bogen.org

We left early this morning to see the Minnesota Twins play the Boston Red Sox at the Metrodome.We’re taking in Saturday’s game with my parents. My Mom is an avid Twins fan, and is really looking forward to the game.

On Sunday, we’re sitting with some friends of ours who also live in Madison. They are originally from New England, and they are die hard Red Sox fans.

Dalla is spending the weekend at Aunt B’s Pet Resort and Spa. They were one of the few kennels that had space on short notice, and that weren’t in the opposite direction of travel from ours. We’re very interested to see what it looks like.

We’re really looking forward to this trip. Hopefully, we’ll get some good pictures to post.

Short and sweet reviews of movies we’ve seen recently.

• Mean Girls – See It
• Hellboy – Slack It
• Barcelona – Skip It
• City of God – See It

Explanation of my movie reviews

If you visited our house in the past, you more than likely could not help but notice that we like to use brightly colored paint on the walls.All of the rooms in the house were reasonably colorful…except the bathroom.

The previous owners of the house apparently were either blind, or blind. They somewhat inexplicably painted the bathroom a mottled dark brown with pink accents. The shower surround is a dirty white; the tub is reddish pink. The floor is a stark white linoleum. The wood is all oak. Obviously, given that color scheme, one would naturally gravitate to mottled dark brown with pink accents. (?!?!?!?!)

To make matters even worse, they painted the ceiling the same color. So, not only was the bathroom a horribly ugly color, but it was really dark.

In addition to painting the ceiling, they painted all manner of surfaces that are not usually painted, including parts of the shower surround, the vanity, and the heating duct. But, they didn’t paint behind the toilet tank. They also, didn’t remove their towel racks from the wall, they just painted around them. So, if one were to remove the towel racks (which we did because they were incredibly ugly, cheap affairs), one would be left with cream colored spots on a mottled dark brown wall with pink accents.

Sarah and I had discussed painting the bathroom several times, but since it would mean putting it out of commission for several days, we just never got started on the project. We did buy paint for it, but even that wasn’t enough of a kick in the pants to get the job done.

Monday, I grew fed up with walking into a cave everytime I wanted to use the bathroom, so I started the unpleasant job of painting the whole thing a new color.

I had to remove all the towel racks, dissassemble the toilet (so I could paint behind the tank), cover all vanity and shower with plastic drop cloths, and all the other prep you would normally perform on a room targeted for painting. In addition, I had to wash down the walls and ceiling with a bleach/water solution to kill any mildew resident on the mottled dark brown with pink accents paint.

Sarah spent the first part of the week at Effigy Mounds National Monument, so I was the only one inconvenienced by the bathroom disassembly. Fortunately, we have a toilet and a sink in the basement. Unfortunately, we don’t have a shower. That meant that the longer the project went on, the smellier I got. By the end of the project, I was making an effort to avoid other people because I figured that if I could smell myself (which I could), then my B.O. must be completely off the scale.

In total, it took me just short of three days to finish the project. Six coats of paint (two primer sealer coats; two coats of ceiling paint; two coats of wall paint) were used to banish the mottled dark brown with pink accents to the dustbin of history’s incredibly bad ideas.

Note: This page is no longer maintained. I’m archiving it here. – DJB

Since I started commuting to work by bicycle several years ago, I’ve experienced more flat tires than it seems any one person should have to endure.  At first, getting a flat tire was all part of the novelty of riding to work.  Commuters who drive their cars generally don’t deal with flats in the same way bikers do.  A flat tire in a car is an unforeseen event.  Most people don’t even keep their spare tire properly inflated.  Others don’t have the slightest clue how to change a tire and are entirely dependent upon AAA to rescue them from this generally inconvenient, yet rare, event. Bicyclists, on the other hand, generally plan for flat tires.  For instance, I carry a spare tube, a pump, a patch kit, and irons (among other sundry tools).  Originally, I just carried one tube.  That all ended the day I got one flat riding to the ferry from Alameda to San Francisco, and another flat while riding to lunch that same day.  Much cursing, swearing, grumbling, and other methods of verbally expressing my frustration soon followed that particular flat. The odd thing about these flats is that throughout my first 25 years on the Earth, I probably had as many flats total as I’ve had in the past few years. Towards that end, I’ve decided to start a compilation describing each and every flat from here on forward.  This will probably be therapeutic for me since it will make me realize that I really don’t get flats every other day.

For the last couple of years, scripts I wrote have been automagically collecting information about the number of e-mails I get every day, and the number of spams I get every day.The idea was to keep track of the volume of spam that I get through time. I kept hoping against hope that someday, the volume of spam sent to one of my accounts would decrease. Obviously, that has not happened.

Since the numbers have been obvious and predictable for some time now, and since they show no signs of changing, and since I may soon switch to a different spam filtering method, the SpamStats Project ends today.

