Okay…I’m going to Mexico Thursday and I should be paying more attention to my Spanish then German.  But I’m reading This Interesting Column by Rick Perlstein over at Talking Points Memo , about the American right’s failure to grasp the changing world around them…

The Germans have a word, vergangenheitsbearbeitung, or "working through the past," to describe that nation’s attempt to achieve something that, while not nearly as world-historic, dramatic, or portentous, is structurally similar to what has been happening on the American left over the last decade or so, apparently without many conservatives noticing: doing the hard work of reckoning with collective errs, facing up to them, unflinchingly staring them down, and restoring a community to balance by transcending them as best as we mortal humans can.

Vergangenheitsbearbeitung.  Vergangenheitsbearbeitung.   Vergangenheitsbearbeitung.  Christ almighty.  Okay…I think I’ve figured something out about Germans.  When they want a new word, they take the definition of that word, remove all the spaces between the words in the definition, and presto…they have their new word.  Vergangenheitsbearbeitung.  Vergangenheitsbearbeitung.  I’m not sure I can make my mouth do that without pausing for breath.

That’s as opposed to us terse Americans, who simply take the first letter of each word in the definition and make a word out of that.  Radar.  Laser.  Scuba.  CD-ROM.  WTF.  Okay…that last one isn’t a word…yet… 

On the one hand, ten dollars gets you about one-hundred pesos.  On the other, an item selling for ten dollars here in the United States costs about one-hundred pesos in Mexico, apparently…

And you thought today’s kids were unruly.  Some early school rules of etiquette from around 1900, from Horton Cooper’s North Carolina Mountain Folklore (1972):

• Neither boys nor girls must wink at one another.
• Boys shall not carry any girls in their arms or on their backs unless heavy rains or much ice have made the creeks and branches impossible to cross.  No hugging, squeezing, or kissing shall take place while the girl is being transported across the water.
• Don’t pretend to see ghosts in an effort to frighten younger pupils.
• You shall not go swimming naked within 200 yards of the schoolhouse.
• You shall not bring to school any hawks claw for use in pinching the ears and noses of others.
• Do not put any dead pigs, polecats, or other dead animals in the schoolhouse loft to create a stink.
• You shall not argue hotly as to whether the earth is round or flat.

In some schools around this country they’re probably still arguing about that.

Now that I have a passport (yes…more on that later), the need to learn other languages besides English, if only to be polite and not the Ugly American when I travel to other countries, has become more pressing.  The logical choice for a first other language for me here in the U.S. is Spanish, and as my first trip out of the country will be to Mexico, I’ve been trying to pick up a little basic tourist Spanish, although they say in most resort areas by the beach English is spoken enough that you can get by.  But I want to be polite.

For various personal reasons I am also trying to pick up some German (read that however you want).  So I was attracted to this headline on Fark.Com…

EU wants more people to learn German. You know…just in case

Never mind the gratuitous Nazi joke there…the comment thread on that article became really absorbing…

Ugliest language on earth.

—- 

A long time ago, I was playing a recording of the Vienna Boys Choir. My aunt stopped, listened, and said, "That’s beautiful! They must be singing in French!" And I said, "No, it’s German."

A friend of my mother’s wanted me to say something in French, so I did. She made me repeat it, I did. She said it put shivers up and down her spine, it was so beautiful. She asked me for a translation. I said, "Take out the garbage."

If you say a language is beautiful or ugly, you reveal more about yourself than the language. 

—

To us southern California folk, people in Spain sound remarkably like gay Mexicans. 

—

No, actually, I think Moroccan Arabic (if not Arabic in general) holds that honor. Never have I heard an angrier sounding language. Even spoken in normal tones, it sounds like people are arguing with each other.

German *can* sound quite sexy. Arabic, not so much.

Arabic can sound pretty damn sexy too. My husband sounds almost like he’s purring when he rolls his r’s and I just adore it. Maybe I’m a little biased because I love him so much. :)
But you’re right, the Moroccan dialect does come across a little harsh. Palestinians and Egyptians are a little more lyrical and pleasing to the ear. And the Algerian dialect is beautifully intertwined with French.

Anyone here know what language the Vikings spoke and whether it’s still around? I wonder if THEY sounded angry.

—

It´s quite easy for Germans to learn English, because most English terms evolved out of the German language and therefore have many similarities.

