Have you been following this story? It broke yesterday.



That's an actual, unretouched photo, by the way, and I find it supremely cool. There are more on the link, as well as video. So: aliens? Yes, yes, aliens, yes of course! Obviously! Either that, or the twelfth imam or Jesus or [your deity here] has returned from the heavens, arriving in Norway. Who cares that the Russian military denies any recent missile testing?

I knew what it was from the moment I saw it, but so did a lot of folks, and I didn't even get a chance to brag about it here before someone at Gizmodo came up with a computer simulation that explains it (here) heading off the inevitable international panic. One question for you doubters of truth: did you actually think that the Russians would announce that their new intercontinental ballistic missile spiraled out of control? There's 10 separate nuclear warheads on that thing! (Well, potentially.) Anyway, the pics are neat and I couldn't resist posting one.

Sorry if you came here looking for EOTW news lately and have been disappointed. #1: it's Christmas, and we shan't be talking about such matters. #2: I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't actually get out to see that Roland Emmerich masterpiece, king of all disaster flicks, 2012 movie. I really should have, if I want to be a scholar on the subject. Truth is, when I heard that Danny Glover was playing the president, I thought the storyline had jumped the shark and just gone too far. (California tumbling into the sea, I can handle.) I'll catch it on video. (That is, if it comes out in time!)

What can I say? Everyone's got their thing. Some people love bacon, I love this end-of-the-world stuff -as I do all things Bigfoot, Nessie, Little Green Men, and Unknown Species/Phenomena. Sometimes I hold back from blogging about it, because there's just so much out there. And some of it really is.

Someone commented on the Gizmodo site that the photo was like a photo of a lone tree in the middle of nowhere with skid marks that went straight into it. Yes, in all the vast, empty universe, a wayward alien crashed into our little inhabited planet.

Could happen.


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Can it be repeated? I kept asking myself, out there on the run this morning. I ran my own little 5K around the suburbs, the one I contrived years ago, the one where it all really started. "My 5k", I call it on my little running calendar. It goes out across the mighty intersection and tours the suburbs. Past the elementary school where the kids will go in a few years, up and over some hills, past the high water towers and a hundred homes just like mine, and then down and around the hillside, a vantage point from which I can see my own backyard and, on some days, the big tv glowing in the distant living room with the kids watching Handy Manny or Little Einsteins, or something. Then my course goes down, down, down, where I try to pick up a little speed without breaking my ankles, back across the boulevard, and then up, up as fast and as hard as I can, back into my cul-de-sac. It's exactly 5 kilometers. My PR on it is 22:07, which is about 2:30 slower than I can do on a flat 5k course. The hills really throw you, and crossing the Big Street is always a crapshoot, which I chalk up as that capricious variable that exists in every race (like this past Sunday's biting cold.) Some days there are no cars, and I can rocket across the highway. Other days I have to wait, as big trucks lumber by and the seconds fall off my watch.

Today I ran/walked it in 30 minutes, feeling the residual pain of the Vegas race, but trying to rub it out of the system with some sort of massage of consistent, but slowed, footwork, like a painter moving from oils back to pencils. These marathons punish the body, taking it right up to the limit, and I couldn't honestly see how I'd done it, or whether it could be repeated, or even improved upon. It can, I'm sure, but I'll have to take it nice and easy for a while, which is really the challenging part. But it's Christmas, so that set of distractions will help.

Back to making shade this week, though who needs it after last weekend's storm? We arrived back in town to find a new set of broken pottery and our patio umbrella halfway across the yard. Some weather tore through here while we were gone, and by the looks of it there was quite a fight. But it's good to be home. Someone ought to put these ornament boxes away so we can get on to enjoying the holidays.




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The Good Sean of the North's Las Vegas Marathon write-up is more interesting and informative. Here, there's merely this humble offering.

