One thing you tend to forget about when you take a yearly cross-country road trip is jet lag.

(It’s What time???)

As it turns out, turbulence while taking off is even more nerve wracking then turbulence while landing.

(Safely in Portland)

…and the OSCON Open Source Developer’s Conference therein.   This’ll be my fifth year at this particular conference and I really enjoy the company of so many fellow computer revolutionaries.   My all time favorite T-Shirt slogan is from last year’s:  In A World Without Fences, Who Needs Gates?

I’m flying out from Baltimore first thing tomorrow, with neighbors and Brinks looking after Casa del Garrett while I’m gone.  And I’ll be real busy at the conference so posting may be a tad infrequent until I get back.  I’ll try to post some photos of the scenery out there when I can.  Some of it is just lovely.  And Portland’s not bad either…

This isn’t your grandfather’s war soldier…

Terrorism Funds May Let Brass Fly in Style
Luxury Pods for Air Force Debated

The Air Force’s top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules’ carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Production of the first capsule — consisting of two sealed rooms that can fit into the fuselage of a large military aircraft — has already begun.

Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass’s preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Air Force documents spell out how each of the capsules is to be "aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

The effort has been slowed, however, by congressional resistance to using counterterrorism funds for the project and by lengthy internal deliberations about a series of demands for modifications by Air Force generals. One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table’s wood be darkened.

These are the guys who are massively against letting gays serve in their military.  Because…you know…that would damage moral and stuff…

When adding a few flowers around the house fails to improve the scenery…

Flowerpot’s spontaneous combustion blamed for fire

MENDOTA HEIGHTS, Minn. – Fire investigators said a fire that destroyed a Mendota Heights home last week was caused by a flowerpot. Fire Chief John Maczko said a flowerpot on the home’s deck spontaneously combusted.

While rare, spontaneous combustion can happen to pots with the right mixture of soil, moisture and heat.

Homeowner Dan Stoven said it’s hard to believe, but said he’s just glad his 17-year-old daughter was able to escape when passers-by entered the home to wake her up.

Investigators said the soil was in a plastic pot that had become hot after several days of high temperatures and humidity. It ignited July 8, and wind helped the fire grow and spread to the deck and then to the house.

Next time I go shopping for flowers I need to check their flame retardant rating.

Via Good As You…  It’s not that Hollywood can’t come up with any new ideas, it’s that it would rather not pay for the creative talent to come up with them.  Thus, the "reality" shows.  But on MTV’s pioneering Real World the point really was to have a dispassionate camera eye view on how people interact with each other.  Most "reality" made since Real World are really just another kind of game show.  And in fact, Real World has itself added some game show elements in recent years. 

But with TV audiences getting bored with all the "reality" out there, the Networks are trying to revive some actual game shows.  From Good As You I read that they’re now making The Newlywed Game once more.  Can you spot the "Heterosexuals Only" sign buried in the game show eligibility rules…?
 

Eligibility Requirements

The following are the eligibility requirements for contestants ("Contestants") on the television show currently entitled "The Newlywed Game" (the "Program"), which is being produced by Manhouse Productions, Inc. (“Producer”). In order to be selected as a Contestant on the Program, and to be eligible for any prize ("Prize"), you must meet the following eligibility requirements:

A. Employees, officers, directors and agents of Manhouse Productions, Inc., Diplomatic, Embassy Row LLC, Sony Pictures Television Inc., Game Show Network, LLC (“GSN”), Liberty Media Corp. and/or of any of their respective licensees, assigns, parents, affiliated and subsidiary companies and the immediate family (spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son, regardless of where they live) or members of the same households (whether related or not) of such employees, officers, directors and agents are not eligible to be Contestants on the Program. In addition, any person closely acquainted with any person connected with the production or administration of the Program is not eligible, if in the Producer’s sole discretion, the person’s participation could create the appearance of impropriety.

B. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of application.

C. Contestants must be legal residents of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.

D. Each newlywed team of Contestants must be legally married to each other (legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States) and, upon Producer’s request, must be able to provide proof of marriage (i.e. a marriage certificate) that shows that Contestants are legally married to each other. As of the tape date of the Program, Contestants must still be newlyweds (which is defined as the period of two (2) years after the date of Contestants’ original marriage to each other).

E. Contestants may not be candidates for public office and may not become candidates before the broadcast of their appearance on the Program, or until one year from the date of their taping of the Program.

