Category Archives: Random

Tazer Man!

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The following is best read in a voice akin to that of Don “The Voice of God” LaFontaine:

IN A WORLD where people have forgotten their manners, made deaf to their fellow citizens by ipods sprouting from their heads, apathetic to those around them: one man stands alone, willing to fight for truth, justice, and the social contract. Impoliteness is his enemy, and his weapon is 24,000 volts of pure blue truth. Mild-mannered electrical engineer by day, by mid to late evenings he roams the streets of Boston, seeking vengeance on those who are unaware of the fact that they are not the only people on the planet. He is… Tazer Man!

A man at the mall stops right at the top of the escalator, deciding that would be a good place to continue his cell phone conversation, clueless to the people piling up behind him. Zap! Man down! He won’t need to charge that cell phone for another week. Thanks, Tazer Man!

It’s rush hour. A group of three teenage girls are gossiping cluelessly in the doorway of the Red Line subway, oblivious to the passengers trying to push by them before the door closes. Zap, zap, zap! No, he does not dial down the voltage for the young! “The younger they are, the more they gotta learn,” is Tazer Man’s motto.

A stock broker in a BMW sees the “left lane closed” sign, but does he merge? No, he drives past half a mile of people who don’t think they’re above everybody else, and cuts somebody off right at the last minute. He thought he got away with it. Maybe the last hundred other times, but not this time. Not today. Today he cut off the wrong guy. BMW guy doesn’t know that there is a complete electrical circuit between the metal interior door handle of a 2002 BMW 330Ci coupe and the chassis ground. But you know who does? Tazer Man does! ZZZZZap! Now two people know. Good thing leather cleans up well.

A twentysomething rides by on a skateboard. He stops at the front door of a bank, and quickly slaps a sticker on the side of the building, advertising his band “Shades of Moon.” Tazey has a special setting on his ‘gun’ for people like this. It’s called “Nobody cares about your stupid emo band so quit defacing public property with your infantile self-promotion.” Just kidding. That would never fit. It’s just called “High.”

When a broken social code has seemingly left us with no consequences for asocial behavior, Tazer Man is here to show us that there is a price to pay, and that price is 45 seconds of pain and possibly momentary incontinence. So the next time you are in public, remember your manners. And if you ever forget them, you may hear the faint whining hum of an electrolytic capacitor charging. That’s the sound of justice brewing, and it’s the last thing you’ll remember for about two and a half minutes.

Another reason to keep my degree from the University of Colorado a secret

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It’s not so much that people at CU smoked pot, skied and climbed rocks, or that I have a problem with any of these activities in and of themselves, it’s just that from what I could tell, that’s pretty much ALL many of them ever did, professors included. While the grad students were, in some cases, the smartest people I’ve ever met, half-heartedly attending the school seemed to just be a way for people with a modicum of self-respect to legitimize what would otherwise be a lifestyle more commonly experienced by people living out of VW vans in the parking lot of the local tobacco accessories store. So it is with bittersweet nostalgia that I read a recent Daily Camera article about the annual 4/20 celebration on campus. A choice excerpt:

CU freshman Emily Benson, 19, of Kansas City, said she thinks the decriminalization of marijuana will become a hot topic in the upcoming political season and said she felt part of something bigger than just a smoke-out on Sunday.

We’re at the starting point of a movement, she said. This is a big part of the reason I applied here, for the weed atmosphere.

Although CU junior Max Lichtenstein, 21, isn’t into marijuana or smoking, he also felt Sunday’s event was a chance to do something “bigger” than himself. He passed out 126 Rice Krispies treats with messages attached asking that they act out against the injustices in Darfur…

“I just like being generous and doing nice things,” he said. “I’m like a good Samaritan.”

I should have known public image would be a problem when I found out that the school slogan was “Minds to Match our Mountains.” Publicly comparing their students’ brains to a mass of granite really makes one wonder if the administration knows what they’re doing. So does the fact that the last three major publicity events I’ve read about the school have been this story, hookers for the football team, and campus riots over beer policy. Thanks, CU, for continuing to ensure my degree continues to be so valuable in the market. Maybe your slogan should be “Minds to match the font size you’ll want to use to mention our school in your resume.” After this article, I’m down to 7 pt Helvetica, placed with an asterisk down at the bottom of the page.