This is the recipe we use when we make fresh salsa. Most people prefer it when we use poblano or jalapeno peppers. If you really like hot food, try using one or two habanero peppers, instead.Ingredients:

• 1 large tomato or two medium sized tomatoes, cored (we use big, organic brandywines)
• 1/2 medium yellow onion
• 1 T. oregano (use fresh, if possible)
• 1/4 t. salt (we use sea or kosher salt, but table salt is fine)
• 3 medium-sized garlic cloves
• 1/4 c. fresh cilantro leaves, risned
• 1 or more hot peppers (just cut off the top; leave seeds and veins inside) See Note below.

Directions:

Put the all ingrediants into some sort of food processor and process/chop until the pieces are small enough to pass for salsa. We use a hand cranked processor, so I’m guessing at what sort of setting one might use on an electrically driven food processor or blender.

Note: The best way to control the heat of the salsa is to start with one
half of a hot pepper and test the salsa. Keep adding more hot pepper (including the seeds and the veins) and chopping/processing until the heat gets to where you like it.

The Dog Who Loved Too Much by Dr. Nicholas H. Dodman should be required reading for anyone who adopts a dog from a shelter.Dr. Dodman, who teaches at Tufts University, has written an interesting examination of dogs and their mental problems.

The books uses real life dogs as examples and we get to sit in on treatment for dogs that have the following problems:

• Dogs that are afraid of Thursdays
• Dogs that attack the new baby in the house
• Dogs that attack their owners
• Dogs that are afraid of other people than their owners
• Dogs that tear up the house when left alone
• Dogs that are afraid of thunderstorms
  

There are even more in the book, but those are the ones that pop to the top of my mind.

In addition to describing the dogs above, Dr. Dodman describes the underlying syndrome that creates undesirable behavior. This helps the reader to understand what their dog (which may display the same behaviors) has going through its little dog mind.

Even more importantly, Dr. Dodman describes how to cure the behaviors he describes. At the end of each chapter, a summary of the chapters high point placed for easy reference.

All of this makes it very easy to understand why dogs act the way they do, and how people sometimes inadvertantly reinforce behavior that they do not like or appreciate.

Since dogs acquired from a shelter often have troubled pasts, this book can help dog owners overcome the dogs mental blocks and thought processes to create a better behaved and better socialized dog.

The Peace War by Vernor Vinge is a compelling, fun book.Yeah, it’s not terribly deep science fiction, but it has some interesting plot twists and the action really propels the book forward.

If you like hard science fiction, and if you’re in the need of a fun read, you could do much worse than The Peace War.

I am sick and tired of corporate lies.The next company that spams me and writes in the message that I “received this message because [I] registered to receive commercial e-mail messages” should be forced to move their entire headquarters operation to a vomit-filled North Korean alley that reeks of stale piss.

Note to corporate spammers: I’m not that stupid.

In fact, I’m damn near religious about seeking out your various not-so-tricky “Please, spam me.” check boxes and turning them off. Just because I once ordered an oven thermometer, baseball tickets, office supplies, or a garden gnome does not mean that I want to hear from you every *expletive deleted* day!

Yes, I’m talking to you Major League Baseball, Staples, Dutch Gardens, Griots Garage, Gardener’s Supply, and Kitchen Kapers. You’re all on my List at the moment, and if I were President, the military would have a slew of new targets for its ICBMs.

I get between two hundred and three hundred spam messages per day (on average). Do you honestly believe that I wanted to add to that total?

I’d like to meet the marketing genius that said, “Well, all our customers are idiots just functional enough to know which end of the mouse is up, so let’s just lie to them. They’ll never know the difference.” In fact, I’d like to meet him in a dark alley with a 2×4 in my hands.

What’s even more insulting is that you refuse to honor your unsubscribe procedures. You make up stories about how it will take “several days” to take my e-mail address of your list. Right, several days.

I’ll just make a note of that on my calendar. Let’s see, Monday, 26 Jul 04. “MLB.com takes my e-mail address off of their *expletive deleted* spamming list on which it shouldn’t have been in the first place.”

As long as I’m screwing around in my datebook, I’ll just pencil something else in for Tuesday, 27 Jul 04. “MLB.com sends me spam which also indicates that I asked to be spammed.”

Of course, these tactics are nothing new. The sub-humans most of us think of when we talk about spammers have been using these same tactics for years. It has just taken the so-called legitimate businesses a while to catch on.

Long before the Federal government got into the act, Wisconsin created a so-called no call list.

Having now been on the no-call list for over a year, it is time to examine just how effective that legislation has been.The executive summary to such an investigation might read like this:

          The no-call list is a joke.

Since we signed up for the no-call list, the number of calls we get from telemarketers has probably trebled. Not a day goes by that we don’t get a call from someone trying to sell us vinyl siding, replacement windows, local telephone service, long-distance telephone service, or other products and services in which we have no interest.