—

The vikings spoke norrønt mål (aka Old Norse). The closest living equalents today are Icelandic and Faroese – allthought as a Norwegian I have little trouble understanding written norrønt given a bit of time. And personaly, i don’t find any of the North Germanic languages to sound particulary angry…

German is the perfect language for giving commands in though; even to tell someone you love them (Ich liebe dich!) sounds like a direct order.

—

German is an brilliant language. I dare someone to find me a another language that has more words for "the".

—

It has one word for the, its just inflected. 

—

Oh fine, if you wanna get all nit picky…

"I dare someone to find another language that has more variations for "the"". Is that alright? Does my point make sense now? I hope the German’s aren’t going to be that pedantic when I go to Wacken.

—

You’re a brave man, doing that in front of the Germans.

—

On a related note, whoever invented different genders for words should be drawn and quartered.

THIS

I live in Switzerland and not only do I have to learn Hoch Deutsch in school but I have to try to understand Berndeutsch, which is a dialect that is totally different from German. I love hearing Germans speaking in the streets because I actually understand what they say. It’s damn frustrating to leave German class and stand open-mouthed at some store clerk who has mumbled some simple question to you in Swiss that you, of course, don’t understand.

Btw, I read somewhere that the different gendered articles for nouns probably originated from assigning articles to animate objects versus inanimate ones and that eventually evolved into a gender-based system. 

—

And we don’t sound angry all the time. But a swearing german is scary.

Am arsch! I find German is missing a good substitute for the word fark though. 

—

I’ll have to agree on that. "Ficken" doesn’t sound quite right for swearing.

—

Also, I never realized how much Spanish I knew until I tried to survive in Germany and learn German. Spanish comes to mind easily. German is like getting blood from a stone.

—

I live in a town of about 13,000 people about 1.5 hours north of Hamburg by train. I have found a local primary doctor who speaks English (trained in Boston), a pediatrician who speaks English (fluent enough, but sometimes we miscommunicate), and there is a teacher at my child’s school who speaks English well enough. I travel 15 minutes to a nearby town for banking because there is someone there who speaks English well. I can order in a store in German well enough and I traveled to Kiel for purchasing appliances etc. The salespeople there were fine. There are fluent people around, but most people studied it in school (decades ago) and then never used it or just know enough phrases to minimally interact with tourists. The good part is that it forces me to work on learning.

—

That must be nice, when I use german here they just respond in English, which is why I have been here a year and my skills are mediocre at best.

—

English and Mandarin are the languages of business. I would add Spanish. If a person knows these three language, they can travel anywhere in the world and communicate with most people.

A person who speaks 3 languages is trilingual. A person who speaks 2 languages is bilingual. What do you call a person who only speaks one langauge?…an American.

Good day!

Heh.  Of course that’s not fair, we’re not all like that.  But I can see how we might seem that way to the rest of the world.  Hopefully when I go traveling abroad I won’t be doing my part to reinforce any negative stereotypes.  One of the things I wish now that I could do over again, is have traveled abroad more.  But there was never a whole lot of money for travel in my household…we pretty much stuck to the beaches a few hours drive away…and I never had enough nerve to try wandering all over Europe with only spare change like some kids did back in the 70s.  I’m starting to appreciate in my middle age now, how that lack of nerve I always had stifled my life in so many ways besides romance.

The Scene: 

Soft introduction music plays…

"Are you embarrassed easily? I am. But it’s nothing to worry about; it’s all part of growing up and being British. This course is designed to eliminate embarrassment, to enable you to talk freely about rude objects, to look at awkward and embarrassing things and to point at people’s privates. The course has been designed by Dr Karl Gruber of the Institute of Going a Bit Red in Helsinki."

-Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Every Friday evening now for almost a year, I’ve made it a point to drive down to D.C. and hang with my gay friends down there.  We have a regular happy hour/dinner end of week gathering.  It keeps me sane.  I’m single, I live all by myself up here in Baltimore, and if I don’t actively seek out companionship I just go nuts.  I wasn’t cut out to be a loner. 

