Llamas and Refrigerators

A friend of mine recently described the various tattoos she had considered getting in her life, though she had never gotten one. She said she had four main options that she had debated. They were these:

1) “Yes”

2) “?”

3) A circle

4) An elephant

This list made me very happy. There is a certain beauty in completely off-the-wall randomness.

Now I know I am biased on this issue. I have been told by many that I am the most random person they know, and I am no longer surprised when I here this. At work, I am the random fact guy, who occasionally spurts out completely useless, unimportant information. And every time we have a team meeting, I am expected to produce new geographic commentary as we view the wall-sized map in our team room. (I like these duties, by the way. And today I branched out of mere terrestrial geography and discussed Neptune. Did you know that this frigid planet can have sustained winds of up to 1500mph?? Wow.)

But there are many who are not so keen on things random. I have many friends who find peace and joy in the complete ordering of their surroundings. I’ve always been glad there are people like this who can balance out the ones like me.

Recently, though, I have begun to realize that my love of randomness is not so different from a love of order. Many before us have noticed that opposites in their most extreme manifestations often suddenly find themselves rather similar – Communism and Facism being an oft-cited example (I think before long General Relativity and Quantum Theory will become another one). And in some areas, like natural selection, randomness is rather orderly indeed.

But at a more basic level, I’ve realized that the manner in which I judge the merits of any random thing is in fact a logical process. It’s a lot like one of those logic games where you are presented with a group of objects and asked to spot the one that doesn’t fit. Except this time, I want them all to be completely unique, sharing as few traits as possible with all the other items in the list. That’s why my friend’s list of tattoo options was so excellent. The four options have almost nothing in common. “Yes” is a word, whose part of speech I cannot even say I know; “?” is a symbol, only slightly related to yes in that they can both be used in sentences, though “yes” is very definitive while “?” is extremely uncertain. A circle is also a symbol but it has definite physical applications and occurences and is used in math rather than language; an elephant is the only purely physical thing in the list and is obviously unique. And this list would become even better if the items’ small similarities were eliminated, though completely eliminating similarities can only go so far.

I now see that this love of orderly randomness is why I am so fond of a particular, random video entitled “The Llama Song.” I was first introduced to it in college, and it is completely ridiculous and makes no sense. It includes lines like, “I was once a treehouse; I lived in a cake. But I never saw the way the orange slayed the rake,” and lists like “tablet, brick, potato, llama,” and “doorknob, ankle, cold.” That last one is particularly good from a logical perspective. Doorknobs are physical, inorganic, and discrete; ankles are physical, but organic and continuous (who can really say, “the ankle stops here”), and cold is conceptual and subjective, never necessarily present or absent. How wonderful!

So now that I have sapped all randomness of its pleasure, I will leave you with a different sort of randomness, which is equally thrilling, and not of my making:

Haikus are easy,

But sometimes they don’t make sense.

Refrigerator

The End of Sanity - Car Troubles, Part II

It was a beautiful December day, the type of day that can only be had in the south at that time of year – sixty degrees and sunny. I was coming back from LaGrange, where I had been on business, listening to NPR, as always, and learning some very interesting information about our military interests in the Indian Ocean (specifically, the island of Diego Garcia). I was looking forward to the next piece which had something to do with cooking mushrooms.

But before I could start salivating, my tire exploded. There’s really no other way to describe it. One minute I was in the Indian Ocean thinking of fungus, the next I was listening to a terrible grinding noise and seeing large chunks of my car flying out behind me on GA-400. Needless to say, when one is going 60 or 70 mph, tires do not explode in a merciful manner.

Somehow I still had complete control of the car, so I turned on my blinkers and pulled over three lanes to the shoulder through a sudden gap in the traffic. One thing I will say for Atlanta drivers: while they can be real jerks sometimes, they are very obliging when you are throwing metal at them. On the side of the road, I collected myself, counted all of my digits, and then swung my head around to look for other cars that I hit with my car body buckshot. Surprisingly, there were none, though I could see small remnants of my car flapping around in the road a few hundred feet back.

Sitting there in my car on the side of the highway, cars whizzing by, I was surprised that my car had not erupted in flames (see previous post), but this was a very pleasant surprise. So I was in a much more jovial mood than many probably would have been. But fear not, it would not last.

