Diary of a Wolfeman

Frizzen Sparks brought up the idea this time ’round, so we’ll bame him.

What 15 or so songs would you put on the soundtrack of your life? Most of the responses he’s had are just the top 15 or so songs for the individual; I’ll try to put them into context of what scene they should be played in. Some of these can’t really be narrowed down to one song or even one artist, but I’ll try to be brief. (Yeah, right.)

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In a great decision for dinner-hour privacy, the Supreme Court backs the ‘do-not-call’ list. A group of telemarketers tried to get the Court to declare it an unfair restriction of commercial speech, but the Supreme Court has agreed with the over 11 million people who have signed up on that list that it is merely a pre-emptive opt-out.

I’d still rather have a device that allows me to send a high-voltage current back down the line.

If you haven’t had a chance to catch it yet, you need to tune in to PBS for Nova’s “Beginnings” mini-series. Gone are the days of scratchy documentaries – this is a four-star production with some spectacular graphics, and the script is incredibly well-written. I’m no science slouch myself, but this series is written so that someone with a less scientific background can get just as thoroughly sucked in.

The series deals with the appearance of life in our solar system, and the possibility of life elsewhere, both within and outside of our Sol system. More specifically, the chances of finding intelligent, technological life outside our system.

Intelligent life is actually pretty common here on Earth – many aquatic species have very advanced brains, and many have said for years that dolphins have their own language. The thing is, with over 30k species alive today and hundreds of thousands of extinct species, humans are the only tool-using technological intelligence on the planet. While there may be other life forms out there, the chances of finding an intelligent species for us to talk to look pretty grim. We’re damn lucky to be here, and that luck may not have been spread out evenly.

Now, this got me thinking down another line. Many sci-fi books have had the idea of a race of ancient peoples who travelled throughout the galaxy seeding planets with life or tampering with existing life forms in order to induce intelligence. These stories always posit that the Ancients are long gone, usually for millenia before we find any trace of their existence.

Here’s the thought that crept into my head: What if we are the Ancients? Who’s to say that we won’t eventually devise some method of travelling netween the stars in search of intelligent life and come up with nothing? Faced with the enormity of knowing that we are completely alone out here, we could decide to spread the seed ourselves on every planet we come across in the hopes of eventually duplicating the results of Earth’s happy accident.

So, here’s my question to you: take the role of an Ancient for a moment and think about what kind of message you would leave behind for your ‘children’ to discover, and how you would place it. You know the maturation process is going to take millenia, so what do you leave behind to let them know that they are not alone, that at least one other has gone this way before?

Me, I’d be leaving stuff all over the place, but I’d start with something big. I figure if I can cross the gulf of space, chances are I can do pretty much anything I want to the local solar system, like screw with the rotation or orbit of a planet. I’d do something on a pretty grand scale to make the curious wonder “what’s up with that?” Take Pluto, for instance. Pluto’s eccentric orbit takes it from all the way out at the edge of the system back into the 5th orbit, leading us to believe that it just wandered into the system and got stuck. Right there, we have the possibility of a message that says interstellar travel is possible.

I wouldn’t stop there, though. I’d set it up so that the oddity would always have one side facing the planet I seeded, so there’s the “what’s on the other side?” question as well. That’s where I’d leave the important stuff, the huge obelisk of some unfathomable material laser-carved with runes and heiroglyphs depicting a star chart with “You are here!” arrows pointing at the home system’s star and another pointing to my star of origin.

Careful study (and alot of poking and prodding) would reveal the hidden cubbyhole where I left the keys to the Buick Starlark parked in the gravitational eddy located halfway between this star and the black hole that keeps Pluto in it’s odd orbit :)

So, WWTAD?

With Pookie’s birthday coming up this weekend, it was time to do a little shopping of the fun kind. Now, like most kids, she wants something off of almost every commercial on Cartoon Network, but I really dislike most of those toys. There just doesn’t seem to be any life or creativity in them.

Just on the off chance I might find something cool for her, I went down to the local Toys-R-Us and wandered around aimlessly for almost an hour. Sure, there’s stuff in there she wants, but nothing I’d really like to get her with the exception of a big box of Legos. Fortunately, there was a better answer.

Down on Hawthorne St., just west of Noah’s Bagels is a shop called Kids At Heart Toys. It’s a little small, but they have a good selection of stuff aimed at ages infant-to-8 or so. Lots of little wooden toys, with quite a selection of miniature-house furnishings. For the older kids, they have some science toys, a fun selection of ‘spy’ gear, and even Erector sets. (Yay! I want one!) They even have a huge selection of rubber snakes :)

What I got for Pookie is even cooler. First, I had to get her another marble race set – this one has plastic tube pieces that snap together with two spiral ramps and a vortex. She already has a wooden set, but she has a hard time with it because she knocks it around too much. Pookie can’t exactly sit still, y’know. This one should stay together for her.

I also got her a cool book of velvet marker drawings with a zipper-pouch of markers. The whole thing is spiral-bound, so she can take it with her and do it in the car or back-and-forth between here and her mom’s house. Having the velvet will help her get a better handle on her coordination, I think, and she loves to draw and color.

The best part about this shop though is the staff of friendly folks who are amazing gift-wrappers. I’m no slouch in the wrapping department, but these gals can do wonders with handmade ribbon bows. It’s almost a shame to open them up! The wrapping is free, but drop a couple bucks in the tip jar, folks – we should all support the arts where we find them :)

Today I bring to you the newest resident here at Chez Wolfie: Trouble, A.K.A. Bob Cat. At least, that’s what we’re calling him until Ratboy comes up with a better name, and it kinda fits due to his ears and the look he gets on his face when you piss him off.
Say ‘mouse!’