This week I decided I wasn’t drinking.  My body really isn’t used to regular drinking nights, and alcohol was never my favorite form of relaxation.  So I just drank Cokes.  One of my friends later blamed that for how embarrassed I became at the…erm…low altitude of the dinner conversation.  But I don’t think so.  You have to expect when you’re with a pack of gay guys in a gay bar in a gay neighborhood in a city with a large gay population, that the conversation is going to get a tad sexual.  I strongly doubt that’s really any different from the tone of most conversations in straight pickup bars either, but I wouldn’t know about that.  Last night however, thanks to a few folks at the dinner table the conversation got really really raunchy.  So I did what I usually do when I’m not enjoying myself.  I tuned out.  Ironically, I suppose that was a tad rude of me.  I really felt sorry for our waiter.

I blame my Baptist upbringing for the modesty to the point of paralyzing inhibition I’ve been stuck with ever since puberty.  But it may also just be in my blood.  I wish I could be more of a gay peacock.  I was a cute little dickens when I was younger and I’ll go to my grave regretting I didn’t make more of that.  And I get embarrassed.  So much so that I’ve been asked outright on occasion if I really am gay.  I think people mistake my embarrassment for disgust.  But if I am anything it’s sexually frustrated, not turned off by the idea of sex between guys. 

But I’ll cheerfully admit to being grossed out by some of the kinks people get into.  Some heterosexuals get into those same kinks too and I don’t confuse my libido’s sexual tastes for a moral sensibility.  As long as people consent to whatever it is they’re doing and as long as it’s done with some degree of care and sympathy it neither picks my pockets nor breaks my leg what they’re doing with each other.  I don’t expect people to accommodate my embarrassments.  Matter of fact I’m usually grateful when they don’t.  But not last night.  I wish I didn’t get embarrassed so easily, but I do not regret being a romantic in the least, which is the polar opposite of raunch, and there were other people in that dinning room besides us.

The night that started out with my making my first ever iTunes buy from my iPhone.  Before heading downtown I was at a friend’s house when I heard Dionne Warwick singing This Girl’s In Love With You on his Pandora station…

You see this girl, 
This girl’s in love with you 
Yes I’m in love 
Who looks at you the way I do 
When you smile I can tell 
We know each other very well

Somehow I’d never gotten around to buying that one…probably because I never saw it on the singles rack back when I was a teenager.  But I sat there listening to it at my friend Jon’s house and next thing I know I’m calling up the iTunes store on my iPhone.  My inner teeny-bopper has been grooving to it all day today.  Probably as a tonic to last night’s raunch.

My hands are shakin’ 
Don’t let my heart keep breaking 
‘Cause I need your love, 
I want your love 
Say you’re in love 
And you’ll be my guy…

Am I really gay?  As I was sinking deeper and deeper into my chair last night in embarrassment, one of the guys, who had been briefly married, started talking graphically about a certain way straight guys can make their ladies happy and That was when I started getting grossed out.  No offense to my heterosexual readers here…I know some of you would probably get grossed out by a graphic conversation about the same sex version of that kind of sex, and that doesn’t make you homophobic.  It’s just your libido grimacing.  One person’s sweet delight is another’s gross-out and that’s just the way it goes.  That part of us just has its own way of looking at the world and all you can do is just try to deal with it honorably. 

I was embarrassed, not disgusted.  But I think I have a plan.  From now on I’ll save my drinking for when the conversation starts looking like the letters page of Screw magazine.  Then I’ll walk up to the bar for a shot or two.  They say people in a bar generally look better when you’re drunk.  Probably they make better sense too.

I have a confession to make.  I have this…tragic…habit of falling madly in love with guys who tell me after I’ve become completely twitterpated on them that they’re straight, and later go on to lead thoroughly heterosexual lifestyles (and yes, I am using the word ‘lifestyle’ ironically here…).  Either they tell me they’re straight, or do so in so many words.  Not always…’K’…my ex…is certainly not presenting himself as a heterosexual…at least not to his friends.  And I’ve had the random crush on guys who were unambiguously gay.  Alas, none of those ever seemed to have a crush back on me.

What I find…interesting…after having just had a brief email chat with one…is that almost without exception none of these straight guys I’ve ever crushed deeply on have ever gone on to get married.  The exception being, ironically, my first crush back in high school.  He got married, or so he says…to a girl he seems to have met in his college years, and is still married after thirty years now.  But he’s the only one of the lot who ever married.