I hopped out of the car to inspect the damage to my front left tire. It looked a lot like a scene from Terminator, so I figured I should get a tow truck. The tread had become disattached from the rest of the tire all the way around except in one spot. So rather than just falling off and me needing to get a new tire, the tread had whipped around in the wheel well and mutilated everything in its path. Unfortunately that included my lucky “Smith and Sons, Locksmiths” sticker that previously graced the splash guard. I’m afraid that family went all to pieces.

I had it towed to the Toyota dealership where the attendant gave me one of those awful pained looks that says “We are going to get so much money out of this.”

“Looks pretty bad,” says he with aforementioned grimace. “You’re gonna need new brakes, new struts, new splash guards, new wiring, new headlights, a new hydrophobic water pump, a kryptonite windshield, a red paint job, hydraulics for the back, and at least three oversized Singing Billy Bones wall hangings.” You know – those mounted singing fish that you see at Cracker Barrel.

After inspecting it more myself and realizing just how perfectly those wall hangings would fit on my dash, I had to agree with the attendant.

So my wife came and got me and we left my car with the dealer. That night we worked it out so that we could share her car for the next few weeks. It was near Christmas, and we were traveling with my family for a week anyway, so it was not too much trouble. I went to sleep that night tired, but glad to have the episode behind me.

I woke up to frollicking birds the next day and my wife and I got in her car to take me to work. Everything was great for about thirty feet; then we hit a small dip in the road: “Ka CHUNK – GRRRRrrrrrr”

“Did you hear that?” I asked frantically.

“Hear what?”

“That chunking, grinding noise.”

“…No.”

I made her turn off the radio and we both listened intently as we drove to my work. Every time we hit any sort of bump, I would be at it again, “There it is! I heard it – all grinding and chunking, just like my car before it exploded.” But my wife just didn’t hear it.

A few days after this new issue arose (at least, I thought it was an issue), I took the car to a party at Dave and Buster’s, about half an hour away. I got on the highway and started hearing the noise and proceeded to go 45 mph the rest of the way. I was convinced that these tires were going to explode as well. And without Smith and Sons, Locksmiths, I knew my fate would be less lucky than before. Fortunately I survived the evening. But after about a week of enduring me always turning down the radio just as they were getting to those mushrooms on NPR, my wife told me I should just take it in to get looked at. So I did:

“It’s your struts,” they said. I nodded, feigning understanding. “You’ll probably also want these diamond-encrusted windshield wipers.”

So many dollars later, I took her car back home much more sparkly than it was before. But now having endured an exploding tire and messed up struts, I was beginning to go crazy. We took my wife’s car to Augusta for a wedding just a few days later, and I was so tense going above 60 mph that I basically just didn’t. And by the time we got home again, my back was so tight I could barely stand up properly. Then we went to visit family in Ohio, we took my brother’s car, and at one point when I was driving it, I thought his car was also going to explode, so I slowed down to about 40 mph on the highway and seriously considered pulling it over. It wasn’t for about 5 miles that I finally felt comfortable enough to bring it back up to speed. I thought I might never see the sunny borders of Georgia again.

And yet, I sit in Georgia now, writing this blog. Who would have guessed?

I’ve learned a lot from my recent car troubles. I learned how struts work. I’ve learned that it always takes longer to fix than you expect (nearly a full month for my car). I’ve learned that even the best insurance company can have some incompetent employees. And I’ve learned that I’m paranoid, or at least, this fact was confirmed.

But most importantly, I’ve learned just how nice diamonds can look on windshield wipers. My geologist friend told me they are rhinestones, but I didn’t believe him. I paid way too much for them to be rhinestones.

Car Troubles, Part I

When I was a child, cars were rather mysterious to me. My first car memories are from when I was about four years old. I had still not begun school myself, but I remember riding with my mother and siblings in the car every morning to take my two older brothers to school. I was still too short to see out the window, but I remember looking up at the tops of trees flying by at break-neck pace.

I also remember the old Pontiac station wagon we used to have. It had wood trim down the side, and the car was so long it would not fit in the garage. The hood was about six feet long and it was followed by two rows of panel seating and a mammoth trunk with a rear-facing seat. Rather than pile into the front two rows, one or two of the kids often ended up in the trunk (which was open to the rest of the car). My sister and I often sat in the trunk and waved to the occupants of the car behind us, who often smiled and waved back. Unfortunately, similar good nature today is often returned with a lone-fingered salute. Why this is the case, I am unsure. People are just grumpier than they used to be, I guess.

