This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

A human tends to see what the human expects to see.

That’s it. It’s just the way we put things together in our minds. If there is a gray cat in your neighborhood named JoeBob and you see a gray cat, you’re extremely likely to think it is JoeBob, even it is some other cat altogether.

If your Aunt Mabelline always scowls when she sees you, when you visit and she opens the door — even if she has a perfectly blank expression because she’s having a deja vu about a long-forgotten lover, or maybe her underwear itches — you’ll probably see a scowl on her face.

Because you expected to see something, you ‘Interpreted’ your senses, and you saw it.

Once I had to give up a really cool business name because of this law.

Many years ago, in San Francisco, I decided to start a small business, a telephone answering business. Before the days of email, and even before answering machines, a business would wire an extension from their phone to the ‘telephone answering bureau’ where operators would answer and take messages when the business folks were out of the office.

I wasn’t sure how to name the business, so I invited 25-30 friends over one evening with a keg of beer, and we all sat around the room making up names, of which many were absurd. However, some were good.

I still wasn’t sure which to use, so that first year I used five different names and placed them all the telephone book yellow pages, to see what people would call. As it turned out, they called the most boring and blatant of the names, ie: “A Budget Answering Service” rather than the more fun and esoteric names (“Sundial”, “Western Eclectic”, “Network”, and “Xanadu.”

Now that name ‘Western Eclectic’ was of course a play on words for the US company ‘Western Electric’ which was well known since forever in this country. Once upon a time, Western Electric made every single one of the black telephones used by AT&T, when it was the (only) phone company. And the name ‘Western Electric’ was impressed into the plastic in every handset of every telephone in the USA.

I didn’t want to use this clever name — Western Eclectic — for the answering service, since nobody called its listing in the yellow pages, but since I had a couple of small businesses, I thought it might be cool to have a ‘parent’ company for our vast enterprises, and I liked ‘Western Eclectic.’ Yeah, man. Cool.

Now, at last, to the point …

Humans perceive what they expect. For example, when reading, the human doesn’t spell out the word. They glance at it, grasp its shape, and then since they ‘know’ it, they don’t examine it any further. And that automatic pattern recognition is why spammers can send something saying ‘Vi_8gra’, and all the humans can read it anyway.

But I had to give up the idea of using ‘Western Eclectic’. Here’s why —

When I registered it with City Hall for my business license, they registered the ‘Western Electric‘ company and issued them a business license to take phone calls and put up posters.

The city business-tax authority and the Internal Revenue Service sent tax bills to the Western Electric company, who I suppose they thought lived in my studio apartment in San Francisco.

Not long afterward, I had a very fancy brochure done, and my copyright notice on the brochure was printed as (c) Copyright 1976 Western Electric.

Just because I had written it correctly did not enable people to correctly read it. There was nothing wrong with the people. That’s how reading and pattern recognition works. (If it was different, we’d have to spell everything out like we were in the first grade.)

I realized that there was no alternative but to give up this business name, because it could not be read by humans.

Perhaps this is the reason that humor often works poorly for business names. Because if somebody doesn’t get the joke — and that happens with every joke — then they can’t understand what the business is, and that’s a loss of business right there.

So as you create communications for people, when you move along the tracks that they might expect to see, they’ll follow you well. Go strange on them, and you will lose them.

There. Knowing this valuable Rule-O-Thumb, go forth and prosper.

Mount Shasta, February 1, 2007: As of noon today, my voicemail business is adios, muchachos.

I’ve sold my interest in that company, and will no longer be running it. No longer to be answering that phone, saying those words, operating those particular computers, no longer doing that billing. And to those thousands of clients whom I served for the last twenty years, I am deeply grateful to have been a part of your lives.

I’m grateful to Abe’s SuperBudget Voicemail, the entity created, which took on a life of its own, relaying the messages that lie at the center of hopes and dreams, good times, and in the center of the comings and goings of so many lives. I’m glad to have been able to create this service, and I’m grateful that so many found it useful.

