Born from jets; hoping for rebirth.

I still remember the Saab that got me—a dark red 1978 99 Turbo that I spotted at a donut shop when I was nine. It was a startling vehicle, with its clamshell hood, crazy wrap-around windshield, and rakish, swooping hatch. To me, it looked like some kind of spaceship, but cooler than anything George Lucas could’ve imagined. Even the nameplate seemed otherworldly: SAAB. I remember thinking that I’d probably never get a chance to ride in anything so exotic.

But just a few years later, my father began working for a Swedish firm, and his company car was a blue 1984 Saab 900 Turbo. Riding in its cockpit for the first time, feeling the whoosh of the turbocharger that seemed ready to lift us right off the pavement, I was hooked. I’ve owned four different Saabs since then, two of which are still in my driveway.

Like most Saab aficionados, I was never happy about GM’s dulling influence on the company, but I also grudgingly recognized that, without GM’s investment, Saab might’ve disappeared years ago. Still, that knowledge hasn’t made it any less painful to watch GM's recent treatment of Saab, first trying to sell them off like some toxic asset, and later announcing that they would just shut them down.

The American media’s Saab coverage has been spotty, so I’ve been following the story on a Swedish news site called The Local. Multiple articles there have suggested that GM rejected an initial bid from Dutch carmaker Stryker because it was backed by Russian investors, and “GM was reportedly concerned about the transfer of technical know-how to Russia.”

That one really had me scratching my head. Sure, Saabs have always featured some nifty engineering, but does the company really possess some secret technology that simply cannot fall into Russian hands? And if said technology does exist, why hasn’t GM exploited it to, you know, make money?

I'm beginning to suspect that GM is content to let Saab die because they'd rather not see the brand succeed under someone else’s stewardship—a turn of events that would just underline GM's own failure. And perhaps GM doesn't want any of their future vehicles—be they Chevys, Opels or Vauxhalls—to be forced to compete with a reinvigorated Saab, whose owners have always been among the world's most loyal and enthusiastic. Maybe that mysterious Saabist devotion is the real "technology" that GM is hesitant to sell.

As of today, GM has reportedly reopened the door to potential buyers; here's hoping that they can work something out. If not, maybe I'll see if I can track down that 99 Turbo from the donut shop, or an old 900 like Dad's—both cars are still more original and inspiring to me than anything Detroit has produced in the last thirty years.

Free Couch! (cushions not included)

Two weeks ago, we put our old couch out on the curb. We were actually hesitant to let it go—we'd had it for nearly ten years, and it was still quite comfortable—but we needed the space, and we were sure that someone else would give it a good home.

Within an hour, a couple in a minivan stopped to claim the couch. They said they wanted it for their playroom—they had young children, in addition to a teenage son—but they needed to clear some space in their van before they could haul it away. The plan was that would take the cushions and pillows immediately, and then the man and the teenage son would return shortly for the rest of the couch.

It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. It was two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon; I figured they’d be back before dinner. But while other people stopped to inspect the couch (now looking a little naked), there was no sign of the couple in the minivan, either that day or the next. They just never came back.

And I just keep asking myself, Why?

I can understand changing your mind—maybe they figured out that the couch wouldn’t fit in their playroom. But still, wouldn't you at least return the cushions so that somebody else could use the thing? How much trouble could that possibly be, especially if it meant saving it from a landfill?

Since I don't like to think ill of people, I've been trying to imagine a scenario that would excuse this couple’s behavior. So far, I've only come up with three possibilities, summarized below. Since I never got their real names, I’ve just referred to them as "Regis and Kelly."

1. The 24 Theory.

Regis and Kelly were actually undercover counterterrorism operatives who had just discovered an explosive device hidden in the “Seasonal/Juice/Candy” aisle of our local Star Market. Using our couch cushions to fashion a makeshift blast suit, Kelly had successfully defused the bomb, saving dozens of lives and literally hundreds of dollars in tacky holiday decorations.

As a token of his gratitude, the store manager presented Kelly with a gallon jug of store-brand cranberry juice. Caught up in the excitement of the moment, Kelly attempted a celebratory swig from the unwieldy bottle, but just ended up spilling cranberry juice all over our herself and couch cushions, staining them irreparably.

2. The Memento / Dory Theory.

A tragic trapeze mishap in 1994 left Regis and Kelly afflicted with anteretrograde amnesia, a rare brain disorder that prevents them from being able to store new memories. And so, three minutes after pulling away from our house, Regis and Kelly forgot that they’d ever stopped. Upon arriving home that night, they were stunned to discover that their minivan was packed with couch cushions of every conceivable color and size.

