digitalprimate

Early this morning, my aged uncle who lives on the TX coast sent the following:

I am replying now because I expect to be cut off from the internet for quite some time after the wind starts up. My connection is a tall, thin microwave antenna on top of my neighbor’s shed, and the shed is not a very sturdy structure. Almost every time we have had a heavy rain the connection has been lost for a time. The mast has been struck several times by lightning. And the one-man operation that installed all this has been bought out by a company in Victoria that has bigger fish to fry.

One of the main reasons I have not wanted to evacuate, after my responsibility to my animals, is the necessity to get through Houston, not all that pleasant under the best of circumstances. Right now they are in the process of turning the south bound lanes of I-45 to Dallas into additional north bound lanes. All of Houston is in gridlock. Cars full of dogs, cats, kids, old folks and pregnant women are running out of gas running from one filling station to another looking for the stuff. Tankers have not been delivering gas for the last 12 or so hours because they can’t get through the mess. The mayor in the meantime is telling people not to hessitate but get out now. How day gonna doo dat? (I expect Martha is trapped in that mess about now. She was planning to head north early this morning. Beth is already in Dallas with relatives of her baby sitter.)

I have about 10 gallons of bottled water, 60 lbs of dog food, 10 lbs of cat food, a freezer full of steaks, lots of canned soup, and some left over meals in boxes left over from Beth’s lunch program from last year. I filled up the car w/gas yesterday, about 10 gallons. I have another 10 gallons in gas cans in the garage. I got an inverter that plugs into the cigarette lighter to keep the steaks from thawing, and the wine from cooking. And 2 large bags of Kingsford briquettes (one mesquite flavored) in case the steaks thaw anyway. If the house does not collapse around me, we will be OK.

Well, that is enough for now.

Jerry

Godspeed uncle.

A line of motorcycles, 20 minutes long, and their police escort, 26 strong, blocked access to the Saw Mill, to New York, today as I tried to go grocery shopping with my son. American flags stralend in the translucent autumn light, reminding one that redneckism is a pan-national affiliation.

The local classic rock station dedicated “Sweet Home Alabama” to the “heroes” of 9/11.

I watered my lawn, marveling that it’s always beautiful weather on 9/11. Was amazed that my son volunteered to my wife that I’d bought spinach.

There was a country western concert tonight, in DC, in support of the troops, because you know all those Latinos and Blacks serving in Iraq love them some good country.

Those of us who were below Canal street that day, hell even below Houston; those of us who lost friends or had friends who lost friends, who understand that being senselessly immolated does not one a hero make; those of us who’s asses are still sitting right atop the bullseye; to the rest of the country who’ve somehow decided that “Patriot Day” is exactly the right time to drag a little radical nationalism into their small lives, by sympathetic magic infusing them with meaning, to you we say:

Fuck you.

No, really. Fuck you.

Driving to Aikido tonight, a motorcyclist passed me. The weather was fine, and although he was driving reasonably and traffic was light, I had a strong sense that something bad was going to happen to him. So strong in fact that despite knowing the roads on which I was driving intimately, I took not one but two wrong, very wrong turns, for example turning South instead of North on the Bronx River Parkway, a fairly major highway around here and one I take often. The sensation disorientated me, subtly drawing my attention to dangerous sections of highway then projecting those backdrops into dire little films that changed constantly but played continuously in the Cartesian movie hall of my head. I couldn’t shake the feeling until I left the highway and hit the classic anytown USA streets of Scarsdale.

Being thrown around for an hour and a half in Aikido, however, did shake the hoodoo out of me, and by the time I left Scarsdale, I’d forgotten all about it until I pulled the sharp left down the ramp to the Bronx River again and, remembering how I’d spooked so easily earlier, chided myself to remember this most obvious example of confirmation bias next time I chalked up being distracted or hitting the new espresso machine too many times to premonitions.

Five minutes later, LE had traffic stopped both directions on the Bronx River Parkway. I dutifully stopped behind an SUV which itself was stopped behind a police cruiser around and beside which a bunch of guys in shorts and t-shirts looking for something with flashlights. My first thought was, this must be a sobriety check point, but that didn’t’ fit what was going on: plainclothes cops with flashlights not being stuck into drivers’ faces. A uniformed officer went by, I asked what was happening, and he replied, “A motorcycle fatality. They’re looking for his body parts.” It was then I noticed most of his leg was about 10 meters in front of me and to the left (just above that pink light squiggle in the photo, near the guardrail. It was hard not to notice when another cop shouted at a ambulance to stop because it was about to run over it.) After the cops detoured us around the Parkway, at the next exit coming from the South you could see what was left of his bike - not much -crushed against the median guardrail - a good 40 or 50 meters from where the rest of him was.

