Solar stupidity

I watched a news report last week on Earth Day about the virtues of line drying your clothes. During the report, several people, including some students at Pomona College, were interviewed. They shared their opinions about how such a simple act could save dollars and aid the environment. Blah blah.

My favorite quote of the report? One way-too-enthusiastic guy claiming, "It just makes sense for us here in Southern California where we have so much solar capital."

Solar capital? Seriously?

It's called sunshine, you idiot! When did referring to light from a star...one of the key catalysts of our primordial evolution...something a two year-old looks at and says "sunshine, mommy!"...turn into eco-political-Greenpeace-PC-accountant speak?!

Maybe the guy was just trying to sound intelligent or let his parents think their tuition dollars were going to good use.

Personally, I think he looked like his head was stuck where the solar capital don't shine.

Inverted pyramids don't stand for long

As per the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office (not just Fox News for all you paranoid haters out there) the top 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year pay 72.4% of the nation's income taxes.

In 2001, the bottom 60% of the country (those who make less than $44,300) paid just 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, they paid less than 1% of the income tax burden.

That bottom 60% makes 25.8% of the nation's income yet only pays .6% of the income tax.

The bottom 40% of Americans (who made less than $30,500) paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from the government equaling $33.3 billion by 2005. (And we know who really pays those checks.)

So I'm not going to use this time to bemoan the inherent lunacy in this scheme. Only to establish a foundation for this ongoing debate over what's "fair" and "equitable" with regard to taxes and redistribution of wealth.

I will say that building upon such an unstable foundation will only result in catastrophic collapse.

Summer camp and why I hate soccer

Thinking tonight about the coming summer and starting to make plans for the girls, my mind went back to my one and only summer camp experience. It was a Catholic soccer camp outside of Cleveland, Ohio circa 1980. Might sound innocent enough. Perhaps even fun. But here's two things you should know:

1) I'm not Catholic
2) I friggin' HATE soccer. Never liked it, never will. And in 1980, my only experience with soccer was touching a soccer ball in a sporting goods store.

So why did I go to Catholic soccer camp, you might logically ask? No clue. None. Perhaps it was the only thing Avon, Ohio had to offer along the lines of summer camp in 1980. Maybe my mom was desperate to get me off my butt and out of the house. Maybe she was grooming me for priesthood. I have no idea, but it sucked. Let me just say that, I hated Catholic soccer camp.

First, it was taught by honest-to-goodness Italian priests. Like the on-loan-from-Italy kind. What they were doing in Avon, Ohio, I'll never know but unless you spoke Italian or the international language of soccer (both of which I most certainly didn't), you had no idea what the hell they said. Ever. Their idea of communication was to hold up a soccer ball, flare their eyebrows at you and bob their head a bit, and then chuck the ball at you. Roughly the same approach to non-verbal dialogue you have with a puppy.

Second, as mentioned before, I am not Catholic. So I had never been to Mass in my life. Nor was I even the slightest bit prepared to attend my first-ever Mass as a sweaty soccer camp halftime show. Really weird. All the recitations, the genuflecting, the totally awkward way I just looked around at everyone with no flippin' clue what to do. I'm not sure what I was supposed to say when I took the bread at Communion, but I'm pretty sure I subvocalized through clenched teeth "what the hell am I doing here?"

Third, also mentioned before, I hate soccer. When we went out to the field for the first time, the priests lined up across from us and garbled out some question like "poh-see-shen?" They queried each cluster of us and, taking my cues from the kids who actually LIKED the sport, I realized that they were dividing us up into groups by our positions. Having never played soccer, I had no idea what any positions were actually called (still don't). Save for one. Goalie. Thank God, I thought. I'll play goalie! No running...use my hands. Got it.

Of the forty or fifty kids there, only one other kid and I wanted to play goalie. Pretty cool, I thought. Fewer kids to reveal my total lack of skill or interest to. Said "other kid" and I followed one of the olive-skinned priests down to the goal at the end of the field.

The very first thing Father Luigi Goalie taught us was how to properly catch the ball. Maybe he could speak a few words of English, but we relied mostly on him pantomiming, moving our limbs like marionettes and then looking into our eyes with a little "eh?" and an inquisitive nod seeking understanding. He demonstrated how to hold our hands in a diamond formation in front of our faces and bend our knees. How to move laterally and always be ready for the ball. Sure, I can catch a stupid ball, I thought. My compatriot lined up first and Father Goalie kicked a ball at him. Hands comfortably in diamond formation, he caught the ball easily. Twice. Three times. I felt the tension drain from my shoulders. The priest was nodding with enthusiastic encouragement. The sun was out. This was going to be a great day!

My turn.

I jogged into position. Put my hands up in diamond position and bent my knees, earning a little nod of affirmation from the priest. Then he took one step back in preparation to kick. He smiled and nodded to make sure I was ready. I smiled back, thinking bring it on, Padre. This isn't so tough.

Father Goalie launched a ball at me like a hair trigger mule that just spent the afternoon grazing amphetamines. Like a bionic Pele drunk on Red Bull. This ball screamed through my ridiculous diamond hands and hammered squarely against my Adam's Apple with the force of the Chicxulub meteor impacting Earth with reckless mass extinction on its iron ore mind. It knocked me back to my ass. The embarrassment of which was surpassed by the fact that I could only muster this weird squawking, gagging sound in response to the other kid laughing "you okay?" and Father Goalie looking at me with flaring eyebrows and a countenance of subtle contempt. I'm sure, later that night, he and the other priests laughed over the stupid American kid and how much he sucked at their beloved sport. And the other one would say "Was that the same little shit from Communion?" (Era quella la stessa poca merda dalla comunione?)

So, yeah. Summer camp a good experience for me? Not so much. I won't be converting to Catholicism or watching the World Cup anytime soon either. So, at least summer camp did teach me those life lessons.

35 days and nights

By the end of this week, I will have worked 35 days and nights without a day off. Probably a third of those days have seen me working until 2 and 3 in the morning. And, no, I'm not building an ark. Rather, I'm helping launch a new initiative at Binary Pulse (get it, ark...launch?). And while the work is grueling, it is a labor of love.

However, I am looking forward to this coming weekend like the desert to rain. The thought of NOT working a weekend actually seems alien to me now. To just lay back and read all weekend or actually interact for extended periods of time with my ladies will be so welcome.

Aside from mowing the lawn yesterday, I sat at my computer all weekend yet again, watching the days break and nights fall with time-lapse celerity. I'm sure I look like Boo Radley staring out at the street from the office window...all pale and sunken-eyed in the milky glow of the iMac. At least the work I'm doing can be done from home. Always nice.

I managed to allow myself to finish the last 20 pages of The Dreaming Void on Saturday morning. Awesome book. I found myself consciously delaying finishing it while I await the arrival of the second book in the trilogy from the Science Fiction Book Club. Hopefully The Temporal Void arrives in the next day or two, because I'm already starting the Jonesin' shakes.

So, off to bed I go. Just trying to keep this reignited blogging push fueled.