our complacence.

Every three or four days, a solitary ant wanders up from behind the refrigerator and crosses the counter. Dang! Thing is, there’s no hole in the house in that direction—no door, no window, no present or past hole in the wall or slab floor. Where’s that little booger coming from? No enjoyment here. Aints.

At least (so far) we’ve managed to keep out the house flies. No doubt, that’ll change before long. The one or two that’ve threatened to come in, we’ve managed to coax off the screen door and back into the wild.

I think it was seven years ago, we had an infestation of small wool-eating moths. Maybe they came with an imported rug we bought, or maybe not—some of our friends reported they had them, too. We ended up with most of our moth-bait (woolen things) in plastic bags, with loads of moth balls. All, that is, except the items most severely damaged. Those, we tossed. Last year, we finally brought out the smelly stuff, aired it out, and agreed, What will be, will be.

Meanwhile, this year’s annual infestation of Miller Moths was especially heavy. Those are the inch-long boogers especially fond of light bulbs.

You’d think they’d head for that giant light bulb in the sky! Heck, it’s the biggest light bulb around, no barriers, no ceiling or lampshade to hit: go for it. But no-O-o. Inevitably, they swarm around street lights, and they manage to find any open door and just love bedside lamps. Dang!

That’s one thing our cat Hippy enjoys, though. The chase. Miller moth? It wiggles. Get it. Eat it. (Bleah…) Good kitty!

There’s spiders, too. Mi esposa detests spiders. Hippy enjoys Daddy Long Legs.

Ah, well, yearly entertainment from small meaningless lower life forms. A perfect world might be perfectly boring.

¿k?

We trained our cat, Hippy. At bedtime, she helps (her clue word) by tapping my hand on the chair arm, so I’ll press the TV remote’s OFF. Then, we take her to the garage for her goodnight supper.

Now, she knows the bedtime routine. About a half hour before, she stares. If my hand goes to that chair arm, I get a pat or two with gently hinting claws. Whatever you do, don’t train your cat!

We got Hippy from the pound. She’d been injured by dog bite. The pound folks expected hip problems in later life. Hence her name: Hippy. When she runs in the lawn, toward a bird coyly waiting to leap, her rear legs are notably askew. She doesn’t seem to mind.

(Can a cat mind? She often gazes as if to count the garage floor: One… Perhaps, she just finds the floor interesting.)

We got Hippy about a year after our previous cat, Fish, died. How we named him is a story for another time. We etched a stone marker over Fish’s grave in our backyard.

Both cats trained us. Her in and out routine? Hippy knocks at the back door (grabs the wood frame at the bottom of the screen door and shakes it). We admit her and, soon as we sit comfortably, she signals for the front door. Lemme in, le-meow-t.

Mornings: low purr of radio news wakes us. Then, ablutions. Coffee. Feed Hippy and let her out (of course). Fetch morning paper. TV news in the background. Read email, tweets, online news. (News junkies?) By now, Hippy’s knocking.

I used to write mainframe computer routines. Parts of life fall into routines. Takes all kinds.

It’s about 9:45. Near time for the news. A small head just bobbed up near my chair seat. Guess who? She knows the nightly routine.

Whatever you do, don’t train your cat.

¿k?

Dang! Rant and rant and rant. Don’t you get tired of people who write blogs that rant? So kick me.

Yeah, kick me. This time, I’ll start with my little toe. On my right foot. Keeps getting a danged corn. Ever had a corn? Sounds like something an old fart would have…

…That’s not to say I’m not an old fart. Been around the block a few times. It’s easier when I don’t have this danged corn, though.

Seems as if it started out when I got this new pair of shoes. Clark’s Desert Boots. I’ve broken them in since then, but at first (probably like all new shoes), they were sorta tight. Around that toe. Dang! Toe still hurts, on and off. Shoe’s comfortable, though. Dangdest thing.

I got the new shoes after years of wearing a pair of their shoes they no longer make. I still have those: I’d even worn them in the lava fields in Hawaii when we visited in 2004, and they were old in those days. Still comfortable.

I always wanted a pair of Wallabees, but never got around to it. I’ve always favored suede shoes. Why? Because I’m too danged lazy to polish shoes, and because the dull finish matches my personality. They’re usually soft enough to avoid corns, too.

