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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.

I swear, no practitioners write more about what they do than writers do. Writing about writing: Are they not worried about the infinite loop? If you don’t believe me, march your incredulity over to your local book seller and inquire as to where you may find the section on “books on writing.” Or look here, I’ve done the work for you. I went to Amazon (who, my familial readers should know, did not hire me :-() and searched for “books on writing.” 497,718 hits!

By comparison, a search for “books on running a backhoe” returned six hits. Why is this? As children we’re taught to write in the first or second grade. Nothing challenging, maybe the assignment is: Briefly describe your classmate. This actually happened to me. When it was my turn, one of my classmates described me thusly (verbatim):

              Rod Nibbe

Rod is seven years old. I love
Rod. He loves me. Rod laghes hard.
Rod’s mouth is wide open in years
from now his mouth will stay
open. He makes the world. We all
love Rod.

                          Timothy Gieschen

See how easy it is to write? And, I should add, to write well.  No big words. No deep symbolic meanings (although “He makes the world” causes wonder). Good cadence. Prescient even — forty seven years later and yes, Tim, my mouth is still open (much to the chagrin of my betters).

Another good one. Verbatim again. Note the use of foreshadowing in the last sentence. Foreshadowing. People, this is a seven year old!

Rod Nibbe

Rod has a good Mother
and Father. Rod sits in the 1
row. He has blue pants on
to day. Whin He laouphs He
shaks the whole sclool evre time.
He plays with the girls.

                             Russell

Here, while arguably punctuation is a growth area for Lori, that’s something easily improved with practice. But note the feminine voice in her prose does come through quite clearly.

Rod Nibbe

Rod was very nise in
the begining of the yerr
he has a red shert on
to day and whit he
thinks he is funny but
he is int funny. do you
no wat 8+8=[] he likes to
lafs a long with timmy W

                         Lori

Another female point of view not entirely inconsistent with Lori’s. Note the complete absence of of adverbs. And remember, Teri’s never read a single book on writing!

Rod Nibbe

Rod was good at the
begininning of the year but
now he is bad. He laughs
so hard that his head will
come off. But I don’t
care. And Rod said that
5+8=11. He has a red and white
shirt on today. He likes
Mrs. Kerwitz and likes
Tim G. He sits in the
first row. And he swings
crooket on the swings.

               Teri

(For the record, I don’t recall making any such claim about five plus eight).

Here’s another good one. Precocious even. See if you don’t agree that had this been written as dialog it might sound a bit like Tom Sawyer.

Rod Nibbe

Rod is my buddy.
Rod came over to my house to stay
over night. We had a blast in the
basemant that night. He was laughing
so hard that he made me laugh at
the dinner table. Then my mom
sended he to eat some waer els.
Rod sneesed. We jumpt all over
the couch. Rod came over to my
birthday party. Rod’s mouth is
open so much I could jump in it.
Rod loves Lynn K. Rod and me are like
brothers.

    Tim W

In truth it was Tim’s sister I had the hots for. That’s the real reason I hung out with Tim, and especially the reason I went to his house so often. I feel like crap admitting it. Especially knowing I was like a brother to him. Sheesh.

Here’s what Lynn K had to say. At least half my classmates wrote that I was in love with Lynn Kaphingst, something I will neither confirm nor deny. Nothing indicative of early talent here, more or less just a fact dump. But she gets her points across quickly, so points for brevity.

      Rod Nibbe

I can see Rod today.
Rod is in Love with Paul
Johnson and Timothy Wright.
Rod is in love with me.
Rod sits in row one.
Rod is on a baseball
teme. He has blue pants.
Rod has a brane.
He has black hair

   Lynn K

A brane! Eat your hearts out Lori and Teri.

Diane grabs the reader early with elements of terror and suspense. Already showing promising signs of using compound sentence structure.

     Rod Nibbe

One day I saw. Rod and he had
a red shroot and I thought that
theri was a fire on him and he
was at my hose and wen I
saw that he had a red shoot
I ran out of the house

          Diane

Just because it was my day that didn’t exempt me from doing the assignment. My only excuse is that autobiography is a difficult form to get right. Too much telling here and not enough showing. Early indications of an Oedipus complex (note capitalization of Mother). Also, nothing here about my supposed love for my classmates. Lynn K especially must’ve been pissed about that.

