And indeed they did.

"Could you dispose of this gas?" I said. "It's old, and I want some fresh gas."

The old fellow in overalls behind the counter looked at me with the inscrutible expression of a wise man of experience, or an utter moron. I've been going there for four years and I still don't know which.

"We could," he said slowly, "put it in my truck. Or your car."

"It's old gas," I said.

He shrugged.

"Your truck," I said. So we went around the back of the station. He cracked open the cap of his old pickup truck and glugged my gas down the spout.

"Started a car across the street that hadn't run in five years," he said. "Gas was even older. Turned right over."

He handed back the empty jug.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you for the gas," he said.

Then I filled it up again and gave him some money.

I think we've settled the wise-man or moron question. More of a wise-man and the moron, really.

Friday: went to work. Not many did. It was a gorgeous day, pure and perfect, and half the city must have played hookey, including the Strib staff. If the IDS Center had fallen over that afternoon, the story would have been written by a food writer and a movie critic. (And they would have done a fine job.) I wrote my column, went outside as often as possible, and tried not to look in the mirror: I had a large loud flaming blemish, close enough to my lip to indicate I beta-testing a new and improved version of cold sores - Herpes99! - and while usually this wouldn't be something I'd mention here, it bears directly on the next part of the story. Such as it is.

So I finished the column and drove to St. Paul to do my TV monologue. It's a variant of the old pimple-before-the-big-date problem of high school: I'm on TV once a month for about 165 seconds, and I manage to time it so I'm at my unsightliness. I touched it up with makeup in the green room, absolutely certain I was doing a lousy job. I don't know how to do makeup, let alone makeup for television. In the hallway I ran into a local TV weatherman who was still in full Kabuki - it looks alarming in person, but utterly natural on TV. He'd been professionally done. I would look as if my face was smeared with melted pantyhose.

Well, to hell with it. I did the runthrough, palled around for a while, then went back to the dressing room and read more of the Hitler biography. I always feel . . . sad at that point, as if an execution is imminent and I'm resigned to it. At 6:55, I went to the studio, reminding myself: do not touch the mouth. DO NOT TOUCH THE MOUTH. This was not a monologue in which I had any particular pride; it was simply too beautiful outside to be upset or exercized about anything, so I'd written about how nice it was outside. That sounds boring & banal, I know, and perhaps it was, but it was fun - I began with a growling rant about Marilyn Manson, then just lost enthusiasm, said my heart wasn't in it, and walked off camera. (Beat.) (Beat.) (Beat.) Then I came back and explained that spring is too short and rare to give a flick about anything else. I was advocating intellectual isolationism, I suppose, but really: anyone who CAN work up a full froth about anything at 7PM on Friday night - well, they alarm me.

But as the camera came in close, I thought: I probably wiped my mouth without knowing it, and here I am delivering this STUPID monologue and everyone watching isn't listening at all, they're staring in horror at this TICK ENGORGED WITH CURRANT JELLY PERCHED ON MY LIP.

Okay, I'm vain; that's obvious. But not unreasonably so. I just felt as if I was violating the most basic and fundamental rule of television: Thou Shalt Never Have a Pimple. That's why the professionals show up with makeup slapped on like drywall mud. God knows what Vesuvian mounts seeth below that mantle.

I'll stop now.

Saturday I went to get gasoline for the lawn mower. There was still some left in the gallon jug, but it was old gas. Paul Harvey told me that old gas becomes gunky, or gummy. Can't remember the technical term. Having not applied Sta-Bil-Ize to the gas, I needed fresh gas. Couldn't pour the old stuff down the sewer, though. Ah: the gas station would have a place to pour it.

And indeed they did.

"Could you dispose of this gas?" I said. "It's old, and I want some fresh gas."

The old fellow in overalls behind the counter looked at me with the inscrutible expression of a wise man of experience, or an utter moron. I've been going there for four years and I still don't know which.

"We could," he said slowly, "put it in my truck. Or your car."

"It's old gas," I said.

He shrugged.

"Your truck," I said. So we went around the back of the station. He cracked open the cap of his old pickup truck and glugged my gas down the spout.

"Started a car across the street that hadn't run in five years," he said. "Gas was even older. Turned right over."

He handed back the empty jug.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you for the gas," he said.