F. Producer reserves the right to change any of the eligibility requirements at any time and is the sole judge of the eligibility criteria.

Here…let me help you with it:  "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"

It’s a safe bet that clause wasn’t in the old rules.  You see…same sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and California, and even if California’s same sex couples are divorced-by-referendum come November, there will still be at least one state in the Union where same sex couples can legally marry.  So in order to keep the homos off the set you can’t just say the contestants have to be legally married anymore. 

The last game show I ever really enjoyed was the old Concentration.  Way back when I was a kid I’d watch that thing raptly whenever I was home that it was on (it was a daytime show).  It was a memory game…you had to build a mental image of where all the little prize pairs were inside a grid and at the same time figure out a rebus as it was slowly being revealed.  I think part of the appeal to my budding young geek self was also trying to figure out how the mechanical game board worked.  That thing just fascinated me.  It was the only game show I ever really paid attention to…although these days I’ll watch Jeopardy whenever I happen across it.  I glanced at a few episodes of The Newlywed Game in the 1970s and every time I did I quickly became uncomfortable with it. 

Something about the idea of watching young couples in love being made to embarrass each other on TV where the entire nation could watch just didn’t appeal to me.  And for each couple that won, three others lost.  Part of the intended fun for the audience was to watch the loosing couples have fights during the show.  It was horrible.  Even the Roman Circuses weren’t that gratuitously cruel.  I’ve often wondered how many divorces resulted from that show. 

So, in a sense, I’m not altogether unhappy that same sex couples are banned from this atrocity.  A couple’s love should be nurtured, not humiliated for laughs and ratings.  And same sex couples have it hard enough in this country.  But on the other hand, here’s how prejudice will keep its claws in our lives to the absolute very end.  Year upon year, decade upon decade, inch by inch by painful bitter inch, we have worked to get it’s taint out of our lives.  And for every inch it looses, hate adopts, adapts and improves, and keeps working with what it has to work with.  Okay…so now you can be legally married….Ha!…but Not In All Fifty States…!  Got you There didn’t we!

If same sex marriage was legal all across the Union they’d find some other way to cull out the homos.  Perhaps recasting the show as a contest between genders…er…Birth Genders…who incidentally and merely to heighten the excitement of the game play, have to be newly married also.  As I said, I’m not all that unhappy that same sex couples are being kept off this atrocity of a game show.  But I emphatically object to the name.  It is not The Newlywed Game.  There are gay newlyweds, and have been even before same sex marriage was legal.  Same sex couples have been getting married for ages, whether or not their government or their communities recognized them.  Our relationships exist.  Our households exist.  Our unions exist.  We exist.  It is not The Newlywed Game if only heterosexual couples are allowed to be contestants.  It is The Heterosexual Newlywed Game.

At the same time I’m reading this…I also came across this little news item from The Netherlands, which has had same sex marriage now for years…

Dutch replace ‘maiden name’ with ‘birth name’ to spare gay blushes

The Dutch civil service has developed a new name for "maiden name" so married gay men won’t feel awkward.

"Geboortenaam" translates to "birth name". It will replace maiden name on official forms, radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday.

The Dutch Language Union hopes it will save married gay men from any embarrassment when taking their spouses surname.

Despite its liberal reputation, Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands have been facing a rise in homophobic attacks over the last few years.

The government has committed to millions of Euros to fighting homophobia in the country.

A recent European poll found the Dutch to be the strongest supporters of same-sex marriage in the EU, with 82% in favour

I’m a tad surprised they didn’t already have a term for "birth name" in Dutch.  But never mind.  Over there they are trying, really trying, to be inclusive of same sex couples.  And this was such an easy one.  Just say "birth name" on the form instead of "maiden name".  That works too, and doesn’t deny anyone, gay or straight, the dignity of taking their spouse’s name if that’s what they want.  Meanwhile, over here in the land of the free and the home of the brave it’s "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"

Wow…  It’s really Work trying to draw this bad… 

…don’t ask.

The catalogs are coming in all of a sudden.  In the mail today I received an L.L. Bean catalog for all these guys:

1. Bruce Garrett
2. Bruce A. Garrett
3. Bruce Garnet
4. Bruce Garret

I had no idea I had so much company here.   Maybe this is why my tequila keeps disappearing. 

