John's Gatsby Garage

Graf # 15

2006-05-10T11:19:00.000-04:00

Course Evaluation

I actually learned quit a bit while taking this course. I think by far the most important thing that I learned was that I really need to get into the habit of writing. I had to write quite a bit of material for this class and gradually my writing improved and it became a little less unpleasant for me to write. I didn’t expect it to become less unpleasant, but the instructor gave me quite a bit of encouragement and I continued to plug away although with quite some difficulty. He gave me a lot of useful feedback on what was right about a graf or essay. Most of the English classes that I have taken provide very little feedback and it was quite frustrating to try to find ways to improve my writing. I liked the emphasis on making the writing personal. I hated reading the sterile essays of the famous essayists when I was in high school. I believe that I learned more from reading the examples provided by Mr. Goldfine. I didn’t enjoy working with blogs, or having to produce so much material. However I don’t think that should be changed. I think that this course has actually been very beneficial to improving the quality of my writing.

I am frustrated with my Isearch. I wanted to be able to perform some experiments. The techniques as described in the texts were bland and somewhat duplicative to those that are not truly interested in the material. I really wanted to find the time to try things out. I wanted to make some of my own original material from my own efforts and share it with the reader.

Graf # 14

2006-05-10T10:38:00.000-04:00

Response to Contrast Essays

My link to the sample essays was not functioning. If they are anything like the example that the instructor provided, I’m sure that I would have enjoyed them. I liked reading about Dan and Ed of the planning board. I could really relate to the differences between the Mainer and the ‘Out of Stater’. My neighbor Bob is an out of stater loves ordinances and codes. He is a real pest. My Mainer neighbors mostly keep to themselves. I should learn to enjoy writing too. I enjoyed reading about Dan and Ed and their contribution to the color of the planning board.

Graf # 13

2006-05-10T10:16:00.000-04:00

My Own Research

I suppose I’m always doing research of some sort. When I killed my primary car’s engine a couple of years ago I did research to find a ‘new to me’ rebuilt engine on the internet. I also called around to find a shop to install the engine. Unfortunately I didn’t do all of my homework. I went on the cheap. I was surprised to find that I saved a lot of money by buying an unpainted engine that was missing some parts from the ‘long block’ and that the shop that I used saved me a lot of time by assuming that I wanted an unpainted engine in my car and that I would not mind having a couple of bolts missing from the starter and engine mounts. When I add up the repairs that were needed to have the car run, I found that I still saved money. But it was not worth the aggravation. I could have done more research and had the job done right. I should have done research on finding a replacement (Chrysler Crossfire?) car instead.

Graf # 12

2006-05-10T10:01:00.000-04:00

Response to Classification Essays

The sample classification essays were very graphic and actually quite gritty. The colorful language the authors made an impression on me. I didn’t like to think about what goes on under the puppy dog’s tail. I could actually visualize the sports fans and their various levels of sloppiness and levels of enthusiasm. I started to fantasize about fishing with the descriptions of trout, salmon and pickerel. Of course in my imagination I would insert myself into the scenarios. I know that I am sugar and spice, but would she think that I’m a snail or a snake? Why were bass not included? They are fun to catch and fight a lot harder than the much tastier trout. And what sort of sports fan am I? I don’t need to see it on TV unless it is football and I am really suffering because I could not go to the track last Sunday because my school work is still not done.

Graf # 11

2006-05-10T09:41:00.000-04:00

Meta Graf of Cause Essay

I had extreme difficulty writing a cause essay. My first thought was to write about other people’s bad behavior. I thought I could explain passive aggressive behavior. I was wrong. I don’t understand other people, never mind their behavior. I felt there must be something that I can write about that doesn’t feel too personal, about me. I felt that I could still write about other people. I’m fascinated by things that go. I have cars and I like cars. Maybe I could write about cars. I noticed that the Ford Mustang was still selling very well (even with today’s gas prices). And there had to be a reason why people were not driving econo-boxes and hybrids. I decided to explore this and found that my own feelings on the matter were very similar to the actual sales of cars. I had something in common with many people. They like things that go. And almost all of us like cars that are comfortable and have lots of pep.

Graf #3 blog-hunting report

2006-05-10T09:22:00.000-04:00

There are things that I would periodically look for when I’m on the internet. It is a long running obsession for me. I go to Ebay to look for a Geo Metro convertible with a stick shift and less than one hundred thousand miles. I also use the search engines to look for schools that could teach me how to drive a car with a manual transmission. Most of the performance driving schools will not admit students that are not already proficient with a stick shift. The next search I do is for any car rental agencies that rent out vehicles that have a real transmission. Over the past two years I have found two in North America, one in Toronto that has Mazda products (even the Mx-5) and the other is in Charlottesville Virginia and has both Triumph and MG sports cars. Too many times when I did these searches, the search engine would pull up only people’s web logs. Being an American that wants to learn how to drive a stick shift is a common theme among the web logs. Some of them such as 43things would cross reference people by the activities that they want to try. To “kiss in the rain” and “become fluent in (a language)” are a couple of the more popular activities listed at this site. I used the links I found there to travel around a bit. There was one entry that I could access there without logging on. The author of this entry described how she tried to drive her friend’s car, and how she would forget how to stop at a stop sign. When I used “manual transmission” for my search on blogger.com I found armature car revues. Algreen submitted many of these reviews. His revues were written up in a style similar to those in flashy youth oriented magazine rack car magazines. The descriptions of various cars and trucks seemed to be formulaic. I started to get suspicious when I read one of his posts that had a paragraph repeated and there are quite a few pictures credited to an automobile reference website. I went to the referenced site and found that every one of the articles had the same formula and even found the article that ‘Algreen’ had pasted from. I wonder if he had even read the article before he decided to “borrow” from it because I found the same repeated paragraph. I am befuddled to why anyone would ‘cheat’ on a web log. I can only imagine that he wanted to pretend to be a car expert.

Search: Manual Transmission

2006 Honda Ridgeline Review by Algreen

2007 Dodge Caliber Road Test Feb 4, 2006

2006 Toyota Camry LE V6 Monday Feb 6, 2006

2006 Cadillac CTS-V reviews January 7,2006
By an unknown author

Preview: 2007 Cadillac CTS midsize sedan
July 28, 2005 11:53 AM EST
Printed with permission from Edmunds.com

43things.com has people listing the things that they want to do. It shows cross reference of all of the people that want to do the same things and go to the same places. Sixteen people listed that they wanted to learn how to drive a stick shift. Many of the things they listed seemed a bit prosaic and lame. Prime examples of this are “get a massage” and “kiss in the rain” or learn to be fluent in a language. Almost no one placed any real comments. None of the comments were useful, but one about how she didn’t really learn and could not stop when she needed to was pretty interesting. Lotr_otaku was the only one to have a true entry.

http://purple.mytica.net/blog/?p=583

http://community.livejournal.com/stick_shift/35304.html
good looking woman

http://standardshift.com/index.html

http://www.skipbarber.com/faqs.aspx

Response # 15

2006-05-10T09:15:00.000-04:00

Week 15

Students keep bugging me--where's Week 15, Goldfine?

Here:

T: What should the prompt be?

S4. Hunting, so I'll have something to write about.

T: What kind of hunting?

S4: Deer.

I think that some deer have a death wish. You would think that they would want me to stick to my vegetables, but I don’t think that is the case. The deer destroy my garden every year. Not having my veggies makes me angry. I want revenge. I am out for venison. I know that I cannot hunt the particular deer that will not leave my yard until I’m actually in the yard with them and throwing a temper tantrum. I would yell shake my keys, and throw things at them. To make things worse they would use my garden as a place to take a nap after they get their fill of cabbage, broccoli, spinach, tomato plants, corn seedlings and even onions, chives and garlic. They would turn around in circles turning my corn stalks into their own personal dog bed for every nap. I can imagine how tasty they must be after eating up all my fine vegetables and leaving me with a few mustard leaves that I want to simmer them with. I know that the deer that live out where I can hunt them are not the culprits that devastated my vegetable patch, but I don’t know that during the season. They must be destroying someone’s crops. I’m out for venison.

Freestyle #15

2006-05-10T03:16:00.000-04:00

America’s Next Great Inventor

Last night I was tired and non-ambitious. I decided to procrastinate. One of my favorite ways to procrastinate is to do physics homework problems on a clipboard while sitting on the couch and watching television. I only get a couple of problems done this way. In effect, I’m watching TV. I watched a show called America’s Next Great Inventor. Watching this show was like the old cliché’ about looking at a train wreck. I felt compelled to watch people presenting their stupid inventions spawned from their stupid lazy imagination. One woman’s ‘invention’ was a CD of her nagging her son! Last night’s episode was people that made it to the next round and were given $50k to develop their inventions. The one inventor that actually had a product that could actually be sold in stores, a tool for scooping sand or other particulate solids into bags lost last night. He had a product that was already ready for market. He frittered away his opportunity to improve his product and vacationed as the other contestants struggled to make theirs less bad. The judge was upset that he did not take advantage of his chance to improve his already viable product and eliminated him in favor of a man that put a pool floaty on the front of a vest to make a football training device. The whole time I was watching I could not help but think of my own inventions. Like Lex Luthor my inventions are only good for evil and not particularly marketable. My toilet tablets permanently stain and clog toilets and drains. My pool tablet is really just a Navy dye marker and my bonk stick has been also invented by rail road hobos and actually used for a murder already. I should get caught up on my schoolwork, but I know I will watch again.

Freestyle # 14

2006-05-10T03:15:00.000-04:00

David Blain cheated! The man who holds the record set back in the seventies took a breath of air and lied down in the shallow end of a swimming pool and some men placed some weights on him to hold him secure. He lay there without breathing for a whole eight minutes and fifty eight seconds. Blain was breathing pure oxygen before he did his attempt and achieved a time of seven minutes and eight seconds while going through an escape. Hearing that he got to breath pure oxygen upset me. It must be cheating. It reminded me of the Japanese guy that would win Nathan’s hot dog eating contest by not eating the buns. When they changed the rules so that he had to eat the buns too, he didn’t always win anymore. I don’t know how long I can hold my breath, but I’m sure that it must be longer after I huff some pure oxygen.

Freestyle # 13

2006-05-10T03:13:00.000-04:00

I wanted to watch David Blain. I normally don’t want to see him doing his stupid ‘Penn & Teller’ card tricks or eating things and spitting them up but somehow magically changed, but this time was different. He was underwater. I wanted to watch the stunt artist David Blain hold his breath for nine minutes, but ABC television was showing cross promotions instead. I turned to the channel to see a couple effeminate adult boys talking like women about women. I was not comfortable. I didn’t want to see that crap. I figured that it had to be an add. I watched CSI Miami for a while. I go back to ABC and it is the two guys with two women that look like models talking about their feelings. What happened to David Blain! I figured that the show was cancelled in favor of a new night time soap opera. After CSI Miami was over I saw the last minute of the David Blain show. He failed to hold his breath long enough to break the record. It turned out that the whole show was ruined because ABC thought the public wanted to see five minute segments of their new California style soap opera throughout the whole stunt show. I wanted to see the drowning man in the tank, not hear what a guy with high cheek bones and a lisp looks for in a woman. They played the new soap opera show after the David Blain special. I did not watch it.

