Vows Made, Kept

Friends,

I'm in Chicago, Illinois this weekend trying to keep my head down. The weather's nice, unlike my general neighborhood (warning: link to crappy video that is so rustic it seems charming). I'm just trying to avoid some dynamic family dynamics while still enjoying my cousin's first wedding.

Here's a tip, by the way, if you want to impress people at your next church wedding. Hire a trumpet player to go along with the organist, the violinist and the mezzo soprano. Trust me on this.

Pictures when I get back next week.

- bob

Wheat Fancier

Friends,

This is a cute story about some environmentalists:

A Canadian magazine will be making history Thursday — Canadian Geographic is publishing its annual environment issue on paper made from wheat, a first for a North American magazine.

The issue is being printed on sheets made with wheat straw — what's left of wheat after the grain harvest.

The magazine says adding agricultural waste to pulp from trees could offer farmers a new source of revenue and cut the demand for pulp from the continent's boreal forests.

Sounds great! Use the waste from food production. Besides, one of Canada's largest crops is wheat. What a perfect use of a domestic resource...

The wheat-straw pulp used in the making of the issue was imported from China, where papermakers have been using wheat and rice for centuries.

Importing wheat straw! That's rich! Next you'll tell me that a Canadian team won't contest the Stanley Cup this year.

Oh, sorry.

- bob

Jaunty Special Election Update! - Gardening Department

Friends,

I was listening to the radio this morning after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries and heard Senator Mrs. Clinton say this:

"It's not just Kentucky bluegrass that's music to my ears, it's the sound of your overwhelming vote of confidence, even in the face of some pretty tough odds," Clinton told her supporters in Kentucky.

I may be mistaken, but isn't Kentucky bluegrass, you know, grass?

- bob

Spammers Desperate, Russian

Friends,

Look, I hate spammers as much as you do, but it's starting to look like tough times are hitting them too. You've certainly seen all the come-ons for expensive watches, jewelry, and designer fashions flooding your inbox. Me, I'm getting spam offering deep discounts on Timex watches and Ugg boots. I'm a big Timex fan, but as far as fabulous offers go, it seems pretty low-rent to me.

Poor, pitiful spammers. What's next? Deep discounts on Tupperware? Black market laundry detergent? Identity thieves coming after my Vons Club card? In Cyrillic?

- bob

OMG Guys! It's Two Sentences From A Book!

The Little Jaunty Players
- Proudly Present -
- An Ongoing Feature -
- Right Here -
- Of This Very Blog -
- Proudly Entitled -

Two Sentences From A Book!

"As an example of a third-brush-regulated Delco motor-generator we will use the Delco electric system on one of the first models of the Hudson "Super-Six" cars, models "H" (1916-17) and model "J" (1918). The Hudson "Super-Six" was produced after the Hudson "6-40" which used a variable resistance regulation which was cut into the field winding automatically by a governor."

Owners of the Hudson "Adequate-Six" aren't gonna like this.

Maybe It Knows Something...

Friends,

I was working on the pre-recorded bits for the podcast but, um, the microphone on my nearly new headset stopped working. The universe must be mad at the creation of art. Art!

Gawd, you're gonna hate this thing. I'm so sorry.

- bob

Jaunty Little Vice Presidential Selection Committee

Dear Readers,

It's a new kind of politics so we've taken it upon ourselves to start the V.P. selection process. Citizen journalism is fine, but we're going much further. We're selecting you, gentle reader, to be the next Vice President of the United States. We're really excited to get you on the ticket and to get to work on preparations for the general election.

Let's face it. You're smart, savvy, and we've found in our polling that your positives are much higher than your negatives. Our media people are already working on a response for that stuff you did in high school, so that shouldn't be a problem. They're asking, though, that you stop wearing stripes. It's just really not a good look for you.

Our advance team will be giving you a call in the morning for a brief interview. Just a formality, but we need to get that out of the way. And think, free room and board at the Naval Observatory!

Congratulations! We know you'll do a great job!

Your pal,

- bob
Chairman, Jaunty Little Vice Presidential Selection Committee

Log Used As Wilderness Ashtray, Fire Ensues

Talk about your brain-dead moves. You're hiking through heavy brush then reach a peak that affords a gorgeous 360-degree view. What better time to have a smoke and take it all in. But where, pray thee tell, does one extinguish said incendiary device?

A rotten log seems like a good bet. What could go wrong?

click to embiggen

This is the first map that I've seen of the fire perimeter posted by the fine folks at InciWeb.org. The first thing you'll notice is that the whole area is pretty much roadless. I have old USGS maps that show roads up there, but they were removed through...wait for it...legislation!