At Mile 17 I was feeling like Wayne Newton with a full house, and my sister caught this great action shot of me, high-fiving my brother-in-law:


Marathons. What more can be said about them? Well, a lot, actually, but it all sounds redundant to a non-runner. Okay, it is redundant. I admit it. Put a few passionate folks together and they all end up talking about the same esoteric stuff. After every race, the story is the same: how you felt after this mile, how you felt at the finish, what strategy worked, what strategy didn't, oddly-dressed participants, and the chafing of intimate body parts. Not a runner? Then I doubt any of it will hold your interest... but we had a great time!

How? the non-runner asks, incredulously. There's no good answer. It's all a big joke, and you had to be there. And trust us: it was painful, miserable, cold, and we're still feeling the effects of it. You don't want to have been there... but it was awesome!

If you're interested, I got a PR (personal record) of 3:26:29, which I feel great about, since my previous best was 3:46 at the OC marathon earlier this year. And that elusive Boston qualifying time is just over the horizon now, six short minutes away. I saw the 3:20 pace-setter about a half a mile ahead of me at around 19 and thought, Can I catch him? and at 24 I knew the answer with clear and reasonable certitude: No. Maybe next time.

The race itself may have contributed a few slowing factors: 36 degree start time with cold and dry temps all morning, and a 2000 foot elevation, where I'm accustomed to a warm, pleasant, oxygen-rich, sea-level atmosphere. But the truth is I got what I trained for. Ideal conditions would have improved my time by maybe a minute or two, and only prolonged, tempered self-discipline can wipe all that out. Excuses.

I have an unusual condition today, however. It's some sort of exercise-induced asthma brought on by running hard in the cold, dry air. Or perhaps it is my genetic predisposition to asthma (my mom, my uncle, and recently my sister, have it). Or perhaps it was the pre-race Tylenol I took, messing with my lungs in that stinging, cold air. Anyway, I'm finding it a bit difficult to take a deep breath today, (a new marathon symptom for me) but a night back in Oceanside and I'm sure I'll be fine. The same old post-race aches and pains are there, as well as some back pain from tensing up with the cold. It doesn't matter if you run 3:26 or 3:46 or 4:46. It's still far, and it still hurts.

It was a terrific race! Elvis beat me by a few minutes, but I also beat a few hundred of him.


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Friday News Roundup:

How could they?

"As a precaution, he was wearing a full-length stinger-suit, a lightweight version of a wetsuit that covers everything but the face."

All men watch porn. ALL OF THEM.

"The World's 18 Strangest Roadways."

Jon Stewart: “Poor Al Gore: global warming completely debunked by the very Internet you invented. Oh, the irony.”

More irony.

Toy Hannah Montana doll says, "..later we'll have some F-ing pie and we'll do some caroling." Parents thrilled.

Finding the Perfect Christmas Tree can be dangerous. Here's some tips.

Have a marshmallow weekend. If you're going to be running the Las Vegas Marathon, I'll see you there!


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Oh, no. I hope it's not going to be one of those Christmas's...

I am a third of the way through putting up the Christmas lights on the house. Also, we still have the ornament boxes piled around the living room. It's been that kind of week. Putting up the decorations is fun. Dragging the boxes down from the attic and then cleaning up the mess of empty boxes and crumpled newspaper afterward is half the work, and no fun at all. It's because of the stairs, I believe. I believe!

The reason the exterior house lights are taking so long is because I am installing an elaborate system of hooks on the fascia boards, to make the light-hanging of 2010 (and beyond) a breeze. I have to drill out the holes, and then screw in a little hook every two feet or so. I have a lot of roofline, and it's pretty high, so I'm going one hook at a time. It's nice up on the roof, with the Santa's sleigh-eye view of the cul-de-sac, but one wrong move and it will all be remembered as the Christmas where Daddy broke his back. (Which, in my mind, is like most Christmas's, but no one ever remembers.)

