Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

Question: What do you call a laptop computer with a non-functioning battery and no power supply?

Answer: An expensive paperweight.

Yes, I forgot to pack my power supply before heading west on Tuesday. So I get to the hotel planning to get some work done only to be met with the “doh!” moment of realization that my laptop is no longer my friend. Hey, it”s not like I”m here to launch the project I”ve been working on for four months or anything.

Worse yet, I”m relying on my laptop to recharge the iPod.

But I managed to borrow power supplies and batteries Tuesday and yesterday, then conned a co-worker flying back this morning into leaving me his power supply so I can stop being a power gypsy for the rest of my trip.

- On the flight out, I heard a faint male voice coming over the intercom, so I figured it must be the pilot coming on with information about our arrival time (we got off late), so I pulled out the earbuds to find the pilot - I”m not making this up - doing trivia. What year did the U.S. go off the gold standard? How old is Ashley Judd (who had a birthday Tuesday), etc. Hopefully this was the superfluous pilot and not the guy actually flying the plane. And no (as a co-worker asked), I wasn”t flying AirTran. This was Delta.

- I”m in an XM-equipped G6 again, and I can more surely say now that XM”s programming sucks. If you want satellite radio, get Sirius.

I love that there”s controversy circling around Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the pick-a-pope conclave gets underway in the Vatican.

Ratzinger”s comments about “a dictatorship of relativism” is coming under fire from some Catholics as being - apparently - too Catholic.

What the good Cardinal said, in effect, is that Catholics should follow Catholicism. You know, the actual religious order founded by Friends of Jesus back in the day. Catholicism teaches things like “divorce is bad and not allowed”, “if you”re not a good Catholic, you”re going to hell” and other things that can really bring down a weekend in Vegas.

Of course, a lot of Catholics (especially in the U.S.) don”t particularly like all these rules, and look for ways around them. Annulment is a fabulous loophole for a church that won”t recognize divorces, for instance. Married seven years? No problem! I”m sure we can squeeze out an annulment somewhere.

Then there”s the whole P.R. nightmare of a doctrine that assigns 83% of the world”s population to eternal damnation.

So The Ratz, obviously not happy with the notion that the Church should be a kinder, gentler place - and the treatment of the conclave as a political caucus where pope candidates are vetted against standards such as “media presence” - used his last public statement before being sequestered into pope-picking to give a shout-out to old-school religious rigidity:

“Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism,” Ratzinger said. “Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching,” looks like the only attitude acceptable to today”s standards.

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one”s own ego and one”s own desires.”

Damned right.

If you”re going to have a religion, people, have a religion! If there are rules, follow them. If you”re not going to follow the rules, don”t claim to be a part of the religion that has these rules.

Now get in there and pick me a pope!

So TCL and I ended up catching The Kills last night at The EARL. With their set not kicking until 12:15 on a Thursday night, the other potential attendees pooned.

They were as advertised and expected; which was somewhat of a disappointment. Their records are completely minimalist, and the live show pretty much re-creates the recorded vibe. And while using digital tracks on a record isn”t so bad for a two-person outfit, plugging a lot of bass and syth tracks into the little machine sitting on stage seems a bit like a crutch.

If Jack White and Dexter Romweber can pull off live shows with just a cheap guitar and a drummer, The Kills should be able to get by with two guitars and a drum track.

But, then again, The Kills are probably 55% “art” and 45% music. I read a preview of their show in Orlando this morning in which the experience was described in part as:

“As the show goes on, Mosshart and Hince inch closer to each other, gradually slipping into a combustible reverie that seems to shut out everything else. Eyes lock across microphones that now face each other, sexual tensions and emotional obsessions voiced with vitriolic urgency in such songs as “Kissy Kissy” or the new two-part “I Hate the Way You Love” and “Love Is a Deserter.”"

I remember one point in the show where they put the mics across from each other, but this whole theatrical subtext was lost on me, I guess. I was there for some rock “n roll.

And, of course, to check out Alison Mosshart. She”s like the female equivalent of an Eddie Vedder or somebody - objectively not necessarily all that good-looking, but by virtue of her being a rock chick, she”s freaking hot.

And she certainly lived up to that.

There”s a great Hollywood-type event that”s going to be played out in Alabama and Georgia today. The Feds have to get pissed-off Christian bomber Eric Robert Rudolph from a Birmingham courthouse to one here in Atlanta (so he can cop pleas to his bombings), and then back to his cell in Birmingham.

John Law fears potential problems both from pro-abortion and/or pro-gay and/or pro-Olympic Park concert people who might want to kill Rudolph and from Christians and/or anti-abortion and/or anti-gay and/or anti-Olympic Park concert people who might want to liberate Rudolph - or maybe also kill him as a martyr.

Where”s Clint Eastwood when you need him?

Word on the street is that the Feds will likely use decoys, diversions and other tactics to throw potential wackos off the trail. The convoy of cops that will no doubt be seen on I-20 today might have Rudolph with them, or maybe he”s on an FBI plane landing at Peachtree DeKalb Airport. Or maybe there will be two planes - or three - all landing at different Atlanta airports and deplaning in secret inside hangars. Maybe each flight will be followed by a convoy to the courthouse, with Rudolph riding in one of them - perhaps.

Could be they”re all decoys and Rudolph actually travels in the back of a lone minivan driven by an FBI agent who happens to resemble a soccer mom.

I hope some screenwriter is taking notes on this. It should be fun.

I don”t look to make The Wisdom a sounding board for my personal life (I prefer to set the standard for online commentary about weighty issues of the day - that or writing about my Mac Mini), but for those of you closely following The Cap”n”s adventures in dentistry …

I went back in yesterday to have the cotton holding the guts of my soul-less tooth together replaced with a permanent “filling”. But, as it turns out, “filling” is not an accurate description of what now lives within my least-favorite molar.

“Rebar” is perhaps a more accurate description. I don”t know if this is standard for root canals, but what was required to stabilize my cracked-to-the-core molar was a dozen or so little rods driven through the tooth void deep into my jaw.

It didn”t really hurt when they did it, but a day later it still kind of feels like I got in a barfight. And now I get to spend a month with a semi-complete tooth fix so we can see if the rebar takes and firms everything up before the crown goes on.

That means there”s still a chance the tooth will have to come out, which would kind of suck after all I”ve been through to save the bastard.

[editor"s note: The Cap"n erroneously reported - and believed - that this procedure was to have taken place a week ago. The Cap"n regrets any inconvenience this may have caused readers of The Wisdom and also regrets making a pointless trip to the dentist"s office, especially since The Gap wasn"t having a sale. The Cap"n will no longer attempt to understand appointment dates while under the influence of novocaine.]

Turns out I”m not clever enough to be able to take a DVRed snippet of Tiger Woods” chip-in on the 16th hole yesterday and edit it together with Chapter 27 from my Caddyshack DVD using iMovie to create a re-cut scene where Ty tells Tiger “If you miss it, we lose”, Al Czervik bets Judge Smails bets double-or-nothing Tiger makes it and Carl”s explosions lead into “It”s a birdie!”

Too bad. “Hey everybody - we”re all gonna get laid!” would have been beautiful over the shot of Tiger making out with his hottie wife afterwards.