Freestyle # 12

2006-05-10T03:12:00.000-04:00

I was reading a brochure for the new Pontiac Solstice sports car. I love looking at the beautiful photographs of the gorgeous new car. Of course I end up reading the text. I wish I could avoid it, but my curiosity is too strong. I am blasted with something commonly referred to as bad Hemmingway. The author uses an excessive number of adverbs and adjectives to describe feelings in a sickening sweet way that I soon tire of. Of course since I’m not an English major I’m not required to love and worship Earnest Hemmingway’s work. They tell me that his writing is very concise and only his later work from when he was quite old was less than perfect. All I know is that when I had to read some of his magazine articles in high school my eyes would glaze much like they started to read this treacle:

Solstice’s nose suggests a decisiveness, a carefully defined composure frozen in an unflinching gaze. On closer inspection, subtle details reveal themselves: The lamps and hexagonal grille set flush within its taut skin. The tires charting its outermost edges. The devilishly low-slung stance. The indulgent brow of its hood. And all boldly derived from the gentlest of curves.

Yuck! In other words the car has a bulbous front end, but is still aggressive looking. This passage reminded me of reading ‘The Old Man of the Sea’ by Hemmingway. Almost a whole page is devoted to describing just how craggy the old man’s face was. I soon tired of that story too. I was even cheering for the sharks that devoured the giant fish that he caught and could have used to feed the village. The only thing I liked about that book was that it is only 110 pages long. I don’t see myself reading any more real Hemmingway soon. I might read the rest of the sales brochure if I’m really bored and somehow got tired of gazing at the pictures.

Freestyle # 11

2006-05-10T03:11:00.000-04:00

I do not want a cellular telephone. Today I took my father out to lunch and I learned something new. There are now cell phones that have a speaker phone feature and there are people that are not shy about using it in a restraint where people are eating. I already hate the speaker phone. I have two of them. One of them is actually of good quality, but all speaker phones always sound terrible. I did not enjoy listening to the man talking with the ill mannered woman through the dreadful device. Of course there are ones that have every imagined annoyance. They have some that have lousy cameras for perverts to take low quality up skirt pictures for the internet or even take birthday party pictures that no one (not even the birthday girl) would care to look at. I was surprised by how many times I was temporarily blinded by people text messaging when I was trying to watch ‘King Kong’ at the movie theater. I see too many people that cannot go five minutes without the cell. I see people especially young women that cannot go five minutes without calling someone. They cannot drive to work or even buy food by themselves. They are always a pest. I welcome being away from the phone. I don’t have an overwhelming to yak yak all of the time. I welcome time away from the phone. If I have a cell phone people will actually expect me to carry it around with me. I don’t need people angry with me because I leave it in the car when I go into a restaurant to eat or go to a party. I don’t want to hear someone whine about not being able to call me when I’m out working on my cars or in my garden. When I’m working at my desk, I don’t mind answering my phone at all. If they are lucky they might catch me there.

Freestyle # 10

2006-05-10T03:09:00.000-04:00

It was a nice day outside today. I could have been outside enjoying the wonderful spring weather. Unfortunately, I have work to do. All of this is school work that I should have finished weeks ago. It is do now. Some of it is work that I wanted to do. Some of it is work that I never wanted to do and I must have been hoping that somehow someone else would take care of it. When I was a boy, if the cat got sick my mother would clean it up. I would just ignore it and it would go away, just like magic. My mom is not going to show up and do my work. It will not go away by itself. I just have to keep plugging. Maybe I’ll get enough done, so that I can get some sleep. I can’t stop. I must keep going. I don’t want to have any more days with nice weather that are not nice.

Response # 14

2006-05-10T03:07:00.000-04:00

Week 14 Prompts

66. The whirlpool swirled around me, sucking me in deeper and deeper.

I’ve got time. I’ve got plenty of time. I’ll even get this assignment done early. I know I’ll get a good grade. I’ve got a good handle on it. I can work on it during the weekend. There will be plenty of time to work on this tomorrow. There is still plenty of time. I need to work on this assignment for another class that is due tomorrow. I’ll get that done first. There will be plenty of time to do it after I get what is due tomorrow done first. There’s still plenty of time. I have to study for my test tomorrow. I’m tired, I better get to bed. There is still plenty of time I can work on it in the morning. Where did the time go? I don’t know what I’m doing? Who do I ask? This isn’t working. This isn’t working the way I expected. I don’t know if I have enough time. I must keep working. I’m at the wire. I’m doing my best. Sometimes, my best isn’t good enough. Sometimes my best is none too good. Why didn’t I drop this class? I should have known that I would never get caught up. How did I get behind? I was so careful. I have work I need to do for another class. It will have to wait. I must get this done now.

Response # 13

2006-05-10T03:04:00.000-04:00

Week 13 Prompts

58. April Fool times 30....

I’m an ‘April Fool’. I don’t mean that I’m silly, foolish, or that it is really easy to play an ‘April Fool’ prank on me. I just don’t believe in following Pope Gregory’s Demonic Calendar. (I don’t believe in following ‘Daylight Stupid Time’ either.) Believe it or not, people didn’t always use the same system of measurements of time that we use now. Most people would let their lives be dictated by God’s clock and calendar. The solstices and equinoxes would tell when the seasons started and people did not need to be told to ‘save daylight’ by their government. There was even a six hour solar day that was replaced by the twelve hour day. The twenty four hour day was cooked up by insomniac monks that used hour glasses and invented the water clock to tell them the precise intervals to pray through the night. Other monks in many different places would try to make calendars. Some of these calendars would have only 360 days. With these bad calendars the seasons would drift. Most of the better calendars agreed on one thing. The beginning of the year was the Vernal Equinox and that April 1st was to always be aligned with this. The new calendar that Pope Gregory foisted upon the world was and is still without reason. When someone says the winter of 1998, what does that mean? There is a winter on both ends of the year. The solstices and equinoxes were no longer aligned with the months and the beginning the year was moved back into the dead of winter, but not at the Winter Solstice. Despite the new calendar many people continued to celebrate the new year of the older calendars. These people came to be known as ‘April Fools’. I believe that the year should be started on the Vernal Equinox. That may sound silly to some. I’m an ‘April Fool’.

Response # 12

2006-05-09T20:27:00.000-04:00

Week 12 Prompts

55. Love at first sight?

I love people. I don’t love inanimate objects. They cannot love you back. But, I don’t lust for some ‘pretty neat’ things. I saw the new Saturn Sky Roadster a couple of weeks ago. I received a flyer through the mail saying that I could win the new Sky Roadster if my number matches the one they have on display at the dealership. The flyer also says that I could save $2000 off one of their other icky cars if I buy it in time. As I walked into the dealership I was amazed. The angular looking car in the pictures was the second most beautiful car that I’ve ever seen. Although any car looks like a dish rag compared to the Chrysler Crossfire, I was mesmerized by the little red car’s sexy shape. The fit and finish were as perfect as the German built Chrysler. I was amazed. A gray haired old man came in to look at the car too. The first thing he asked whether or not it had the same plastic (Pontiac Fiero) body panels. When the salesman told him that the sports car was all steel and was built on the same platform as the Pontiac Solstice he was unhappy. He complained bitterly like the salesman would return engineering input to the designers that the lithe steel sports car was ‘not a real Saturn’ (Much like the idiots that didn’t like modern headlamps on the Jeep Wrangler). The old man then went on to complain that the sticker said that the car only got 28 mpg on the highway and that a little car like that should get over 40. And he then went on to spin tails about the Impala that he rented last month got 36 mpg on the highway at seventy miles per hour. (Both of these cars have tires more than nine inches wide and the Impala might touch 30 mpg in real life if you use imperial gallons and go down hill most of the way.) I watched as the old man gave into his lust and had to touch her. He was getting his greasy paw prints all over the car as the salesman explained that the vehicles had already been sold and proceeded to demonstrate the cars features. I made a mental note, that if I order one I had better pick it up the day it arrives before it gets groped. I didn’t order a Sky. I chose to keep working on my old kit car “The Gatsby Cabriolet”. Oddly enough the Sky at a price of only about $24,000 is cheaper than completing the Gatsby. But I didn’t buy the Crossfire either and I still haven’t seen a prettier car than the Crossfire.

Response # 11

2006-05-09T19:38:00.000-04:00

Week Eleven Prompts

49. Doesn't matter where you begin, you'll end up back here.

I was a failure in a school. I was an academic failure at the Navy Nuclear Field Electrician’s Mate A School at Orlando Florida. It was such a tough school, I was given another school. For a couple of months I was working in a working party at the school before I was transferred to San Diego for my new school. I also worked on this working party while I was waiting to go to school after I graduated from boot camp. On my first day in the party (before I went to school) the leader of the party told me that quite a few of us will be coming back to the party after flunking out of the school. It turned out that the school had a very high attrition rate (almost 40% don’t make it). I was back in the working party after I finished only four weeks of the very grueling material. One of the other young sailors was asking me about school while we were pruning some bushes on the base. I told him about the school being rough and that quite a few of you might be coming back before I get my transfer. Another man that had just started in the work party piped in that he was not going to ‘end up like you guys’ and that he was going to succeed through the whole program. I told him that I sincerely hope that he does. He was back in the working party in just a little over three weeks.

Response # 10

2006-05-09T19:07:00.000-04:00

Prompt for Week Ten

44. They say the best things in life are free.

The best things in life are free. I have never understood that saying. If I said that must have been written by a thief it would sound like I’m joking. I don’t really know if anything is really free. What I do know is that people will pay dearly for many of the things that we take for granted. In a ‘Talking Heads’ song David Burn sings about the future and says that in the future water will be expensive. In the nineteen seventies when the song was written, that was intended to be a funny joke. People will pay to have a nice drink of water. Sky scrapers would be much less expensive, stronger and energy efficient if they were built without windows. No one will rent space in such a building if they could avoid it. Windows are nice and sometimes sunshine and seeing the outside are not free. Exercise should be free too. Nice gyms and pools cost a lot more than lifting bags of dirt, running around in the yard and swimming in water of questionable cleanliness. People will even pay money to watch television. I can look out the window or watch my own mildly amusing life for free.

Response # 9

2006-05-09T18:34:00.000-04:00

Week 9 Response:

40. Sometimes humans are defined as tool-using animals. Nowadays, the scientists talk about chimps both making and using tools, but, hey, we're Number One! Tools in their chests, drawers, and wallracks; tools scattered on the table; tools used and unused, n ew and old; tools of love, tools of war, tools of work, tools of play. Tools can say a lot.

I had a raccoon in one of my traps not too long ago. I watched the monkey-cat miscreant turn around in my trap and try to dig his way out, pulling dirt into the trap. I thought about how I needed to have that trap to be rid of him while he didn’t need tools at all. I was about to give him the thrill of a lifetime. He got his first and only ride in an automobile. Critters don’t need cars. They get around pretty well, he got into my garage. He must have wanted a ride. He used his little hands to paw around at the tarp and newspapers that I put under him in the back of my Chevy Blazer. His hands look like he could use tools. I know that if I left him alone for a few hours, he could use his hands to work his way loose from the cage trap. I certainly would not leave him alone in the car. I doubt he would have much respect for my things, especially since he did not have things of his own. I let him out near some woods, a river crossing and some miles away. I’m sure that he will use his fancy, but not tool using hands to get into someone else’s home. He is now someone else’s problem. Now, I have to use my tools, live traps to catch more of his family and friends. My intention is not to build a Milford raccoon colony, but I just don’t want them in my home. In a few more days I’ll have a new invader with his/her fancy hands that do not need any special tools to get in my garage or on my roof.

