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Crazy Monkey Shoes

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Three weeks ago I saw a kid on my flight with some weird looking aqua-socks on. They had separated toes kind of like the old rainbow knee socks that were so popular back in the 70s. I asked him if they were comfortable and he said, “definitely.” I didn’t have time to ask more (we were on our way up the jetway) and let it go at that.

I soon forgot about the whole thing, but my toes locked up pretty severely yesterday (I’m developing hallux rigidus in both feet) and hurt a lot. I remembered the conversation and did a quick search. I was expecting to have to search for awhile, but apparently I’ve stumbled upon (no pun intended) a burgeoning fad: barefoot running. Everything old is new again, I suppose.

So I went out yesterday and bought a pair of Vibram Five Fingers, or “Crazy Monkey Shoes” as John Biggs at CrunchGear terms them.

They are butt ugly. And they are wonderful.

Most of the time, I have a moderate pain when walking. Kind of like a really low-grade headache that you know is there but don’t really feel anymore. But every so often, one or both of my big toes just locks up at the first joint and it’s all I can do to not unleash a stream of obscenities that could flash fry a Gorton’s beer battered fish filet. I end up limping for ten to fifteen minutes while my toe figures out that it isn’t actually caught in a Chinese finger trap and works itself loose.

I have four normal pairs of shoes. Two pair of basic Adidas tennis shoes (basic basic… none of this hyper-developed high resolution supercharged stuff with onboard circuitry), a pair of Rockport brown wingtips, and a pair of Johnston & Murphy black wingtips. I like all of them. The Adidas are occasionally painful, the Rockports about the same, and the Johnston & Murphy are frequently excruciating. None of this is the fault of the shoes themselves – they’re all actually quite comfortable with roomy toe boxes – it’s my feet. My halluxi (halluxes, hallu?) just don’t get along with them.

So enter these crazy monkey shoes. After some cursory research, I figure it’s worth a gamble. It can’t really be any worse, and I do notice that my toes almost never lock up when I’m barefoot around the house. I wore them to walk the dog in the park next to my building and it was one of the weirdest things ever. I could feel the ground and the cracks in the pavement, but only just barely. The best way I can describe it is that these things are like growing an instant protective callus on the bottom of your feet. The real weirdness, though, came from knowing that I really didn’t want to be barefoot in that park.

Last night, I wore them to an NBA game and, aside from being horribly self-conscious about the look, was amazingly comfortable. I started noticing other people’s shoes, though, and realized that we have some really REALLY odd things that we do to our feet. After looking at a pair of 3 inch stiletto boots with new eyes, I didn’t think the Vibrams were quite so odd. And “normal” running shoes are equally hideous looks, it’s just that we’re now used to them.

I (now) know they’re trendy. I know they’re hippie shoes. But my toes didn’t lock up one single time yesterday.

Now if I can just figure out how to wear these damn things to work…

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No MyAlRecMo. Yet.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The fates have conspired against me and forced me to postpone December as my month to write and record an album. I’ve had some gear malfunctions, had to completely disassemble the studio due to a move, and ended up needing to be in Texas more than I had originally planned on. That said, I plan on spending some of the holiday time doing some writing and getting the studio back into shape. I’m now shooting for somewhere in Q1.

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MyAlRecMo?

Thursday, October 15, 2009

You may be familiar with NaNoWriMo, or “National Novel Writing Month,” in which people are encouraged to overcome their own personal inertia and write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I’ve been intrigued with the idea since I first heard about it a few years ago, but fiction writing has always been an area that I’ve studiously avoided. I have enough trouble self-critiquing my lyrics and declaring them stupid before I’ve even finished the third line — I can only shudder in horror at the thought of reading over my own fiction.

Still, the idea is sound and something I actually wrote about in a song to myself back in the late 90s:

You don’t know what you can do until you do it.
And you won’t know what you can get through ’till you get through it.
There’s a world waiting for you, go pursue it.
There’s nothing left to stop you, so go to it.

For awhile it worked, but I’ve been in a funk for over six years now and haven’t written a thing worth mentioning. I’ve started thinking about music more and more lately, though, and NaNoWriMo has the right idea. It’s defined. There’s a ticking clock. There’s a clear measure for success.

I first thought that, in solidarity with my literary bretheren, I’d would tackle the musician’s equivalent of writing a novel — recording an album — in November. Then I remembered that I’ll be in Texas for 20 days of it. While I’ve gotten a pretty decent mobile studio started down there, it’s not quite ready for all of the work I’d need to do.

So I’m shifting My Album Recording Month back to December. I’ll be in Milwaukee for all but four days of it, so the time is good. What I haven’t quite decided yet is whether this will be a brand new set of songs, reworkings of older stuff, or something in between. I also haven’t decided what kind of music it will be or if I might do some pre-production work ahead of time. The main thing is that I want to have final recordings either on their way to CD duplication or making their way to something like the iTunes online store by the end of 2009.

I’ll be keeping a diary of progress here, so stay tuned if you’re interested.

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The New Math

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I know it’s an era of Obamanomics and new math that somehow makes it possible to spend $800,000,000,000 and simultaneously reduce the deficit without raising taxes, but even in the middle of all of that, I think credit card companies have finally gone completely crazy.

