Mr. Leaver Outee

“Thanks for the help, Mr. Leaver-Outtee!” my wife bombed at me in a mixture of frustration, rage, bewilderment, and more rage. She calls me this, if you can’t guess, because I have a tendency to take things and leave them out on any one of the surfaces in our home, rather than put them away. These surfaces, covered either partially or totally with change, receipts, keys, tape measures, mugs, pens and other small pocket sized bits of life, are things that she spends considerable effort and time keeping smooth and clean. She’s right, of course. I am responsible for the vast majority of these things being placed on these surfaces. And honey, I’m sorry, but…

“Now see here, Mrs. Antique Canned Goods…” I usually begin my defense with an in-kind insult. You see, there are two kinds of people, those who can’t stand the sight of a mess and those who can’t stand the thought of a mess. My wife can’t stand the sight of a mess which is why she needs those surfaces to be clean. I can’t stand the thought of a mess, which is why I need to empty out my pockets. There is no point in my mind in taking the mess from my pockets and hiding it in some drawer, bowl, cabinet, or folder. I might as well leave it in my pockets, ready to transfer to tomorrow’s pockets, which I would do, were it not for the following rules of engagement regarding my pants.

The second my pants hit the floor, they contact a surface. This surface, before it was marred by my dropping pants, was clean and cleared of clutter, owing to the aforementioned efforts of my wife. Thus, my pants set off the equivalent of an air-raid siren. Rotating red lights come on and a calm but serious voice comes on over the loudspeaker, “Danger, surface has been compromised, floor breech, pants down on level 4, DEFCON 5, ladies and gentlemen, we are at war!” Being a loving parent, I dash to find my son. I scoop him up into my arms and dive under the nearest table. There I sit, either naked or in my underwear, cowering as the squadron that is my wife’s cleaning instinct flies overhead to neutralize the threatening armada of my pants. She seizes them, takes them prisoner, whisks them down to the interrogation room, tortures them briefly with some stain removing agent, and then drowns them in the wash. “Okay folks, it’s all over. You can go back to your homes.” the obviously relieved voice intones.

So, if I don’t remove the stuff from those pockets, its going into the wash, too. If you don’t believe me, just ask my wallet, or my paycheck, or that napkin on which I wrote that phone number. They know. The screws I need to put the door back on its hinges know too. Unfortunately, they are embedded in the lining of the dryer, accounting for its permanent clank, and because they are inaccessible, you can’t ask them anything.

These two personality types are actually just manifestations of two different reactions to the same situation – what to do with stuff. You can immediately tell which type you’re dealing with by looking in a kitchen, a desk drawer, a car, a purse, almost any container. I have always been accused of being a slob. I leave stuff out. This stuff includes tools, clothes, dishes, toys, parts, things of all kinds. My wife has been forever on the other end, given to missing appointments, dinners, functions and anything with a schedule, because she was obsessively neat, clean and tidy. Neither of these characterizations are accurate. I am not a slob, and, though she is chronically late, she’s not chronically neat. The situation was most apparent before we were married. One look at my apartment would suggest “So, a coyote lives here, right?” A closer inspection, however, revealed the truth. Open a drawer. A model of organization. A closet. Shirts, slacks, blankets stored neatly and efficiently. The cabinets under the kitchen counter? Empty. I mean, completely empty. For years. It wasn’t as though I couldn’t see the mess. It was just that I couldn’t hide it. It would have been very easy to take the stuff from the surfaces and stow it underneath, but the thought of that stuff, under there, messy, made me panic. At work, I was the same way. My desk was always trashed, unless you looked in the drawers, which were either organized or empty.

On the other hand, my wife, before we were married would have a spotlessly clean floor, counter, bathroom, everything, but she was endlessly cleaning. Why, I thought? Because on the few occasions that I would clean my apartment, really clean it, it stayed clean for a long time. I thought she was obsessive. In truth, she had filled every drawer, closet, bin, cabinet, nook, cubby, and cranny to capacity with the mess she couldn’t stand the sight of. And there was the difference between us, the thought of mess versus the sight of it.

