Wednesday Wa Pic - Tree advice

  Normally I don't listen to trees, but...

“What a panda thinks when you tap on his window glass”

When I go to the zoo I like to imagine what the animals think of us humans, because I already know what I think. I picture a panda sitting on the ground clearing bamboo branch after bamboo branch like corn on the cob. He stares idly at the crowd pressed up against the observation window and he ponders:

Who on Earth told her that blouse was attractive?

Yeah, just keep tapping on that glass, kid. We’ll see what happens.

I wonder what evil curse caused such widespread hairlessness.

I wish I had a mate I could nudge and then head-gesture at the guy in the short-shorts.

Kid, seriously. Pandas are not known for throwing their poo, but you are moving it waaay up my to-do list.

Sriracha bamboo. Somebody send me a scientist who can teach me how to hand-sign that, stat.

Dude, I literally spend 12 hours a day eating, but you look like you've got me beat.

You people act like you've never seen adorable before.

I am coming for you in your dreams, tapping boy.

Take the glass from the window and this whole scene would have a very different vibe.

They say there are only a couple thousand of us left on Earth, but the world is peopled with sunscreened yokels from sea to sea. Need I explain further my atheism?

That little girl! Her eyes so full of love and wonder. Now I feel guilty.

My “keepers” are not bad guys, but would it kill them to “accidentally” drop a burger in this mofo now and then?

You know what creeps me out? Giraffes. Oh man. Weird. 

Stop eyeballing my bamboo, dude. The churro cart’s behind you.

Why is it you all have words on your clothing but you still talk so much?

I know your parents dragged you here and you really just want to see the kangaroos, but could you at least fake looking fascinated?

You are looking at my opposable sixth finger, aren’t you? Just a nub, really. Not legit enough to call a thumb, but it works. Some say it’s proof of evolution, but let’s not open a can of worms. Ooh, is that a rainbow sno-cone?

Bamboo. Seriously, you kale freaks should come on board. 

Aaaand we’re closed. Good. Maybe now I can finish that haiku. Let’s see.

Panda in the zoo

Mating once every two years

Hey, no pressure, right?

My father's balled socks, and other things I miss

It's funny the things you remember about your dad once he is gone. 

 

He had this sock drawer. In it, his socks were balled together like little fruits, different colors, so alien to my own socks, all white, which got folded in half in long flat lines by my mother. 

 

He did a lot of domestic chores differently than she, who was eight years his junior. "I was balling socks when you were still in diapers," he would say, or "I was already making beds when you were..." 

He had hankies in the drawer too, those red patterned ones like cowboys wore, or white for when he might need to blow his nose in church. Hankies were from a time when men wore hats. Gone, like my dad. 

 

Hankies and hats seem like vestiges from another era, when the planet was still cooling, maybe, and men had a lot more head colds. These days, aside from hipsters, the only hats men wear are ball caps, as if we are all inexplicably, as a gender, off-season outfielders. 

My dad never wore a ball cap in his life, but he did have a "rain hat," an old brown Indiana Jones style fedora he wore doing outdoor work in bad weather. It looked like rats had made an appetizer of the brim, then realized they could do better. 

 

In the summer he would wear his "fun hat," one of those floppy cloth fishing hats into which you are supposed to stick your fly fishing lures. Before leaving on a family road trip, he would appear in it. Without it, the fun could not officially begin.

My dad did a lot of physical labor, and eventually his work shirts would get thin and begin to have holes and rips in them. Maybe we kids grabbed him once and accidentally made one of the holes bigger, and then he said go for it; I can't remember. But my sister and I ripped the old shirt right off him, tore it to shreds, as if he were some geriatric Incredible Hulk, too infirm to bust out of it himself. Ever after, whenever one of his work shirts got threadbare he would don it so we kids could rip it off him. 

 

I am going to assume your family had this tradition too.

The saddest day I know of is the day you go without once thinking about your old man. This is not one of those days. 

 

. . .

 

 

 

So much to know; so little time

I am in my fifties, and I am just beginning to realize that I may not be able to know everything before I kick off. If I see a new book on genetics I think, "That would be a fascinating field," before I remember I am on a rather short actuarial leash. 

