I can't believe that Rodney King--a man only 2 years older than me--is dead.
I feel bad for his family.
I want to say something nice about him, even though he was an alcoholic. Normally, I can't stand alcoholics, but Rodney admitted on Patt Morrison's show earlier this year, during the 20th (TWENTIETH!) anniversary of the riots, that he struggles with alcohol. he struggles (struggled) to be a good person.
But here's the thing about Rodney King: Usually, alcoholics are nasty. The term "mean drunk" is just another way to say "alcoholic". Most alcoholics are angry, and when their frontal lobe has been dissolved in ethanol, they feel free to vent their spleen at somebody who pissed them off when they were a kid.
So, what did Rodney King do at the height of the riots, when the TV reporters shoved their cameras in his face?
Did he say, "Fuck white people"?
No.
Did he say, "LAPD got what's coming to it?"
No.
The man trembled, and cried, and felt horrible about the fact that the city was on fire because of him (Actually, it wasn't his fault, it was the ultimate ex-Marine's fault, that arrogant moron, Daryl Gates). Rodney King--a guy who wasn't that smart, not well-educated, not a smooth-talking, articulate guy who could sell ice cubes to Eskimos, stood in front of the cameras, and with tears rolling down his face asked, "Can't we all just get along?"
Did the riots end because he said that on TV, or because enough uniformed men with guns showed up from all over California, or because the rioters themselves grew tired of the burning and looting?
Probably a combination of all three, but Rodney King--with all of his shortcomings--didn't pour fuel on the flames, and we must never forget that.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
THE MEXICAN OF EAST L.A.
Venus transited the Sun, giving a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one of the inner planets’ full size and shape. The truth of the matter is that as Venus goes round and round the Sun every year—just like Earth, all that really happened with this transit was that Venus crossed the Sun at an angle where you could clearly see it. So to speak. You needed to either project what’s coming out of your scope onto a piece of paper, or some other flat surface, or put an appropriate filter in front of your scope’s objective lens. We did both.
So, what did we actually see? If you look at Jeff Cowell’s photograph, you can see that Venus is this little, tiny ball in front of the gigantic ball of fire that is the Sun.
Here’s the thing: Earth is the same size as Venus:
Earth - 7,926 miles (12,756 km) in diameter
Venus - 7,521 miles (12,104 km) in diameter
So, by standing in our driveway, and seeing this little tiny planet that is the same size as our planet, live, through our own scope, we got to see just how small our world is.
Well, recently I found out just how small my world is.
To say that there are Mexicans in the eastern part of the City of Los Angeles—referred to as East L.A.—is like pointing out that there are Jews in Brooklyn. My job sends me to East L.A. on a regular basis, whenever a truck sets off the radiation alarms at this facility that receives shipments. The routine is that some truck driver shows up, something inside his truck—that he is unaware of—sets off the radiation alarms, and I get called. When I arrive, I use special equipment—the equivalent of a 1960s laboratory in a device the size of a laptop—to figure out what is inside the truck, where it is, and how radioactive it is. After we determine that everything is okay, I fill out paperwork, and tell them how to proceed. So far, nothing dangerous, life-threatening, etc., has ever shown up at this facility that is hidden in a little pocket neighborhood. That’s okay. If—God forbid—anything dangerous or weird ever should show up, we will respond accordingly.
Two weeks ago I drove up to their office, and decided to park ass-backwards, to hasten my exit when I’m done. The manager came out, and upon seeing the Obama 2012 bumper sticker on the back of the Jeep, he enquired, “You’re a Democrat?”
“Yeah!”
“I’m a Republican. I like war.”
I stared at him, speechless.
Last week I had to drive over to his facility for the usual reason, and after identifying the isotope in his truck, we sat in his office, studying the truck’s route, in order to figure out who the moron was who put radioactive junk into his truck. If we can figure it out, I can fine them. That’s right: I can write you a ticket, like the cops. I’m the radiation cop and I’ve got the badge to prove it.
So I’m sitting there at Jose’s (his real name) big wooden desk, studying his haircut that may—or may not be a military haircut—and he circles back to last week’s comment about liking war.
