July 2007 Archives

Since last week, we've adopted two new family members, in the form of two Bengal kittens named Londo and Tigger Woods.  Londo, Tigger Woods, and our original Bengal, Bogey, all have the same father in spite of their different physical appearances.  This brings the total number of cats in our household to 4, to the chagrin of the human children in the house.

Our "oldest" cat, Sox, seems to be taking the situation pretty well.  He hisses if any of the new guys get near him, but otherwise isn't bothered by them:

Bogey, the youngest cat of the four, but with us the next-longest after Sox, is still adjusting:

Londo's color is described as "flame tip" and is somewhat rare for a Bengal.  (The reason there are more pictures of Londo than the others is that he happened to be playing in front of me while I was fiddling with the digital camera and the others weren't.  And BTW, his eyes are actually light blue, not "demonic red".)  Londo's name comes from a character on the Babylon 5 TV series.

Tigger Woods (below) is several colors of orange all swirled together (his eyes are green, not evil green glowing).  I'm not sure what his coloring is called, but it's said to be the rarest of the three we have.

I'll probably be posting some more/better pictures once I get a chance.

I've no scientific evidence to support it, but I believe the human genetic code includes a "sports gene". This gene is responsible for making those who have it obsess over pennant races, earned run averages, field goal percentages, shots on goal, and any of a million other statistics used to try to quantify sports activities. This gene makes otherwise sane people dress up in outfits of the same color, smear their faces with paint, and chant silly slogans like "Batter, batter, batter, SWING, batter..." It makes them spend inordinate amounts of money on sports logo clothing, sports logo stickers, sports logo pens, sports logo paper, sports logo flags, sports logo food, and even sports logo toilets. Yet, while I'm certain this gene exists, I'm equally certain that I don't have it.

I know I don't have it because I don't have an urge to own any sports-related paraphernalia. If I have anything with a sports logo on it, it was a gift, or it happened to be cheaper than a logo-less item of the same type. I don't smear my face with colored makeup on game day. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't even know when "game day" is.

On my own, I will not sit down and watch sports in person or on television. It just doesn't interest me. I'll get more enjoyment out of watching a documentary on the mating habits of the common fruit fly than out of watching the Super Bowl or World Series. Watching a sporting event is about as interesting to me as watching a group of retirees play Yahtzee.

There is nothing less interesting to me than the "color commentary" of sportcasters and those sports shows like the ones on ESPN where two people hold up masks of famous sports-related figures and pretend to be those people having some kind of discussion. Maybe I'm mentally defective in some way, but I can't imagine any situation where I'd enjoy watching two commentators pretending to be someone else, discussing ANYTHING. Seeing Bill Gates debate Steve Jobs over why the Mac's security isn't as good as Vista's would be interesting. Watching John Dvorak and Guy Kawasaki pretending to be Steve Jobs and Bill Gates having that debate wouldn't. Perhaps nothing is more conclusive evidence of my lack of the sports gene than the fact that I can't see why anyone would want to watch any of the "sports talk" programs that don't at the very least feature an athlete or coach or manager from that sport on the panel, or why anyone would bother to call into a sports radio show. There's obviously some appeal there, but I don't get it. I really, really don't.

Not having the sports gene is a good thing in many ways. I've gone to normally-crowded restaurants during the Super Bowl and been escorted straight to a table, where I received excellent service because practically no one else was there. I've been able to spend my money learning skills that have helped me on the job, rather than on sports logo merchandise. I've found it much easier to relate to women, many of whom also do not have the gene and do not see the appeal of sports. My marriage is probably stronger, too, since I don't neglect my wife because "the game" is on or spend all my time in front of the TV watching ESPN, the Golf Channel, and all the other sports-related programming. I don't stand outside in freezing weather cheering on a sports team, or spend hundreds of dollars to watch sport events that I'll forget about in a year.

But there are some serious drawbacks to be sports-gene-free. For one thing, conversations with my fellow men are often virtually impossible. Most groups of men spend their time discussing who traded who, who's playing who tonight, who got injured last week and is now on the disabled list, and why their team needs a left-handed pitcher. Drop me into this conversation and I do my best to keep quiet, nod, and not be noticed. I've got NOTHING of value to add, and I know it. I'm about as comfortable in the middle of a sports discussion as most men would be sitting in on a focus group for a new feminine hygiene product. My only hope in an all-male conversation scenario is that they'll eventually drift off the topic of sports and on to something I do know a little about, like a popular television series or movie.

