1. Writing retreat in New England (with a $20/day rental car and a KOA campground)
2. On-the-ground full-time community organizing (Occupy, RRFM, community garden, etc.)
3. At-home controlled study of the abuse a human liver can withstand
4. Start an Immersion Project.  How do you feel about jazz?  Hate it?  GOOD!  Start there.
5. Go to sea to work on a commercial boat for a couple weeks
6. A thousand notes on Wikipedia ‘citations needed’, a laptop, and a library card
7. Pick a random celebrity.  You probably will know the person already.  Agree to feed his/her fish in exchange for use of his or her home theater, and have movie marathons.
8. Sketchbook, pencils, borrowed chair and easel, and an art museum
9. Pre-plan your vacation time, wait for the ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ bizarre weather disaster during that period, and go assist with recovery/rebuilding efforts.
10. Eye exam, some awesome large work that you’ve never have time to tackle (Thoreau’s full journals, À la recherche emu temps perdu, complete Shakespeare, etc.), and a good reading lamp
11. Badminton.  On a unicycle.  NEED I SAY MORE?!
12. Or let me buy you a plane ticket to come out and see me

You (the reader) are welcome to any of these.  Except for the last one.  It’s unlikely that I will buy you a plane ticket.

“I assume you’ve seen interesting strata up-close in your climbing.  Have they ever generated an insight about evolution?  Other more emotional reactions, such as enormous respect for, or humility in the face of, the age and history of the planet?”

While I did not have this song in mind when I asked the question, Eddie Vedder, a surfer and a fellow atheist, wrote a song about his insights about evolution, and his emotional reactions to the age and history of the planet, while surfing.  And while he may have taken liberties with the evolutionary tree for the sake of a rhyme scheme, I still love these lyrics.

Big Wave

I used to be crustacean
In an underwater nation
And I surf in celebration
Of a billion adaptations

Got me a big wave, ride me a big wave, got me a big wave!
Got me a big wave, ride me a big wave, got me a big wave!

I feel the need planted in me
Millions of years ago
Can’t you see the ocean’s size,
Defining time and tide?
Arising up, arms laid upon me,
Being so kind to let me ride!

I scream in affirmation
Of connecting dislocations
And exceeding limitations
By achieving levitation

Got me a big wave, ride me a big wave, got me a big wave!
Got me a big wave, ride me a big wave, got me a big wave!

I feel the need planted in me
Millions of years ago
Can’t you see the ocean’s size,
Defining time and tide?
Arising up, arms laid upon me,
Being so kind to let me ride!

Got me a ride!
I’ve got me a ride!

Today it came on shuffle, and I fell in love with it, and started crying.  This is now one of my favorite Pearl Jam songs.  Amazing how life events can change these things.

Force of Nature

Understand she’s a force of nature
Contraband hiding deep inside her soul
Exercising her will to lose control
She lets go

A common man, he don’t stand a chance, no
Wonderland pulling Alice in the hole
No way to save someone who won’t take the rope
And just lets go

One man stands at the edge of the ocean
A beacon on dry land
Eyes upon the horizon
In the dark before the dawn

Hurricane has the trade winds blowing
A gale force shaking windows in the storm
Shipwreck on the rock that he calls home
With one light on

Somewhere there’s a siren singing
A song only he hears
All the strength that you might think
Would disappear — resolving!

One man stands alone, awaiting
For her to come home
Eyes upon the horizon
In the dark before the darkness meets the dawn

Makes me ache, makes me shake
Is it so wrong to think that love can keep us safe?

Last I saw, he was out there waiting
A silhouette in the black light; full moon glow –
In the sand there he stands upon the shore, forevermore

Somewhere there’s a siren singing
A song only he hears
All the strength that you might think
Would disappear — resolving!

One man stands alone, awaiting
For her to come home
Eyes are closed. You cannot know –
But his heart don’t seem to roam

“Of course you like music!” he replied. “Music is math!”

I immediately corrected him. “No, Dad,” I said. “Math is music.”

