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I sent her off to the distant corner of the backyard to gather pooh in a bag. She appears small in this context, no? Nearly dwarf-like set against the distant peaks of the Chugach mountains, the trees coming into their own. Similar to a lawn gnome you might imagine, sans the white beard and pointy red hat.

(Reader dismay: “Wait a minute, did he just compare Happy Wife to a lawn gnome?!).

We refer to this look as her, “Fluffage.” She could probably use new Fluffage as repeated washings have rendered this Fluffage more like “Pillage.” Plus, once you’ve worn your Fluffage outside where it’s vulnerable to being soiled it then becomes forever afterward your work Fluffage. Technically speaking. Like a favorite sweatshirt, the super comfortable one, the one you’ve had forever that has somehow become even more comfortable after hundreds of washings, your go-to sweatshirt, always, until that day you slip outside maybe just to fetch the mail, no harm in that you think, and on the way back into the house you see your bike on the work stand, where you’d left it a day earlier when you were in the garage in your work clothes meaning to put that chain back on the gears but your attention was diverted and the chore left undone. So now you set the mail down and think I’ll just quick take care of this one thing. BLAM! — chain grease on the sleeve of your favorite sweatshirt.

Damnit!

Which never comes out completely in the wash. You try degreasers and spot removers of every kind but that niggling remnant of stupidity — your own stupidity! — will never go away. “Why, it’s barely visible,” others will console. But you know it’s there. Like an old friend who’s done something unforgivable, things will never be the same again, you’ll never be able to bring yourself to unlearn the transgression.

So now your once favorite sweatshirt, your old friend who’ll never be the same is forever relegated to an anonymous hook in the cold garage. There to keep company all the other despoiled clothes, themselves also once-upon-a-time regularly washed, tenderly dried in Springtime-scented drier sheets, folded and lovingly laid in a dresser drawer.

Update on Lucy: Our girl continues to defy this damned mast cell cancer. She has tumors on her tumors now, if you can believe that. The mass between her neck and shoulder is as big as a small cantaloupe. Happy Wife provides Lucy her meds twice daily by hiding them in a smear of cream cheese tucked inside a cylinder of rolled lunch meat. Lucy prefers ham but sometimes turkey is on sale at Safeway. Here she is three months ago in a moment of self prayer. She’s still with us today so who can be sure it hasn’t helped.

Happy Wife smiles at the announcement of free money. Death and taxes? No mam. Live in Alaska for just one year, stay out of trouble, and they pay you!

PFD = Permanent Fund Dividend.

Oldest PFD recipient this year: 109; youngest: 1. What on earth does a 109 yr old even need for goodness sake?

“Ya know, Granny”s been eying that new walker on Amazon. Made of titanium. Comes in colors even!”

Parents of the 1 yr old deposit the check in the 1 yr old’s bank account, that is if the 1 yr old is lucky. There’s no requirement to do this so far as I know. A child’s guardian simply files his/her PFD application, claims the number of children in the household, and accepts fiduciary control over the check that arrives for each eligible applicant in the house ($1884 per person this year!).

Ah, but in order for the child to get a check, his/her guardian must be eligible themselves. So kids with deadbeat parents get nothing. Kinda sux if you ask me, given children are born tabula rasa, but rules are rules and when they were made nobody asked me.

But there is no rule to prevent guardians from pocketing for themselves what is nominally the kids’ money.

“To hell with it. Johnny & Cindy don’t need to go to a spiffy 4-year college. Community college will do. And why shouldn’t they pay their own way? Builds character. Besides, when I was a child we had to walk over glass shards in bare feet to get to school. No sir, kids these days have it waaay too easy. $3768? Are you kidding me — let’s party!”

For your general amusement, the classic video: “Oh-yeah, well when I was a child…” (LtoR: Tim-Brook Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman). Marty Feldman!