Wisconsin’s no-call list is the result of a particularly useless piece of legislation. There are so many loopholes that you would have a very difficult time finding some way to apply the list to yourself. The following are the built-in loopholes to the law:

1. Calls made to an existing customer – for example, calls from: the bank you have a checking account with, your phone company or your credit card company.
2. Calls made in response to your written or verbal request or permission.
3. Calls encouraging you to make a donation of property, goods or services to a “nonprofit organization.”
4. Calls encouraging you to purchase property, goods or services from a “nonprofit organization” unless sale proceeds are subject to Wisconsin sales tax or federal income tax.
5. Calls made for noncommercial purposes such as polls, surveys and political purposes.
6. Calls made to a business telephone number.
7. A call made by an individual acting on his or her own behalf, and not as an employee or agent of any other person.

As you can see, those are some pretty broad holes.

Easily the worst offenders are the various state trooper, firemen, police officer, and whatnot organizations. These people call all the time asking for money. Politically, no one is going to go after these supposed non-profits because the members of the organizations will just accuse the government flacks of persecuting valiant public heroes.

MCI (nee WorldCom) calls us every few weeks asking us to change our local telephone service over to “The Neighborhood.” Since we have no current business connection with MCI, my only guess is that they are calling in flagrant violation of the no-call list. However, I’m sure if they were pressed, they would indicate that we asked (per item number two above) to be pestered at all hours to buy a service we don’t want.

Let’s say, for instance, that I wanted the state to go after MCI for bugging me. First, I would have to gather the following information from the telemarketing-drone on the other end of the telephone:

1. The telephone number from which the telemarketer is calling.
2. The company for which the telemarketer works (this may not be the same company or organization for whom they are calling)
3. The telemarketer’s Wisconsin telemarketing license number
4. The telemarketer’s manager’s telephone number.
5. The physical address of the telemarketing company.

Why on earth would a telemarketers stay on the telephone with me long enough to provide all that information? If I was a telemarketer, and if someone started bugging me for all that information, I’d hang-up on them.

So, even if I could gather all that information, and if I then took the time to fill out a long form, and if I then submitted that form to the state, most likely, nothing would happen.

The reason is that the state only goes after flagrant violators that receive hundreds of complaints. Hundreds of people would have to waste the same amount of time that I did in completing the above procedure.

Even then, the chances of dragging a telemarketing company into court are vanishingly small. Usually, the state enters negoiations with the company. These negoiations then result in a generally small amount of money changing hands and an oh-so-solemn promise by the violator never to do it again.

That’s why I just shake my head whenever I hear about how the federal courts might strike down the sacred no-call lists. Let ‘em strike the useless things down. Clear the books of yet another toothless, worthless law.

Last weekend, Sarah and I went up to Allequash Lake in Northern Wisconsin with our friends Sheri and Bryan.We had reserved a primitive wilderness campsite on the lake that had water-only access. So, Sheri and Bryan loaded their two-person kayak on top of their car while we loaded the canoe on top of our car. Both cars were filled with camping gear and food, so we all were somewhat concerned with the number of trips it might take to get all of our gear from the dock to the campsite a mile+ away. In addition to a car filled with gear, Sarah and I brought Dalla.

We started from Madison about 13:30 on Friday. Using a pair of CB radios, we were able to travel in an easy caravan from Madison to the Northern Highland/American Legion State Forest, where the lake is located, in just under five hours.

After a brief stop at the contact station to register and pick-up some firewood, we found ourselves at the Allequash Lake boat launch. We were all somewhat intimidated by the thought that we might have to make four or five trips in the canoe (because it could hold more than the kayak) to get all of our stuff out to a campsite that we couldn’t even see.

However, once we got started loading things into the kayak and canoe, our outlook changed radically. Two factors were in our favor:

1. We hadn’t packed as much as we feared
2. The water-going vessels held more than we thought they would

So, after some creative packing, both vessels were full, and the cars were empty. We pushed off from the dock, and started paddling to find our campsite.

Dalla had only been in the canoe once before, and that wasn’t one her favorite experiences. To make this one better, we put a rubberized mat on the canoe floor so that she wouldn’t spend all of her time slipping crazily on the floor of the canoe. In addition, she was between my knees so I could keep an eye on her (there wasn’t any other place in the boat she would have fit at that point, anyway). She wasn’t too happy with the canoe trip, and she started whining once we pulled away from the shore. After a couple of minutes she stopped whining, and started to show an interest in the water gliding by the canoe’s walls. We both thought this was a sign that she was relaxing and learning to enjoy the canoe.

As we entered a relatively shallow portion of the lake (about three feet deep) with lily pads floating on the surface of the water, she jumped out of the boat and into the water! She probably thought that the lily pads were just lying on some sort of funny looking ground. Imagine the look of surprise on her face (and ours) when she cleared the canoe wall in one quick leap and entered the water.

This very contingency had been in our minds, so she was wearing her harness and leash. The leash was around my wrist, but it was also tangled around her because of the leap. She was paddling like mad, and she quickly turned around to face the boat. As soon as she came within reach (she was never more than a couple of feet from the boat), I reached out and pulled her back into the boat by a combination of the scruff of her neck and the harness.

Of course, I placed her back on the floor of the canoe between my knees. Bad idea, but I had no other choice. She immediately rewarded me for pulling her out of the water by shaking three times and soaking me. For the rest of the trip, she showed very little inclination to jump out of the boat.