Dammit Campbells, what am I missing?

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“Mmm, mmm, Campbell’s Soup–Possibilities.” That infernal commercials jingo has infected my mind and torments my soul. There is nowhere I can hide from its taunting refrain, nothing I can do to stop it from springing forth into my consciousness, uninvited, mocking me. Soup. Possibilities.

What the bloody hell am I missing? For years I’ve just been following a simple recipe when it comes to soup: Open can. Poor contents into pot. Heat. Consume. No matter how many times I go through the numbers in my head, I can’t come up with anything other than pouring it into a receptacle and eating it. What are these possibilities? Are they still talking food, or other stuff? Is there something kinky you can do with Clam Chowder that everybody knows but me? Is that why the lady in the commercial winks at the end?

“Why I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone”

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One of the things I admire about my friends Ken, Scott and Dom is that they all seem to be the kind of balanced people who will raise kids who will be sensitive and thoughful, yet also not neurotic or afraid of taking risks. I don’t know if that’s as rare as I fear it is, but based on my informal children-i-see-wearing-helmets-for-activities-not-remotely-requiring-head-protection index, I’d say it might be. Obessing about safety and an abundance of precaution are not hallmarks of successful people, and I wonder if many companies are started by people who, as children, were hovered over by over-protective parents. I therefore enjoyed this story about an NYC women who indulged her 9-year-old son’s wish to be left alone in downtown NY to find his way home. From the article:

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

If I had to guess, I’d say that in 20 years this kid will be doing something interesting with his life. Perhaps providing employment to the grown children of more obsessive parents. I hope he appreciates what a wonderful mother he has.

Interesting story on high-stakes ship salvage

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Photo courtesy of the US Coast Guard.

In the absence of anything interesting I can think of to write about the few things I understand, and an inability to write intelligently about the interesting things that are actually happening (e.g. the present collapse of our financial system), I am not above just jangling a shiny object that I found on the internet. In the previous issue of Wired magazine, there is a fascinating story about the people you call when your multimillion dollar ship full of 100 million of dollars worth of brand new cars nearly capsizes and is drifting helplessly into the coast of Alaska. I was deeply disappointed to find out that applied physics computational modeling is not the most manly occupation out there, as I’d been heretofore led to believe.

A brief excerpt:

In the crew’s quarters below the bridge, Saw “Lucky” Kyin, the ship’s 41-year-old Burmese steward, rinses off in the common shower. The ship rolls underneath his feet. He’s been at sea for long stretches of the past six years. In his experience, when a ship rolls to one side, it generally rolls right back the other way.

This time it doesn’t. Instead, the tilt increases. For some reason, the starboard ballast tanks have failed to refill properly, and the ship has abruptly lost its balance. At the worst possible moment, a large swell hits the Cougar Ace and rolls the ship even farther to port. Objects begin to slide across the deck. They pick up momentum and crash against the port-side walls as the ship dips farther. Wedged naked in the shower stall, Kyin is confronted by an undeniable fact: The Cougar Ace is capsizing.

The Boston Symphony on a weeknight: Death is gaseous and awesome

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One of the nicest things about being a student in Boston is the $25 “BSO Student Card,” which lets you attend certain Thursday night performances of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for free. Of course, Thursday night is not the big night for the Boston intelligentsia to attend the symphony, and tickets for the cheap seats are actually cheap, even if you’re not a student. Thus, it’s fair to conjecture that you get a different crowd at the Thursday night performances, to put it politely, and it’s clear that many of us “far in the back” are not taking the experience as seriously as those paying $150 for the privilege. I fear that the musicians probably think of Thursday night as riff-raff night, and regard it as a rehearsal for the weekend’s benefactor show. If they don’t, they probably will from now on.

This week the orchestra played Edward Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius,” which is a huge piece for full chorus and orchestra with pipe organ. It is a setting of a poem of the same name, which deals with the death of a man and his transport beside his guardian angel to His final Judgement and on to Purgatory. (Too much capitalization there? Well, better safe than sorry, I say. The grammarian version of Pascal’s wager.)

