Author: dev7

outstanding! superb! fabulous! far and away, one of the best days of my life.
sunday and monday we were pretty socked in, and snow was falling around us, and we still had a grand time.
today, however, the sky cleared, and the sun shone warm and bright, swimming in a deep azure sea. the rocky crags to our east, invisible since saturday, outlined the feminine sky with masculine force. the peaks to our west, prepare to bear the scars of a thousand brightly colored skiiers and snowboarders.
I had a conference call scheduled for today, but last night I convinced myself that my attendance wasn’t necessary, and anyway, I’m on vacation. the situation is a little weird, the guy who scheduled the meeting didn’t check my schedule, or if he did, he decided it didn’t matter. I told him I would be out of town at this time, but whatever.
so I blew it off. it will be fine. I’ve been through this countless times. you’ll see.
now I know I made the right decision. determined to decouple my schedule from the kids, who asserted that they’d be delighted to sleep in a little bit, which to them meant probably 11 or 12, I set my mind to wake early. I examined the schedules, and learned the buses start at 8:00, and was reminded that the lifts open at 8:30. my plan was to be in line at 8:30, and head over peak 7, as I had been advised by a local. peak 7 is not acessible from any of the bases, and serves blue slopes only. this gives it a number of properties — you have to go out of your way to find it, and you have to be at least a marginally competent skiier just to get there.
this cuts out a lot of nonsense. the six seat lift runs super fast, hardly ever stops, and serves six or eight really fun slopes.
so I made a bee line over there, getting to the top of independence superchair before 9:00. there were only a handful of other lucky skiiers there with me. words cannot do justice to the view I beheld. It was similar to many views you can find around here, some of which we have photographed, but was unique in its freshness. the snow of the past few days made the slopes inviting and forgiving, and the groom lines from the night before gave the slopes a uniform appearance, like fresh bed linen or ice cream.
I flew down monte cristo I don’t know how many times, probably four or five, the first few runs, most of the time without a single other soul in sight, the tall snow crested firs to my right and left, the rocky crags in front of me, the crystal blue sky above, I simply cannot convey the joy I felt. I was getting more confident in my skills, “keeping my line tight” as they say, slaloming to control my speed, but trying to avoid that as much as possible, once I found myself familiar enough with each of these slopes in turn, I fairly flew straight down, as fast as I could, just holding the edge of my competence in front of me by a hair’s breadth.
the only sounds were the crunching snow under my skis, and their occasional flap-flap as I cut and turned.
later, lizzy would ask me how many runs I went down, and I truly couldn’t answer precisely, but it was a lot.
in the morning, I probably covered peak 7 completely, doing monte cristo 4 times, angels rest 4 times, and lincoln meadows and wirepatch once each.
at first, there were practically no waits. you’d just run down, and get back on the lift, and zoom up and do it again. it seemed to me I was going pretty fast, and each run was about 5 minutes, followed by maybe 5 minutes to get back up. [TBD href audio]
toward the end I started getting a little tired, and I think somehow my bindings got slightly loose. it seemed harder to lift my right ski to cut left. but just the right one. maybe it was just fatigue. this is what I was thinking when I decided to cut over to claimjumper and head back to the base of peak 8. halfway down my phone rang in my pocket. I don’t mind saying the combination of the surprise, the sound and maybe my fatigue, just then I cut into some fresh powder, and took a spill. nothing serious, though.
perhaps needless to say, I didn’t answer the phone. and of course it was anita. when I got to the bottom I called her back. she said she was already in line for the colorado superchair, on her way up to vista haus. so it was pretty good timing.
I met her quite promptly, and was happy to rest a little bit after more than 3 hours of pretty much solid skiing under pretty much perfect conditions. thank you Lord!
we enjoyed a wonderful lunch.

I was happy to learn the kids had skiied their bunny slopes all morning as well, and had a fine time too. all three rode rode down together.
afterward, I had an equally fine afternoon, doing northstar perhaps 4 times, zooming down and back up the rocky mountain superchair, which perhaps by an odd circumstance had really short lines. just zoom down and zip up, over and over. what a life!
when I felt like I had mastered northstar, and wanted something a little different, I took claimjumper once more, and before I knew it, it was 3 pm. so this time I zipped across to the colorado superchair, and like lots of other folks it turned out, chose to take the four o’clock down right around 4 o’clock. what a ride that was. it was a moderately challenging blue at the top, and turned into a moderate green at the bottom, but there were more folks on this run than any other I had taken today. a lot of them, likely more tired than me, taking spills here and there, so it was kind of like an obstacle course, even the green part of the slope was pretty challenging. and a number of us were trying to go fast once we cleared the caution zone.

