My Dating Profile

I followed a link from Ed Ward's blog and took a funny dating test. The results are... varied. It is definitely NOT true that I would never date anyone dumber than myself. That happens all the time. Just ask my friends.

I most definitely do not have lots of female friends and I am not at all good with babies. I probably have many more male friends, a byproduct of spending a few decades in the comic book industry.

Here's what someone's server had to say about me. The questionaire was not really geared toward me. There wasn't, for example, a box to tick for "Do you roam the world for months on end every few years," though there was a question about long-distance relationships. I have to admit that the bit at the end about The False Messiah pegged a certain individual in my not-too-distant past.

The Sonnet
Deliberate Gentle Love Dreamer

Romantic, hopeful, and composed. You are the Sonnet. Get it? Composed?

Sonnets want Love and have high ideals about it. They're conscientious people, caring & careful. You yourself have deep convictions, and you devote a lot of thought to romance and what it should be. This will frighten away most potential mates, but that's okay, because you're very choosy with your affections anyway. You'd absolutely refuse to date someone dumber than you, for instance.

Lovers who share your idealized perspective, or who are at least willing to totally throw themselves into a relationship, will be very, very happy with you. And you with them. You're already selfless and compassionate, and with the right partner, there's no doubt you can be sensual, even adventurously so.

You probably have lots of female friends, and they have a special soft spot for you. Babies do, too, at the tippy-top of their baby skulls.

ALWAYS AVOID: The 5-Night Stand, The False Messiah, The Hornivore, The Last Man on Earth

Talk to the Animals

All right, listen up.

I just stumbled over Very Important Information on Wikipedia (while researching the capybara, or actually the Amazon).

Seems you can tell what a guinea pig is trying to say simply by paying attention. Wikipedia has the Rosetta Stone of guinea pig-dom, reproduced here for those of you that have guinea pigs.

Guinea pigs are very vocal animals. Some sounds are:

Wheek - A loud noise that sounds about the same as its written form. An expression of general excitement, it can mean "feed me", "pay attention", or possibly "I'm hurt". It is sometimes used to find other guinea pigs if they are in a run. If a guinea pig is lost, it may "wheek" for assistance.
Rumbling - This sound is related to Guinea pig dominance or in response to an unfamiliar sound. It can also come as a response to comfort or content. Whilst courting, a male usually purrs deeply, while swaying from side to side, nearly lifting the rear feet.
Chattering - This sound is made by rapidly gnashing the teeth together—it is a warning to others to keep away. Guinea pigs tend to raise their heads when making this sound so as to look more dangerous.
Bubbling, or Purring - This rather pleasant sound is made when the guinea pig is enjoying itself, when being petted or held. They may also make this sound when grooming, crawling around to investigate a new place, or when given an unexpected food treat, like lettuce or carrots.

Happy (Early) Holidays

The unwritten code of the block I live on is that 1) Every house must be decorated for every major holiday and some minor holidays and 2) One must decorate promptly and with enthusiasm.

Newcomers get some slack but there comes a point when it is assumed that you are a snob—or worse, a snotty transplant from Manhattan—if you do not follow the code.

The residents of my building always attempted to decorate with restraint. We were neither old-timers nor newcomers. We were in-betweeners, going along with the joke but unable to ignore the natural inclination towards a bit of taste. The rest of the block would be decked out in life-size scarecrows and spray-on cobwebs for Halloween. We'd have a bale of hay and a pumpkin.

I'm the only one of the in-betweeners left, and the newcomers can't be bothered. Yesterday I tossed out the two pumpkins, gourd, and dried corn that I'd had out for Halloween and Thanksgiving, and went to find the plug-in Christmas candles. One goes in each bay window, on a timer from 6 to 11.

The horror! The Christmas candles are missing.

But I just saw them last week. I'd put them somewhere special... but where?

Uh-oh. I must have packed them deep in a box and put them in my garage. Well, that's not very useful.

I went over to ShopRite and got a few 18-foot fake garlands and wrapped them around the outside railings. It's pretty lame. I need something with lights.

But Ax says I get a pass since I'm moving in two weeks.

I hope I find the candles anyway.

Istanbul Not Constantinople

I'm on crushing deadlines for a few days so no long blog posts.

Here's a few photos of the Hermitage--the Winter Palace--instead.

The first I took in 1982 with a 110 instamatic, in Leningrad.

The second I snapped in 2001 with an Olympus Stylus point-and-shoot, in St. Petersburg.