Response #8 (Holding Hands)

2006-05-09T18:31:00.000-04:00

Prompts Week 8

33. Loosely holding hands, not even aware of doing so, but, still, skin touching skin....

I like to hold hands. I really enjoy holding my girlfriend Urai’s hand. Her hands are toughened with hard work. Hers used to be soft. Mine are soft now. They used to be tough with calluses from tough industrial work. I now work with gloves on. Many tasks that I do with outdoor cooking and welding and working around engines would result in injury if I did not wear gloves.

I sometimes think about the girlfriends that I had and how I always try to hold hands. I would go to the movies with Brenda. I would always try to hold her hand. It didn’t help that she would eat her extra buttered popcorn with both hands. Of course this was aggravated by both of our hands sweating. I still wanted to hold her greasy sweaty hand. She would have none of that. She would yank her paw back if I was holding on to it. Jennifer and I were holding hands while watching a movie on her television. She commented that her ex-husband did not like holding hands with her because her hands were larger than his. I looked at her mitts in mine and made a joke about them, she threatened to not hold hands with me any more if I did not behave. I didn’t want to lose that privilege. Lisa liked to hold hands. She would interlace her fingers with mine and squeeze tight. It wasn’t a cute hello kind of a squeeze. She would squeeze tight and it would hurt. It would not hurt for the one doing the squeezing, only for the one being squeezed. I didn’t like that game. I miss her V8 (not the V6) turbo Trans Am more than her.

Contrast Essay (EMCC VS the University of Pain or Why I Wish I Came Here Instead)

2006-05-09T18:09:00.000-04:00

I have attended the University of Maine which I did not graduate from. I am now enrolled at Eastern Maine Community College (EMCC). I wish that I had been enrolled at EMCC to begin with. There are many profound differences between the community college and what was supposed to be the flag ship campus of the state. I’m not a fan of the despicable atrocity that is squatted on some of the best real estate in what was southern Orono until the early eighteen seventies, but I will try not to let my jaded opinion over bias this essay. Overall I would have to say that there are three great differences between my new school and the place over in Orono. These amazing dissimilarities are in politics, campus safety and whether or not they really care.

The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO for University of Maine at Orono) is purely political in its nature, structure and day to day operations. Walking around the campus the politics is readily visible on postings stickers and flyers on doors, windows, bulletin boards and even signposts. I don’t feel comfortable with all the political clutter and graffiti. I know of several people that were expelled for taking down political postings and stickers. I am not comfortable with being harassed by this clutter. EMCC is for the most part free of this political clutter, which helps to keep a comfortable, neutral environment. EMCC has had its president for quite some time, and I’ve heard quite a bit of praise for her from the college faculty and staff. She seems to be stable in her position at the school. I have not seen any signs of political unrest at EMCC. Umaine on the other hand is a boiling cauldron full of a most vile witch’s brew of political unrest. The last president or UMaine Peter Hoff ran the campus into the ground appeasing the crazies that are supposed to be the faculty of the campus. He did everything he could to appease the dangerous and harmful people that were allied with the dean of students. He worked to bring in huge sums of money into the campus. He gave jobs to his cronies and caused a local building boom at the university. This building boom is on a campus that already has a large amount of underutilized class room space. Money was flying in and around the campus like October leaves. But the wolves at the door were not happy with their daily supply of butchered cleaned and cooked sheep. They wanted real blood and saw him out with a vote of no confidence. The university has a new president. We will see in time if he has enough blood for all of the vampires.

Campus safety at EMCC is quite good. The campus police are friendly, very polite and quite helpful. The campus is uncluttered and has well lit walkways. I feel quite comfortable here. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for UMO. The environment at the university can be described as hazardous at best. The lighting at UMO is excessive, but ineffective. I would prefer lighting were I walk, so I don’t slip or step in something. Much of the lighting on campus is for the untrimmed bushes. (Do the rapists in hiding need to read a paper while waiting for their prey?) There is a particularly annoying accumulation of misdirected lighting at the school’s observatory. Apparently there was a report about it being dark there. They even put a street lamp on the side of the observatory that the observatory operator can only extinguish by opening a circuit breaker. Of course, lighting is a very minor issue compared to the fact that the university’s police force has people that were poorly screened. When I was enrolled at UMO I was repeatedly harassed by a university police detective. His behavior was a continuation of the bullying that he did when we both attended the same high school. In high school he found great amusement in pushing me down while I was trying to retrieve my books from my locker. At the university he filed a false police report against me. I also believe that justice at this campus is moderated with politics. People that came on campus with a religious message were given little help when harassed on campus (often by members of the student clubs), particularly at the student union. The student union manager allowed one of the student clubs to set up a booth expressly to harass a small group of religious people that paid a $260 fee to proselytize the students. I like it much better at EMCC, UMaine just isn’t safe.

Eastern Maine Community College has a large rate of graduation and the instructors seem particularly interested in the progress of their students. I was in the electrical engineering program at UMO where few graduated and even less graduated in less than five years. I was given a questionnaire to fill out regarding the quality of life on the campus at EMCC. The University of Maine to my knowledge has never requested feedback of this level. When I first enrolled at the university I was given a graduate student as an academic advisor. She was not helpful or even knowledgeable. I wanted to withdraw from my English class ‘Writing Workshop’. I was not given any assistance. I received a failure for this class because I was not given opportunity to withdraw in time. The English teacher that I have at EMCC has given me quite a bit of encouragement. The first English instructor I had at the university simply did not accept any of my assignments. I believe that my instructors at EMCC actually care.

One the whole, I’m much more comfortable at Eastern Maine Community College. I came here to take evening non credit courses to learn how to make a business plan for a restaurant that I want to open and learn how to do custom work for my cars and felt welcome enough here that I enrolled as a full time student in addition to taking my night classes. I really appreciate going to a safe neat campus, without the overhanging politics of the University of Maine and having faculty that are interested in taking time to answer some of my questions. I am comfortable here and would recommend enrolling here. I have not decided yet on whether I am going to complete my associate’s degree, but I am already enrolled in another non credit class to learn some more advanced welding.

Division Essay (Three Kinds of Assignments)

2006-05-08T13:04:00.000-04:00

Some Objects seem to always have stories. I just don’t find some of them particularly interesting. I certainly don’t enjoy most peoples little stories about their little treasures. But on my keychain is my AVB 1/2 gigabyte flash-drive with all my school stuff on it and therein lies three stories. There are three kinds of school assignments for me. There are those that I complete early; those that I complete at the last minute, and those that are never really finished.

Some assignments are bread and butter for me. If the assignment is a physics or electronics problem that I am familiar with and I find interesting and I feel confident about its completion. I may complete it early and may even go through several different methods to test the answers and results. I recently had a physics assignment that I completed early. I checked my answers and experimented with alternate methods of using matrix algebra to test my analysis of linear circuits. I even repeated these problems to help prepare for an exam.

The assignments that I complete at the last minute usually start out as bread and butter, but that can change. I started early on a computer aided drafting assignment only to find out that many of the tools that I needed to use were unfamiliar to me. The text was not clear on explaining some of these features to me. I ended up seeking some extra help from the instructor and I was able to complete my drawing the night before it was due. Unfortunately my tardiness is usually more preventable. I’m not very good at time management. I am usually over confident in my ability to complete work in its allotted time, although my experience with most things proves otherwise. I should know that most things take more time than planned. The second to the last time I bottled beer. I was overconfident about the time it would take to prepare the bottles and the amount of time I needed for clean up. I ended up staying up much later than I expected and still had more cleaning to do in the morning.

The assignments that I feel that are never really finished fill my heart with terror. These tasks are almost always writing assignments or at least have a large writing component. This fear always causes a certain degree of avoidance for me. I would much rather work on these after completing some bread and butter work first. I even lie to myself. “I’ll have some time to work on this tomorrow.” “I’ll get caught up this weekend.” The worst of these are ones that I believe are complete only to out later that I passed in unsatisfactory work. It may be unsatisfactory because I did not understand the assignment, my standards were not high enough (or lack of proof reading?), or my thoughts just don’t make any sense on paper in the small hours of the morning. I’ve been told that: “Perfect is the enemy of good.” And I believe it, but some of my work is never quite as I or the grader would want it. I recently failed on a formal lab report for my physics lab. I was astonished by the grade that I received on this paper. Upon closer examination, I found that reading aloud could have saved me a lot of trouble. I definitely should have done the assignment earlier so that I could have had someone else read the paper for me.

There is one common theme among these three divisions of my assignments. This is time management or the lack of it. I know that these only get completed if I actually do them. I have problems with my life right now, as always although many of them are severe at this time. I know that if time is allotted for these things as with my assignments more things may be completed. I do however believe there will still be assignments that I will complete early with others that are completed at the last minute and some never really completed.

Freestyle #9 (I'm Sick)

2006-05-08T12:56:00.000-04:00

I am sick. I got sick last night. I was working hard on a project for one of my classes that had to be submitted by E-mail. I had to use a computer program that is only available to me at a lab at the college. I was almost done when I started to get a head ach at about four pm. I would go and get some water. Maybe I had too much coffee. I would drink some more water. I started to have an upset stomach. ‘Ok, no more coffee today.’ I thought. ‘Maybe it’s stress. Maybe, I need to sleep more.’ I tried to rationalize with myself. ‘Uh, oh time to go to the can.’ It was quite dynamic. The project did not work exactly the way I wanted, but I had to go. I needed to go home to get my boots for my welding class. I did not make back. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it home. Traffic was slow in Orono. Why is traffic moving so slowly? All these people got off work at three. They don’t have anywhere to go. I pulled over to a side street. I had a plastic bag in my hand that I grabbed from my back seat. I carefully dumped its contents of new office supplies as I brought it forward. I made sure that there was plenty of room for people to go around as I parked my car seventy feet into the small street pointed downward on a steep hill. I walked quickly to the other side of the street and leaned against a tree, sack still in hand. I was tasting baking soda. I breathed the fresh air and stared at the ground. Someone has dogs; big and small. I heard a man’s voice. ‘Are you all right?’ The man standing near his brand new deep blue Dodge pick up in front of a modest house shouted. I told him that ‘No, I’m sick. It’s kind of you to ask. Thank you.’ It is good that he was concerned for someone that was about to sick into the brush not far from his home. I soon regained my composure and continued my drive home. I left my books in my car. I needed to get in my house and lie down. I grabbed a bucket and lined it with a plastic bag. I was sick, but did not want a messy clean up. I rested and woke up late. It was already time to go to bed. I went to bed. I got up early this morning and came to school and I’m writing. I am sick.

