Allan’s Blog

A friend recently sent this to me thinking it sounded a lot like me. He was right.

This is a rant from Andy Rooney that I agree with.

Read on…

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By Andy Rooney, “60 Minutes:

I don’t think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America. Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television, or Miss White America; and see what happens…Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door.

Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game.

I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, that is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts! ARE YOU LISTENING MARTHA BURKE?

I.

I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English! As a matter of fact, if you want to be an American citizen, you should have to speak English!

My father and grandfather didn’t die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours. I think the police should have every right to shoot your sorry behind if you threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can’t understand the word “freeze” or “stop” in English, see the above lines.

I don’t think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket st! ore, or any other business.

We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms, so that decades later they could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living document; and open to their interpretations.

I know pro wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television. That doesn’t stop you from watching them.

I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that’s better, and put your name on the building.

It doesn’t take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the kid; and smack their little behinds when necessary, and say “NO!”

I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don’t pretend they are a political statement. And, please, stay home until that new lip ring heals. I don’t want to look at your ugly infected mouth as you serve me French fries!

I am sick of “Political Correctness.” I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa; so how can they be “African-Americans”? Besides, Africa is a continent. I don’t go around saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was from Europe. I am proud to be from America and nowhere else.

And if you don’t like my point of view, tough…

Every month I work my way through a spate of magazines, mostly over meals and on airplanes. These range from the purely pointless tabloids to science and financial material.

In April/2005, Scientific American had a rather sarcastic letter from the editors at the beginning of the magazine. It addresses a pet peeve of my own, that being the religious among us who attempt to characterize their faith (unprovable by definition) as a belief system that is supportable through evidence. Generally this is followed by a complete absence of evidence in the midst of claiming every other theory has holes in it.

So, here’s the text from Scientific American’s SA Perspectives page…

==============================
April 01, 2005

Okay, We Give Up
We feel so ashamed

By The Editors

There’s no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don’t mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there’s no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that’s a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That’s what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn’t get bogged down in details.

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody’s ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can’t work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars and imperil national security, you won’t hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration’s antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that’s not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either-so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools’ Day.

Editors@SciAm.com

Most of my life I’ve been subject to WMD syndrome. To the uninitiated, that’s “White Man’s Dance Syndrome“. This is the state of dance capability where one goes to a bar or dance and does the “elbows bent, rock from foot to foot” dance.

Considering I’m a reasonably capable musican and managed to squeeze in six years of tap dancing as a kid, you’d think I’d have at least a shred of dance style. Apparently not.

Over the years of endless travel I never managed to find a weekly event to be involved in. You know… Ralph Kramden’s weekly Lodge meeting. Or bowling. Or pool. Or darts. Or batting darts at a bowling ball on lodge night.

A friend in Toronto who travels about as much as I do kept popping into NYC to crash on my couch whilst attending Lindy Hop dance events. Since I always had an interest in Big Band music and organized dance (as opposed to WMD Syndrome), I put this on my radar. It ended up being part of the motivation for moving to Austin since Austin is a hotbed of Lindy dancers. Since Swing, Lindy Hop, Blues, and Balboa dancing are all tightly related and can be done to one part or another of the same spectrum of music, I needed to learn all of them.

The key element here: even as a traveller, Lindy (and by extension, Balboa) events are everywhere… and many of the core participants travel to them regardless of where the events are. The result is that this can be and in fact has become my lodge night. Or lodge weekend as the case may be.

Yes. On to Balboa. You had to know I’d get there eventually.

This seems all reasonable but not terribly interesting until you realize that:

• Lindy can be fast and Balboa is faster
• So participants are more fit and more energetic than would be the case in the general population
• While it’s about the dance, it remains true that there are a lot of single people with a common interest amongst the crowd
• and… (this is big)… Balboa is an ExtremelyCloseContactDance!!!

You can read this as:

• lots ‘o cheap thrills
• ’cause you spend your time squished up to your partner like superglued velcro
• did I mention the ability to discern “natural or silicon” on every partner?