Rod Nibbe

My Mother and father play
cards. My father like to read
dog book because we are going
to get one. his name is going
to be corky. We are going to
get him in three Weeks.
My Mother and father
buy me alot of presets for my birthday.

    Rod Nibbe

Took the Subbie in for an oil change and asked Rolando if he would also have the technician look into a noise coming from what sounded to me like the passenger door. “It just started this week,” I said. “A kind of high frequency rattle sound, like something was loose, although I looked the door over pretty thoroughly and couldn’t see that anything was loose. Goes away when the car stops. I only hear it when the car is rolling.”

Rolando dutifully typed the details into his computer as fast as I spoke, as if it were a crime scene. He then noted the manufacturer’s warranty had very recently expired. This is code speak for: Now it’s going cost you sucker. I quickly tried to think of way to explain how the problem very well might have originated when the car was still under warranty, and so doesn’t that mean, you know, technically speaking, it should be covered? But even to me it sounded like a load of bull, so I said nothing.

“I’ll have the tech look into it Mr. Nibbe.” He slides the estimate over the counter for my signature. “This still a good number to reach you at?” I told him it was.

Happy Wife (HW) had followed me to the dealership and was waiting outside in her car for me to take her to work. As we left I spotted the Subbie in the lot where I’d parked her, a tech already walking toward her to take her into the shop. It felt like seeing your child on a gurney being wheeled into surgery.

The hours passed. No call.

Still no call by 5 pm, and by then I needed go pick up HW from work, after which we went straight to the dealership. We pull into the lot and I spot the Subbie, right where I’d left her, but with a plastic protector on the driver’s seat indicating somebody had worked on her. Relief.

Rolando is at the counter again. “I’ll help the next person.” As I approach I’m thinking, The next person? Doesn’t he recognize me?

“Hi there, I’m here to pick up my Outback?” as if to say, remember me? And then, like a spurned lover I say, “You didn’t call me.”

“Oh, yes, I remember, very sorry for not calling you…” — he reaches for the paperwork on the chair behind him — “uh, Mr. Nibb is it?”

I correct him, “Nibbē“.

“Oh, sorry Mr. Nibbē. Yes, I’ve your work order right here. Just very busy today. Sorry.” He begins reading.

“What was the sound in my door? Did the tech diagnose it?”

I’m standing there with Happy Wife at my side, clearly expectant, like I’m waiting to hear “malignant” or “benign.” Rolando is still reading the tech’s note on the paperwork, and reading, and reading, and reading… And I’m thinking, who frickin’ wrote this note, Michener? I actually say that, “Man, that’s a lot of words. Who wrote the note, Michener?” Rolando chuckles.

Finally, he says, “I don’t know if you’re going to like what they found or not, Mr. Nibbe.” My eyes must’ve looked like two full moons. “Crap. What was it?!”

A bear bell.

“WTF?”

“Do you keep a bear bell in your car, Mr. Nibbe?” HW begins to laugh. An expression, half smirk half pity, rises on Rolando’s face. He explains the tech took the car for a test drive, noticed the noise I’d reported, and discovered the noise was emanating from the console, opened the lid on the console, spotted the bear bell, removed the bear bell from the console, and the noise disappeared. Entirely.

Rolando slides the paperwork over the counter for me to read the note myself, if I cared to.

“No charge for the diagnosis, Mr. Nibbe, just the oil change today. Oh, and the tech noted your air filter should probably be changed with your next oil change, and I see here the yellow box was checked on your tires. Still some tread life left, but you’ll want to think about changing them in six months or so too.”

I’m still on page one: “A bear bell?”

HW, now barely able to contain her laughter, says she’ll meet me at Bradley House, get us a couple of bar stools. She turns to leave, clicking towards the door in heels and an above-the-knee skirt, closely followed by the stares of two men at the parts counter.

I sign the paperwork. Swipe my Visa. Rolando staples this to that and hands me my copy. I thank him.

Outside, I open the Subbie’s door, remove the plastic protector, and there it is, on the console, laughing at me, the orange bear bell. I’d forgotten it was in the console. We sometimes put it one of the dogs’ collars when hiking in bear country. I pull out of the lot and mosey on down the road, hearing nothing but the sound of fresh oil lubing The Works.