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I swore I wasn’t going to comment on this, but then I did.

I’d written a 400 word post about Osama’s double tap and when I went to save it WordPress kicked me out and erased it.

Interesting.

So let me try again.

I was trying to be objective. Trying to understand the epiphanies.

‘Cause check it.

We’re being asked to believe that a lanky long drink of water, huddled with two 14″ portable TV’s that your grandmother would clutch to her drooping bosom claiming they’re OK, a digital decoder “probably tuned to Al Jazeera via Pakistani satellite network”, a 17″ color computer monitor (read laptop), a Sharp 12 digit calculator with printer (the horrors), a remote control (probably so he wouldn’t have to scramble the coupla feet to change the channels on his shitty TV), and a bolster pillow somehow brought the greatest nation on earth to it’s knees?

Long, deep, breath.

Are you telling me I have to undergo a strip search when I fly to Atlanta because Mr. Lanky’s watching bad TV with rabbit ears? That my whole world has changed and a whole new layer of government bullshit has been added to protect me from a guy with a Sharp 12 digit calculator and a bolster pillow?

You’re kiddin’ me, right?

What is it we’re being fed here? Now that he’s dead and gone can we get back to normal?

Hope wanes.

I’d started this post about the MEN of Deadliest Catch and how I I’d thought that maybe I could maybe dream about throwing myself up against the marathon mountain that is crab fishing in the Bering Sea and how cool it’d be to be able to be one of them.

And so there I was typing along, living longingly vicariously, when I got (ok, received? I get it, Ms. grammar) an e-mail from my father?

And everything dilated and dehydrated.

I hadn’t and haven’t spoken to the man who calls me son in over twenty years. And I’m good with that. I don’t care. I don’t know who he might be or who he might have become. I just don’t care.

I don’t know how he got my e-mail address and I don’t know if he reads my shit.

But if he does? Listen up motherfucker.

We’re done, we’re over, we’ve been waaaaaay over for a loooooonnnng ass time. Get over it.

The bruises will never go away.

I mean honestly?

Miss Carol and me went to lunch at a place across the street over the weekend. It’s a place we don’t frequent much for lots of reasons.

One is the bartenders.

They’re kinda scummy and kinda ugly and, more importantly, kinda MEN?

Sorry dudes.

Bartenders should ONLY be cute babes.

I don’t want some tattooed stoner sliding my beer across the counter while he growls out the lunch specials.

I want Trixie in hip huggers or a bikini and a push-up pretending to find me fascinating.

Call me Mr. Dickhead but even Miss Carol agreed. She was all like-chicks rule.

So I sipped my beer and I said, Ya know what? I think if I ever hire people instead of 1099’em I’m thinking it’d be really cool to hire really cool, really good looking chicks.

Whatya think?

Miss Carol heaved a sigh.

Sometimes I think I make her tired.

Miss Carol LOVED this book.

I think I did.

Set in the Ozarks, Ree Dolly needs to find her bail-bond-jumping father before the courts call in the tab and Ree and her two little brothers and brain-addled mother all get kicked to the curb.

I fucking loved Daniel Woodrell’s prose and the way he shone a light on mountain life.

Folks, them’s hard people.

I’ve read other books with ancillary stories about mountain people- be they Sierra Madres or Appalachians- and I don’t know if it’s the constant contact with mountains and all that rock and hard stuff but holy jeebers you don’t want to mess with them. They’s HARD.

At first I hated the obscurity and obliqueness. I thought there were parts of the story that were being kept from me, that I wasn’t privy to ’cause I wasn’t a mountain person, ’cause I wasn’t an Ozarky native son.

But then I tackled my Mr. Narcissism and wrestled him to the ground and sat on top of him and thought that maybe that was EXACTLY what Mr. Dan was trying to accomplish.

You are left out. ‘Cause you don’t belong.

And I think that’s the beauty of Winter’s Bone.

So, yeah, I think I love this book too.

Man, I hate walking you guys, I said.

Cutter trotted ahead and strained to look up at me.

Why? he said.

Tug tugged in a different direction.

‘Cause it’s a chore, I said. Just another thing I gotta do every day.

Cutter stopped and sat and stared at me. So we’re a CHORE? he said.

Well, yeah, kinda. I said.

I mean, I gotta walk you guys twice a day every day no matter what, I said, feeling peevish and feeling like I was losing something.

Dude, Cutter said. You’re kidding, right?

And he got up and shook his coat clean and clear and Tug said, kidding right? while he was licking the grass.

And Cutter said, You really don’t get it do you?

Maybe not I said.

We LOVE parading you around every day, he said. It’s what makes us sensational, he said.

Sensational Tug said, sniffing the air.

wave-particle duality – superpositions – quantum tunneling

I’m not quite sure why I ever bought this book.

infinite-sum wavefunction – zero point energy – allowed states

And I’m definitely not sure why I EVER decided to read it.

quantum randomness – light polarization – the many worlds interpratation

But I did and I did and somehow kinda queerly and eerily I’m glad I did?

wavefunction collapse – decoherence – separate universes

‘Cause the author, Chad Orzel, makes quantum mechanics and theory almost understandable.

Allllllllllllllllmost. Maybe?

the quantum zeno effect – entangled photons – quantum teleportation

So would I do it again?

a/V> + b/H> and E = hf and 1s + 1/2s + 1/4s + 1/8s … = 2s

Not a chance.

It’s an interesting ride, but it was like wearing ill fitting jeans.