When I recounted this to my wife she pointed out that at least he must have died instantly. I counted eight small to mid size baggies being taken back to the ambulance and saw more parts that needed bagging, so, yes, one would assume that it was quite immediate. In our morgue, I’ve seen bodies hit by subway trains (jumpers) and by cars, and I’ve seen two motorcycle fatalities. I consider myself a person who, for the most part, abides by the laws of physics, but I can’t think of any way to explain how that poor guy got so torn up. Bodies just don’t rip completely apart like that in these types of accidents. The only thing I can think of - and this would explain why only one car was in front of me while there were two cruisers, one blocking traffic on each side of the Parkway - is that after the initial accident, multiple cars didn’t see him or couldn’t stop in time.

At most, I missed witnessing the accident, or even being involved, by five minutes, perhaps the five minutes after class when an unusual turn of a rather random conversation led me to discuss diving spots in Thailand with a classmate headed there in a couple of months. I wrote about premonitions before, and all my disclaimers about them are there. At the time I declared that I almost certainly wouldn’t avoid boarding a jetliner about which I’d just had a premonition. After tonight, I’m not so certain.

What’s a good empiricist to think?

I have this 100 year old oak in my front yard that’s the first tree near my house to loose its leaves in the fall. The other day it was 95F with 95% humidity outside, and what do I see on the steps leading to my front door?

Cue The Byrds.

So there’s a fairly big, Midtown style deli (multiple hot entrees, sandwiches, salad bar, eat in take away - all Mexicans all the time, and yes, we would fucking starve without them) near my office. It has a name, but no one seems to remember it, and we all call it “Tony’s” after it’s gloriously be-maned, loudmouthed owner of indeterminate sexuality.

Anyway, there’s no system to ordering at Tony’s - no take a number device (what the hell are those things called anyway?), no separate line for hot food or sandwiches; you just try to figure out who the last guy in was, and when he’s done ordering, attract attention to yourself as aggressively as possible, preferably without actually injuring anyone around you, unless of course they try to get in an order ahead of you in which case it’s perfectly acceptable to buffet them about the face and shoulders with a hard Italian roll. Or if they’re undercover from the 50 precinct and carrying.

So where was I? Well, here’s what the deli normally looks like:

Usually all we little red stick people line up, more or less at random as you can see from my fine illustration. However, the day in question, people were lined up between two of the aisles of balsamic vinegar and olive oil and potato chips and other deli delights, thusly:

When I first walked in, I found this configuration of fellow primates to be a bit odd, but I figured, what the hell, this is the Bronx. Maybe they’re all together or something. I walked up, said hello to Gilberto who told me he’d be with me in a minute. Then the lady in question (helpfully indicated in the illustration above) said something to the effect of, “Hey, pal, there’s a line here.” To which I responded, “There’s never a line a Tony’s, lady.” She said I should ask the owner, and I replied, I’ll ask Tony when I check out. As she was, in fact, ahead of me, I let her order first, despite the preferential treatment such a valuable, goodchristmastimetipping customer as my self naturally engenders.

The lady in question continued to grumble and give me dirty looks, but I ignored her as she had a wee one with her, probably about three years old, although I did have half a mind to tell her she really shouldn’t be shooting her mouth off around her kid like that.

Now, the dilemma I had was this: The place is a chaos, and often an annoying, conflict producing one, and I’ve told Tony many times he needs a number system, or separate lines - something - but he seems to think the system works fine if only his lazy Mexicans would work harder, which isn’t humanly possible and I’m sure I’ve no idea why one of them hasn’t put a meat cleaver through his sternum yet. I wonder if that line formed spontaneously or if that rather bossy lady manufactured one, preying upon most of my fellow primates’ innate need for order and their willingness to follow the orders of someone who knows what they’re doing. If so, does that invalidate the line solution? Not really, but it as a primate who really, really hates petty tyrants, it really, really pisses me off. I suppose it doesn’t matter as in the end there’s just not enough room to line up an entire lunch crowed between two aisles and there are too many regulars who, as much as it’s possible, know how to work within the current system.

Yet I’m ambiguous about my response to the Bossy Line Lady: she had the right idea, bringing order to the Great Deli Chaos, but she went about it the wrong way with an ultimately untenable solution. Maybe this is why, in a city of nearly unlimited culinary choice and unmatched quality, McDonald’s still thrives: you always know where you stand at a McDonalds. You just might want to watch what you’re standing in.