Something struck a chord in me when a noted medical doctor Lisa Sanders said, “we live in a dirtier and dirtier world, and yet our lives are longer and longer… go figure” in Act Two of This American Life Episode 259. [link] I have been reared to be cautious about the filth out there, but not to be afraid of it.   My mother is a nurse and she’s seen her share of bodily fluid, infections, and the ravaging effects of our infectious world.  Compounded with the fact that she grew up in a third-world country, I’ve learned to accept the loathsome miasma that permeates the Troposphere.

So, what inspired this posting you may be asking? I’m a sadistic cad, and despite my own failings, I tend to poke at the vulnerabilities of others. Knowing that Peter from MacBoyx.com/OhMyPod.net has an almost crippling fear of germs, dirt, and general uncleanliness; I knew that I could press his buttons. We shared a hotel room in Chicago-land and I wanted to open his eyes rather than spurning the dirt.

I started out subtly. I did clue him in on the nasty foot funguses that my nomadic friends have picked up in hostels. I tried to point out all the spunk, blood, piss, shit, and spit (a nod to Gilbert and George) that was on every surface. Sadly, he wore sandals to avoid contact with the carpet… and has learned to embrace whatever may be living on the bedspreads. I felt hyperbole would help in the situation. I announced that anything that made contact with the floor, picked up syphilis. I lovingly adopted this from my best gal pal while she lived in New York, because if there is any place in the world where one can contract syphilis from an inorganic surface… it would be Manhattan.

Peter was horrified with the idea, I reveled in his discomfort, but I think the ridiculousness helped him get one step closer to embracing it. I didn’t go as far as to wrestle him to the ground to wallow whatever laid beneath our flip-flops, I was afraid that he’d go into convulsions. Now that I write about it… I think I would have enjoyed that toxic super-freakout. All in all, he’s accepted that “syphilis is everywhere” as proven in OhMyPod episode 104.

Not to be stopped there, while we kvetched over our sojourns home I told him about another pithy expression that my gal pal loves to sling around: The concept that airplanes are just an aluminum fecal tubes bounding through the ether. A small confined space where all conventions of sanitation aren’t strictly followed. I must say… I don’t think he’ll ever get over this fact, and I plan on reminding him that every time he steps onto an airplane — he’s going into a hermetically sealed cloud of scatological vapor.

So, what have we learned here? Don’t ever tell me what your phobias are!

Image provided by Cacetudo @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Human_Feces.jpg

Earlier this week, I met up with the fantastic Peter, the host of Oh My Pod. In the mobile studio we chit-chated about the time that we spent together in Chicago. I must say that being in close proximity made for a really good fast-paced, dynamic, and hilarious conversation as opposed to the almost clinical, doctor-patient-like conversations that we carry on over the lag-ridden VOIP.

Though this show was to re-cap our hi-jinx, I did manage to get in a reference to SmallTalk, the object-oriented programming language whose IDEs represent object-classes as icons on a flow chart. Sit back and enjoy, I hope you love it as much as I did.

PSBTW: There is a section that needed to be, shall we say censored. I kinda wish Peter flubbed more so I could get in more of my sound-byte.

Link to the show [ via ohmypod.net ]

Yay, my MacBook is back from the repair depot! I would have had it sooner, if the “Genius” recognized the bad section of my HD and sent my lappy out for service from the store. Since I wasn’t charged for the “Genius” service, I’m not going to complain too much.

Thanks to the ease of restoring user preferences, I did not have much to do with a clean HD. I installed the base 10.4.6, transferred apps from the trusty PowerBook, imported my user information, and system updates, resulting in a fully cloned system within one hour and a half.

I’m back to being the subversive mac user in the sea of windows pc users here in the enterprise… excelsior!

Earlier last week, I noticed a spider web on the driver-side mirror and thought nothing of it. Every day, I’d drive the sixty-four miles from to work and back, and this tough little monkey still manages to hang on for dear life subsisting on the odd gnat that floats by my car. When not out weaving the web or partaking of other arthropods, the spider hides behind the mirror which one would think since the housing is black it would be scorching hot for the little arachnid.

I do not try to mess with the spider or take down the web since in many Asian cultures consider spiders as good luck. My sense of communion and affection for the spider was put to the test when I had my car cleaned in preparation for my road trip. A byzantine process of multi-stage washes then meticulous drying stages orchestrated by a dozen, if not more people, would prove to be nothing to my spider. The side-mirrors do get a good douching and dried with compressed air. Thinking that my eight-legged talisman was lost forever, I felt that my luck had run dry.

Here in Chicago, weeks after seeing the first spider web, tootling down a four-lane expressway… the spider comes out! Sensing that the wind was too strong, it crawled back into the mirror’s housing. I can feel my luck coming back to me.