The campsite itself, once we reached it, was great. There was a circle of stones for a fire pit, a nice picnic table, a relatively flat area for tents, and a sandy beach. There wasn’t another campsite within a mile of us, so we had almost complete privacy. Allequash Lake has a horsepower restriction, so the only boaters were campers like ourselves, or people engaged in fishing. All the waterskiing yahoos were at the other lakes where they could run their motors at full throttle leaving us with relative peach and quiet.

There were loons on the lake that could be heard calling morning and night. A pair of bald eagles were roosting in a tree near the lake. An immature bald eagle could be seen walking in the tree and flapping his wings (though he could not yet fly). We also got to see the eagles swoop down on the lake and pull out fish which were then dropped into the nest. We saw deer (of course), crawfish, signs of bears (scat) and beavers (dams), and other birds.

We spent some time Saturday afternoon trying to get Dalla to try voluntarily swimming. She would wade out into the lake just until she needed to start swimming, and then she would make haste for shore. Eventually, once we were all in the water, she took some very tenative steps into the deeper water which turned into a frantic swim towards me. Once she got to me, she started clawing at me, so I picked her up and she calmed down. She then swam to Sarah who was in deeper water than I was. Sarah was using a pink water noodle to float, and once Dalla reached Sarah, she put her front paws on the noodle and rested for a few minutes before returning to shore. She only swam for a few minutes, and it was obvious that while she floats easily, she swims frantically and it quickly tires her out. So, before we take her on any more canoeing trips, we’ll probably have to get her a doggy PFD. If the canoe tipped while she was in it, she wouldn’t swim to shore, she’d swim to us. Well, if we were both struggling to right the canoe, neither of us would have both arms free to keep the dog from clawing at us in a frantic attempt to keep from drowning. So, a doggy PFD is probably the logical solution.

After the dog had retreated back to the shore, we stood around in the lake looking at all the fish and crawdads in the water around us. Bryan got his fishing pole and he was able to land several sunfish and a blue gill using pancake batter for bait.

Saturday night, a racoon got into our trash. Dalla (a.k.a. the Mighty Hunter) did not bark, but did sit up in the tent and watch the whole affair. So, we all had to get up, secure the food and trash better, and joke about what a great “watch” dog Dalla is.

The weather was just about perfect: sunny days with highs in the mid seventies, and cool, clear nights in the fifties. The bugs were unpleasant around sunrise and sunset, but during the day they weren’t much of a bother. The lake itself wasn’t nearly as cold as we expected. While that made for pleasant wading and swimming, it somewhat put the kibosh on our plan to use the lake as a cooler. The beer we put into the lake wasn’t much colder when it came out than the air temperature.

We all agreed that our site on Allequash Lake was a truly sublime campsite and that we’d all go back again.

Today, another roll of film came back from the local film developer. There are pictures of our camping trip to Allequash Lake, Sarah’s coring expedition at Effigy Mounds National Monument, and some things around our house.

This story was originally published by the e-zine Explosive Cargo in 1996. Until today, It was mouldering away in my archives.

It could use some editing, but I decided to present it, as is, to retain the original flavor of the piece.The Overly Caffeinated Generation

by David Bogen

There are a large number of things in the universe that simply make no sense. Beyond the obvious ones like “How could anyone possibly find Michael Jackson attractive?”, and “How could anyone possibly not find Cindy Crawford unattractive?” that is. No, I’m thinking about the less obvious, more mundane unexplainables. These are the questions to which the great philosopher Aristotle answered, “Huh?”, the great theorist Einstein replied, “Say what? Who?”, and the simply great Homer Simpson responded, “Mmm…Sixty-four slices of American cheese.” It is these great matters that weigh upon my mind, giving me both a splitting headache and a remarkably flat head perfect for holding my drink at parties.

One thing that has occupied my mind lately has been what some might consider to be a trivial detail, “What on earth are we going to call the next Generation?” Ok, I admit, the next Generation is about five to ten years from needing a nickname but, like my scoutmaster once told me, “Don’t use the younger Scouts as fishing lures.” Oh wait, that was a completely different time and place. I think he said, “Be prepared. And don’t use the younger Scouts as canoe paddles!” Yup, that’s what he said, and I think that it is good advice all around. It never hurts to be prepared, and nightcrawlers do make better bait.

I have to admit, there is a personal facet to this problem. As near as I can figure, Generation X has gotten its greasy fingerprints all over me. This isn’t all bad, of course. I can mope around the town for no good reason, wear enough flannel to intimidate native Scotsmen, and use words like angst with no fear of reprisal, even if I don’t know what it means. But let’s face it, no matter what defines my Generation, we got stuck with a downright cruddy name.

