30 Grand

I have now, finally, hit 30,000 words on the novel. Yea!

Shame on Wal-Mart

Today Jason alerted me to the story about how an employee at a Wal-mart in NY was trampled to death by a crowd this black Friday morning. It is upsetting how it represents the ridiculous over-commercialization and greed that this holiday has come to represent. Christmas means a whole lot more than shopping and presents, and but I do enjoy giving thoughtful presents to my loved ones during the holiday, and I don't really want to be associated with the crazy violent consumers out there. The article about the violence said that they are reviewing tape at the store and that people will be prosecuted. Personally, I think Wal-Mart should be sued.

Every year you hear about someone getting hurt on Black Friday morning. This is the first time I ever heard of someone getting actually killed. And years ago, I used to think it was just that there are crazy and selfish people out there that are causing these problems, in little isolated cases like lightning striking. That was until a few years ago when I actually decided, for kicks, to go check out a Wal-mart at 5 am on Black Friday for myself, maybe get one of those computer deals for someone on my Christmas list. That experience convinced me that the problem is not so much the customers, but actually the corporate morons at Wal-Mart, and that they are super lucky that there are not more injuries and deaths from their poor management.

Like many stores, Wal-Mart advertises awesome deals on their pages and then tell you that there's only 6 in the store. So, this is not a sale ... this is a contest. A contest of endurance -- how long can you stand outside in the cold? Oh, and, after you stay up all night freezing your butt off, can you keep your cool when someone decides to shove in line ahead of you? And this contest preys on people with little money, people that are the most desperate to have things that they can't afford but that society tells them they ought to have, which might just give them the gumption to shove in line ahead of someone else, thinking that they deserve that tv more. And better yet, if that tv is a gift, I think people are even more likely to shove because they're not doing it for themselves, they're doing it for their kid or their wife or someone else whose eyes they want to light up on Christmas morning.

And I suppose it's fine for Wal-mart to sponsor a "contest" like this to get people into their store, but what they are doing encourages a mob. And they are simply not equipped to handle a mob at their stores. At the NY Wal-mart, the poor victim was an employee who actually got in front of a group of people who broke down the doors to Wal-Mart. The people were upset because they thought they'd seen employees let people in ahead of opening time that hadn't been in line. Poor guy, the employee was not trained to realize that getting in front of an angry crowd would be to put his life on the line. What he needed was tear gas. Or a whole line of people with big padded buttress things and face masks and perhaps clubs. Sure, Wal-Mart will tell you that they are not responsible for people's criminal actions of breaking into stores and act like they are the victims, losing one of their valuable employees ... but for goodness sake, they call their deals "Door-Busters". They are expecting people to be at their door the moment it opens and to run through it. They are expecting a mob. Why are they suprised when one shows up? Why are they not prepared? Wal-mart is criminally negligent.

If you've ever been in a crowd of people moving in one direction, you know that a mob has no brain. The people behind you are pushing the group, trying to elbow out the people behind them, but they have no idea what the people in front are seeing. You are shoulder to shoulder with people. You may have no idea what, or whom, you are stepping on. And if you do realize that you're perhaps stepping on someone -- don't you dare stop, because the person behind you has enough momentum to accidentally push you down, too. It's a powder keg. It's totally scary. When I went to Wal-mart that morning I was expecting us all to walk into Wal-mart one-by-one, perhaps a bit hurriedly, but not as a crushing mob. But there is no one controlling the crowd. They simply open the door. And because there's no crowd control, people cut in line, which aggravates everyone. Once inside, everyone makes a bee-line to electronics, some people running between the clothing racks, knocking things over, only to end up at another bottle-neck -- the entrance to the electronics section. Another mob-crush.

Best Buy, for example, has some "door busters" but half an hour before opening time they send out employees to give coupons to the first people in line for the items they are waiting for. So they "win the contest" without having to run through the door. I believe that since Wal-mart, even after all these injuries, still has not taken action to prevent them, that for them these "runs" on the stores are publicity stunts. And I totally believe that Wal-Mart might actually enjoy the publicity they get when someone is hurt or worse. What better way to advertise -- "Our prices are so low, people are maiming to get them!"

Wal-mart should be sued for inciting riots across the country every year. But instead we always blame the customers. I do think that people need to realize that flat-screen tv's are not worth staying up all night and shoving people around and to lighten up, get some holiday spirit. But Wal-mart needs to take responsibility here for the fact that they are the ones endangering people's lives in order to make a few dollars.

Novel Progress

I just turned over 24,000 words. Slow and steady wins the race. I got the idea from the book "How to Write A Lot" that it might help to chart my progress in an excel workbook. I started the novel in October and started this log in March. And it was helping -- it was nice to log the number of words and watch my wordcount grow -- until I created this graphic. I would say that most scientists would glance at this graphic and say it's got no slope! Time to increase production.

Isn't it amazing what chaning the axis can do?

Re-Volt!

I only just now learned about the existence of my dream car so I have to talk about it. Also, I must formally announce that I no longer want a Toyota Prius hybrid. That stuff is OLD news. And hydrogen fuel cells? Bleh.

