Wednesday random

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/15/BASA1FEE6R.DTL
Senator Mark Leno counters with a proposed bill to make PG&E shareholders responsible for costs due to negligence b y PG&E.
*********************

It's September. Once again, two hours before the eye exam which has been on the books for a year, I get a phone call from the nitwit at Dr. T's office telling me she has to reschedule. Now this ridiculous ritual is going to eat a couple hours of my Saturday afternoon, which pisses me off. If I'm told I need new lenses, I will demand they be fit into the older of the two sets of old frames I will be carrying with me. They pulled the you're-covered-so-we're-going-to-sell-you-new-glasses routine on me last year, refused to mount lenses in my old pair, insisting I HAD to have a spare, then tried to bill me for more than I was quoted because The Nitwit didn't know the lenses wouldn't fit the frames I picked and more expensive lenses would be needed. This racket is wasteful, stupid and costly to both me and my insurance company. I actually take care of my glasses, I'm not vain about them. I do NOT need three pairs of prescription readers.
**********************

Taiko kicked my ass last night, but in a good way. The new piece we've started work in is challenging, I don't have all the bits memorized yet and Sean-sensei is pushing us through a lot of it at a time.

Thanks to prevailing wind direction and the subtle change in elevation that only appears to be noticeable to Old Slow Me,  the ride home is always easier than the ride out. You'd think I'd be more tired than less, but it feels good. I actually kind of like riding after dark too. Traffic is fairly light most of the way, the streets are decently lit, there are traffic lights to cross with at the busier intersections and I like the atmosphere of the neighborhoods I ride through, even at night. I've been waved at by folks watering lawns, nodded at by other bikers, waved through intersections by motorists with eyes. Even the knot of teenagers hanging out in front of an apartment building or by the 7/11 is likely to wave or call "Hi."
***********************

Finished reading Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried at lunch today. If it didn't say right on the cover that it was nonfiction, I'd believe it was true. Maybe it is in its way. Read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, (another Dad recommendation, because "the protagonist lived in your old dorm!") before that. Actually it's got a great deal more merit than the Rutgers connection and it's a terrific novel, but I'm due for something light. Yeah, like The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Oy.

Mmmm, earwax!

No, this is not about unfortunate flavors of Bertie Botts All Flavoured Beans.

baronalejandro  mentioned today that September 19 is Remembrance Day or Segaki, and reminded us to feed the hungry ghosts. (The actual date varies depending on what region or flavor of Buddhist observance is involved. One local congregation near here does it around Halloween!)

The gaki (Japanese) or preta (Sanskrit) are not ghosts, per se. As punishment for greed in a past life, their karmic fate is to be reborn as creatures who are insatiably hungry, usually for such things as excrement or rotting corpses.

Don't click on the link which follows if you are easily grossed out. The Tokyo National Museum owns a 12th century Japanese picture scroll known as the Gaki Zoshi, or Scroll of the Hungry Ghosts. The scroll contains some incredibly detailed scenes of daily life, an aristocratic banquet with music, the birth of a child with the anxious father peeping in one door while a priest chants outside the other, even a scene of common folk relieving themselves on a street corner designated for the purpose. People go about their business, unaware of the desperate, grotesque gaki lurking next to them. (The earwax gaki appears in the banquet scene.)  The Kyoto National Museum also has a Gaki Zoshi scroll from about the same period, which shows scenes of the gaki entreating Buddha and being fed their Segaki offering by priests.

I think it's time to send a couple bucks to the food bank again.