Hey, Dad? I was right.

Oceans

Hold on to the thread
The currents will shift
And glide me towards you
You know something’s left,
And we’re all allowed
To dream of the next –
Oh, the next time we touch

You don’t have to stray
Two oceans away
Waves roll in my thoughts
Hold tight the ring
The sea will rise
Please stand by the shore
Oh, I will be –
I will be there once more…

“What an astonishing thing a book is.  It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.  But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.  Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.  Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs.  Books break the shackles of time.  A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
– Carl Sagan

When there is an issue of concern … or a fear … or a suspicion, instead of stacking it into a teetering pile known to only one of us, it is brought into the open.  We look at the concern, fear, or suspicion together; we talk about it; we resolve it to mutual satisfaction; and then we “put it in the drawer”.

What is the drawer?  The drawer is a phantom place in a bureau, the sort of drawer that might hold unpaid bills or aging photographs or unwanted heirlooms in a normal home.  But this drawer has no bottom.  This drawer falls to infinity.

We talk about the worry.  We place it in the drawer.  The worry flutters away into the abyss, and we never have to worry about it, ever again.

She and I also have a tradition of toasting celebrations.  This predates our intimacy, and we each admire the other’s toasts immensely.  After a night of multiple stressors, we listed four items and tossed them into the void.  We opened a much-appreciated bottle of saké, and I took the toast for the evening.

“To bottomless drawers,” I said.  “They defy real physics but define real relationships.”  She approved.

I love you, Penguie.  Here’s to bottomless drawers.

So what’s with Easter?

To the pagan Norse, “Eostre” was the name of a goddess of the dawn.  In north-western Europe, where there are bitter winters, the “Festival of Eostre” would be held in the springtime to celebrate the annual rebirth of the world.  That which had lain dormant for months was coming back to life: animals were being born; trees and flowers were starting to grow again; the days were getting ever longer.  Totems of birth — eggs and rabbits for their symbolism of fertility and fecundity — were celebrated.

Cultural traditions and rituals are very hard to change.  It’s tough to get people to give up their rituals.  It’s easier to get them to substitute one object of their worship for another, but keep the trimmings.  And this happened with Easter.

Christianity came in as a massively successful Mediterranean Mystery Religion with a god-man who is killed and reborn.  His resurrection was a deeply important part of the religion’s memeplex.  So, the Christians got the Western Europeans to start celebrating it, with a couple of minor changes.  For instance, instead of celebrating it on the first full moon after the vernal equinox, they started celebrating it on the first Sunday after the … first full moon following the vernal equinox.  That’s the calculation of Easter to this day, based on sun-worship and a lunar calendar, and explains why Jesus dies and is reborn on a different date each year.

They made some other changes.  For instance, they decided to ditch the bunnies and the eggs, because using symbols of sex in a liturgical holiday was unseemly.  Also, they changed the name: you can’t really have the name of a pagan goddess for your celebration.  Third, they totally played down the symbolism of the rebirth of their man-god being the rebirth of the world itself.

Actually, I may be entirely wrong about that last paragraph.  They may have made none of those changes.

Perhaps Eddie Izzard said it best, in the role of the Holy Ghost, criticizing Jesus for dying and rising at Easter: “If people don’t figure out that’s pagan, I’m just going to eat my hat!”

Happy Stolen-Pagan-Fertility-Festival.  And have courage, little bunnies.  You may yet escape.

Amy:  “No, but ask Kimberly.”

Me (after walking):  “Kimberly, have you seen my FedEx package?”

Kimberly:  “No, but ask Liz.”

Me (after walking):  “Liz, have you seen my FedEx package?”

Liz:  “No, but ask Alex.”

Me (after walking):  “Alex, have you seen my FedEx package?”

Alex:  “No, but ask Catherine.”

Me (after walking):  “Catherine, have you seen my FedEx package?”

Catherine:  “Yes!  I left it on your desk!  You didn’t see it?!”

I … hadn’t seen it.  It was on my desk.