And none of them…not a one…has ever had kids, or even expressed the slightest interest in having kids.  The only guy I’ve ever been in love with who ever expressed an interest in having kids, ironically enough, was ‘K’…the openly gay one.  And…interestingly…he Did get married.  For a little while.  After his parents pressured him into it.  Then he got divorced…and called me up…and came up to Baltimore for a visit…  But that’s another long and tragic story…

So…about a half dozen serious crushes in my life who present themselves as heterosexual.  And of the lot, only one ever got married and none have kids.  Most of them are single now, as I write this.  In their 50s.  Most of them have been single for most of their lives.

I have no idea what this means, but it isn’t random.  I take any other random group of six heterosexuals who I know and there are kids there, and the ones who don’t have any are the exception.  But there are no kids by any of the heterosexuals I’ve ever fallen in love with, and only one outright marriage.

There’s an obvious conclusion here, and maybe I just don’t want to look at it.  But at least I’m not blaming myself anymore.  Time was I used to think of myself as the cure for homosexuality that NARTH has been searching for…

I don’t think a pit bull is spec for a ’98 Ford F100…but let me double check…

(Story Here) 

I found this in my home directory yesterday while I was installing CentOS 5.1 onto Mowgli, my office workstation.  Not sure when I started filling it out but it was probably something I got passed to me on MySpace some time ago.  So just for kicks and grins, and because as I’ve said before these things actually do give me some insights, I finished filling it out and updated some of the answers.  Notice how I never seem to know what a simple one word or yes/no answer is…

200: My name is:
Bruce

199: I was born in/on:
Pasadena California, September 12, 1953.

198. I am:
Male.  Gay.  White.  Longhair.  Artist.  Software Engineer.  60s Child.

197. My eye color is:
Gray-blue

195. My shoe size is:
7 1/2   

194. My ring size is:
Erm…don’t know offhand.  I don’t have any.

193. My Favorite Color is:
Intense Primaries.

192. My height is:
5′ 9”

191. I’m allergic to:
Some kind of tree pollen.  Don’t know which.  Not much this year though.

190. I live in:
Baltimore, MD.

189. The last book I read:
"Defying Hitler" by Sebastian Haffner

188. My bed time is:
When I’m too tired to stay awake.   Usually around 11-ish.

187. First screen name:
Bruce Garrett.  Seriously.  I like my name.  I don’t do aliases.

179. My favorite Holiday is:
I like the summer vacation ones best.  Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day…

178. The perfect kiss:
Affectionate and wholehearted.

177. The last band listened to:
Aerosmith.

176. Last song that made me almost cry was:
One Summer Dream.

172. My most treasured possession(s)
My artwork, negatives and slides.

170. What did you do last night:
Worked on some photos down in the art room.  Took a walk.  Finished installing CentOS on a free drive on Mowgli, my office workstation…

167. My skin’s reaction to the sun is:
To turn red and complain.

==========================
:::::I Do (YES)/Do Not (NO) Believe In:::::
==========================

143. Santa:
Well, no.  But…yes.

142. Love at First Sight?
No, not literally.  I believe in Oh My God He’s So Damn Good Looking My Eyes Hurt though.  That can lead to love eventually.  Maybe.  I hope.  But it isn’t love itself.

141. Luck:
Yes, but I spell it ‘Chance’.

140. Fate
Er, no.  I was never Calvinist enough.

138. Aliens:
They’re out there.  But if the speed of light really is the limit on how fast anything can travel, then we may never be able to communicate with any after all, or even know they’re there.

135. Ghosts:
I’ve never seen one.

134. Horoscopes:
No.

133. Soul mates:
Yes.  Where is mine…

132. Devil:
In all of us.  So is God.

131. Masturbating:
Does not grow hair on the palms of your hands.  I read this somewhere…

130. Earth:
The only place in the entire universe that we know for sure there is life.  We should take care of it.

====================
:::::Which is Better?:::::
====================

129. Hugs or Kisses:
Hugs and Kisses.

128. Drunk or High:
A difference that makes no difference.  Neither one is better then sober.  But both can be pleasant every now and then.

127. Phone or online:
For family it’s phone somehow.  For a lover it would especially be phone.  For everyone else it’s online.

126. Red heads or Brown hair:
Long hair.

125. Blondes or Brunettes:
Long hair.  Can you hear me?  Long.  Hair.  I don’t care what color.

124. Lamb and tuna or peanut butter and jelly:
Jelly, Not.  Lamb and…tuna?

123. pool or darts:
No.

