Baggy Paragraphs

Still life photo of Pink Lady apples with Gerbera daisy by Baggy Paragraphs

Boy, I’m telling you, I just hate it when I:

1. Run out of staples in my Swingline stapler, which is as aggravating to me as a political reversal to the committed party member, or a home team’s loss to the ultrapartisan fan
2. Wake from a nap and see a ten-inch lizard on the floor, which awakens my primitive flight response, as though my inner eye were seeing a dinosaur
3. Forget whether I locked the car, which may or may not feature my iPhone standing as ripe as an artichoke in one of the center-console cupholders because, of course, I forgot it, too (the day when we wear our phones as part of our clothing will be a good thing for me and others, including those who drop theirs into the toilet and vaguely report, “It fell into water” — unless adding apparel before flushing is a routine thing)
4. Bite my cheek while too avidly chewing, or scald my lips and tongue with a hastily imbibed hot drink, leaving me with the vague hope that the tissues of the mouth indeed heal quickly because of superabundant vascular circulation
5. Leave my shopping list on the counter and my collection of cloth and polywollydoodle shopping bags in the car’s door pocket, while my main emphasis upon entering the market is to find the restroom
6. Am taking my daily walk, and the hard rubber ball or the baseball with which I play Mouth-of-Driveway (high toss with backspin; sharply angled carom from driveway’s sloping mouth received with the off hand without breaking stride) bounces awry and rolls with dismal, disheartening finality into the storm drain
7. Go outside for the newspaper that hasn’t been and won’t be delivered today
8. Break a drinking glass
9. Flip the light switch and hear the filament snap, making me want to curse Thomas Edison
10. Have to peel fruit labels

I’ve been reading Willa Cather‘s stories from “The Troll Garden,” which was published in 1905. It’s a while since I’ve read anything from this period and longer since I’ve read any Cather. This is good reading, but I sure am amazed at how much language has changed since 1905. I don’t think I’d even dare use a word like “celerity” in a story. (No, it has nothing to do with green vegetables; it means “rapidity of motion or action.”) One of my professors from the University of Nebraska says “celerity” is a favorite word of his, but then he doesn’t write for the public print. I’ve used plenty of words like “celerity,” which I would say is an obscure word, but this one today seems like a wooden leg in a sentence.

At the same time, I’ve also been writing a piece for Automobile about the history of automotive headlamps, with two sources being articles from The Horseless Age (1907) and Motor Age (1908); the way the sentences wind themselves up makes me snicker. But 100 years from now a reader might say the same about these sentences. There was a terrific piece in the Wall Street Journal a while ago (I knew I should’ve clipped it; I can’t find the link) about the rapid changes occurring in English, including the incorporation of graphic symbols. Decrepitude inheres.

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• Blog 2: O Pioneers! Willa Cather classic pastoral (aml24101614.wordpress.com)

On the same day as I finished reading “The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World,” I saw in the newspaper that the estimate for North Dakota’s recoverable oil reserves is now 24 billion barrels–but that’s only a small fraction of the reserves under the Bakken Shale formation. North Dakota is now the number-three oil producing state, after Alaska and Texas.

Yergin, who’s a terrific writer (although this book desperately needed a copy editor), presents the case for a mixture of energy sources in the future. In this follow-up to his equally monstrous “The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power,” published twenty years ago, he devotes enormous care to explaining how nations like Kazakhstan and Brazil are helping to meet rising demand from China and elsewhere; how the study of climate science has exerted its influence; how renewable energy has developed to this point.

Yergin quotes Churchill: “Safety and security in oil lie in variety and variety alone.” But he would substitute “energy” for “oil.” The problem remains that none of these anointed alternatives matches the bang for the buck that oil provides. Greenies and politicos can mandate change, but ultimately it comes down to the consumer’s pocketbook. Having driven the Chevy Volt and Fisker Karma–two plug-in electric cars that were heavily subsidized by the federal government–I’m unimpressed. OK, I love the Karma because it’s gorgeous. But it weighs about as much as a rhinoceros and achieves the equivalent of 20 mpg.