½ Full

Climbing over mountains
Floating out on the sea
Far from lights of a city
The elements they speak to me

Whispering that life
Existed long before greed
Balancing the world
On its knee

Don’t see some men as half empty
See them half full of shit
Thinking that we’re all but slaves

There ain’t gonna be
No middle anymore
It’s been said before

The haves be having more
Yet still bored

Won’t someone save?
Won’t someone save the world?

Severed Hand

Big man stands behind an open door
Said, “Leave your lady on the cement floor.”
“Got some kicks, want to take a ride?”
I said, “Yeah!”
“Take your pick, leave yourself behind.”
I said, “Yeah!”

I’ve no fear but for falling down
So look out below!  I am falling now!
Oh please understand I just need, my friend,
A way — a way — a way home

Tried to walk, found a severed hand
Recognized it from the wedding band
Said “It’s ok, do you want some more?”
I said, “Yeah!”
“You’ll see dragons after 3 or 4.”
I said, “Yeah!”

“Understand I’m not falling down,”
I said.  “Look around, the room’s taller now”
I can’t close my eyes, ’cause I see the sound in waves –
In waves — lets me stay calm

If I don’t lose control
Explore and not explode
A preternatural other plane
With the power to maintain

Like a tear in all we know
Once dissolved we are free to grow
What is human, what is more?
I’ll answer this when I get home

I Am Mine

The selfish, they are all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time
Me, I figure as each breath goes by
I only own my mind

The North is to South what the clock is to time
There’s east and there’s west and there’s everywhere life
I know I was born and I know that I’ll die
The in between is mine
I am mine

And the feeling, it gets left behind
All the innocence lost at one time
Significant, behind the eyes
There’s no need to hide
We’re safe tonight

The ocean is full ’cause everyone’s crying
The full moon is looking for friends at high tide
The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied
I only know my mind
I am mine

And the meaning, it gets left behind
All the innocents lost at one time
Significant, behind the eyes
There’s no need to hide
We’re safe tonight

And the feelings that get left behind
All the innocents broken with lies
Significance, between the lines
(We may need to hide)

And the meanings that get left behind
All the innocents lost at one time
We’re all different behind the eyes
There’s no need to hide

Miles Away

New moon peeking through
Now the sky is brand new
Feel it on my skin, is it night or noon?
It’s been the blackest night for quite some time
Since my love left with that heart of mine
It kept on ticking, I don’t know why

(Chorus:)
Now this rock bottom hurt has a whole new feel
It feels like the moon since I saw you here
And the light that comes from your face
Brightens this place
Tell me who needs a sun when it goes away?
It sets on me every single day

Darlin’, I’ll get my light from a star who is miles away

If I look too long will I lose my place?
I get caught staring into space
You see, my dear, there’s much I’d like to erase
It’s later now, my eyes adjust
Ooh, what a pretty boy he was
Pretty is as pretty does

(chorus x 3)

Faithful

Plaque on the wall says that no one’s slept here
It’s rare to come upon a bridge that has not been around
Or been stepped on
Whatever the notions we laced in our prayers,
The man upstairs is used to all of this noise
I’m through with screaming

And echoes nobody hears, it goes, it goes, it goes
Like echoes nobody hears, it goes, it goes, it goes
We’re faithful, we all believe, we all believe it (4x)

And echoes nobody hears, it goes, it goes, it goes (2x)
We’re faithful, we all believe, we all believe it (3x)
So faithful, we all believe, we all believe it

Myth is belief in the game,
Controls that keep us in a box of fear
We never listen
Voice inside so drowned out, drowned
You are, you are, you are everything
And everything is you
Me, you, you, me, it’s all related
What’s a boy to do?
Just be darling and I will be too  –
Faithful to you

All Vedder Tuesday

Song of Choice

Early every year the seeds are growing
Unseen, unheard, they lie beneath the ground
Would you know before the leaves are showing
That with weeds all your garden will abound?

