This is the “Old Sculpin Gallery” in Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard. A little sign claims it was a place where whaleboats were once made, and there’s one in the yard. Or, maybe I’m remembering wrong. Maybe the sign says that it was a bordello.

I’ve been neglecting this little blog since the 8th. Nothing to say, really. I don’t really have anything to say today, really, but, it is my obligation as a Member of the Bar to produce an endless streak of useless verbiage, remembering always the lawyer’s credo: Never use a simple word when a polysyllabic one can be used instead. Never use a single word of any kind when a sentence can be cobbled up. Never use a simple, declaratory sentence when a compound, complex, run on version can be created (I understand they have software for this now). Never use a single sentence, when the magnificent edifice of a pages-long paragraph can be assembled, preferably with lots of unclear pronoun references. Above all, never say, in writing or verbally that you are relating what a client/witness told you, but, rather, assert all matters as if you had personal and unassailable knowledge of their truth and veracity (the unmodified word “truth” is meaningless unless you add the term “veracity,” sort of like football commentators referring to some player’s “speed and quickness.”).

Well, now that I’ve got that off my chest, here’s the promised randomization:

1. Mrschili over at Blue Door is experiencing low back pain, with no ascertainable etiology. I sympathize, this “black dog” jumped into my life a few years ago, and, apparently finding the company to be tolerable, has never left. At the risk of offending any readers who believe in the perfection of some deity’s creation, I usually tell folks who ask what’s wrong that my low back pain is due to poor design work. Maybe she’ll get lucky, and the black dog will only make a short visit in her case.

2. I was hoping for an all Manning Super Bowl. This isn’t gonna happen. It’s not that I am related to those guys, but it would have been cool, coulda been called the “Bubba Bowl.” For those who don’t know, in the South, “bubba” is a colloquial term meaning “brother.” Probably comes from Yiddish, but they’d never admit that in Dixie. (I made that up, I have no info at all that it come from Yiddish). So, because I like my son-in-law who is a Giants fan, I’ll pull for those millionaires over the other millionaires they’ll be playing. I find the pro game to be pretty boring for the most part otherwise. I have no favorite team. When I lived in Miami I’d pull for the Dolphins out of courtesy (I wouldn’t actually go the their games), but I understand they are no longer actually a pro team (looks like this pretty much applies to all the franchises down there).

3. Edmund Hillary died. I care not a fig for “firsts,” or for mountain climbing, but this guy worked tirelessly for the welfare of the people of Nepal, and as far as I can tell was generally a wonderful human being. The Sherpa who climbed with him, Tenzig Norgay, died over twenty years ago.

4. Speaking of “firsts” or “records” or, (here we go) “history,” what debased words these have become. People (especially those who babble on TV) seem fascinated with meaningless milestones. Not content to just, perhaps, when there’s no news about Britney Spears or other important issues, note in passing that some tennis player (yes, pro tennis is still being played, as I understand it), hit more aces in a match on clay under the lights than anyone they know about ever did before, the announcers wax eloquent on the “historical” “record.” I have a degree in history. I thought “history” was about the major events/times in the annals of the human race. I don’t recall any high school or college history course which mentioned tennis, people crowded into phone booths, or any other such trivia. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know how much actual truth was contained in the history books/courses, but at least there was a surface gloss of significance, for shit’s sake. Don’t get me started on the idjits who’ll do the most idiotic things to be included in an advertisement for beer called the “Guiness Book of World Records.”

Somebody actually gave me one of these useless books. It is called Guiness Records 2000: Millennium Edition. It has a shiny silver surface on the cover. I think I’ve exhausted what is interesting about it, but, in the interest of fairness, I’ll include here the info that the fastest speed ever recorded riding a bicycle down a glacier was 132 miles per hour. The French guy (who else?) who did this has not become as famous a Julius Caesar, for reasons which escape me. For those who are inclined to think I’m a foolish curmudgeon (or just a fool), and that any human attainment, no matter how trifling, is worth keeping track of, I give you the same caveat printed in the book: “Attempting to break records or set new records can be dangerous.” The beer people go on to disclaim any liability for injury or death. So, just keep that in mind when you set down in front of the TV cameras with that pile of living dung beetles you intend to consume to make “history.”

5. Someone gave me a Maxtor external hard drive for $mas. I finally unboxed it and fired it up. I set it to back up my photo files on this computer and went to bed. The next morning I found it had decided every file was in an unrecognized format, and thus not stored but for that terse info. It also did not create a directory. I called Seagate (which owns Maxtor). A nice man in Bangalore walked me through re-formatting the thing, and downloading the latest software for it. Now it seems to work (caveat: I have not attempted to retrieve anything from it yet). Oh, yeah, the cute name for this thing is “One Touch.”

6. My favorite $mas present (other than watching Babycakes open packages) was a new camera strap. It has two little pouches on it, affixed to it, one of which holds a couple of Compact Flash cards, and the other holds my spare camera battery. I’m tickled pink with this.

7. Speaking of Babycakes. We got her a pink “Daisy Rock” guitar. We are given to understand that the noted musician Hannah Montana, aka Mylie Cyrus (or was it the body double?) started out with one of these. I am teaching her to play it at whatever pace she wants. I tuned it to Open G so she can make a nice-sounding chord without fretting any strings. We’ll take it from there. Her fingers are still too short to successfully fret any interior strings, so we’ll start on the high E string. [Editor's Note: the foolish guitar instructor, usually a stickler for accuracy, referred to the "high E string" although, in an open G tuning, this string is tuned to D. ] Many people don’t know there are lots of ways to tune a guitar. Ha! I do.

Out.