He says, “You ever been in the military?”
“Yeah, I was in the Army.”
“Me too. I was in the Balkans.”
Holy shit. That makes sense. He’s a little bit younger than me. I lucked out. I nailed it perfectly: I served after the invasion of Panama, and before the Gulf War. I have never fired a shot in anger, or been in danger of hostile forces shooting me. Him? He must have been in during the late 80s/early 90s.
He doesn’t know that I’m Hungarian, and that I have traveled all over Europe. I flash back to my friend Richard Kostrenic in San Pedro, a Slovene who said 5 years before it happened: “When Tito dies, the country is going to catch on fire. They’ll be at each other’s throats. Richard predicted that Yugoslavia would break up in a bloodbath.
I ask Jose, “Yugoslavia?”
His eyes widen with surprise and he says, “You know where that is?”
“Yeah, dude. I’m Hungarian. I’ve travelled up and down Yugoslavia by train and bus multiple times. When World War One ended, the Serbs went looking for my grandfather, because they wanted to kill him.”
Jose looks down at his feet and replies, “Oh, shit, dude. You know what happened there, right?”
“You mean, like Srebenica?”
“YEAH! Srebenica!!! I was there, man, when it happened!”
OH MY GOD.
I sat there in that black leather office chair, staring at Jose in his bright yellow safety vest with silver, reflective strips, and his hard hat, that make him look like a construction worker. I stared into his empty, hurt eyes, and then I stared at his short, black hair that is gray along the sides of his head, and saw that he has never gotten rid of his Army haircut. He is permanently stuck in 1995.
Jose leans back in his office chair and starts talking.
“I was in the reserves man, in an artillery unit, and we got activated and they assigned us to NATO. Man, I’d never been nowhere in my life, and now I’m in this beautiful country with pine trees and rivers and mountains, and all these people that hate each other. That dude, Slobodan Milosevich? He was an asshole. They shoulda shot his ass. Motherfucker killed women and children. Man, I was 19 years old, and I was digging up the bodies, man. They killed all these women and children. I remember digging in the dirt, and this 5 year old girl’s foot came out of the dirt. Man, it was so small. It didn’t affect me, at the time, man, but now I have a daughter…”
Jose stops talking. Tears well in his eyes, and he sits there, silently.
He regains his composure, and continues,
“Man, it didn’t bother me until I had a kid, you know? Once my daughter was born, I realized what those fuckers did. Bunch of fucking murderers, man. They were like gang members, and it was weird, ‘cause we were like the cops—we couldn’t just go in there: somebody had to call us, and ask us to do something. I hated that, man. I wanted to just go in there, and stop those dudes. They were called the…the…the…”
“The Skorpions?”
“Yeah! The Skorpions! They were death squads, man. I hate those motherfuckers, to this day. They almost killed us.”
“What happened?”
“We got a call, and drove into them. They would just set up a roadblock where-ever, and we were in 3 Humvees, and they had all kinds of trucks and cars set up, and we drove right into their roadblock, and their leader said ‘Come out of the car. Come on, we’re your friends. Give us your guns. We won’t hurt you!’ I didn’t believe him, man. I knew they would kill us, and bury us in the forest, somewhere. I was scared, man. We were seriously fucking outnumbered. I was lucky, man, my platoon sergeant was a CHP from Sacramento. Experienced cop. He told me, ‘Don’t give them your gun. Stay in the car.’ He told them to back off, and let us through, and their leader kept saying, ‘Come out of the car. Give us your guns. We’re your friends.’ So my sergeant pulled the lever on his M-16 and said, ‘Lock and Load!” real loud, and pointed his gun at the Serbs. That CHP cop saved us, man. I owe that Sacramento cop my life. He wasn’t afraid of them, and they knew it. He saved my life, man. But it affected me, man. When I came back, I was fucked up. After I got out (of the Army) I went through my troubles, man. I drank, I kept arguing with everybody. Kaiser told me I needed better help. They said, ‘Wait, you were in the Army, in a war? You need to go to the VA’. So I went to the VA, man, and talked with these dudes who went to Vietnam, and they were like me, man.”