Had to call our Internet provider this morning. We pay for 10 Mbps but lately have received only 1 Mbps. I called to inform them they owe me 9 mega bits times all the seconds of reduced speed we’ve experienced. IOW, a lot of mega bits.

“Hello, my name is Luna. Who am I speaking with?”

“Rod.”

“Hello Rob, how may I…”

“No, Rod, like Rocket Rod.”

“Oh, I am very sorry, Rod, how may I help you today.”

“The speed of my internet connection the last few days has been one mega bit per second. It should be ten. Can somebody fix this?”

“I would be very happy to help you with this, Rod. May I have your date of birth?”

“What?”

“For security purposes, Rod.”

“Same day as Ronald Regan.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Don’t be. Could be worse, like Hitler or something.”

“I’m sorry, Rod, I didn’t get…”

“Kidding, Luna!” I tell her my date of birth.

“Thank you very much, Rod. I can help you now. So I understand your connection speed is one mega bit per second, and you have already reset your modem, is this correct, Rod?”

“I’m sorry, Luna, before I can answer your question I need your date of birth.”

Dead silence.

“Luna, kidding! Yes, everything you said is right.”

“Okay, what I’m going to go ahead and do, Rod, is I’m going to go ahead and call our support group and have them go ahead and look into if there are any problems with your connection. Can I go ahead and put you on hold while I do that, Rod?”

“Go ahead.”

Battery on cell phone drops from 70 to 50 percent. Hold music sounds like Kenny G in a beer can. Over and over it repeats. Finally, Luna returns with the news. And it ain’t good.

“Rod, are you still there?”

“Barely. My birth date is unchanged but I feel a lot older for the wait.”

“I am terribly sorry for the long wait, Rod. I went ahead and called our service department but they must be very busy because I’m still on hold with them.”

“Must be verifying your birth date, huh?”

“I’m sorry, Rod?”

“Nevermind.”

“Rod, instead of having you wait can I go ahead and get your number and call you back after they tell me what they have found?”

“Go ahead.”

Silence.

“Hello, Rod, are you still there?”

“Yes, no where else to go.” I tell Luna my number.

“Thank you, Rod, I will call you back, hopefully shortly.”

Another joke comes to mind. I spare Luna the frivolity of my mood.

“Can’t wait, Luna. Thank you.”

The ghost of Handel visited our backyard a few morns ago.

It happened while I was out there hand snatching turd-age from the deep grass with a plastic grocery bag as a mitt. You know the feeling, like when you were a kid on Halloween, blindfolded in the neighbor’s garage and directed to touch something gross and gooey and then guess what it was. Even with a Safeway prophylactic the tactile sensation is much the same. Moreso if there’s a hole in it, and the turd-age is still steamy fresh. Oh, la joie.

And then all of sudden I look up, behold the rising mist, hear the chorus of Messiah.

Such events cannot be predicted, only enjoyed.

I was not able to enjoy myself thoroughly at the Champagne Pops gala owing to the persistent, ghoulish gaze of this one:

The theme for this year’s benefit was Country Legends. Had I not known this, which in fact I did having earlier glanced at the printed program over a glass (or 3) of Pinot Noir during the pre-concert reception, I might’ve thought the theme was Heavy Metal Legends. Why? Well, remove Dolly’s tooth whitener, the red eye correction, and add a jolt of 110, and these two look nearly identical! :

 

That’s Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie.

…

Ten years — 10! –training the Iraqi military and they scattered like puffballs in the wind the first time isis said “Booh!” And McCain now calls for more boots on the ground in Iraq to train the “military” to fight isis?!

The mind reels.

I like to think of myself as patriotic. I really do. I like my country, broadly speaking. Not every where and every time as perfect as I’d like it to be, but utopia is for the euphoric. What I increasingly don’t understand, however, are the misguided sentiments of patriotism I often see expressed by my fellow countrymen (and women). Yes, misguided. Apparently during a moment of solemn reflection on the anniversary of 9/11, some people have expressed what you might call an almost reminiscent fondness for the good ol’ days of unconditional surrender of a country after having been carpet bombed into oblivion. Or certain post-war treaty formalities, where the losers publicly repent for their various atrocities while the winners divvy up what’s left and make the losers pay reparations for what was lost.