But wait…there’s More!  Ladies and gentlemen…introducing the Williams Sonoma…

…Veg-O-Matic.  Swell.  That’ll go great with my Wüsthof Ginsu knife.  They should have made it entirely of stainless steel though.  How much would you pay Now..?

I have a pair of nesting catbirds in the Japanese maple in my front yard.  For a couple months now I’ve watched them setting up house and listening to their occasional mewing.  At the same time of course, they were watching me.  I knew where they were, they knew where I was. 

This morning, as I packed my car for a trip to the Goodwill clothing bins (re: this post), they were screaming in my face like they’d just then figured out there was a human in the neighborhood.  I’d bring a load out to the car and one of them would perch on the limb closest to my front door and yell at me.  As I walk to the car it would follow from one branch to the next.  By the time I got back to my front door they were both there yelling at me.

I’ve no idea how many eggs they had in the nest but I figured one of the younglings had fallen out and was probably hiding somewhere in the azalea by my front steps.  The screams got louder the closer I was to my front door and the azalea is the only place there where a small bird can hide.  So after I got the car loaded I paused on the front steps and, not moving, scanned the bush beside them with my eyes while the catbirds screamed at me.  There it was, keeping still and quiet.  It still had most of its down, but a few feathers had already grown in.  Its wings however, were no where near flight capable.  Problem is, I need to use my front door every now and then. 

We have cats in the neighborhood, so I don’t know if the little youngling is going to make it, but at least it wasn’t advertising its whereabouts like a mockingbird youngling will (and I’ve never figured that out), so maybe it can keep hidden until it’s wings grow in.  In the meantime, I’ve got a couple of catbirds that don’t want me using my front porch anymore.  There was a nice summer shower just now and with it a slight cooling breeze and I wanted to sit out on the front porch with a drink and enjoy it and I couldn’t because the catbirds kept screaming at me.  Oh well.  Better catbirds then mockingbirds.  Were they mockingbirds I’d have been getting pecked as well as screamed at.

Note to self:  When putting your shirts in the wash, remember to remove those mini-cigars you put in the pocket of one of them before going down to the bars last Friday first.

Hey nineteen
Thats ‘retha franklin
She don’t remember
The queen of soul
Its hard times befallen
The sole survivors
She thinks I’m crazy
But I’m just growing old
Hey nineteen
No we got nothing in common
No we cant talk at all
Please take me along
When you slide on down

Toto…maybe Kansas wasn’t so bad after all…

Poor guy…confined to a prison cell…fearing for his life…

Josef Fritzl going stir crazy in cell

Josef Fritzl, who locked his daughter in a cellar dungeon for 24 years, has asked permission to leave his prison cell after admitting he can no longer stand being cooped up.

Fritzl, 73, kept daughter Elisabeth locked in a windowless cellar in Amstetten, Austria, and fathered her seven children before being caught by police. Three of the children had never seen daylight before being released.

Now, after just two months of incarceration and despite his fear of being attacked by fellow prisoners, he has demanded his right to 30 minutes exercise every day.

Fritzl has now twice had half-hour walks, protected from other inmates by a close guard of prison officers.

Prison spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Erich Huber-Guensthofer said: "Mr Fritzl is accommodated in a cell for two and recently he has made use of his right to go outside for half an hour per day.

"He usually sits there watching television all day, especially news programmes about him," said one prison source. "He’s terrified that someone will attack him or try to kill him."

What’s German for Schadenfreude?

I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland.  But I was born there, and half my family tree is there.  So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state.  I see it from both within and without.  The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland.  Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.

One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years.  And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California.  This, from Box Turtle Bulletin… 

We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.

Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.

In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:

“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.

…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death. 

Dig it.  The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples.  Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state.  It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America.  Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.

There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California.  But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander.  The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose.  The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys.  The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton. 

It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head.  But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate.  My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant.  During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law.  H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun.  But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew.  California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages.  It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world.  In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology.  There is Hollywood and Disneyland.  There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop.  The human potential never had it better then in California.  It is a place of magic.  But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

The flower scene from The Brave Little Toaster. Just for kicks and grins I decided to see if anyone else out there was struck by that scene and maybe posted it to You Tube. Sure enough. It’s shorter then I remember, and I got a few details wrong, but otherwise I seem to have remembered it fairly well. And David Newman, who composed the background music, knew what he was doing.

You know…that damn scene still makes me want to bawl…