122. sci-fi or horror:
Sci-fi.  But it has to be good.

121: eat at home or eat out:
Home mostly.  Out sometimes, somewhere nice, when I have someone to go with.

120. Night or Day:
I like both.

118. Curly or Straight hair:
Straight and log.  If curly then short.

==========================
:::::What comes to your head ?:::::
==========================

117. Scary:
High bridges over water.

115. Backstabbers:
Gay Friendly Politicians.  Usually democrats.

116: Parents:
Wish mine were still alive…

115. School:
Loved high school and college.  Loved my first day in Elementary school.  Hated the rest.

================
:::::Last time?::::::::
================

102. Hugged someone:
Friday.

101. Seen someone you haven’t seen in a while?:
Last Christmas week.  Two someones.

=========
::::MISC.::::
=========

90. Who’s the ditziest person you know:
I know someone who likes to play ditzy.  But he isn’t and he should stop that. 

89. Do you like anyone at the moment:
Yes.  I have always ‘liked’…….someone…

87. One thing I’m mad about right now:
Bigoted attacks on same sex couples.  You’d think there was too much love in this world for some people…

83. The last movie I saw in the theater was:
The Phantom Empire.  Yes…it’s been a while since I’ve been in a theater.

78. This summer:
Driving my new Mercedes.  Breaking in my first passport.  Figuring out how to live the rest of my life knowing I’ll always be single…

77. this coming school year:
Just like all the others since I graduated…back in 1972.

76. Something I will really miss when I leave home:
I missed my sense of privacy when I left home because my first place was a makeshift room in a friend’s basement.  But I got it back when I moved to my first apartment all my own some years later.

75. The thing that I’m looking forward to the most is:
Once upon a time I would have answered this ‘finding my other half’.  I still haven’t, and I can’t rightly say now that I’m ‘looking forward’ to it.

========================
::::::What are you doing?:::::::
========================

73. Tonight:
Washing my car probably.  It got rained on last night by tree pollen and seeds.

71. Tomorrow:
Same as today, probably…

72. Today:
The usual.  Work.  Eat.  Go home, do chores.  Sleep.

71. This Summer:
Driving my new Mecedes.  Breaking in my new passport.  Say…haven’t I already answered this one…?

72. For Christmas:
Way too soon to tell.

====================
:::MISC:::::(CONTINUED)
====================

62. The person(s) who knows the most about me is:
Nobody.  I have a few close friends who each have their own line of sight into me.  And my brother probably has a better one then anyone else.  But there hasn’t been anybody in my life who sees Me since mom died.

61. The person that can read me the most is:
My brother, I’m sure. 

60. The most difficult thing to do is:
Walk up and speak to someone I don’t know.

59. I have gotten a speeding ticket:
Not in years I haven’t.

57. My crush(es):
Delight me.  Terrify me.

56. My relationship status:
My ‘use by’ date has come and gone I think…

53. The one person who can’t hide things from me:
Nobody.  I’m very easy to hide stuff from once you get to know me.  I wear my blind spots on my sleeve.

51. Right now I am talking to:
Er…nobody.  I’m answering this survey.

50. I play a sport:
Not into sports.

49. I love it because:
Not.  Into.  Sports.  Some of us are like that.  Adjust to it.

48. I have best friends:
A few close friends.  No best friend at the moment.

47. I have a pet[s]:
None.  Last pet was my black cat, Pepper.  He died in 1989.  He was 14.  I live too much alone now, and travel too often, to have a pet.

44. The ONE person that made me cry the most is:
I won’t name him here.

43. Have you ever done drugs:
I’m a 60s child.  Ask me which ones I haven’t done.

42. Have You ever Smoked:
Yes.  And occasionally inhaled too. 

41. Which parent are you most close with?
I was closest to mom, but I loved them both.

39. What’s your favorite movie[s]:
Casablanca.  To Have And Have Not.

35. Someone you’ve gotten closer with this year:
Tico.  A little.  I think.  Maybe.

33. My favorite piece of clothing is:
My 501s.

32. My favorite sport is:
Ignoring sports.  I practice often.

31. Last time I cried:
In Keith’s arms, last Christmas week…

26. My worst experience:
Jr. High.  They call it Middle School now.  I still have bad dreams about it.

21. The best feeling in the world is:
Loving someone.  It can also be the worst.

19. The most annoying thing/s ever is/are:
The Stupid…it burns…!

18. The most annoying person you know is:
TV news anchors.  All of them.  They are very annoying…

17. I lose respect for people who:
Cheat.

16. I hate:
Cheats.  Sharks.  Bullies.  Bigots.

14. My Favorite day is:
They all have their good points.

13. My Favorite Month is:
September.

12. My Favorite band is:
No particular favorites at the moment.

11. The worst pain I ever felt:
When I broke a tooth.  Tooth pain is relentless…you can’t out-stubborn it…

9. favorite tv show:
The Outer Limits (original series)