Ok, let me discuss my problems with this name. Rather I’m going to write and you’re going to sit right there until you finish that damn broccoli! The most obvious problem with this name is that we didn’t get to choose it. Who chose this name? I don’t remember anyone asking me, that’s for sure. I would have suggested names like “The Get the Hell Out of My Way Generation”, “The Overly Caffeinated Generation”, or “What?” There are no Generation pollsters, and this is a problem. We can forecast the results of an election months before the actual event, but we can’t prowl the malls of America looking for people dressed entirely in flannel and shaking from too much coffee? It should be written into the Constitution, as an amendment, that Generations should get to name themselves. (This, of course, right under the amendment which states that there should be a National Peppermint Day, which coincidentally enough, would also fall on my birthday.)

Let’s face it, beyond the obvious fact that not one member of my Generation was consulted on this tiny little matter (after all, it’s only the name I will be grouped under for all eternity), the name itself isn’t that great. Generations before mine got good names like Baby Boom and Baby Bust. We got X. What is X and where did it come from? Was there some sort of Alphabet Olympics and X managed to pull out the title by scoring a perfect ten on the balance beam? Perhaps there was a giant Alphabet Chariot race and X managed to beat out Charlton Heston for the title. If only it were that glamorous and exciting.

Most people will probably admit that they have no idea what the surface of Venus looks like. These same people will probably tell you that the X in Generation X is derived from mathematical roots. Oh boy. Named after math? Is there possibly a less exciting scenario in all of the world? What academic subject will the next generation be named after? Biology perhaps? Generation Transpiration? Chemistry? The Titration Generation? At least they rhyme. Let’s face it, to most people, math is slightly more exciting than listening to Bob Dole debate a dead person. For the record, I’ve got my money on the dead guy.

Oh sure, X stands for unknown, a variable, and ever changing. Who cares? We got stuck with X because it was too much effort to pin down a better name. The marketing stiffs needed something to show their commanders in chief and we got stuck with X because of it. Thanks a lot folks!! I’ll be thinking of you during the next break between commercials. I think the next Generation should be called “Generation Too Difficult to Think Up a Better Name” or “We’re Just Too Damn Lazy to Name This Generation”. Either one of those would be better than X and it would be our revenge upon those least deserving.

Now, if X stood for exotic entertainment, then it would make sense. My generation has helped to spawn the World Wide Web of Smut, e-mail sex, and more Communications Decency Acts than you could shake thirty highly uninformed United States Senators at.

You see the problem here? Nobody was planning ahead and my Generation suffered. There was a big rush to meet deadlines in the marketing department and my Generation paid the price for the preceding Generation’s poor preparation. That’s why it’s time to heed my Scoutmaster’s warning and “Always look before you squat in the woods.” The Generations who follow mine are counting on us to give them catchy titles; phrases they can bandy about and use to help target advertising towards themselves.

Most of the good animal nicknames have been taken by sports franchises over the years. There are very few animals left that have no corresponding sports franchise. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is the Grouper, and a sports team named the Boston Groupers would invite more derision than respect:

    "Oh, look, it's the Groupies!"
    "Hey! That's Groupers to you!"
    "Oh yeah, what's a Grouper?"
    "Groupers eat little fish who travel in groups."
    "Wow, that makes you sound slightly more dangerous than margarine!"

So, we need to rule out animal nicknames, unless we use an inferior one like the “Spawning Salmon Generation” or “The Howler Monkey Generation.”

A natural choice would be the “Beavis and Butthead Generation.” Let it be said, however, that I would not wish that name upon my second worst enemy. For those of you keeping score at home, however, write it down in the “Possibly” column.

Chances are however, that the next Generation will get stuck with some catchy title. Something like “Generation Wow!”, “Generation Now!”, or “Generation How?”. Or perhaps combinations of these like “Generation Bow Wow!” or “Generation How Now Brown Cow?” Personally, I’m shooting for a standardization of the naming scheme.

Standardization would proceed as follows. Generation X has seeped into the American consciousness much like radon into a home, so it looks like we’re stuck with it. However, as my grandmother once told me, “You break it, you buy it.” and “Every cloud has a silver lining.” Well, it isn’t broken but this name does have a silver lining. X has a solid place in a natural progression of letters. For those of you scoring at home, we call it the alphabet. Therefore, let’s standardize around this sequence.

• The next Generation will be called Generation Y. Please don’t ask why.
• The following Generation will be called Generation Z. They can grow big bushy beards and drive cars full of women like the members of an 80′s rock band. (Where have you gone, ZZ Top?)

Ok, Z is the end of the alphabet, so we start over at A, but with two A’s to signify this is our second time through the loop.

• Therefore the Generation after Generation Z will be Generation AA, the Battery Generation. They will keep going and going and going, ad nauseam.
• Then comes Generation BB, the air-powered gun Generation.
• Generation CC – The Carbon Copy Generation.
• Generation DD – The large breasted Generation.
• This will continue thorugh the double-letter Generations until we reach ZZ. This Generation can also grow big bushy beards and drive cars full of women like an ’80′s rock band (Where have you gone, ZZ-Top?)
• Generation AAA will be the first Generation on the third loop through the alphabet. They have a choice. They can either all become travel agents, or they can be the second, and last, Battery Generation.
• Etc, etc.