Agreeing that this was probably just another one of Regis Jr.’s teenage pranks—in reality, Regis Jr. is now 30 years old and running for Massachusetts' open U.S. Senate seat—Regis and Kelly stacked all of the cushions on the curb for the morning trash pickup.

3. Raiders of the Lost Couch

Regis and Kelly were actually renegade "recyclers" (aka curb cruisers, dumpster divers, or sidewalk stalkers) who, shortly after leaving our house, were captured by a tyrannical junk cartel. Dragged to the evil trashlord's headquarters/two-car garage, they faced their longtime nemesis—we'll just call her "Kathie Lee"—who had discovered our cushions and correctly identified them as part of a rare late-90s Crate & Barrel Apartment Sleeper. Kathie Lee threatened Regis and Kelly with unspeakable tortures unless they revealed the couch's location.

"I'll never tell," Regis scowled. "You don't scare me anymore, Kathie Lee."

"Oh no?" Kathie Lee said, flicking on a karaoke machine.

Two days and 273 Christmas medleys later, Regis finally snapped and agreed to lead Kathie Lee to the couch. But by the time the trio arrived back at our house, the couch had disappeared...

They wondered: Had it been carted it off by some less-picky trash-picker? Or had it, separated from its beloved cushions, died of a broken heart and ascended directly to furniture heaven?

Or maybe—just maybe—the original owner couldn't leave the fricking couch blocking the sidewalk forever, so he'd had to haul this decushionated behemoth to the garage—by himself, if I had to guess—pivoting, dragging, and flipping the thing end-over-end, its fold-up bed frame periodically springing out at him like some enormous mechanical tongue. And maybe the couch is still sitting in his garage—alongside his old washer and dryer and everything else he can’t bring himself to throw out—waiting for someone to knock on his door and ask for it.

Or maybe we’ll never know what really happened…and maybe it’s better that way.

Teen Wolf Wearing Ray-Bans

As I've mentioned before, people visit my blog for a variety of reasons, most of which involve looking for someone or something else. They search for "snacks to regulate blood sugar," and Google or Yahoo magically mis-leads them to a post about my diabetic cat.

I feel a twinge of guilt every time I see hits like that in my Google Analytics report—my blog certainly isn't going to help anyone control their blood sugar—but I do enjoy my little glimpse of the things people search for:

best things about working in information technology
lost or corrupted user profile in Vista
how do you say ‘fan club’ in japanese?
use of freeze by dates
derek shortened
queasyness at bedtime
i'm not the man i thought i was
teen wolf wearing raybans

That's all pretty mundane stuff—I mean, who hasn't been gripped by the need to see an adolescent lycanthrope in glamorous eyewear? But every once in a while, I'll encounter a search imbued with such passion that it practically jumps off the screen:

a dog keeps peeing on the grassy strip between the curb and sidewalk who owns it

This one scared me because, very briefly, I worried it might've come from some disgruntled neighbor. Thankfully, Google indicated that this visitor actually lives in Iselin, New Jersey, a place Hugo and I will be sure to steer clear of.

Over time, I've noticed that certain searches seem to transcend geography. For some reason, I see hits like these coming in from all corners of the globe:

blackberry change life
blackberry changes people life
blackberry change my life
blackberry will make my life better
sugar snacks
blood sugar snacks
snacks good for blood sugar
snacks to regulate blood sugar
un gateau
ce n'est pas de gateaux
ceci n'est pas un gateau

The Blackberry hits, which arrived from as far away as Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Africa, just depress me beyond words. And while I totally understand all the blood sugar queries—diabetes is a global issue—it's harder to guess why people everywhere are also searching on "Ceci n'est pas un gateau." Though in a surreal sort of way, one search does answer the other, non?

Snacks good for blood sugar?
This is not a cake!

But by far the most curious search to bring anyone to my blog has to be:

he peeing long moan good

I have no idea what this person was looking for, but I’m pretty sure it was inappropriate, if only grammatically. And for some reason, my blog is the #1 Google result for this phrase.

I've always wanted to be #1 at something; I guess this is it.

My Old, Familiar Friend

Two weeks ago today, I took my old friend Spalding to the vet, something I'd done so many times over the last sixteen years. Unfortunately, this trip wasn’t like any of the others; this time, I came home with an empty carrier.

I'd known this day was coming, but that didn't make the occasion any less sad. As it turned out, diabetes wasn’t Spalding’s worst problem—he also had a tumor on one of his hind legs. By the time we discovered it, camouflaged within his gray fur and already encroaching on his knee, the only treatment was amputation. Given Spalding’s age and medical resume, we decided to keep him comfortable instead.

He had four good months after that, which I think was more than any of us expected. His limp gradually worsened, but he still hopped up onto the couch every night and sat purring beside me while I watched TV or wrote. And that's how I'll always remember Spald: a warm, happy shape beside me on the couch.

