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A little brown cork
Fell in the path of a whale
Who lashed it down
With his angry tail.
But in spite of its blows
It quickly arose,
And floated serenely
Before his nose.
Said the cork to the whale:
"You may flap, slap, sputter and frown,
But you never, never, can keep me down;
For I'm made of the stuff
That is buoyant enough
To float instead of drown."

Though I see the end approaching - the end of the familiar, the rearrangement of the elements of beauty... I know that as the night presses it's ever-expanding claim, the things in which I put my faith will come most alive, and fight their undoing by rising up to their full and majestic height.

Here's to cork, and here's to you.

Here piggy piggy

What do you do when you have a pig that’s so big, he can’t walk? You either:
A-slaughter him, B-put him on a diet, or C-keep feeding him, which is more or less what the health care debate boils down to – the pig representing the current state of our healthcare system. Let’s discuss in a non-partisan way some points about the health care debate that everyone seems to agree upon.
1: The USA spends an inordinate amount of it’s GDP on health care, more than any other nation.
2: Our current healthcare system is radically unfair. –That’s not to say that other healthcare models wouldn’t be more unfair.

First, we have the people who want to ‘kill the pig’.
Some argue that we need a large-scale, govt-run insurance company. The so-called “public option”, which everyone would be able to buy into, and for which the poor would pay less than the rich. This government-run insurer would then be able to negotiate lower costs for procedures, and cut down on the number of procedures used.
Although the “public option” wouldn’t eliminate private insurers, private insurers still HATE the prospect, because they know the government-run company will be larger, and therefore more able to leverage lower prices – making the public option less expensive, and making people less inclined to buy private insurance.

Second, we have those who want to ‘put the pig on a diet’.
These people advocate the creation of some sort of non-profit insurance companies that will compete with private insurance. Because they are non-profit companies, they will not be incentivised to work for shareholders (like for-profit insurers), but instead work for the patients they represent. The downside of the “put the pig on a diet” plan is that you still end up with tens of millions of people with no insurance whatsoever.

Then, you have the people who don’t want healthcare system overhaul. They want to ‘keep feeding the pig’. These people are happy with the current state of their healthcare, and probably don’t want to pay for people who make stupid decisions (gang-bangers with gunshot wounds, alcoholics, smokers, the obese). On some level I can empathize with this. At the OC fair a few years ago, I remember seeing a vendor selling chocolate-covered bacon. I don’t want to be on the financial hook for people that eat chocolate-covered bacon.

Although many people are screaming that they don’t want socialism, what they don’t realize is that many aspects of our government have already been socialist for some time. We share the cost of school, roads, and the military, to name a few. Also, we already have socialized medicine, just an outrageously bloated and inefficient form of it. At most hospitals, ANYONE can go to receive treatment. That treatment may bankrupt you, and it may be of poor quality, but nobody is refused if they cannot pay upfront. I would argue that it is the very inefficiency of our current system that makes medical care so much more expensive than it needs to be.

Is healthcare a privilege, or is it a right? If it is a privilege (even if it’s a very desirable privilege, like indoor plumbing), then we need to STOP giving healthcare of any kind to people who cannot afford to pay for it in advance.

But I think the reason that hospitals continue to treat people who are uninsured is that we, the people, don’t believe that healthcare is a privilege. We believe that it is a right. And if it is a right - like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - then it is the responsibility of our government to protect that right.

The Facial Flex

Coming to a retailer near you:

Susanna Mari Doss

Today is Suzy's birthday. In honor of this solemn and momentous occasion, I would like to share some of my most cherished memories of her.

The first that springs to mind is of her running down the grassy slopes at Dino park, then falling and breaking her arm. I was mightily jealous of all the attention she recieved, and intrigued by the makeshift splint that the overzealous adults made for her out of cardboard, twigs, rope, human hair, and bras[citation needed]. My wonder soon turned to weeping and gnashing of teeth, as when she watched our group during 'naptime', she made good use of her cast-bound arm by vigorously bonking the evildoers(me) over the head with it.