The beginning of “The Dream…” is a somber orchestral prelude, setting the mood using perhaps the quietest tone in which I’ve ever heard an orchestra play. (For the first time I’ve seen, the concert notes are printed with the admonition “Please turn the page quietly.”) The hall is hushed, and this beautiful string adagio begins to wax quietly, creating a hallowed, church-like atmosphere. But it does not last long, this being Bingo night at Symphony Hall. An older gentleman in the balcony starts to go into a comical, high-pitched coughing fit that sounds like an asthmatic cat being repeatedly gut punched. They are probably looking frantically for this guy in whatever ICU he wandered out of. Going out in public was probably a poor call, but he clearly has a health problem and can surely be forgiven, if not lauded for his thematic complement to the subject matter. Jesu, Maria–I am near to death, And Thou art calling me; I know it now, sings the tenor. But there are others for whom Judgement will not be so kind…

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How to drive to and from Logan without a toll

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I’ll depart from my usual genre of pointless complaining to actually put up something of use. Well, at least of use to the 1% of my readers who live in Boston. (Which prompts the following Zen koan-like question: what is 1% of ten people?) So, if you don’t live here, may I suggest you read my fascinating take on Sarkozy’s fight with labor unions? Nothing entertains like dated editorials on French politics.

So, you live in Boston? You’ve probably figured out by now that the only thing Boston hates more than an outsider is an outsider in a car. There is a secret office of the mayoralty tasked solely with making life difficult for people who are visiting. They are the ones who make sure less than half the streets have signage, and of those that do, half are incorrect. They are also the creative minds behind the five-way-intersection-without-a-light. Not to mention my personal favorite: the InstaMerge whereby two (sometimes three) lanes suddenly turn into one. (Check out Route 2 entering Cambridge for a prime example. The first time it happened to me I thought I’d missed something. It took me three trips before I caught on that I was just no longer in civilization, and not suffering from occasional blackouts while driving.)

Boston is designed to be learned, not taught, and once the initial grieving process is completed, the truth is living here can be enjoyed as a series of small triumphs as you learn the ropes. What once held you back now holds back others, and the unintentional (or is it?) genius of Boston’s hostility to outsiders becomes apparent: the obscurity of the city is just a tax on newcomers, with the dividends going directly to the natives.

A perfect example of this is the toll tunnels and bridges to the airport. Blindly following the advice of the road signs leads one to pay about $7 in tolls when picking up a friend from Logan. However, it’s quite possible to pay nothing if you know which ones to use, though it’s hard to find them. I suspect this is not an accident. Fortunately, nobody reads this blog, so I’m not going to ruin the secret by publishing it here. (Note to my fellow Bostonians: if this blog actually starts getting more than 300 visitors per day, I promise I’ll take down this post.)

To get to Logan: This one is fairly easy and probably fairly well known. Take 93 South from any point north of Storrow Drive (or take Storrow Drive itself) and you have the option of the Callahan tunnel, which is toll-free outbound from the city to Logan. You can also access the Callahan tunnel from downtown Boston by following signs for Route 1A. Not only is this free, but it’s actually often quicker than taking the more advertised Route 90 East tunnel. If you have a GPS it will probably take this route if you ask for directions to Logan and tell it to avoid toll roads.

To get back from Logan: This is the hard one, and is best explained by a map. Here the evil Sumner tunnel and Tobin bridge duo conspire mightily against the thrifty driver. You need to drive towards Revere on Route 1A and take the first exit (it comes quickly). Take the Chelsea Street Bridge from Route 145 out of the airport. Then cut through the industrial blight and get to Route 99, where you’ll take the Malden Bridge to freedom. It’s a bit out of the way if you live in Boston, but actually quite direct if you live in Cambridge or north. I know this sounds confusing, and it’s even more so in real life, so just check the map I linked above. The best way to do this is to enter the route into your GPS ahead of time by telling it to go to the two bridges enroute to your final destination; the GPS will likely figure out the rest. (As an added bonus, you get a tour of Boston’s old working waterfront area, including the main food distribution centers and our energy infrastructure. If you’re like me, it’s fascinating to see the machinery behind the Boston economy, and it’s amazing that it it is hidden so well, so close. At some point maybe I’ll write an article with photos on all the interesting infrastructure hidden across the river in Chelsea.)

Granted, the return trip makes for about two miles of extra driving, but it’s not about the time or the measly $3.50, it’s about the moral victory. Enjoy. By the way, it’s one thing to publish this secret on the internet, but for god sakes don’t tell anybody about it.