We had an AFV moment the other day, but the cameras weren't rolling, unfortunately, so there will be no prize money. The whole family was outside watching Daddy hang the lights. Every head was turned in an equal and opposite direction, and I picked up the ladder and swung it around, a leg of which clocked the Little Digger square in the head, knocking him flat to the ground in a perfect little Buster Keaton-style pratfall. It would have been pretty funny, if it hadn't hurt him so bad. He had a good-sized bump on his head -an AFV-sized bump. That show never seems to go into the resultant medical status of its participants.

Only a few ornaments have been broken so far, but we're only a few days into it, so give us some time. This is the year many ornaments found their way to the Wednesday Morning Curbside Experience, unfortunately for them. We were unpacking box after box of dumb little plastic baubles with corporate logos on them, and I resolved to sequester them away under cover of tree lights late one night. The children will never notice that they're gone, but the dross must be wrapped, ironically, before being placed in the garbage. You see, these kids are always looking through the kitchen trash can, and finding old, forgotten works of art and faded bric-a-brac with dangerous sharp edges. The parents always get a stern rebuke: "HEY! Who threw away my [busted plastic teacup, torn paper with scribble, old ribbon tied to deflated balloon, etc.]? Why? WHY!?"

I don't know where most of these ornaments come from, or how we've accumulated so many. We never buy ornaments, except for the one-per-year for the family ornament exchange. Perhaps we are the family whom no one knows what to get for Christmas, so they get us the old holiday gift standby, The Ornament. And then, I suppose, they are all kept out of a certain obligation. But as soon as an ornament's point of origin is forgotten, it's trash -unless, of course, it is undeniably beautiful, at which point hanging it on the tree risks its doom, since the kids angle for the pretty ones, with breakage on their minds. (I keep the Crazy Glue handy.) Anyway, we have several fine ornaments, all clustered near the top of the tree, clinging to the little ornate ceramic angels, holding on for dear life.

Things break at Christmas, and it's always so unsettling, what with the joy once-removed by broken decorations, broken ornaments, broken just-opened gifts, broken hearts. Perhaps it's all part of The Big Divine Design of Christmas, to repair/renew/replace at year's end, fresh for Spring. Or perhaps God lets it all break on purpose, since there's a nice tree under there.

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Christmas!

I love Christmas! But so many people find so much about Christmas so upsetting. I fall into that category of people who catch themselves loathing so much about the holiday, who realize their criticism curbs the joy of others, and who then backpedal furiously -No! I love it! I love the holiday! I love the music! The presents! The time with family! I love decorating the tree!- and then denying all the misguided gaudiness that surrounds them.

When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, THE PEACE SIGN, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw THE PEACE SIGN, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him...

So Pottery Barn just doesn't get it, so what? So what if they want to decorate their trees with the symbol of the British nuclear disarmament movement? What's wrong with that? Sheez. Relax. Peace on earth, good will toward corporate marketing.

I was going to make a big deal out of it, but then I saw that one of my sisters bought a big peace sign for the top of her tree, and so I shut up. Because she loves Christmas, and possibly even more than I do. It's just that I love the subset of "Christmas" that has to do with religion and family and tradition and history and that Ultimate Gift that both blessed and confounded the world for the ensuing millennia. The peace of it all, actually. She, on the other hand, loves a mostly different subset of "Christmas". The one that includes shopping, wrapping, partying, and large, inflatable snowmen in the yard. We're all happy. What's wrong with that?

But you're doing Christmas wrong, you know.

What kind of crazy family opens presents on Christmas Eve, for example? And what nut spends Christmas morning dishing out turkey at a homeless shelter? Don't you know we're all supposed to shuffle downstairs in our pajamas and dive full-bore into the plunder at the fireside? If there were ever a confluence of elves and pirates, it would manifest on the American Christmas morning.

But, ahhh, Christmas! It's the most wonderful time of the year! I got some of the lights up on the house the other day, and plan on spending a few more days to trim the remainder of the roofline later this week. And we got a tree. A good tree. So many of the trees in the lot reached out at odd angles and had bare spots without branches. I jokingly commented to Mrs. Ditchman that I guess God had made those trees wrong, and I realized then that that's the way so many people treat the holiday: they're all busy looking for the perfect tree.