Some weeks ago, I left work around noon to go to church for Ash Wednesday. It had been some years since I had done that, but it was a worthwhile experience. These bastards who put down the Catholic church don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Its like New York City. There’s everything here, amazingly satisfactory emotional and aesthetic spritual experiences, as well as despotic pedophiliacs. If only we could get rid of the bastards, we’d really have something. Hmm…

You know, this is positively weird. Perhaps like many things, the product of a superstitious mind, or the power of suggestion. Perhaps the universe really is random — I often think of that — the idea that we can see patterns in clouds — you see a teacup, I see a puppy. Is there really a teacup floating, billowing up there in the blue sky? Clearly not, but we may see one there nonetheless, and so in fact the representation of a teacup does exist, if only in our minds. And our understanding of all this nonsense is still so limited, who is to say, definitively?
Maybe its that I’m wearing my lucky shirt. This shirt makes me lucky. Do you ever think things like that? I used to have a lucky rock. I lost it on what I call our great western expedition. That’s the trip we took out west to Carlsbad, Canyon de Chelly, and Bryce. We rented a R.V. and tooled on out there, west Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah.
That part of the country, my friend, is a special place. People say they like to be near the sea. And they think nothing interesting ever happens far from it. They are wrong. Of course the sea is interesting, beautiful, ancient, and ponderable. But there is something else out there, in the desert. A different kind of consciousness. It is beyond words, you have to experience it to know what I’m talking about. I know they felt it out there among the Anasazi, I suspect its releated to Abraham’s journey from Ur, and Moses’ forty years wandering.
I sometimes think my lucky rock decided to escape. I found it years ago, by the side of the little Colorado river. Another ancient place, where people had been living many, many centuries ago. And this rock spoke to me, as I let my dogs swim in the river. Dogs both now gone. They are gone and I am here. But not for long. Do you get my drift?
And I took this rock with me everywhere. I have no evidence that it really was lucky, I just had this idea. I used to think maybe it was an arrowhead, or more likely some kind of small tomahawk. It had an edge that might have been notched by one of our fellow human beings. There was a red blotch near the edge that I imagined might be blood. One side had been smoothed by perhaps centuries of Colorado river water. I used to rub my thumb along its smooth side when I was stressed out. It calmed me.
Once I had lost it for a whole year, and found it again on Christmas eve, because I had left it in my suit pocket the previous Christmas eve when we went to midnight Mass down there at St. Martin’s Lutheran.
And I imagined, when I realized it was lost after we returned from our trip out west, that it had intentionally lost itself, searching for its previous owner, perhaps, or its kin, among the Anasazi out there in places like Canyon de Chelly.
But never mind that. What I want to talk about is this weird feeling, like.
One day, several weeks ago, I came to the office, and I literally closed my door and knelt down to pray. I prayed God to make my way clear. My dad used to say “follow your heart,” but I have people depending on me, I can’t just do whatever the hell I want, even though my heart tells me to just fuck it all, and be an artist. That can’t be right. But if that’s what God wants me to do, I’ll do it. I’ll just put down my work right now and walk off and follow Him, if He actually presented Himself. I mean check out Deuteronomy 31:15 and 32:20. Where is he? “I will hide my face from them,” He said, “since they have provoked Me with their no-god, I will provoke them with a no-people;”
It might possibly explain why God doesn’t present Himself to us the way he apparently used to present Himself to the chosen people. But who knows? What do those verses even mean? But in any case, if its not for God’s sake that I do it, its just a bullshit ego trip, or worse, and I’m just imagining things.
You see, this is what happens when you spend too much time reading spiritual literature. If you ever actually think about it, pick any religion — any of the prophets, the gurus, the sages, they are subject to multiple intepretations. They could be transcendentally insightful, or they could just be kooks. Either interpretation is valid in certain contexts.
You know what I mean.
But I just don’t know what the deal is! This was my prayer: please, God, make Your will known to me. That’s what I always say: let God’s will, not mine, be done. But this day I prayed: I don’t know shit! Search my heart, Lord. You see in all secret places, you know me better than I know myself. You know my comings and my goings, Lord! Then you must also know that I am as dense and as dumb as ten sticks! You know You have to hit me over the head with it Lord! I beg you, make it plain. What the fuck do you want me to do?
And in the past few days, it seems, my prayer was answered.
Thank you, Lord!

my definition of love is simple. my happiness derives from yours. only if you are happy, I might be. but if you are not, then I cannot be.