This past weekend (Apr 1-3, 2005) there was an event called “Balboa Rendezvous” in San Diego, hosted by ing.com. This event covered:

• Balboa lessons every day
• Balboa dances with great live bands every night
• Events in San Diego and Newport Beach (near L.A.)
• Great people in great venues with great weather all around!

Of course, you couldn’t expect everything to be entire smooth. Prior to this event I travelled to Warsaw Indiana for a contract. Naturally my luggage decided to take a jaunt through the rest of America prior to arriving.

On travelling from Warsaw to San Diego by a convoluted three-leg flight process, my luggage once again decided to be footloose (handle-free?) and fancy free. It wandered around checkin’ out luggage handling services far and wide. Since I was scheduled to stay at a Super 8, the luggage was eventually supposed to make it there. Except… the Super 8 was not only un-super, it was nowhere near an “8″. I’m guessing its proper name should have been Super-disgusting -7.5. Having been up for about 30 hours at the point of arrival, I crashed anyway. Of course, when I checked out at noon the next day my luggage was nowhere to be found. It did arrive after I checked out (naturally). At which point I had to head back to the airport to hunt it down.

So I danced in a t-shirt and running shoes the first day. That’s a long tale to get to the point of saying “and we danced… finally”.

But… the people were great, the event hosts were well organized, and the venues were really appropo.

In particular, the Sunday event in Newport Beach was held in a classy, older, big-ass ballroom. The band was absotively stunning! Great choices in music, tight arrangements, and talented musicians… it was excellent. Some of the originators of Balboa were on hand and danced as well. Not bad for people in their 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.

Warm Southern California nights, echoes of the Beach Boys wafting through the air, a live band playing swing/jazz/big-band music, and hundreds of people dancing the flippin’ fast Balboa… it was a crazy great experience.

Incidentally, if you’re inclined to check out a bit ‘o Balboa, you can see some video at www.AllBalboa.com.

Some of our lessons were also held in the Veterans Memorial building in Balboa park in San Diego. That was very cool. Learning to dance a WWII dance on old hardwood floors in a building surrounded by images and artifacts from the period.

And then there’s Balboa Park in San Diego itself. It is the second park I’ve ever been to (after Manhattan’s Central Park) that I can honestly say is stupendous, impressive, and fun. It’s worth going to San Diego just to wander the park and all the museums.

Since I’m running out of time, I’m going to stop here. I do have to mention a couple of points again though. If you never considered dance lessons or dance events before and you are a carded member of the male of the species, then I remind you of two important things: Balboa = cheap thrills, random boob squishes, and lots of women!. See you there!

By the way… on returning to Warsaw via South Bend I missed a connection and was routed to Ft. Wayne. This time my luggage saw fit to head to the original destination while I was busy heading to the new Ft. Wayne destination. Three flights. Three episodes of lost luggage. I’m going to give my luggage a good talkin’-to regarding the meaning of “team work”.

When I first was working in the NYC area I was living in Toronto, working in Jersey, and coming into Manhattan on Saturday afternoons to wander the city.

At the time things were a wee bit black for me personally so I more or less vanished into the background noise of the city. Playing billiards in a tiny billiard hall, listening to and playing music in dark little pubs, and wandering through the back streets of Manhattan often until 6:00am.

Having had a film noire night in Manhattan, I did a stream-of-conciousness note to a girl I had some interest in back in Toronto. Just didn’t know who else to share a thought with at the time. But… it seemed to strike a chord and so I kept the email.

You never know. You might get a kick out of a good example of NYC’s effects on me.

Date: 1/25/1998 4:43 AM

RE: Passing thoughts…

Cool. Very cool.

A long time. Substantive effort. Net result: life. A period of void.
Then life. Time available and a city to enjoy.

Bright lights. Neon. Nothing but people. And the people mean nothing. And yet they are interesting. Comedy. In a club. Tragedy in a street person.