8. My favorite actress/actor is:
No favorites.

6. Inside joke between you and one of your friends:
"Well Mr. President, it’s the bees and spiders again…"

5. What is your favorite candy?
Chocolate.  I try not to eat much of it these days though.  My slim figure and all that…

4. Whats your phone number?
I’m in the book darling…

3. Ever had MD?
I live in MD.

2. I filled out 200 questions because:
It was passing fun.

1. Favorite Phrase:
"When the bird and the bird book disagree, believe the bird."  Also, "I believe in God but I spell it Nature."  And, "No stream rises higher then its source."  And, "When you gaze into an Abyss, the Abyss also gazes into you."

I won’t be posting much for the next couple of days I think.  I’m in a VMWare seminar all day at work, so when I come home it’s mostly the regular work I couldn’t do during the day, plus some commitments I have regarding photographs I took at The Academy’s Miss Gaye Universe DC Ball.  No…not the ones in that link…those were taken by the working photographer for Metro Weekly.  Look closely and you’ll find a rare sighting of Bruce Garrett in a Tux.  I was invited by some friends to play paparazzi at the event…my first ever Drag Show.  Ironically, I had to wear a tux as it was a black tie event.  So in a sense I was in drag myself.  But my friends all said I looked good and I had a great time.  But now I have hundreds of photographs to sort through and get ready to show some people and that’s taking much of my free time this week. 

I’m also working on getting a bunch of my old Woodward photos ready to send to one of my classmates on the reunion committee.  We’ve been promising the folks who attended our 35th reunion a DVD for months now and we need to get it out to them.

And on top of all that, I’ve been working on creating a CD of some old photos I talked a certain someone back in high school into taking.  He gave me the roll of film back to develop and I gave him back a contact sheet and some prints but somehow the actual negatives never made it back to him and I’ve been waiting for years, decades literally, to do that.  Some of the shots he took turned out very good and I wanted to give him a nice CD with the scans in it along with the negatives so he could print them out on his computer if he wanted to.

So…I’ve been a busy photographer lately, which is rare for me.  So posting here is going to be sporadic…I think…for a little while.  I have hundreds of photographs of some amazing, just amazing, drag queens to sort through..one of whom made my jaw just drop to the floor and I never thought that would ever happen.  Let’s hear it for gender bending…

Atrios writes…

This somewhat anecdotal stuff rankles my inner social scientist, but perhaps things are changing a bit.

Economists say home prices are no where near hitting bottom. But even in regions that have taken a beating, some neighborhoods remain practically unscathed. And there’s a pattern emerging as to which neighborhoods those are.

The ones with short commutes are fairing better than places with long drives into the city. Some analysts see a pause in what’s long been inexorable—urban sprawl.

…

Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic surveyed two rows of neat new brick town homes on Falkner’s Lane. "These were selling for about $550,000 at the peak, which was about August 05, and they’re selling right now for about $350,000," Bogdanovic said."So $200,000 in a year and a half and fifty 50 of this community has been ether foreclosed on or is facing foreclosure.

For residents who work in the city, their commute is around an hour on trouble-free days. But that could extend upward toward two hours very quickly.

…

But construction in town has held steady. Goldberg sees other cities rebounding too, including Baltimore and Philadelphia."Philadelphia was loosing downtown housing and in town housing until very recently," Goldberg said. "And now that’s the hottest part of their market."

That’s my experience so far here in Baltimore.  In the neighborhood I live in, the houses going up for sale still don’t stay on the market for more then a few weeks.  Prices aren’t soaring like they once were…if anything they’ve gone down a tad.  But just a tad.  Prices are still more then double what they were seven years ago.

I can walk to work from where I live.  For most folks here in my neighborhood who work in the city, the commute can’t be too bad because we’re close to I-83 which goes right into the heart of downtown Baltimore.  The Light rail is nearby too.