I wasn't sure if I should post this second picture from the CalFire blog, but here goes...



This is a shot of the burning log noticed by one Pacific Coast Trail hiker and includes mysterious hiking companion "Steffi." They tried to put it out, but the wind got the best of them. You're on your own for dreaming up your own personal "Steffi" narrative. That's what the comments section is for, after all.

- bob

Hand Crews Bring Hands, Holding, To Apache Fire

Friends,

Apparently our little 700 650 700+ acre wildfire is no longer news. The only information you'll receive from now on is from the relentless Jaunty Little News Team and the CalFire blog. We'd like for Jaunty meteorologist Dr. Barry Spoon (68th in the class of '84 at Universidad do Chiropractico in Caracas) to get a little rest after a full night of pouring over charts and graphs, so let's see what CalFire has to say as of 7:00 this morning...

Fire is burning in the San Jacinto Wilderness but is visible from many areas.
Hand crews accessed the fire and established an anchor point and began building fire line along the ridgetop and the handcrews have spent the night Coyote on the fire and more crews will hike, fly to fire this morning.
Winds have died down and based on fire weather forecasts, fires projected movement is expected toward the South by South East.
Medium ROS, 15 mph winds, smoke, heavy downed timber, moving into brush.
The Steep terrain have made accessing fire difficult and ground resources have lengthy travel times to access incident.

640 personnel on fire, Resources assigned include 28 handcrews, working the fire in very steep terrain today. Aircraft should fly due to favorable weather and light winds.

Got that? A ton of guys had a hard time getting here and can't fly to the fire, so they'll have to walk. With huge packs. Then fight a forest fire.

Would it be weird if I brought them cookies or something?

- bob

Wouldn't It Be Funny?

So we're sitting around in the breakroom at the Festival Of Dirt and in the glow of the dimwitted noon newscast discussing the fire, we started speculating. Ho ho! The mountains are on fire, and the winds outside are insane, what could possibly happen? Geez, what we need is a freakin' earthquake! Stop! You're killing me!


Yeah. A 4.2 hit about twenty minutes ago. I'm gonna need a frog umbrella, I think.

- bob

Because We're Supposed To Worry About This

Friends,

Some flamey flames on the other side of the ridge this evening. Here's a shot from Palm Springs (via the Desert Sun):


We're not really supposed to be alarmed though. My little burg is, at this time, not threatened. Let's have a surprisingly responsive news media explain it...

Smoke and flames from a wildfire burning near Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains is visible across the Coachella Valley tonight.

The fire, which burned about 1.5 acres as of 8 p.m., can be seen at least as far east as La Quinta and was even more visible at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains.

“It’s coming down the ridge over on to our side of the mountain ... very high up ... but we can see it and certainly smell it from Andreas Hills,” said Marie Weigel in an e-mail to The Desert Sun. She is wife of Palm Springs City Councilman Lee Weigel, who lives in the Indian Canyons area.

The fire was reported about 4:35 p.m., U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Valerie Baca said.

Firefighters are hiking 3.5 miles, starting at Keenwild Station, on the Pacific Crest Trail to reach the blaze in the Apache Peak area, she said.

They are expected to remain at the scene all night and continue their battle Wednesday morning.

Not my idea of a fun nature hike, that's for sure. Updates as they occur...

Your pal,

- bob

UPDATE: Oh yeah, KESQ is covering it too. Fewer words, more pictures...

Fire crews from the U.S. Forest Service have been called in to battle a brush fire that sparked Tuesday evening in the Apache Peak area near Idyllwild.

The fire has burned at least 1.52 acres by 7 p.m., Forest Service officials said. Officials, though, are still assessing the acreage burned.

Firefighters are hiking to the fire to battle the blaze.

Officials say the town of Idyllwild is not being threatened.

Well, not threatened. That's good. I love officials.

UPDATE II: Hey Bob! Where's Apache Peak fer crissakes! It's here:


View Larger Map

UPDATE III: The Desert Sun (which seems to be the only halfway serious news organization to be covering this thing) has a new article with a News Infographic™ to explain where the fire is. Kind of like the Google terrain map above. Scooped!

UPDATE IV: The Idyllwild Town Crier weighs in at 8:00 AM on Wednesday with essentially the same information you've already read, except for one thing. As is their custom, breaking news can be a teachable moment:

Apache Peak, named sometime after 1867, is a double-headed mountain along the Desert Divide in the State Game Refuge Boundary of San Jacinto Wilderness. The highest of Apache's summits is the westernmost with a height of 7567 feet, while the eastern summit reaches approximately 7400 feet, barely a quarter of a mile away.

