Let me just say that, after you’ve driven a four-cylinder car for so many years, six cylinders feel like a friggin’ rocket. This was the first major roadtrip we took in the Dodge Intrepid we received from Dani’s grandmother earlier this year, and it was a true pleasure to drive. I have never reached 90 MPH with such ease.

It was a lovely little holiday. We burned down the five in about eight hours, including stops, on Christmas Eve with almost zero traffic. When we got to the Flaherty-Carns household (my mother’s place) we settled in by starting the laundry marathon. See, living in an apartment complex where you need to pump quarters into a machine to get your clothes clean is a drag. It’s made more so by the fact that there are only about five said machines to the 100 or so people who live in my part of the complex. Laundry tends to pile up like a landfill in our house. Knowing this, mom encouraged us to bring our laundry with us so we could do it there for free. When we arrived with only our trunk and back seat full of laundry, she was disappointed tat we didn’t bring it all.

Christmas was nice. With no room left ion the car for our gifts, Dani and I decided to open the presents we gave to each other before we left. I received a couple of nice sweaters, a long trench-style raincoat (DESPERATELY needed after some #$@! stole my old London Fog a couple years back) and what is, quite possibly, the greatest gift of all: GARDEN GNOMES!!!!!! And not those crappy cement jobbies you see at the Home Depot, which I would have been perfectly happy with. OH no! Dani got me two — a male and a female — traditional Nordic garden gnomes, complete with RED POINTY HATS!!!! Hand-painted, made of relatively fragile plaster (so they’ll actually have to be living-room gnomes, which is all the better in my eyes) and just totally beyond awesome. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING says love like garden gnomes. I almost cried.

I gave Danielle a couple of cool things, but the creme de la creme was the totally bitchin’ Sketcher’s Four-Wheelers. They’re blue with red wheels with little sparkles in the wheels and an American flag tag on the toe. She had mentioned about two months ago how cool she thought they were, but it was a bit of an off-handed comment. I then mentioned that Brittney Spears was tied tot hem and she immediately changed her mind. I discovered that, while they have a Brittney model, they’re not all hocked by Spears, so I figured it would be a good gift. Then I got nervous, as Christmas is always a test of how well I know her. Fortunately, I tend to know her slightly better than she knows herself. Her face lit right up the second she lifted the gift. It’s heft apparently gave it away and she was stoked, putting them on right then and there to go try them in our parking lot. I also got her a bottle of her favorite perfume — Calvin Klein’s Contradiction — which I don’t think anyone had ever gotten for her before.

We celebrated Christmas early with Dani’s family as well, since we were going to be out of town. Her parents are pretty groovy and they gave me some nice shirts and a sweater. Her brother Zack also gave me a really cool sweater (I was in desperate need of new clothes this year). But the COOLEST gift I got, aside from the gnomes, came from Tom and JoAnn, Dani’s parents: A KITCHEN TORCH!!! And not one of those half-assed jobbies you see hanging in your local pseudo-gourmet shop. Oh no. I can practically weld with this thing. It’s a Williams-Sonoma torch and it is just beyond cool. I can not wait to make my first creme brulee with it. I also plan on using it to heat soup. And anything else I can think of. Just genuinely awesome.

On Christmas day Mom, as usual, spoiled us. I’m an only child, which should explain a lot, so she tends to go a tad overboard. Add to that fact that she raised me on her own from the time I was seven years old and you get a good feeling for just how overboard overboard is. This year was relatively tame by comparison, but we still received enough DVDs to almost start a new library. I’m all about the The Simpsons Second Season DVD box set. I also got Band of Brothers, Ice Age and a couple of others. All in all, a good haul. Dani found this incredible cobalt blue vase on eBay that we gave to mom, who loves cobalt glass.

In addition to the videos, mom gave us each an inspirational book, which was odd considering that mom’s not usually the type to do that. I can’t for the life of me remember the title at the moment. Essentially, she intended to give the women’s version to Dani, who she has officially adopted as a daughter now that we’re seriously talking marriage. She inscribed something in the book that Dani was not allowed to read in front of me as it was guaranteed to make her cry, as did the card mom gave her. When buying the book, mom found a copy for men as well, so I also received that. It’s quite touching to see the two most important women in my life bond like that. It seems so common to hear about the mother hating her daughter-in-law or vice-versa, or for the woman’s family to not dig the groom, but in our case there’s love all around. Her family digs me and I totally dig them, and my mom loves Dani and Dani just friggin’ raves about my mom. It’s the best situation and I really totally dig it.