Traffic congestion plus the rising cost of gas is already having an effect.  The housing market collapse isn’t happening where people can live close to where they work, or close to rail transport.  One of the biggest booming housing markets in Baltimore, still is around Penn Station.  Which just also happens to be close to our gay neighborhood too. 

Now I know why people keep buying celebrity biographies…

Coldplay sleep aid

The Travelodge hotel chain have conducted a survey of 2,248 Brits to find out what helps them go to sleep.

According to Reuters Coldplay topped the list of music that acts as the perfect sleeping pill replacement. James Blunt, Snow Patrol, Take That and Norah Jones were also high on the list.

Sleep inducing music wasn’t the only topic polled. Reuters reports, "But those who prefer to be tucked in with a book at night judged celebrity autobiographies as the most effective sleep aid, with the life stories of glamour model Jordan, soccer star David Beckham and Sharon Osbourne ranking at the top."

White noise generally puts me to sleep.  No, that’s not the name of an Easy Listening orchestra.  At least I don’t think so.

So…yeah…gasoline for Traveler is just going to be expensive.  It has about the same size tank as the Accord, but its V-6 is thirstier, so it gets emptied sooner.  And it requires premium.  I knew this when I bought it.  A Mercedes-Benz is just going to cost me more to own then a Honda Accord.  I went into that with my eyes wide open. For weeks before I bought it I stressed over whether or not I could afford it After I’d bought it.  Once I’d satisfied myself that I could, I went to the dealer and put my money down.  I admit I didn’t expect the price of gasoline to rise so…rapidly.  But there’s no getting around it.  So I’m more careful nowadays in planning my trips to the hardware store or the post office.  Is there anything else I need that I can get along the way?  Better one long circle then two or three trips back and forth.

Recently, the original equipment wiper blades on Traveler started streaking ever so slightly.  Most of you probably know how it is after that.  At the first sign of streaking it just gets worse really quickly.  So I figured today I’d go buy myself another pair.  Traveler came with a spare set, and my plan was to put the spare set on the windshield and make the new pair the spare.  And because I am such a Mercedes-Benz fanboy and I don’t want anything on my car that isn’t factory approved, I went to my dealer to buy the new blades.

I had a hunch they would be a tad pricey when the parts department guy behind the counter whistled under his breath when the part number came up on his computer display.  Sixty bucks.  That’s right…sixty dollars for a pair of wiper blades. 

Maybe it’s the falling dollar.  At least they’re lasting me about six months.  And I’ll say this about them…yes, they actually do their job better then the blades on any other car I’ve ever owned, including the Accord, yet their design is simple and elegant.  I’m a geek…shoot me…but one of the subtle little things that told me I was in a different world now was trying out the wipers and seeing how smoothly and thoroughly they cleaned the windshield. Partly that’s the odd little articulation Mercedes puts on the passenger side wiper to make it get more of the window.  But also it’s the design of the blade itself, which distributes pressure more evenly across its length then any other design I’ve ever seen.  In the package they’re actually curved inward.  When flattened out on the windshield every point along its length is exerting an even steady pressure against the glass.  I can swallow the extra cost of something if it gets me a better made something, and that is in fact the bargain you make when you buy into the brand; the theory being that a Mercedes-Benz costs more because it’s over-engineered a tad and that costs money.  But that means the maintenance is going to cost more too.

Here’s a lesson for all of you dreaming of that supercar you want to own one day.  Don’t buy it until you can afford the maintenance too.  Even if you see one in cherry condition on the used market and you can afford it.  Investigate how much the upkeep will cost.  I was reading on one of the Mercedes forums about a guy who bought himself a very nice "previously owned" ‘S’ class, only to discover that when it needed its next routine servicing work it was going to cost him close to a thousand dollars. 