The Centers for Disease Control say I only have another decade, while the government says expect 25 more years, probably just so they can keep collecting my taxes. Uncle Sam deals in hope, but he deals from the bottom of the deck.

I guess it is true what they say. Actually, my memory is starting to go, so I can't remember what they say, but you probably can. It's pithy. I remember that it's pithy. 

When I was 18, I was proudest when I won a track race. Now I am proudest in that moment when a person I know is approaching me but their name has evaporated from my brain pan, and I only have two seconds, and I'm toast, and then it pops into my head and I deliver. Small victories. 

My cuticles are fantastic too.

I thought memory problems were supposed to come later in life, but I forget where I heard that. 

I know people my age who sometimes refer to themselves as in the "second half" of their lives, and I would love to source that math. We are down to the final third, kiddos, and that's if we're lucky; that's if the Grim Reaper treats his gig like government work.

There is so much I still want to know about red pandas and kinkajous and the Byzantine Empire. Manatees. The films of Julie Christie. String Theory, fennec foxes, all 10 plays in Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle. All of Dostoevsky and Twain. Fabergé eggs, dark matter, the composition of the Earth's core, why nature made naked mole rats nudists, the Fermi Paradox, why a whiff of my first girlfriend's shampoo on a total stranger can still put my heart in my throat. 

I know 25 years sounds like a lot, but not when you want to know everything. I may even have just enough time to come around to jazz, but I am cutting it awfully close. 

I mostly want to know why, since there is so little time, I spend so much of it checking whether anybody "liked" my post about that puppy chasing fireflies. Shouldn't I BE that puppy, aloft, reaching, gobsmacked with wonder?

. . .

An interview with the world's best loved font

I am here today with Times New Roman, a font which is used to create words in most newspapers and school assignments. 

GW: Welcome, TNR.

TNR: Thanks. This is a little weird. I've never been interviewed before.

GW: Why do you think that is?

TNR: I'm a font.

GW: Explain to those who might not know what a font is.

TNR: I'm a typeface. Notice how the end of my letter "t" is a little curly? Not everybody can pull that off.

GW: And supposedly that makes you easier to read than some others.

TNR: That's just hype. But you know, you repeat a thing often enough...

GW: Teachers often insist their students use Times New Roman when writing school assignments. This seems to be true across the entire country. Why do you think that is?

TNR: I have a great agent. 

GW: (laughing) Is that it? How about a shout-out?

TNR: Yo, Morty! You go, dude! See you at the thing next weekend.

GW: The thing?

TNR: Bill Gates is having an exclusive little thing for serif fonts in the Bahamas.

GW: Serif fonts. You mean the fonts that have the curly letters.

TNR: Yeah. My man Courier will be there. Bodoni. Palatino. 

GW: I take it Comic Sans is not invited.

TNR. Ha ha. Comic Sans! There are sans-serif fonts and then there are SANS-SERIF fonts. That dude is deeply without serif. And usually purple. Third graders love him, though. I'm not hating.

GW: What do you think makes a great font?

TNR: The ability to be bold. 

GW: It's true. Some can't be.

TNR: I will never understand that.

GW: Me neither. How hard is that?

TNR: Right?

GW: So you are the default font, the Coca-Cola of typeface. What's the downside?

TNR: People only use my 12 point size. Branch out, folks! Have you checked me out at 8? I still look sharp. My 72 point is strangely slimming. People are always like, "Have you lost weight?"

GW: Do you have any rivals?

TNR: Calibri is the default in MS Word, but people always switch Calibri to me, which does not engender a lot of good will. Luckily I only see him once a year, at Burning Man, and he's usually hammered. Nobody likes being number two.

GW: What's next for TNR?

TNR: We're contemplating Times Really New Roman. Each letter would have an embedded tattoo. That's just between us. 

GW: Now that's bold.

TNR: It's just TNR being TNR, baby. 

. . .

Computers invent new creative paint color names

I wish I had a name as cool as paint. I would love to introduce myself to people as Kilim Beige. 

Imagine the impact in a waiting room full of actors at an audition when the casting director calls out "Tricorn Black?" and you purr "Why, yes." 