We weren’t able to see my dad while we were down which totally bummed me out. We had initially planned to see him on Christmas Eve, as we had planned on driving home the night before, but we decided that we’d probably be way too out of it to enjoy the visit. So we switched to the day after Christmas instead. On Christmas, Dad called us and said he wasn’t feeling well and had been feeling kind of sick for a while. He just wanted to sleep, so he said he’d come up to see us in April. That’ll make it almost 18 months since I will have last seen him, which sucks. It’s partially my fault. When I was unemployed, I just didn’t want to spend the money to travel anywhere, so I didn’t go home that entire time. Of course, he hasn’t come up here to see us either, so it’s kind of evenly split on that one. He’s been up here a couple of times to visit the wine country with one of his girlfriends, but didn’t have a chance to stop in and say hi. So, bummer all around.

I feel kind of bad for my dad this year. Last year, he got married for the fourth time in a ceremony that I presided over. They got divorced a few months later. So, this holiday season, he was pretty much alone throughout, and he didn’t sound too happy about that. I had really hoped to see him. Dani was all set to bake some cookies and a pie for him, since he doesn’t get much home cooking anymore. I’m concerned for his mental welfare as a result of all this, and don’t feel like a particularly good son for allowing him to sleep rather than driving out to see him. Granted, we’re talking at least an hour’s drive from Tustin, as he now lives in Sun City, but it still would have been a good idea, I think. It’s one of those situations where my dad and I don’t really see eye to eye. We don’t fight or anything, we just sort of realize that we’re totally different people. He’s always been more of the jock where I’ve always been a bit of a geek. That, plus all the weird crap surrounding the divorce (which was 20 years ago… I’m so totally over it, but I’m not sure he ever will be) makes for a fairly strained relationship. We both need to try harder, but it’s difficult when he’s way the hell down there and I’m way the hell up here. Despite the tension and our differences, I really love the guy. I mean, hell, he’s my dad. He’s made a ton of mistakes, but all that proves is that he’s human. And, as he gets older, he gets harder on himself for the mistakes he’s made. In the end, he’s really a good guy. I really hope he understands that.

Since seeing dad was out on the 26th, we chose to hit Disneyland that day. It was supposed to train on Saturday, which is when we’d initially planned to go, so moving it up seemed a good idea. Apparently, everyone else in Orange County agreed. I hadn’t been to Disneyland in almost a decade, which is odd considering that I used to go at least once a year when I lived in OC. They built California Adventure over the old parking lot, building new massive parking complexes about half a mile away. The new garages looked something like a scene from the Matrix. The newly revamped tram takes you from the garages to the park, dropping you conveniently off at the new Downtown Disney shopping district.

It’s really hard not to be cynical about Disneyland. As a child it held so much awe and wonder in me. As an adult, I’m savvy to the marketing blitz and the kind of thought that goes into the design of everything, which is built to take more of your money. Downtown Disney is a prime example of this. It’s essentially a shopping mall where you pay $8.00 for parking. It takes its idea from Universal Studios’ City Walk, which is another hyper-stylized shopping area. Knott’s Berry Farm pioneered the idea with the shops that sit right outside their theme park. You used to have to pay admission to buy certain souvenirs, but now you can get most anything you’d find in the park at the stores on the outside. The World of Disney store is like a mini-mall in and of itself just for Disneyland souvenirs. As they were having a 50 percent off sale for Christmas items, it was a bit of a mad house. We fell prey as well and bought a cute ornament with Minnie and Mickey under the mistletoe. I later bought Dani a figurine of the same scene as well as four of the little Christmas beanie toys — two for Dani and two for my nephews who we planned on seeing the next day.