Am I better off without the sports gene? I don't know. I do know it's genetic, though, and not learned behavior. I've tried to watch sports and enjoy them at different times in my life. I just don't. It seems I genetically "can't" get into sports. Sports fans tell me that it's the marvel of watching athletes at the peak of physical perfection performing complicated maneuvers better than their rivals, that it's the strategy of choosing the right play at the right time, of standing behind a group of people who represent your city, state, or country. I get that. I still don't find it interesting. If you can't see my point of view, perhaps this will help.

Imagine that instead of two sports teams taking the field in opposition, it's two accounting firms, each leaders in their field, one representing your city/state, and the other representing a rival. Both teams will be given the most challenging accounting tasks in the world to complete, and the winner will be the firm whose bookkeeping is the quickest and most accurate. The starting gun is fired, the accountants go into a huddle, then sit down at their desks to start "accounting". A couple of hours later, one of them turns in a ledger that's complete and accurate. They win. The crowd goes nuts. They've never seen such a group of highly trained professionals accomplish such marvels of business acumen in so little time, so well.

Would you, as a sports fan, enjoy sitting in front of your television watching two hours of people going through complicated accounting acrobatics? I can hear the sportscasters now, "Wow, Phil, look at the speed at which Jenkins adds up those debits and credits! He's amazing!" and "Did you see that? Johnson is depreciating that company car over 3 years instead of 5! He's going to save the company hundreds this year. They sure made a good decision when they hired him from SmithCo last season." I'm betting that you'd find this accounting competition dreadfully dull. In spite of that, it has all the same elements that I'm told make a sporting event worth watching. Two teams, at the height of perfection, representing their communities, competing in a public spectacle, doing something beyond the reach of most of us.

If you tell me the accounting competition sounds like an exciting idea, I'd be a little concerned about you, even if you were an accountant. As uninteresting as that competition may sound to a sports fan, that's exactly the way sporting events strike me if I sit down to watch them. At the end of the day, the accountant's work will at least have yielded a ledger that solved some business problem and perhaps made or saved a company money. The athlete's work will have resulted in a pile of meaningless statistics and a ball/puck/etc. being moved back and forth on a playing field for a couple of hours. This, to me, is sports in a nutshell. A bunch of people who've spent far too much time training to play a game get paid to spend a couple of hours moving around in front of an audience. More entertaining than watching grass grow, but far less entertaining (and much more expensive) than a rock concert.

Note: The following article is for entertainment purposes only and is intended to be humorous. It's based on years of my personal observations and, as such, is likely biased and inaccurate. It shouldn't be taken as anything other than an entertainment and editorial piece.

I have a theory about bumper stickers on cars. Specifically, the theory goes like this... The more bumper stickers on the car, the farther left-wing (politically) the owner of that car is. The fewer, the more right-wing.

For example, I saw a car the other day with just two bumper stickers. They were both campaign stickers for George W. Bush's 2004 presidential run. Zero, one, or two stickers usually means "Republican" or "right-wing" politically.

This morning, I was behind a car with about 8 bumper stickers. One of them was "Hate is not a family value". Two others talked about autism. Two more talked about the breed of dog the owner preferred. The last was a subtle left-wing message, "11-04-08" implying that the driver can't wait until the next political election to bring George Bush out of office. More than two stickers usually means "Democrat" or "Liberal" or "left-wing" politically.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this observation. Does it mean that a more-liberal personality feels that it's necessary for their car to make lots of political statements? Does it mean that a conservative doesn't think bumper stickers have an effect on others, or is just that they prefer not to clutter up their cars with lots of stickers?

Beats me. But I find it very rare that a car with more than 3 bumper stickers is expressing a Republican, right-wing, conservative set of viewpoints, while it's almost a given that a car with 5 or more stickers is expressing just the opposite.

Next time you're stuck in traffic behind a car covered in bumper stickers, make your own observation. You might find it interesting...