Jose then recounted his drug and alcohol abuse, and how he clawed his way back into the real world, all for the sake of being a father to his little girl—the love of his life. He also told me about how he had been thinking of killing himself, and was driving his car, and was stopped at a red light, and when he said out loud, “God, do you even exist?” a shooting star flashed by, and he took that as a sign from God, and now he’s another one of those ex-Catholics (I don’t know what’s more annoying: ex-smokers, or ex-Catholics) who is a strident follower of some fundamentalist church that knows when the world is going to end, and all of the signs are there in the Bible, blah blah blah…
Normally, when some religious numbnut starts “proving” to me that the Bible has accurately predicted various historical events, along with next week’s winning lotto numbers, I quickly lose my patience, but in this case, I gave Jose a free pass. He deserves it. It’s his way of dealing with PTSD caused by his wartime military service.
As I drove away that morning, I thought about him all the way back to my office. I thought about him at home, that night, when I saw my 2 kids. I also kept thinking about the phenomenal number of Iraq War and Afghanistan veterans out there. Jose is only a few years younger than me, in his late 30s, but what about all of the 21 and 31 year-olds out there? How many 25 year old Mexican ex-Marines and soldiers are there in East L.A., who can’t tell their mom what they saw in Fallujah, or Kandahar?
So, the next time you’re driving your car, and you see some minority dude on the side of the road in boots, jeans, a t-shirt, a day-glow safety vest with silver, metallic reflector strips, and a hard hat, ask yourself who that guy is, and if he’s ever been to Afghanistan.
Or Yugoslavia.
So, what did we actually see? If you look at Jeff Cowell’s photograph, you can see that Venus is this little, tiny ball in front of the gigantic ball of fire that is the Sun.
Here’s the thing: Earth is the same size as Venus:
Earth - 7,926 miles (12,756 km) in diameter
Venus - 7,521 miles (12,104 km) in diameter
So, by standing in our driveway, and seeing this little tiny planet that is the same size as our planet, live, through our own scope, we got to see just how small our world is.
Well, recently I found out just how small my world is.
To say that there are Mexicans in the eastern part of the City of Los Angeles—referred to as East L.A.—is like pointing out that there are Jews in Brooklyn. My job sends me to East L.A. on a regular basis, whenever a truck sets off the radiation alarms at this facility that receives shipments. The routine is that some truck driver shows up, something inside his truck—that he is unaware of—sets off the radiation alarms, and I get called. When I arrive, I use special equipment—the equivalent of a 1960s laboratory in a device the size of a laptop—to figure out what is inside the truck, where it is, and how radioactive it is. After we determine that everything is okay, I fill out paperwork, and tell them how to proceed. So far, nothing dangerous, life-threatening, etc., has ever shown up at this facility that is hidden in a little pocket neighborhood. That’s okay. If—God forbid—anything dangerous or weird ever should show up, we will respond accordingly.
Two weeks ago I drove up to their office, and decided to park ass-backwards, to hasten my exit when I’m done. The manager came out, and upon seeing the Obama 2012 bumper sticker on the back of the Jeep, he enquired, “You’re a Democrat?”
“Yeah!”
“I’m a Republican. I like war.”
I stared at him, speechless.
Last week I had to drive over to his facility for the usual reason, and after identifying the isotope in his truck, we sat in his office, studying the truck’s route, in order to figure out who the moron was who put radioactive junk into his truck. If we can figure it out, I can fine them. That’s right: I can write you a ticket, like the cops. I’m the radiation cop and I’ve got the badge to prove it.
So I’m sitting there at Jose’s (his real name) big wooden desk, studying his haircut that may—or may not be a military haircut—and he circles back to last week’s comment about liking war.
He says, “You ever been in the military?”
“Yeah, I was in the Army.”
“Me too. I was in the Balkans.”