And I’m grateful to Abe’s for providing food and shelter for my family and myself, all these years. Thank you for the whole-wheat bread, thank you for the vegetables, thank you for the coffee and tea, cookies and cakes, yoghurt, honey, and rich creamery butter. Thank you for everything!

It will go on, Abe’s will, providing those useful services, keeping folks in touch with the worlds in which they live, they strive, they seek their fortunes, they find their loves. Let it serve you well. The company is in good hands. Only, it has passed from mine.

For my hands have found other occupation … creating music, fun, and happiness to stream out into the universe, for other lives, for other loves, for other travelers in this world.

So on behalf of myself and my family, in the words of Dorothy Collins, Giselle McKenzie, and Snookie Lansen, singing so long ago …

“So long, for a while. That’s all the songs for a while. So long to your Hit Parade, and the tunes that you wished to be played … so long.”

AllAboutJazz.com, October 21, 2004: The following excerpt is blatently stolen from AllAboutJazz.com. There’s lots more good stuff at AllAboutJazz.com, if you’re interested in jazz. But this superlative interview with Yogi Berra may be of interest even if you aren’t …

Can you explain jazz? I can’t, but I will. 90% of all jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it’s wrong.

I don’t understand. Anyone who understands jazz knows that you can’t understand it. It’s too complicated. That’s whats so simple about it.

Do you understand it? No. That’s why I can explain it. If I understood it, I wouldnt know anything about it.

Are there any great jazz players alive today? No. All the great jazz players alive today are dead. Except for the ones that are still alive. But so many of them are dead, that the ones that are still alive are dying to be like the ones that are dead. Some would kill for it.

What is syncopation? That’s when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In jazz, you don’t hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be jazz, but only if they’re the same as something different from those other kinds.

Now I really don’t understand. I haven’t taught you enough for you to not understand jazz that well.

[Thank you, AllAboutJazz.com!]

Mount Shasta, July 7th, 2005: Daisy, our little white border collie is one year old. From the basement today Adrienne brought the plastic swimming pool. It’s just a Toys ‘R Us special, about four feet across and perhaps eight inches deep. She’d bought it for the dogs, for the hot weather.

On the back deck, she filled it up with cool, clear water.

Tonight after supper, with the sun aslant from beyond the mountains to the west, and the mountain beyond our back yard glowing peach-colored, we sat out back drinking iced tea after supper.

Daisy noticed, for the first time, the little fish printed on the bottom of the plastic pool.

At first I was puzzled at her dipping her head into the water, and biting at the water. Suddenly, I saw it. If I just forget what I know about the refraction of water, then what my eyes actually see are the painted fish wiggling as the water moves, and the wiggling fish are just barely below the surface.

Therefore, any good dog, who was quick enough, ought to be able to bite one of those wiggling fish!

Again and again she circled the edge of the plastic pool, biting into the water. Bite, bite, bite, bite, bite!

See funny Spot!

Plunging her head down into the water — bite, bite, bite, bite, bite! — and then she would lift up, to clear the water from her nose and mouth. She’d look at us, puzzled, as the water poured down from her chin.

We were laughing, and I greatly admired her persistance, and then this made me think about the Angels.

Angels always seem so solemn. They aren’t human, of course. So I wonder: Can Angels laugh?

Is it in them that they can laugh? Can they understand strife? Pain? Release? Freedom? Is anything funny to the Angels? Can you picture an Angel, laughing?

I hope they can.

I hope they can laugh. Because just as we can see how Daisy is caught up in illusion, so too must God see us, caught up, day by day, in illusion.

It must be very funny to God. At least, I’d like to think God is getting the good of it. And that’s why I hope that the Angels can laugh, because surely it will be so much more fun for God, if He’s got somebody to share the joke.

Seattle, Summer 1961: My friend Lefevre and I looked up at the towering building and gawked like hicks. Eighteen years old I was, just graduated from high school.

“Gawrsh,” I said.