Suede shoes? That’s me. And a vest. Jeans, mismatched shirt and a hat. See someone around town dressed like Goofy, and it’s likely me.

So I’m sitting here with the nail clippers trimming my corn fresh off once again. I do this about once every two weeks. And I’ve been going through this blog, looking at how I rant and rant and rant. Lots of old entries for Blog Action Day, each year, October 15, since 2007.

This week, I went through and checked all the graphics and links to root out old stuff and make sure links were up to date. A thankless task. Know what?

The Blog Action Day website is dead! Yep, dead! Dang! I guess there’ll be no more special rants on October 15.

I’ll leave those old posts in place, I reckon, with their obsolete links and images. Comfortable, somehow. Like an old pair of shoes.

¿k?

Okay, this. I know from Akismet™ that mine is a low-traffic blog. No one is likely to read this. But I’m ready to waste some words.

Just as I’m ready to waste some votes. Yeah, that’s what it’s called, right? The two-party addiction is strong.

So many folks have told me, to vote for someone who’s not in one of the two major parties is to waste a vote. Vote for your own party lest the candidate from the other party get elected.

Yet, too often, I’ve seen that both parties offer up real doofuses for office. Both! Doofuses! We end up with exactly what we deserve: doofus government.

Incompetents in office, who make silly and vacuous promises during their campaigns, don’t keep them while in office, vote according to the wishes of the highest-bidding lobbyist, and return only form-letter responses to their constituents.

Frankly, I’m tired of it. And somebody has to take the first step, else it’ll never happen. I’ll help. If a better third-party (heck, it doesn’t have to be a party) candidate runs for an office, I’ll waste a vote on a better candidate.

Take the U.S. Congress, for example. For too long, the nation seems to have been held hostage, not making progress because of deadlocks between two parties. Deadlocks often not based on issues, but rather party loyalties. Citizens gripe about Congressfolk, as if they forget who elected the Congressfolk! Surprising? (No, maybe some voters didn’t want to waste their votes. Or something.)

So here: maybe if we elect a few folks who are not in the two major parties, it’ll create even more divisiveness. But you know what? Maybe it could be divisions of opinion on the issues rather than divisions based on party lines. Why not?

Why not?

Rhetorical. I’m snooty enough that I didn’t leave a comments form on this blog. So you don’t get a chance to answer that question, unless it’s in your own mind.

Unless, maybe, you’re reading this, and get convinced. And maybe pass it on.

End of stoopid rant.

¿k?

Are you familiar with Cinco de Mayo, the celebration of the 5th of May? Yeah, I had a vague idea it’s the fifth of May. Some think it’s just a day of merrymaking and drinking. But it’s not.

Wikipedia goes into great detail. Among other things, you may see that, on May 5, 1862, 4,000 Mexican soldiers defeated a much larger and more well-equipped French army of 8,000 at Puebla. You may note that this was the last European invasion in the Americas.

On June 7, 2005, the U.S. Congress issued a Concurrent Resolution calling on the President of the United States to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe Cinco de Mayo with appropriate ceremonies and activities. [Reference: Library of Congress (U.S.A.) Declaration Retrieved February 6, 2009]

Read more—Wikipedia’s article on Cinco de Mayo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinco_de_Mayo

A commentor on Huffington Post went Wikipedia one better:

Cinco de Mayo represents the intrinsic will of a people to remain free. Had the Mexicans not defeated the French at Puebla (they eventually lost that war but kept fighting)—the French [would have] been licking their chompers to move into the US that was vulnerable to the decimation of the Civil War. Plus the general in charge of that battle, Ignacio Zaragoza, was born in Presidio La Bahia, (present day Goliad, TX).

Latinos are 16+% of the U.S. population, and growing. To what city can you go without finding some sort of Mexican food (no matter how poor an imitation)? I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the oldest (European, of course) capitol in what is the modern United States. Here we have, not a Latino influence but rather an influence from anybody else.

I’m not Latino, but my friends here (and on HuffPo and everywhere else) are good teachers. I’ll have a Dos Equis on Cinco de Mayo, but I’ll stay thirsty.

Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it. (George Santayana)

¿k?