Meanwhile, Chevy just suspended operations at the Volt factory because people aren’t buying the car, not even after the $7500 tax kickback. Having also visited a wind farm and a solar-thermal generating station, I’m aware of the upside and the downside to renewables. The upside is that this type of heavily subsidized power generation helps to meet peak demand. The downside is that windmills routinely kill protected golden eagles and other birds. If this slaughter went on at an oil well, the greenies would wet their pants about it. And solar-thermal generation uses an awful lot of groundwater from the aquifer. In any event, renewables are impossible without governmental subsidies.

The Fisker Karma was awarded Automobile Magazine's Design of the Year.

The other day, President Obama said, “Here is the truth. If we are going to control our energy future, then we’ve got to have an all-of-the-above strategy. We’ve got to develop every source of American energy—not just oil and gas, but wind power and solar power, nuclear power, biofuels.”

Here are a couple of suggestions for the President. Stop taking credit for the increase in domestic oil and gas production; you have nothing to do with it. In fact, North Dakota wouldn’t have passed California for third place among producing states if the Golden State’s industry weren’t strangled by regulation. And Mr. Obama wants to end the $4 billion annual subsidies that oil and gas industries receive. Maybe he’s right. But in that case, he should also stop funding pet projects in renewables and stop bribing consumers to buy government-supported cars.

A final thing to take into account is that the improvement of the internal combustion engine isn’t finished. People tend not to think past 1973, to hold any hope of further gains in efficiency. Call me crazy, but I’d guess onboard carbon capture is more likely before there’s ever a truly practical battery-powered car.

After reading “The Quest,” I conclude that the rapid increase in oil and gas production should continue as our national priority, along with efficiency gains. The real and immediate prospect of North American energy independence is something we’ve dreamt of for several decades. We shouldn’t have qualms about exploiting the advantage.

December 27, 2011

Best of Big Red

6891 A St., #105

Lincoln, NE 68510

Greetings:

I would like to acknowledge receipt of a sweatshirt by second-day air, and it showed up at my door on Dec. 23, fulfilling the hope that after sending off a check on Sep. 23, I’d finally have the sweatshirt by Christmas.

Just to review: I ordered the Pelini Crewneck Sweatshirt (AS-10603) in Medium, but it was too big. So I returned it around the second week of October with a note saying that even after a washing, it didn’t fit. There followed no news whatsoever as to the status of my order (invoice number 3971, date Sept. 30, 2011). Around Halloween I called up and got a rather snooty woman who said that Normally if Someone Washes a Garment It Isn’t Returnable, But This One Looked Like New So It Still Could Fill an Order.

Please allow me to point out that the shipment had arrived at my door with a Returns and Exchanges notice, a copy of which I’m enclosing. On this notice, no mention is made about exceptions pertaining to the washing of garments. Besides which, one becomes used to dealing with Land’s End and other catalog companies, as well as direct retailers like Macy’s, who take back their merchandise and no questions asked.

So when I called up toward the end of November and got the same lickspittle on the line, she said, “Oh, you’re the one who washed his shirt?” OK, let me observe that the customer is not to fucking blame, and I think there’s probably some nepotism going on at your shitty little company Best of Big Red.

My hope for the New Year is that things get straightened out at Osborne Familyland in the event that I’d like to order more of the brilliantly designed merchandise that you monopolize.

And thanks for the sweatshirt that I didn’t order.

Best wishes,

Ronald Ahrens

Cc: Addidas Customer Service and my blog.

Some time ago, I attended the media day at Harbor Freight Tools’s quality assurance lab in Calabasas, California. I came home feeling as though I should write a report for the editor who sent me, but there didn’t seem to be much of a story. Yes, Harbor Freight’s engineers and technicians are dedicated and enthusiastic. But stressing tools to their failure points lacks the kind of zing I’m usually looking for in a tale.

As we reporters left the lab, we were invited each to take home his “goody bag” of $600-worth of Harbor Freight tools. For those of us—including me—who had gone out there on our motorcycles, they would ship everything to our homes.

Motoring back through the San Fernando Valley, I thought maybe I should’ve just stated for the record, before departing Calabasas, that I couldn’t accept $600-worth of tools (and don’t need them anyway), but thank you very much.

So a few days passed without a deliveryman’s knock. Was I off the hook?

Then one afternoon, I returned from an errand and found a ninety-five pound box on my porch. Can you imagine what the shipping charges were?