Verily, the felling of the twin towers was not the same kind of casus belli as was Pearl Harbor in flames. The former did not force the kind of retribution amenable to picking up the aggregate might of our Industrial Military Complex, bringing it to bear on some neatly delimited geographic area, turning it in on Full Blast and waiting for the Mo F’ers to say, I give.

You don’t need me to tell you that bringing modern enemies “thoroughly to their knees” in this way can no longer be definitively accomplished.

I suppose this explains the pining for the good ol’ days of war, when two lines of bayonet-wielding men would simply charge each other. Distinguishing winners from losers was so much easier then.

I don’t know. I’m not a military man. Don’t look for me in the Situation Room. Probably also explains why I don’t wax nostalgic around matters of military history. I don’t read that stuff and I’m more likely to yawn rather than fawn at the prowess of past military generals and such. Don’t mean to sound unthankful for their service, just saying I’m not interested in reading about, for instance, Patton’s tactical genius in the European theater. (See, I’m not totally ignorant).

Got to thinking about all this after a reply I left to a comment at a blog:

Commenter: The brutal fact is that the timber of humanity is crooked indeed, and these things need to be demonstrated and relearned over and over.

Me: The problem is when “straightening the crooked” becomes viewed as a moral responsibility of the US because we emerged during the last half of the last century as The Only Dominant Military Power In The World (please see: Team America, World Police). Increasingly, we are now expected to restore order everywhere in the world where it has fallen apart, for one reason or another, whether or not the ensuing disorder poses a clear and present danger to our homeland.

Now, implant that misplaced prerogative of national responsibility to “fix” the world inside a POTUS du jour with a jingoistic attitude and a perfect storm of congressional approval to borrow seemingly limitless sums of money to finance nation building “fixing” campaigns — future taxpayers be damned! — and, well… the national timber becomes vulnerable to crookedness as well.

What the commenter meant by “these things” was the 1) total annihilation of an enemy followed by 2) occupation of the enemy’s land for a generation or more so 3) the lesson of defeat is never forgotten. But that will no longer work in the world we now find ourselves in. Don’t need to be steeped in the lessons of military history to understand that. A glance at what’s gone down since 9/11 is sufficient to understand why.

Go ahead and gloat Sea Slugs, you beat the Cheeseheads. And you did it fairly this time! So extra credit for that.

Anyhoo, as promised, HW and me gnashing chicken wings at Peanut Farm.

Later, being the gentleman I am, I gave HW my rain jacket for the walk to the car, and then she stops and asks for my pocket knife to cut some flowering Yarrow blooms, now resting comfortably in a vase on our kitchen window sill.

Heard on the radio this morning Alaska has the second slowest Internet speed in the country. Thanks Arkansas.

You see, this is why I talk about the ephemera of our lives here, and not, for example, some other pressing, present-day news, like, for instance, the collapse of the housing bubble, the killing of Osama bin Laden (did you hear!), the breakup of REM (sad!), where Jimmy Hoffa was really buried (No!), etcetera, etcetera.. It all makes sense to me now. By the time reports of these matters get through the wire and into my computer it’s already stale news.

In addition to glacially slow Internet, we are in many other ways quite third worldly up here. Many of our roads resemble lunar scape, per capita we have the most people on welfare of any state (a self deprecating joke comes to mind here but I resist out of respect to Happy Wife who has grown tired of such (hi Honey!)), we have the seventh most corrupt state politics (thanx Alabama), and a sizable portion of our population has no access to the basic services of modernity like running water, a flush toilet, or a 7-Eleven. Fresh fruits and vegetables, are you kidding? I’m talking about people who still poop in a 5-gallon paint bucket and empty it now and then in a hole in the ice:

The bucket is emptied when it becomes full or starts to emit foul odor; usually once a day for large families, and about once a week for smaller families. A honey bucket well is a hole in the ground, capped with a raised wooden enclosure or none at all.

