A Thousand Times No

Today marks the Day of Ashura in Islam, often called the holiest day of the year for Shi’a Muslims. Coincidentally, today is also the release date of Microsoft’s new offerings, the Vista operating system and Office 2007. In reviewing Vista for MSNBC, writer and onetime Apple employee Joe Hutsko noted that printing anything negative about Apple products inevitably triggers hate mail, always unleashing a torrent that tends “toward religious zealotry” in tone.

It’s true, Macintosh users behave as members of any embattled religious minority might. (What else would you expect from a firm that once had a “Chief Evangelist” on its payroll?) Let’s match Mac users against the current Wikipedia entry for “minority religion“:

• “Minority religions may have a stigma, that may, or may not be justified.” Check.
• “An example of a stigma is using the term cult with its extremely negative connotations for certain new religious movements.” Check.
• “People who belong to a minority religion may be subjected to discrimination and prejudice…” Check.

How might a minority religion respond when facing a major day of observance for a dominant sect? By staging a counter-holiday, of course, complete with festive, colorful decorations.

As a confessed cradle Cupertine, you’ll have to excuse me as I shuffle off to make merry among my own kind.

I had been planning to post another podcast episode this weekend, but when you conduct an interview show, it’s difficult to produce anything if you can’t reach your guests.

As I mentioned earlier, I already experienced a cancellation a couple of weeks ago. (It takes two to tango, but it only takes one guest detour through Buenos Aires to trip up a production schedule.) I was slated to interview a different guest last week, but was forced to reschedule twice when he came down with a cold, then nursed a residual cough that would have made recording unpleasant for guest and listener alike.

That persistent cough was later diagnosed as pneumonia, and my guest was immediately dispatched to a hospital bed. The interview is on hold until after Punxsutawney Phil does his thing. April may well have been the cruelest month for old Tom Stearns, but on the vocal front, January is proving to be anything but kind. I just hope the groundhog looks over his shoulder later this week and sees a long line of healthy guests for me.

In order to install my new wonder blinds, I needed to get my hands on an electric drill. Since power tools tend to associate themselves with homeowners, I began asking around among mortgaged friends and colleagues to see who might have one. A work colleague offered to loan me his, and we made plans to call one another on Saturday morning to arrange a handoff.

As the weekend wore on and I couldn’t reach him, I began contacting others in my immediate neighborhood, keen on some electric boring action. When I reached one of my male friends on the phone, he quipped, “Have you just been calling guys all day to talk to them about your drilling needs?” Well, yes — plus other women, everyone in my building, and married couples. I was shameless.

Eventually, some friends living down the block loaned me their electric drill-driver. I took measurements, made markings, and carefully pre-drilled the wooden window casement, all based on the instructions enclosed with the blinds. The mounting brackets went up without a hitch.

It was only when I lifted the blinds to hook them into the new mounts that I discovered a problem: the measurements I was given before the drilling commenced were off by a couple of inches.

Honestly, you’d think I’d know better by now…

The bedroom window in my apartment came fitted with venetian blinds: ugly, clattering metal blinds in a muddy, doleful brown. The wand controlling the tilt of the slats broke off several years ago, in effect leaving me with the world’s noisiest pulldown shade.

Since my bedroom window overlooks the back roofs of my distant neighbors, I left the blinds up all the time. Of course, I made a point of not standing directly in front of the window in my birthday suit, but otherwise went about my business. Though I had always meant to replace the blinds, I was never quite motivated enough to take them down.

Recently, during our freakish summer-in-January weather, I clearly heard the voices of my new neighbors (and their dog) as they sat out on the rooftop deck next door — the same formerly idle rooftop deck that includes an unobstructed view into the middle of my bedroom, including portions of my bed. Faster than you can say “Stanislavski,” I found my motivation. To paraphrase Frost, good window treatments make good neighbors.

When ordering a single new shade, I went all-out: Double-honeycomb, light-filtering, bottom-up, top-down — everything short of voice-activated remote control. The shade was delivered today, so I began removing the tired old venetians from my bedroom window this evening. Pulling the brown blinds out of their mounting brackets, I found a surprise hanging from the newly exposed portion of the window pane: Tiny incipient beehives, no larger than my thumbnail.

How long the proto-hives had been hiding there, I can only guess. Even the most industrious bee would have been stymied by the foam insulation I had wedged between the two window sashes several years ago. Yet I still half-wondered whether anything might fly out of from the honeycombs as I prepared to dislodge them.