These memories come before I remember the specter of driving dangers ever rearing its ugly head. I was oblivious to the real power of cars until I was a little older, despite my mother’s constant reminders about wearing seat belts and other safety measures (she was very diligent, and still is, when it comes to safety). Then one day we were all headed somewhere in Atlanta for some sort of doctor’s appointment for one of my brothers. I remember the scene vividly:

The family Waldroup was unaware of the calibre of disaster represented by a winter storm in the Atlanta area. The mother, a Clevelander in years past, was wonted to the salted and plowed roads of the North. In fact, the whole family, having recently called the mountains of western Massachusetts home, was in no way surprised by snow or cold. Now leaving their home in Georgia, they never expected the events that were to befall them on this peaceful, though chilly, day.

They piled into their red Caravan and joyfully lilted toward their destination in raucous song, no doubt led by Psalty the Singing Songbook. It had rained earlier in the day, and as they neared their objective, which was off a small two-lane road in Atlanta, the mother Waldroup began to exercise more caution, as she sensed the worry in the fellow drivers on the road, perhaps indicated by the glaring white knuckles of tense grasps on the steering wheel that beamed through the windshield of every passing car.

The Caravan came to the top of a hill and began to descend. Suddenly Mother Waldroup saw it, a patch of black ice right in front of her, just when the hill became steepest. She veered precipitously, causing the Psalty cassette to skip, throwing the whole car into a panic. The car wheels clenched with lack of friction and the once mighty Caravan began gently sliding down the hill without regard to Mother Waldroup’s turning of the wheel. The littlest one began to cry, no doubt because of the lack of Psalty, and young Jonathan Waldroup gasped in realization. As the car turned slowly to the point that he was facing up the hill from whence they came, he knew his life was about to end. He expected the car to burst into flames any second, as the gas tank spontaneously ruptured and then ignited.

(Excerpted from The Chronicles Waldroup, Book XLVII, Chapter IV)

Fortunately, I was fated for at least seventeen more years of life. Through all the crying and the shouting, the car slowly came to rest without a scratch. All the other drivers had paused to watch. But such near-death experiences cannot help but have an impact. And so for many years, my young fears of gas tank ignitions led me to believe that nearly all car wrecks led to instant, apocalyptic explosions, from which car occupants seldom walked alive. I have yet to be in a car wreck (knock on wood) of any significance, so I am not yet convinced that I was wrong. But I did recently have an interesting experience with my car that troubles me to this very moment.

(To be continued…)

Cold Doom

A few weeks ago, I hopped in the car on a chilly Georgia morning and turned on the radio. The forecast greeted me:

“Fearsome arctic blast descends upon southern territories; deaths likely.”

It was all very dramatic, as cold weather always is in the south. But I would have it no other way. I can go out to a sports bar and see Glenn Burns on every TV screen, gesticulating wildly at minuscule spots of green and white somewhere north of Atlanta while a dancing “Winter Storm 2010” graphic pours snow on the rolling banner along the bottom (which bears strange announcements interspersed among the multitude of school-closings – messages like “Lands of frozen tundra unapologetic over escaped weather”). As I munch on some hot wings and fries, I listen to Glenn tell me how the latest in Snow Accumulation Prediction technology (which they refer to as “SNAP Tech”) is showing rapid accumulation overnight, up to .27 inches in total, with drifts of up to 2 inches (gasp!). But in one small town east of Atlanta, accumulation could be up to 17 feet. After he has zoomed into a few particularly dense snowfall areas to the point that nothing on the map is recognizable, he realizes that 17 feet is really quite unlikely, so he reminds us that SNAP Tech is still experimental, and perhaps we should only expect 14 feet. I feel very honored that Atlanta, home to some of the greatest annual blizzards in the world, is finally being recognized for its potential in testing snowfall prediction equipment.

Later in the day I went to the bank to deposit a check. As I stood in line, I could hear an elderly gentleman at the counter muttering, not so quietly, about those northerners “keeping their cold to themselves,” like it was something they intentionally passed on to us. I suspect he was right (Glenn Burns said so). But the teller had a different opinion,

“I’m from Pittsburgh,” she announced rather noisily, “and I can tell it’s definitely not cold enough to snow. I’ve seen real snow. You know, snow snow. There’s no way we are going to get any.” I wanted to protest, citing Glenn and his splatter of green and white across the metro, the new technology, and the scaled-back 14 feet of snow predicted east of Atlanta, but I thought better of it. I figured I’d better not argue with the woman who was going to have full access to my bank account information. Plus, I knew she really had seen more snow than most of us from Georgia. And I knew that she was only exhibiting that fundamental human urge to be proud of your hometown.

