Forts of the 1980's

I grew up in a house next to an elementary school. In the 1970's, there was an area of shrubs and tall grass in between our backyard and the school parking lot called "the field." Around 1980, the so-called field was flattened out and turned into an athletic field suitable for playing soccer. At the same time, the school installed a cyclone fence topped with three rows of barbed wire along most of the edge of the field. The fence ended halfway down the back of our lot, which made the shortest path free of barbed wire to all destinations southeast around the end of the fence and through our backyard. The consequences of this traffic pattern will be dealt with at a later date.

The fence ran along two sides of the field. In the corner wrapped by the fence, there was a small tree and a clump of "pricker bushes." The bushes formed a defensive perimeter around the tree, with the fence filling in where the bushes ended. As a result, the base of the tree was the ideal location for a fort.

The main trunk of the tree leaned out from the fence over the bushes. We were able to tie a knotted rope to the tree in such a way that it hung down over the grass outside the palisade of pricker bushes. To enter the fort, you climbed up the rope and down the tree. If you were being pursued by a would-be assailant, you pulled the rope up after you. In order to apprehend you, your pursuer would have to cross the expanse of prickers, an act widely regarded as impossible at the time. In reality, I suspect that even a moderately spry neighborhood youth could jump over the pricker bushes fairly easily.

We did have an secret escape route under the fence. This started as a little depression, probably dug by a dog. Using tools such as sticks, we expanded the depression into a muddy groove big enough to allow the average fort denizen to slip under the fence.

The premise of the fort-building pastime was that there was a significant population of thugs in town who were interested in chasing us. If we built forts with pricker bush barriers and secret escape routes, we would be able to evade these thugs. In hindsight, I think the thugs probably existed. However, the chances that we would see a thug coming from far enough away that we could climb the rope, pull it up after us, climb down the tree, and then escape under the fence are zero. The thug would have had to be so far away, I can't imagine how we could have known he was chasing us.

No one ever said building forts wasn't a stupid pastime.

Crystal palace found in barn

About two months ago, the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers reopened after 8 years of closure in Golden Gate Park. This was reported in the local paper, and the history of the conservatory was discussed. The paper (I believe this was the San Jose Mercury News) claimed that the conservatory was discovered packed in boxes in the barn of a wealthy man (James Lick) upon his death. This is allegedly true, but cannot be.

I imagine that when my relatives die, I will sort through their belongings. I expect to find a box filled with old photos, maybe a pile of old magazines, or a stack of manuals for computer programs from the 80's (Sargon III, MacPublisher II, etc.) that "could be valuable some day." And what's this in the back of the garage-- oh, why yes, it's a conservatory! Let's take it to San Francisco, and in 125 years, the city can spend 25 million dollars renovating it! I lift it out over the unassembled steel mill and the folded-up baseball diamond cover, and we're off to the city!

On the other hand, James Lick did endow a high school in San Francisco by the name of Lick-Wilmerding with enough cash for it to be tuition-free for 77 years. If you're doing things like that, maybe storing a collapsible metropolitan attraction in your barn is small potatoes.

Pismires in my computer

Tonight, I was attempting to add a CD-ROM drive to one of my computers, when made a horrifying discovery. My computer, which is near the window, was no longer secure (despite running OpenBSD). I found that a large number of ants had infiltrated my home, slipped across to the desk by way of an Ethernet cable, and were making themselves comfortable between the motherboard and the bottom of the case.

I unplugged all the cables and carried the computer into the kitchen. As you can well imagine, I was worried that the pismires would escape to other regions of the house, e. g. my bed. We had an aerosol can of ant poison under the sink, so I cleared a spot on the kitchen floor and laid out a Ring of Death from which no emmet would escape.

Over the next 30 minutes, I disassembled the computer inside the Ring of Death (later expanded into the Concentric Rings of Death). When I pulled out the motherboard, there were myrmexes all over it, running around with 0603 ant eggs in their mandibles. At one point, I tilted the case forward, and eggs poured out of the firewire ports on the front panel. I triple-eeked at the 1394 eggs piled like sand in front of the case. It was revolting.

After deformicating each major component of the computer, I took the case outside and sprayed it full of poison. At this point, it was suggested to me that as runoff in the area drains to bay, it was probably not advisable to fill the case with poison. I washed it out with a hose, dried it off, and threw away all the rags.

I am considering surrounding my house with a 10 meter concrete apron.

Dork tricks

The following statements I consider to be established facts:

1. Every male human currently aged between 18 and 30 used to skate, and most of them secretly wish that they still did.
2. Generally, dedicated skateboarders are stupider than the rest of the population.
3. After you have been skateboarding long enough to realize that you will never be among the talented, hard-working few who are fortunate enough to skateboard professionally, you adjust your aspirations accordingly. In extreme cases, this results in people attempting to do extraordinarily stupid tricks. Some people call these "dork tricks."

Here are some dork tricks that I have imagined, but never successfully executed.

1. The 90 no-comply kickflip off a parking block. This trick stems from my observation that if you attempt to do a 180 no-comply off of a curb, your board will make it about 90 before the back wheels hit the curb sideways, at which point the board will spin uncontrollably. If you started out going fast enough, I think you might be able to land it.
2. The simultaneous noseslide and bluntslide. This trick I imagined after realizing that I didn't really need to ollie to noseslide a bench. I think if I found a pretty high bench with a curb in front of it, I could noseslide and bluntslide at the same time. (A related trick is the flatground bluntslide, which I believe John Thomas, or perhaps some equally cavalier athlete, like Bill Danforth, performed in the Streetstyle in Tempe video that I spent too much time watching in the late 80's.
3. One very dumb trick that I have spent quite some time failing to do is the ollie kingpin stall on a bench corner, which is also a good way to gouge the hell out of your board. I have seen someone successfully land on his rear kingpin, with his board sticking out over the bench, but as far as I know, it has never been landed.
4. This trick doesn't involve a skateboard, but it is so remarkably stupid, I thought I should mention it. You know that if you are wearing knee pads, you can slide down a ramp on your knees with your feet tucked under you. You did not know that if you are wearing a helmet, you can lean forward and slide on your head too. You can, and I have the video to prove it. The youth filmed actually slides off the quarterpipe onto the driveway a few feet.
5. This is one dork trick that I have completed successfully--the milk crate slide. You ride very fast down a hill carrying a milk crate. Then, when you have some smooth pavement in front of you, you hold the crate to your ass and sit down. Inevitably, you swerve out of control frontside.
6. I have seen two friends of mine cut their faces skateboarding, and they both did it trying this trick. Stand with both feet on the tail of your board so the front lifts up. Then grab the nose with both hands, so you look like Christian Hosoi doing a rocket air on flat ground. Now attempt to hop and hold the board to your feet so you land on all four wheels. You will fall forward, and your face will hit before you can let go of the board. If you do let go, it will spring up and hit you in the teeth.