Rationally, I knew it was unlikely in the extreme. But I would have said the same about my last sting, which came from an British bee, furious about being trapped inside a toilet bowl by my looming hindquarters. After the bee struck, I was unable to fully remove its stinger; there is a corner of my foreign field that is forever England.

Should be? Should buzz. Who knows what lurks in the hearts of wasps? Not me, honey, not me.

By day, I design interfaces for web applications at a major research university. From time to time, I don the hat (or the hair shirt) of being an advocate for our international users. While we can expect most of our visitors to read English passably well, we can’t expect them all to be immediately familiar with non-metric mileage, 12-hour clocks, 10-digit phone number formatting, and placing the month at the front of numeric dates.

Often, this sets off the eye-rolling. “Well, they’re here now, and that’s how we do it in America,” I’m told. Later, people wonder why there are data entry issues with supposedly self-explanatory information, such as date of birth. Guess what? Oranges are not the only fruit, and American is not the only standard. Any American abroad who has tried to decipher street signs where they don’t employ Roman letters, much less bother with writing in English, knows this fact by heart.

Though it can be a hard sell here on the home front, thinking about the rest of the planet does pay off from time to time. Tonight I took part in the 2007 Philly CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) Design Slam. Professional information architects, web designers, user interface developers, and others from throughout the Philadelphia metropolitan area worked together in randomly assigned teams as part of “a fast-paced race to create the best design solution to a real-world problem.” It was frenetic and terrifically fun, with Post-Its and chunky colored markers flying in every direction. We needed to interview imaginary clients, create a portable electronic concierge device for visitors to a fictitious South Pacific island resort, and to prepare a pitch presentation with visuals, all in just under 50 minutes.

Most teams converged on some sort of push-to-talk technology for the emergency contact function requested by the client. That’s when my International House of Patois reflex kicked in. “Uh, that’s not really helpful if the dispatcher can’t speak Arabic, or Russian, or whatever the guest with the emergency is shouting at the time,” I insisted. So we globalized the interface, adding a screen with icons and short phrases written in the guest’s native language to back up the walkie-talkie communications. (After all, nobody in the room seemed to know offhand how to say “#$@#%$, shark bite!” in Japanese.)

The hypothetical client took the bait, and our icon-happy team came in first place. “You thanked the client for the opportunity to present your proposal,” one of the judges commented in his critique. “Your team was very professional, and it’s always good to kiss ass.” Ah, yes — now that is something that needs no translation.

Let us say you have an injury of sorts. Nothing outwardly visible, but an ongoing problem, perhaps in your left shoulder. You feel it every time you try to put on a jacket or scratch your back. Sometimes, when you lift your arm overhead, you feel a burning, twisting sensation shooting past the outer edge of your shoulder blade.

Your doctor rules out anything grave, like a torn rotator cuff or a problem in the joint. She recommends stretching. You try it, and your range of motion increases a bit, but you continue to experience pain, discomfort, and the all-too-frequent bad torque.

Now let us say you have a friend who is trained in Thai massage therapy. Repeat after me: If you fail to ask this friend to help with your trick shoulder, you are an idiot.

This evening, while we were sitting in a restaurant booth waiting for dinner, my friend with the mighty skills and the robust grip opened my shoulder up more in five minutes than I had been able to move it in the previous five months. With my newly released arm, I felt like the Bionic Woman, but it’s really Mr. Magic Hands who has the crazy cartoon superpowers.

I can’t believe I didn’t try this sooner — the shoulder cramps must have cut off the blood supply to my brain. Tonight I can finally catch some decent southpaw sleep, and dream of Sandy Koufax to my heart’s content. Roger Dodger, over and out.

Last night I went to Divan Turkish Kitchen for dinner with a guest from out of town. By the time we left, the ground was covered with a dusting of snow. I took this as a cue to start reading more Orhan Pamuk.

Meanwhile, I’ve had to postpone yet another interview — a second case of bronchitis swooping in to make for a change in plans. When Thomas Quasthoff canceled his appearance with the Philadelphia Orchestra earlier this week, the players pinch-hit with Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. But we are clearly in the grip of only one, King Winter.

Or, let us say, Minor Viscount Winter. After Brown Christmas and melting Mummers, I’m wishing for more snow. Meanwhile, a little Wallace Stevens will have to do.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I had been looking forward to hearing German bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff in concert for months. His story is unusual, and ultimately, hopeful. His mother was prescribed thalidomide for her morning sickness while carrying him, and his self-description sums up the result: “1.34 meters tall, short arms, seven fingers — four right, three left — large, relatively well-formed head, brown eyes, distinctive lips; profession: singer.”