I dragged the box over the threshold and opened the lid to find not only sockets and adjustable wrenches, but also power tools. Because my neighbor had suffered the theft of some tools, I let him have the ratchet and sockets and three of the four adjustable wrenches. (I greedily kept the six-inch one, as well as the torque wrench.) But what was I going to do with everything else? I felt unsure about giving them to a charity for resale. Might they not go out the back door?

My friend Andy suggested a donation to the local high school’s automotive program. This seemed an excellent idea. I got in touch with Monrovia High School’s Phillip Jelinek, who came to my place. A modest, white-bearded fellow, Jelinek opened up the hatch of his Prius. While we loaded the tools, he explained that he’s president of the California Automotive Teachers. Moreover, he’s faculty advisor for the Monrovia kids’ effort in the Shell Eco-marathon. So this isn’t just your average auto shop program. He also told how his former students are at service departments and parts counters all around the San Gabriel Valley

Soon, he drove off; I said good-bye to the tools and forgot about them—until today, when I came home to find a manila envelope at my door. It contained a dozen thank-you notes. Jelinek had waited till Christmas break and distributed the tools to his kids. The notes are simply delightful. Here are the best, faithfully transcribed:

“Thank you for donating the ½” impact wrench I will be using it to help restore a 57’ Ford”

“This digital caliper will realy help me in my quest to because a car designer.”

“This battery charger is going to be really useful for my moms car.”

“Thank you very much for donating this wonderful floor jack, I will be using it daily to work on my families car doing basic minor repairs.”

“Thank you for donating so much to our Monrovia High School Auto Shop. I personally received an infrared thermometer and have been taking the temp of different things all day. I have always wanted and need one for my RC cars. I plan to use it to record the temp of the little nitro engine, to tell whether it’s over heating, and adjust the fuel mix accordingly.”

And finally…

My name is (female name) and I wanted to thank you for donating the Variable Speed Multi-Function Power Tool. It’s going to be nice for building reptile cages with my brother.”

Besides the fact that a girl who builds reptile cages with her brother is evidence that kids are being brought up right in this town, I now have proof that giving away the tools was the correct thing to do. And when I didn’t initially find the poetry in the visit to Harbor Freight Tools, it was a good choice to hold off writing. As it turns out, the story came to my door.

Baggy Paragraphs photo @ 2011

In Jeffrey Eugenides’s remarkable and absorbing work “The Marriage Plot: A Novel,” the plot is paramount yet sometimes nearly invisible as the reader gets lost in the minds of the three main characters, who are just finishing their college careers at Brown University. Mitchell Grammaticus, Madeleine Hanna, and Leonard Bankhead are heading different directions, and in fact their travels to Cape Cod, Paris and Monaco, and Calcutta receive the full benefit of Mr. Eugenides’s extraordinary novelistic gifts. But it’s the questing that fascinates. Mitchell is after meaning and truth, while Leonard is in the grips of madness. Maddy delays her own independence and the pursuit of her career in order to sojourn with Leonard. The story weaves back and forth, but the reader is barely aware of the high-wire act the author must do in order to keep it together. There are dazzling long sequences with never a wasted word and dead-on dialogue: even the secondary characters’ voices are unique and recognizable. It’s a rare thing to find a novel this high-minded yet gripping, and several of the twists and turns elicit vocalizations: chortling or gasping. (The scene that has Maddy and the manic Leonard checking into their Monaco hotel blends the two.) It continues this way, right down to the revelation on the last page, when the story concludes in the only plausible way, and the three main characters are nobler for the experience.

I went car shopping earlier this month. My 2000 Honda Odyssey minivan was faltering with a clunky transmission, so I decided I wanted a new car. It was time for an upgrade. The Odyssey has a cassette player with a four-speaker system. It has power locks but no remote operation. So first stop was the Hyundai dealer in El Monte. A salesman named Wu introduced himself, and I expressed my interest in the 2012 Elantra GLS. Wu led me toward a video screen, saying, “It’s our best-selling car, and we don’t have any on the lot right now.” Having taken three steps with him to this point, I pivoted and headed for the door. Wu stayed in hot pursuit, pointing out a “pre-owned” 2011 Elantra GLS on the lot. “It’s the same body,” he protested. I marched toward the minivan. Last thing I heard was, “What about a Sonata?”