Holy shit. That makes sense. He’s a little bit younger than me. I lucked out. I nailed it perfectly: I served after the invasion of Panama, and before the Gulf War. I have never fired a shot in anger, or been in danger of hostile forces shooting me. Him? He must have been in during the late 80s/early 90s.
He doesn’t know that I’m Hungarian, and that I have traveled all over Europe. I flash back to my friend Richard Kostrenic in San Pedro, a Slovene who said 5 years before it happened: “When Tito dies, the country is going to catch on fire. They’ll be at each other’s throats. Richard predicted that Yugoslavia would break up in a bloodbath.
I ask Jose, “Yugoslavia?”
His eyes widen with surprise and he says, “You know where that is?”
“Yeah, dude. I’m Hungarian. I’ve travelled up and down Yugoslavia by train and bus multiple times. When World War One ended, the Serbs went looking for my grandfather, because they wanted to kill him.”
Jose looks down at his feet and replies, “Oh, shit, dude. You know what happened there, right?”
“You mean, like Srebenica?”
“YEAH! Srebenica!!! I was there, man, when it happened!”
OH MY GOD.
I sat there in that black leather office chair, staring at Jose in his bright yellow safety vest with silver, reflective strips, and his hard hat, that make him look like a construction worker. I stared into his empty, hurt eyes, and then I stared at his short, black hair that is gray along the sides of his head, and saw that he has never gotten rid of his Army haircut. He is permanently stuck in 1995.
Jose leans back in his office chair and starts talking.
“I was in the reserves man, in an artillery unit, and we got activated and they assigned us to NATO. Man, I’d never been nowhere in my life, and now I’m in this beautiful country with pine trees and rivers and mountains, and all these people that hate each other. That dude, Slobodan Milosevich? He was an asshole. They shoulda shot his ass. Motherfucker killed women and children. Man, I was 19 years old, and I was digging up the bodies, man. They killed all these women and children. I remember digging in the dirt, and this 5 year old girl’s foot came out of the dirt. Man, it was so small. It didn’t affect me, at the time, man, but now I have a daughter…”
Jose stops talking. Tears well in his eyes, and he sits there, silently.
He regains his composure, and continues,
“Man, it didn’t bother me until I had a kid, you know? Once my daughter was born, I realized what those fuckers did. Bunch of fucking murderers, man. They were like gang members, and it was weird, ‘cause we were like the cops—we couldn’t just go in there: somebody had to call us, and ask us to do something. I hated that, man. I wanted to just go in there, and stop those dudes. They were called the…the…the…”
“The Skorpions?”
“Yeah! The Skorpions! They were death squads, man. I hate those motherfuckers, to this day. They almost killed us.”
“What happened?”
“We got a call, and drove into them. They would just set up a roadblock where-ever, and we were in 3 Humvees, and they had all kinds of trucks and cars set up, and we drove right into their roadblock, and their leader said ‘Come out of the car. Come on, we’re your friends. Give us your guns. We won’t hurt you!’ I didn’t believe him, man. I knew they would kill us, and bury us in the forest, somewhere. I was scared, man. We were seriously fucking outnumbered. I was lucky, man, my platoon sergeant was a CHP from Sacramento. Experienced cop. He told me, ‘Don’t give them your gun. Stay in the car.’ He told them to back off, and let us through, and their leader kept saying, ‘Come out of the car. Give us your guns. We’re your friends.’ So my sergeant pulled the lever on his M-16 and said, ‘Lock and Load!” real loud, and pointed his gun at the Serbs. That CHP cop saved us, man. I owe that Sacramento cop my life. He wasn’t afraid of them, and they knew it. He saved my life, man. But it affected me, man. When I came back, I was fucked up. After I got out (of the Army) I went through my troubles, man. I drank, I kept arguing with everybody. Kaiser told me I needed better help. They said, ‘Wait, you were in the Army, in a war? You need to go to the VA’. So I went to the VA, man, and talked with these dudes who went to Vietnam, and they were like me, man.”