It costs $45 to get into EACH park. That’s $45 to go to Disneyland and another $45 to get into California Adventure. I’ve heard that California Adventure isn’t really worth the $45, so we’ll probably be waiting until another time to visit it. Disneyland, on the other hand, was packed with a capital P. There were lines for everything. We arrived at about 12:30, so the park had been open for more than four hours. We missed both Christmas parades because we were otherwise occupied and really didn’t want to wait for seats for them an hour ahead of time like everyone else. The “It’s a Small World” ride wait was 120 minutes, and they had to close the Fast Pass on it because its schedule was full. ON IT’S A FRIGGIN’ SMALL WORLD!!!!! Dude, I remember when that was, like, a guaranteed no-wait ride. Just wild.

We ate lunch at the Carnation Cafe, which was groovy, then sauntered off. I had heard somewhere that they had changed the Star Tours ride, but I was apparently mistaken. It hasn’t changed at all since they installed it. The Innoventions ride was VERY cool. They had closed the rotating carousel a long long time ago shortly after one of the cast members was crushed to death on the rotating stage. You used to sit in seats facing the middle, which rotated to provide the show. Now, you enter on the outside, watch a little presentation on one of the four subjects they represent, then are set loose to wander about the inside playing on various computers and such. I finally got to see a Segway up close and personal but, unlike my buddy John, I didn’t get to ride it. The computers had some fun software on it for kids, but, working with them all day, I wasn’t as excited about them as I once was. They did have an area where you could surf the Internet through Google, but it was extremely limited in what you could view. I couldn’t find any porn at all. What’s more, I couldn’t even access my own site! I was so hoping to leave this homepage up on the screen for someone to view, but no go. Total bummer.

We ate dinner at the Blue Bayou, which was a first for Dani, then hit the Haunted Mansion. I’m not sure when they started doing this, but they dressed the mansion up for the holidays in the style of The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was REALLY cool. The narrator explained that Jack Skellington and his crew had taken over the mansion and we were witnessing the result of two holidays colliding. The ghosts that pop up from behind the gravestones all wore Santa hats. The talking statues were replaced by talking jack-o-lanterns and, instead of the hanging man in the entrance at the elevator, it was the giant head of Jack staring down at you saying “Merry Christmas”. Very, very, very cool.

After that we went to watch the fireworks. The whole reason we went to Disneyland for the holidays was because Dani had heard that it was snowing on Main Street. We’d heard various things to back that up, including someone telling us that the “snow” was actually flakes of soap, which disappointed me to some degree. In all the times I went to Disneyland, I don’t think I had ever seen their fireworks show. Since half the park flocked to see it, my friends and I usually took advantage of the open lines and went on the more popular rides. Besides, you can usually see the fireworks from our house in Tustin, so I never saw the need to pay for that privilege.

It turned out that the snow only fell during the fireworks show, so we camped out a spot near the Rivers of America and waited. The fireworks were simply the best fireworks I had ever seen. I felt my anti-Disney cynicism literally melt away as I watched them. I was actually in awe, which is hard when you see the things every year. They had these rockets that looked like shooting stars, leaving a bright glowing trail behind them as they went. They were totally my favorite. They also had bursts that, when opened, looked like smiley-faces. Spectacular just doesn’t seem to cover it. At the end, they popped up the blue lights and the “snow” began to fall. It was actually soap suds, not flakes, and the foam fell on us just like a heavy snowfall. It really was magical and romantic and just plain gorgeous. I could not get over just how beautiful everything was and found myself really admiring the Disney folks for pulling that off. My sense of awe was bursting and, for the first time in years, I really felt that Disney magic.

We went on the Pirate of the Caribbean (I love that ride, for some reason) and then decided to head home. We slept pretty well that evening.

The next day Dani wasn’t feeling too hot, so I drove out to Riverside to see my brother Bill on my own. He and his wife had a second child last January whom I had never seen. I’m the God father to their first son, Michael, and I love that little monster. Their newest son, Zackery, is just the cutest, sweetest baby I’ve ever seen. He was remarkably well behaved and has one of those smiles you just fall in love with. Michael spent all of his time showing me the cool things he was building with the Zoobs I bought him. That kid cracks me up.