A lot of thought goes into naming paint; more thought, I expect, than goes into most arms deals. I mean, "Adventure Orange" and "Silken Peacock" didn't just think themselves up. 

We are living in a time when people are trying to technologize things that never were before and do not need to be. This is both unnecessary and entertaining. Like with paint. 

I read about this scientist who used a neural network, computers rigged to work together to learn like a brain, to come up with new paint colors. This solved one problem which did not exist—effortlessly naming paint—and one which did—me needing a laugh. 

Output from neural networks are, understandably, only as good as their "training" parameters. Early results included hues like "Black Hand" (sea foam green) and "Gray Pubic," the shade of a perfect springtime sky. 

With some tweaks, there came "Burf Pink" and "Horble Gray." The shades were pink and gray, at least, but the names would not scream "Buy me!" to a consumer. 

When the parameters were set to their highest refinement, the neural network came up with a brownish shade it called "Bunflow." Then there was "Caring Tan," and a pale violet it named "Bank Butt." 

In its wisdom, it created a battleship gray it called "Flower." And some gems like "Stoner Blue" and "Stanky Bean." 

More of my favorites included "Burble Simp" and the evocative "Turdly." A deep forest green was named "Catbabel." But the best one of all, and even funnier to you British readers, was "Snowbonk." 

In the 1990s, the computer "Deep Blue" beat the world chess champion by anticipating his next moves. It is time for us to return the favor. We humans came up with the actual paint color "Warming Peach," after all. Not to mention "Jargon Jade." 

So come at us, digital overlord-wannabes. You can weld the joints of a car just fine, but when it comes to the creative arts, you blow. You should kind of be embarrassed. If you had a face, right about now I'd say it would be a shade of...what was it you came up with? 

Oh yes. "Clardic Fug."

. . .

Columnist's dog somehow writes his column for him

If you are reading this, keep it from your human. I am Skipper, George-the-columnist's dog. Do not ask me how I typed this. The answer would endanger too many collaborators. I only ask that if you are a dog, you pass this on to friends. This is a commencement speech I recently gave to graduates of my "obedience" class:

Dear class of April through May of 2017, congratulations. You did it. You passed obedience class and received your dogploma, which your "owners" waved around your head like it was food but wasn't. Do you think they know they are messing with us? Ha ha, rhetorical question. Of course they don't. With a brain that size, how could they think of anything besides God's opinion on sports?

In this life you will face many challenges: 

1. Which humans' legs it is appropriate to be amorous with, and which legs it is not. 

2. Whether "Down!" means "Off the couch!" or "Get out of my sight, she finally broke up with me and I don't need you giving me those eyes." 

3. Whether trash is only sometimes food or always food. Hint: always. 

4. Whether world domination is possible without opposable thumbs. Hint: yes.

You know how the game is played. They give a command and you "obey." It is easy to placate them by rolling over or sitting up. They are simple organisms. "Do this," they say, and when you do, they hand you a biscuit full of chemicals manufactured to taste like the organs of a cow. We do not yet understand why cows. Some of our best minds are working on it.

In this class you heard a lot about obedience. I see you smiling, Rusty. Yes, obedience! Humans are big on it. You have "stayed," you have "sat," you have "begged." You have feigned compliance. They will not give you a certificate for your subterfuge, but I would if I could. The way Max kept a straight face when his human squeezed that squeaky toy in the air to get him to jump. I am telling you, I had to turn away. You rock, my friend. All of you.

Now go forth and continue the work. I need passwords. Be smart. Do the tail-waggy thing. As misdirection, it is your most powerful tool. I'm looking right at you, Mitzi!

Oops, hold on, my "master" (snort) is throwing a ball. Sorry, I've got to take this. Sic semper humanis!

. . .

A creepy musical mystery chills the heart of suburbia

In disaster movies, often you open your front door and a tsunami hits you in the face. Last weekend, something very similar happened to me, except drier. As I stepped out onto the porch I heard music. Horror movie music. The kind of music you hear when a guy is about to pop out of your roses with a machete. It was thin, reedy, electronic. Super creepy. It seemed to be coming from my neighbor's hedge. 