Another fond memory of her is the torture and humiliation I endured when she, along with my other sisters, would hold me down and tickle me mercilessly, laughing at my helplessness.

Joking aside, I do have many fond memories of you Suz, like going up to NHK field, flying a kite, and you reading L. M. Alcott's books to us. How thin you were after coming home from Africa, and how happy I was to have you home. Our adventures(or lack thereof) at the editing studio, and our long bike rides, pool trips, and frisbee sessions at the park.
I think, looking back, at what I appreciate most about you is that although you were always very intelligent and learned, you never made me feel dumb, and always treated me with patience and helped me learn by teaching me new things and ideas.
I think those traits have made, and will make you an excellent mother. Noah, Dillon, and Zoe are very lucky.
I love you and hope you have a wonderful birthday!

What is best in life?

Well said Arnold, well said.

Camping

Last weekend, on a whim, we went camping amid the craggy peaks of lake arrowhead. It's a running joke that we would like to go to big bear sometime, but we never seem to make it up there. My attempts at booking a spot by the lake up there were futile, so we settled for Dogwood campground, just past the turnoff for Blue Jay. I spent friday shopping and packing. It was very strenuous. I had an enormous and very official list of must-brings - among them, 25 comforters, 16 pillows, and 3 feather mattresses. Sarah has a fetish for burrowing among piles of bedding, and expressed a desire to create a "nest" in our tent. When 4:00 rolled around, I picked Sarah up from work, and off we went. My truck (good truck) was loaded down with 100,000 lbs of bedding, chairs, firewoood, and all the other rugged necessities that would allow us to barely survive the wilderness. We arrived in good shape and had a delicious dinner of hawaiian-style marianated chicken and bacon-wrapped corn, courtesy of my expert chef/gf. During the course of our camping, lovah experimented with different "earthy" flavorings for our food. She dropped a chicken breast in the fire. She dropped half of her cooked chicken on the ground. Later, she would go on to drop other food items in search of the perfect recipie. We slept well that night, and awoke to the melodious sounds of a crow gang-bang about 10 feet from our tent. We ate very well on this trip...breakfast was sausage, bacon, pancakes, and scrambled eggs. I remembered the hike we used to take to deep creek, and we followed my vague memories of the road to splinter's cabin. Thanks mom for jogging my memory! The hike to deep creek was a bit sad, the willow creek fire having devastated the entire canyon. Only the trees next to the creek survived. It was an ugly wasteland. I missed the tall pines that used to shade the trail. Such is life. After finding the creek and hiking past the bridge, we found the elusive trail that led 70 feet down the cliff to the secret swimming hole. This path was marked by waterbottles strewn at intervals down the vertical slope. We forgot the camera, so I have drawn an illustration from memory of the climb down:

It was perfect, as we were the only ones there, and although the creek's water level had dropped about 5 feet, there was still a good 12-15 feet of water in the deep end of the swimming hole.

It wasnt deep enough to take the 50 ft jumping off point, so I had to settle for a 15ft rock on the other side. Lovah captured the event on film:



We hiked up river a bit, had a picnic and played some games by the river, spending a very relaxing and enjoyable morning there. After getting back to the truck, we drove to nearby Lake gregory to scope out their "water park". Turned out to be a dinky beach on the lake, with 1 slide going down to the water. The beach was full of people, and as we walked into the water we saw that it was the color and consistency of diarrhea from all the people stirring up the bottom. This on it's own may not have been a deal-breaker, but our feet then began to sunk into the soft, squishy mud on the bottom. The further we waded, the deeper we sunk into the goop. I cant really tell you how disgusting it feels to walk barefoot through ankle-deep mud. I was expecting to emerge from the lake covered in leeches. We got out of the water and left the tourists to enjoy their foul beach and the swamp monsters that likely inhabited it, and went back to camp to clean up.
That night, we went to the tiny Blue Jay theater to watch the Hairy Potter movie, which was entertaining. But we can't stop calling dumbledore "gandalf".
We did some stargazing, and made s'mores by the campfire. Between us, we polished off a bottle of port, drunk out of classy disposable champagne classes. We burrowed in our mountain of bedding like 6-foot gophers, and spent a restful night nesting.
The next morning, lovah surprised me with her innovation by wrapping raw cinnamon roll dough around a stick, and roasting it over the fire to make MacGuyver cinnamon rolls. She is a culinary genius. We packed up camp and headed back down the mountain, and hightailed it to the pool at the grand californian where we sipped drinks and napped in the sun. I was sorry to leave the mountains, as we ended up having a really wonderful time. Nobody was hurt, nothing was forgotten, everyone was happy. Thanks for sharing the weekend with me lovah!