Bill, his wife Melissa and I went out for dinner and got away from it all for a bit. Bill works two jobs to support his family and literally never sees them. He’s up at 5am and usually not home until midnight. He took Friday off to spend it with me. He was glad to have the excuse to take some time off. I miss those guys in a big way. I wish we all lived closer so that we could spend more time together. Bill is not my biological brother, but we refer to each other as brothers since we really are the closest thing each of us have to a sibling. We’ve known each other for as long as we can remember, having met when we were about a year old. He’s only a week and a day older than me, so we’ve always celebrated our birthdays together, and we grew up right across the street from one another.

I sometimes find myself feeling sorry for seeing Bill working as hard as he does and all that. For a while, I considered it a bit of a mess. But, upon just a little more inspection, it’s easy to see that there is absolutely no mess to be found. Yes, he got married and had a family when he was rather young (he and his wife were 20 when they got married and had Mike). And, yes, he has to work two jobs to keep everything together. But you’ve never met a man who looked as happy as he does. Bill is a man who looks at life and says, “OK, no problem.” I think it kills him that he needs to spend so much time away from his family, but aside from that he just sees everything as stuff that just needs to get done. I never hear him complain, nor does he express any sense of woe over it. He recognizes that he has a responsibility and, rather than shirk or fret over it, he just puts in everything he’s got every day to make it work. And damned if he doesn’t make it look easy, though we all know it isn’t. I only wish I had that kind of drive. I swell with pride whenever I think of him. His sense of maturity makes me look like a teenager in comparison.

Our last day at home was spent watching some of the movies we received, relaxing and, for Mom and Dani, doing a bit of baking. It was good to just hang out with Mom, yap and have a good time. I don’t go home nearly enough. I love my mom and really enjoy when she’s around. Dani has been working on her to move up to the Bay Area, which Mom has expressed some interest in. I think that would be a great idea. I originally moved up here to go to college and selected this area primarily because of its distance from home — close enough that I could easily get home in an emergency, but far enough away that I could claim some independence and no one could sneak up on me. Having Mom around would be a boon. Having both parents around would be pretty cool. Having Bill and his family up here on top of all of that would be simply awesome. But I can’t expect everyone to uproot their lives to be near me just because I decided to leave home.

I have no real strong desire to move back home, though I did find myself less hateful of OC on this trip. I think I’m realizing that home is, essentially, where you make it. I love the Bay Area, but it is beginning to wear on me a bit. Perhaps if I lived somewhere other than Hayward I’d be less jaded about the place. That’s something we’re working on, though.

The traffic on the drive home royally sucked, as the road is paved with idiots, but we still somehow made it home in eight-and-a-half hours. The house is a total mess, and I’m back at work, but all in all it is kind of good to be home. I miss everyone already. But that’s just another excuse to head back home when I have the chance.

I’m overly proud of myself:

Click on it to see it full size. I have a use for it, I just haven’t completed it yet. It was a lot of fun to create, though.

Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Publishing fame has written a rather well thought out article on the benefits and myths of so-called piracy.

Anyone who used Napster before the RIAA cried foul and had it destroyed knows that it didn’t supplant their purchase of CDs. If anything, it enhanced it. MP3 sharing gave me the opportunity to get a risk-free taste of music I’d heard a lot about but hadn’t actually heard without having to commit to a $13 CD. If I liked the music, I went out and got the CD because a) I like pretty packaging, b) pressed CDs are far more durable than CD-Rs and typically have slightly better sound quality than MP3s and c) it was the right thing to do, which, as O’Reilly points out, is the attitude of many consumers.

Of course, because of the whole RIAA flap, I’m now probably more willing to download the MP3 and burn my own CD just out of spite. But that doesn’t keep me from going to concerts, buying additional merchandise related to the bands or giving my money to the music industry through any of the number of channels in which they have their hands. The fact that they still rely so heavily on CD sales in an age where a digital file of only about 4MB contains an almost equal quality simply boondoggles me. If someone were to offer to press a CD for $13 that consists only of those songs that I liked rather than the extra crap they usually put on there (i.e. the “hidden tracks” that are nothing more than studio outtakes that are, at best, only slightly more interesting than overheard conversations at the local McDonalds) I’d happily drop the cash.