You get the idea? (If not, carefully back away from the monitor and seek professional help. Exposure to these radical ideas may be harmful to your health.) Such a standardized system would get rid of all the problems with the current system. No marketing folks need be involved. Everything would be predetermined and we could all rest easy at night.

This would be way to end one of life’s greatest unexplainable phenomena. With a standardization of the Generation Naming Scheme Generation X would no longer be seen as a Generation suffering from an obscenely bad name. Rather we would be trendsetters. Or as my Scoutmaster would say, “We are boldly squatting in the woods where no one has squatted before.”

That is how the Wisconsin State Journal titled a recent op-ed of mine they published today.

You (yes, you!) can read the op-ed below.Here is my dirty little secret. Every Friday morning, I walk my dog around
the neighborhood and peer into my neighbors' private lives. I am a recycling voyeur.

My neighbors will soon be able to hide their discarded recyclables in opaque
wheeled bins. When those bins are wheeled out to the curb, their contents
will be just as unknown to me as the future itself. At that point, I will
no longer be able to call myself a recycling voyeur and my dirty little
secret will be no more.

The Democratic party was in Florida over the weekend adopting a largely do-nothing platform.Why on earth would I vote for a party’s candidates when its platform can be best described as “measured”, and “watered-down”.

Perhaps my favorite measured idea is a lack of condemnation of the war in Iraq. Rather than declare the war a mistake, the Democratic party chooses to say that it was a mistake to “rush to war.”

So, it is okay to persue wars with uncertain ends for false reasons if we do so slowly? I’m glad those razor-sharp Democratic minds cleared that up for me.

Oh, and they are afraid to take on the PATRIOT Act. The Democrats (minus Russ Feingold who was the only member of the Senate who did not vote for the accursed Act), are turning tail on their original votes to enact the Patriot Act and now they spend their time half-heartedly attacking the damn thing. Of course, they don’t want to attack it too strongly because that might give the Republicans some sort of basis to attack the Democrats.

In other words, the Democans don’t want to appear too different than the Republicrats.

And you ask why I’m voting for Ralph Nader?

This is a story I wrote many winters ago for a now defunct e-zine/mailing list named Explosive Cargo. The story below was written and published in 1996. I’m presenting it here because I found it in amongst some old files today, and it never hurts to air out the old jottings.The Iced Tea Effect

by David Bogen

We are gathered here today with a single purpose in our minds. We are gathered with a single, all-consuming thought burrowing ever deeper into our collective psyche. We are gathered here to take action. We are gathered here because we just don’t have anywhere else to go, it is raining outside, our wallets are running on empty, and the only clean clothes we own are gaudy Hawaiian shirts. We are gathered here because we are concerned about (big, giant, gi-hugic kettle drum roll here)…the ICED TEA EFFECT!!!

While this phenomenon has yet to make front page news, it is as big a danger to life, liberty, and the pursuit of cool video games, as nuclear war, mandatory gym class, and video game rating systems. However, unlike many of life’s looming disasters, the Iced Tea Effect, is one hundred percent preventable. The easy, and often overlooked solution to the Iced Tea Effect, is (another big, giant, gi-hugic drum roll here, except on steel drums this time)…KILLING WHALES!!!

Now, before I get megatons of e-mail, hate mail, mail bombs, junk mail, and mail boxes, please allow me to explain why we are so concerned about this topic. We–those of us gathered here, in this place, at this time, and in gaudy Hawaiian shirts–are prepared to construct an elaborate, convoluted, and completely opaque chain of reasoning to support our ideas. Those of you who are government workers should have no problems staying with me, since most of government work seems to revolve around elaborate, convoluted, and completely opaque chains of command, as well as reasoning.

The beginning of the story (See, this isn’t so hard. It’s just like a television flashback. Did you notice the wavy lines at the beginning of the paragraph? Those were flashback lines…), starts with the 1950′s. Fortunately for us, absolutely nothing happened before 1950 of any note, so we can safely begin there. Some misguided historian types will probably try to convince you that things like “The Crusades”, “The Fall of Rome”, “The Reign of the Mongol Hordes”, and “The Industrial Revolution” actually occurred before 1950, but these are obvious and easily dismissed lies. Simply ask one of these self-styled “historians” to produce a single episode of any televised sitcom from any given time period before 1950 and the lack of hard evidence to support their claims will become apparent.

So, it is the 1950′s, the world is starting fresh, and it smells just like a new car. So, to get rid of the New Car Scent that permeated throughout the world, concerned citizens banded together to form grassroots action groups called “Mega-Huge Industrial Chemical Concerns.” These heroes of the olfactory realm decided to make bunches these things called “chemicals” to try and get rid of the new-car smell. (Notice that their efforts were not entirely successful, even today. Any new car still has this strange odor permeating throughout it. Apparently places like Detroit, Japan, and Germany are breeding grounds for this mutated strain of New Car Scent.) The MHICC’s decided that they would try to neutralize the scent by producing tons and tons of smoke and by-products, which they would then vent out giant smokestacks, and into the atmosphere where New Car Scent lives and breeds and cooks little tiny microwave dinners.

