Do You Smell Something?

Firefighters responded to reports of a small grass fire, the second to happen in days. They believe it's arson.

Luckily, they were alerted to the fire by neighbors and passersby. Who knows how long it would have taken them to respond without the quick thinking of local citizens.

Both fires were set next door to the fire station.

Sunday Inspiration

Pig Malion

One of our television guilty pleasures is "House Hunters International". Actually, everything we watch on television is a guilty pleasure... have you seen "Big Rich Texas"? Pure awesomeness.

But back to "House Hunters International"...

The show is about people who have money to burn and are looking to buy a second home in Zermat, or Belize, or Vanuatu or some other similarly outrageous location. Or, it's some high powered executive who needs to relocate to London or Moscow or Paris.

It's sadistic really, because it combines two things we'll likely never experience again... world travel and living somewhere nice.

But occasionally, they go downmarket, which brings us to last night's episode. It featured Carl and Sarah, a portly looking couple in their late 30's. Carl is British, Sarah, American. How they met wasn't explained. They've been together 13 years, married for 10. Carl moved here, and for the past ten years they've been living Stateside in Sarah's hometown. But Carl is homesick and it's time for a change and they've decided to relocate to Carl's hometown, Buckingham, outside of London.

We first meet up with them at their current home, in...

BAKERSFIELD!

I almost swallowed an ice cube when I saw that. Holy shit. I should have known... Sarah is sporting a classic Bakerdoo, right down to the bad highlights.

Their current home is typical Bako-terranean, stucco McMansion. Obviously new construction since it's built so close to the neighbors that the roofs practically touch and there isn't a stitch of foliage anywhere to be seen.

Now, Bakersfield, even on a good day and if you were feeling generous, would never be considered... pretty. But either by choice or by accident, the producers decided to portray the city in a particularly hideous fashion. They shot Sarah in her convertible, tooling around some of the most downtrodden and ghetto parts of town on a hazy, gruesome looking afternoon. Then they panned out the passenger side as the endless miles of fallow dirt whizzed by which, through the magic of editing, morphed into the lush green rolling English countryside. Our visit to Bakersfield was over and mercifully brief.

I won't bore you with the details of the show. You can watch the grand climax here. But let's just say the Sarah is kind of a whiny bitch. She specifically said she wanted a typical "English cottage", yet every one she was shown was met with...

"It's not as big as we had in Bakersfield."

or

"We had a lot more room in Bakersfield."

or

"I don't know how we could get all our Bakersfield furniture in here."

And then she'd pout. At one point she seemed incredulous as she asked why the homes were so small. Maybe it's because back in Shakespeare's day they didn't anticipate your horrible overstuffed JC Penney furniture and 70 inch flatscreen.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The worst part was that throughout the entire episode, Sarah was speaking with a fake British accent.

"Lovely day, guv'na!"

It was cring-worthy. We both just wanted to throw something at the TV every time she opened her mouth.

By the time it was over we both felt we had just watched the Bakersfield High performance of "My Fair Lady".

Does Not Compute

I was pretty much offline all day yesterday having my computer tuned-up. It had been acting sluggish for months and recently some bugs had cropped up and I thought it best to have it looked at before something major went wrong.

As far as I know there's only one Mac specialist in all of Bakersfield. He's very nice, and very good.

And very expensive.

What are you going to do? Unplug the machine and haul it to LA? That's really the only other option. He's who I called last year when my hard drive crashed and I have to admit, he saved my life.

I was in college at the dawn of the computer graphics age, but back then the hardware was so expensive, the software so rudimentary and the results so primitive that it wasn't something we spent any time on. That all changed a few short years later.

My boss at the time had moved to a new agency and he wanted me to follow him. After one of the briefest interviews I've ever had, I was hired on the spot. I showed up for work on the first day and was shown to my office, the first time I'd seen it. The door opened and there inside, instead of a drafting table, was a desk with a Mac. I was given my first project and told the deadline was Friday. Nobody even showed me how to turn the computer on and I was afraid to ask. Computer skills had never come up in the interview and I was afraid if I admitted I had none I'd be shown the door.

That first week was a steep learning curve, to say the least. And it's been a struggle to keep up ever since.

When the internet exploded in the mid 90's I tried to stay current. I spent thousands of dollars on night courses and weekend seminars on the latest web software, but as soon as I mastered them, something was introduced that made them immediately obsolete. It seemed less like staying ahead of the curve, and more like a very expensive snipe hunt.

Then I took a different job. It paid extremely well, but they didn't really believe in the concept of evenings and weekends off. So my continuing education discontinued. By the time I hit 40 I was more interested in having a life than chasing after the latest shiny new thing. And I had a new, secure job, so why worry about it?

Famous last words.

I've known now for years my skill set was out of date, but what to learn? There are dozens of programs out there, some old, some new, some relevant, some on the edge of obsolescence and it's a crap shoot which is which.

I spoke to recruiter in LA I've worked with over the years. Two years ago she insisted I had to learn a specific program if I wanted to survive. I actually signed up for classes, but then the house sold and the move to Bako loomed, so I postponed it. I called her last week and mentioned signing up again for classes and her reply was...

"Nobody asks for that anymore. It's irrelevant. What you really have to learn is.... HTML5."

Well, I guess that was money not spent well.

So for the past week I've ben looking into classes in HTML5. Something online. And I found a couple I was on the verge of signing up for. Which brings me back to my computer guy. I offhandedly mentioned to him that I was going to take HTML classes and he said...

