Wednesday  30 Jun 2010           2 comments

Nine days ago, I fed our snake ahead of schedule (he'd been giving me the I'm-hungry look), and he started behaving strangely: curling up in places and ways he hadn't before and losing all energy. I wondered if there was something wrong with his meal.

After a few days of this, I tried to pick him up to examine him. He'd have nothing of it. (He hissed at me.)

My boss said "maybe he's getting ready to shed". I hate it when he's right.

For another week, he didn't eat or do much of anything except curl up every which way.

This morning, he retreated into a narrow tunnel he likes to hide in, fidgeted around a bit, and came out looking brand-new. By afternoon, he was out strutting his stuff and giving me the I'm-hungry look again.

Monday  28 Jun 2010           comment?

"In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents":

Jessie Gugig, 15, said she could not believe the charges, especially against Mrs. Murphy. "They couldn’t have been spies," she said jokingly. "Look what she did with the hydrangeas."

The text of that article changed between when I first read it and when I went to blog about it. Around 1:00 tomorrow (EDT), the Times added the "jokingly".

Monday  21 Jun 2010           comment?

Happy solstice, everyone.

Sunday  20 Jun 2010           comment?

Saturday  19 Jun 2010           comment?

sometimes,     the best     thing to     do is     just to     fold up     and     bask     in a     warm     spot

Sunday  13 Jun 2010           1 comment

And now, the "more about that some day" posting that I promised a couple months ago.

Boulder, Colorado is a strange place. No wonder I once lived there.

It is a liberal college town in a generally red state. Its residents ("Boulderites") are on average young, well educated, and athletic. It abuts the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and has great hiking, mountain biking, and climbing. It has the remnants of a hippie culture. It gets occasional high winds and occasional thunderstorms with golf-ball-sized hail.

When I lived there, it seemed to be a magnet for repressed and closeted guys. Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

There was a nominally gay bar, the Boulder Express. It had a more civilized tone than the bars near the university and thus started to become popular with straights-- and also with young men of unclear sexuality. One learned not to ask guys you met there whether they were straight or gay, lest you get a bizarre and/or evasive response. Or should I say, some learned not to ask; I was by nature direct and plain in interpersonal communication. I remember one (gay) guy telling me he liked the challenge of playing along with the repressed guys' charades. He scored more than I did.

One seriously hot curly-haired student worked there, a lacrosse player. He had professed to be straight when he applied for the job, but after a few months told the manager who'd hired him, "I think I'm ready for you to stick your hand down my pants". (Said manager was a friend of mine; I had the impression he wasn't making this up.)

The bar's management took to charging straights a cover charge; gay patrons were issued "preferred entry cards". Boulder's Daily Camera newspaper editorialized against this practice, but--in true repressed Boulder form--only by allusion, i.e. not daring to mention the bar nor the criterion for preferred entry by name. In any case, the cover charge didn't have the intended effect; straights continued to pour in. Management gave up and started running ads with pictures of straight couples. Gay patrons gave up and went to bars in Denver.

Now, 25 years later, does Boulder have a more liberated gay culture? Not really. The last gay bar in town closed. Students still meet for sex in men's rooms around campus (as countless students all over have done since time immemorial; CU Boulder is hardly unique in that regard). The only difference is, now they sometimes arrange it on craigslist first. I simply must link to a Boulder sex ad, not so much to demonstrate what's going on but rather because the headline on this one is pretty funny.

Friday  04 Jun 2010           comment?

Heard on the radio today, about the out o' control oil well in the Gulf of Mexico:

host:	What's the worst case, that we can't cap it and oil keeps flowing out?
guest:	The worst case is if we don't learn anything from it.

...which reminded me of one of my favorite Beatles lyrics.