Next I went to the Subaru-Mazda dealership. First out to spring upon me was a kid who might have said his name is Jason and wore a black tie over a black shirt. I am not too likely to buy a car from a Goth bon vivant. He said there were no 2012 Imprezas on the lot; they typically don’t arrived till later in the fall. I dismissed him but then wandered over to look at the Mazda3. After a while, a saleswoman named Cindy, who was missing an eye tooth, showed up and said Jason had sent her. I told her the Mazda3 sedans struck me as hideous, while the sporty hatchbacks are pricey. The cars with the new direct-injection engine hadn’t come in yet. She maneuvered me back to the Subaru side to look at the remaining 2011 Imprezas, which only get 20/26 mpg. (The Odyssey got 18/25 mpg.) I pointed out the poor fuel efficiency and that all-wheel drive is useless to me. Reading since then Ezra Dyer’s insightful review of the all-new ’12 Impreza in the December issue of Automobile, I’m sure glad I got out of there. The old models are completely outmoded.

Over at Honda, within seconds of our meeting, a tiny Chinese saleswoman named Amy inquired if I’d be trading in a vehicle, and when I pointed to the Odyssey, she asked what it was. I’m sorry, but I’m not buying anything if you don’t know whether the Accord with five-speed manual transmission is stocked or a special-order, if you don’t know an Odyssey when you see one, and particularly if you don’t really speak English. Besides which, although I’ve spent 23 of the last 25 years in Hondas, the brand now offers nothing that seriously interests me.

So I drove 18 miles to Glendale. Eric Tingwall, Automobile’s associate editor back in Ann Arbor, had suggested a Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen. I was sitting in the Odyssey outside Macy’s when we spoke, and hearing him say “Volkswagen” prompted me to blurt out, “Nah!” But later I searched online and found one with a five-speed; it was in stock at New Century Volkswagen. I proceeded south on Brand Avenue through downtown Glendale with its big, impressive buildings. At times on Brand you can see directly to downtown Los Angeles, so there’s a real sense of momentousness. There’s also a whole bunch of car dealers just south of the downtown. I almost stopped at the Hyundai store because they actually had an Elantra GLS parked out front. But I persisted and soon walked in through the front door at New Century. Two men were leaning against a car. One had several days’ growth of beard and looked like a member of the Russian mafia; I decided he was a down-on-his-luck customer waiting to receive news that his 1988 Scirocco with 317,243 miles could in fact be repaired with paper clips and rubber bands in order to keep it on the road for three more months.

So I met the eyes of the other fellow, a slender young man in a long blue coat, who introduced himself as Chris. We found the white Jetta SportWagen S at the very back of the lot. Chris knew the car’s features, reciting the list of them and demonstrating several key ones. And he mentioned his own street-performance-modified GTI. I mentioned my apprehension about VW due to its history of low scores on initial-quality surveys. The first thing I noted upon opening the driver’s door is that it stayed put when I stopped it at the first detent, unlike the Odyssey’s door, which always flops closed again, an annoying characteristic when you’re leaning back into the cabin in order to fetch the wallet or phone you’ve forgotten. I also commented on the positive action of the handbrake: click, click, click. And the controlled opening of the glovebox door. When raising the hood, he pointed out the gas-filled struts that hold it up, instead of the typical Japanese car’s prop rod. These little things sure heighten the perception of quality.

We took a test drive. I liked the car. It’s nice. And there’s some built-in value with heated, power-adjustable front seats and a few other things. When we returned, he looked at the Odyssey; I’d already taken it to CarMax for an offer, and the deficiencies were obvious; Odyssey transmissions are renowned for their laxity after a certain point. He said the dealership would wholesale the van at auction. Then he led me back into the showroom, mentioning along the way that he’d worked here five years, which is impressive given the brutal nature of car sales. He spoke to his used-car manager and gave me an approximate figure on the trade, which was sixty-percent better than stingy CarMax did.

That was on a Saturday morning. I told Chris I’d give him a call on Monday afternoon, after I’d had a chance to look into the matter of how to pay for a car. Indeed, around midafternoon on Monday, I rang up and got him on the phone. He didn’t remember me and said he had lots of clients. This irked me some, especially after he’d seemed genuinely interested in my background. But I returned to see him, and we made the deal. Unlike the guy who sold me the Honda years ago, and the guys who delivered my new refrigerator last month, Chris did not spread cheese all over the experience by beseeching me for a perfect score on the satisfaction survey that would be coming my way; in fact, he didn’t even mention such a thing. And so far, none has come.