The problem with this approach is rather obvious, however. What on earth should the MHICC’s be burning? First they tried things like dry wood, wet wood, painted wood, and wood with nails and screws in it. While this did produce varying levels of satisfyingly black smoke, the New Car Scent was merely being overlaid with Campfire Scent. So, it became clear that a new approach was needed, we couldn’t just overlay the New Car Scent, we needed to kill it.

Enter the Wonder Chemicals. These chemicals included such all-time classics, as DDT, any member of the chloroflourocarbon family, Yellow #5, and the self-replicating TupperWare. You see–you being those people not dressed in gaudy Hawaiian shirts–these chemicals could serve mankind in many different ways. Most importantly, they were able to rid the world of New Car Scent without simply covering it up. They also served to kill worthless plants like vegetables and fruits, dye candy interesting and bright shades of yellow, and propel other chemicals out of spray cans.

The real bad chemical in all of this was, of course, TupperWare. This particular creation spawned an entire series of “TupperWare Parties” where women would gather and help the TupperWare to spread to every kitchen on the face of the earth. Once entrenched in a kitchen it forced entire families to eat leftovers at least twice a week. But I digress, other than TupperWare, the second worst chemical was obviously DDT. This chemical’s name was soon adopted by a professional wrestler (Where have you gone, Jake the Snake?) and turned into a devastating body throw/decapitation/Swedish massage maneuver. However, once again, I digress. Obviously, the worst chemical in the bunch, after TupperWare, DDT, and Yellow #5, Red #2, Chanel #5, and 25 or 6 to 4 (Where have you gone, Chicago?), was the CFC (or Completely Forgotten Chemicals) group.

This was the group on which the blame for ozone depletion was blamed. Scientists claimed that these particular chemicals were being spewed forth into the atmosphere, and though ridding the world of New Car Scent, they were also destroying the substance called Ozone. The CFCs would enter the atmosphere, mercilessly seek out the small, cute, defenseless ozone particles and then consume the ozone in massive chemical orgies in the sky. Then, once the CFCs reached a point at which they could no longer float through the sky, due to their uninhibited consumption of ozone (usually with a professionally-cooked polonaise sauce), these chemicals would fall back to earth, in the form that scientists called, “crud.”

Now, we are getting to the heart of the matter, so those of you who are getting antsy in the back of the room, sit down and let me finish, or I’ll feed you to some CFCs. The problem with CFCs was not, as you might expect, that they fell back to the earth in the form of crud. It was actually that they were consuming ozone faster than the ozone was reproducing. (You see, ozone has a rather short period of time in which to have Ozone-sex and reproduce, much like many reactionary republicans I know.) So, the ozone is slowly disappearing from our atmosphere, but who cares, right? Well, in and of itself, this isn’t an all bad thing. People can’t breathe ozone and live, so if we get rid of ozone there is more room in the atmosphere for the stuff was can breathe, right? (The chemicals we can breathe are known scientifically as “Oxygen” and “The Air Found in All Potato Chip Bags.”) So, the ozone is going away, but the foreseen side effects are as follows:

1. Melting of the polar ice caps.
   
2. Rise of talk radio and television.
   

While the only sure way to kill off talk radio and television is to actually kill each and every talk radio and television host in America (which I’m not willing to just write off as an option), we can do something about the rising levels of the ocean. And this, (for those of you who have stayed with those of us in gaudy Hawaiian shirts through this long rambling escapade in loose sentence construction and even looser logical construction) is the source of the dreaded Iced Tea Effect.

The Iced Tea Effect traces its name, oddly enough, to an effect first observed in Ancient Germany (circa 1951). The Germanic Tribes were busy killing off the Romans, and on the weekends they would take the time off to build Autobahns and efficient train systems. However, before any of this got started, they invented beer and sausage. One day, a Germanic king dropped a bit of sausage in his beer, and before he noticed, the beer overflowed his cup and spilled in his lap. In retaliation, the king killed the man next to him, and got another beer. However, a quick thinking scribe noticed that the sausage had raised the level of the king’s beer. So, this scribe dropped a sausage in this own beer to experiment. Sure enough, the level of the beer went up, spilling beer in his lap, so this quick thinking scribe killed the man next to him, and got another beer, as well as a new pair of pants.

So, now that it was officially observed that dropping any object into a body of liquid raises that level of liquid, it became known as the “DrinkinÕ Beer, but Droppin’ Sausage in the Beer is a Bad Idea and Will Probably Lead to the Death of the Man Next To You Effect.” The Romans got wind of this idea and promptly tried to copyright the idea by simply translating it into Latin and gave it the name “Beerus Sausageus Spillus, Manus Nextus tous Youus Probablyus Dieus Effectus.” The name remained the same until the invention of Snapple in the latter part of the Twentieth Century, when it was renamed, in a rather clever marketing ploy, “The Iced Tea Effect.”

So, are you with me? No ozone. Polar icecaps melt (due to failure of International Air Conditioning Task Force). Oceans go up. The simple solution to this problem, accelerate the killing of whales. Since we already know that adding a mass or several to a body of liquid or water raises the level of that water or liquid, this solution seems obvious.