Then I filled it up again and gave him some money.

I think we've settled the wise-man or moron question. More of a wise-man and the moron, really.

One day you wonder when the trees will bud and birth their leaves, and the next day you realize they’re smothered with leaves. But it wasn’t the next day - it was four, five days after the last time you noticed. It happens fast, and it all takes place at the periphery of your world. You walk to the car preoccupied, thinking the chores ahead, or you drive home listening to the news, wondering What to Think About Kosovo, and all the while, incrementally, millimeter by millimeter, the leaves grow. It’s the last step - first the grass stirs, then the crocuses poke up, followed by other early visitors; weeds intercede here and there, offering a purple blossom as a peace offering before getting down to the grim work of choking the LIFE out of your lawn. Then the ferns and ficuses curl and unfurl from the dirt, round smooth tubes and shepherd’s crooks. The bushes, surly as porcupines, grunt out some green. When all these actors are on stage practicing their lines, you look at the trees and wonder if they know the show starts tomorrow. And then one day - the day after tomorrow after tomorrow - every tree is green, every leaf a palm cupped to gather the evening breeze. You look down the street - a score of tall elms and maples, swaying like members of a gospel choir.

How did that happen?

I’ve taken care this season to note what happens where and when. But it happens so fast. Today in the woods I decided that the balance had finally shifted: from 49% green to 51%. Vines and flowers and weeds are spreading across the forest floor, every individual reaching for its neighbor. The tree I planted two years ago bloomed yesterday - white pure petals bursting from every branch. They’ll be gone in two more days. If I could I’d take a day off, put a chair under the tree and just sit there until the sun set and the petals dropped.

But I can’t. Good thing, too: that sounds incredibly boring. But there has to be a middle ground between the glancing look and the long stare.

I know: walk slower. Instead of walking the dog . . . stroll the dog. Meander the dog. Perambulate.

So I will.




I saw it as I was drifting off to sleep for the nap - happy faces, without guile, bouncing up and down behind a wire-mesh screen in a window . . . pleading: take me. Take me. Take me please!

And I realized that they were all Cast-Off Mascots from the Orphanage, all the new mascots I’d found over the last week, and this horrible vision of line-art drawings bouncing around in excitement must somehow find its way onto the web. Just before I fell asleep I realized that this meant redoing the entire site: Orphanage 2.0. Well, a man needs a hobby . . .zzzz.

Actually, I’ve been planning an upgrade; otherwise, I wouldn’t have gone back to the microfilm and extracted a dozen new mascots from the ancient archives. It will be part of my attempt to fix this damn site once and for all - a new makeover based on Dreamweaver, which I should be getting this week. The first version of this site was done on PageMill 1; the second version on PageMill 2; the third on CyberStudio 3.0; now, I’ll move it all over to Dreamweaver, spice it up with needless yet lovely Flash, fix EVERYTHING and leave it alone for a year. The Bleat will continue, but after the additions - the Fargo site, Dateline: Kennel, Loring Park and the Nicollet and Hennepin additions to the Mpls site, this thing is done.

Who am I kidding.

Deep Space Nine is close to being done, though. Really done. Apocalyptically done. The other night I watched the 4th in the 7-part series finale, and was Deeply Moved - in fact, I gave out a loud shout of dismay when my favorite starship blew up. It was 1:50 AM, and my wife was asleep - the only ambient sounds in the house were the dog, snortling in deep REM, and my hand scrabbling at the bottom of the popcorn bag. And then: AAAUUUGGGHHH! She says I didn’t wake her. She may just be too humiliated to admit she’s married to someone who weeps over such things.

It's just fiction & FX - but for some of us, it's history. A private amusing personal history that goes back a long ways - ten years for some, 20 for others, 30 for the old-timers. I was sitting in my grandfather's farmhouse watching TV one night as a little kid, and I saw something that absolutely terrified me, scared me more than anything I'd seen on TV before. A man in a grave, staring up at a man on a hill, with a rock perched on the lip of the crevasse, ready to fall. The music, the camera angles, the clothing, the lighting - everything was lurid and frightening, and it gave me nightmares.

Two years later I discovered Star Trek, then in its second season, and like most boys of the era was hooked. A year after that the show ended, evaporated, left us just with books and a cheaply animated TV show. Then, syndication. One day in 72 I realized that the show that had terrified me 6 years before was the very first airing of Star Trek. I have literally been watching the show since its inception.