"Why would you do that? When they just announced... EDGE."

Sure enough, he showed me the announcement online. Just a few days earlier they had announced EDGE. The next essential new thing. It comes out later this year. By the time people master it and classes start being offered in it, or the "EDGE for Dummies" book comes out, it will probably have been rendered obsolete by the next bright shiny new thing.

I swear to God, it's a Hall of Mirrors. Makes me just want to throw in the towel.

Shelf Life

It's actually easy to forget that you (or pretend you don't, as the case may be) live in Hooterville, hundreds of miles from civilization.

Especially if, like me, you rarely go outside.

Unless, of course, you go to the supermarket on Tuesday.

Wednesday is the day most of the stores get their weekly deliveries, so Tuesday is the day when everything starts to...run out.

I've never lived anywhere where things ran out! I come from the Big City where the stores are stocked (and open) 24/7. It was hard enough adapting to the limited hours and even more limited selection. And now they're going to run out of even that? What kind of Banana Republic is this?

In all the years I lived in LA, the only time I ever saw empty shelves was during the '92 riots. The city was in flames, people looting in the streets and the city went on lock-down with a dusk to dawn curfew. I lived in West Hollywood at the time and the local Pavilions was stripped bare of all the essentials for survival.... Pellegrino, artisan bread, imported cheese. Even fresh cut flowers, because nothing brightens a civil insurrection like a little pop of color. I remember you couldn't find paté for days. It was awful.

The first time I encountered the shortages here was one of the first Tuesdays we lived here. As I entered the store you could tell things were a little off. It's not like the store had been looted or anything, but there were definitely bare shelves and empty freezers. First, I noticed there was almost no dog food. And then milk. But the final straw for me came with the peanut butter... there was none. I had been craving peanut butter and there simply wasn't any. Oh sure, they had chunky, but... please.

I was obviously taken somewhat aback and a nearby clerk helpfully schooled me.

"Come back on Thursday once we've had a chance to stock up. The trucks all come tomorrow."

Oh, so trucks is it? I had imagined C40 cargo planes swooping low over the vacant lots behind the store, air dropping pallets of Cap'n Crunch to us starving villagers below.

At any rate, I forgot my own advice and went to the market yesterday and was reminded just how backwards my life is these days.

But this time, they at least had peanut butter.

Coffin Nails

I probably shouldn't even mention this for fear of jinxing it, but... we quit smoking.

Let me rephrase that... we are in the midst of our latest attempt to quit smoking.

So far so good.

It's been one day.

Between the two of us, we've tried just about everything, multiple times. Patches, gum, pills. I even went to a hypnotist years ago. That was not money well spent; my first stop after he pronounced me a "non-smoker" was the gas station at the corner for a pack of smokes.

In a bit of counterintuitive thinking, we seriously thought about trying to quit when we first moved to Bako. Our thinking was that everything in our lives was so upended at that time that it might be easier to break the habit when everything was in turmoil.

Bad idea.

But I think it's going to work this time. We're taking Chantix.

Now, we thought about doing it a year ago, but one of the side effects of Chantix is the not infrequent occurrence of suicidal depression. Considering we were now living in Bakersfield and my career had collapsed and I basically already had one foot out on the window ledge, we thought the timing was... bad.

But here we are a year later, and suicidal depression isn't much of a concern. Been there, done that. I've been soaking in it for a year so I'm just used to it.

We actually got the pills weeks ago, a few days before news reports came out linking it to a 72% increased chance of heart attack or stroke. It gave me pause, since there's a history of heart problems in my family and I just not that long ago spent a month nursing my mother through open heart surgery.

But then my seemingly resurgent career collapsed and my attitude about the side effects was "fuck it". I'll take a massive heart attack over the alternate future... living in a cardboard box off the highway. And on the off chance these pills don't kill me, I'll finally be a non-smoker.

Which is good, because cardboard is extremely flammable.

Manic Mondays

You would think I would dread Mondays. It's the start of the work week and I have no job. I also have few if any freelance projects these days, so Mondays mean the start of a probably futile week of looking for a job somewhere else or trying to scare up some work here.

And yet, I look forward to Mondays.

Because the weekends here are so depressing.

On the weekends, Bako turns into a ghost town.

This time of year, it's always bad because of the heat and humidity. People escape to the coast for some fun in the sun without the risk of heat stroke or radiation burns. Others flee to San Fran or LA for a little shopping and dining and nightlife and culture. You know... life. But the vast majority of locals hunker down, sequestered behind cheap mini-blinds and plastic plantation shutters in air conditioned isolation. It's like a zombie movie where all the zombies are inside on their Playstations.

I can walk the dogs morning, noon or night and in 30 minutes never see a single soul. We went to Home Depot one Saturday around 10am and parked right up front. Inside, there were more employees than shoppers. Obviously, there are still some people around. But on the whole, weekends in Bakersfield are a pretty lonely experience.

And it can't be blamed totally on the heat. A few months back, when my little dog escaped, it was a beautiful, coolish Spring day. Saturday, 9am. As I frantically ran blocks and blocks in every direction looking for her, there wasn't a human in sight. I felt like I was in an episode of "The Twilight Zone", the one where there's only one human left on Earth after a nuclear cataclysm.
Of course, if there was a nuclear cataclysm in Bakersfield, I'm not sure you'd notice.

So yes, I look forward to Mondays. It means the return of some life to the neighborhood. There's always a chance the mail will come and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays the neighborhood gardeners show up. As long as I can hear the leaf blowers I know I'm not alone.