Zoe the Monster isn’t too pleased to have him around yet – she’s doing the territorial thing and hisses at him whenever he’s in sight. This doesn’t seem to bother him much, he just keeps on about his business.

Oh – if you plan on coming over to visit him, I don’t suggest sitting on the far left side of the futon. That’s prime runway space apparently, and he doesn’t care if you’re sitting there or not when he blazes through at just short of lightspeed. I have the wounds to prove this.

On the backpack front, I finally managed to get ahold of that cop who called. She had been off for a couple days, so didn’t have all the specifics right at hand, but apparently a woman was at least seen trying to pass some of the stolen checks.

Thinking back on it now, when I went out to the car the morning the pack was stolen, there was a grey-haired woman standing on the sidewalk waiting for her ride near my car, and I vaguely remember seeing a backpack on her, but can’t quite recall. It would be just my luck that she was standing right there in front of me with my bag and I was too oblivious to notice. I’ll have to call that cop back again later this week to see what’s up.

Twelve years ago, I lived in a section of town called Northwest Industrial. It’s the area north of Burnside and west of the Willamette. When it was all first built, it was bustling with river and train traffic, commerce on the move.

When I lived there, the glory days had definitely gone. Most of the folks in the area were barely scraping by, and what businesses there were tended to be places you wouldn’t take your mother to. Unless she was really wierd, anyway. The first apartment I had we got evicted from – they condemmed the top floor where our apt was. Still being mostly broke, we moved into the building next door – the one with the Phillipino-Mafia-owned restaraunt and the matching gay strip club. Then I got even more broke, and left the state.

When I came back, the area was called The Pearl. Yuppies had moved in and begun buying up the old run-down and partially condemned tenements and warehouses, either renovating them or razing them outright to build condos and lofts. The bums and homeless folks who had been squatting in these buildings were simply run out, left to fend for themselves someplace else. Property values skyrocketted with the influx of Californians moving up from Silicon Valley, and by all counts the area was a success story.

Now it’s twelve years later, and on a downward spiral. Some of the new apartment buildings went HUD and Section 8 at the beginning of the economic slump to keep occupancy up. Some of the newer buildings have yet to reach capacity, as folks started buying houses when the interest rates fell instead of renting or buying ridiculously-expensive condos next door to the poor and unwashed folks moving in across the street. Vandalism is on the up as apartment managers have had to cut spending on security. Places that were clean and beautiful are now dirty and ugly again.

I worked in one of those apartment buildings as a cable guy starting in 2000, and it was almost sickening watching them build these beautiful new buildings, when the one I was working in was getting worse every day. I just couldn’t understand how people would willingly befoul their own home at such a rate that even the most determined maintenance crew couldn’t keep up with it.

What has happened to humanity? I’ll be the first to admit that I grew up poor – my family has never been wealthy, and my mom was on welfare much of my childhood. Nevertheless, our house and property (when we had it) was always clean and well-maintained. Often, we made deals with our landlord for reduced rent in exchange for improvements to the property. I just don’t understand how someone could willingly do this to themselves.

I had a point when I started writing this, but it escapes me now.

Took a trip out to Sauvie Island today with the EMC, her hubby and the Pookster to check out the Harvest Festival they were having. It’s been a long time since I spent any time at all on anything resembling a farm.

Pookie enjoyed the hell out of it, which is at least some recompense for the aches in my knees – I really need to get back into some sort of shape here. I used to be able to walk around all day long without any problems. Anywho, Pookie painted herself a pumpkin, rode a pony, fed the petting zoo animals, took in a magic show and had a good time in general. Which means, of course, that I will have to take her back out there again this October to do the pumpkin patch thing. Maybe I can talk BtFR out of his 4×4 this year – the mud last year almost ate the Little Black Beastie…

A friend of mine made me the offer of a new kitty the other day, and I’ve been thinking about it very hard. My neighborhood currently does not have a tabby cat wandering it’s streets, which just seems very odd to me. The tabby that used to live with me (Sebastian, AKA Be’elzekitty) went home with his original owner some time ago, and the girl who had a twin to him moved away shortly thereafter. Heck, even that poor tomcat with the ‘lion’ haircut moved away.

Anywho, the kitty I have been offered is a grey tabby. He’s currently running under the moniker ‘Trouble’, and is the largest cat in his litter – roughly twice the size of his sibs at 10 weeks old. Big, curious, outgoing and atitude to spare – the kind of cats I’ve had all my life.

The only drawback I can see is the financial aspect. I’m not real big on taking myself to the doc, so you can imagine how often I take a pet to the vet. (Like me, my pets have always been healthy.) While the cat would be free to me, I would still need to take him in at least for his first round of shots (not a big deal) and the Breaking. (If something works, and you make it not work, it is breaking, not getting fixed.) This procedure currently costs about $125 – a fairly largish sum to be spending on a pet at this stage of my finances. This amount is offset somewhat by speculation though: I would have another couple of months before a vet would even perform the procedure due to his age.

Other considerations include the current non-human residents of Chez Wolfie. Zoe The Monster Cat has seemed a bit lonely since Sebastian moved out, and might like a new kitty. Or, she may not. On the flipside, Zoe doesn’t consider Tweaker the Hamster to be food, and a new cat might. The Ratboy would be very unhappy if he came home and found Tweaker’s cage open and hamster-breath on the cat.

So, I’m looking for feedback. What do you think?

Remember how my backpack got stolen back in June? Well, my old roomate found a message on his voicemail from a Troutdale cop trying to get ahold of me. Apparently someone has been masquerading as me somehow or something.

Now I’m waiting for the cops to call me back. I hate waiting.