SFX reports that Neil Gaiman will be writing an episode for the second Matt Smith season of Doctor Who. Hooray!

(Spent part of my snowed-in weekend catching up on the last adventures of the Tenth Doctor, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time. Very well done and a fitting sendoff.)

There's something about this area where I live, the Patapsco Valley around Catonsville and Ellicott City, that's special. Call it the genius loci, call it the kami of the river and the forest, call it cultural geography, ley lines, whatever, but somehow there's a cluster of interesting people that have ended up around here. Some of them are just a little off (perhaps I should include myself there and say some of us!); some are kooky but functional, like the always interesting musician and activist Bob Pyle, subject of Sara Michener's short film Bobumentary (can't find a link right now but hope someone will give one in a comment); and some are vagrants, living in the woods around the river valley.

Even the vagrants aren't just random homeless people; you get the impression that in a slightly different world, a saner and more humane one, they would be artists or shamans -- or perhaps even Emperors.

One of these was a man known as "Backpack Ed".

If you spent time in Ellicott City, you probably saw him walking the streets or hanging out in Tiber Park. I didn't really know him, but he was a familiar face, and I'd nod and say "hi" whenever I passed. A lot of locals, though, knew him pretty well.

Last night, Ed was struck and killed by a train. I've walked along that stretch of track. We'll probably never know, but it is hard to believe that someone could be struck accidentally.

Sara wrote a moving note about him:

He was the town's Gollum; Everyone who knew him well enough, knew things couldn't possibly end well for him. He didn't have the support network that other vagrants in town had. And everyone who knew him more closely, shared with that feeling the hope that he would one day surprise us. But the eerie feeling last night among the townspeople that I spoke with was the death also of that hope. Both for himself, as he may have chosen to lay on those tracks rather than deal with an impending snowstorm with no place to stay, and for us, who were always pulling for him.

That's a hell of a thing to think about, that we live in a society where some people make a million dollars a year, and others are so desperate and hurting that rather than face a harsh winter they will lie down on the tracks. This is not due to some inviolate law of nature, it is not a consequence of physics or chemistry. It is because we have chosen to organize our society in this way.

I don't have any easy answer as to how to change that. All I can do right now is say, rest in peace, Ed.

Yesterday the lovely and talented Sara Michener texted me: "See my [Facebook] wall about a puppy." A friend of hers had a rescued pup, found on the street in Pigtown, that she was trying to find a home for.

There were cute photos, too, and so I talked to the folks who had rescued and were fostering him, Jillian and Issac, and arranged to go meet him tonight.

And so now there's a dog napping -- snoring, even -- in my room.

They had named him Bingo, but that didn't quite click with me. As soon as I got him in the car, it hit me: not Bingo, but Ringo! My mom's favorite Beatle; when I was a wee bitty lad, she had a car she named Ringo, so that makes it a venerable family name.

You never know the full history with a street dog, of course, but he's estimated to be about four months old, a good ol' American mutt, maybe some boxer, maybe some pit bull. He's a sweetheart; when Jillian, Issac, and I were talking, he lied down next to me, put his head in my lap, and went to sleep. That pretty much sealed the deal.

So, here we are at the start of a new adventure: the Ringo years.

I've got a fairly slow DSL line out here at the Secret Headquaters: a 384k symmetric DSL line. Now that's faster than dial-up, but a lot slower than cable or other DSL services. (I have my line with Cavalier, and other than the speed have been generally satisfied.

I'm just barely close enough to the CO (the telephone company "central office") to get DSL service, and because of the distance have been told I can't get a faster line. So I've been looking at options.

There's cable, but a) Comcast sucks, and b) a cable connection is shared with everyone on your block. There are performance and security concerns with the whole setup.

So I was thinking about Verizon's FiOS. Now, yes, Verizon also sucks, so I was reluctant to consider it, but I figured I'd at least check it out.

So I sent them an e-mail with some questions: technical ones like the availability of static IP addresses, and billing ones about the fees they might tack on. (I do not understand how it is legal for telcos to advertize a $49.95 price and then add a whole bunch of unmandated "fees" on top of that, as much as $20 more. Not taxes, mind you, that their competitors would also have to charge, but "fees" that they choose to charge but don't include in the price you sign up for. How is this not fraud? Grrr.)