If you close your eyes, stop your ears
Hold your mouth, how can you know?
The seeds you cannot see may not be there
The seeds you cannot hear may never grow

In January you’ve still got the choice
You can cut the weeds before they start to bud
If you leave them to grow higher, they’ll silence your voice
And in December you may pay with your blood

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and take it slow
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn’t know

Every day another vulture takes flight
There’s another danger born every morning
In the darkness of your blindness the beast will learn to bite
How can you fight if you can’t recognize a warning?

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth and then you know
Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear
And later you can say you didn’t know

Today you may earn a living wage
Tomorrow you may be on the dole
Though there’s millions going hungry, you needn’t disengage
For it’s them not you that’s fallen in the hole

It’s all right for you if you run with the pack
It’s all right if you agree with all they do
If the Fascist Party’s slowly climbing back
It’s not here yet, so what’s it got to do with you?

The weeds are all around us and they’re growing
It will soon be too late for the knife
If you leave them on the wind that around the world is blowing
You may pay for your silence with your life

Close your eyes, stop your ears
Close your mouth, they’re never there
And if it happens here, they’ll never come for you
Because they’ll know you really didn’t care

Like this track from Los Angeles band System of a Down.  Here are the lyrics:

Prison Song

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison

Following the rights movements
You clamped down with your iron fists.
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids.
Following the rights movements
You clamped down with your iron fists.
Drugs became conveniently
Available for all the kids.

I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch,
Right here in Hollywood

Nearly 2 million Americans are incarcerated
In the prison system of the U.S.

They’re trying to build a prison

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
For you and me to live in.
Another prison system
Another prison system
Another prison system

Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You don’t even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich,
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons
You don’t even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars
Against the new non-rich

I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch,
Right here in Hollywood

The percentage of Americans in the prison system (prison system), has doubled since 1985

They’re trying to build a prison

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
Another prison system
Another prison system
Another prison system
For you and me, you and me

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
For you and me
Oh baby, you and me

All research and successful drug policy shows
That treatment should be increased,
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.
All research and successful drug policy shows
That treatment should be increased
And law enforcement decreased
While abolishing mandatory minimum sentences.

Utilizing drugs to pay for secret wars around the world,
Drugs are now your global policy,
Now you police the globe.

I buy my crack, my smack, my bitch,
Right here in Hollywood

Drug money is used to rig elections
And train brutal corporate-sponsored
Dictators around the world.

They’re trying to build a prison

They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
They’re trying to build a prison
For you and me to live in.
Another prison system
Another prison system
Another prison system
For you and me
They’re trying to build a prison,
They’re trying to build a prison,
They’re trying to build a prison,
For you and me.
Oh baby, you and me!

Maybe start here?

Then maybe move on to an eco-awareness song (that takes the piss out of activist rock stars)?

And a song about “Prejudice, the language of prejudice, and the power of the language of prejudice”, with regard to that one taboo word:

A ten minute jazz-backed beat poem about critical thinking?  (No, trust me, watch this):

And round it out with an immensely touching piece that has immediately become my favorite Christmas song.  Of all time.

Mom:  Boy, does this take me back!  Driving you or your [younger] brother around in high school!

Joshua:  It’s old enough to have been me.  It was released as a B-side in 1992.

M:  {amazed:} A B-side?!  What the hell was the A-side?!

J:  “Jeremy”.

M:  {ponders:} Oh, yeah, OK.  I can see that.

How cool is it that my mom can have this conversation?

Usually it only hits me when talented directors do this; they create images seared into my mind that are evoked every subsequent time I hear the song.

Off the top of my head: “Love Hurts”, as a sheriff grieves over his step-daughter, shot by police; Johnny Mathis’s “Wonderful, Wonderful”, which accompanies deformed brothers as they beat a policeman and his wife to death in their home; “The Hokey Pokey”, played while a possessed doll tries to kill a girl’s mother; and (obviously) Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle”, which accompanies one of the most-disturbing torture scenes of the ’90s (again of a cop — what’s with the recurrent police theme in these scenes?)