This urge often shows itself when weather is discussed. Those from the north always pooh-pooh the “cold snaps” in the south, many of which don’t even get below freezing. But those of us from the south similarly dismiss the “heat waves” of the north. And as much as we say we are only speaking the truth, in reality, we realize that we are all exaggerating, just in different directions. But we prefer our exaggerations to everyone else’s.

But I have good reason to prefer the southern view. When I was in college, Glenn Burns was making some of his permanent-ice-age predictions one night. Apparently the President of the college heard the news and decided it was severe enough to cancel school the following day. We all celebrated.

The next day was sunny and well above freezing – then even my northern friends had to admit the local doomsday flavor to weather wasn’t so bad after all.

The Whereabouts of Socks

Yesterday I did some laundry. I don’t usually pay attention to washing instructions, so I only did one load in warm water. My opinion is that if I can’t wash it in warm water with everything else (barring the first washing), I shouldn’t own it anyway. There are a few notable exceptions: suits, straw hats, and my ceremonial Nova Scotian garb for New Year’s celebrations. But apart from these, all clothing is subject to my warm water regulation.

Thus, yesterday I loaded all my dirty clothes into the washing machine for a pleasantly warm dousing, and I specifically noted that I had included three khaki colored socks, of slightly varying décor, but all purchased in the same package from Kohls. “Three?” you may ask. I will get to that infuriating detail momentarily, but I want first to tell you of other infuriating incidents first to adequately whet your rage.

I was just minding my business, doing my husbandly duty of contributing to domestic cleanliness, when what should arise but my socks decide to go on strike. I had already put them into the machine, but they were clogging the agitator with their foul limbs. They simply refused to be washed. In reality I knew they were plotting much worse than a mere wash-strike. I told them that we were not in France, so striking was strictly stricken from their options. At this they took off, as I had anticipated was their goal.

Once out the laundry room door, they split up, making it much more difficult for me to gather them in for punishment. One went for the door, another into the kitchen, and the third toward the living room. I chased the one heading for the door, lest he should escape permanently, and managed to beat him down with a strategically placed broom that I keep in the entryway for such urgent events. War-weary and tied into a knot to prevent further escapades, I restored sock number one to the laundry.

The other two managed to evade me, taking advantage of my struggle with the first sock to hide themselves appropriately. That is how I managed to start with three socks in the laundry and only take one sock out of the dryer.

So can you guess why I started with three socks in the first place? Yep – a previous battle.

Sometimes the socks are more covert, preferring surreptitious escapes to open strikes. This is probably what occurs more often in your household. My socks are much more rebellious than most, probably because I did not discipline them enough in their childhood. The more conscientious (and clever) socks will take off somewhere between the time you close the lid to your laundry machine and the time you remove the clothes from your dryer. They know our human kind too well. It is all a part of the plan for their humans to say, “Oh I must have dropped one of my socks when I was changing at the gym” or “Bobby, did you take your brother’s socks again?” They want us to blame ourselves, or worse, blame each other. The more enmity there is in a house, the more likely the malevolent footwear will have a chance to fly the coop. Reputable sources tell me that certain recent wars in central Asia revolved around supposedly “stolen” socks.

The evil footies are not always able to escape the household entirely, though. That is why we are prone to find them in the most surprising places: packed into a DVD case in a drawer, hanging from a screw behind the garbage disposal under the sink, immersed in water in the toilet tank, stuffed inside the hollow of a doorknob, nailed to the bottom of the kitchen table, covering Auntie May’s face on page 312 of the family photo album, or, strangest of all, sitting unnoticed in the back of the sock drawer under all those green socks that you never wear.

I recently took an inventory of my socks to see if I needed to hire some guards and build a watchtower. I had 7 unmatched white socks with low heels, 3 sans-partner white socks with higher heels, 5 singular khakis, 19 pair-less blues, and a lonely polka-dotted sock with Mickey Mouse on it. I have never owned Mickey Mouse socks! It’s beginning to make me wonder if there is more to the sock mystery than I previously thought.