Jose then recounted his drug and alcohol abuse, and how he clawed his way back into the real world, all for the sake of being a father to his little girl—the love of his life. He also told me about how he had been thinking of killing himself, and was driving his car, and was stopped at a red light, and when he said out loud, “God, do you even exist?” a shooting star flashed by, and he took that as a sign from God, and now he’s another one of those ex-Catholics (I don’t know what’s more annoying: ex-smokers, or ex-Catholics) who is a strident follower of some fundamentalist church that knows when the world is going to end, and all of the signs are there in the Bible, blah blah blah…
Normally, when some religious numbnut starts “proving” to me that the Bible has accurately predicted various historical events, along with next week’s winning lotto numbers, I quickly lose my patience, but in this case, I gave Jose a free pass. He deserves it. It’s his way of dealing with PTSD caused by his wartime military service.
As I drove away that morning, I thought about him all the way back to my office. I thought about him at home, that night, when I saw my 2 kids. I also kept thinking about the phenomenal number of Iraq War and Afghanistan veterans out there. Jose is only a few years younger than me, in his late 30s, but what about all of the 21 and 31 year-olds out there? How many 25 year old Mexican ex-Marines and soldiers are there in East L.A., who can’t tell their mom what they saw in Fallujah, or Kandahar?
So, the next time you’re driving your car, and you see some minority dude on the side of the road in boots, jeans, a t-shirt, a day-glow safety vest with silver, metallic reflector strips, and a hard hat, ask yourself who that guy is, and if he’s ever been to Afghanistan.
Or Yugoslavia.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Thursday: Sandia Crest
After class, we drove up from downtown Albuquerque, elevation 5,000 feet, to Sandia Crest.
I suspect that this is an Eastern Fence LIzard,
Jean takes pictures of the eastern half of New Mexico.
I can see Texas from here!
female Broad-tailed Hummingbird
male Western Bluebird
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Albuquerque Day 4
Finally, we did something interesting, today! That's why there are no blog entries for Monday and Tuesday.
I need to go back, and post some more of my photos that I took on Sunday. It just takes a long time to upload each picture, because they require a lot of MegaBytes, and Blogger's server is slow.
Well, I'm not the first Hungarian to visit New Mexico. The building, above, is proof of that.
One of these days I'll tell the story of the time I ate chocolate cake with Edward Teller (Teller Ede).
Our tour bus
Fat Man and Little Boy
Fat Man was your basic atomic bomb where you slammed 2 pieces of subcritical Uranium 235 into each other at high speed, and their combined mass went critical so fast that the fission reaction went out of control.
In other words, it went "boom".
Little Boy's design was more complicated: they had a single lump of Plutonium 239 that was surrounded symmetrically on all sides by high explosives. When they got all of the explosives to go off at exactly the same time--down to the last millionth of a second--the lump of Plutonium got compressed inward to the point that it went critical.
The museum does dedicate part of its exhibit to the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also starts the exhibit with a display of 1930s and 40s era Japanese Army radios, rifles, and "Samurai" swords (actually, they're officers' swords).
They also have exhibits about the positive uses of radioactive materials.
This is a patient getting a nuclear medicine scan.
Here's a depressing thought: I know how to operate this scanner on display.
That's how long I've been a nuclear medicine technologist.
Hey, this is cool: This is Hal Anger's ORIGINAL gamma camera!
This is the original nuclear medicine scanner. Wow.
I need to find out why they have this small Navy aircraft carrier jet plane on display.
They also have a B-52 on display in the back.
My friend Tony Maldonado was one of the last tail gunners in the back of a B-52 bomber.
Too weird.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Don't Pick Your Nose in New Mexico
This wasn't my plane but with the turbulence it felt like we were in something this small.
female Wood Duck with babies, male Wood Duck
White-winged Dove
female Black-chinned Hummingbirds
The Rio Grande. Doesn't look impressive, but its water flows at a fastpace. Don't fall in.
This is Art and Joanie. They set up their truck on side of the road, near the Rio Grande Nature Center, and bar b que ribs
that will knock your socks off.
Art was a tunnel rat in Vietnam.
Enough said.