One thing I wanted to salvage from the Odyssey was the license plate holder that memorializes my participation in the 2004 Alcan Winter Rally. I unscrewed it from the back of the minivan, but a pair of zip ties kept the license plate fastened to the holder. Chris took a single-edge razor blade from a mechanic’s workstation and slashed at one of the zip ties; following through with this stroke away from his body, he cut the palm of his left hand. So I had drawn blood during the transaction!

So far, what I’ve enjoyed most about the Jetta is the hands-free, voice-activated calling via Bluetooth. And with eight speakers, the stereo sound is hugely improved from the Odyssey. I’ve actually used the seat heater on two of the four occasions I’ve driven the car in the nine days since it came home. After all, as one of my friends admonished when I was getting rid of some winter clothing, the temperature does drop into the thirties! And as Chris asserted, it’s the fastest way to warm up inside the car.

Naturally, I’ve heard various reactions in response to my new car. Everybody has an opinion. For example, whether I should or shouldn’t have purchased an extended warranty. (I did.) The most ridiculous comment I’ve heard so far came from someone I met at the L.A. Auto Show: Why didn’t I spend half the amount of the Jetta’s sticker price and get a nine-year-old AMG Mercedes off eBay? Why, this fellow said, he’d just bought one for his wife. Three hundred horsepower. “Good” fuel efficiency. You don’t lose all that money on depreciation. If there are problems with the car, you can spend another twenty percent to sort them out. I hemmed and hawed before saying, “I guess you’re right.” Instead of revealing what I really thought: “Are you fucking nuts?”

Later I read an auto shop manager’s letter to Automobile: “When I see customers come into the shop in older VWs, Bimmers, Benzes, or Audis that they just purchased, I feel so sorry for them. I can foresee the headaches and check-engine lights in their future, right through their gleaming smiles.” Hmmm. Sounds as though I should trade the Jetta at the end of the extended warranty. Besides, I like the latest features.

Oh, the Russian mafia dude turned out to be a salesman.

Meeting one’s match might be left to the vagaries of Internet dating sites, but couldn’t a professional matchmaker refine the search? Diary of a Beverly Hills Matchmaker is Marla Martenson’s account of her duties with “Double D Dating Service” in the rarified atmosphere of Beverly Hills. The book is a deftly handled dual narrative as Ms. Martenson wryly recounts episodes from her own fraught life in addition to presentations of home runs and strikeouts in the world of dating, where “clueless dickheads” tend to call the shots. Her gift lies in the ability to balance comic and pathetic aspects on all sides of the story. The revelation about parking her car three blocks away from a restaurant in order to avoid paying for a spot is just as significant as that about her matchmaking client Phil: “He drives a red convertible Infinity [sic], and actually brags about his speeding tickets.” She sets him up with Natasha, who “goes ape-shit over expensive sports cars.” Ms. Martenson handles her scenes and dialog effortlessly. The same is true of the social satire: at an art party, an older woman’s face “is pulled so tight, she looks like a bass.” The vulgarity of the car-buying experience is perfectly encapsulated in Ms. Martenson’s remark about the saleman’s offer of paint sealant for $495 extra: “Only five-hundred smackers to protect the car against bird shit!”

While the natural voice is her most winning quality, use of the first-person  can overwhelm the narration when Ms. Martenson emerges as protagonist. A passage about her return to Chicago gets all balled up: the work is best when she moves back and abandons self-scrutiny. Relying on her powers of description, with the addition of tart commentary, pays off big, as in the wonderfully sweet passage about getting away with her husband to Mexico for a family wedding. There’s also the occasional unfulfilled need for data to amplify her keen observations. “Do they think they’d rather have a momentary shot at biological perfection than a lifetime with a loving mate?” she asks of men who yearn for a perfect and much younger woman. Well, that would be interesting to know. What social factors form the basis of this superficiality? Someone must have researched the subject.