Where do I fit? The city doesn’t know, nor does it care. The city is alive or dead simply as a result of one’s perception.

French. Spanish with another. English. Everyone is willing to find something in one another.

Constant expense. $10 for this. $20 for that. For what? But it is the place to be.

A power play. Who will take the lane. The car in yellow or you. Millions may be at stake day to day. But for now it is who wins at the light. You or the cab.

Cool jazz. Palms and lava lamps. Incongruous decor. Big $. Good food. And cool jazz.

Friends talking. Business deals doing. Couples cooing. Yes, they
actually “coo” on occasion. Revulsion and envy at once.

Musician to musician. Empathy and connection.

From sophisticated to raw. Hard blues. A dark but warm bar. Random music lovers. Powerful sax and a rotund but emotive singer. Hard drinking and hard-done-by ladies talking up those unfortunate male souls immersed in the music. That would be me.

A bum on the street. A bad joke but the energy buys the hopeful fellow a couple of bucks.

Flashing lights. Another cop and another episode passed by.

A cruel twist of fate and Paradise by the Dashboard Light as the night ends. The city vista winks.

Very cool.

… because I’ve just been to hell.

I’m in Warsaw Indiana doing work for a company. It’s a small town. That by itself isn’t that unusual. What is unusual is going to a bar here. It was St. Paddy’s day so I thought I’d head out and find some live music if at all possible.

The local place that normally has a wee bit ‘o music on Thursday nights had cancelled it due to the St. Paddy’s day crowd. Wandering around the corner I found a small, smokey, dirty little biker bar. They had music. Actually, they had something that on its best day might come close to skimming the low hangin’ hairs on the bottom scales of a snake’s belly in a deep wagon rut. And even then rap music, country music, and country rap music were far ahead of it. This is saying something considering these last items aren’t really music either.

It was karaoke. More specifically, it was “fat off-key karaoke”.

There is absolutely no way that any reality TV producer could construct a situation or assemble a group of people who could peel paint with their singing like this crew. Unbelievable! I had to stay. A car wreck in sound… although that does a great injustice to car wrecks everywhere.

The worst part was the source of the caterwauling. If you bumped into anyone too hard you could hear the tinkle of loose change and falling TV remotes as random bits of household flotsam was jarred loose from between the folds of ancient and evergrowing fat on these people. Clearly getting morbidly obese and using all available funds to do handyman plastic surgery (likely with a hedge trimmer) is the practice of the common Warsaw resident.

Each and every note missed. Groaned and whined out what were unlikely to be oral orifices. And each believing themselves to have reached a level of accomplishment that would surely win them the next American Idol.

If one believes that proving a negative also proves the positive through a belief in universal symmetry, then surely there must be a heaven…

… because tonight I stepped into hell!

So after arriving home from my trip to ireland I completed my rant. I was sick, tired, and and annoyed. I need to note clearly that there was one clear bright spot and that was time spent with a friend (Hi Karen!) in Wexford. Every place has redeeming qualities. In this case it was sharing time and experiences with a great friend.

From: Allan Barnard,

Date: 9/30/2003 6:41 PM

RE: Understanding Ireland…

[The continuation and completion of a rant born of my recent travel to Ireland]

Well. I’m home.

Having been away for 20+ days, most of it in Ireland, I can tell you…

… I still haven’t had a vacation!

While the trip was FAR less than enjoyable, I can honestly say I came away with a good understanding of Ireland. Before relating any of this information, I would first inform the uninformed that the Irish term “shite” is equivalent to “shit”. I presume that the additional “e” is for “extra emphasis”. And having been to Ireland, I’m quite convinced that there is country better suited to spawning a term for “extra shit”.

I understand why Irish people, particularly the men, drink so much.