They give you a jalapeno with your bar-b-qued ribs. After you bite into the jalapeno, don't rub your eyes, and definitely don't pick your nose. Unless you want to end up in the hospital.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
THE BALFASZ
Friday 27 April 2012
I, ladies and gentlemen, am a balfasz.
The literal translation of the Hungarian word balfasz is “He whose reproductive organ points to the left”. The connotation of the word is “Incompetent moron”. Hungarian is a colorful language.
Today was proof that I am the ultimate, world champion balfasz.
It all started out innocently, enough: just another boring, suburban morning, heading off to work, to continue the inspection of a hospital where—of all people—my best friend in charge of radiation safety. I stared at the Jeep, and decided that as old and tired as she is (232,000 miles, leaking oil, needs a transmission job), I could take public transportation to my friend’s hospital, and leave the Jeep in Claremont.
Brilliant idea.
So I took the train to Baldwin Park—not the best of neighborhoods—and found the bench for the city bus that goes to his hospital.
Before I go on, a disclaimer: I have been riding that same Metrolink train back & forth between Claremont and Union Station while typing on a laptop during the entire trip, for at least 6 years—without a problem.
All I remember from this morning is this: the train slowed to a stop at Baldwin Park, I stood up, closed the laptop, stepped off the train, and walked to the bus stop. I also remember putting the laptop down on a steel box, and thinking to myself, “Don’t put your laptop here. You could leave it here.”
Then I remember getting on the bus, putting down my backpack, and fishing $1.25 out of the small pouch.
Then I remember getting off the bus at the hospital, and taking out my binoculars. It’s spring migration, my co-worker was still half an hour away, and the hospital grounds has lots of trees.
Then I remember arriving at my friend’s office, quite a distance from the hospital’s main building, and thinking, “Let me sit outside at this picnic table outside his office. I’ll work on my laptop, until my co-worker gets here.”
Then I opened my backpack, and there was no laptop in it.
My blood ran cold.
I have lost a government-issue laptop full of nuclear stuff. They’re going to fire me.
Nope, probably not. They are going to send Daniel Craig. When I open my kitchen door, he’s going to point a 9 millimeter with a silencer attached at me, and I will fall to the ground with a crimson splotch on my forehead.
Great.
My friend’s office is literally next-door to the hospital’s (armed) security office, so I ran in there, and asked them to send a guard straight to the bus stop on the street, hoping against hope that when I got off the bus, I put my laptop on the bus stop bench, while extracting my binoculars. Or was it that wooden bench next to the statue of the Virgin Mary, on the hospital grounds?
The lady in the security office looked at me like I’m an asshole.
Believe it or not, some salesman in an Acura volunteered to help me. He drove me back to the bus stop, and to a couple of other spots around the hospital grounds (it’s a really big hospital).
No laptop. Somebody shoot me. Just kill me now.
I whip out my Android, and look up the bus company’s phone number. A very helpful lady takes my information, and tells me that if they have my laptop, they will call me ASAP.
So I use my government-issue Blackberry to call my co-worker, and beg her to pick me up, and drive me back to the Metrolink train station, 5 miles away. I am guessing that I left the laptop on that steel box that I told myself not to leave it on. On the cell phone, she’s confused as to why I need her to drive me, since I have a car. I explain to her that instead of driving—like I did yesterday—I took public transportation. She screeches to a halt at the hospital front door, and as I jump into her car, I see a rolled up practice paper target on the floor. Looking at her groupings—or lack thereof—I surmise that she’s not a very good shot.
Like a bad Starsky and Hutch episode (is there such thing as a good Starsky & Hutch episode?), we go tearing down the streets of the San Gabriel Valley, two wheels off the ground while we take the corners. Sliding to a stop at the Baldwin Park train station, I jump out of her car, and run to the steel box.
No laptop.
While I am walking towards a bus with the same number as the one I took earlier this morning, a train towards Claremont comes in and out of the station. Too bad. I could have taken that train home to Claremont, and used the Jeep to drive back out here, so that I can search for the laptop. Well, I guess I’ll take the next one. So of course, I can’t talk to the bus driver, because there is no bus driver on the bus.