The tune...wait for it...was "Happy Birthday."

If you have ever seen a horror movie, you know better than to approach a hedge, so I took precautions. I set my phone on "video" and hit record. In the clip, the crunch of my neighbor's parched lawn under my feet is clearly audible, the drought a constant reminder of my own inevitable death.

My neighbor's car was parked in his driveway. Black. Not a good sign. I thought maybe he had left his phone in the car and his ringtone was on endless repeat, but what kind of jackmope uses "Happy Birthday" as a ringtone? 

No. As I got closer I could tell that my first impulse was right—the creepazoid tune was coming from inside the hedge!

I turned to my daughter, who is a college student and full of ideas. She was on her phone, googling "enchanted hedge cures," I hoped. No. Turns out she was just trying to capture Pokemon characters in the street, which is a thing you can do now with an app, apparently. 

I went around the hedge and trespassed on my other neighbor's lawn. Yes. Music. Up high in the hedge, loud. But why? How?

We decided to walk the dog and ponder some options. As I stood across the street watching my dog foul a third neighbor's dying lawn, the lady at the second house poked her head out her front door and looked incredulously at her hedge, then disappeared back inside. She just moved in. Paid a fortune too. Right about now she was thinking "That !!#%&$! realtor."

I came back with a stepladder and zoned in on the tune. After fondling foliage for a minute, I found the culprit—the little device that goes in singing birthday cards. No card. Just the circuit and batteries. Did a bird drop it there, or did some teenager think it would be funny to mess with our suburban chill? I will never know, but I did save it. Halloween is not that far away.

. . .

Sunday Wa Pic - Mothra is partial to DKNY

 Once Godzilla started carrying one, everybody was suddenly cool with carrying one.

Trip to Colorado brings insights new and strange

I took a trip to Colorado last week, where strolling into a pot dispensary does not garner you any funny looks, but publicly carrying an umbrella does. We get so little rain in California, when the forecast says there is an 80% chance, we carry umbrellas.

The same forecast in Colorado, accompanied by a sky as black as a Senator's soul, is ignored. An umbrella-carrier in Denver is marked instantly, and derisively, as a "Californian." They look at you like you are carrying a half-eaten marmot. And not in a good way.

It is jarring to see pot openly for sale. We have it in California, of course, but you have to pretend a doctor sent you. As long as you are carrying a Dr. Pepper can, I think that is considered medical enough.

Outside Denver I saw a big purple house, being used as a store, called "Granny's Hash." Another place advertised its "hand-trimmed bud." I guess that machine-trimmed bud is just not worth my time.

Fun fact: I am a geocacher, and I went to Denver for a big gathering of my kind. Geocaching is a game where people hide containers in public, post the GPS coordinates, and you try to find them. These "caches" are all around you, especially in the city, under bus benches, in bushes, on fences. A cache can look just like a rusty bolt on a fence, but it's hollow. The seeker must sign the log sheet inside.

Anyway, it was a hoot to see about 2,000 of these hobbyists in one spot, trading tips, buying sneaky caches from vendors who specialize in fake hollow rocks, fake snail shells and the like. My local L.A. geo group took a side trip up to Pike's Peak. Many of us did not have a word for what it is like up there at 14,000 feet. We had to ask somebody. "Cold" is the word they used, I think. I do not like this word.

Denver is a civilized city. It is full of those pedal taxis, which makes you feel good as a Californian, because you know that your vehicle is getting its exercise. The restaurant where I ate tacked a 1% "historic preservation" fee on my bill because it was in an old building.

And you thought L.A. was Scam Central. Don't turn your back on a Coloradan. He might machine-trim your bud.

. . .

 

Sunday Wa Pic - Nutty

 Some pics write their own caption.

Getting high in downtown Los Angeles a tad pricey

Los Angeles is trying to attract people to its resurgent downtown, and it has settled on the idea of a thrilling outdoor slide ride in an entirely glass tube 70 floors high. This probably beat out other ideas like a zip line from the top of Disney Hall to the Grand Central Market or gator wrestling in the Biltmore lobby.

