Ah, February!

A month of highs and lows, peaks and valleys, zenith of zeniths and nadir of nadirs!

Actually, the twenty eight days went by in a blur.

The tax thing isn’t going that well. The 2018 Tax Cut and Job Act is affecting a lot of people negatively. My informal estimate is that eighty percent of my clients – four out of five – are getting lower refunds than the prior year or have to owe instead of repeating a refund. Some of this is explainable, i.e., with the lowering of the tax brackets many have gotten their “refund” spread out in an extra $20 or $40 dollars a paycheck to spend. But the loss of itemizing due to the standard deduction doubling as well as the loss of personal exemptions are really hurting people out there.

A small consolation is that my tax company has lowered their prices. However, that hurts me commission-wise. Also, I’ve done about 55 returns YTD whereas last year I was at around 70 by February’s end. This has us worried either A) clients are not coming in and seeking to have their taxes done elsewhere, or B) clients are putting off coming in because they’ve heard how painful Tax Season 2019 is, but there will be a late rush and the last week in March and the first half of April will be insane.

Physically, I had a set-back, too. Here in northern New Jersey we’ve had a couple of snowstorms that’ve quickly transformed into icestorms. Last Wednesday I stepped on fresh snow camouflaging a sheet of ice. In a nanosecond my legs flew outwards and I slammed down hard on my tailbone, slid forward, smashing my head hard against the car door. I momentarily blacked out and woke up with bloody knuckles. The wife feared I might have to go to the hospital but I demurred; she gave me the concussion protocol (I passed four of the six points) and dosed me up on Advil. Today, eight days later, my neck and lower back are still achy.

The Beatles biography has gotten me bogged down, only hitting the half-way point of the 856-page encyclopedic work. That’s really a function of having little time to just wall off the world and read. Other than that I haven’t been reading much of anything else. Once I’m through with the Fab Four, however, I want to burn through about ten 180-page paperbacks to get that feeling of caught-up-ness back.

Been playing a lot of Beatles, naturally, on the guitar these past weeks: Dear Prudence, Mean Mister Mustard, Revolution, A Day in the Life, I Dig a Pony. Once tax season’s finished I want to clean and clear out the basement. There’s an eight by twelve section covered by clothes bins and piles of grammar school artwork that’s covering up a nice makeshift rehearsal studio for me, my Epiphone, and my Fender amp. Also, my weights. Six more weeks …

The girls and I were fascinated with the incredibly bad Stephen King adaptation Under the Dome, and spend the first half of the month burning through all three seasons – 39 episodes – of it. We have a healthy repertoire now of Big Jim, Junior, Barbie, Julia, Joe, and Noory impressions that only half a percent of the population would understand. But it cracks us up. We’re looking for a new series to check out. The wife wants to introduce them to the original 24 with Jack Bauer, and I think that’s a good go. Right now the family has been sustaining itself with re-runs of The Office, still the funniest show on TV (Impractical Jokers excepted – when do I get a new season of episodes?)

The little ones are advancing in leaps and bounds. Little One has been busy raising her grades into the 90s, continues to master the clarinet, and is working on an essay for Seton Hall in the hopes of winning a cash prize. Patch plays three sports and just played in her first All-Star basketball game. She scores a handful of baskets every time on the court and as an All-Star sunk two foul shots. She continues to draw, paint, read and write. I have a couple of artists on my hands, an emotional introverted one and an extroverted dynamo in the other.

So February’s in the can. My goal for March? Survival, unfortunately. It’ll be just as hectic, if not more so. Than – glorious April. There’s our Easter ritual: Mass, a nice lunch, and the Ten Commandments. The younglings go away to their grandparents for a week, the Mrs. and I will take a long weekend in Cape May, and I get my evenings and weekends back to myself. When I’m not chauffeuring the girls around, that is.

Hidden in Plain Sight?

Here is the view from the central entrance into the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican. Construction of the Hall was completed in 1971:

This is the sculpture that sits (dwells? lurks? seeths?) behind the chair of the Pope at the center of the stage of the Hall during papal events:

It is called “The Resurrection,” though, truth be told, a dozen words come to mind when I look at this, and not one of them is “Resurrection.” It was completed and installed in 1977.