Now class, I want everybody to take out a clean sheet of paper...

UPDATE V: I'm now looking at the CalFire blog (of all things) for the latest from the Forest Service. Not encouraging:

Apache Wildland Fire
Current sizeup: 650 Acres - 0% containment - Potential for 3000 acres [emphasis added - ed]

Now it's time to get worried.

UPDATE VI: Here are a couple reasons for people on The Hill to be encouraged:

• The wind, although it's gusting up to 40 MPH, is heading West to East. This pushes the fire away from us.
• On my way back to the Lodge this afternoon, I noticed that somebody had managed to bring a helicopter with a bucket to the party. The levels at Lake Hemet are a little lower this afternoon. Maybe they're dropping trout and bass on the fire. It's a Fish Show!
• According to InciWeb, they've replaced the incident commander. Hard to know why. The first guy did such a nice job letting a 5 acre fire expand to 700+ acres. (um, you've heard of wind and dry brush, right? don't you think it's possible that there were circumstances beyond his control? - ed He had to go! An utter disaster! Boo! easy there, sport. - ed

This Week In Technology Gone Wrong

Friends,

Work. What can you say? The medical systems I'm responsible for have decided to pitch a fit, leaving our family health clinic in America's Finest Decent Satisfactory Declining Doomed City without their electronic charts. Fine, they can break out the ballpoint pens and legal pads while I fix it. We've had a good run of uptime, so they're not too upset.

I'm anxious to get in on the burgeoning Bismati rice futures trading market, considering our global food crisis. I don't really know how to get started though. By the way, can we blame Al Gore for this too? The corn to ethanol thing we can totally pin on his biofuel ideas, but rice? We'll see.

The very big problem is that the spambots have started using bob [at] bobtherieau [dot] com for their evil ends. If you're sending email then, please use info [at] bobtherieau [dot] com instead. Thanks China! (Just asking, is this the next salvo in their information war with us? Fun thing to think about, no?)

So, um, good times! Whee!

Your pal,

- bob

What Do We Want? Righteous Indignation!

When do we want it?


Now!


Yeah, what he said.

- bob

Thanks LawDog (via my vivacious writing partner!)

UPDATE: Sin! Damnation! Real fire and brimstone stuff...


Via the sweet-smelling Stinko. Thanks!

Happy Earth Day!

Friends,

I know you've heard stories about the Earth, and some of them are true, but I thought I'd take the time on this Earth Day to remember our home planet.

You could wake up early on a spring day, throw open the window and smell the pine trees. Maybe even hear the the creek gurgling by. We sure didn't like the stinging insects though. That was a big problem back then.

The flowers were in bloom, the birds were chirping (and speed dating), and then the call rang out. We were all evacuated to this planet (which seems to be a pretty close approximation, actually) because of some global catastrophe (thanks a lot, President Gore), but to avoid panic they erased the minds of the slow-witted and...

Uh oh.

- bob

Best Wishes!

Friends,

First, I'd like to extend a warm welcome from this bitter nation, clinging as we do to our guns and religion, to Pope Benedict XVI. Happy birthday, Benny! Next, to the n00b in the blue Honda Civic who decided (on his own, with no help from me) to make his own turnout yesterday and remodel the right side of his car using a mountain, sorry about that (and "uh oh, better go to Maaco"). And finally to my sister who is not at all happy with me for skipping her daughter's birthday, you were much better off. Trust me on this. Unless you wanted to watch me take a nap, which is pretty exciting.

So, happy Wednesday, everybody!

- bob

Self-Reproach

Friends,

My sister held my niece's first birthday party today. I did not attend. There were fairly good reasons on my part to do that too, mostly involving driving fatigue—on my part and the fleet. None of that matters though. The targeting computers were locked on and the keys were turned to deploy a "guilt bomb" (no, I'm not making that up). As officers stationed in missile silos during the Cold War had to agree to launch their weapon, so did my siblings. The specs are simple:

guilt |gilt|

verb [ trans. ] informal
make (someone) feel guilty, especially in order to induce them to do something : Celeste had been guilted into going by her parents.

They failed in their inducement to drive to Los Angeles County on this overly warm Sunday. Where they succeeded was in making me feel terrible about resting up for another fine week down in the dirt. Pretty unfair in my humble opinion.

I hope the party went well, but my contribution would've been minor at best. What a bizarre state of affairs.

- bob