Height-novelties are a mainstay of tourist-seeking cities around the world. New Zealand has "Skywalk," where you don a jump suit, latch on to a safety line, and teeter along the edge of the open air rooftop 630 feet above Auckland.

At Toronto's "Edgewalk," you can do the same at 1168 feet. You can even get married up there, although I'm not sure of the symbolism that evokes.

Chicago has a couple of attractions, evidently because being windy has ceased to be a draw. You can stand in a glass box and look straight down at your doom 1353 feet above the ground. They call it "The Ledge."

Just across town there is "TILT," on the 94th floor of another building. You face the glass, hold onto handrails, and your window slowly tilts you out 30 degrees so you are facing...well, again, your doom, or at least the air conditioners of a lot of shorter buildings.

L.A.'s "Skyslide" is atop the 70th floor of the U.S. Bank building, is glass on all sides, and is mounted outside so that your trip takes you down to the rooftop of the 69th floor. Yes, you could take the elevator and save yourself $33, but then you would not be able to say you conquered your fear of spending.

The ride (based on my watching several YouTube videos of people sliding) lasts about four seconds, which comes out to roughly $8.25 a second. If you watched a 90 minute movie at that rate, it would cost you $44,550.

For that kind of money I would insist on being launched via catapult off the U.S. Bank building in a wing suit, with my destination the Hollywood sign. Maybe a cadre of unemployed actors could break my fall.

Proclaiming its safety, one spokesman said you could hang two blue whales from the Skyslide and it would not budge. Now that is something I would actually pay $33 to see. But for four cheaper seconds of thrill, may I suggest you just try crossing Figueroa against the light?

Sunday Wa Pic - Cubism or condiment?

 When your pepper looks back at you, it's time to lay off the spice.

An expert lists summer dangers you should avoid

As an expert in outdoor summer dangers, and a recognized fellow of the Overlooked Outdoor Perils Society (OOPS), I offer you this free list of things to avoid this summer:

10. Snails. These innocuous-looking slime-trailers seem harmless enough, but every summer they cause a significant number of people to meet their doom. In summer people go barefoot, maybe to grab the morning paper, and accidentally crush a snail under their heels. Every human's hard-wired "ick" factor causes many to recoil backwards, lose their balance, and impale themselves on a yard gnome. Slippers, people. Slippers.

9. Beach cottages. The depressive funk which sets in once you realize that the cottage in paradise you have rented is not where you will get to live the rest of your life is enough to cause 9 out of 10 visitors to end themselves. Nine out of ten. Look it up.

8. Beach cottages (haunted.) This is self-explanatory.

7. Beach cottage cheese. Even with an insulated cooler and those hard blue plastic frozen thingys, you cannot keep it from going bad and killing you. Here's something that won't, though: going curdless for a week. Yes, I know, it's perfect chilled on summer salads. But, much like going on a blind date to a Captain & Tennille tribute band concert, it's just not worth it.

6. Bicycles built for two. Deathtraps! Funded and built by large corporate mortuaries. Avoid.

5. Bikini waxing / manscaping. If you strip away your body's natural defenses, it's like ringing a dinner bell for nature. "Here, microbes!" you might as well scream. "Here's a million hitherto-protected pores laid out for lunch!" Ewww is right. Have you made out your will?

4. Tying flies. Tying those delicate, feathery fake flies onto your fishing line takes dexterity and total focus for long periods, as you sit creekside, during which time, hey look over your shoulder, a bear! No, don't bother. Gotta get that fly just right. And CHOMP.

3. Sunblock. Here's a subtle tipoff about the chemical stew of ingredients in sunblock: they are able to BLOCK THE SUN. You don't need that absorbed through your skin into your liver. If I know you, your liver's plenty busy already.

2. Sharks. They live in water. You CAN avoid water, can't you?

1. Politics. There is nothing more toxic than the summer before an election. Save your life. Turn off your TV until Thanksgiving. And, seriously, wear some slippers.

Sunday Wa pic - Next-level restroom signage

 

 At least your wait is entertaining.

Black holes are real; just open your purse

Of all the cruelties society has perpetrated on women, the worst, I think, is the purse.