We are so very very close to an “in-demand” model of consumerism. Those who have cable can already watch some movies in-demand, though they have to watch them a prescheduled time. Books could easily be printed in demand at your local Barnes and Noble but getting the rights to do that from the publishers have been a serious headache. The cost of the equipment to do this is a loss-leader. It’s just a matter of time and promotion before the system would begin turning a profit. CDs on demand are completely within our reach and a couple of companies have taken a stab at this, but, once again, archaic concepts of intellectual property and the standard fear of new technology, which I liken to a cave man’s initial fear of fire, keeps this from becoming a reality. Which is a shame because I genuinely believe the RIAA could stand to make quite a mint from such a system.

The most surprising part of O’Reilly’s essay to me is this admission:

“At O’Reilly, we publish many of our books in online form. There are people who take advantage of that fact to redistribute unpaid copies… While these pirated copies are annoying, they hardly destroy our business. We’ve found little or no abatement of sales of printed books that are also available for sale online.”

Several market studies have shown that, during the height of Napster’s popularity, CD sales had actually gone up. They have since begin to drop. Some in the music industry point to file sharing as the culprit. I don’t think I’ve heard a single person consider the fact that the poor economy may have consumers focusing their spending efforts on the necessities as opposed to luxury items, which music essentially is.

I’ll continue to download my MP3s off of the internet, whether it be through Kazaa or whatever pops up in its place if its opponents succeed in shutting it down. If I like the band, I’ll buy the CD, like I always have. If I don’t, I’ll commit the MP3 to my digital dustbin and move on. If the music industry loses money off of my decision, it’s only because technology has allowed me to become a better-informed consumer. The only way to fight a new technology is to find a way to work with it, and if the RIAA can’t figure out how then their days are thankfully numbered.

I’ve been sweating this damn Sun Certified Java Programming exam for the better part of a year, especially within the past three weeks. I just completed it and <drumroll /> I PASSED!!! I’m not going to say it was with flying colors, but it wasn’t exactly by the skin of my teeth either.

So I am now officially, pending final approval of everything (i.e. to make sure I didn’t cheat and all that, which I didn’t) a Sun Certified Java Programmer. On my first try! Yay me!

So, I’ll be somewhat insufferable for a while. Don’t know what to tell you other than “deal”. My Java kung fu may not be the best, but it’s damn good.

Next step: Sun Certified Java Developer’s exam. Oh yeah, I can taste the victory.

If you haven’t visited The Brunching Shuttlecocks website… well, the f*&^ is wrong with you? Go! Right now! I’ll wait.

Back? OK, Lore’s ratings are awesome, but his fans have all decided they want to take a crack at them as well in the Tri-Brunchma message boards. The latest is for “Preschool” which has been loosely interpreted to also include Kindergarten. I threw in my two cents worth and, well, it was a story I wanted to share with all of you here, since I think it’s pretty indicative of the kind of child I was. Plus, it represents the moment when I first realized that adults are stupid.

Learning the Limitations of God’s Powers
OK, a bit unfair as this is a Kindergarten story and not Preschool, but it probably could have been Preschool if they had this then.

I went to a Friends Christian school, which is essentially run by modern Quakers (terrific furniture and damn good oatmeal). Every day we had “Prayer time” where we went from child to child, who each added a little request to God. Not sure what He was getting out of the deal — suffering the little children or something, whatever — but we were told to all ask Him for something that we needed. The other kids usually asked for something like, “My Grandma is sick, please help her get better,” and stuff like that.

My father had won me a little stuffed pig at a local carnival and, after sleeping with and hugging it every night (awww) its stuffing began to compress, so it got a bit droopy. So one day, when it came to be my turn, I prayed, “Dear God, please put some more stuffing in my pig.”

My teacher looked at me (“YOU OPENED YOUR EYES! YOU’RE GOING TO H-E-L-L!”) and said, “Bobby, God can’t stuff your pig. That’s probably something you’ll have to ask your father to do for you. Ask God for something else.”

I looked at her dumbfounded and said, “But teacher, you told us God can do anything. He created the Heavens and the Earth. He breathed life into Adam. He helped Moses part the red sea. He brought Jesus back to life. You’re telling me he can’t put more stuffing in my toy pig?”

Faced with such a sound, logical argument coming from a five year old, my teacher immediately renounced her faith and, last we heard, became one of seven wives belonging to a cult leader in Botswana named Mohubtek.