I am super excited about the HPEV technology - the Plug-In Hybrid. So now I've got my eye on the Chevy Volt, slated to come out in 2010. I think I can stretch my Altima until then, so long as GM doesn't pull any fast ones and push it off indefinitely, and that government incentives make it affordable. The HPEV plugs into a regular wall outlet and gives 40 miles for a charge, plenty for most commutes, and then has a back-up hybrid gas engine for any further than that. So all told you get over 100 miles per gallon! I mean, it's like science fiction! Except it's science non-fiction because it actually exists right now. I just learned about it from the kick-butt movie "Who Killed the Electric Car", which I totally recommend (warning, you will probably get extremely p.o.'d watching this movie).

So I have a prediction that this is the future -- that the "gas" we put in these things will be from homegrown cellulosic ethanol (not corn. Corn = bad ethanol source) And that we will thus release ourselves from this oil debacle, except that we'll still want plastics, but that's not nearly as much consumption. And the power that we get coming off the grid will become cleaner and cleaner -- solar, wind, solar and hopefully solar will be replacing the coal. Bye carbon emissions, bye global warming. Our nation will become prosperous again because all of our energy will come from internally, no more importing, no more problems with the dollar sinking. We'll use our wealth to spread the technology across the globe and restore all the good will that our previous administration destroyed.

I feel optimistic today.

Novel Progress

I'm at 22,109 words. I'm guessing that's like 1/4 of the way, but we'll see!

Fascination

Last night I saw something
To explain I must confess
When I was seven
I imagined with longing,
Stealing the vial of silver
Sparkles, and pouring out all --
Every glittering drop --
Onto black cardstock paper
Breathless
Rejoicing in shimmering riches.

Last night I saw,
But this time unexpected,
Turning the corner,
Headlights panned darkness
And dark trees, grasses
Were revealed as diamond-studded
Sparkling, waving
Winking, blinking:
Fireflies speaking
In glittering Morse code.
Breathless
I rejoiced in shimmering riches.

Irish Roots

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, the malls and bars bloom shamrocks, and people plan where to get drunk to celebrate the man that Christianized Ireland, I think about my ancestry. According to my calculations, my blood is approximately 30% green. My father’s father was 100% Irish, his mother is some uncertain percentage, and both my mother’s parents were Polish. Actually, I am more Polish than Irish. But I have the Irish last name. And an Irish first and middle to match. However, I am a misbranded product of Ireland. I have never really felt all that connected to the Emerald Isle.

When I was a kid, being Irish meant that my ancestors had walked straight out of the pages of a fairy tale. It made my imagination run wild with the brownies. Ireland of my dreams was a place so lush and green it made your eyes hurt. The island was overrun by leprechauns obsessed with gold or sugary cereal, and a tall priest in a bishop’s hat and green robes roamed the land chasing snakes into the ocean with a curved staff. My ancestors had lived a charmed life. I was descended from magic.

I got older and the leprechauns disappeared into the hills. I learned about the Irish potato famine and strife with England, the various conquerors who had thought this green jewel an easy prize. And I learned about the mad racism that greeted those that fled to America, trading persecution and poverty for different flavors of the same. In reality I came from people who had struggled to make their way, keep their homes, their freedoms, and even their lives. But never having struggled for anything vital, this has always been a vague concept to me -- perhaps something akin to fairy tales and legend again. Being separated by so many generations from this heritage adds to the vagueness. Day to day I don’t think about my roots at all, except when someone might read my name for the first time and give me a wink … “Irish, eh?”

And then, of course, there’s St. Patrick’s Day, where every cliché related to Ireland is thrown in your face. At this time everyone reaches into their family tree and dusts off an ancestor or two so they can pin on buttons that say “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” It makes me wonder what the turning point was, when Americans went from putting up signs in the window that said “No Irish,” to filling those windows with cardboard shamrocks.

After I turned 21, celebrating being Irish meant drinking. A lot. And when people want to buy a lot of alcohol, enter Commercialism. After those folks sign on, expect the true meaning of any holiday to be seized, the core extracted, and the meaning sold back to you for a couple of bucks, a cheap version of the original. Strangely, they’ve done this to our nation’s pride day, the 4th of July, but people do still feel something akin to respect about this day, in spite of stuffing themselves with barbeque and wearing flag boxers.

It's all in good fun. I love parades and green beer as much as the next person. Well, except that I'm not a big fan of beer, so pass me the green punch instead. But the problem is that the celebration of St. Patty's Day has done to my concept of Irish heritage what McDonald's has done to food -- cheapened it, even made it easy and tasty to swallow, but there's really very little useful in it.

St. Patrick’s Day is here again, and this time I want to know what it means to be Irish. I’ve tried books, history, digging through my geneology. But what I really want is to write a letter to my ancestors and ask. Or maybe it would be enough to ask someone who lives in Ireland now. I would feel silly doing so, like I am one of the many Irish wannabes who wants to trade in their mutt ancestry for 100% pure green blood. Now that it’s “cool” to be Irish, the bandwagon is overflowing with drunken idiots in green plastic derbies.

It's enough to make anyone want to pull up their roots.

My Scientific Contribution

I now must crow like Peter Pan ... ISI Web of Science shows that my master's thesis publication in Soil Science Society of America has now been cited 5 times. Five times! Apparently my research matter to at least 5 people out there. Perhaps all 5 articles show that my research was wrong, haven't checked that yet, but hooray!

Observation

Today when I pulled into the parking lot at work, there was a gentleman sitting in his idling car. He was shaving.

This is not the first time I have observed this.

It makes me smile.