Neither one of these two methods of dealing with clutter, possessions, junk, valuables, whatever you like to call them is better than the other. In fact, neither is particularly good at all. A mess on the desk is just as messy as a mess in a drawer. A concealed catch-all is just as disorganized as a visible one. My wife isn’t obsessively neat and I’m not compulsively sloppy.

These people attract each other. I always admired her polished exterior (though I incorrectly assumed it extended below her countertops) and she looked at my hopeless unkemptness and said “here’s a guy who could really need me”, though she never realized how organized and well kept I am inside.

My sister’s like me, she’s a closet coyote. She’ll spend a whole day cleaning out a drawer or a closet. Her husband will come home and immediately, without thinking about it at all, grab the magazines and catalogs that came in the mail and wad them right back into that drawer. He’ll take some shoes, a broom, an umbrella, some kids toys, the dog’s leash and cram them into the empty closet. She’ll watch him for a while, getting angry and hurt, until she can’t take it anymore and accuses him of trying to hurt her feelings and he just says she’s obsessive and unreasonable. You’d think these two personality types would be better able to get along. After all, one of them could clean the counter, the other could clean the cabinet beneath. What a team! In reality, it ends up being more like “I’ll dig the dirt out of this hole and put it in that hole. You take the dirt out of that hole and put it in this one. With two of us digging, we should be finished in no time. Let’s get to work!” This relationship tension is particularly insidious because it seems that people – both kinds of people – often resort to cleaning and organizing as therapy when they’re particularly angry or frustrated. Watching the two of them after a hard day is like watching people play tennis with lightning bolts.

I remember before we were married, I took a day off and cleaned out the canned goods from underneath my wife’s counter. First of all there were things in there, in the back that hadn’t seen daylight in 15 years. There were things in there that I know she had just purchased anew, as though she needed them. There were brands and labels that were so old that you could have sold them on ebay as collectibles. There was enough tea to fill a clipper ship. I took garbage bags of duplicate stuff over to my apartment and had a whole new pantry full of stuff, so much in fact that I became highly uneasy until I chucked it or ate it. Needless to say, this gesture was not appreciated. This is probably because I wasn’t addressing her problem, I was addressing mine. She just viewed it as me picking on her.

It wasn’t my aim to do that, but she was right of course. If she had come in and cleaned my place I would have hated it. She would have taken all the junk that had been sititng on my counter because there was no good place for it and put it in my gloriously empty cabinets. I have things that have sat around my place for years. They move from surface to surface without ever finding a home. I had an old bolt that sat on various tables, windowsills, sofas, and tv tops for most of my adult life. The only reason it isn’t still on one is because I can’t remember what it was for. I know it was important though, so I have it neatly tucked away inside an otherwise empty box.

The only reason that my wife and I can cooperate in this activity is that we’ve both decided that we don’t want anything anymore. We’ve decided that both the stuff on top of the table and under it are equally complicating and we want it all gone. I like to look at things with detachment. It’s fun to go into a person’s home or office and instantly tell who they are. Open a drawer. Does it have tools, twist ties, pens, playing cards, and lasagna noodles all piled in a jumble. You’re in a squirrel's house. If the drawer is totally empty except for the sawdust from when it was built while the countertop above isn’t even visible, you’ve found a coyote.

Squirrels or Coyotes. Love 'em or leave 'em. The only other option is to live alone.

Taxes, Shmaxes

I can't find my article on taxes. But here it is on NPR's Marketplace, about a million years ago. Some good tips, here.

Can I send Email from an old leather boot?

A couple weeks ago I got a package from my mother in Florida. It arrived by express mail, insured for four hundred dollars. In it was a surge suppressor. One of those big rectangular jobs that your monitor sits on and your computer sits under. I recognized it as the same one that, in the mid 90s, I personally placed under the monitor and over the computer that I bought for my mother.