Similarity Essay (Shielded Metal Arc Welding and Other Love Interests)

2006-05-08T12:40:00.000-04:00

Recently, I was talking on the telephone with a woman that I love very much named Urai. She asked me about how my welding is coming. (It is great that she would ask about something I love to do. She isn’t interested in shielded metal arc welding.) I was telling her about trying to read the slag. Slag is the lava like substance that forms on top of the weld and must be chipped off before the next layer is welded. I had to stop and explain that I was not talking in analogy about our relationship. I was really talking about welding. On second thought it can be a good analogy. As a weld is usually a strong connection between two pieces of metal as they are melted together, love relationships can be strong as the personalities of the two parties meld together. There are four different conditions for welds and slag. I’m going to combine conditions for unfit welds such as inclusions in the weld which slag is combined into the weld, pitting and undercut in which there is metal is missing in the weld, because like unsuccessful relationships it can be unpleasant and difficult to correct even if it looks well on the outside. There are three ways in which reading the slag while welding is like looking at relationships.

Sometimes the slag on the outside is nice and smooth and the weld underneath is smooth and strong. A relationship can look nice to the world and really be nice. I really love Urai. We don’t have any arguments and as a weld fillet gets stronger with each weld, we love each other more as we learn more about each other. As with a smooth weld encased with smooth slag, the slag chips easily from the weld and does not leave any inclusions in the weld, our problems seem to crumble away when we are together. And as with a good weld there are no inclusions, there are no problems that can come between us.

Sometimes the slag on the weld has all the glamour of something that the cat has hidden behind the couch, but when the weld is revealed after the nastiness is chipped free, the weld is quite sound. My mother and father had some pretty nasty verbal rows. My father is an inconsiderate individual and my mother would throw explosive temper tantrums and they both would drink to excess. My two elder sisters through their own selfishness would wish that our parents would divorce and that they would go live with their sainted mother. But under this veneer of nastiness my parents really loved each other and would never ever consider being without each other. Just as it takes longer to chip the rough looking slag away to reveal an adequate weld, it can take a lot of effort to see the good in a rough relationship.

Sometimes the slag looks nice and smooth only to be chipped away with quite some difficulty to reveal a horrible landscape that is not helped by the scars from the chipping hammer’s efforts to remove the clinging slag. It is as if the slag did not want to be removed to show what is underneath. My eldest sister’s marriage was like this. I was sure that their marriage was going to last. They were beautiful and they looked like they belonged together. They were soon divorced. No one saw it coming. I don’t think they did either. They soon remarried and were again divorced. Of course some of my welds look bad to begin with. As my chipping hammer hacks at the bubbled pet-rock turd, the pitted, undercut and inclusive weld is revealed. This weld needs repair, or it isn’t going to last.

As I think of this analogy, I can always come up with more similarities. Sometimes a cooling weld can pull a weak weld apart, as new acquaintances can pull a poor relationship apart. I am always working on how to add the right amount of heat to the puddle in the weld I’m always thinking of little niceties to do for Urai, like when I mailed her a pack of chewing gum I thought she might like. (She was amused that I spent $2.10 to send her a $1.89 pack of gum.) I almost always store me gear properly so, that it would be ready to work for me and I like to help Urai with her things too, like doing maintenance on her car and helping her with home repairs. I enjoy welding and miss it when I have to spend time doing other things like trying to get caught up on my school work. I miss Urai when I’m here in Maine instead of where she lives in another state. I’ll spend some time with her this summer and I will also have a couple more welding classes.

Example Essay: I'm not America's next great inventor

2006-04-26T11:53:00.000-04:00

If I could be paid to procrastinate, I would be able to make a great career of it. The other night I was procrastinating from my schoolwork by doing Physics problems while watching television, which means I was really just watching TV. I watched a new program called ‘America’s Next Great Inventor”. The show was awful, but I watched anyway. I was curious. Most of the inventions were terrible. I kept thinking: “Hey, I could have made that!”, and then I would think: “If there was a market for this, it would already be at Kresky’s or Wally Mart.” I think the show was more about the presentation than the product. I think it must be more of an ‘American Idol’ style talent show. I would then think about my own inventions. My inventions are not good. I am pretty sure that I would not make it past the first round and I don’t think that it is just because I stutter. I can only come up with bad stuff. They are not just things that are impractical or, people don’t want to buy them; they are destructive and not particularly useful. A friend told me that I was like Lex Luthor and that he even had a bad dream that he was Superman and that I was Lex Luthor and that I had kidnapped his girlfriend and was holding her hostage. (He wasn’t sure how much Krytonite I had but I had plenty of things that ran on the stuff.) As I continued my advanced procrastination I started to catalog in my mind some of my less useful inventions. These wonderful creations include: the Disruptor, the 9 Volt Battery Enterainment System and my special tabs for swimming pools.

I came up with the Disruptor in High School. It was allegedly a piece of test equipment, but it is really only good for interrupting power, by shorting out 120V power distribution circuits. If the circuit was over fused a nasty electrical fire could result. I considered making an advanced model that left less forensic evidence. Last year I saw an advanced version that has a timer be used on a cop show with an intentionally over fused circuit to cause a building fire. The Disrupter is really just a shorted electrical plug that has a handle.

The 9V Battery Entertainment System is one of the lowest tech methods to shock people for entertainment purposes. My favorite has always been to charge a large non-dielectric capacitor with a megger (Mega Ohm Meter) and just leave it lying around. Unfortunately, these giant caps are hard to find outside of the Military and I’m not about to expend my hard earned graft on Ebay for these capacitors only to have any angry victim through them away. When I was an Interior Communications Electrician Second Class (IC2) in the Navy and Stationed on board the USS George Washington my shop (Closed Circuit TV) had plenty of 9V batteries for its many devices. I was surprised that although many realized that nine volt batteries could stagger together they can provide immense entertainment value. A string of ten or so staggered end to end worked quite well. We also found we can increase the vicarious pleasure by coupling a large cap with the array for that added ‘kick’. My lab partner for this great experiment IC2 Jeff Carlsen, helped discovered that this could be used with social engineering to zap people that touch things briefly and at certain intervals. When the 9V Entertainment System was connected to a coffee pot and a chair, there was some individuals would brush their hands on the metal of the coffee maker while leaning an elbow against the metal of an arm rest on the chair. Two of the test subjects probably still have no knowledge their involvement in the ‘experiment’. Later Jeff would forget about the device and himself would become “hoist to his own petard” to the entertainment to the others working in the shop. The 9V Entertainment System is more of a discovery than an invention and its use cannot be regulated for me to profit from it.

My latest unhelpful creation is my new swimming pool tabs. Don’t you hate it when you throw Navy dye markers into a swimming tool and you leave incriminating forensic evidence like a finger print laden wrapper or even worse get some of that horrible indelible substance on your little miscreant fore paw. Well now with my new swimming pool tabs these problems are now alleviated. My new swimming pool tabs have a gelatin coating which allows you to remove the tab from its pouch and throw it with the pouch safely tucked in your pocket. The gelatin coating also provides the added benefit of a time delay which can be important if people are in the pool at the time. I don’t see an immediate market for these tabs. Of course there use can cause a lot of unwanted attention.

I’m still researching uses for my latest miss-inventions. I guess it is really not that hard to figure out how to damage things. I suppose a book about damaging or destructive inventions could have a market. As long as it doesn’t contain anything about weapons, explosives, killing people or anything that the terrorists could use, I suppose it could be published. I keep thinking there must be a market, after all I have seen book adds in the back of ‘American Survival Guide’ and ‘Soldier of Fortune’ magazines. I’ve read some pretty niche books. I read ‘The Anarchists Cookbook’ from the Bangor Public Library. I wanted to read Gerry Rubin’s ‘Steal This Book’ too, but it was listed as missing.

Cause Essay: Hybrid Cars, Why Are They Not Selling Like Mustangs?

2006-04-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

I like to listen to late night call in radio. There are both comic and pseudo scientific shows. Some of the topics that come up are alien abductions, crop circles and what happened to the one hundred mile per gallon car. The alien abductions don’t factor too much into my life although my father is watching the sky for ‘chem trails’. I try not to be bothered by the crop circles, but I really wish they did not have access to spray paint and our rail roads. The one hundred mile per gallon car however will not go away and actually does interest me. The real and more interesting story behind the one hundred mile per gallon car is not the oil company and government conspiracy theories, but why America does not want to buy it. It is possible to build one hundred mile per gallon cars, but they would be unsafe and very impractical. However some of the new hybrid cars that are powered by both electricity and an internal combustion engine can exceed 50 mpg. Unfortunately these cars will not sell. While seemingly less practical cars like the Ford Mustang are so popular that in the book ‘Iacocca’ Lee Iacocca told of a breakfast restaurant that had a sign that said that their hotcakes sell like Mustangs. I figure that there must be three reasons why the twenty first century is not already populated with these wonder vehicles. The more I learn about these the more I find three profound problems in the relationship between these wonder cars and the American public. These problems are size and power, false economy and poor looks.

Size really does matter. I, like many people like to stretch out in the car even when there are more than two people inside. It’s good to have plenty of head and knee room. I like having room for my things and my passenger’s things too. The original Toyota Prius has an interior volume of 89 cubic feet with a trunk of 12 cubic feet. My seventeen-year-old Mitsubishi designed Dodge Spirit has the same passenger volume and a somewhat larger trunk but, with its superior ergonomics it feels spacious and luxuriously comfortable after sitting in the cramped original Prius. The Honda Insight (the hybrid that I actually like) has plenty of room for two people, but it has a load capacity of only 400lbs (I weigh 205!). I also like to pull a trailer. The tow capacities of the Ford Escape hybrid and Toyota Highlander hybrid have not been disclosed yet. The other hybrids are not recommended to towing. All of the hybrid versions of existing vehicles are heavier, have less available horse power and most have reduced cargo space (for their battery). None of these things mean more fun. The hybrids are larger and more powerful than the small and somewhat underpowered and very frugal Geo cars of the nineties. The latest set of hybrids that should be available for the 2007 sales season has many larger and more powerful vehicles such as the Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry with their powerful V6 engines, but I believe they will have trouble shedding the image of being small and underpowered.

For the people that want to save money, the false economy of hybrids is quite disturbing. The recently discontinued Toyota Echo had a fuel economy of 42 mpg on the highway and cost less than half the price of the Toyota Prius that could get 48 mpg on the highway. The Honda Civic is already so frugal the hybrid version would have to be driven 180,000 highway miles before the fuel saving at $2.60 a gallon pays for the cost difference between the models. (This distance will be less for short trip driving.) Most of the new vehicles including the Ford Escape and the Toyota Highlander would have to be driven over 100,000 miles before the cost differential is met. The Honda Insight with a manual transmission has a highway gas mileage of 66 mpg and a cost of only $21k which makes it very economical, but I could buy a brand new Chevy Aveo with a manual transmission for less than $10k and get 36mpg on the highway. The Chevy seats four and does not have a load capacity limited to only 400lb. The Aveo (built by Suzuki and Sold as the Suzuki Swift in Canada) is an economy car that is larger, heavier and has a larger, more powerful engine than the more frugal and now defunct Geo/Chevy Metro. But, I could buy a lot of fuel with the money left over. There are also tax incentives to switch to hybrid vehicles, but these will not be around forever. It is hard to justify a hybrid vehicle on economy alone.