Delightful:

But we do love our ice cream. Reason? The answer’s in the name. For most of the year in most of the state you can swing through a drive in, get a triple scoop cone, set it in the drink holder and go do an hour of shopping, return to the car and your treat will still be there, unchanged!

But if you ask me the most deeply disappointing — nay, depressing — feature of our third worldliness is that we don’t have our own PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL TEAM. I know, right?

And so, true to my roots, I root for the Packers. Accordingly, expect to find me at the Peanut Farm (PF) early this afternoon, say around 3 pm, earlier than most people go to a bar I realize, but you see PF is like a major Cheesehead hangout in Anchorage, and given the Pack is playing the reigning world champions tonight (4:30 pm, AKST) in the first regular season NFL game, I expect the place will be mobbed. And there is nothing more relaxing than imbibition with those of like mind. So I took HW to work this morning and told her to find a ride after work and have them drop her at PF. “I’ll have a bar stool waiting for you, dear.”

Let us hope the game feed isn’t over Alaskan Internet. I’d like to see Aaron Rodgers put one in the end zone at the very same instant the rest of you do!

What’s that? You want that I should take a photo of myself and HW at the bar caught up in the gala of the event? You want more Nibbe ephemera?! Can do. Stand by. And thank you for asking!

Happy Wife (HW)  gives scale to the prison yard’s watchtower at Spring Creek Correctional Center, Alaska’s highest maximum security prison.

Gotta be the prettiest backdrop of any prison I’ve ever seen. Oh, my bad, I meant “correctional center.” Presumably because it offers rehabilitative programs for prisoners not serving life sentences, like Robert Hansen, who I’ve mentioned here before. He died recently.

I suppose nobody cares if a lifer gets corrected.

Imagine, thirty years after incarceration: “Hey Robert, still get off on kidnapping woman in Anchorage, flying them to remote places in Alaska then raping and killing them?”

“Yup.”

“Yeah, well, no matter. Not like you’re ever getting out of here anyway. Unless you live to be 500 years old. Ha ha.”

He died at 75. I wonder, do sentences carry over if you’re reincarnated?

We stopped for that photo op at the prison during our bike ride to the end of Nash Road.

On the way I snapped an Usie by a waterfall:

 

Why I appear inflated with air I can’t say.

Earlier, on our way out of Seward, the Alaska railroad. Seems like only yesterday I was putting my “peeps” on the train back to Anchorage after the bike tour was over. Sniffle.

 

A caution from the future…

…posted at the trail head of one of our favorite walks. I’ll keep it in mind.

Tagged along with Happy Wife the other day, we went to Pier 1 Imports. Don’t know that I’ve been before. Quite the menagerie of stuff there. We went to get two spill resistant glasses for our domestic date nights (see below). The ones we have for this purpose are funnel shaped. Even slightly twirling one sets the contents therein into a tornadic rotation, which can be pleasantly hypnotic, until the liquid whorl breaches the rim of the glass and dampens one or both date night day participants.

While HW searched for better glasses I randomly inspected various items to see where they were imported from. All were from China. I says to HW, “Let’s see who can be the first to find something not imported from China.”

She won with this gem:

Somewhere, somebody in Indonesia is holding a giraffe ear wondering where the rest is.

I don’t know, might work well in a room with a jungle theme.

Like I said, the shopping trip was prompted by our dissatisfaction with certain glassware that I’d used earlier. HW had arrived home, showered and primped, and encouraged me to do the same. In the meantime she took advantage of a gloriously warm August day to set a table on our backyard deck complete with select cheeses and meats. I brought the fun in a glass. She called it, Chez Nibbe.