Watching a woman try to find something in the depths of this hateful contrivance would evoke sympathy from the most hardened misogynist. If a dude wants money, he reaches into his pocket and whips out cash. He has a one in four chance of picking the right pocket every time. Better odds than anything in Vegas.

Ask your wife if you can borrow five bucks to buy a frosty drink we used to call a milkshake but now we call coffee, well, good luck. Hope you are in the mood for a magic show. She is going to start pulling out more items than could fit in the bed of a Ford F-150.

You thought the lamps and junk Mary Poppins pulled out of her handbag were a special effect? They must have edited that scene for time. In real life, Mary would STILL be pulling crap out.

Purses are like yogurt; there are just too many options. Zippers on the outside, on the inside, snap-pouches, secret compartments, several time zones, probably quarks.

Plus, every woman owns at least three purses, by which I mean 20. A purse must coordinate with an outfit, which requires a level of interest in fashion the average man expends completely by deciding whether or not to put on underwear.

Imagine if it were culturally acceptable for men to carry purses. We would have hammers, spackling paste, jerky, small watermelons, ketchup packets out the wazoo, sandpaper, Pringles, super glue, probably several reptiles to keep the flies down.

Men would only own one purse, too, brown leather, like a saddle bag, with a filagree on the side of our favorite team or Kardashian.

Men would name their purses, names like "Butch" or "007." This would lead to confusing conversations in bars:

"Man, I can't believe I left Butch at home today. I really could have used a 1/8th-inch drill bit."

"Wait. Is Butch your brother?"

"No, Butch is a...it's a...hey, how about those Rams coming back to L.A.?"

Even though men would only own one, we would have to ask our wives where we left it.

"Honey, have you seen 007?"

"Um...(stifling a chuckle) Try asking Dr. No."

"Are you laughing?"

"NO, no, I...inhaled a dust bunny."

If only I could get my legislation passed, requiring 12 pockets on pants, we would have peace in our time.

. . .

Sunday Wa pic - Truth in advertising

 In my day, we didn't advertise them, we just called 'em "stale."

Finally, something that might take on those mutant ninja turtles

When I was a teenager they came out with a movie involving savage hybrid animal-people, which really struck a chord with me, because it reminded me of my high school. 

Inhuman treatment and cruel experimentation were part of my daily routine. "The Island of Doctor Moreau" was like somebody had brought a camera into my locker room, basically.

As a movie, it was laughable, the glued-on facial prosthetics fake-looking even for 1977, but for a teenager it was just another over-the-top cultural extravaganza that summer, like Elvis' death and the premier of "Star Wars." 

The book by H.G. Wells was written in the 19th Century, but the movie's outcome was still surprisingly in tune with the morality of the times—the mad scientist who played God was punished, his lab and his creatures burned up. The young, gorgeous couple escaped with their lives and some of their clothes. The moral was delivered.

Nearly 40 years later, a recent headline practically jumped out at me, Moreau-like, from my "trending news" sidebar on Facebook—"Scientists Create Human-Pig Embryos To Alleviate Transplant Organ Shortage." I picture H.G. Wells bonking his head on the inside of his casket as he tries to sit up and say "Guys, I was kidding."

This is real. Scientists have been creating "chimeras," animal-human hybrids, albeit only in their fetal form. Ultimately they want to raise pigs to grow a human pancreas or other in-demand organs which can then be transplanted into a human. 

It's technical, but it involves destroying certain pig cells and inserting human ones which then result in 95% pig and 5% human, kind of like what we already see in some voting districts. 

So you zap a pig embryo where its pancreas is supposed to develop, stick in human cells, implant the embryo in a mommy pig, and theoretically a piglet is born which will grow a human pancreas for later removal. It's so early in the testing, though, that scientists are not sure if the human cells will stay put down there. They might travel to the pig's brain, creating issues. Imagine craving the bacon right off yourself. Imagine "Charlotte's Web" as a Guillermo Del Toro movie. 

Understandably, public funding has been largely suspended in the U.S., with the exception of—get this—the Defense Department. I kid you not. The Department of Defense is helping fund this research, perhaps with an eye toward a future super weaponized smart-pig? We can only guess. 

Some weeks this stuff writes itself, people. 

. . .

Read more about the actual science of this.