Actually, I’m kidding. She said something like, “Fine, ask Him to stuff your pig. Smart ass. Becky?” and moved on. From that moment forward, however, I never trusted religion again and am now something of a Zen Buddhist as a result. So C- for the whole existential angst deal, but B+ for the cupcakes on my birthday.

Tomorrow morning I take the big test. I’m nervous as hell about it as I haven’t done as well as I had hoped on the practice exams. So today is one hell of a heavy study day. I have until 7pm tonight to reschedule, which may not be a bad idea considering all the crap that’s been going on lately. Yeesh.

In the mean time, I may be going to the Java Meetup in San Francisco, just to socialize and network and whatnot. If you plan on being there, drop me a line and I’ll look forward to meeting you!

I’m so wildly ambivalent about rainy days. Today I hate them, but that’s because I underestimated the wacky morning DJs this morning when they said it “may get a little rainy”. Well, sure, if by little you mean I’ll be able to take the ferry straight to the entrance of my building. My coat is far from water resistant — more like water retentive, as it soaks it up like a sponge — and I refuse to use an umbrella out of principle, which leads me to my ambivalence.

The grey sky and slightly chilly, cuddle-worthy weather is quite appealing, provided I don’t need to see it more than twice a week. It gives me a chance to sit in front of a fire (or heat lamp, whatever) and get all toasty with a nice hot cup of cider and my beloved in my arms whilst watching the droplets drizzle lazily down my windows.

I’d feel the same way about walking in it if I could keep my corneas intact. See, I stand about 6’2″ tall, which is, conveniently, roughly the same Y value of the pointy ends of the umbrella’s umbra. Since most people are a bit shorter than me, that puts me at eye level of hundreds of eye gougers per square yard on a particularly bad day. And today was bad. I personally prefer a baseball cap just to keep the rain off my specs. But today I had no hat, and no one — not even Starbucks — seemed to have any for sale. And I wasn’t about to break down and buy an eye gouger for myself. No thanks.

So, I trudged through the deluge, dodging left and right from the fiendish things, feeling my socks get slushier and slushier until I could find a place where I get a hot cup of soup and dry out a bit. Then I entered the fray again and trudged back to work.

Whenever it rains, I am reminded of a conversation I once had with my high school girlfriend:

Her: When I was little, I was always told that snow was just angels molting. It was such a beautiful image.

Me: Then what’s rain? Angel sweat?

And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the angel sweat?

Finally got my friggin’ hair cut. It’s not like it was growing wild or anything, but it was about three days from being an unmanageable poof ball and I needed to tame it since I have people to impress. To some degree.

Anyway, went to this tiny little hole-in-the-wall barber shop around the corner from the Academy per a recommendation from my supervisor. This place looks like it was established sometime in the 50s and never really improved much since. Which is not a bad thing. How they can fit four barbers into a space not much larger than a closet is totally beyond me, but it works. The guy who did my hair was an older mexican guy who looked like pictures of my grandfather if my grandfather had been 70 pounds heavier.

The entire time he cut my hair, he was speaking in spanish to an older lady sitting across from me reading an Avon magazine. My spanish is, shall we say, pretty freakin’ limited, but I know just enough to get the gist of a conversation. Now, perhaps it’s gotten rustier, but I swear this guy was swearing up a storm with this woman, laughing back and forth. The phone rang while I was in the chair and he answered. After a rather animated discussion, he got off the phone and said something that sounded like, “That bitch has been riding my ass for 15 years,” but in Spanish. Then he went off on putas, putos and – I swear I’m not making this up – related them somehow to culos.

I know enough dirty spanish to understand all that. Maybe I was just hearing things. Whatever.

Weirdest part: when he got to the cleanup portion, where he shaves off the neck hair and stuff, he got some heated foam from some little gizmo behind him then proceeded to BUST OUT THE STRAIGHT RAZOR AND CLEAN UP WITH THAT. THE FRIGGIN’ STRAIGHT RAZOR!!! I have never staid more still in my life. He cleaned up the neckline, sideburns AND AROUND MY EARS with it. Didn’t nick me once. The guy was a pro.

