fine whine

I was thinking about coins today. Walking to Meijer I stumbled across one that has no markings save for a picture on each side. There is nothing to indicate denomination or value, nor really to indicate if it is money at all. It's a near-blank. Even Chuck-E-Cheese puts their name on their tokens, but this thing has no indication of place of origin, either--just a couple pictures.

It got me thinking about money systems and coins. Are all of the markings really necessary? I tried to create a system of coinage that didn't need any markings at all, yet was still obvious as to value. Without identifying marks a coin would need some sort of unique shape or sizing to provide a standard for comparative value, and I didn't really want to mess with sizes. That's how we got into the whole penny is bigger than a dime but smaller than a nickel debacle still wreaking havoc in the American economy, after all.

No, in my system I thought of using points or vertices. Geometric shapes such as triangles, squares, pentagons and so forth were pretty obvious but not so useful, as what sort of system would start with three (or rather would want to divorce number of sides from value so readily)? I then imagined a bunch of mostly-round coins with a varying number of bulges to indicate value. An egg-shaped one would be worth one. An ellipse, two, and so on and so forth.

There are two problems with simplifying coins, though. First, the economics of minting money out of commonly available materials means that either the money could be melted down for its raw ore worth more or that anybody with access to cheap materials and simple machinery could make their own coinage. I didn't have a long enough walk home to spend too much time pondering such issues as have plagued the U.S. Mint for centuries. The second problem with my money would be that they'd be nearly useless in conventional vending machines. With only half a block to mull this over, I realized that vending machines were created to work with the coins, not the other way around, and with my system the same would happen. Problem solved.

Have you ever taken a good look inside your refrigerator? I mean, when you're not looking for munchies or trying to communicate with leftovers that have gone bad. Chances are good that there's a dial or two to control just how cold the fridge and the freezer get. Chances are even better that there's a label somewhere there that says something like "9 is coldest".

I've noticed this inside more than one fridge lately. I've never checked if there's anything past 9. You know, to see if one goes to eleven. That'd be pretty cool.

Five years of engineering school and I can't figure out why radios with volume controls don't use numbers but fridge coldness dials do. Is there something easier about keeping the fridge at 4 than adjusting it a little bit, then a bit more, until it gets just too cold and then you go back a tiny bit? I mean, isn't that what everybody ends up doing anyway, eventually hitting somewhere around 4 anyway?

So why the numbers?

Anyway, I've been watching the first season of Dead like me, and I've noticed that Mandy Patinkin's character, Rube, lives in apartment 41. There's three ways that I can take this. First is that it's mere coincidence. Behind door number two is the possibility that somebody at Showtime's making a slight jab at Fox's X-files, since Fox Mulder famously lived in apartment 42. Third (and finally) I could just be a colossal goober for having noticed.

Last night I watched Repo man again. And then ("UND DANN", you could say) I watched it again. I didn't get to bed until after 2am. Say what you will, but it's not the greatest movie ever made, but it is quite interesting. Until I listened to the commentary I didn't know all that much about the film. Listen to most people and they'll talk about the quotable lines or the generic foods or the glowing, flying Chevy Malibu, but nobody mentions that the same guy ran the cameras as Wim Wenders's 1976 classic Kings of the road (about which I once wrote). You know, Robby Müller. He also cinematographed most all of Wenders's works, a lot of Jim Jarmusch and even some for Peter Bogdanovich here and there. And somewhere along the way he did this little picture with a bloke not too long out of film school named Alex Cox. So, that's interesting. The fact that the only two companies that were willing to place their products were the supermarket and the pine air-freshener corporation is interesting. It's all interesting, so I say, in that way of the inevitable brown noser incapable of deep discussion in every discussion group or seminar.

But anyway, I watched the movie twice. There was something there that mattered, but I started watching Run Lola Run when I started writing this and now it's ending, and I haven't really gotten anywhere. This, I suppose, explains the meandering of the narrative as well as the "UND DANN" back at the beginning. But endings are what matter, and oddly enough both Repo man and Lola Rennt have credits that scroll from top to bottom instead of the conventional bottom to top. Synch-ro-nicity!

If ever I were to become a copycat comic, I think that would be my cheesy catchphrase. Little coincidences and serendipitous sorts of things pop out at me all over the place, it seems. I was chatting with a longtime friend about books to read, and she pointed me at two trilogies by Lynn Flewelling and Anne Bishop. Checking for them at the local lending library, I noticed that both trilogies are written with the book titles in the same order alphabetically as chronologically. Both of them. Synch-ro-nicity!

We also watched Big fish, but I've got nothing to say about that right now.

Well, I'd like to think that I'm getting pretty decent with the propane grill (thanks again, Scott, Carina and the mysterious benefactor!) as I was able to cook chicken breasts for my parents, grandparents and sister.

That said, though, next time I'll make an extra one for each of us. And I still think that asparagus can be grilled.

Today we went yard and garage saling. Wheee.

Jessica really gets a kick out of that sort of thing, and I have to admit liking finding a bargain, such as I did with a forty dollar benchtop router. I bought it in part to be able to say that I had a router now, which would necessitate the explanation of the difference between woodworking routers and networking routers. We also bought some glass pans for cooking and other sundry items which I no longer remember.

Something I do remember, however, is one householder's ingenious solution to the cicada problem otherwise plaguing the no-longer-quiet neighborhood. At about two feet off the ground this person had run a piece of tinfoil around the circumference of the trunk, and the cicadas could be seen only under it. Evidently they cannot climb over smooth metal nor can they land on a tree.

We saw them covering just about anything else: concrete geese, car tires, slow moving children and more. And this one house, with the tinfoil, had none on its trees. Why, then, wouldn't everybody else do the same?

Probably because it looked really funny. Half of me wanted to congratulate the guy for his ingenuity and the other half wondered if clear saran wrap would have the same effect.

Today an idea struck me, and I can only lament a year's worth or more of lost stuff for not having thought it before. Instead of having my good scissors, pens and staplers swiped, as has happened nearly countless times in the past, I will keep the good stuff in a drawer.

This resolution likely surprises no one, but the next bit's the genius touch. I'm going to put crappy decoy supplies that naturally nobody's going to want to take. So far it's worked well, inadvertently, for my scissors. In the parlance of the workplace, going forward I'm looking to roll out this initiative cubicle-wide.