Oh, look: there’s a voicemail on my Android. That’s probably the bus company calling to tell me that they found my laptop. All will be well. Life is good. I listen to my voicemail:
“Mister Miko? Yes, my name is Jane Smith; I’m calling from Claremont Elementary School. We need you to come pick up your daughter. She’s in the office, with abdominal pain.”
OH MY GOD. I’ve lost my laptop, I don’t have a car, the train to Claremont just left, and my kid is sick. Let me call my wife.
She doesn’t answer her cell phone, or the house phone. Oh, wait, she volunteers at that school for special kids, let me call their office. The person who answers the phone there has no idea who my wife is. So I keep calling the house, and her cell.
That’s when I notice that the batteries are dying on both cell phones: my personal Android, and my government-issue Blackberry.
Okay, let me re-phrase that: I’ve lost my laptop, I don’t have a car, the train to Claremont just left, my kid is sick, and both of my cell phones are dying.
That’s when I found out that the next train to Claremont is in 2 and ½ hours.
The train from Claremont arrived, and when the doors closed, they closed on an old guy who was too slow stepping off the train. I just sat there on a bench, and watched. Hey, why not? I’m stuck here for 2 & ½ hours, I have no laptop, no cell phone, and I left my Michael Connelly book at home. That’s how I met Ernie the Jehova’s Witness, who literally fell off the train clutching his walker, wearing half-glasses, and a fake coonskin cap—complete with a fake raccoon tail hanging to the side of his head.
After the train conductor extracted Ernie from the train, Ernie shuffled over to the same Metrolink dedicated landline phone that I had already used to report my missing laptop, turned his walker around, adjusted his coonskin hat and reading glasses, and got ready to talk. First, he said “hi” to a short, dark woman named Ramona, with tattoos, long straight hair, and a male Rottweiler on a choke-chain leash. The dog weighed just as much as she did.
The Metrolink operator answered the phone, and Ernie started in:
“Hello? Yes, I’m at the Baldwin Park station. My name is Ernie Smith. I’m 70 years old, and I have prostate cancer. I’m here with Ramona, she’s an Indian woman. What? No. She’s a real American Indian. She’s homeless. She’s one of the local characters, you know. Everybody knows her. She has her dog with her. You see, my first wife died of cancer, and my son is an award-winning artist. Well, anyway, as I was getting off the train, the doors slammed on my, and now my knee hurts, but you know, when you’re 70 years old, and you have prostate cancer, you’re never sure what hurts, and why.” Ernie peers at me over his reading glasses at me, and says, “Also with me, is…what’s your name, sir?”
“Tom Miko.”
Ernie returns to the phone and continues, “Also with me is Tom Pico. He’s a witness. He saw everything.” Ernie waves at Ramona and says, “Stick around, Ramona, there might be some money in this.” Ernie returns to his victim on the phone and says, "Listen, I have something very important to tell you: read the Bible. It contains God's word, and the promise of eternal life. When he sets things right, you will have a perfect body, and live for thousands of years."
Ramona stops right in front of me, and the Rottweiler can smell my female Basset Hound’s scent on my pants, so of course he starts sniffing me. At this point I have decided that if this Rottweiler is horny, and he starts to dry hump my pants, who am I to stop him? It’s like the rumors you hear about the main L.A. County jail. What happens in prison stays in prison.
Needless to say, I enjoyed listening to Ernie call every agency, company, and authority that he could think of during the next 2 and ½ hours, and tell them about the time he took his first wife to Tijuana for herbal remedies for her breast cancer, and about how his son—a talented artist—designed an inter-changeable Mickey Mouse toothbrush for the Chinese, until that sweet, sweet freedom train to Claremont whisked me away. At the Claremont train station I jumped into the Jeep, picked up my daughter, and took her home, where my wife was playing video games on the internet, and demanded to know why am I not at work, why did I bring our daughter home, and why didn’t I call her?
Just, just put a bullet in my brain. I can’t take it, any more.
Okay, now I am going to set up a crisis center, and track down my laptop. I plug the Android and the Blackberry into their chargers, boot up my wife’s laptop, and start using the house phone to call all of the places that I have been this morning.