1. Every morning they wake up and realize “SHITE! I’m still in
   Ireland!!!”. And they start drinking.

2. Soon, with beer goggles firmly fastened (or perhaps more appropriately “Guinness Goggles”), they look around and realize “SHITE! Even with six beers in me, the women are ugly as SHITE”. And they drink more.
3. Next they realize that along with all other things in Ireland, the very Guinness they are drinking is more expensive than any other place on the planet (really). So they are paying more to drink their own shite. And they drink more.
4. Having drunk so much without women in site, the visions of drunken, old, hunched over men gleefully chuckling to themselves makes a lot of sense. Hence the myth of the Leprechaun. Myth my ass… it exists in every pub in Ireland every day!

So having confirmed my earlier hypothesis (see prior ranting email) that all the pretty women had left Dublin, I have further refined to be:

The one single attractive female that was once rumored to be from Ireland has definately left.

Everything in Ireland is expensive but does not come with a commensurate level of service. In fact, it seems they have taken the European penchant for crappy service and refined it to a new level nonexistence.

There are taxes on owning a TV (working, broken, used, or not… if you have one, you pay). Taxes on garbage bags (the equivalent of $7 U.S. per bag… they won’t get picked up otherwise). Taxes on garbage bins. All of this for better service that never materializes.

The entire population seems to whine about this on the radio, in the papers, and in person… but TAKE NO ACTION… EVER. It’s rather surreal. It’s about as bad as Canadians whining about immigration but taking no action… ever.

Here’s a great example of how things happen in Ireland… the types of things that make everyone there nuts. Recently a 23 kilometer light rail line was commissioned for the city. Years later it is unfinished and overbudget. Total to date: 773 million euro… about $800 Million U.S. As one local newspaper columnist wrote (and I’m paraphrasing here):

And who’s to say that 773 M Euro isn’t a good value for 23km of railway?

But just for comparison, take a look at Australia who recently completed 2800km of rail line, complete with 97 bridges…

… for 775 M Euro.

773 M for 23km…

… or 775 M for 2800km and 97 bridges.

Hmmmm.

Those ratios just about explain the price of food vs. the quality.

It’s my contention that much of this is due to the Mad Cow disease that ripped through Ireland a year or so ago. Rather than being over, it seems to have spread so far that the people in a position to judge whether it is present or not have themselves succumbed to the swiss-cheese hole-in-brain effect of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. So everyone has it but it now
seems normal because… well… everyone has it. I made a point of not eating the hamburgers…

The pot ‘o gold at the end of the rainbow makes sense also. Everything in Ireland is “just over there”. Trying to get postage stamps in the airport was always “the machine is just over there…”. No matter how far I went in the terminal, it was always just around the corner. It was moving so fast that I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the postage machine that was running around spreading Mad Cow so efficiently.

This applied to both music and good food:

There’s a great restaurant…
… just over there…

There’s great music…
… just over there…

No really… it’s just over there.

Just around that corner.

If you just cross that street…

There must be a hell of a party wherever the pretty girls went to, because they seem to have attracted all the good food, the music, and the postage stamps and headed out of the country. I think all the sane cows went with them.

My best advice to you, should you ever have a desire to go to Ireland… is buy a shamrock to satisfy the urge and head to the Barbados instead. Because… it’s not Ireland.

Or the south of Spain. It’s great. It’s also not Ireland.

I hear Sierra Lione is nice (if you can dodge the bullets and the beatings). It’s also not Ireland.

This was all very confusing to me, considering I liked all things Irish and a lot of Irish people that I’ve met outside of Ireland. But slowly it’s making sense. They’re so damn happy and musical in Toronto and New York City… because they’re NOT in Ireland!!!

It seems unlikely I’ll be back unless there are a sea of attractive naked women beckoning to me from the chilly hills of the Emerald Isle. And from personal observation, they’d be unlikely to assemble a muddy puddle of attractive naked women, let alone a sea.

So methinks the Barbados will be my next destination.