I opened a GM Card in… oh… 1991 or so. It seemed like a pretty good deal – I got a certain percentage of money back that I could apply directly toward the purchase of any GM car. Well it seemed like a pretty good deal at the time, anyway. Now it’d be kind of like getting a discount on a Pacer.

So I’ve had this card for 18 years (or thereabouts). It’s never been my lowest interest rate card, but it wasn’t too bad either. I used it as a backup card and rarely carried a balance. It was useful when Mary and I wanted to track total project costs as we did recently. I put about $6,000 on the card three or four months ago and have paid that down to $900: a fairly typical pattern that must make them salivate because my credit limit keeps going up.

Seriously, it’s almost stupid. $21,000 stupid. I once called them and asked if they could reduce my credit limit. After they got finished laughing, they told me that 1) nobody had ever asked that before, and 2) no. I didn’t worry about it, though. I minded my business and they minded theirs. I never could figure out if it was good or bad for me to have a card with that much room on it from a credit score standpoint but I’d had it a long time, which I know is a good thing.

Over the last several years, Mary and I purged our super-high interest rate cards and the GM card, at around 16%, became my highest interest card. Again, not worried about it, as I hadn’t carried a balance in years and paid it off quickly whenever I used it.

This weekend I got mail (that’s pre-printed email for you youngsters out there) from HSBC, the company behind my GM credit card. They explained to me that Great Things™ were about to happen.

  1. My monthly statements will now include helpful information like how long it will take to pay off if I only make the minimum payment
  2. Anything over the minimum payment will be applied toward my highest interest balances which might save me money on interest charges. (Emphasis mine)
  3. I would now have an optional overlimit authorization where I could decide if I wanted the ability to go over my credit limit for a fee.

The telling bit at the end of this amazing list: “Further information about the upcoming changes will be communicated to you once final regulations are issued.”

Regulations.

Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.

Oh and there was something about an interest rate change taking place on December 13 that I might want to read about on a separate page, but only if I really felt like it. It’s not that big a deal. It’s just a minor adjustment.

Ok, that’s not fair. They did put it in big bold letters at the beginning of the letter, but how can I slam evil capitalists if they’re actually trying to communicate with me. In this case, however, I don’t need them to try and slip something past me; what they’re advertising is bad enough.

So I flip over to the next page to find out that my interest rate will be going up. Way up. To 22.49%, a 30% increase. I get nervous thinking that perhaps I missed a payment or they found out I thought the bank bailouts were unconstitutional and a bad idea.

So I called and spoke with a friendly-sounding person with a vaguely Eastern European accent. I told her about the letter and asked if that was correct information. She said yes. I asked if I had done anything to warrant my interest rate going up.

She laughed nervously and said, “No sir, this is a business decision that has been made by HSBC and is being applied to all customers.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, sir, I’m very sorry about that.”

“You’re raising everybody’s interest rate above 20%?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And it doesn’t matter that I’ve been a good customer for 18 years?”

“Unfortunately, no, sir. I’m sorry about that.”

“And is there anyone I can talk to that can authorize a lower rate for me?”

“No sir, but you can opt out of the change.”

“And not have use of the card anymore…”

“Right. Again, I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

I told her I understood that it wasn’t her decision or her fault, but that it was one of the most monumentally stupid business decisions I’d ever heard of.

Now my first reaction is to cancel my card, but that would be a mistake. In the murky world of credit scores, a long relationship is a very good thing. This is one of my oldest cards, so canceling it has the potential to drop my credit score by as much as 100 points according to some advisors. Not the best choice.

Instead, I will simply pay off the card, take it out of my wallet, and file it away. I might make one or two purchases on it a year just to keep some activity on the account, but they will be small and paid off before interest is due. To HSBC, that scenario is apparently preferable than me carrying a balance at a lower interest rate.

So the new math, according to these wunderkinds, is that 16% of $1,000 is worse than 23% of $0. These are the geniuses that Congress has decided are too big to fail and, thus, deserve not only the money I give them as a customer, but some of my tax payments as well.

It’s almost enough to make me want to go into politics…

Filed in Inside My Head, Rants 'n Raves, The Sharpest Tacks, What Does It REALLY Cost? | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Outside of The Asylum

Thursday, May 14, 2009

In his grossly inaccurately named five-volume Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, Douglas Adams came up with an ingenious character named Wonko the Sane. Wonko called himself that because he had determined that he was the only sane person on earth.

After coming to this conclusion, Wonko decided that the rest of the world belonged in an asylum, so he built a house to contain the entire world. He built his house inside-out. The inside of the house looked like the outside, while the outside of the house consisted of painted walls, furniture, etc. In this way, by going “into” the house, Wonko and his wife (“Arcane Jill”) could live on “the outside of the asylum.”

So how, you might ask, did Wonko determine that the rest of the world was insane? Well, one day he was unwrapping a toothpick and noticed that the wrapper had printed instructions on how to properly use it. He decided that any society that needed instructions on how to use a toothpick was certifiably insane and should be committed to an asylum.

It is with tremendous amusement and not insignificant trepidation, therefore, that I present you with a link to an article (complete with demonstration video, no less!) found this week on no less august a publication than the Wall Street Journal.

How to wash your hands.

Even disregarding the last five months of fantasyland economics and nationalization, this article proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world has finally gone completely and irrevocably insane.

If you need me, I’ll be at Home Depot getting some building supplies. Heck, I’ll even be contributing to an increase in New Home Construction.

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