What would cars look like if people didn’t care what they looked like? I often thought that it would look like the Moon Buggy, also known as the lunar rover. Of course it would have to have an enclosed body and some aerodynamics too, because the Earth does have an atmosphere and I would want to be able to travel at highway speeds. In the mid nineteen thirties, there was a trend in which things were streamlined mostly for decoration. This streamlining improved the real aerodynamics of vehicles, but the Chrysler Air Flow was developed using real wind tunnel experimentation. The Air Flow sales were extremely poor. This was an early incidence were true aerodynamics was much less esthetic than streamlining. Although it was developed at a time of a poor economy, the new sleeker cars with the exception of the new Air Flow were selling. Most of the new hybrid vehicles and some of the mini vans have less drag than the beautiful Jaguar E-type coupe of the nineteen sixties. Quite frankly I would rather be seen in the more attractive car. I was listening to the Phil Hendrie radio program and he lamented about the fact that there were no cool looking convertible sports car styled hybrid cars. I agree. Looks really do matter.

I periodically look for a replacement for my driving around (winter) car. I look at what other people buy, what is selling and what the sales people want to sell to me. Although the Ideal for me would be a large coupe with a V8, manual transmission and vinyl seats, must people would prefer to go more with the current fashionably designed cars. Americans like to have cars with a lot of pep. The hybrids actually have quite a bit of power, but it would be quite some time (even with the V6 powered Toyota Camry and Honda Accord) before they develop an image of being sporty. We do like cars with pep. The popular V6 cars have more power than many of the V8 powered cars of the eighties. Most of the newer four cylinder cars have plenty of power and modern electronic controls provide greatly reduced emissions, but inferior fuel economy to the anemic and boxy, but more distinctive cars of the eighties. The interiors are handsome with soft leather bucket seats and all the latest electric and electronic goodies, even in the Hyundai, and Kias. Hello GPS. Hello DVD players. Hello all angle, all speed air bags. The smooth exteriors have the smooth soft melted shapes developed from real world aerodynamics. There seems to now be a consensus on what cars should look like. They look alike. There are still plenty that want more traditionally shaped (retro) vehicles. I believe this backlash is selling the latest V8 powered (although with automatic transmissions) muscle cars. The new larger and more efficient Prius cannot come close to matching the sales of the angular Ford Mustang in the United States. I’m going to have my ninety eighty nine Dodge Spirit ES repainted this spring.

Process Essay: (Instructions for My Funeral)

2006-03-27T11:58:00.000-05:00

Instructions for my funeral:

I decided that I should pre-plan my elaborate funeral. I don’t want my loved ones to be burdened with too much expense and planning for my burial. I’m a Navy veteran, so of course I expect to receive Navy honors. I would like a good turn out for my funeral but, unfortunately I’m not particularly popular so, I decided that by providing entertainment I could improve turn out and entertain my friends and maybe even make the eleven o’clock news. There are some things that I would like to have that are not practical to have on stand-by such as a German brass band. But there are other things that I can have pre-arranged such as a small clinker built long boat to burn for the closing of the ceremony after my American flag is folded and taps is played.

A small memorial service is to be held three days after my death. My corporal remains are to be cremated and placed in a plain wooden urn which will be used later at my burial service. The primary service, the elaborate funeral is to be performed later outside during a warm part of the year. If I die in the winter my service is to be done in the spring before the insects are particularly active. The weather report will be used as part of the planning to help ensure good weather although it will not be cancelled if the weather becomes sour. A tent will be available for the guests and musicians should the weather turn.

A small jazz ensemble is to great my beloved friends and guests as they come to the site. There are plenty of rented chairs and tables with treats, hors d’oeuvres, refreshments and drinks in the open field near the beach looking out on the ocean. They can also smell a fine variety of savory meats being grilled near by. They can see my fine miniature Viking ship on the beach in the background. I don’t really like jazz, but a jazz ensemble is the sort of thing to help lend a light atmosphere. I’m not sure how I feel about dogs at most grave sites, but this is at a beach. Of course dogs are welcome. There are even complimentary Frisbees for the dogs and children that may want to play.

There will be a brief service with a eulogy given by a Baptist minister with a Bible reading, followed by a poetry reading. Any sort of poetry should be OK. I would like there to be some beat-poetry, but this is not necessary. People are then welcome to make any commentary that they would like to make.

The next part of the service is the disbursement of some of my prized possessions from my estate. Particular attention is to be given to the guardianship of my dogs and horses. The guardianship of properties and library are to also be issued. A mention of the issuance of the death warrants for the surviving relatives of my enemies is to also be mentioned. A long list of people that I love and want to acknowledge will then be read.

My urn and Flag are then to be carried to the boat on the beach. The congregation is then invited to come down to the beach for the conclusion of the ceremony. The Navy honor guard unfolds my flag and holds it before my urn that is already placed on the boat in front of the gathering.

The American Legion Honor guard will then fire a volley with their rifles to honor my service to the nation. My cannon (which I inherited from my uncle) will then be fired out over the water as a salute. The bugler of the Navy honor guard will then play taps with his automated bugle. Two sailors then fold the ensign that they held before my urn. The flag is then to be folded into a neat triangle with only blue and stars showing. One of the men in the honor guard will then present this flag to my beloved widow Urai McDaniel.

The gathering is then invited to the feast. There will be a good variety of foods to be cooked on a small variety of gas and charcoal grills. I will leave the menu choices to my widow. I know that she will want there to be chicken wings and pork ribs. I am sure that the guests will be happy with their fare.

As desert time nears the sun will be starting to set. The gathering is then invited to light sparklers at a propane powered torch that is in front of the boat and throw them on its deck. The small boat will soon be ablaze. The Jazz band will begin playing music and there will be a small fireworks show on the beach. Desert dishes will be brought out to the people on the beach. The funeral is to be concluded with fireworks and desert as the small ship with my urn is consumed in the flames.

Freestyle # 8 (How I Spent My Saturday)

2006-03-13T11:53:00.000-05:00

I didn’t get any of my English class homework done on Saturday. I don’t think the day was wasted. I went to a funeral in a town called Eagle Lake near Fort Kent. I did not know Thomas Soucier, the man being honored at St. Mary’s Chapel. I can only assume that he was quite popular in this small town. The lady that served me breakfast in the local café asked if my party was going to Tom’s funeral. She then told us that they would reopen shortly afterward. The chapel filled with people that talked about their relationship with the man and his extended family. I was part of his funeral. After the main part of the service the flag covered casket was wheeled outside the front of the chapel where about half of those in attendance gathered. A detachment from the American Legion fired a volley into the sky outside the chapel with their rifles to solute the honored man. I played bugle near the altar of the chapel toward the open doors, along with an Air Force sergeant. We performed Taps. I would play my notes behind his as an echo. Two enlisted sailors in their Navy dress blue uniforms stood ready to fold the nation’s ensign that draped over the casket. They slowly saluted as the music began and then slowly dropped their salute as the music faded. Petty officer Toomer folded the flag with precision and care as Petty officer Park held his end firmly. Petty Officer Park performed the last tuck as the ensign became a triangle of blue spattered with white stars. Petty Officer Park gave Petty Officer Toomer a salute and then received the flag from her. He then in turn received a salute from her and then turned and presented the ensign to Quarter Master Second Class Soucier’s daughter in honor of his dedicated service to the nation in the early nineteen fifties.

Petty Officer Soucier’s daughters, brothers and many other extended family members and friends heartily thanked us for coming to honor his service. It became quite clear that we must stay for the supper that is to be served in the forier behind in the back of the church behind the stage with its fonts and altar. There were more people than seats at the tables as people slowly piled into this large back room. The people did not mind the wait as they socialized and slowly drifted in. There was plenty of food for everyone. People would continue to socialize even as they slowly drifted out. As my companions and I enjoyed the delicious fare (I had the roast turkey) I talked with a gentleman dressed in his World War Two Army Air Core Uniform. He was a friend of Tom’s. He was a B-17 pilot. He flew rescue missions in the South Pacific. Tom’s eldest daughter said that she hopes to see us again. I said that I just wish it could be on a happier occasion. She agreed. I feel truly honored that I spent my day, Saturday to honor a fellow veteran’s service to our nation.

Response # 7 (For Want of Better Maintenance)

2006-03-08T12:10:00.000-05:00

Response # 7

Prompt:
For want of a nail
the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe
the horse was lost.
For want of a horse
the rider was lost.
For want of a rider
the battle was lost.
For want of a battle
the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want
of a horseshoe nail.

Response:
For want of a professional coolant flush
my thermostat failed.
For want of a working thermostat
my heater failed in the cold of winter.
For want of a working heater
I disconnected my cooling fan for heat.
For a disconnected cooling fan
my engine overheated in heavy traffic in the warmth of spring.
For my engine overheating
my head gasket failed.
For my failed head gasket
I found that my head was warped.
For my head was warped
I found that my block was warped.
For my block was warped
a replacement was needed.
For a replacement was needed
a choice must be made.
For a choice must be made
a foolish choice was made.
For a foolish choice was made
the old Dodge received a new heart instead of a more worthy replacement.
And all for the need of a professional coolant flush.

Freestyle # 7 (Stuck Up Snobby Charities)

2006-03-08T11:31:00.000-05:00

I tried to write a paragraph about a couple of charities that rejected me as a volunteer. After writing and reading it I did not like it. It did not look right. To someone that does not know me, or has some familiarity with these organizations, I would appear very ‘uncharitable’ to these charities. I’m sure that they must have standards, but I found it very distracting to have to go through a process that is as taxing as applying for paid employment for volunteer work that does not provide me with any kind of title. I now know that my time would have been better spent applying for real employment. I thought that I could use them for references. Of course they checked mine. One of the coordinators told me that they might consider me after completing a criminal background check which could take several months. I did not have several months free at the time to be considered. I found other things to do with the time that I had. I even got to read the news for the visually impaired over a sideband radio station. I’ve been warned about what happens when you commit good deeds. I know that they would have burdened me with things that I do not really want to do. I’m glad that I did not ‘have’ to do these things. But I still don’t like to be rejected, especially for something that I’m not getting paid for.

Isearch (Why I'm writing)

2006-03-06T11:13:00.000-05:00

Why I’m writing

I like drinking beer. I particularly like drinking good beer and have been exploring by tasting different beers and beer styles. This exploration has led to an increased fascination with making my own beer. I want to learn how to make superior beers. I’m not interested in just imitating (known as cloning) name brand beers, but to be able to produce a product that is particularly suited to my own taste and sharing what I have learned.

My study of this topic has only led to an increase in my interest. There is always more to learn and try in refining my brewing technique. I am continuing to read more books, especially brewing recipe books in my continuing quest for new knowledge. I don’t just want to know what these techniques are and how they are used, but to know just how effective they are at causing variation in the final product.

The variant that I am the most interested in exploring right now is yeast and yeast culture. At this time I am trying different liquid yeast cultures. Unfortunately they are not always available at my favorite brewing supply store. I want to find a yeast that I particularly like and be able to continually culture it. I would then be able to use this culture at any time of the year for brewing.

Graf # 5 (Inventory from Graf # 4 Explained)

2006-03-03T17:19:00.000-05:00

He has a small box that he keeps on a ledge by the head of his bed. He pays little attention to what is in it as he empties his pockets in preparation for going to bed. He tosses the contents of his pockets onto the unmade bed and then gently places these things neatly into this crude unfinished pine box that he made when he was in fourth grade. He puts his digital watch so that he can hear its alarm in the morning. He makes sure that his wallet and the correct set of keys are in the box. He will need those for school tomorrow. He has spare sets of keys, but this key ring has a flash drive with his homework on it. He has been behind in his English class since the second day. He cannot afford any more trouble. He cannot lose that key ring.