And he actually made an excellent writing partner, except on those rare occasions when I attempted to use a pen. Spalding never met a pen he didn't want to rub his face against, so he would chase it back and forth across the page, purring and lunging and knocking my hand off course. It kinda drove me crazy sometimes. But now, of course, I miss it.

Weapon of Choice

It’s ten-thirty on Thursday night. Lilah and Alex are asleep, Hugo has been walked, and I’m in the dining room, trying to write.

But now Hugo appears beside me, wide-eyed and whining. I run through the list of things that might be troubling him:

Does he have water?
Yes.

Is there a mouse in the kitchen cabinets?
I find no evidence of this, but much like the existence of God, it's a difficult thing to disprove.

Did the cat die again?
No, Spalding is still breathing..and now he’s meowing at me because I touched him.

Is Hugo about to have explosive diarrhea?
I take him outside again, and he casually attempts to pee on the new Japanese maple. When I snap the leash, he pretends to have been aiming for the fence.

Is Hugo distressed by that new rawhide, resting so tantalizingly atop the china cabinet?
I take the rawhide down and give it to Hugo. He runs off to stash it in his crate with his other rawhides, and then returns to whine at me again.

Would Hugo prefer that I write in the living room?
I relocate myself to the couch, which is far too comfy for productivity at this hour. Hugo is still upset though, pacing back and forth in front of me…

…and that’s when I finally see it, the source of his agitation: there’s a fly in the house.

This is very bad news, perhaps worse than all of the other possibilities combined. Something about a fly’s buzzing tickles the most primal parts of Hugo’s brain. If I don’t banish this thing, Hugo will be barking and chasing it around the house all night, pausing only to chew out his frustrations on unsuspecting shoes and books. And none of us will sleep.

My fly-killing skills are notoriously weak though, a point that was driven home by our cat Theo a few years ago. I'd been chasing this monster fly around the house, flailing and cursing at the thing for a good ten minutes, when it made the mistake of buzzing past Theo, half-asleep on a chair. Without even rising from his reclined position, Theo snatched the fly out of the air, dragged it straight to his mouth, and ate it in front of me.

I'd never been so impressed and revolted at the same time.

But Theo has since passed away, Spalding has no interest in insects, and Hugo is all enthusiasm and no skill. I grab Lilah’s slim paperback of Henry and Mudge from the table and, with little hope of success, begin tracking the fly. It circles just out of reach, resting first on the ceiling, and then on the inside of a lampshade.

When it finally stops on the wall, I strike. The fly lurches back into the air, stunned but alive, and Hugo lunges after it. His snapping jaws knock the fly off course, but it's just another glancing blow.

Seeking a more substantial weapon, I grab a magazine from today’s mail. The fly lights on the blinds and I strike again, knocking it to the windowsill while Hugo barks in near-rabid excitement behind me. One more bash, and the fly is finally dead.

With equal parts pride and relief, I get a tissue to collect the corpse and clean the errant bug-bits off the murder weapon, the Fall 2009 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. I recognize that there will be karmic consequences for what I've done, but at this point, I'm ready to accept a few lifetimes as a dung beetle if I can finally get some fricking work done.

But as soon as I return to the couch and the computer, so does Hugo. He's whining and wedging his head up onto my lap, every bit as agitated as before.

What now? Another bug?

No, it seems that Hugo just doesn’t understand what happened. He never saw the dead fly, so he's convinced that it's just hiding somewhere, waiting to start buzzing again.

Or maybe Hugo knows exactly what happened, and this is just his way of asking, "Aren't you going to eat that?"

Better Life Through Blackberry

One of the best things about working in information technology is that, even after 15 years, I still learn new things every day.

One afternoon last summer, for example, I learned that you should never answer your cell phone in a bathroom. This might seem like a no-brainer, but I’ve discovered that when something starts buzzing in my pocket, my irrepressible instinct is to make it stop.¹ On this occasion, I also experienced an untimely loss of motor control, and—splash!—I got my first Blackberry the next day.

If I’d known how completely that Blackberry would change my life though, I would’ve tossed my old Motorola RAZR in the toilet much sooner.² So for anyone who might be contemplating Life on Blackberry, here’s an overview of the key benefits:

Always Connected!
Now that I carry my e-mail with me everywhere, I never miss an important message. Whether I’m driving to work, watching my daughter’s dance recital, or just trying to eat my dinner, I get:

BZZT!—Hot deals from Dell!

And then BZZT!—25% off Photo Mugs at Kodak Gallery!

And also BZZT!—Amazon has some exciting products to recommend based items I bought as gifts for other people!

And how could I live without BZZT!—The Gap is having a sale on flirty summer skirts!