Quasthoff’s voice is remarkable for its smooth, sonorous beauty, and clear, flowing articulation, particularly in German. He was set to appear with the Philadephia Orchestra during the next week, both here in Verizon Hall and also at Carnegie Hall, performing Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder. There’s nothing like a little Mahler to remind you that a life full of complications, suspensions, and constant shifts between bright and dark can, for all its challenges, be a remarkably beautiful thing.

Sadly, Quasthoff cancelled his Philadelphia Orchestra engagements early this week due to a serious bronchial infection. As with all musicians, singers must protect their instruments, and Quasthoff’s is a doozy. I’m disappointed, but not shedding any tears — that’s reserved for when I finally do get to hear him in person. Throw in the towel, indeed.

There are certain endeavors which, if they cannot be carried off solo, are best not attempted in the first place.

Take jewelry, for instance. I went window shopping during a stroll in my neighborhood this afternoon, pausing to try on a silver and moonstone bracelet inside a small boutique. The bracelet closed using a tiny, delicate S-hook — an attractive fixture that demands the digital dexterity of a skilled pickpocket to affix without assistance. Some S-hooks are forgiving. This one was not.

“I can remove the tag thread,” the sales clerk offered when she saw me beginning to struggle.

“No thanks, that’s okay,” I quickly replied. “This is husband jewelry,” I added, explaining one of my guidelines for shiny adornments: If I require assistance to put it on, or to afford it, it stays in the display case. The clerk laughed and said, “I’ve never heard that before. I like that.”

It’s easy enough to pass on acquiring baubles. But what happens when you have trouble with some of the most routine tasks of everyday life? Or put another way, how many 5-foot-3 (160cm) women does it take to change three light bulbs in a spring-loaded ceiling lamp?

Just one. If she takes off her socks to avoid slipping as she tiptoes atop a copy of the American Heritage Dictionary, balanced on the sloped seat of a wooden kitchen chair. And if she doesn’t tip over cursing when one of those fresh, expensive compact fluorescent bulbs falls out of its obscured socket, shattering as it tumbles into the glass lampshade.

I was born to the Court of Short. As anyone who saw Helen Mirren’s remarkable turn in “The Queen” would tell you, abdication is not an option. True, a husband could help with jewelry and those hard-to-reach fixtures. On the other hand, a sturdy ladder will never leave the toilet seat up. While not exactly a draw, one should never underestimate the power of a proper set of tools.

(Sigh. As they say, the light bulb has to really want to change.)

During the past few weeks, I’ve had a unusually bad run of almost-but-not-quite social engagements. To wit:

• I had plans for dinner with a longtime acquaintance who was visiting Philly from New York. We spoke on the phone after he arrived in town, and agreed to call each other a few hours later to determine where to meet. I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the evening. When I spoke with him the next day, I learned that he was already back in New York — because someone had broken into his apartment the night before.
• I was going to be in New York today to record an interview, but my guest had a last-minute change of plans — that took him to another continent.
• Tomorrow was going to be my chance to catch up with one of my friends after the holidays. But he came down with a cold this weekend that makes him sound like a cross between a basset hound and a cement mixer. “Trust me, you do NOT — ” he subwoofered, “want a piece of this.” Mañana? Nada.

With the extra time on my hands, I made a dent in my laundry backlog and decided to seek enlightenment on one of life’s great mysteries: how to fold fitted sheets. First, I consulted Cheryl Mendelson’s brilliant opus, Home Comforts, to learn her secrets of bedsheet oragami. (I can already hear my close friends now: “How can you profess to be an Mendelson acolyte, yet live in a domicile that could easily double as a Superfund site?” Uh. . .maybe the Perfect Mess guys know?) I went with Mendelson’s recommendation, which was cribbed by the folks at Real Simple on their website.

Now, I’m not a topologist (I don’t even play one on TV), but there’s something a little strange about this method in practice. The problem lies with the long edge of the sheet. By attempting to tuck one set of corners into the other, the lengthwise side of the sheet must serve as both an enclosing and an enclosed edge. Gödel, Escher, and Keanu Reeves aside, this creates some twisty lumps in the finished product.

I continued in my quest for The One True Fold. What can I say? All roads (and folds) lead to Martha. Her linen-fu is strong, grasshopper — so powerful, she can even defeat the Tiger Claw school and leave me utterly flattened.

Sifu, I am not worthy!