Browse Tag: Books

Photos from Running – 9/30/13, 10/1/13

One of the wonders of modern technology is an item we refer to as a “cell phone.” What a misnomer! This gadget is slim and light enough for me to carry while I run. Not only does it give me the ability to make a phone call while out running, if need be, it also has the ability to track the course of my run, record my pace, show me my distance, and calculate the calories I burned. I can communicate via text message when I’m feeling lonely out there. I can post to Facebook. And I can even read a book on my Kindle app if I get bored while trudging through mile four! (Yes, I have done it. I have found motivation in the pages of “Eat and Run” by Scott Jurek while running.)

One of the features I love the most about my phone is its high quality digital camera. Its 8 megapixels produce photos that blow away the photos from the 1.4 megapixel Sony Mavica which I paid $500 for a dozen years ago! That camera used floppy disks and could hold about 20 pictures on each disk. It’s hard to run with a pocket full of floppies and a 50 pound camera hanging from one’s neck!

All that being said, here are some photos from the last few days.

If We Could Make War Backwards

I am currently reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  This passage was so good I’m going to post the whole thing:

Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove.  He had an hour to kill before the saucer [flying] came.  He went into the living room, swinging the bottle [champagne] like a dinner bell, turned on the television.  He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again.  It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them.  Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England.  Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen.  They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames.  The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted them into the bellies of the planes.  The containers were stored neatly in racks.  The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes.  They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes.  But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair.  Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals.  Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work.  the minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas.  It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids.  And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed.  That wasn’t in the movie.  Billy was extrapolating.  Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

Back Spasms from Heck

The View from Here
How is it remotely possible to injure oneself while home on disability and doing nothing? I don’t know, but I did. I think the breath-absorbing back spasms I am experience for the last two days are due to falling asleep with Tad Williams in my arms and in a position that was fine while reading but which proved crippling after four hours of sleeping in said position.


So, now I am flat on my back on a heating pad. I haven’t quite figured out the safest ways to move and without warning I am finding myself in the vice grip clutch of back spasms. I thought I was fine this morning. But then I made the mistake of thinking I could actually walk in a hominid-like upright position in an attempt to forage for sustenance in the currently de-evolutional zone which is my kitchen. Doing dishes is beyond the abilities of a Neanderthal like me, not to be expected but by the grace of natural selection, which hopefully will enable me to straighten up enough to peer over the sink’s edge within the next several millennia. I did manage to eek out a cup of coffee and a Rice Krispie treat for breakfast.

Meanwhile, Doomsday is approaching. I go back to work on Wednesday. Less than a week now. It’s still six days away, but already I am fighting off depression. My two week disability for migraines turned into four weeks when the doctor changed my medication. He put me on a beta blocker because they help high blood pressure and migraines. Someone told me beta blockers also cause “reptile dysfunction.” I said, “Holy hell! I certainly don’t want the ol’ T. Rex getting all flabby!” But I don’t want migraines or strokes either. After a week on the new medicine there have been no migraines, no strokes, and Rex is still the King of the Mesozoic.

Now, if I could just get the rest of my body straight…