Find the perfect tree. And then cut it down, bring it inside, and decorate it. (Of course, Charles Schultz knew all this.)

It's so distinctly human to miss the point of everything, that I can accept it all blithely and cheerfully. What choice do we have? That the Prince of Peace would come amid the shame of two unmarried young adults, that a genocide of infants would soon follow, that the world would change by the eventual gruesome sacrifice of the miracle-maker that was born among some dirty farm animals...

And we celebrate that birth like this! And here in Southern California the fantasy is layered on the miracle, since there's no winter wonderland, no ice skates, sleighs, or snowmen, no certainty of what a reindeer really looks like. It's sunny all day! We'll be lounging in deck chairs on New Year's!

It hardly makes sense. It's confusing, like a lot of things in life. But the Little Ditchman gasped at the neighbor's lights as we drove by last night, and she has learned the lyrics to Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and right now she is downstairs with mommy gluing some glitter on home-made Christmas cards. The Little Digger is wearing felt antlers with little bells on them that jingle every time he turns his head. Holiday music is playing. We're together. Have a cookie. This is great. Don't ruin it for me.


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Last month was National Novel Writing Month, and I failed miserably, again, although last year I didn't even try. This year I actually tried -I signed up, I had a plan, I started a new blog, and then I quit on Day 1. How did you do?

I was really going to do it, too. Years back I wrote a lengthy, ambitious screenplay with a dumb, pretentious title and I always thought it would make a fun book. Recently, the idea of sitting back every night for an hour or so and having some creative time, hammering out a novel, sounded like a good idea, and one I was ready for. But November turned out to be too busy with all that work, and running, and then there were all those time-sucking holidays. Seems I just can't write a novel in any month with a holiday in it. Maybe January, but then there's MLK day smack in the middle of it, messing up everything.

The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month, just for the sake of doing it and calling it a novel. It's not really that much. People don't realize how little that is, how easy that is to reach, how, by the end of this paragraph, I will have already logged 250 words in this post alone. My word count for TMST in November was 10,000, (It is. I counted.) and I practically did that in my sleep. Why I don't just pump out novels is like asking why you do all those 20 milers, but never run a marathon. There's a reason for it, I'm sure.

Crying babies. Needy customers. The stress of day-to-day living. I used to pride myself in the fact that I could concentrate within the fracas, write with the music blasting, work under pressure. Whether that was ever true is no matter, I can't do it any more. I guess I'm getting old. I need peace. I need quiet. I need space.

So, maybe some day. I could have just uploaded all the blogs and declared myself a winner. (There is no prize, by the way, but bragging rights. Hell, they don't even offer to read the book for you, and that's the hardest part of the whole endeavor -courting or conning someone into reading your dumpy novel.) I'm not sure there's a definite arc to my blog's characters, however. It would make for an odd work. I can see the book jacket:

Written in a uniquely hypnotic, free-form style in the literary tradition of Joyce and Faulkner, Hawkins abandons all the conventional aspects of language and trailblazes to the frontier of the artistry, or, at least, proficient chicken scratch. The uncommonly compelling story follows The Family Ditchman, their adventures in the aluminum patio cover industry, and their travails and triumphs in a suburban cul-de-sac.

And beneath it, a quote from someone famous:

"You won't be able to put it down! At least, not without bullets. Hey, when the horse has broken legs, what good is it?" -Margaret Thatcher

Seriously, the Little Digger is screaming his head off right now and I can't put two words together. I had something I wanted to say, here, and it has been cried out of the building. I guess that's why I run -It doesn't involve me being in the house. Speaking of running, I get a lot of great ideas out there on the run, but I can never remember them when I get back.

I can't remember anything when there's noise, and hardly more when there's not. You'd think the deafness of old age would contribute to brilliant writing, but the forgetfulness that accompanies it precludes this. So I can run marathons at 40, but I can't finish a novel. At this age, mid-life, it's like there's no time to stop for anything. I'll just keep running.


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