Putting the “Fun” in “Funeral”

Thanks everybody, for the calls, comments and text messages. I’m sorry if I didn’t reply. The weekend was long and tiring but much of it was actually enjoyable, insofar as a funeral can be enjoyable. We buried Grampa Bob in a warmup suit, because that’s all he ever wore these last 30 years. The service was non-traditional, featuring the songs “Opus One” by the Mills Brothers, “I’ll Be Seeing You” by Jimmy Durante and “Goodbye” by Julie London. We also had a bagpipe player before and after the service.

The weekend also represented probably the longest span of time I’ve spent with my relatives. Usually we’re in and out in a day during the holidays, but this kept all of us together for a good 2-3 days. Grampa Bob had six kids, and they are all fairly spectacular. None of them have, as far as I am aware, ever been involved in organized crime, chemical dependency, domestic abuse, pornography or politics[1]. We have our dysfunctions, to be sure, but nothing that would sustain more than a couple of Lifetime Television movies or ABC Afterschool Specials.

Dad, uncle Barry, cousin David and I all dug through the sizeable record collection at various points; I made off with a few dozen – mostly Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, etc. I also took a picture of my parents one year after their marriage and some century-old books: a well-worn collection of Robert Burns poems and a copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

I had a lot of time to stare at the house; it’s the only house in my family to have seen my entire lifespan. It has also never had any kind of interior remodeling, so it remains frozen in all its avocado-colored, mid-60’s glory. The phone in the kitchen is a rotary with a long curly cord. The TVs live inside large wooden frames. The next time I make it up to Harrison, the house will probably be empty or sold.

For this funeral I was allowed some emotional distance, as I’ve never been very close to Grampa Bob. He was a prickly but lovable curmudgeon, but my grandmother Virginia (mom’s mom) is someone to whom I am much closer. She’s been fighting cancer for about a year now, and I imagine I will be repeating this whole process again at some point in the coming months. Maybe it will help me prepare.

1.) My father did run for office once in the late 70’s for his position as circuit judge but hey, back then everybody was experimenting. It was the 70’s.

Robert William McCorkindale

The first of three Robert William McCorkindales (the second being my father and the third being my brother) is currently residing in the Intensive Car Unit at North Arkansas Regional Medical Center following hip surgery, a subsequent embolism, and recent kidney problems. He is not expected to last very long. From what I saw he is in a great deal of pain and is beyond ready to leave. He was only semi-coherent when I saw him this afternoon; the only words I made out from him were “Oh God.”

One of the things I think I dislike most about hospitals is the inevitable feeling of helplessness that arises from watching a loved one suffer. Even worse is watching grandparents suffer, with the knowledge that death is a far more likely outcome than a return to health. All you can do is stand there, try to make conversation with your relatives, and maybe hold hands with your grandfather, who probably isn’t aware of your presence.

For dinner last night I went to my maternal grandmother’s house. She’s dying of lung cancer at 92, and has defied all expectations by getting up every day and not dying. She still has her wits about her and, at least in my opinion, gets better every time I see her. She has a sterling resilience, a strength she probably developed by taking care of her husband for about 30 years following his debilitating stroke.

Part of me envies my grandparents. They were here for most of the 20th century, the single greatest span of human advancement our species has ever witnessed. We went from learning to fly in 1903 to landing on the moon in 1969. From radio to TV to Internet. And my grandfather has made sure to leave behind plenty of McCorkindales (this is him seated at center, amid 15 of his progeny). He has 6 kids and 12 grandkids. He has outlived 3 wives, the first of which died in 1968.

Sadly, all we can do is wait. Prayers and good vibes appreciated. His coordinates are 36.23° North, 93.10° West.

Would You Like to Listen to My MP3 Collection?

I just realized that there is a convenient link to the index of my mp3 collection that MOG creates. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before, but in case you were absent that day, MOG is a music blogging/social networking service that tracks your collection and what you listen to for all to see. If what you’ve got matches their database, people can listen to samples of those tunes. I know lots of people are using Last.fm for a similar service, but Last.fm has the maddening lack of a local state-level search options so I’d never be able to find people in Little Rock on it. You’d think that would be a horific oversight but apparently they’re not too concerned with it. So much for their social networking. Yay MOG.

Google Gives Bush a Pass

Searching on “miserable failure” in Google no longer brings up the Bush biography at whitehouse.gov. In fact, whitehouse.gov no longer comes up at all for that term. Google was the first search engine to really focus on link text, regarding them as “votes” for particular site. Yahoo and MSN followed suit, and indeed, searching on “miserable failure” still brings up Bush’s biography at #1 in both of their engines.

Google insists that it has simply made adjustments to its algorithm to somehow counter the effect of these “Googlebombs” (events like “miserable failure” where the term itself has no literal bearing on the content in question, it’s just a concerted effort by Netizens to express their opinions via links). I’m not enough of a mathematician to know how this could be accomplished but this thing just smells fishy. Of course, a search on “waffles” no longer brings up johnkerry.com (still there in Yahoo and MSN). Still, the paranoid schizophrenic in me thinks they’ve made specific exceptions.

Craigslist and The New Economy

Las year I wrote about the New Economy, and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark just provided me with another enormous example of what I think is an emerging economic paradigm shift:

“We’re just motivated by the same values we all learn in Sunday school or the equivalent,” he says. “The Golden Rule and that it’s more important to help people.”….

The company that is indifferent to money, therefore, gushes profits.

Read the full article here.

Reunions Abound

Word is out that Crowded House will reunite for a tour, rumors are that the Police will reunite soon (at least for the Grammys but possibly more), and Van Halen have confirmed a summer tour, with David Lee Roth being a more likely candidate for vocalist than Sammy Hagar.

Here’s hoping these reunions will be as fruitful as the amazing Tears for Fears reunion record, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending.

The Dirigible is Back

As with any big step forward in technology, I am simultaneously excited and scared. Lockeed Martin’s High Altitude Airship seems like the perfect Big Brother technology[1]. It’s an unmanned craft capable of observing over 600 miles from above 60,000 feet up, unseen to the naked eye. Surveillance seems to be its main job. Hmm.

1.) Comic book fans may remember the same idea from the Watchmen in the 80’s.

Commuter Reflections

As I drove home from work last night, I thought about the flying car. Technological limitations aside, it could never really happen for one mundane reason: insurance premiums. Conventional car insurance rates are already hefty, and automobiles only travel in two directions, forward and backward. A flying car, potentially[1], could travel forward, backward, hard left, hard right, up and down. That’s two more sets of axes, so at the very least we’d triple our potential for accidents, and thus triple our insurance rates. Then take into account the amount of skill needed to pilot such a craft, and how many people have a hard enough time not crashing their cars as it is.

Of course, while I’m dreaming, I think really the only way for a flying car to be a viable mode of transportation for average people would be for it to somehow conquer gravity. Propellors and turbine engines are just too dangerous for Joe Sixpack. The mythical flying car would have to involve some kind of anti-gravity buffer that protects it from hitting the ground and from hitting anything else around it. A force field, I guess. Only then would the accident rates drop low enough to be cost-effective, possibly even lower than automobiles.

Anyway this is the sort of thing I think about during rush hour traffic.

1.) I’m assuming the flying car is VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) because not everyone has access to a safe runway.