Note: The following piece is intended for entertainment and humor only. It's based on my real-world observations and as such is probably biased and inaccurate, so take it with a large grain of salt and don't hate me for it, OK?

By nature, I'm a people watcher. I can't help it. And being a human, I have a need to categorize the people and behaviors I see. This combination leads me to have certain theories about certain groups of people. I call them theories because there's no scientific basis for my claim, other than my own observations, which are probably biased. They're more like "certain behaviors I tend to correlate to certain observations". Since I spend a fair amount of time in the car, many of my theories are based on the kind of cars the person drives, or characteristics of the cars. My "Automotive Theory #1" is that certain makes of vehicles tend to be driven by people who exhibit certain poor driving habits.

Take the Buick, for example. I've observed that when I see a vehicle make a lane change without regard to where other cars are, or drift too far out of its lane, or otherwise behave like the driver is unaware there's anyone else on the road, the car tends to be made by Buick. In a nutshell, I say that (generally) Buicks are driven by people who forget they're not the only ones on the road. Is this because the typical Buick driver seems to be over the age of 50? Maybe. But when I see a driver behaving cluelessly, I'll usually find them behind the wheel of a Buick.

Then there's the Honda driver. When I see a car darting back and forth between lanes to jockey for position, making lane changes with very little room to spare, going faster in cross-town traffic than is probably reasonable, honking the horn, and generally behaving as though they own the road and can't get where they're going fast enough, that car tends to be a Honda, usually an Accord or Civic. When I see what is overly aggressive driving behavior, it's usually a Honda driver doing it. Whereas the Buick driver behaves as though there's no one else on the road with them, the Honda driver behaves as though all other cars are the enemy and should get the heck out of their way. It's as though they think they own the road.

The Infiniti driver wants to be the first one in the line, the first one to the intersection, etc. I've actually had Infiniti drivers go off the road surface on the right-hand side to pass me, only to make a right-hand turn at the next intersection. And no, I was going plenty fast enough at the time. My assumption here is that the Infiniti driver seems to think that because they've paid extra for a fancier car, they should be at the head of the line.

Nissan drivers seem to think they're in sports cars, even if they're driving a 4-door pickup truck. I usually find that someone driving 50 in a 35 tends to be a Nissan Altima driver. Unlike the Honda drivers, who tend to be jockeying for position and fighting everyone else to get where they're going, the Nissan driver seems to be trying to prove they're faster than everyone else. Perhaps they've bought into Nissan's ad campaigns so deeply that the thought of another car being faster just isn't acceptable.

If I'm at an intersection and another driver goes "out of turn" or darts into the intersection as though they feel they always have the right of way, I often find that driver to be behind the wheel of a Mercedes. Maybe they think the big bucks they spent on their car entitles them to go first at every Stop sign? Maybe they feel they're better than the rest of us, I don't know. Compared to the Infiniti and Nissan drivers, I generally don't see Mercedes drivers behaving recklessly or driving too fast for conditions. Compared to Buick drivers, they stay in their lanes and generally seem to drive safely and with respect for other drivers. Compared to Honda drivers, they don't seem to be impatient, except maybe at intersections. But at intersections, if someone jumps the gun, it's often going to be a Mercedes - or a Honda in a hurry.

Being a Ford Mustang driver, I really don't like to disparage my own kind, but I have to. While many Mustang drivers behave reasonably, many others just don't. I've seen my fellow Mustang drivers squealing tires in a 25 mph zone, pulling out in front of someone when there's nothing for half-mile behind them, and engaging in other behaviors that seem to scream out "Notice me!" They don't seem to have the need to be out in front that Infiniti drivers do. They do share some of the Nissan drivers' need to go fast, but I see it more from Nissans than Mustangs, oddly. They sometimes behave aggressively like Honda drivers, though that's not as common in my experience. But their behavior does seem to imply a desire to be noticed.

There you have it. I haven't really observed any other close relationships between car makes and models and the drivers' behavior. If I do, I'll come back and add them. And as I said above, I'm not saying that all Honda drivers are impatient lunatics. But I am saying that when I see a driver behaving like an impatient lunatic, there's a very high likelihood that the car will be a Honda. As you're driving around town, pay attention to your fellow motorists. Perhaps you'll see the same things I do.