Has anyone see the 20 days of my life I wasted in Ireland? Maybe they are in the same place my missing socks from the dryer go…

OK. Fine. My mom chastized me and told me not to say anything bad without saying something good. Really. Just yesterday. After describing Ireland on the phone. So, good things include:

A) I’m not in Ireland anymore

B) I did really manage to have a good time once I
met up with a friend in the south of Ireland. We
eventually even managed to find some decent
food.

C) Friends are really really good things to have!
(you see, I can be profound…)

D) Frustration and anger can occasionally breed
humor. This may or may not be one of those
times depending on your perspective.

This completes the rant started in an earlier email. I was actually rather hoping to balance the rant with a description of how wonderful the rest of Ireland was… but that will have to wait until Ireland moves south and starts singing reggae music.

Weary and annoyed Travel-Al

In late September of 2003 I decided to go on a trip to Ireland with a stopover in Iceland. Having looked forward to going to Ireland for a long time due to my many cheery and musically talented Irish friends, I was somewhat disappointed to find that if it could go wrong it did. So, sick and tired and disappointed, I sat down in an internet cafe in Dublin to send an email update to a few people. Many people seemed to enjoy it… so I’m posting it here.

September 23, 2003

Note: I did some odd gyrations to get my email list posted on a central website and it sometimes doesn’t load properly into these internet cafe computers… so if you get this twice, just ignore me twice as much!

Hi all,

I’m sitting in an internet cafe in Dublin. This may be a regrettable turn of events for all of you insofar as it gives me a venue to vent… in your collective direction!

I like Ireland. Especially the form of Ireland experienced in an Irish pub in Manhattan. I’m far less enthused about Ireland itself at the moment.

My trip began in Iceland. That turned out quite well. Oddly (or perhaps appropriately), I spent a fair amount of time in a pub there called the ‘Dubliner’ as it was the only place with live music in the early part of the week. As it happened, the singer was good but had been singing every day for two weeks and was beginning to have throat problems. Having initially been generous enough to allow me a song or two, both he and the bar management invited me back both to add a song or two and to offer a reprieve to the main singer. Skipping the steps in between, I ended up taking over the gig entirely for the next two nights. For those of you who haven’t been to NYC for a jam of late, I’ve managed to put quite a repertoire together over the years, so this worked out quite well.

There is a well promulgated myth among people outside of Iceland that Iceland is teeming with young, attractive, substantially available women. While I will explain this momentarily, I am now thinking of writing a book entitled one of the following:

• The female grass is always greener…
• Women everywhere are stunning in !
• In [city X] they love you if you are [canadian / American]
• Modern Myths and other tales of attractive International women

Recently a friend (Spencer) returned from Eastern Europe with similar but well supported tales of these mythical creatures. It is my educated opinion that Spencer clearly was suffering either from delusion or had first-hand experience with the “George Effect”. You may have seen the Seinfeld episode where George stumbles into the secret “international model parties” held in odd places. Once in the loop, George continuously gets invited to these ever-changing locations that mere mortals are not supposed to know about.

It is my theory that such situations do in fact exist. However, unlike Spencer, I have not had an opportunity to experience the rarified air of such a location and am unlikely to until I also manage to locate both El Durado and Atlantis.

Without a doubt, I really enjoyed what little I saw of Iceland. The people were friendly and the standards where quite decent. However, finding the mythical herd of Icelandic sirens proved as likely as finding a bikini-clad three headed bisexual leprechaun in Lithuania. It is my theory that the mythical women in question do exist but recently were on a trip to Eastern Europe which explains why Spencer had such a good time there.
If my initial findings in Ireland hold up over a longer period of scrutiny, I expect to be able to prove that the beautiful people from Iceland made a short stop in Dublin on their way to Eastern Europe and encouraged all the local pretty women to go with them into the heart of Croatia. Spencer’s timing could not have been any better apparently.

It would seem that Ireland has an active import trade with other countries. Clearly there is a heavy trade with England where the locals in Dublin have imported the English predisposition towards incredibly bad teeth, no makeup, and heavy smoking. Reaching further, Ireland has willingly or otherwise imported one of America’s worst contributions to the fashion world… the IBBO, or “inappropriate belly baring outfit”.