The response from Verizon? "In order to provide you with the best customer service, please contact our Verizon FIOS Sales and Customer Service department at (800) 837-4966 Monday through Friday, between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM Eastern Time."

Uh, no. I took the time to write out my questions so that we could have precise communication. I do not want to wait on hold to talk to a salesdroid in your customer service department. If you are not willing to answer my questions in writing, if this is how you treat a potential customer, then thank you, but no, we will not be doing business.

(So now I'm considering Sprint's 4G wireless. Not as fast as FiOS, but they did get right back to me when I e-mailed them questions.)

Zelda's Inferno exercise: supported free-write around the phrase, "To focus & believe creates what you want, like prayers over a Rose Bush will Burst Blooms!" A long one, so I played with it piece by piece, and ended up with a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.

to focus and believe creates
creation via an act of mind -- only what we believe in, focus on, exists --

at least for us

to focus and believe create what you want
what you want
what do you want?
to know what you want is deep wisdom
you can never get enough of what you didn't really want
and so we spend our days chasing the wrong things
eating food that will not fill us

to focus and believe
to believe to behave to beehive to be or not to be
to focus to folk us, us folk, we
we believe
we retrieve
we re-believe, again and again and again

to focus and believe creates what you want, like prayers
now I lay me down to sleep, hail mary, who art in heaven, bless us o lord and these thy gifts, for we believe in one god
or two, or three, or a hundred, or a thousand, or zero
we believe in minus one god
we believe in the square root of minus one god
we believe in an imaginary number of gods, in an irrational number of gods, in a transcendental number of gods, in an aleph-null number of gods, in a square number of gods, in a perfect number of gods, in a prime number of gods

"What is there of the divine in a load of bricks? What is there of the divine in a barber's shop?...Much. All." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (Journal, July 18 1834)

This week's Zelda's Inferno exercise: a list poem, around the theme of music

my father's old guitar, sitting in the corner of my office
my grandparents' piano in the living room, that I don't really know how to play
a bamboo flute, a thumb piano -- both gifts
my Ovation guitar, veteran of numerous camping trips and a voyage to Japan, the
    guitar I played in an art center in Kyoto and a
    basement bar in Osaka
old cassette tapes, sliding toward dead media
an old tarnished guitar string coiled up in the bottom of a desk drawer
a folder of song lyrics and chords, songs I've covered, another thin folder with
    those I've written
a bag of mics and cables and music gear, the truth of the expensive hobby

and memories:
guitar as a security blanket at parties, something to hide behind
concerts -- Peter Paul and Mary with my parents, the Dead (and all a show
    entails) with friends
a violinist who used to play the open mics, slightly crazy goth chick,
    taking her for a ride late one summer night
my uncle playing and singing at the family gatherings
playing on 9/11, and the day after -- and at a party the weekend
    before, the change in what it all meant in just a few days
walking through a subway station in Boston on a warm September Sunday
    afternoon, and a man with an electric guitar was
    playing the music that was in my head

Dear friends, I'm very sad to inform you all that Piccolo, one of the truly great dogs, left us on January 20.

She had been in declining health since the end of last year. In early January, she began to lose her appetite, and I took her in (again) to see a vet. This time she was diagnosed with kidney failure, and the prognosis was very poor -- I was advised that there was nothing to be done except euthanasia.

Rather than make a hasty decision, I went to Falls Road Animal Hospital for a second opinion. Piccolo spent a week in intensive care there, and while her urea, creatinine, and phosphorus levels came down (though still not to normal levels), she did not regain her appetite. She was apparently feeling nauseous, possibly due to ulcers. She was put on stomach protectants, but still didn't start eating.

I brought her home on Saturday, and while I continued to care for her, administering subcutaneous fluids and the stomach meds and trying to tempt her with old favorite foods and many new options, she didn't improve. While she was not in pain, because she was weakening and lethargic, and apparently dizzy and confused, and still not eating or showing signs of recovery, I made the very difficult decision that rather than let nature take its course, I would choose euthanasia on her behalf. She passed peacefully here at home while I was with her.

I'm very glad that Saturday, the day I brought her home, was also the day of my 40th birthday party. I'm grateful that this meant that many friends were able to come and say farewells to this wonderful dog in the final days of her life.

A memorial web page has been set up at http://infamous.net/piccolo.php