I see that we might be more sympathetic toward the Earth when we’re well-fed.

Read more—Ars technica (March 19, 2012): …climate change acceptance nosedives with the economy.

Any port in a storm… including making more fossil-fuel burning cars, as long as it creates jobs in the good ol’ U.S. of A. We likely won’t find a political candidate standing for any other possibility in hard times. Gotta pay the rent and put food on the table. Harsh bottom line.

One of our favorite local barbecue restaurant restaurants closed down. We were sorely disappointed. Then we found out, much to our pleasure, it had re-opened further south in town as a more upscale restaurant—higher prices, some of the same food, plus some more exotic entrées.

Our town—or, I might say, city—has grown dramatically since I moved here in 1976. (Of course, hasn’t most every population center?) We live in the high mountains of the great desert southwest: Santa Fe, NM. What were dirt roads in 1976 are now four-lane major arteries. Rodeo Road boasts a golf course, a small airport (heh, one boarding gate), and—wow!—a sewage treatment plant. Land is plowed flat at an alarming rate for new subdivisions and commercial enterprises.

On the highway south of town, where one could drive for miles at night in darkness, is now a constant string of headlights. The biodiesel fuel commuter train struggles for customers. Score a victory to fossil fuel gas.

In the midst of Santa Fe southern growth is the new version of our barbecue restaurant.

About a month after restaurant V2 opened, we visited. We had the usual—one of us, a half rack of ribs, and the other, brisket. Mmm… But we noticed an intriguing item on the menu: a green chile barbecued beef burrito. (We’re addicted to green chile, so this item immediately caught our attention: we agreed to return soon.)

Upon return a couple weeks later—yes, that soon—mi esposa had a barbecued carne adovada burrito with red chile (special that night) and I had the green chile burrito we’d seen before. Superb. Refried beans on the side, of course: can’t have southwest food without refried beans, ¿right? We were well-fed.

Revenge of the refried beans! We’re remodeling, so instead of the luxury of separate throne rooms, we share while one is out of commission: a hot time in the ol’ house that night! Natural gas.

Global warming with an attitude.

I saw an amusing, if not scary, article just now. Some excerpts:

The Earth’s methane concentration has increased by about 150% since 1750, and it accounts for 20% of the total radiative forcing from all of the long-lived and globally mixed greenhouse gases.

[…]

A 2006 UN FAO report reported that livestock generate more greenhouse gases as measured in CO2 equivalents than the entire transportation sector. Livestock accounts for 9 percent of anthropogenic CO2, 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide and 37 percent of anthropogenic methane.

[…]

President of the National Academy of Sciences Ralph Cicerone (an atmospheric scientist), has indicated the contribution of methane by livestock flatulence and eructation to global warming is a serious topic.

Read more: Wikipedia

Anthropogenic—that’s us: getting well-fed. Flatulence and eructation—that’s our food: farting and burping. Revenge of the herds.

From the Earth Day Network website:

Each year, Earth Day—April 22—marks the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

The height of hippie and flower-child culture in the United States, 1970 brought the death of Jimi Hendrix, the last Beatles album, and Simon & Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water. Protest was the order of the day, but saving the planet was not the cause. War raged in Vietnam, and students nationwide increasingly opposed it.

At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.

[…]

Earth Day 1970 capitalized on the emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center.

(We were well-fed.)

Much like 1970, Earth Day 2010 came at a time of great challenge for the environmental community. Climate change deniers, well-funded oil lobbyists, reticent politicians, a disinterested public, and a divided environmental community all contributed to a strong narrative that overshadowed the cause of progress and change.

(Getting a little hungry at times, eh?)

The fight for a clean environment continues in a climate of increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more manifest every day. We invite you to be a part of Earth Day and help write many more victories and successes into our history. Discover energy you didn’t even know you had.

Maybe it’s not all hot air.

¿k?

high gas prices are not because of a lack of domestic production, nor because of environmental regulations

…

He said the most important thing to cut the cost at the pump is to find ways to use less oil.