While I applaud the complete rejection of size zero stereotypes as promoted in women’s magazines, and I applaud the devil-may-care and I-will-define-myself attitudes represented by these body-image-unconscious types, there really does need to be a limit. I have happily spared the world from seeing the really grotesque comb-over I might well be able to grow were I clueless. Further, the world clearly would shudder were I to wear Speedo swimming trunks. Once again I have spared the world this fate.

Along this line, I would encourage a small test for those women using belly or belly-button baring outfits. If one has the ability to completely lose a television or other remote in the folds of your tummy for several days without even noticing, this should be a fair indication that baring your belly is not a good thing.
I may have to wear Speedos for a day just to drive the point home among the unaware.

The shudder that went through you all at that thought likely registered on a Richter scale measuring device near you.

Now I ask you… where is the outrage? In times passed, large groups of anti-fur activists took to the streets in cities around the world. Wherever they found someone wearing fur, they would rush up and spray them with red paint to prevent that person from wearing the fur again.

We need anti-IBBO activists. I’m thinking that groups of people could run up and spray on “instant T-shirt mix”, thus covering the inappropriate parts of the IBBO.

It’s just a thought.

Anyway, back to Iceland. So on my last day there I played guitar and sang from 10pm until 2am. Then some of the locals took me on a tour of a bunch of other places where I met an unending array of local musicians, all with names I have no hope of pronouncing or spelling.

I left directly from the local establishments to the airport and made my plane to Dublin (via London) with moments to spare.

Any guesses whether my luggage made it?

Really. Go ahead. Guess.

I was up for about 24 hours by the time I arrived in Dublin, having put out huge energy in the prior day, and then arriving to find my luggage accumulating mileage points elsewhere in the planet. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it stumbled into the secret Icelandic-Irish-Eastern-European-International-Model summit that Spencer was attending.

No worries. If you know me at all, you’d know that no matter how careful I am, how well I label things, or what extra steps I take, either the flight will be cancelled or the luggage will be lost. It’s one of the universal constants, like the speed of light. Einstein or Maxwell may have even stumbled on to this constant in their theorizing. My most creative success in this regard was in fact during my final departure from Cincinnati, where I invented an entirely new way to delay a departure, this time by a full two days. You all saw it as the blackout in the eastern U.S. and Canada. That was just me trying to get home and fate running out of new ways to delay me. On the plus side, I did manage to miss the sweltering heat and the complete inability to get from the airport in NYC to my apartment that would have been my fate had I arrived in time for the blackout.

In any case, I used the time to find a hotel.

Not.

The ‘All Ireland Final’ of some kind of ancient hit-ball-with-stick sport was going on. There were no B&B’s or Hotels to be had anywhere in Dublin. To be fair, this may explain why the attractive women could not have their conference here and had to head to Eastern Europe.

I tried to call a couple of local and international 1-800 types of numbers to get help… except they don’t work from payphones in the UK or Ireland… only from private lines. Don’t ask.

So exhausted and luggage-less, I rented a car. That seemed to go OK. More on this later. Don’t hold you breath. Or actually, when you hear the story, perhaps holding your breath may be the best course of action.
I then proceeded to wait for my luggage at the airport because I had no hotel room for the airline to send it to.
The next plane came in. The computer showed the luggage to have been on the plane. But as the last bit of luggage rolled off the plane, I noticed that my luggage was once again busy not being there.

The local customer service representatives would have furrowed their brows in consternation if they understood such terms. Since they did not, they were simply baffled. It turns out that my luggage was taking a break on a pallet somewhere in the no-man’s land of the Dublin airport.