The other things in this catch-all are things that are occasionally in his pockets. He doesn’t want to lose them, but he cannot be bothered to put them away. Some of these things he uses frequently, like change and another set of keys that have keys to other cars and even an LED flashlight. He has the gold dollars that he uses for tips. He eats out often. He cannot be bothered with cooking. He needs to do repairs in the kitchen. It’s easier to eat out. He uses the gold dollars. Too many servers don’t remember George. They remember heavy gold things that click. The Citizen Eco-Drive watch lives in this box. It is a beautiful machine that plucks hairs from his wrist. It attracts positive attention. People can see the money. He is usually treated well while wearing that timepiece. Some of the other things such as the fishing swivels and buttons are seldom used, but can find purpose at times. The swivels are used for key rings. They are 225 pound test and are the best way to put a full sized church-key bottle opener on a key ring. He cannot be bothered with putting the buttons back on the clothes that they popped off. He puts little thought into this catch-all that he uses every day. He feels depressed; he does not need to be bothered with little things. Boxes are good for little things. There are kept together until they are needed. He just puts his things in there at the end of his day.

Graf # 4 (Inventory of Catch-All)

2006-03-03T17:12:00.000-05:00

Inventory of Catch-All by bed as liberated from the box:

Key chains:

U.S. Naval Air Station Brunswick Maine bottle opener Key chain with 512MB RVB flash drive attached by a black 225lb barrel swivel, house key and plastic headed Dodge car key

Black plastic bottle opener key ring with red squeeze LED flashlight and keys to two houses and three cars.

White plastic ‘College Republicans’ bottle opener key ring with two bicycle lock keys

Glow-in-the-dark key ring with two paddle lock keys

Glow-in-the-dark key ring with lawn tractor key

Snap swivel key chain with old keys that were used on a ship

Penlight keychain with locker keys

Yellow plastic flashlight key ring with no keys

Black wallet from Thailand
Contents: Various ID and Credit cards with some cash

Two black ‘Wilhold’ plastic pocket comb

Leatherman tool engraved with ‘McDaniel JT 5688’

Exchange Select brand Dental Floss, mint waxed 100yd

Pack of ‘Bill Fisher’ 225lb test fishing swivels

Spyderco Police Model pocket knife

Green Portsmouth Naval Shipyard security badge

Citizen Eco-Drive wrist watch

USB extension drive for flash drive

Two spent 20 gauge shotgun shells

One spent 32 Auto pistol round

Two inert 32 Auto pistol ‘snap cap’

Black carbonated beverage stopper

Tot 50 mini stapler

Finger nail clipper

Five ‘Moist Towelette’ packs

One wooden pencil

Three stick pens

Four wire nuts

One tweezer

‘Orbit’ gum wrappers and ticket stubs from Speedway 95

One Krypton flashlight bulb

One Phillips headed wood screw

Paper clips and safety pins of various sizes

One small machine nut

One small blue shirt button

One Naval ribbon back

About two pounds of late vintage American coins, that consists of gold dollars, Kennedy half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

Response # 6 (The Safest Place in the World)

2006-03-03T11:55:00.000-05:00

27. The safest place in the world....

I wish I could say that the safest place in the world is with loved ones, but that hasn’t been always the case for me. One time when I was with my girlfriend Urai, some pot addicted youths stole my little red Dodge sedan and used it for drive by shootings. The police recovered the damaged vehicle two days later. My beautiful red roadster was hit in the center its trunk and convertible top by five pound sacks of sugar thrown from a twenty story high rise while it was parked in front of my favorite uncle’s house in a big city. When I stay with my father in Orono the veteran’s plates on my cars attract egg throwing twenty first century hippies that really believe that they can end the war by damaging other people’s private property.

In the state of Maine I felt safest when I was at the Hiram Maxim Historical Society’s machinegun shoot that was held for several years in Dover Foxcroft Maine. That was the one spot in Maine where there is absolutely no crime. There were many police and military there and majority of the people were armed. There were some people that may have not been comfortable. Some were convinced that their dogs really wanted to come with them, just like they do for every Independence Day fireworks show. Of course the people were told over the public address to leave their car alarms off. There were no crimes committed there but I heard a years worth of Chicago car alarms that day. The alarms were triggered by the shock of cannon fire. Sure enough car alarms would go off every time a heavy caliber arm was fired. I felt safe and comfortable there. I still don’t understand those that had such anxiety with such a safe environment.

Response # 4 (Time to Throw Away the Old Board)

2006-03-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

That dirty old cutting board--it's been here for thirty years-- has to go. Or does it?

Not long ago I was helping my father by removing things from his conversion van, in preparation for its sale to his friend Guy. My father would not use the van for what it is made for. There have been many times when I would have liked to use it. It would have come in handy for when relatives would come to visit. We could have all rode in one vehicle instead of two. Instead he used it as a shed. I was full of tools and things that he could not be bothered to put away. It took hours to remove all of the raff in the van. As I was grabbing at old newspapers and fishing law books I found my mother’s favorite old cutting board. It was warped and moldy with some paper stuck it. It had gotten damp in the van. I thought about how she would use it twenty years ago before she died of cancer. The last time I had used this board was nine years before when my father and I used the van to go to the family reunion in Indiana. The van had sat in the driveway since. I would have been using that cutting board during this time if I was able to find it. I will not use this board now. It is also cracked now. I could clean it with bleach. I have made a new board since then. I will throw it away soon, or when I get around to it. There just so many things that need to be thrown out first.

Response # 3 (I Don't Think I Was Listening)

2006-03-03T11:34:00.000-05:00

9. Writers have to listen to themselves; writers ought to always be talking to themselves. Try a conversation between you and yourself. Sometimes arguments are fun.

John1: Are you listening?
John-A: I love Urai.
John1: Yes, she is a great lady. Are you listening?
John-A: You shouldn’t fuss about whether I’m listening! You are me. I already know what you are going to say.
John1: Why did you have to be John-A? You should have been John2.
John-A: I don’t like that name. It makes it look like I’m secondary. I’m not going to play your second chair. If I’m John2 that means you thought of John second and I thought of it third because everyone knows that John must be the first.
John1: So, “likeslittlegirls72” is the seventy third pervert to think of that name?
John-A: You must have seen that on pervscan dot com.
John1: Do you think I like how this conversation is going?
John-A Go try to have a conversation with yourself.
John1: Ok…
John1: Good morning John.
John1: Good morning John.
John1: Do you think the weather will stay good today?
John1: Yeah, I think it will be pretty good today.
John-A: That is terrible!
John1: Like you could do better?
John-A: I hope that I could into Nancy some time after she gets divorced again, but before she gets married again.
John1: You always have to change the topic don’t you?
John-A: Hey, she is a great woman.
John1: Do you think she could love you?
John-A: Oh, yeah! I love her.
John1: Must you obsess over the most beautiful serial divorcee in Maine?
John-A: She has a kind heart. She was nice to me.
John1: Hello dead end. Why don’t you try to check up on Debbie?
John-A: I wish I could have some banter with someone other than Mr. Question Man.
John1: Debbie laughed at your jokes and you know you are as funny as a baby’s open grave. She likes to dance. She likes to dance with you. She is smart. She has a career. You had a good time with her at your sister’s wedding. Why not look her up?
John-A: More questions. She’s seen me with Urai. She is a close friend of my sister. Besides, she lives in another state. I love Urai.
John1: I don’t think you listen to me at all. Are you listening?

Response # 2 (Two Went Out, Three Returned)

2006-03-03T11:24:00.000-05:00

A. Two went out, three returned.

There are times when I find that I’m much less close to my friends than I thought. There are times when I receive a surprise. The second greatest is when someone gets married. Usually I’m unaware of the newlyweds being divorced from their previous spouses. The other I would describe as ‘Two went out, three returned.’ It is always nice when a couple is first seen with their new baby. Many times I don’t even know a coworker has a new baby until I see his wife with her. I seldom ask until she starts to show. I don’t like to ask too many personal questions. I find asking questions to be harder than the surprises. I’ll continue to live with the surprises. Some of them are quite nice.

Freestyle # 6 (I Didn't Get the Memo)

2006-03-03T11:21:00.000-05:00

I’m not ready for the twenty first century. There are many things that I didn’t keep up with. When did it become high fashion to have a nose ring. I saw that there are some nursing students wearing them now. They must be mandatory for education majors now. I noticed that Madonna doesn’t wear her truffle snaffle any more. She must be a relic of a previous century like my self. I also think I missed the memo that told elderly women to dress up like Britney Spears. I don’t think that the bare midriff with the hip huger jeans with the thong panties are a good look for those over fifty or over one hundred fifty pounds. I got an unwanted eye feast at the Governor’s restaurant when a skinny old lady with her extended family bent over showing her pink thong leaping up out of her pre-worn-out hip huggers. I averted vision when it came time for the unwanted cleavage show from her Kelly Clarkson style top as her skinny little dog arms dug through her purse on her chair. Later as I stood in line to the cash register, I saw that she had a nose ring. She must have gotten the memo. I’m not ready for the twenty first century. I still miss the eighties.

Freestyle # 5 (Did Satan Invent Recycling?)

2006-03-03T10:59:00.000-05:00

I don’t enjoy recycling. When I was a boy, my teachers kept telling my peers and myself about how we need to save the world and tell our parents to support the bottle bill. I thought saving the world one can at a time was going to feel good. I was disappointed. Keeping my old newspapers in neat bundles or stacks of paper bags until recycling day (which I usually miss) is not as satisfying as just throwing yesterday’s news in the kitchen trash before I sit to enjoy the funny pages known as editorials and letters to the editor. I miss stomping all my pop cans so that they took up less space in the trash. I don’t feel much satisfaction in washing and hanging up to dry my milk bottles and steel cans. On recycling days that I’m not prepared for, or it’s raining I can only wonder if recycling could be a conspiracy to have our homes full of trash and be inconvenienced by the accumulation of raff. I’m sure that Satan must get some joy from human suffering. Could Satan be in on this? Did Satan invent recycling to add to human suffering? I know that my suffering decreases as these materials start to drift into one can. Maybe the ‘god of the earth’ wants me to sin against the earth.

Freestyle #4 (I'm Typing As Fast As I Can)

2006-03-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

I’m typing as fast as I can. I bet that Stephen King could write a book that is simply him typing as fast as he can, have it published and make money. I doubt that he would do that. I think that he has too much respect for his fans to do that. But I might read it anyway. In the movie D.O.A. the villain killed a college student and stole his homework, because he thought that he could get it published, get rich and famous and be able to publish anything. He never did answer Dennis Quaid when he asked who he was going to kill for his second book. Unfortunately I don’t have anyone handy for me to plagiarize-kill for this assignment. I’m really just trying out a keyboard that I haven’t used for a couple of months. I’m still typing as fast as I can. I haven’t used this keyboard very much. I bought it for gaming which I do not have time to do during the school semester. I normally use a smaller, compact illuminated keyboard. Its keys are like those of a large lap-top or desk top replacement computer. The keys of little keyboard are crisp and work well. Best of all it takes up little space on my desk. I bought that one to use when I need to bring a computer with me. The first sentence that I usually type when trying out a new keyboard is: ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’ The keys of this Saitek Eclipse keyboard are squishy but, the keys are where they are supposed to be and it has a really neat illuminated keyboard. I hope this keyboard works as well for typing as it does for gaming.