This computer, from "Zeos", I think, had a catchy name which I've forgotten, and was marketed as an all-in-one, "zippetty-doo-da" fast, productivity-increasing, feature-packed system, from a company who'll be there tomorrow. It was, like most computers you'd buy for your mom, immediately obsolete, but great for email. It was also great for playing computerized bridge and pinochle which is as far as my mother wants to go in computer gaming. For a couple years this Pentium 75 zippety-doo-dahed along quite happily, raising my mother's productivity considerably before trying to retire early, by pretending its motherboard was fried. Unable to convince it otherwise, I buried the "fried" motherboard unceremoniously at the curb and replaced it with one scavenged from a derelict PC carcass which was camped in my office.

This "new" PC was even faster than the previous, which made it about as current as writing email on parchment with an ostrich feather dipped in India Ink, but bought me another year of not buying a new system. That was a little over a year ago. A few months ago, that computer died too. So, a new computer was ordered, with a place to plug a complete modern life right into the back. USB ports, Serial ports, Modem Ports, Mouse ports, Ethernet, Fishnet, Parallel ports, Perpendicular ports, car ports, Video out, Video back in, and PDA handheld-infrared-ultraviolet-see-in-the-dark-intradimensional wireless toaster ports, pipe anything and everything into a tiny beige box. This box is great for email, and for playing computer bridge and pinochle.

For a month, my mother became really productive (mom's productivity is measured in forwarded joke emails), and then, abruptly, stopped being productive at all. Concerned about the uncharacteristically empty "Mother" folder in Outlook Express (a subfolder of "Deleted Items"), I sent several emails which went unanswered. It occurred to me that she might have been sucked into some port on the back of the computer and was deadlocked in a virtual game of computerized cribbage with either Keanu Reeves or a rogue supercomputer from IBM, but I didn't follow up on this. The next time I heard from her was on my answering machine - "You can cancel my internet access, I've packed up the computer and put it in the closet. Bye."

My mother's messages often sound like epitaphs, but this sounded particularly dire. I knew that either Keanu had beaten her in cribbage or her computer had died. Despite being totally generic, the new computer was still new and still under warranty, a warranty that the computer gnomes in her closet were unlikely to honor, but which my local computer supplier probably would. I took drastic measures and called her. A frustrated woman answered, close to tears "Well, it stopped getting email two months ago and then one day I turned it on and no picture showed up and I didn't want to bother you because 'You're so busy' and I know its my fault and…"

She was not particularly helpful in troubleshooting the problem. Furthermore, the computer's condition of being unplugged in a dark closet made successful diagnostics so grim a prospect that I patiently explained the whole "gnome-warranty" thing to her and asked that she send it back to me. Swayed by my logic, she agreed, and several days later a package arrived from her.

Understandably excited by the prospect of fixing a computer I bought because it wouldn't need much fixing, I tore open the package to reveal one unremarkable, heavily over-insured surge suppressor. Remember the surge suppressor? Confusion descended. I felt as though I'd ordered a latte and been handed a stapler. Was it the words I'd used? Did the gnome story scare her? Did I say "Please just send me any object and I'll use it to fix your computer from a thousand miles away." Again, I took emergency measures and called her. I pretended that I hadn't opened the box in case it was an early Christmas present. "Please tell me this is an early Christmas present" I said. "No, it's that damned computer" was the reply that I both feared and got. Because this surge suppressor is about as mistakable for a computer as an old leather boot, I had two painful options; one of making my mother feel like a total boob, and the other of configuring an email client on a mid 90s surge suppressor. Boob it would be. I said, as delicately as possible "Mother, this isn't a computer, it's an old boot!"

On my desk now sits the multi-port roadster of a computer that arrived today from Florida. Sure enough, there's the bridge and pinochle CD still in the drive and, sure enough, it doesn't work. I suspect that the huge dent in the case, indicating some sort of collision, trauma, impact, stampede or other violence might have something to do with that. Maybe the tech gnomes took a whack at it. Whatever. She's my mother. I love her. I'll just fix it.