Contributions?

I

did

not

write

this

poem

I

compiled

it

It really is great.  Check it out.

Somehow we’ll find a way
We’ll paste it back together
These ripped out pages of old coloring books
Where your gold is silver, my blue is gray
Its all held together by cellophane tape

But we change directions, we watch the tides
And we borrow too much
We form restrictions, we form lines
And we separate you from me

But sometimes — sometimes we carry more weight than we own
Oh, but sometimes — sometimes goes on and on and on and on

Marvelous.

The assassin didn’t hear anything until Zero spoke.

“Squire?” said Zero.  The assassin spun, as he had a few minutes before, but without pulling the trigger this time.  He wore a fashionable and semiformal orange denim kilt and a black rugby shirt, fringed in hyperwhite.  A pea-soup duster, which until recently had hidden a belt with matching hip-holsters, was swept back.  He was shod in the trendy faux-bare-feet style, and the weapon from his right-side holster was in his hand, pointed at the middle of Zero’s chest.  Zero’s weapon was pointed at the assassin’s face.

“Easy,” said Zero.  “You don’t want to fire that thing.  What’s your name?”

The assassin barked a laugh.

“You’re Terran,” said Zero.  “Male, maybe twenty-five.  You’ve been captured on camera.  They will have looked up your name by now.  I just don’t happen to know it.  Tell me, and I will have something to call you other than Squire or Assassin.”

The assassin equivocated momentarily.  “Seamus,” he said.  “You can call me Seamus.”

“Good, that’s a start.  Seamus.  Thank you.  Now, if you would, please put that on the floor and slide it over to me with your foot.”

Seamus laughed again, a harsh sound like flint striking steel.  “You would like that, no?”

“Yes, I would,” said Zero.  “But not for the reason you think.  Because I abhor killing.”  Zero took a step forward.

“Stop!  I have a gun!” snapped Seamus.

Zero’s head shook minutely, back and forth.  “No, Squire,” he said.  “What you have is a sidearm, if you are military.  A pistol if you are an enthusiast, a weapon if you are an engineer.  You would call it a gun only if you just purchased it last week.  You slipped it through some of the most sophisticated detection screens on this planet.  How did you do that?”

Seamus chuckled.

“That’s OK,” said Zero.  “I’ll guess.  What you have is a Pulsar-7 corundum pistol.  Recent manufacture — maybe this Rat.  Last Pig at the earliest.  Right so far?”

Seamus’s face remained impassive.

“OK.  It’s all ceramic — that’s how you got it into the IPA Parliamentary room.  Room-temperature superconducting ceramic, which is expensive.  From the charred parliamentarians around us –” Zero gestured with his head without shifting his gaze “– you just pulled the trigger and pirouetted.  That means a highly illegal full-automatic modification.  Full-automatic means you wouldn’t have a gnat’s chance of bringing that through a CQA post, even here on Calymon.  Your pirouette probably took at least five seconds.  Maybe six.  That means liquid oxygen-cooled.  I’m still right.”  The last was a statement more than a question.  “As for padparadscha….”

Seamus blinked twice, then tried to hide it retroactively.

“Yeah.  Padparadscha.  You don’t know that word.”  Statement.  “I wasn’t sure until I saw your reaction.  The best padparadscha is from your corner, on Terra.  The Subcontinent.  Padparadscha is corundum.  A beautiful pink-orange.  Great for jewelry, better for lasers, like the weapon in your hand.  You could have bought some of the stone at home.  But you didn’t.  Do you know what that means?”  He didn’t wait for a response.  “It means,” he said, slowly moving his left hand to the collar of his tunic and pulling it down.  “I wore the right color shirt.”  Under his loose tunic lay a form-fitted mailshirt, ashen spidersilk over blood-red ruby.

Seamus’s hand began to tremble the slightest bit.