Read more: http://www.koat.com/news/30654995/detail.html#ixzz1oquIQjfG

Using less: what a novel idea. Well, no, not really. In 2006, the World Wildlife Federation in Sydney, Australia, held the first Earth Hour event. From there, each year, it grew worldwide. In 2011, Earth Hour saw hundreds of millions of people across 135 countries switch off for an hour. (From the About page on the Earth Hour website)

One might start with a symbolic act. Turn off lights for an hour at 8:30PM (local time) on March 31, 2012. And imagine a cascade of lights going off, hour by hour, time zone by time zone, as 8:30PM proceeds around the globe.

Probably, too, imagine them coming back on an hour later in the next swath: not much stamina in energy saving. A razor-blade of dark-er-ness 15° wide. So to speak.

We’re testing our energy stamina, digging through the slab where our tub used to be. We found a measly two inches of insulation under the slab—not the greatest quality foam, at that. Certainly a target for improvement when building a shower basin.

We’re in the midst of our last remodeling project: the hall bathroom. There, I most often reign on my regal throne and peruse Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. The new and improved throne will boast dual-flush, by the numbers. Fancy-ass. (Get it?)

Now, I have to learn to grope for a danged button on top of the tank instead of the familiar handle at the right. Or left, depending on whether I’m standing. Which I don’t. And I know, from experience with mi esposa’s similar throne, there’s no reassuring whoosh—just a delayed guttural gulp.

We heard there’s a black market for the low-efficiency toilets that are against our local code. Our discard went to the landfill. I reckon we’re just not creative enough to make it a lawn ornament.

When the halogen lights come on in the new bathroom, it’ll be a real pleasure to have a sink counter 35 inches high instead of the 30 inches built into the original house. (Why’d they do that? What a literal pain in the back for someone of normal height.) And improved insulation may lower our heating bills and make the room temperatures a bit more me-friendly.

Earth Hour Plus. (No, not that other Plus.) Plus means, what to do after the lights come back on.

Doing more. It’s a heavy load—the Plus part, that is. Sometimes like 5 feet by 3 feet by 8 inches of concrete slab, removed with drill, saw, hammer, chisels, and shovel.

Maybe I’ll sit down and think about it.

¿k?

We noticed lots of greenery already blooming. It’s too warm. Stuff has a good chance of freezing before it’s time.

We saw an ad for coffins. Imagine that. I thought it must be a clearance sale. Mi esposa said, Makes a great gift!

It’s never too early. But wait. Call now and…

It’s Leap Year Day. Time to catch up with an accumulated four years’ error in counting how long it takes the Earth to go around the Sun. Now we’re back to where we started. Somewhat. Right? We leapt.

In 11 days, Daylight Savings Time begins. (Each year, I wonder why we don’t compromise at a half hour. But that’s neither here nor there…) We’ll wake up an hour too early for a week or two. Heck, by then, the sun’s been coming up too early, anyway.

Then, on March 31, at 8:30PM there’s Earth Hour. We’ll remember to turn our lights off for an hour. Symbolic, yes. It won’t make up for all the time we’ve left the lights on too long. But it gives us an idea of what to do to protect the planet before it’s too late. Heck, we’ve got nowhere else to go.

Before too long, a certain danged robin in our neighborhood will come around. It’ll roost in the tree right outside our bedroom window and wake us right before sunup, with chirup, chirup, chirup, chirup, cheee! Now that’s too early.

Spring forward to April 22: Earth Day rolls around. Never too late for that. Or early. Our planet, our home is being neglected. Climate change continues unabated. It seems there’s a new ecological disaster happening almost daily. This Earth Day it’s time to mobilize the planet from the ground up to send a message that the Earth won’t wait!

It’s hard for me to write a story when I don’t know the ending in advance. Or even the middle—like, say, a decent plot twist. Write what you know, I was told in college years. That leaves my pen (or more accurately, typing finger) paused in the air, awaiting touchdown. Speechless.

So it occurred to me the one thing I know is that I’m a web designer. I know about 404 pages. That’s what one may place on a website for visitors to encounter when they seek an item that can’t be found. Maybe, for now, I should write a novel titled 404: Page Not Found. That’d be the first page. Then, I could write the last page of the next mediocre American novel and work my way backward from there. Hmmm…

Like trying to put time in a bottle. Or a genie back.

¿k?

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• Stop Online Piracy Act From Wikipedia
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