Distracted? Attach Things to Your Head

Some laws seem incredibly stupid at first and only prove themselves after going into effect.. So, when New York's "no handheld phone use in car" law went into effect a few months ago, I was initially wary. It seemed to be another waste of effort Band-Aid law which addresses one symptom instead of treating the disease. However, after using a headset for a few months now, I'm convinced. Strapping things on your head is the only way to drive safely.

I'm an inventor, so, I've since invented several new headsets which allow people to do more things while driving than ever before. First, is the Whopper Champ. This allows busy, but safety conscious drivers to eat on the go, without looking at their food. It has a platform which holds a large fast food sandwich, fries, and has a three foot straw for a soft drink. The sandwich is fed to the driver at intervals, giving time to enjoy each bite interspersed with French fries which get vacuumed from their packs and launched into the mouth along with aerosolized ketchup. Just clamp the Champ to your head and chow down in perfect undistracted safety.

I've also developed the Coffee and Doughnut Focuser, so called because it let's a driver keep driving while it focuses on morning coffee and doughnuts. I had a few bugs in this one, at first. It turns out that coffee sucked through a straw is hotter than coffee sipped from a cup. I can't explain this, but its true. Tests also indicate that people prefer not to have coffee and doughnuts pre-mixed. This made one clever single-straw design unacceptable. The current design features a spring-loaded doughnut hopper, which ratchets doughnuts one at a time into the driver's consumption chamber...err...mouth. The driver sets the pace and, yes, it also works with bagels. Warm (not hot) coffee is sucked from a sponge leading to a coffee cup.

Another new headset I call the Babysitter. There's nothing more distracting than a child, particularly an infant, sitting in a car seat in the back. Kids say all kinds of distracting things from back there; like "I want more Juice, Dada!", "I wanta Get out!", "I need a new dinosaur, now!", "I took my diaper off", and "Who's this stranger back here?" The Babysitter solves all that by constantly stimulating a cranky child with a selection of favorite toys, snacks, beverages, and soothing songs, all while perched on the driver's head. If the troublesome child becomes too unruly, the Babysitter can calm him or her with a patented Ritalin-derived vapor called Happy Gas.

For myself, I know that pretty soon I'll have so many headsets, that I won't be distracted at all. I am already so keyed-in to my driving that I hardly pay any attention to my conversations anymore. In fact, half the time I don't even know who called. I just venture a tentative but highly undistracted "umm, what?"

I may have become too undistracted, in fact. I keep thinking about a headset that let's me take up smoking. And because I have developed so many headsets, I now seem to need a Headset Manager, which I think should also be a headset, called the Headset Headset, or maybe the Head Honcho.

I really want to thank New York State for making this article possible. After all, without this law I might have blown all my driving attention on holding my phone and wouldn't have been able to write this piece safely, using Head Pen and Head Paper, on my way to work.

The Dog's Point of View

Sometimes the difference between a prized possession and a money pit is simply a matter of perspective. For instance, I have a pure bred dog. She's a Belgium Tervern...Turvyuren...turveyon...a Belgian Turv. Her given name is Bora, which I think is Belgian for "expensive". I call her MooCoup Bucks, because that's what she cost - about twelve hundred of them. Her nickname is Moolah. She arrived as a puppy, making her worth about two hundred dollars a pound. I thought that was excessive. "Ah, but she'll grow" the breeder assured me with a twinkle.

You'd think that certain undesirable traits could be bred out of a dog - like chewing, barking, digging, and running away. But Moolah does all of those. Mostly though, she chews...and chews...and chews. She chewed the bark off the peach tree, which then died after making only one peach. A three hundred dollar tree. She chewed the seat-belts out of the car...all the seat-belts - nine hundred bucks. She brought back a neighbors shoe and chewed it in half. They won't sell you just one shoe so we replaced the pair. A hundred and fifty bucks. She chewed several toys, my gloves, a pillow, 2 dog beds, a shovel handle, her own leash and an old hat on the same day.

She also digs. And after pulling a handful of my son's beloved plastic dinosaurs, all with their heads freshly chewed clean off from one of her excavations, I knew I needed to find a new way of thinking about Moolah. So she became an investment.