“Steady,” said Zero.  “Keep your hand steady.  I’m not here to scare you.  I’m here to educate you.  For instance: if you were to calculate the absolute worst place in the Association to commit a mass assassination this week, you couldn’t have chosen better.  You are in the city of Noki.  So, Noki sheriffs.  Province of Ellssiss.  So, Ellssiss marshals.  On Calymon, but at an interplanetary event, so you have both Interior and Exterior Calymonian intelligence services with jurisdiction.  This is an ad hoc Parliamentary session.  Every single attending delegation has native-soil claims to this meeting hall, and they all brought security.  Plus Parliamentary police.  And why are they here?  To discuss the Flaro ‘problem’.  That means that, begrudgingly, both sher and resh Flaronians have the right to carry arms in this hall.  If all the first part of the list wasn’t enough to scare you, the Flaronian bit should.”

Seamus’s hand hadn’t stopped trembling.  After a pause: “Which are you?”

“Which am I?  No.  I’m just a weapons enthusiast.  I like that pistol in your hand.  I like mine more.”

Seamus looked incredulous.  “That?”

“Yes,” said Zero.  “This.”  He slowly rolled it first clockwise, then anticlockwise, letting Seamus see it without moving his aim from between Seamus’s eyes.  “Yes, I know it’s old.  An antique.  A needler-railgun.  Magnetic coils accelerate iron spikes at Mach-several.  This one has a mixed magazine: it can fire four-nought needles — that’s finer than a sable’s hair — up to 6-go bolts, which are thick enough to hammer into teak wood.  It’s an antique, as I said, and it had an antique stabilizing computer in it.  But I removed it.”

Seamus’s hand began to steady as his mouth began to develop a sneer.

“I’m not done,” said Zero.  “I removed it because it would get in the way.  I can control my aim by one two-thousandth of a degree.  That is more than accurate enough to perforate the three dots of an ellipsis on a printed page at a hundred meters.  Your pistol’s computer couldn’t get within two orders of magnitude of that, let alone this one’s old computer.”  He saw the look of naked disbelief on Seamus’s face.  “Oh, you bet your life,” he said with a fleeting grin.  “Squire Seamus, my liege.  Put your weapon on the…”

Seamus’s forefinger depressed the trigger pad.  The biometer measured the patterns of the nerve running through his finger, more individual than any retina print, in microseconds.  With a scream, Seamus jerked his hand, moving the focus of the beam up toward Zero’s face.

Zero had a moment to smell the dusty scorched flax of his tunic and the slightly metallic char of the spidersilk, but he had been right about the color of the ruby: the corundum reflected most of the energy of the beam, scattering it harmlessly, the little that was absorbed feeling like a matchstick dragged upwards along his sternum.

With a fluid snap of his arm, his eyes still locked on Seamus’s face, his needler moved down and to the left, the air snapped with a whip-crack, and the aim of the needler returned to between Seamus’s eyes.

Just at the top of Zero’s mailshirt, the laser beam stopped moving, stopped burning, and a fraction of a second later Seamus’s shriek of rage turned into a howl of disbelief as his nerves informed his brain of what had happened.  Seamus gazed wildly at his wrist, thrashing his arm from the elbow, trying to move his curled digits, no more responsive than the trigger pad had become when the nerves through his finger had stopped transmitting.

“That,” said Zero quietly, firmly, “was a three-nought needle.  I clipped the back seam of the O2 tank in your pistol.  What you fail to feel in your wrist and hand is what it doesn’t feel like when your carpal nerve is suddenly frozen.  If I call for help now, Squire –” Zero’s expression bore a sadness Seamus could not understand “– the doctors can save the rest of your arm.  Reach for your other pistol with your left hand, and the next bolt severs your corpus callosum.  My Squire, my liege, my master,” said Zero, “I do not want that any more than you do.  On the ground, if it pleases you.  Now.”

(Unlike the rest of this site, this content is copyrighted All Rights Reserved.  See here for details of the mcgees.org content license.)