And also, BZZT!—Your Amazon order confirmation!

And furthermore BZZT!—Your Amazon shipment notification!

And don’t forget BZZT!—Yet another Amazon shipment notification! Because your electric nose-hair trimmers are coming from a separate warehouse!

And on a related note, receiving separate alerts for every single message³ has revealed how little of my correspondence comes from actual human beings, liberating me from the delusion that I have a lot of friends. (Sure, it hurts a little, but I'm growing from it. And when I get blue, I just order more stuff from Amazon.)

Always Sharing!
My Blackberry’s digital camera and 3G Internet connection has also changed the way I look at the world. Now I can take a low-res photo of anything I see and instantly upload it to Facebook, whose proprietary ImageCrappening™ technology will render it totally unrecognizable even to me. (How did I ever live without this?)

And on a related note, this capability also earned me a smirking reprimand from a supermarket manager, who stopped me from photographing myself in their security camera display.⁴ I'd been thinking that the picture would make a cool Facebook profile photo, but it turns out that I’m just a complete moron. Which is really good to know. (No pain, no gain, right?)

Always Antisocial!
One of the most overlooked Blackberry benefits is the ability it gives you to avoid eye contact with people you don’t want to talk to. Here’s how it works:

The moment you sense someone approaching, take out your Blackberry and stare down at it seriously. As long as you DON'T SMILE, everyone in the area will assume that you’re absorbed in some high-level business activity—maybe destabilizing the credit markets, or shipping American jobs overseas—and they will leave you alone.

If, on the other hand, someone were to see you fiddling with an iPhone, they would know immediately that you were just screwing around. Not only would they interrupt you, they might even ask to play with your iPhone, getting their greasy fingerprints all over it. This is something that I promise will never happen with a Blackberry.

Always Exploring!
The Blackberry’s built-in GPS, combined with VZ Navigator’s turn-by-turn driving directions, has taken me places that I never would've gone without it. On a recent drive to New York City, for example, VZ Navigator lost its GPS fix on us just as we were approaching the George Washington Bridge. This sent VZNav into a Tourette’s-like froth, during which it exhorted us to make a series of impossible turns onto side-streets that we couldn’t even see from the canyon of I-95. “Turn left onto Pinehurst Avenue! Turn left onto Washington Avenue! TRAFFIC INCIDENT AHEAD—5.6 MILES!!!”

It was all very exciting. So exciting, in fact, that we missed the one we turn actually needed—exit route 95 onto route 9A—et voilà: Welcome to New Jersey!

I shudder to think: if we'd been following those silly Google Maps directions, we would've missed out on that magical $8 ride back through the Lincoln Tunnel. I know that sounds expensive for a mere 8,000 feet of roadway, but when you calculate it out on a cost-per-hour basis, you see that the Lincoln Tunnel is actually one of Manhattan’s most affordable attractions. Particularly at rush hour.

Always Learning!
With the Internet always at my fingertips, I never have to wonder about anything anymore. Instead, I just look it up on IMDB or Wikipedia, interrupting the flow of every conversation to answer important questions like, "Who was the guy in that movie with so-and-so?" and “Is tofurkey made from soy or seitan?”

And while the answer to the former question is invariably Charles Durning or Dan Hedaya, the latter answer really depends on whether you’re referring to Turtle Island Foods' Tofurky™ products (capital T, no e), or if you’re using the more general word “tofurkey” to talk about some other turkey-like meat analogue. A word that, coincidentally, also has an extra e when compared to the analog in terms like analog television. And also an extra u, which tofurkey has either way I guess...

Sorry...what were we talking about?


¹I trace this impulse back to the day I inadvertently pushed the lawnmower over a nest of yellow jackets while wearing shorts. It's just a self-preservation thing.
²Note: This technique does not actually make a RAZR stop ringing.
³Yes, I know how to turn the buzzing off. But what would be the point of that?
⁴The supermarket rules as I understand them: they can take as many pictures of me as they want, but self-portraiture is a terrorist act.

Infinity Times Two

Two girls, aged five and six, take seats at the dinner table.

5: I am so hungry right now.
6: Yeah, me too.
5: I'm so hungry I could eat your whole head off, if I was allowed.
6: But you wouldn't, right? Because I'm your friend.
5: No, I would. I'm serious. I would eat your head off right now.
6: But...would you eat your brother's head?
5: I would if I was allowed.
6: Well, I could eat the whole world and the universe.
5: And I could eat more than that.
6: And I could eat the whole day of school. I could eat the whole year.
5: Actually, I could eat even more than that.
6: Okay, well how about we just eat the same instead of boasting* about it?
5: Okay.

*Recent kindergarten vocabulary word. 6's teacher would be so proud.