But I don’t mean to overemphasize my quibbles. Diary of a Beverly Hills Matchmaker consistently charms and amuses. Without having met Ms. Martenson in a writers’ group, I wouldn’t have picked up her book; whether it’s chick lit or not, it made me laugh aloud while also touching my heart. So much for trolling Amazon.com for something good to read! I wonder what the group’s other members have written.

In “The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount,” Italo Calvino offers two novellas that dazzle and amuse. As delightfully far-fetched as these novellas are, there’s always a touching humanity about the characters, even those who aren’t exactly human.

Inhuman but Humane

“The Nonexistent Knight” is none other than Agilulf Emo Bertrandin of the Guildivern and of the Others of Corbentraz and Sura, Knight of Selimpia Citeriore and Fez: an empty suit of white armor that speaks with a metallic voice and irritates all the other paladins in Charlemagne’s army by being so fastidious. He puts up with all sorts of madness during the army’s march against the infidels. Notably, his groom Gurduloo doesn’t know of his own existence exists, and therefore takes many names and forms. Another part of the plot involves a young squire named Raimbaut of Roussilon, who means to avenge his father’s death. Not until the fifth chapter do we realize a cloistered nun narrates this story. As more chapters unfold, we realize her true role and find that not as much was left to her imagination as she first asserts

Half-Human but Reconciled

The first-person narrator of “The Cloven Viscount” is much more of a witness than a participant, but maybe that’s due to the even more astonishing sight of his uncle, Viscount Medardo of Terralba, who returns from war after being split in half lengthwise by a cannonball. And he’s in a foul mood! He terrorizes his subjects, who are already faced with grim enough conditions, barely able to survive. There is a leper colony in the neighborhood, and a nearby mountaintop is home to some refugee Huguenots. When Medardo’s overtures to Pamela, a shepherdess, are rejected, his sourness curdles. But hope soon rises when we learn the fate of Medardo’s other half, which had been detained under a pile of battlefield corpses. Soon the happy ending is inevitable—but Calvino’s remarkable inventiveness still is required in order to deliver it.

T.C. Boyle’s new novel “When the Killing’s Done” is a vivid but flawed work. Mr. Boyle brings his unparalleled descriptive powers and exquisite narrative pacing to bear in this story of a National Park Service scientist who seeks to restore the environmental balance on California’s Channel Islands, off the coast of Santa Barbara. Alma Boyd Takesue has a long and tragic connection with the Islands, and her quest to rid them of invasive brown rats and wild pigs can be seen as an act of personal purification and redemption. In this effort she is opposed by Dave LaJoy, owner of high-end electronics stores in and around Santa Barbara, who has taken up environmental activism and has plenty of resources to throw into his fight. Coincidentally, LaJoy—who finds little joy in anything and is in fact filled with rage, fury, and hate—once had a date with Takesue, whom he met in a folk music club. It was a disaster in which LaJoy called a $300 bottle of wine “vinegar,” humiliating the maître d’ and putting an abrupt end to the date.

And here is my problem with LaJoy: his unaccountable behavior doesn’t add up. (Who would act like such a jerk on a first date?) When LaJoy goes to Home Depot, we learn that he “loathes places like this—as a small-business owner, he ought to, what with Costco and Best Buy and all the rest undercutting him twenty-four/seven…” But his visits to local restaurants include at best “an unfortunate debate with the waiter” and open cursing and berating of the staff at worst. He threatens to cancel a check to his landscaper and generally bullies everyone. This sort of carrying on is implausible on the part of a small-business owner, whose personal reputation and connections within the community are paramount. Following the Golden Rule isn’t in LaJoy’s plans, though. He has to be dragged out of a public meeting conducted by Takesue, and we presume it is he who writes the racial slur on the car she arrived in. He leads criminal expeditions to the Islands and faces legal consequences, which certainly must be known throughout the community. You’d think someone in the downtown business owners association would take the poor fellow aside and have a word with him.

Yet after leading a doomed foray that results in the death of a college student, he faces neither social nor commercial consequences, and of course in his total selfishness he diminishes the moral ones. LaJoy resembles characters in Boyle’s early novels “Budding Prospects” and “World’s End.” They similarly had a bug up their ass, and it was never clear why. For all of the care the author lavishes on his fascinating and detailed descriptions, for all the erudition he brings to his work, he seems arbitrary in creating a wholly impetuous villain. It just doesn’t add up.