To protect the neighbor's footwear, I surrounded about three acres of land with Invisible Fence. It cost about two grand and increased her value accordingly. I added everything up including her crate, air fare, collar, training, the tree and the other chewed items and figure she's still worth $200/lb...only now she weighs about 70 pounds.

I now look for ways to increase her value, like tying pork chops to 100 bills and leaving them in the lawn. I smeared peanut butter on the rest of the fruit trees, hoping she'd debark them and further add to her mounting worth.

In all truth, I know that I'd take a beating if I tried to sell her, but the bank doesn't know that, so I took out an equity line on her and if I do sell her, I should be able to declare the loss on my tax return.

The breeder was right. Moolah has grown. She's grown from a soft fluffy ball of liability into a beautiful full grown asset. And no matter what,she’s still beating the stock market over the past three years. See? It's all about how you look at it.

Partially Hydrogenated

I made some hydrogen last night...well, I didn't create it or anything...I just liberated it from a glass of water. The exotic equipment I used consisted of two #2 pencils, two wires, a 9 volt battery, and, of course, a glass of water. I strung it all together until hydrogen bubbles formed, and went to bed. In the morning, I still had plenty of water left - a nine volt won't drown you in hydrogen - but I reminded myself how simple it is. For those who don't know already, water is 2 parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. To get at the hydrogen, plug a DC current into water and hydrogen collects at one electrode and oxygen at the other. Pretty easy, but if you want to make a lot of it, consider joining the battery club at Radio Shack.

Hydrogen's been on my mind lately, because there has been so much talk about the hydrogen economy and, in particular, fuel cells powering our cars. Fuel cells take hydrogen, which is made with electricity and water and turn it back into electricity, and water. This may seem to be a rather pointless exercise, until you realize that hydrogen is very good at storing electricity, something windmills, solar panels, fusion reactors, and coal fired power plants are all very bad at. Lost in all the fuel cell fervor is that you can also burn hydrogen. Now maybe its just because I'm an American, and hydrogen's a flammable gas, and nobody burns stuff better than the good ole USA. Or, maybe it's because making a hydrogen engine isn't much, if any harder than making a gasoline engine. But, Instead of just turning our hard to make hydrogen back into electricity, let's make something else with it...like heat, expanding gases, and "vroom vroom" horsepower?I say, skip the fuel cell and just put a hydrogen eight cylinder in my SUV

Now, I like fuel cells, and the argument in favor of them is their high efficiency. It's sort of like this - We can increase a horse's efficiency if we turn him upside down, tie magnets to his hooves, and have his flailing legs induce a current in this special platinum coil. This argument, while compelling, doesn't mean that, while we're waiting for this breakthrough to hit the market, we shouldn't ride the horse to town the normal way. A hydrogen engine burns just as cleanly as a fuel cell, it just makes a little hot waste water at the tailpipe. I figure we can use that hot water to melt snow, or to clean off the windshield, or make soup...or whatever. It turns out that I don't hate inefficiency, I hate pollution.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to have a fuel cell humming away in my basement, making heat, electricity, bagels, and whatever else they make. But to put the hydrogen economy on hold until they are workable enough to power our big fat American cars seems crazy. Some people have made the claim that the fuel cell in my new hydro car may produce enough electricity to power my home. That's great, but won't the refrigerator go off every time I drive to the store? Guess I better hurry back. I can just hear my wife "Hon, could you stay home today so I can turn on the lights and vacuum? No? Well, then could you leave the car? Thanks an mil!" Sure, dear, I'll just take the train...if there were any trains.

Still, the real problem is the hydrogen infrastructure. Yeah, I know there's a hydrogen fueling station in Las Vegas. And if I only lived a few thousand miles closer, I could make it there on a tank of gas. And the REAL real problem is that oil makes the electricity that makes the hydrogen that makes the electricity that makes the car zip down to Star bucks. So, no matter what turns the wheels, to make a big difference, we need a commitment to hydrogen production from green energy. Well, I've got a nine volt's worth of hydrogen floating around my house that says I'm ready.