The Dangers of Philosophy

Yikers! I have three texts by Kant on the shelf behind me …

Reads a Book

In our quest to do more things together as a family, this past snowy and icy evening we all watched Kevin Costner’s epic Dances with Wolves this weekend, in two parts over two nights. The girls were riveted and I enjoyed it. Sometime in the 90s I saw the first 45 minutes or so, and that’s all, so I was a little worried it would be a little too preachy during the inevitable confrontational climax, a la Avatar. But it didn’t seem so, and I recommend it as a glimpse into the Old West / Disappearing Frontier genre.

Anyway, we immediately began discussing what our Indian names would be:

　

Me – “Reads a Book”

The Mrs. – “Talks on Phone”

Little One, age 14 – “Sleeps All Day”

Patch, age 10 – “Can’t Stand Still”

　

Ooh, this is fun! Thirty years late to the party, but fun nonetheless.

　

The wife also made a bonus comment for Little One, or any teenaged Indian nowadays –

“Texts Too Much”

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

(c) 1870 by Jules Verne

A thousand years ago, when I was a sprightly young lad beaming with hope and optimism whose only desire was to lay in the warm summer grass with a gnarled science fiction paperback in my hands, I read this book.

If memory serves correct, which it often doesn’t, I purchased it from “The Bookmobile,” the ungainly cylindrical vaguely Space-Race-y RV that pulled up to our school every May. We’d be allowed twenty minutes inside it, in groups of three or four, to peruse the stacks and stacks of books, much like vinyl record aficionados do in specialty record stores today. I must’ve bought a half-dozen books during my grammar school career from the Bookmobile, but 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was the only one I sort of remember.

As a kid I was into Verne. Journey to the Center of the Earth was one of my all-time favorites, and I rarely missed it when it graced the ABC 4:30 Movie. I own it on DVD today, though it never became a rave with the little ones. I also own the DVD for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, also not a hit with my girls. But I enjoyed it, though I recall suffering a vague sense of unease watching it with my parents as a boy in the mid-70s.

Both movies starred James Mason; ergo I associate Jules Verne with James Mason. Mason, by the way, has the Platonic Form of the Greatest Speaking Voice in the Ever. I could listen to him for hours. Every audiobook ever made should have been narrated by him. When I finished my reread of 20,000 Leagues yesterday, it was like parting with an old friend, for James Mason had narrated the book to me in my head.

Seriously, as a reread it was somewhat flat, but enjoyable nonetheless. This may have something to do with Verne being subject to 19th century authorial mores and such, it may have something to do with the whims of translators’ translations, or a combination of both. I read the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth ten or twelve years ago and it was horrible. There’s a website out there which reviews each of the numerous translations of every Verne novel; I guess with Journey I got a bad egg. 20,000 Leagues, at least the translation I read, was a page-turner, though it did not drive up the adrenaline as a 21st-century technothriller might.

I much appreciated the dry humor, such as this exchange:

“Well,” said Conseil, with the most serious air in the world, “I remember perfectly to have seen a large vessel drawn under the waves by a cephalopod’s [squid’s] arm.”

“You saw that?” said the Canadian.

“Yes, Ned.”

“With your own eyes?”

“With my own eyes.”

“Where, pray, might that be?”

“At St. Malo,” answered Conseil.

“In the port?” said Ned ironically.

“No; in a church,” replied Conseil.

“In a church!” cried the Canadian.

“Yes, friend Ned. In a picture representing the poulp [squid] in question.”

Innocent, and funny. Twenty years ago I read the slim From the Earth to the Moon, and it was legitimately laugh out loud funny.

I’d read Verne again. Maybe Around the World in Eighty Days, or The Mysterious Island, or Master of the World. Dunno. But I’ll read him again.

Verdict on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea – Solid B+.

Furlongs a Fortnight

I was reading an article on why the metric system never took off in the US the other day (it was slow at work). In the comments, someone suggested that we use the units that make the most sense or are most familiar to us, i.e., we use “miles per hour” instead of “furlongs per fortnight.”

Furlongs per Fortnight! I absolutely love it!