I dig it. I think I’ll be going back. These guys were not hair stylists or haircutters or anything poofy like that. No way. These guys are barbers. And that’s freakin’ cool.

Just a bunch of disconnected thoughts for ya today, in addition to the Shatner link. Essentially, this is making up for that fact that I’ve actually had quite a few things to discuss this week, I’ve just been too busy/lazy to do it. So, here ya go.

Branded by a Dodge

Our Dodge Intrepid has been leaking oil like a friggin’ sieve for a while apparently. Dani, who drives the car to and from work every day, pointed it out to me this weekend. Initially, we thought it was a blow-by problem in relation to a hose that needs replacement, but there was nowhere near enough oil around the hose for that to be the issue (plus, very little oil actually goes through that hose). So, remembering a problem we’ve had with the Escort in the past, I reached down and twisted the oil filter. Sure enough, it was very loose and covered in oil. So I tightened it. Having just driven the car about 30 miles or so, the engine was good and hot. My arm rubbed up against the side of the engine block and got burned, but it wasn’t particularly painful or serious, so I forgot about it.

On Monday, during a meeting with the rest of the web team at the AAC, I glanced at my arm and noticed this wild infitigo-looking circle on my arm. Upon closer inspection, it was the perfect burned imprint of a bolt from the Dodge’s engine. That sunnuvabitch branded me! It’s still there, though the heat blister is gone off of it. You can just make out one of the slash marks on the bolt used to identify the standards it meets. There’s a part of me that kind of hopes it scars, since it’s kind of an interesting mark, even if it looks a bit like a cigarette burn. Weird.

Showering in Public

I’ve been trying to go to the gym on a regular basis for a couple of months now in the mornings before work. Initially, I was going only on Tuesdays and Thursdays but, since my supervisor is rarely in before 9am even on the days that he’s technically supposed to be in at 8am, I decided to switch to a Mon-Wed-Fri schedule as of yesterday.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, there weren’t too many people at the gym at 7am. I go to the Bally’s in Hayward (don’t even try to pitch your 24-Hour McFitness crap at me – I chose Bally’s precisely because it wasn’t 24-Hour Fitness). There’s hardly ever a wait for any machine even at the peak of usage, but in the mornings it’s an especially small crowd. It’s slightly larger on Mon-Wed-Fri. This is only a problem because it means that I no longer get to shower alone in the Auschwitz-style communal shower in the men’s locker room (for the record: according to Danielle, the women have individual shower stalls instead of a communal area. Gender equality my ass).

Now, I’m not particularly homophobic. It’s not like I’m constantly freaking out about dropping the soap or whatever, but I really don’t want to see some other guy’s junk hanging out there and all that. Being straight, it’s a serious hard-core weenie-shrinker for me. Which lends to the whole “Are the other guys making comparisons?” issue, which is probably just something I need to work out with my therapist.

But, most importantly, I have no idea what the etiquette is in these situations. When I played football in high school, the guys were pretty chatty and such in the showers, myself included. We were all friends and, once we got past our homophobic immaturity, it was just like being out on the field. Well, with less tackling. Any rate, showering with stranger is a whole different world. Is it like using the urinal, where you just look straight ahead and, if you must make conversation, you do it with the wall? What is a breach of etiquette in this situation?

When I got into the shower yesterday, there was a guy already in there. I turned on my faucet and got blasted with ice water. While fiddling with the nozzle, the guy offered to let me use his shower head since he was just about finished. I politely declined as my nozzle was just warming up. Somehow, though, this led into his explaining his mini-thesis on why the gym showers are always so friggin’ cold first thing in the morning. All the while he was facing me and making eye-contact, like a polite conversationalist otherwise would were his junk not hanging out for the world to see. I, instead, spoke to every other inanimate surface in the shower but him, making occasional eye-contact with him until the little voice in my head started saying, “Dude, what if he thinks you’re checking him out? LOOK AT SOMETHING ELSE, QUICK!”. He, of course, was totally cool with it.

Man, I need help.