Better late than never, I guess. This nyt editorial makes probably the most concise and compelling case for John Kerry that I have seen.
What I think happened is they got put on the White House shit list for some recent things, like the recent piece by ron suskind in the nytmag, and they decided they had nothing to lose by finally expressing an honest forthright opinion.
Where have they been the last three years?
There turns out to be this incestuous relationship between journalists who need this thing called “access” to government sources. This administration has been exceedingly disciplined about denying this essential stuff to those whom it hates.
In order to maintain what they thought was a competetive footing vis-a-vis other outlets like the post or (though they disdain to admit it, broadcast and cable tv networks), many journalists and editors compromised themselves, publishing mealy-mouthed half truths (pretty much anything safire or will and many others have written for the past decade) and sometimes even propagandistic falsehoods (e.g. julie miller’s phony reports from the “front”), in order to maintain at least a functioning relationship with their “sources”.
This, as it turns out is a doomed strategy, unless your intent is to forfeit all credibility as a journalist, and admit that you’re essentially a tool of the administration.
Now there is at least some hope that we won’t have to deal with this administration in the future, they are perhaps already trying to cultivate the next bunch as favored “sources” in the event they prevail on election day.
If Kerry does not unseat Bush (and most of us dare not allow ourselves to even contemplate that eventuality), can we expect this newspaper at least to assume a more openly antagonistic posture, or will it return to its role a priori of cowed supplicat?

why isn’t there a columnist, much less a candidate, with the guts to ask the tough questions?
how many members of the current administration have been arrested for drunk driving, or for other crimes?
what exactly happened to the records of those arrests?
how exactly is it that entire years are missing and unaccounted for in the president’s biography, years in which he claims to have been serving in the military? how exactly is it that a man can just not show up for a year, miss a flight physical, and there are no consequences?
how exactly does one explain how this president got into, much less out of yale and harvard, considering he’s obviously an ignoramus.
why is it that reporters know all this, but are afraid to put it in writing, finding all kinds of excuses, like needing multiple official sources, when the truth is they know they will be punished for crossing the politically powerful?
we suffer a terrible attack in large part through their own negligence and incompetence, and yet they wrap themselves in the flag, fill themselves full of jesus, and claim their own failures as excuses to extend their tyranny, their real agenda is to screw the working man, screw the poor, throw the hard earned gains of the civil rights movement out the window

impugning the honor of an injured veteran — that’s just what you might expect from someone who’s only
experience with military service is wearing the uniform. someone who never earned an honest dime in his life,
he doesn’t even know what the hell it means.
they don’t know what it means to be shot at. to sit in a foxhole in the jungle or out in the open in the cold
desert night with bombs exploding around you and you just hope to hell the assholes back in washington know
what the hell they’re doing. and you don’t even allow yourself to think that they’re a bunch of greedy,
selfish assholes who don’t give a damn about you, they just have these ideas that they’re trying to prove,
these fucking ideologies, for christ’s sake.
there’s no character, no honor, only the insider-outsider distinction of the fucking spoiled, privileged,
self-indulgent frat-rats who run the goddamned world. you know the type. and that’s what we have, the
georgetown, yale and harvard graduates, children of wealth, and as for you poor working class bastards who’re
getting shot at right now? know this: they don’t give a damn about you. they mouth all the words, wrap
themselves in the flag, without guilt or compunction. they lie so well, because they actually believe it
themselves. but deep down, all they really care about is their own pansy asses. they don’t know it
themselves, because they’ve never actually been tested out there, they’ve never sweated the rent, or struggled
to pay the damn doctor. they don’t even know what it means! they think if you’re poor, that its some kind of
character flaw. believe it! its like they’re living in some alternate reality.
they actually believe horse shit like: “business success not only requires but also rewards virtuous behavior.”
(for help translating the “code” also see: lakoff)
they’re the kind of folks who’ll push you out of the lifeboat in a pinch. and they’re doing just that. don’t
believe me, take a look at the effect their domestic policies have been having on the working class and the
poor. just making sure the trusts are well funded, and killing the inheritance tax, that is their priority.
not to worry about your poor sick grandmother, or your unemployed brother-in-law. fuck them! believe it!
is it really that hard to get your head around it, do you really want a C student running the world? and
that’s actually being generous, the worthless bastard never even would have gotten into those ivy league
schools much less got out of them, if it weren’t for the powerful influence of his family name, and his old
man’s money. everyone who was there knows it. but they’re afraid to say anything about it, because he’s one
of the club. how fucking scary is that? pity the more deserving but less well-connected bastard who’s place
he took there (not to mention in the air national guard), somebody who would have actually attended classes
and learned something or somebody who would have actually taken their goddamned flight physical or got court
martialed, because that’s what they’d do to you and me, but not to him and his kind.
but the point is, he doesn’t even know the difference, he and his kind live in another goddamned world, the
bastards, and its like they know our language but we normally can’t decode theirs.
and he puts on this good ‘ol boy act and is almost proud he don’t know shit. what the fuck is that about? is
he a clever right wing ideologue, a scion of a mafia-like family with connections to obscure and shady
international conspiracies, or a brush clearing, horse riding cowboy from central texas?
please, God! they never even heard of him in Crawford, Texas before the 2000 campaign. just like Reagan, its
all a stage act. they don’t give a shit, they even hire actors to play the roles. the guy on the screen has
a role, and he plays it. the perqs are good, you’ve got to admit it. get it? but he’s not the guy making
the call. so there’s no contradiction, there’s just more to the game than is apparent.
ref:
http://slate.msn.com//?id=2100064,
http://blogs.salon.com/0002542/,
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_05_09.php#002940