Jack and Jill (updated)

Jack and Jill drove up the hill and hit another commuter
Jack jumped out and hopped about and fell on his Apple computer
A cop was hailed and Jack was jailed and this was the final decision
For when he struck that Nissan truck he caused a four-car collision

(This is probably either a good argument for why you would have wanted to know me at age 11 or a good argument why you would not have.  Not sure.)

Trading cards

• Padded 3-ring binders are much cheaper in trading card collecting than in stamp collecting, and sometimes even cheaper than non-padded ones from the office center.  They’re great if you don’t mind a logo on the front (most have one) — or those can be easily covered with a label.
• “Toploaders” — hard cases — are cheap and great for inserting a stamp or small pane or cutout into to mail cheaply, and are thin enough that they never get tampered with in customs.  These are under 15¢ apiece.  Look for these at Amazon.
• “Penny sleeves” — thin archival plastic sleeves to securely hold a trading card —  are crystal clear (you can easily scan through them, for instance) and are great for stamps.  They don’t seal like most stamp bags do, but they are super-cheap (about $1 for 100 — it’s not just a clever nickname!)  One can fold them over and hold them securely with sticky tape.  Make sure to fold them — you don’t want stamps sliding up and touching tape adhesive!  Here are some at Amazon.

Comics

• Comic “Bags & Boards” have lots of uses.  Put a backing board into the mylar sleeve, slide a stamp sheet in front of it, fold the flap over and seal it.  A “Current Comic” size cut into thirds fits perfectly into a #6¾ envelope; therefore they can be used to stiffen covers sent for first-day servicing or can stiffen FDC-size polybags and glassines.  The bags themselves can hold panes.  These are around 9¢ apiece for a pair of bag and board.  Here are some at Amazon.

Office Supply Stores

• Letter filing and storage boxes are frequently much less expensive at office supply houses than through stamp supply mail-order houses.  If you buy your envelopes in bulk, keep the boxes and store (a smaller number of) full envelopes inside.  The cardboard will almost certainly be non-archival even if the envelopes are — line them or make sure your envelopes are in archival plastic.

Craft Stores

• “Archival mist” — an aerosol can or pump bottle/can full of alkaline fluid to deter yellowing of acid paper — can be a tenth of the cost at a craft store compared to stamp supplies.  This is easier to get in a walk-in store than by mail order, too, because some have shipping restrictions.

Any other ideas for cost savings in philately?  Add them as you like!

Tonight I revamped my stamp offers page.  It’s now basically a “What I collect, or used to collect before it was all stolen” page, due to lack of funds.

Enjoy!

This is the picture on Wikipedia:

I collect examples with 22m circular date stamps — the “cancels” — situated squarely on the stamp and clearly readable.  But I set aside other ones that catch my eye.

And this one did catch my eye:

Isn’t that cool?!  I’m working on a Machin album right now — designing specialized album pages to print from my computer.  This image will be reproduced on the album cover, and the actual stamp will appear on the first page.

I plan on a set of pages on this site on the topic of collecting postmarks on Machins, that will have a literature review — if you are a stamp collector or just an interested person, please reply with any suggestions of what else to include.  But until then, I’ll give links to what I consider the best current printed references:

This leads me to two conclusions: (1) I love data mining and (2) my musical tastes are absurdly predictable and haven’t changed all that much over the last ~20 years.

Here’s a wee sampler I put together for you:

So, there’s reasonably good setup for exposition, and the main character (a molecular biologist) says “OK, Virology 101:  Viruses are very small.  They’re about a millionth of an inch across.  If this room were a cell, a virus would be a pinprick.”

Wait, what?  BOTEC time.  How big is a ‘pinprick’?  I’d say about a tenth of a millimeter.  That means there are 10,000 in a meter, and maybe 80,000 across the room they’re in.  So if a virus is a millionth of an inch across, then by this scale a cell is between an eighth and a 16th of an inch across.  Which it’s not.  A cell’s about 10 microns (1 × 10^-5m) across: off by a factor of 200.

