Bowie.

David Bowie is somewhere between 67 and 68, and he just released what could be his best work. Bold statement, too bold: we'll emend it to "in the top five of his best albums".  You can probably tell from the fact I use the word "album" that I'm old; then I'm rating Bowie albums, so I've gotta be, like, ancient.

My favorite Bowie thing - I don't figure it in to any lists - is 'Low', the Philip Glass symphony.  Brian Eno's in there too.  Needless to say, you can't go wrong picking that up.

Ups to the YouTube, they've posted a, what would we call it, it's a short film around 'The Stars (are Out Tonight)'.  It's not the best track, it's not the worst, but if you're interested, it serves as an extended sneak preview of what you get.

Age, I'm convinced, is good.

Safe.

Sometimes, I'm a little slow.

Let's preface this with some silliness: I have a crush on a woman, and I can never say that to her.  It's The Sorrows of Young Werther, but comic, hilarious really, and I'm old.

So we're talking over a couple of beers, and it turns out...how much detail do I give...she was in an industry that had a tremendous negative effect on the US economy.  She resigned in disgust just before that industry did that thing to the US economy.

I'd studied this negative effect, what led to it, the events, the repercussions, had it totally down, and had a variety of ready solutions.  For some reason, though, I didn't have the fast access to the information pool I usually do, so I just sat there listening, and feeling dumb, contributing nothing.

Could be a number of things caused that, right?  Crush shyness (which I thought I overcame when I was a teenager), fatigue, could be anything.  But, man, I felt dumb.  Frustrated too.

Happens.

After this scene, I got to thinking, if you practice the virtues - honesty, integrity, compassion - you're not going to go very far in this world.  That's a shame.

Tactic.

If you've heard this before, I hope you'll pardon my repeating it.

I don't know if he still does this, but Don DeLillo, novelist of note, types a paragraph (on a typewriter), then yanks the page to do revisions by hand.  It's not clear if he writes several paragraphs on several pieces of paper, yanking each as he goes, then revises, or if he yanks each paragraph, revises, then moves to the next paragraph.

You can do this electronically now (not passing judgment, of course, but I don't like the idea of trees dying for my scrawlings) with your writing machine, a tablet, and a Dropbox or like account.  The expensive parts are your writing machine and tablet; the Dropbox account is free up to a certain amount of storage (2G, I think), a stylus costs around $15 US, and most handwriting apps are free.

(I actually made a stylus before I broke down and bought one; you may want to try a homemade stylus before you commit.  Sharpen a dowel, and cloak it with an electrostatic bag.  It's good enough.)

Pretty sure you can figure things out from here.

The Walkin' Hypothetico-Deductive Method Blues

Remember growing up how you learned The Scientific Method?  How it was beautiful because even if the hypothesis was proven wrong in the lab, you still gained positive knowledge?  That's wrong, so, we know that's wrong, and can proceed from there.  Might be the converse is true, might be something else altogether, but we know that hypothesis is wrong.

Anymore, The Scientific Method goes by 'The Hypothetico-Deductive Method'.  It's an accurate description, but a daunting one.  Regular people like you and me might be deterred from studying something, much less engaging in, something called that.  Exclusive jargonization.  J'accuse.

Furthermore, it's not pretty, etymologically speaking: it's an ugly mishmash of Greek and Latin.  So, I'm not going to implementing The Hypothetico-Deductive Method; until there's something more pleasing to the ear, I'll be sticking to The Scientific Method.

Stubbornly, hot water remains nice.

Oops, I gendered that.  Let me revise an earlier implication: if a woman spongebathed in the woods, I'd frown on it in exactly the same way I frown on this friend of mine.  I'll also be using the adjective 'unwoodspersonly' from here forward.

A week ago Friday, at 5:30 AM, the hot water heater in my home exploded, rousting me.  Generally, I strive to undertake everything with discipline: I move cautiously, deliberately, mindfully, thoughtfully, precisely and so on.  When I'm brought to consciousness by an explosion, though, I'm evidently not able to summon discipline.  I didn't think to put on rubber-soled shoes or hit the breaker before investigating.

That's the weird thing, to me: I would think, faced with what I was faced with, some deep species-memory would've caused me at least a little apprehension.  Dark.  Unfamiliar noise.  Get the flint spear, proceed carefully.

Nope, just waded in, barefoot, mostly naked.  Fortunately, I was thrown back a few feet, otherwise I would've been unconscious in an electrified puddle.  I don't remember recovering very well: the breaker was tripped, but I don't know if I did it, or if the surge did it.  For some reason, I'd put on clothes, too, only to get them soaked as I searched for the water supply valve to shut it off.

So, and needless to say, I was without hot water for a time.  That I don't mind, of course, but I live in a city, so some degree of hygiene is my responsibility to everyone who lives in the city with me.  Spongebathing in a city is fine, in my opinion.

Hot water is still nice.

Annually, this friend of mine and I disappear into the wilderness for a week or so.  He climbs rocks; I fly fish.  You'll learn I'm really into fly fishing, if I can keep this up.

He does this really unwoodsmanly thing; I never told him I thought so, and I never will.  Every day, near dusk, he fills his liter pot with water, boils it, retrieves an airplane bottle of environmentally friendly soap and a washcloth, and spongebathes himself.  Now, to me, that's an affront to all that is wild: does Jeremiah Johnson bathe?  Grizzly Adams?  Bears?  Ravens?  Sasquatch?  I don't think so.

It occurs to me, just now, I can't remember if Grizzly Adams or Jeremiah Johnson did indeed bathe.  Maybe they did, and if they did, they shouldn't have.  That's just not paleolithic.  Or maybe cavepeople did bathe, that could be, I wasn't there.

Point is, I don't need to be clean all the time.  I can go a week or so without a shower, and can even revel in how awful I smell.  That's what I smell like, dammit.  It's honest.

Don't get me wrong, I do love the shower I get when I return from the wild.  Water heaters, though, will explode time to time.  Mine did, about a week ago.

Hot water is nice.

On doctor's orders, I'm to ritualize some behaviors (I know 'ritualize' is a word, but spellcheck says no, no such word; you can't trust these machines; they're going to eat you, but not before underlining Finnegan's Wake with a red squiggly long as the Liffey; 'Liffey', it says, is misspelled too).  The doctor was specific regarding certain things - regular sleep schedule so as not to trifle with my Circadian Rhythms, outdoor exercise, more drugs, and social interaction - but beyond that, I'm to establish structures of my own, just whatever will do.  Blog seemed like a good idea.

'Spellcheck' isn't a word either, it's telling me.  That one, I don't know, but where I'm concerned, it's a word, now, if it wasn't.  Damned if I let you become self-aware, spellcheck, I saw what those Terminators did to those people.

We'll come back to the hot water.  I need to put some things about myself in place first.  The cliffhanger shall be: I don't need hot water, just the means to make it, I'm gross that way.