Two Catagory Essay Introductions

2006-03-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

Car Music
There are three kinds of music that I play in my car. I can play music that does not annoy the passengers. This can depend on who the passengers are. I can play music that can embarrass me or the passengers or I can play music that only I like.

Car Shopping
What will be my next automotive acquisition? I periodically shop for cars. I’m looking for a replacement for my winter car. Eventually I will find the ideal candidate. There are several different kinds of vehicles that I frequently examine. These can fall into three categories. These are: the practical, the ones that other people believe I should buy, and those that appeal to me.

Isearch Background (Home Brewing and the Quest to Make My Own Premium Beer)

2006-02-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

I am new to the hobby of home brewing. I had been cooking since I was a child. When I was a boy I was in a 4-H club and would compete in baking competitions with other 4-H-ers and with other youths in the Bangor fair. When I was in the active duty Navy and was stationed on my last ship one of my shipmates gave me some of his home brewed beer. It was quite cloudy and I was not impressed with its quality. I liked the factory beer well enough. I did not see a reason to make my own. One of my other shipmates was interested in wine making and would read my gun magazines for their wine and beer making supply advertisements in the back. He said that if I can bake a pie that is better than those sold at the grocery store, I should be able to make a better beer than the big brand names.

Not very long ago my father told me all that was needed to make beer using the malt syrup that he pointed out to me in the baking section of a local store. He told me about using the malt syrup and white sugar to make a home brewed beer that was high in alcohol. He told me that his beer would become clear and he would use pectin to get the sediment to stick to the bottom. I was interested and wanted to try to make some myself. I started my brewing hobby in April of 2005 by browsing at the Natural Living Center store in Bangor Maine. I looked at the equipment, kits and books they carried. I decided I should learn more before in invest in any equipment or ingredients. I purchased a small book titled: ‘Home Beermaking The Complete Beginner’s Guidebook’ by William Moore. After reading this tome I decided to buy an equipment kit and an ingredient kit and try making some ale using its clearly written instructions. In May I brewed my first batch of ‘amber’ ale. While the beer was undergoing its primary fermentation for a week I purchased ‘The Complete Joy of Home Brewing’ by Charlie Papazian. I read this book and was inspired by the pleasant and interesting text. It gave me plenty of ideas of things to do to improve my beer. What I liked the best about this book is that the procedures were sub divided by whether they were for beginners, advanced or were expert techniques. I then read ‘Homebrewing for Dummies by Marty Nachel. This also was divided into different skill levels. I wanted to use the materials to improve my beer which I was then drinking. I am continuing to read books and slowly work my way into the more advanced techniques. My present goal to find favorite yeasts for both ales and lagers and be able to continually culture them indefinitely, so that I may be able to brew batches of beer at any time of the year my own convenience.

Cause Essay (Passive Aggressive Behavior)

2006-02-17T16:15:00.000-05:00

This is being edited.

Freestyle #3

2006-02-15T15:31:00.000-05:00

I hate tattoos. I don’t hate them because they are sister to all those crazy, disturbing, scary body modification that I used pay to see at the ten-in-one freak show that came with the traveling fair and now cannot avoid whenever I buy a Hamburg sandwich. I don’t hate them because they can represent a serious health hazard with possibly toxic ink or all those crazy infections and contagious diseases that are available in this age of world travel. I don’t hate them because they always become green and hazy as we get older, as anyone that knows an old sailor or marine can attest. I’m not even bothered by all the different groups and beliefs, from Krishna to Castro. I'm not even bothered by the fact if I got one I would tire of looking at it. I just wish people; especially beautiful young women would get tattoos of things that I want to look at. Is it really too much for me to ask. I’m not asking you to get anything in any places where a judge can see it. Just get pictures of things that I want to see. I don’t think I’m alone on this. I’m sure there must be other guys that would rather see a Chevy Camaro on his girlfriend that the tired old clichés like the rose with bloody thorns, barbed wire or Celtic nonsense. If you cannot get one of things I like to see, such as battle ships, airplanes or classic cars, at least don’t get one that can be called stupid. Yes, tattoos of cartoon characters or your own name are stupid. I also question the wisdom of tattoos of words that you cannot spell or are in a language that you cannot understand. My girlfriend’s son told me of an individual that has a tat’ in Chinese that has a double meaning that the wearer did not know about. I once saw a man with a tattoo of his own photograph on his arm. I really wish I had a camera when I saw that. I heard of a man that commissioned the artist to tattoo the photograph of his daughter on his shoulder and the tattoo ended up being a picture of the artist’s niece that wasn’t even of the same age! Last summer I saw a young girl of about fourteen with the name ‘Alex’ across her belly in one inch letters. I don’t think that she will be with Alex when she is thirty. Will she find a new ‘Alex’ and pretend that she just got it for him? She should have been gone with ‘John’ (the most common male first name in the US) I think it would have saved her some trouble.

Graf #10 Reaction to Sample Isearches

2006-02-15T14:30:00.000-05:00

The 'I-searches' that I read are very personal. The writers had no difficulty with using words like I, and myself. They were very personal and informal, but each had a distinct structure. In this structure I felt affirmed that the questions they posed would be answered and my attention was held by their story. Some of the 'I-searches' held my interest a little more than others. I did not pay complete attention while reading the genealogy 'I-search' because I kept thinking about how my 'family bush' is confused because my ancestors were so poor and trashy that many lied about whom they were related to, especially on immigration papers and marriage licenses. I found the reloading 'I-search' helpful not for the technical material in it but, because it provided me with a structure that can help me in finding my own structure for my own 'I-search' on home beer brewing that I am now working on. I particularly enjoyed the 'I-search' on the history of the old house in Bangor. My own fancy old house is only one hundred three years old and is in another state, buyt I can certainly relate to her interest in finding about the history of her home. I have a book that mentions my house and its once opulent neighborhood. I could clearly feel her excitement with the information and documentation that she found. Her paper also had a structure that I also found helpful. I will look at these sample 'I-searches' for encouragement as I work on my own 'I-search'.

Prompt Reaction #1 (Six Bottles Sitting on the Porch)

2006-02-15T14:21:00.000-05:00

Prompt Reaction #1

Six bottles sitting on the porch

It is not really a porch. It is a set of crumbling brick steps. The bricks are fine but the mortar is weathered and the bricks are starting to find their own way. I’m not a bricklayer. I own a house with real porches. I’ve spent a lot of money repairing it, but I don’t live there. I have tenants. It had been adorned many times with empty champagne bottles when my uncle lived there and entertained his drinking buddies from the Chicago Yacht Club. I am living with my father now in Maine. There are often bottles or cans out on his front stoop. There are more than half a dozen aluminum beverage cans there now. They are not there for a bottle drive. They contain a filling of ‘tobacco juice’. My father is infirmed and cannot be bothered with proper disposal materials from his little ‘hobby’. I have been putting off disposing of his materials until some fair weather. It looks bad, but most of his neighbors will not say a word. I’ve been meaning to clean up this litter. Tomorrow should be a good day for that.

Outro for Cause Essay

2006-02-15T11:19:00.000-05:00

Passive aggressive behavior will always be with us. Many of us will always find it useful or even entertaining and continue to practice it. I am going to continue to try to not let it bother me and not be involved if I can avoid it. Not being bothered might be the best passive aggressive behavior of all.

Intro 1 for cause essay

2006-02-10T11:17:00.000-05:00

Why do so many people have to make things difficult? As a Navy reservist I have often experienced a ritual known as ‘hurry up and wait’. One of my colleagues found great amusement in quoting me to just about everyone in my unit one day when I said; “Why do they have to make it so, difficult? Every time we do this, it’s like this has never been done before.” Even my Unit’s senior chief was amused by my naivety. There years of experience has shown them not to be upset by a little bit of “personal control” from the “little Hitlers” in administrative tasks. They understood that passive aggressive behavior is common, useful and at times necessary. I’m sure that everyone has suffered from people that sort-of do their job, or put their work or favors upon others. There are many (politicians, bosses, lovers, children, clergy, etc) who offer to do great things while ignoring the great things that they didn’t really… actually do. Let’s (try to) explore the motivations of those that practice passive behavior and how it is common, useful and at times necessary.

Graf #9 (Cause Essays)

2006-02-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

I actually enjoyed reading the sample cause essays. I liked the colorful descriptions and examples that were given. I paid little attention to the typos, odd grammar and ragged margins. I liked what they had to say. The first essay really caught my imagination with the reference to the delivery of the flowers and then held me with curiosity buy changing the subject to why love fails. I felt satisfied with the examples that she used to back up each of her claims. Each paragraph ends with a sentence that provides clarity and closure. I was especially moved by the paragraph about selfishness and the horrible way that she treated him and his little daughter. I catch myself trying to imagine how things went on that last weekend that they had together. I liked her closing paragraph. I felt better that she was in love again, but I wouldn’t want to be the man that receives a copy of this essay, especially after only one month. My only disagreement is with timing of her candor with her new love. I would want to know only the good things about her, especially early in the relationship. I doubt that I would have ever gone out on a first date with my girlfriend if I already knew that she had been divorced twice, attacked her first husband with a knife, is a poor gambler, would borrow money from loan sharks, doesn’t like cheese and hates beer.

Graff #6 (Uniqueness)

2006-02-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

I’m sure that I’m unique. At least I like to think so. I’m sure that I can find similarities between most people, but I think if I look close enough I’ll find a difference. I’ve seen how similarities can be found in things that are very distinctive. I can have any two people write something on a piece of paper and claim that they were both written by the same person because there is a similarity to be found somewhere. Finger prints are supposed to be unique, but there are only about half a dozen different finger print features. The combinations and shapes of features are supposed to be unique but they may not helpful if they are smeared or are only partial. It is still a matter of judgment of a human to assess a possible match because there are no computers that really have judgment which is a trait that is unique to humans. The government now assigns a social security to all babies at birth. This is now considered our identity, our proof of our uniqueness. I must have been born a long time ago because I was not assigned a Social Security number at the time. Back then people did not even apply for one until it was time to go to the workplace. Now, you cannot even claim then as dependants on you income tax if they are not listed in the government’s beast. My number is lower than most people my age because my mother opened a savings account for me when I was in elementary school. This lends a little bit of extra uniqueness to what should be my unique number. I’m sure there are many people that like the same things that I do, but maybe not in the same order. That must make me unique. I’ve accumulated huge collections of tools, books, clothes, watches, hobby equipment, boats, several cars, and even paintings that I do not have up on the walls. Although this set is unique to me I’m pretty sure that most people have things in their home that serve the same purposes. After all other than the naked native Tasmanians, most would have clothes, things to eat with, a place to sleep and things to look at and be entertained by. I’m sure that at some time someone has or will write a graph that is similar to this one. If I succeed in not letting that bother me, it will be unique to me.