Fast forwarding a bit, I finally got my luggage. Nearly falling-down sick and very tired, I found my rental car, packed up and left. Now, as a non-European driver, it takes a great deal of concentration to drive a standard with your left hand while driving on the right side of the road while navigating poorly marked round-abouts (traffic circles). I’ll spare you the details. Three or more hours later I wound up through and then out of Dublin by about 100 miles before finding a hotel. I stopped several times looking for places. Each time another mythical goal seemed just outside my reach… the available room. “Aye then, just go up McCoy and out on the N4 for 15 minutes and get off at Shady Acres and they have one there… really”.

Not a word of a lie, I left one particularly nice but full B&B and attempted to follow the directions given to the next place. Taking one wrong turn, I wound up at the same place about 15 minutes later. By a stroke of luck (fate blinked apparently), someone cancelled moments after I left 15 minutes earlier.
They let me in. Yay.

To suspend the rant momentarily, it was very nice. Clean, big, quaint, all the amenities, and a great breakfast. By this time however, I was brutally sick. At first you might think this is simply because I push myself farther than I should or am simply sickly. But no… complicating the search for a hotel was the car I rented (notice the not-so-subtle foreshadowing earlier in this email).

The car apparently decided I was underexposed to cigarette smoke and took it upon itself to rectify the situation. There was a HUGE hole or break in the exhaust train, likely right near the engine. This was not immediately apparent. Initially, I thought I was sucking tailpipe tokes from from the belching cars in front of me. As I started to get dizzy (or at least, dizzier than normal), I decided to shut off the A/C and vents. That didn’t work. Then, as it was now dusk, I noticed that oncoming headlights and the setting sun were blinding me… there was a film of something oily on the INSIDE of the windshield. From exhaust.

I drove the rest of the way with windows down. I consider it “experiencing Irish country air at high speed”.
So when I finally did get to the elusive “available room”, the only thing I could do was get in a hot tub and work to decongest myself. I’m almost certain that entire vacations could be skipped and substituted with a hot bath. Why I chose to travel when I could have done that at home I’ll never know. For completely different reasons I would recommend this course of action to the French in general, but I digress.

The people at the rental car place were duly apologetic and credited my card for the time testing their experimental exhaust inhalation system.

I was able to get a B&B location in the city this time as the sport event had finished and people were heading out of the city.

This was fine also. Initially.

Then it turned out that I was the only person staying there who was:
A) a non-smoker
B) alive

Apparently, the large majority of the other patrons, while certainly pleasant on the surface, had already died. They were stepping back from the crypt into the world of the living just long enough to blow smoke into my room at night and try to take me with them. In fact, I’m not so sure that one of them didn’t fix the exhaust on my car to hasten the process.

Truthfully, since I missed the “model summit” happening in Eastern Europe, I might as well have gone with them. I probably would have but I couldn’t do so without first sending off a couple of post cards and perhaps annoying all of you with this letter.

With all that said, particularly having cleared my senses with a good solid rant, I really do like Dublin. Unlike Seattle, where the best part of the city is the exit gate at the airport, there are some redeeming things here. For example I like Irish accents. Happily, a lot of the Irish in Ireland have an Irish accent. Who knew?

My salvation has been my new iPod. I bought this amazing little MP3 player just before leaving NYC (after leaving a prior MP3 player on the last delayed plane from Cinci). I burned a bunch of CDs I purchased and copied over many more tunes downloaded from the internet. I know it’s bad of me, but everyone needs to be a bit subversive somewhere in their life. For me it’s the thrill of taking money out of the mouths of starving artists like Madonna and Elton. In Elton’s case, I think I was just taking money from his hairpiece maintenance budget. Once again I digress.

In any case, the iPod has been amazing. Until it ran out of power. I finally found a voltage converter (just before coming in here to embark on a path of wanton ranting).

OK. Really… I do like Ireland. I’m hoping to get a bit more sleep, get well, and then find new ways to get myself really partied up and run down over the next couple of days! I have to do it quick because there are no available hotel rooms in the city for the weekend. I’m heading south to meet with a friend (yes, some do admit to knowing me). Then I’m thinking about Barcelona for a bit where I know another guitar player is vacationing.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Regards,

Travel-Al