re: the topic a priori — I presume you saw last sunday’s nyt magazine.
a good image of two fat old tweedledee-tweedledum type functioning alcoholics masquerading as journalists bracketing a cute sex-in-the-capitol-city obsessed blogger going by the handle wonkette, who for her part, appears to be focused entirely on washington cocktail party gossip. though she once carefully protected her anonymity, its long since been compromised along with her content, and appearing on the cover of nytmag it appears she has gone to the other extreme. characteristically, the print media is running about a year behind.
now while there are thousands of folks out there ‘blogging their spleen’ to the purely hypothetically interested, (see http://www.globeofblogs.com/?x=topic), there are a few who function essentially as columnists and have quite a bit of good insight. a lot of these folks are essentially doing it in their spare time, and giving the pros a run for their money.
its actually a return to a purer form of “journalism” when you think about it, as in “individuals writing in their journals”. its really a leap forward for journalism, although you have to sift through a lot of noise to get to the good stuff.
yet the theme of the nyt piece seemed to be ‘you can’t trust those bloggers, because they don’t conform to the unwritten code of journalistic ethics, like we professionals do.’
wow, no need to parse that one out too closely, I hope.
as for “the good stuff,” my favorite political blog du jour is http://talkingpointsmemo.com/.
he’s got an interesting take on last night’s debates, that sounds like someone who’s living in the real world, not wrapped up in the cocoon like some of these so-called journalists [[20040929190100]] seem to be.
another one that I like is the daily prospect [[ http://www.prospect.org articleId=8691]]
you know from time to time they actually tell me stuff I didn’t know. I wonder if you were aware of this:
“First things first: John Kerry is significantly taller than George W. Bush. But last night, millions of unknowing Americans tuned in and saw a split-screen image of the pair looking exactly the same height.
…
Leave it to FOX News to distort the truth. The network was charged with camera control for the entire media during the debate tonight, so no matter which network you watched it on, the cameras were run by FOX’s crew. ”
go figure. I guess they just wanted to be “fair and balanced” with respect to the height issue.

overheard on the net:
when we talk about these conspiracies, say between certain media outlets being the tools of certain interests, some practical questions come to mind:
> how do these people coordinate their signals? do they check with their controllers? do they have a newsletter?
in a way, yes. that’s how elite journalists work. …much of it is done very simply, and not at all surreptitiously, say over tennis, golf, or drinks… whatever.
> what do you mean, ‘elite journalists’?
there’s more to it than just a matter of always sourcing the political/economic establishment (by which we mean masquerading the establishment position as “independent news”).
the elite journalists also share a common culture with the political/economic elite. for starters, in the top echelon, they’re very wealthy. either as a cause or an effect, they share similar points of view, life-styles;
they share similar concerns with the stock market, private schools for their children and the high price of nannies (and the servant problem more generally), etc.
but there’s both more and less to it than that. its as simple as a high school clique. there’s continual direct and indirect social interaction, at various parties and events, and of course, through the gossip mill.
> Chomsky argues that outlets like New York Times are tools of the ruling elite.
sort of. the few remaining leading papers out there are really anachronisms, and constitute a category in themselves. many more people get their ideas of world events from jay leno say, than papers like the post or the times…
these peculiar, public and untrusted channels serve primarily as vehicles through which members of the club send messages to each other in code.
but to your point, in many ways the top editors of these papers (and even more obviously the publishers of these papers, and the producers of tv news shows) aren’t so much tools of the elite, they are _part_ of that elite.
often people point to cases where there are apparent and sometimes real splits over policy issues between certain parts of the political establishment and certain parts of the media establishment, and say: “see. this proves that the government doesn’t control the media”
but what these represent are relatively rare splits _within_ the elite itself. some inside sources leak one side of the story, other inside sources leak another side. and there’s no reason to think that there’s only two factions. like the real world, there are at least as many sides in this game as there are people playing it.
(e.g. when the NYT split with Johnson over the Vietnam war (even about tactics and strategy) and when it split with Nixon over Watergate, that represented a pretty explicit split in the US ruling class.)