Graff #2 (I Learned a Little)

2006-02-06T17:59:00.000-05:00

My fear of going to sixth grade loomed over me like a dark shadow of an oncoming storm. I had heard these terrible stories of how Mr. Gridley would torment and humiliate his students. I heard that he made everyone do homework on the weekends and would make almost everyone solve problems on the blackboard in front of the whole class. I also heard that if you were late to his class especially from coming in late from recess he would make you miss the next recess. Worst of all I heard that if you were the least bit different from the other students he would give you a nickname. I was quite relieved that when I finally got to sixth grade that Mr. Gridley no longer worked there. He had been moved up to the sixth grade. I enjoyed my first couple weeks of school. I was so pleased that my homeroom teacher Mr.Morang was also my science teacher. I really loved science at the time. He seemed quite affable. He had a round face with a fluffy black beard with some gray hair. He looked like a big cuddly kitty cat. And after school he would be visited by his former pupils from the high school up the hill. Then we started to get weekend homework. One of my peers forgot to bring his homework. He had the honor of being nicknamed ‘Uh, I donno’ for his response to the query about the whereabouts of his assignment. Soon, many of my classmates had nicknames. Most where based on excuses given by the student such as ‘Dog was sick’, although there were exceptions such as ‘Barn Boy’ who left the door open several times and there were ‘Fiddle’ and ‘Miss Fidget’ that messed with things in their desks during lecture. He became impatient and was often very sarcastic with wrong answers and excuses. In a classroom discussion, I expressed some disbelief about a certain aspect in a story that we were reading about and his response was “If you can’t understand this you must live a pretty sad pathetic little life.” I told my older sister Holly about my troublesome new teacher. She said; “Don’t you remember all that I and Lynn (the eldest child) told you about Mr. Morang.” I had the names confused. Holly told me about a time when she was in the hall outside his classroom when he burst out the door and demanded to what she and her friend Klauna were doing outside his door, and who messed with something that he had left out. Klauna would not say a word and she was sent on her way. Holly said “Nothing” in response to the question and was sent to the principal. I had a similar incident and earned the nickname “Nothing much” for my response to his question of what I was doing in a hall outside his class were a group of boys were at horseplay. I’ve also seen him burst out on people like a trap door spider when I was in his class. I had a dislike for him and wanted him to be unhappy too. One day when a group of students passed Mr. Morang with his class in a crowded corridor, they said in unison “Good morning Mr. Morang.” With the one exception, I said moron. With his sharp ears he instantly knew who said the offending word. I denied the accusation and Mr. Morang did not choose to punish me. I was certain that I was going to have the longest semester of my life. Soon Mr. Morang would periodically fall ill and Mrs. Wyman would be our substitute teacher. I liked her. I wanted her to like me. I behaved. I must have behaved better when Mr. Morang was back. I was less often picked out for his sarcasm which was quite amusing when you are not the target. A couple of years later my father broke out with laughter while reading the police log. He said: “You remember that teacher that gave you all that grief a couple of years ago?” I want on with a long litany of teachers that squashed my creativity. And he said: “You know, Holly had trouble with him too.” Apparently all of those high school students that came to visit were buying weed from him and several of them were caught getting lit up with him at his camp. I don’t know where Mr. Morang is now. He is quite a character.

Frestyle #2 (Car Trouble)

2006-02-06T10:54:00.000-05:00

I am shopping for another car. I don’t enjoy car shopping. I am still traumatized by my earlier experiences. The worst one is from 1984 when my father took me with him to shop for a car that he had no intention of me ever driving. My second worst experience is my own fault, so concentrate on that. I’ve had my primary car, a Claret Red 1989 Dodge Spirit ES 2.5L turbo since March 1991. I should not have bought this car. It had ‘issues’. It still does. The car was less than two years old and looked and smelled newer than most real new cars but is already had over thirty four thousand miles. It had been professionally detailed before it was brought in for a trade-in. It was like a perfect new car. Hello window dressing. The very next day after I brought it home I was greeted by a puddle of the brand new clean rust-free anti-freeze finding its way out through the radiator. I immediately brought it back to the dealer for service. It had a one month warrantee that covered half the cost of the new radiator and installation. Six months later I got back from a cruise on my ship and took it out from the Navy long term parking lot where I found that it was abused by the crazies that worked there. They were supposed to start the engine once a month, but all they managed to do was blow two of the speakers on my stereo and let my undersized battery run so low it had to be replaced. It was then that every one of the freeze plugs sprung a leak. I took it to a repair shop where it was found that every single freeze plug had rusted through and had another plug hammered in on top it which itself was now rusted through (all in less than two years!). All of this could have been repaired for the original owner under warrantee for free! Obviously it was not. I wanted and asked for brass freeze plugs, but “monel” (actually galvanized steel) ones were sold to me by the repair shop at extra cost. This car had many repairs over the years that almost all stem from the original ownership. I kept holding onto the car hoping to find something better. When I had enough cash together in mid 2002 for a brand new Chevy Camaro I was dismayed to find out the model was discontinued and there were no more to be ordered. The new GTO is just not the same. I wanted a Camaro. I decided to hold onto the Dodge while the body was rust free until I found something else that interests me. When the turbo charger self destructed and ruined the engine, I did not have another car in mind and foolishly continued to repair the vehicle. I’m not happy with the service I received when I had the engine replaced. The repair shop that installed the power plant assumed that I would be happy with and unpainted engine rusting under my hood. Recently I took it to the local dealership to have the gasket around the windshield replaced. I received four hundred dollars worth of damage to the paint on the front of the roof from the technician that was supposed to put some sealant around my wind screen. And now the trunk rattles too. It’s time to look at some other cars.

Freestyle #1

2006-02-06T10:50:00.000-05:00

I hate to write. I do not enjoy it. It gives me anxiety. I prefer to avoid the scrutiny. When I was a boy, my mother said to me that no one really want to hear what you have to say. Now some thirty years I think it means that people only want to hear about things that involve them. At the time I took it to mean that I should shut up. I especially feel that way when I write. I feel sure that they are not enjoying it and they are compiling a list of grammatical errors and misspellings. When I was a boy another boy I knew wrote letters to NASA and received some great photographs in return. I followed his example and wrote to NASA in hopes of receiving some of those pictures. They never wrote back. I thought about sending hate mail to NASA for that. I wonder if something was misspelled. Oddly enough when I wrote a letter to ‘Santa’ I received a letter back from the Archive of Saint Nicholas at Bari Italy. Most of the women I’ve dated while I was in the active duty Navy were not very good at writing to me when I was at sea. It can get embarrassing to have one sided correspondence because the other person cannot be bothered to write. For a brief time I was guilty of that myself because I didn’t feel like writing while I was being overworked on the ship (and I write even worse when I’m extremely unhappy). I suffered my greatest traumas by having to write for school. It didn’t help that I started out as a lazy child that didn’t write more than I had to. I never understood grading of writing assignments in school. I never understood the instructions of the assignment. I was often shocked by the ‘Sea of Red’ on what I thought was a flawless paper. In school they sometimes would show an example of ‘good’ writing that would make my eyes glaze. I still don’t understand what is good writing. I certainly hope this paragraph was not as unpleasant to read as it was for me to write it.

Graff # 8 (Bob is unhappy)

2006-02-06T10:47:00.000-05:00

Bob is unhappy. I’ll call him Bob to protect his identity; after all he is my father’s neighbor from two houses up the street. (If you really have to know, his real name rhymes with Bobbert.) I’m pretty sure he is unhappy. I don’t just assume that he is unhappy because his two sons that just barely left him recently smoke pot and are almost a regular feature in the local police log. I don’t assume that he is unhappy because his very elderly mother and law had come to live with him or that his wife continues to task him whenever he is home. I’m pretty sure he is unhappy because he always finds time to bully his neighbors. Bob’s particular pet peaves usually involve his home owner’s association fantasies. Two neighbors that had downed trees in the Great Ice Storm will still not speak to Bob. In early Spring, before the snow melts my father always receives letters from him to complain about some sticks in his yard or half a dozen bottles on the porch or that one or more of his vehicles have an expired registration. Last year in a wind storm my father’s old metal shed was blown down. The snow was still eight inches deep when my father received a scary letter from the town ordinance officer accompanied with a very official looking letter compiling a long list of complaints padded with fiction worthy of a Stephen King novel that Bob composed during some of his free time at his law office. It was a very compelling letter. When I talked with the ordinance officer he said that he could not see much of the things that Bob complained about, but he still wanted the yard cleaned up. My Father sold his unregistered vehicles. One of these a Maroon Lincoln Town Car that I am restoring in my garage in another neighborhood and the other a Maroon Chevy Conversion van that is now our friend Guy’s wheel chair van. Upon talking with Guy who had much more trouble with Bob when he and Bob lived in another town. There he was charged $5500 in fines soon after he saw Bob poking around on his property. Guy had a car in his back yard that needed some more work done it before it could pass its safety inspection. Guy said that Bob had always a lot of free time, maybe too much free time. I’ve talked with my father’s other neighbors. There was a consensus that Bob had an abundance of free time, but not friends. It is also pretty apparent that there were no actual ‘others’ that asked Bob to take action. The recent super snow thaw has left my father’s yard bare, showing that I didn’t take care of my father’s sticks and leaves before the snows like a better son would. I’m sure that Bob is still unhappy. I’m sure that my father will hear from him soon.

Graff # 7

2006-02-01T10:41:00.000-05:00

No Deposit No Return

“No deposit * No return Not to be refilled” is what it says on the shoulder of this short fat brown glass bottle in ominous all capital letters. I found an unbroken beer bottle with no remaining traces of any labeling in the woods last fall while on a deer hunt. I was out with my elderly father in Milford trying to get revenge on at least one of the deer for what the deer in Orono did to my garden. I was looking for tracks in the reddish sandy loam on the edge of a clearing when I found this little treasure. I make my own beer now and I am always looking for new (to me) containers for my delicious nectar. I remember a time before the bottle tax and there were actual handsome sturdy returnable bottles that would actually be refilled with beer. Returnable now only means that it is brought back for the small tax refund so that it may be melted down for other glass, not to return as a refilled bottle of beer. Unfortunately this was not one of these treasured original ‘returnables’, but a cheap thin-glassed throw-away. No deposit. No return. Not to be refilled. The cryptic code on the bottom of the smooth virtually unblemished vessel revealed that it was made in June of 1968, only eleven months younger than my self. It had been protected by the soft soil where it was discarded possibly by another hunter for decades, waiting to be broken by the careless or be redeemed by my loving hands. I worked hard when I was younger, saving all that I could for college and more. I went to college to become an engineer. I’m not an engineer. I have not worked at a rewarding career for a long time but I am careful with my money and have more now than before. I’m looking for redemption. I will find it. The little brown bottle will have its redemption. In four weeks it will be filled with my Czech style pilsner.

graf # 1

2006-01-18T11:36:00.000-05:00

I treasure my hands simply because they are mine and they work well. They are not very big for a man of my size, but they are strong and have grown more than a glove size since I was twenty because my bones have not sealed. (Many others that have this condition are arthritic.) My hands have many of the usual stories told by scars of minor cuts from glass and knives and minor burns from the stove, cigarette lighters and some fireworks. Many of these stories I no longer remember. My hands used to be tough and rough from hard work, but now they are soft and smooth from less demanding tasks and wearing gloves when working around the heat of an engine. I enjoy working with these gentle but, strong hands. I’m very fortunate to have two complete hands with a full a full set of ten fingers that can be used to do things like play the euphonium horn, cook food, brew beer, save lives by performing first aid, fight fires, plant a garden, play sports, troubleshoot electronics, fly kites, work on cars, and most importantly hold my fiancée’s hand.