The blue whale is the world’s largest species of mammal, and many of its whale buddies are no contenders for the featherweight crown, either. So, if we can eliminate the whales from the ocean, it would be just like removing a gonzo amount of sausage from beer, or a similar amount of ice cubes from iced tea. Kill the whales, transport their stinking, rotting carcasses to an airbase for disposal (this is to be done by dropping the rotting, stinking carcasses from a great height on unfriendly nations like Iraq, Libya, New York, and Connecticut), and the problem is solved.

By removing tons and tons and tons and pounds of useless whales from the oceans, the world should enjoy at least a four foot drop in sea level overnight. The other advantages to this solution are obvious as well. First of all, when we call Libya or Iraq a “stinkin’ excuse for a nation”, BAM! we’ll be right on! Second, the Air Force gets to drop something out of their planes (they get antsy when they don’t get to drop stuff for a while), and third, those of us in gaudy Hawaiian shirts might actually receive some sort of scientific acclaim for our quick thinking actions.

So, join the movement and don that gaudy Hawaiian shirt. Soon the whales will see it coming and tremble in fear!!! Muahahahahahaha!!!

© Copyright 1996, David Bogen

In case you thought hysterical elected leaders were confined to big cities, and the federal government, the Village President of Black Earth, Wisconsin gives us proof that short-sighted, hysterical alarmists are in our small towns, too.The e-mail below was sent by Jeanne Poast, Black Earth Village President, to Wisconsin’s Governor, Senator Russ Feingold, county, city, town, and village leaders in Dane County, and state legislators.

Subject: Bicycling on the west end of Dane County

Allow me to address some of Ms. Poast’s points. The idea that bicyclists use Wisconsin roads without paying for them is ludicrous. Most bicyclists are forced (by incredibly poor infrastructure and transportation planning) to own cars. Those cars have license plates and are filled with gasoline. In Wisconsin, a portion of the gasoline tax is specifically directed to be used for roads. So, to say that bicyclists use resources without paying for them is prima facie false.

Also, the city of Madison already requires me to purchase a license for each bike I own. If law enforcement stopped me on my bike for some reason, and if I didn’t give my name (though doing so would contravene recent Supreme Court decisions and would lead to jail time for yours truly), law enforcement could just contact the city of Madison and find out who owns bike license “blah blah blah.”

Bicyclists do not, in fact, have more rights than automobile drivers under state law. In some cases, it may appear that we have less rights than automobile traffic. For instance, bicyclists are barred from traveling on certain roads (the Madison Beltline, for instance), while being forced to follow the same rules of the road as automobile traffic in all instances. If Black Earth feels like passing a law to keep bicyclists off its roads, it woul open the door to all kinds of goofy traffic regulation. For instance, I could agitate for a movement to keep SUV’s, dump trucks, semis, vehicles carrying Black Earth politicians, and other vehicles I disdain off the street in front of my house.

In addition, many of those who live in Black Earth, Mazomanie, and the like commute daily into the City of Madison for work. Do we complain about how the city’s infrastructure bends every day to accomodate the travel needs of those who do not pay property taxes to the city? Do we write angry letters saying “Something needs to be done…” when the residents of those bedroom communities cause two-lane highways to become four-lane highways because they can only commute to work at reasonable speeds (instead of unreasonably fast speeds) on the two lane roads?

Maybe Ms. Poast ought to clean up her own messes before trying to fix a nonexistant problem.

The bicycle races about which she writes bring hundreds of visitors to Black Earth and the surrounding area from all over the globe. Why on earth would those people ever visit Black Earth if it wasn’t for rides like the Horribly Hilly Hundreds? Nobody travels from Germany to see the “public library, three church congregations, two daycares, a preschool, the largest independently owned shoe store in the Midwest, and three elderly facilities.”

Hopefully, the public firestorm of criticism from bicyclists and bicycling advocates this ill-placed volley has created will cause Ms. Poast to re-evaluate her opinion on bicyclists. I’m sure that if Black Earth merchants don’t want hundreds and hundreds of out-of-towners on quiet, non-polluting vehicles spending their money in Black Earth, thousands of other towns would gladly step forward to have us.

Essential for making buffalo wings (if you make buffalo wings with some sort of dry spice rub, we’re not interested in hearing from you, or eating your "food". Heretics.). More of a vinegar and salt flavor than a heat.

Chili-heads: You already know this isn’t the answer for you.
Novices: Enjoy this on all sorts of foods.

The hot version is not even in the same zipcode as the heat produced by those salsas that use habanero peppers.

Chili-heads: You already know to look elsewhere.
Novices: The "hot" version of this sauce may make you want to exercise some modicum of caution.

This is supposed to the "hot" Frontera salsa. Uh, huh. Hot compared to tap water, perhaps.

Chili-heads: Stick to the Desert Pepper XXX.
Novices: You’ll enjoy the flavor and lack of overwhelming heat here.