Ascent into madness

This past weekend I took it upon myself to climb Mt. San Antonio, the highest mountain in the world. "Why", you ask? "Because it is there", I say.
Not only would I climb it, but by God I would find the most challenging route up to the summit. Ride the ski lift halfway to the top? I scoff at your ski lift.
Because I am a genius, I discovered a little known trail that cut straight to the top, with no need for those wimpy switchbacks or gently sloping ridgelines. This "Ski Hut trail" is difficult to find, and even more difficult to master. But master it I did. All 4 and 1/2 miles of vertical goat-path. Lubricated by the sweat of my brow and the secretion of all manner of bodily fluids, I propelled myself to the summit on quaking chicken legs.

Here, we see our hero beginning the treacherous ascent, armed only with his wits and 2 litres of water.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I began the climb in high spirits, as I had previously sacrificed 3 orphaned Tutsi children to Moloch in hopes of fair weather, which he granted me. Emerging from the parking lot, I had an urge to purge, but I was thwarted at the port-a-potties by a group of hippies dressed as hikers, who loitered and pooped with abandon, hogging the facilities. I forged ahead, squirrels chattering in wonder at the dashing figure blazing up the mountain. After approximately 500 feet I realized that my blistering pace was unsustainable, and I wisely slowed to a mincing helf-step to conserve energy. I found the trail, a 12-inch path cutting up the slope, and began my ascent.
The view.

I immediately began breathing heavily, but not due to exhaustion. I blame the breathtaking vistas around me for literally "taking my breath away", and not the fact that I have the lung capacity of an asthmatic smoker. As I climbed, I realized that this was not going to be a pleasant experience. I wasn't even at the halfway point, and already my romantic notions of solo climbing were evaporating like the briny liquid that covered every inch of my upper body.

The sunscreen coating my face began to trickle down into my eyes, blinding and enraging me. I stumbled on, bellowing and weeping as I labored to the "Ski Hut", the halfway point. This edifice was constructed by demented sherpas who took it upon themselves to fabricate a hut at 8,000 feet with no doors or windows. I'm serious. No doors or windows. It's beyond me. I did, however, avail myself of the "facilities", an outhouse filled with wasps.I live a charmed life.
I rested, munched on trail mix, and attempted to compose myself. I struck up a conversation with an older gent who seemed knowledgeable about the mountain. He advised me cheerfully that the "worst was yet to come", and recommended that I look sharp because the trail is easily lost in the rocky area. Charmed, I contemplated what kind of death would overtake me as I blundered, half-blind, among the sharp rocks. This is the f*****g trail.

I pressed on. The next 2 hours were a blur of pain and hyperventilation. As my hip dislocated with each step forward, I begun to believe that my head was inhabited by gold-mining dwarves. Their incessant hammering between my ears drove me nearly to distraction. My greatest regret is that due to the state I was in, I didnt stop to appreciate the gorgeous scenery as well as I should have. The last mile was the hardest. I felt sure that heart failure was in my near future, and I finally staggered gasping onto the summit.
I rested for about 1/2 hour, and then made my way down the ridge leading to the ski lifts.

What did I learn from this adventure? Absolutely nothing. My legs feel like i was set upon by Tonya Harding's goons, and it hurts to sit down. Still, I would recommend this climb. I laughed. I cried. I vomited. I voided nearly all producible bodily fluids. I am a new man.