So what? To some people, this is like saying you've memorized every episode of Golden Girls. Granted. If you like Trek, you understand, and if you don't, you don't. It's like baseball. Some people follow it with fanatical attention, memorize a million stats, and to a non-fan this seems like the apex of misplaced enthusiasm. I don't care about sports. I don't look down on those who do. Some people dress up like their favorite characters; some people paint their faces and show up at the stadium. The difference is that the former group is usually sober, and have a glancing interest with actual science, and the latter believes that getting hammered while watching televised sports is somehow equal to actually performing in the event.

Since I have such embarrassing hobbies, I don’t judge other people’s interests. I make fun of them, of course, but don’t judge them unless they really, really ask for it. I’ve one friend who skies, which seems to me like a freezing smooth version of throwing yourself down the stairs. I’ve another who flies ultralights, which to me seems like jumping off the roof with a lawn-mower engine strapped to your back. I think they’re both incredibly brave. They would never dare get on radio or TV, which to me is no big deal; I would never have the courage to do what they do. At least their hobbies are dynamic; mine are static and tightly controlled with little room for outside input. When I watch DS9 there’s no concern they’ll be suddenly knocked out of contention by the Babylon 5 team; when I go on the air, I don’t worry about engine failure or trees on the slope.

Well, I’m rambling. Enough.

Here’s a connundrum: if Hitler could have been convinced of the post-war effects of his policies, would he have continued on his murderous rise? I’m still slogging through this bio of the Austrian devil, and I’m at the point where he’s finding his calling as a barracks rabble-rouser. As with all studies of the man, his essential character is obscure, unknowable; for all the documentary evidence the author has assembled, there still is nothing at the center of the man but an empty sphere lined with barbed wire - vacant hatred, empty malice of a commonplace variety. It’s just extraordinary that such a banal tiresome dullard did what he did. But: was he unamenable to reason? For all his rhetorical excesses, he obviously believed in his core hatreds, inasmuch as he believed or thought about anything: anti-Bolshevik, pro-German, and of course anti-Semetic. If you could go back in history, pluck the pasty bastard out from his chancellor’s chair, and show him a world in the 50s where the Reds occupied Russia, the Jews had their own country, and polyglot mongrel America strode the world, would he have changed his behavior?

Useless question, because it posits a kernel of sanity at the heart of the man. And useless because we never really believe in the future until it’s here, today, now, biting us in the ankles. No one believes in the law of unintended consequences until they’re charged and arrested.

I was the Flusher in the Rye today. I entered the men’s room, and found (I’ll try to employ euphemisms here; be aware this is an aesthetically questionable topic) that all the, ah, American Standard wall-mounted micturation receiving units were brimming with the contributions of past visitors, save one. After I concluded with my donation, I flushed, and learned that the water pressure was low - the inflow served to dilute one’s leavings, but not whisk it all away. Two flushings did the trick. So I gave all the urinals repeated flushings until everything ran clear as a mountain brook. Naturally, someone came in as I was standing before two units, gripping the handles and giving them a stern yank; I wanted to say “I’ve flushed them all for you!” but that’s the sort of thing you just don’t say. Regardless of its general truth.

Rain today, and lots of it. The grass I mowed on Sunday is already ragged and shaggy; the bushes bloom and the lilacs are practically gargling, they’re so happy about it. I went to work, wrote the column, came home and started learning all about Macromedia Dreamweaver, which is quite an impressive program, and utterly different than the one I’m using now. It’s like learning to drive on the other side of the road. My goal was to create a site with rollover buttons and precisely aligned graphics in one hour without reading a word of the manual. If I could do it, then I’d switch over from GoLive. I did it - not a testament to my skill, but the program’s clarity. I am impressed. Still, it feels like talking in Esperanto, but that’ll change.

Still raining, and I’ve yet to set out the recycling. If I put the papers in a plastic bag, they won’t take them; if I put them in paper bags, they will rip when they try to put them in the truck. Either way, they will curse me. The recyclers hate me; they hate all of us. I can hear them cursing as they load tons of papers into the truck: frickin’ earthy-firsty yuppies. Whatever happened to just throwing crap away?