Because it got me thinking …

What is a furlong? Aside from the two minutes a year the wife watches the Kentucky Derby and I happen to be in the same room, I don’t think I’ve never heard it enough to bother about a definition. It turns out a furlong is one-eighth of a mile – 220 yards, or 660 feet. Twice around the big oval track two towns over I used to walk daily during my bout of unemployment a few years’ back.

How about a fortnight? This I knew. A fortnight is a two-week period. How a two-week period was deemed important enough to earn its nomen I know not, though I believe it has something to do with either wages being paid out biweekly decades or centuries ago, or something to do with a common length of time enjoyed by various sports tournaments. Or maybe something else entirely, I’m not sure.

So –

A furlong is 660 feet.

A fortnight is 14 days.

Now, a furlong is distance and a fortnight is time, so the variable measured by distance over time is speed. A furlong per fortnight is a measurement of speed.

Here’s where the fun begins.

Let’s take a common, familiar speed, say 60 miles per hour. Side note: I remember being absolutely fascinated when, as a small child, I was driving in the car and my father told me that going 60 miles an hour means you’re traveling exactly one mile a minute.

How would you transpose 60 miles per hour into furlongs per fortnight?

Let’s reason this out.

A mile is 5,280 feet which is 8 furlongs.

So 60 miles per hour would be (60 x 8) 480 furlongs per hour.

But an hour is a fraction of a fortnight. A fortnight is 14 days x 24 hours, or 336 hours. Thus, an hour would be 1 / 336th of a fortnight, or 0.00297619 of a fortnight.

Thus, 60 miles per hour would be 60 miles per .00297619 fortnight. To determine the miles traversed over a fortnight at 60 miles per hour, you would divide 60 by .00297619 and obtain 20,160.

So 60 miles per hour would be 20,160 miles per fortnight.

And now for the best part. What would be the furlong / fortnight equivalent of miles / hour?

Multiply 60 by 8 and divide by 1 divided by 336.

(60 x 8) / (1 / 336)

(480) / (.00297619)

161,280.

60 miles an hour is as fast as 161,280 furlongs a fortnight.

There!

And that’s the principle behind the why that we in the United States don’t use the metric system!

I Am the Walrus

Okay, forget that Jim Carrey is now an unhinged lunatic screaming at anything and everything to the right of Bernie Sanders. Money and fame will do that to you. They will do that to you even if you’re not as unhinged and lunatic as Carrey already was by nature. But there was a period in the mid-90s where, by young Hopper’s standards, Mr. Carrey could do no wrong. The dopey, over-the-top face-mugging the camera humor struck a nerve with me, and for a half-dozen of his early movies I never laughed harder. Perhaps early Steve Martin flicks, before he rebranded as a serious actor, rivaled Carrey, but as far as laugh-to-screen-minute ratio goes, I think the younger comedian has the older one beat. At least in the dopey, over-the-top face-mugging humor department.

So in that spirit, the video below absolutely fascinated me, for a solid weekend. I now present it to you to experience.

I’ve been reading a bio of the Beatles on-and-off for a couple of weeks now. They’ve always been in the background of my musical life, and I know all the major stuff, but I’ve never examined them closely, until now. I don’t really have a favorite Beatle, more a composite Beatle: 20 percent George, 30 percent John, 30 percent Paul, and 20 percent George Martin, the Fifth Beatle. I prefer last-three-album Beatles (White Album, Abbey Road, Let It Be) to the psychedelic mid-to-late-sixties Beatles, and both to the Beatlemania mop-top early-sixties Beatles.

Thus, I’ve been watching some Beatles videos on the internet and came across this oddity.

I like John Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus.” It uses all the letters of the musical alphabet, A, G, F, E, D, C, B – I can think of no other song that does so off the top of my head. It’s weird, it has a climactic chorus resolution, it has a crescendo fade out, its lyrics can be interpreted any number of ways. I think I could easily write a dystopian science fiction novella á la Michael Moorcock from the verses.