First place I call says, “Yeah, Dude, you left your laptop on the bus. Driver turned it in at nine o’clock, this morning. When you gonna come pick it up? We close at 4:00, and wanna go home. What’s with you doctors that leave your laptops on the bus? Don’t be like George.”
“George?”
“Yeah, George is this doctor that works at your hospital. He’s already left his laptop on the bus FOUR TIMES. We told him, hey George, next time you leave your laptop on the bus, man, we’re keepin’ it!”
Since I went to the hospital wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a tie on a hot day, they assumed that I was a doctor.
I am not a doctor, I am a balfasz.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Plastic Ocean
So I just finished reading this book titled Plastic Ocean, by Captain Charles Moore. It has everything: San Pedro, birders, Masked Boobies, Catalina Island, Laysan Albatrosses, the plastics industry, Long Beach, Black-footed Albatrosses, sea turtles, Hawaii, the Fukushima disaster, the L.A.River, plastic bags, the San Gabriel River, and rubber ducks.
This book is a dizzying travelogue of the world's oceans, the continents, chemistry, history, politics, marine biology, meteorology, romance, nautical terminology, and nerve-wracking days floating at sea, praying for the wind to pick up, because you don't have enough diesel to make it back to Hawaii.
So I wrote a post to the L.A. Birdwatchers' email list about the book, and exhorted the local Audubon chapters to invite the author to speak at monthly meetings.
So of course, an idiot birder hit "Reply All" and huffed indignantly, "Does this email have anything to do with a rare bird sighting?"
Oh. My. God.
Where do I turn in my Swarovskis? I don't want to be associated with these idiots, any more.
Okay, Jethro, let me explain it to you in plain English: There's a shitload of plastic trash from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Korea floating in in the Pacific Ocean. Millions of tons. That's right: MILLIONS of tons. Laysan Albatrosses, Masked Boobies, and other tropical seabirds are eating that plastic, and feeding it to their babies. Their numbers are declining...so...next time you pay $200 to go 100 miles off-shore on the Condor Express, and don't see anything interesting, here's what I want you to do:
When the Condor docks in Santa Barbara, I want you to drive straight to my house in Claremont (it'll only take you 2 hours!), and ring my door bell. When I open the door, don't flinch when I smack you in the head with my copy of Plastic Ocean.
Food for thought: Okay, now lean close.
Closer.
No, no. Closer.
Now, squint at the photograph.
That's right: As soon as the Claremont Library received this book, they slapped a protective plastic dust jacket onto it.
This book is a dizzying travelogue of the world's oceans, the continents, chemistry, history, politics, marine biology, meteorology, romance, nautical terminology, and nerve-wracking days floating at sea, praying for the wind to pick up, because you don't have enough diesel to make it back to Hawaii.
So I wrote a post to the L.A. Birdwatchers' email list about the book, and exhorted the local Audubon chapters to invite the author to speak at monthly meetings.
So of course, an idiot birder hit "Reply All" and huffed indignantly, "Does this email have anything to do with a rare bird sighting?"
Oh. My. God.
Where do I turn in my Swarovskis? I don't want to be associated with these idiots, any more.
Okay, Jethro, let me explain it to you in plain English: There's a shitload of plastic trash from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Korea floating in in the Pacific Ocean. Millions of tons. That's right: MILLIONS of tons. Laysan Albatrosses, Masked Boobies, and other tropical seabirds are eating that plastic, and feeding it to their babies. Their numbers are declining...so...next time you pay $200 to go 100 miles off-shore on the Condor Express, and don't see anything interesting, here's what I want you to do:
When the Condor docks in Santa Barbara, I want you to drive straight to my house in Claremont (it'll only take you 2 hours!), and ring my door bell. When I open the door, don't flinch when I smack you in the head with my copy of Plastic Ocean.
Food for thought: Okay, now lean close.
Closer.
No, no. Closer.
Now, squint at the photograph.
That's right: As soon as the Claremont Library received this book, they slapped a protective plastic dust jacket onto it.
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