In 1983, I was an exchange student to Finland. I lived with Heidi (who reads this blog) and her parents in Karis (Karjaa), about 40 miles southwest of Helsinki. The exchange organization, Youth for Understanding, took us students to the Soviet Union on a field trip. Heidi didn't get to go. It was only the exchange students, not the host sisters and brothers.

Heidi and I both had the same camera. I'm sure she too has a much better one now.

Recycle or Donate?

What am I supposed to do with a perfectly good, working old Powerbook Duo 230 laptop circa 1992?

It was an incredible computer in its time. It had no floppy drive--radical in 1992--but came with a cable to hook it into any other Mac or system. At four pounds, it was truly portable. The Duo was meant to be docked--that is, slipped into a desktop model--but I never owned the dock.

At some point, I bought a connector that gave it SCSI capabilities, and I have the external floppy as well. One day in the late 90s, it struggled, so I bought a cheap working Duo off eBay and cannibalized it for parts.

The Duo went on a few freighter voyages with me in 2001. Why not? It was so old, it didn't matter if it broke when I sent it home by post.

It's a little slow.

Now I'm moving. Out go all kinds of thing. Used books go to the church down the street, since they have a used book sale every Sunday. Records will go to the Princeton Record Exchange when I get around to it. The super-8 projecter goes--where the hell does the super-8 projector go?

And the old computers, they go too. But to where?

Rats Killed Easter!

The problem with writing the copy for the 3D children's atlas that I am working on is that I am petrified of making factual errors.

When I started this project, I bought four children's atlases. As I've steadily dug through them, I've come across dozens of mistakes. Some of them are mind-boggling, like the one with text claiming that the Equator is in Central America. Others have less conspicuous flaws, such as overlooking the existence of Qatar.

Anyway, being a compulsive fact-checker while learning every minute detail about a region adds up to one thing and one thing only.

Missing deadlines.

But there's not much I can do about that, so let's talk about something more interesting. Like Easter Island.

And rats.

The big mystery of Easter Island is not where the big heads came from or why they were carved. Every continent has their mysterious architectural masterpieces. Did aliens make the Great Pyramids? How did the stelae get to Axum? Oh, surely aliens. I'm good with that.

But why didn't the aliens whisk those poor Easter Islanders off to Chile when all their trees died?

I'd always believed the catastrophic deforestation theories about Easter Island, and the study I just read by Terry L. Hunt doesn't argue the deforestation point.

But it places the blame somewhere unexpected. Previously, blame had been placed on the common criminal: Mankind. But not Hunt. He blames something else.

Rats. Rats came in by ship from Europe, ate the vegetation and tree seeds, and caused deforestation. Erosion of soil, no farming, no veggies, no canoes, no way off the island. Cannibalism. Rat-eating. Dog-eating. No wonder they tipped their big stone heads over. I'd have been pissed too.

More Ro Art

Roberta had a piece in a show at the Bronx River Arts Center a few weeks ago. It was a temporary installation that lasted only one day. The idea behind it is "conceptual and temporal brevity." Which I think in plain English might mean "quick and dirty."

Not On the Move

It's the night before Thanksgiving, and all across the USA, people are on the move.

Not me. I'm sitting this one out. I'm packing to move, selling a condo, writing an atlas, helping run a comic book company and probably some other things I've forgotten. There's no time to get myself to Virginia and back.

I'm still thankful, though. Mostly thankful that I'm not sitting in traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike, but that counts too.

A Camel's a Wonderful Thing

Last night, during my research for the children's atlas I'm writing, I learned the following camel facts:

-Camels have gorgeous long eyelashes not to flirt with other camels, but to keep the sand out of their eyes.

-Camels ARE flirting when they blow that ugly pink bubble out of their mouths.

-Camels have super-kidneys that produce dry camel poo.

-Camels are useful for meat, milk, transportation, hauling, and camel hide in the Sahara.

-Camels have special fat feet, which act like camel snowshoes for sand.

Eliza Goes Home to Iceland

I've been following the adventures of writer Eliza Reid as she travels through West Africa.

Eliza writes for the in-flight Icelandair magazine. Peter Moore pointed her my way. Or me her way. I'm not sure anymore, but I've read every entry she's posted during her West Africa trip.

She's gotten a lot of marriage proposals. I haven't gotten many of those, ever. Maybe I should focus on getting to West Africa on the double. (I think Daniel Johnston made a few on the phone over the years, but I always managed to change the subject to Captain America.)

Anyway, Eliza is heading home to Iceland tomorrow. I'm sure she's happy to be going home, but I have enjoyed reading about her grumpiness in Accra, her adventures on public transport, and her bouts of malaria. I selfishly wish it wouldn't end.