OK, so say we keep the scale.  Divide the cell width by 80,000.  That would make a virus 1 × 10^-10m across.  Which it’s not.  They’re talking about Poxviridae, which is about 2 × 10^-7m across: off by a factor of 500.

So, what’s the actual scale?  A human cell is roughly 50 times the width of a pox virion.  So if they’re in a room 8m across, rather than a pinprick, it’s about six inches across.  The difference between the ratio of six inches to the room and a pinprick is about 2000.

Am I making too big a deal out of this?  Maybe.  But it’s a mystery show.  Presumably, we’re supposed to potentially figure it out while they’re working on it.  Or else, at least have it plausible at the end.

If you’re unconvinced, imagine a traditional detective show.  Someone is talking about how fast a car could have fled the scene of a crime.  But instead of saying “The max speed of a Toyota is about 100mph”, they say “The max speed of a Toyota is about Mach 200″ (that’s about ten times the highest velocity the space shuttle reaches as it goes into orbit).  Or instead of “Just a drop of this poison is enough to kill a man — he wouldn’t have noticed it in his coffee”, they say “Just half a cup of this poison is enough to kill a man”.  Would that be fun in a show?  No, right?

Or let’s say there were a book that some people wanted to put into a science classroom, that instead of saying the Earth was 4½ billion years old, was off by a factor of 2000, and said the Earth was only 2¼ million years old.  That’d suck, right?  But that one’s silly.  Certainly no American would trust a book that said the Earth was as preposterously young as two million years old, right?!  Good thing!

If you take a look and find any errors, please let me know.

Rex woke me this morning.  One moment I was asleep, dreaming that a crate of oranges had just been delivered to my door, and the next moment I was awakened by friendly snorts and whines coming from the speaker on my bedside table.

Rex is my dog.  Actually, Rex is a kind of hybrid of a computer dog and a Rolodex.  I programmed Rex in 72 hours straight.  About thirty hours of it was the actual skeleton of the program, and the rest getting Rex’s snorts and whines right.  I did it, finally.  It took me 42 hours, but I console myself with the fact that it was the 42 hours at the end of the programming rather than the beginning, and that about three hours into the snorting lessons my coffee machine broke down.

I got out of bed, cautiously, and tiptoed across the collection of coffee mugs that had accumulated on the carpet of my bedroom, to the bathroom first, then to the hall closet (this was a mistake; I am not a morning person), then to the kitchen.

I walked up to the counter and opened my high-use drawer.  It contains my keyboard, my pizza roller, my coffee filters, a box of pens, and my laser pistol.

I buy my pens from my baker.  He sells donuts by the “baker’s dozen” (13) and pens by the “baker’s gross”.  I get 156 pens in a box.  This is my baker’s logic.

He maintains that because a gross is a dozen dozen, a baker’s gross should be a dozen baker’s dozen.  I say that a baker’s gross should be 169 pens: a baker’s dozen baker’s dozen.  I still buy my pens from him, though.  My baker’s pens are cheaper than their office-supply counterpart, and I am in the habit of finding myself needing a loaf of cornmeal hearth bread more frequently than finding myself in need of a telephone answering machine.  After all, people stopped using telephones a hundred years ago.

My laser pistol qualifies as a high-use item due to the large number of people I have over for a cup of coffee and the corresponding number of people who have never seen a Smith & Wesson Mark VII Aility [sic] sidearm.  I traded my car for it at last month’s community swap meet.  It doesn’t work.  Neither did my car.

I removed my last pen from the drawer.  This was OK: I could use some more cornbread.  Four loaves.  I’ve gotten this down to a fine science: I go through 156 pens for every four loaves of cornbread for every 3 coffee mugs.

I was also out of coffee filters.  This was not OK.

So, car-less, coffee-less, wearing clothes I had slept in, and carrying my last pen, I made a plan:

• Buy coffee filters
• Buy pens
• Buy bread
• Buy car
• Wash clothes

Armed with this list, I set out to face the day, stepping over the crate of oranges outside my door.

So wordy!  But I don’t think too horrible for a 15-year-old.