But while they anger and confuse me, socks are dear friends of mine. They kept me warm in England; they provided unending ammo for childhood wars when snowballs were not available; and they keep me on my toes….hehe.

Really, though, they help prevent gangrene and are known to have curing effects on all sorts of maladies including, but not limited to, strep throat, ear infections, hair loss, arthritis, overgrown left elbows, and that creeping feeling of ants being all over you. Plus, whenever you find a sock that has hidden itself away in some unexpected place, you get to shout, “Hey honey! I found that chartreuse sock that I have missed so much for the last thirteen years! Let’s go to that really expensive steak restaurant that I love so much tonight in celebration.” And do you honestly think she is going to turn you down on that? I think not.

This of course explains that well-known phrase: “Steaks abound when socks are found.”

For this very reason, I must now go and find a long-lost sock. Wish me luck!

Christmas in June

Here it is, June 23; it is only possible to get two days further away from Christmas (in an absolute value sort of way), but I am nonetheless listening to Christmas music. In fact, I generally listen to Christmas music at least once a week throughout the year. Some call me crazy; others call me inspired; most call me Jonathan.

Regardless of what you call me, it is safe to say that my taste in Christmas music is eclectic. I have a suspiciously large collection of Christmas music in foreign tongues: Russian, Gaelic, Latin, German, French, Italian, Spanish. I have always found these songs are my favorites, but I am often alone on that account. A few years ago I tried to play my Latin music on Christmas day at my family’s house, but I was almost instantly vetoed. I guess most people don’t appreciate "In Dulci Jubilo;" "Veni, Veni Emmanuel;" and "Volare" as much as I do. (Okay, so "Volare" isn’t Latin or Christmas, but it’s still a great song.)

Part of the reason I am so fond of foreign Christmas music is that many of them are exceedingly old. And the older the song, the more likely it is melancholy and haunting. Most Christmas songs are peppy and upbeat, and I like those songs just fine, but the songs that really touch me are those more akin to "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" with their darker moods and mysteriously foreboding wonder. Other traditional carols from Europe like "The Coventry Carol," "Don Oiche Ud I Mbeithel" (Gaelic), "Maria durch ein Dornwald ging" (German), and "Szczo to Za Prediwo" (Polish) all carry this same tone. These songs, among others, are representative of a side of Christmas we often neglect.

In many ways Christmas is both a mystery and an unfortunate necessity. Obviously the birth of Jesus was a joyful event. There were angels singing, shepherds praising, and much general jubilation. But we often forget that Jesus himself said his purpose on Earth was to die. And he was doing this because humanity had messed everything up. So Christmas is joyful because God sent Jesus to save us, but it is also profoundly sorrowful. He would not have needed to come if it weren’t for our failings; he would not have needed to die. Jesus’ birth was the first physical step toward his unjust death. Hence the magus’ gift of myrrh, an ointment for embalming the dead.

Beyond its gloom, the birth of Jesus is also a mystery to the Christian. He was both God and man; he was born of a virgin. It’s all quite paradoxical. In this way the Catholic church is right to classify the incarnation of Jesus as a “mystery” of faith.

So I see the melancholy songs of Christmas as an important reminder of the nature of Christ’s birth, but I also enjoy these songs for a different reason. They invoke some of the most vivid memories of my life. England, to me, will always be encapsulated in the gloomy Gaelic Christmas song that I listened to umpteen times on the train to and from a Medieval Christmas Fair in Ludlow. My wife and I had just decided that we would be moving back to Atlanta after a brief stay in Oxford, and my emotions were conflicting. The move was necessary but sad, which is probably why the opposing moods of a darkling Christmas song hit the spot. The oft-forgotten disparities of Christ’s birth are common enough in our lives: the bittersweet release of a child to college, marriage, and beyond; leaving a place you love; seeking closure for the death of a loved one. I wanted more than anything to stay in England, to do all those things I had envisioned in my mind before arriving, to make better friends, to really know the place. So as we left Ludlow, snow-covered hills gently flowing by, the mournful notes of Christmas were the perfect summation of my emotions.

Life is no simple matter. Every joy has a corresponding sorrow; every life ends in death. Christmas often brings with it a naïve belief that all sorrow can be covered with gifts. But the true Christmas is much more complicated. It is joyful and foreboding, simple but mysterious. In reality, Christmas is life in a nutshell, and sometimes that is easier to see in a heat wave in June than in the snowy shopping frenzies of December.