Jim Carrey performed a version of it on George Martin’s 1998 album In My Life, an album which featured numerous celebrities singing/speaking Beatles covers. I say “performed” because he doesn’t really “sing” it, as you can imagine. I think he attempts to do so on the opening lines, then wisely decides to go a thousand percent into overdriven mania. The deep growly shouting, the mee-mee-mee-mee insane asylum Joker-esque warblings, the foppsy English accent – all had me laughing out loud. I must admit it’s an experience. The man delivers. Or delivered, as this video is 21 years old.

The best part is his proud doofus commentary spoken over the ending fade-out: THERE! I DID IT! I DEFILED A TIMELESS PIECE OF ART! FOR MY NEXT TRICK, I WILL PAINT A CLOWN FACE ON THE MONA LISA …

  

Break the Bank

Patch is quite the enterprising young lady. She's ten, and she's a hustler. Her net worth is around $400 and she has more cash in her purse than I have in my wallet on any given day. Also in that purse are various gift cards for local arts and crafts shops as well as coupon cut-outs.

A few weeks ago I found a piece of paper on my bedside table. It was an invitation for a Party / Art Exhibit, to be held a few days later in Patch's room. She assured all invitees that refreshments and music will be provided while we examine her artwork plastered all over the walls. At the very bottom of the invite, in bold letters, was: DONATIONS ACCEPTED!

Needless to say, her mom and I each dropped a five in her Donations Bowl. Her older sister begrudgingly put in a dollar and proceeded to eat more than a dollar's worth of cookies. Oh, and Patch bought all the refreshments herself.

Speaking of buying refreshments, Patch got it in her head to buy a bag of licorice. Then she asked me how to make a profit from it. I taught her how to divide the price of the bag by the number of candies in the bag to determine the unit cost, and then how to adjust her price accordingly. Turns out each licorice cost her seven cents, and she immediately advertised to her older sister that she was selling licorice at fifteen cents a strand. In a week she got $7 off a $3.50 investment. She then bought a bag of those mini Three Musketeers bars with her profit and repeated the exercise.

Like many young children, she routinely goes through the couches, the laundry room, my bedside table, etc., hunting for loose change. And she accumulates it, believe me. Every couple of weeks she'll ask me if we can stop by a bank on our Saturday morning errands to cash in her coins. She'll have a bag of 40 quarters, or one of 50 dimes, or whatnot, and she likes converting it to good old greenbacks.

Last month she asked me again. We normally bank with Chase, since it was right in the center of town in the town we lived in twenty years ago when we were engaged to be married. Now the nearest Chase is a couple towns over. However, downtown, within walking distance of our home, are two other banks, M&T and Valley National. M&T has a large parking lot (nearly always empty) which I drive through to hit an ATM when I need cash quickly.

So Patch and I entered the cavernous M&T building at 10 in the morning, she all proud with her bag of quarters weighing her down. There was one suit talking to a woman at a desk, and one teller doing busy stuff behind the massive wall separating us from them. I went up, duly waited until I was acknowledged, then approached, holding the bag of quarters.

"Hi! My daughter here would like to exchange these quarters for a ten dollar bill," I smiled.

The teller immediately parried with: "Do you have an account with us?"

"No." I added, "Do I need one just to exchange some quarters for a ten?"

"Yes. I can't do it for you."

I chuckled and tried some charm. "Look at this face," I said, motioning at Patch. "She worked so hard earning these quarters."

"I can't do it for you."

I paused, and the charm quickly dissolved off my face. "Really? You really can't take these quarters and give her a ten dollar bill?"

"I can't," she insisted.

"I don't believe it," I said, to her stony silence.

The transaction could have been completed in the time she spent parrying my simple request.

"Maybe that's why your bank is always empty," I said, as I led Patch out the door. We walked past the suit who was still with his client. I contemplated saying something as I went by, but I'm not a jerk. He probably didn't even hear what went on as he sat with his prospect.

We went next door to the Valley National Bank, and I faced the same obstacle: "Do you have an account with us?" What is it with these people? I said no and resumed the charm offensive. This time the teller, an older woman, relented, but shoved some brochures in my hand, which I did not mind at all. Patch got her ten dollar bill, plus a lesson in Customer Relations.