The breakdown was this: the service schedule on the model ‘S’ class he bought called for the plugs to be replaced, and the oil and gas filters, really close to the mileage it had on it when he bought the car.  That’s something you have to consider when looking at a used car: when is the next maintenance due.  It had a V-8 engine with two plugs per cylinder and it used the most expensive plugs Bosch made.  The oil and gas filters were equally state of the art, precision made and just as expensive.  But that’s what you buy when you buy a high end car like a Mercedes-Benz.  I’m sure the top of the line BMW or Audi are just as expensive to maintain, and I don’t even want to think of what it costs to do routine maintenance on a Bentley or Rolls.  Between the parts and the labor the scheduled service on that guy’s ‘S’ class was getting close to the thousand dollar mark…

…which you figure someone who can afford one of those things new can also afford.  But not necessarily someone buying on the used, excuse me, "previously owned" market.  You may have bought the car for half of what it was worth new, but you still have to pay full price for the maintenance.  Unless you get it done in Butthead’s garage and junk yard emporium…and do you really want your lovely ‘S’ class worked on by Butthead?  Oh sure…a I can fix that…a little duct tape and glue and it’ll be good as new…and hey…sorry about the greasy shoe stains on your carpet there…

I could have held out for an ‘E’ class…barely.  I hear the new one coming out in 2009 is going to be really nice.  Sometimes I catch myself thinking that maybe after I’ve paid off Traveler I’ll trade up to one.  But if you can just barely afford the car, you probably can’t afford the maintenance too.  Unless I jump a few more rungs up the income ladder, a ‘C’ class is probably all I’ll ever be able to afford.  But that’s okay.  Every day when I go out for my after dinner walk I stop and just…gawk…at my car.  My neighbors are all probably getting the biggest kick out of seeing me standing out there nights just staring at it.  But there was a time in my life when I couldn’t even afford a car.

CIO Magazine asks, Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista?

Throw Vista away. That’s what my colleagues at our fellow IDG publication InfoWorld have now argued that Microsoft should do. Give it a dignified resting place, as a stepping-stone OS, and come up with a replacement that’s more sensible for enterprise IT.

Why?  Seriously.  Why should Bill Gates do any such thing when he owns 90 percent of installed PCs and Office Software Suites?  You gonna go somewhere else pal?  Where?  If your data is in one of Bill’s software products, then Bill owns your data too buddy.

You can’t just ask Bill to please be nice to you.  He won’t.  He doesn’t care.  He doesn’t give a shit about you.  You need to take your destiney into your own hands.  Or you will never own it.

Today I just paid nearly seventy bucks for gasoline.  And that was at the Costco gas station where the price is about 25 cents a gallon less then it is most other places.   That amounted to just a tad under twenty-one gallons:   About sixteen gallons for the car, and another five in the spare gas container I bring along so I don’t have to make the drive to Costco as often.

According to the owner’s manual, Traveler has a 17.43  gallon tank with a 2.11 gallon reserve (that probably works out to some nice round figure in metric…), and I’d run Traveler’s tank down to the last 1/8th.   The fuel reserve warning came on around the 1/8th mark, but as I only had to put a bit less then 17 gallons in I’m not sure where they’re drawing the line at the reserve, unless there’s almost a half gallon of it that doesn’t get filled when the gas pump clicks off, which is possible.  Anyway, figure since it’s a Mercedes when the gauge reads empty it probably means it. 

The rising cost of gasoline is of course, why this all matters to me.  The more gas I buy in one go at the Costco, the more I save because I have to figure in the gas I use getting there and back.  It’s about eleven miles, so figure about four-tenths of a gallon spent, in order to buy gas at twenty-five cents a gallon less then the local stations charge.  At 3.26 a gallon, which is what the Costco gas cost me, let’s say that’s a buck-thirty I spend going to and from Costco.  I paid sixty-eight dollars for twenty-one gallons.  Around here that would have been about 3.50.  So my bill would have been 73.50.  I saved five and a half dollars.  Subtracting the buck-thirty it was only 4.20 I saved.  But that’s another gallon and four-tenths if I use the local price per gallon.  Or another way of looking at it, is I get about an extra forty miles.  In a year’s worth of local driving, I reckon looking at an extra two-thousand miles roughly, but depending on all the slop in my figures it might be closer to fifteen-hundred.  But I have to practically empty my tank before I refuel, to see that kind of savings.  If I don’t do that, and I can’t always it just worked out that I could this time, I don’t see nearly that much savings.  If I refuel at the half tank mark, the drive to Costco and back eats up the amount of money I saved buying it there.

I’m going to keep on doing this for a while, and watch the numbers, but you know…it might not be worth my doing this, even at twenty-five cents a gallon less.

Via Slashdot.  You can thank me later…

Japan’s Unique Cow/Whale Hybrid Experiments

I just…don’t want to know…