Inappropriate Behavior

I work at a college now, which is weird. I’m 27 years old, which puts me pretty well within the age range of most of the students who go here. Now, for fear of an appearance of impropriety, I’m going to say this once and then keep it to myself hereafter: the students that go here are FRIGGIN’ HOT! I mean, criminy, when I was at Cal we had some extremely attractive women on campus. The same is definitely true here. Were I still single, I’d probably be in all kinds of existential turmoil over the access to such gorgeous young women. Were I faculty, this would be a far more disturbing issue. As staff, however, I have no influence over the futures of these students, so were I to start a relationship with one it would merely be inappropriate as opposed to outright dangerous.

Since it’s illegal, and just downright creepy, to publicly sexualize high school girls, I think that the folks who set the standard for what is sexy (i.e. the media, advertisers, Playboy, etc.) need to find the next best thing, which is college girls. Therefore, we’re bombarded with the message that women between the ages 18 and 24 are, like, the ideal sexual partners. Being surrounded by very attractive examples of this population leads to a great deal of temptation for all involved. This results in situations such as the one at the Boalt Law School at UC Berkeley.

In short, the dean of the school recently stepped down over allegations of inappropriate sexual advances toward a former student. The story goes that the dean and a group of students went out to celebrate something. Near the end of the evening, one female student was separated from the rest of the group. The dean offered to drive her home, which she accepted. When they got to her apartment, he went inside with her to use the bathroom. At this point, she was apparently fairly intoxicated, and she passed out on her bed. When she awoke, she allegedly found the dean doing, uh… inappropriate things with her passed-out body.

So now the question is put forth about whether this was consensual or not. Naturally, she says no and he says yes. In my opinion, the answer is clearly no – there was allegedly no relationship between the two beforehand and she was not in a state of mind at the time that would allow her to thoroughly consent to much of anything, and a man who is the head of one of the country’s most prestigious law schools should have recognized that – but that’s not my point here. This is the kind of allegation you generally hear about between a female student and, say, a member of a fraternity or something. In other words, this kind of thing is usually between student and student, not student and college employee.

However, sexual relations between students and college employees, consensual and otherwise, are far more common than many people realize. I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard about some faculty or staff member’s marriage breaking up over an affair with a student enrolled at said college (not necessarily at the AAC, just in general). Or how many stories I’ve heard about employees who see each new freshman class as their own personal dating pool. This goes way beyond “dipping the pen in company ink”. The students are not just customers, they’re the “impressionable youth” that we’ve been tasked with supporting and educating. While such relations are less of an issue for staff than for faculty, it’s still wildly inappropriate. And, yet, it’s kind of hard to avoid.

Whether college educated or not, being around so many young people tends to remind us of our own youth. Being around it daily almost makes us feel like we’re that age again, only this time we know more. That doesn’t necessarily mean we know better. As a result, I think some folks in the employ of the college kind of lose themselves, forgetting that they’re not students anymore and acting like they are. A lot of these students are away from home for the first time and are just beginning to experience the effects of their sexuality on other people. In the case of graduate students, who have often gotten past that phase, many of them still do not quite realize the potential consequences of their actions, like drinking to the point of losing consciousness and leaving themselves vulnerable to some kind of abuse. I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m blaming the victim – assuming the rape charge is valid, she had absolutely every right to believe that she should be able to trust the dean of her college, who is not only supposed to know better but also be looking out for her best interests in his position of authority – but even the highest authority figures are human, complete with all the failings and flaws that go along with that.

College staff and faculty who deal with students face-to-face on a daily basis are presented with a great deal of potential temptation. While I don’t believe it takes a ton of strength to fight this temptation – a person who succumbs will succumb whether it be with a student or someone they met at a bar – the folks who are most susceptible to such temptation are placed in a rather precarious position. When such allegations of abuse of power are brought to the fore, it should come as no surprise to anyone when these factors are taken into consideration. It falls upon the leaders of the college to monitor the situation and educate their employees and students about the potential of such situations and their consequences. While I was given sexual harassment training as part of my employee orientation here at the AAC, it only covered situations that occur between colleagues. Students never entered the mix. It doesn’t require too much of a leap for an intelligent person to realize that students are just as verboten as coworkers, but considering the amount of fraternization between college employees and students in academic institutions throughout the nation, perhaps its time for such training to add a component that covers that explicitly.

Some folks just need it spelled out for them.