I told her that this type of attitude will drive banks to extinction in twenty years, primarily due to the expansion and dominance of online electronic banking. These banks should value any single person walking in through their doors as a veritable treasury of potential. Double so for local clientele. Do they really think they will ever, ever receive good word of mouth from me, ever again, after acting so despicably towards a ten-year-old girl? I know it's small potatoes and means nothing to them in the grand scheme of things (or any of us, really, except for the lesson Patch learned). But if you do it to enough of us, we'll stop patronizing you.

I may not be jerk enough to make a scene over a girl unable to change forty quarters into a ten dollar bill, but I am jerk enough to hope that girl grows up and one day breaks that bank like Soros crushed the Bank of England in the 90s.

Back from Limbo

Yes, I took January off from The Hopper. Had no choice, really.

My night job as a tax preparer has been in full swing for nearly the entire month. It’s going to be a busy season, and not too many clients will be happy meeting the 2018 Tax Cut and Jobs Act up close and personal. I’ve already done eight clients and have a handful of returns on hold, and so far most people are getting less of a refund than the year before or actually have to pay. More on this, later.

The day job was over the top busy with year-end tasks combined with an upgrade for our 650-user time and attendance software, which did not go smoothly and hitchlessly. I was so overwhelmed I actually took a mental health day two weeks ago which flew by mercilessly. (Hmm – side note – should I write more adverblessly?) Just only now starting to get a hold on it, as my To Do list is now down to a single page. Why do I do this? It ain’t for the money and it ain’t for the love. Well, maybe for the money.

Patch has sprouted up and is nearly as tall as her older sister, the not-so-little-herself Little One, now a high school freshman. Patch is long and lean and all muscle, and she plays travel basketball, rec basketball, and has started her winter travel soccer practices. Every other day she has a practice somewhere in the county, and weekends are chock full of games. If I’m not driving her the wife is, and if she isn’t, we’re working the texts with other parents to get her to and fro her workouts. It’s crazy hectic.

Little One no longer plays sports, but I’ve been bonding with her over Thursday-night sushi and the Stephen King adapted teevee show Under the Dome. We’ve binge-watched season one and are halfway through season two. More on this, too, later. She also went with her photography club into Greenwich Village for a day-long field trip, and took some beautiful pics. And the Mrs., well, she had a four-day business trip followed by a weekend in Dallas for her father’s memorial service, leaving me here in frigid northern New Jersey to play Mister Mom.

I still read to escape this madness, and in January I put away four books and made serious inroads into two more. The ones I read: a book on Christian Science, a science fiction war novel, a slim primer on the geophysics of the interior of the earth, and a published dissertation mishmashing Zen, Existentialism, and Christianity. I’m currently moseying through a biography of the Beatles and journeying with Verne 20,000 leagues under the sea. Some possible reviews upcoming, possibly.

I took in the new M. Night Shyamalan movie with my buddy a few weekends ago. The Fosters Oil Can and chocolatini I drank in the parking lot was better. But … more on that one, also, later.

Thoroughly disgusted with politics, from all sides, though primarily from the left, as well as thoroughly disgusted with the leadership of the Catholic Church, primarily from the pope on down to my local bishop (“Nighty-night baby” Tobin). I have some radical actions I’m contemplating in response to both, which I may or may not write about in the upcoming days. We’ll see. Not much to hope for, from where I stand, except to just grin, bear it, and outlast it.

After a few days on the paleo I’ve gone ten sheets to the wind, diet-wise, and have gained about ten pounds. Too cold to get out the door at 6 am to walk (due to this polar vortex thing that’s descended on the upper U.S.) and too tired to lift weights when I get home at 9 pm. So the thing I’ve opted for is lots of fast food, ice cream, and Fosters Oil Cans. I have no choice but to put the brakes on this madness as I’m having trouble fitting in to all those new dress shirts Santa just brought me.

I missed blogging to be honest. But I think I want to structure it a bit more. I went from a daily post to a post whenever I felt like it. Now I think I’ll aim for a weekend post and a one during the week, plus a regular “Musicalia Monday,” as I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately and have learned a lot of tunes on the guitar as well. But we’ll see …

So it’s good to be back. Talk to you later …