It was a grand adventure. The best one yet.

In study hall, while studying Life magazine, I’d seen the photographs of the Seattle World’s Fair. Photographs of the towering, unique ‘Space Needle’. It was far from Henrietta, Texas. It was on the West Coast, way north of fabled California, where I was born but really didn’t remember

Jerry was three years older. He’d graduated earlier, an artist, and he was working at a ritzy department store in Wichita Falls, arranging their windows, and I found him in a back room, standing over an empty Coca-Cola bottle, holding an unlit cigarette four feet above the bottle.

“You see,” he said, pointing to the shadow on the floor, which showed him, the bottle, and the unlit cigarette in his hand, “if you get the shadow lined up right, you can drop the cigarette into the bottle.” He let go of the cigarette.

It fell four feet, and slithered into the coke bottle. As always, I was impressed. But I had bigger game on my mind.

“Do you want to go to the Seattle World’s Fair this summer?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “We’ll camp out, and take v8 juice and lettuce. Just the ticket.”

And so we made our plans.

We’d work through the summer — me as a laborer on a construction job, and him at the department store. We’d save our money. Then we’d pack my gray Dodge Lancer with camping gear. And we’d go.

We would drive diagonally across the country from Texas to the Northwest. We’d stay for 3-4 days. Then we’d drive down the coast and see San Francisco, and also some girl he knew in Los Angeles. I think he had a plan for that girl, but that’s the one part that didn’t happen.

At the end of summer, Jerry made a sign on the department store’s printer that said ‘Seattle or Bust.’ We taped it to the back of the Dodge Lancer, where it covered ‘The Spook’ which I’d had painted on the car, and of which Jerry did not approve, as it just wasn’t cool. We loaded the trunk with borrowed camping gear, a coleman stove and lantern, and a box with salami, instant coffee, beer, white bread, and other nutritious foods. And we went.

The second day out we arrived in Creed, Colorado, where we met up with the family of my high school sweetheart. This got us a free dinner. Having no money for hotels, we then went to find a camping spot. We’d arrived late, and had to settle for casting about for a vacant field which we found. There Jerry, rather drunk from beer, and enraged when I chided him for some disparaging remark he made about a Mexican, attempted to strangle me for a while.

It didn’t seem like the best beginning, but we were very tired, and after the attempted murder we grew sleepy, and fell into drunken slumber on the seats of the car.

In the morning, we awoke to discover that we’d parked in the middle of a field belonging to a racing stable, and the jockeys were exercising horses all around us. Eschewing coffee in favor of a quick get-away, we were back on the road, and drove for several more days, to find a campground not far from the World’s Fair. They had a shower. That was a good thing at this point.

At the Fair, we marveled at exhibits of blonde Danish furniture, astounding cars of the Future, and sandwiches billed as ‘Mongolian Beef.’ (I wondered how they got the beef here from Mongolia, and how the guys who cooked them had learned such good English.) And the next day for lunch we rode the amazing elevator to the top of the Space Needle, where a round restaurant proudly served us menus with prices to stop a young cowboy’s heart. We settled on the cheapest item, a corned-beef sandwich for a resounding $4.50, stiffed the waiter, and watched the scenery.

As you probably know, the round restaurant at the top of Seattle’s Space Needle has windows all around, and the entire restaurant slowly revolves, once per hour. Which means that the scenery you’re looking at changes during dinner. However, I must report that it doesn’t move very fast, and it doesn’t take very long to eat a sandwich. So I didn’t really see the scenery changing that much. I don’t know why they can’t just have it whirl around much faster, more like a carnival ride. Afterward, the part of the view we remembered the most was the $4.50 price for the sandwich. And it wasn’t even Mongolian Beef!

In Seattle, other attractions found us. Errol Garner was playing, at the museum if I recall correctly, and I heard how he groans the melody out loud while he plays the piano. At the museum, we saw many famous and wonderful painting which I had never heard of. We also ran into a married couple that we knew slightly from Henrietta, Texas. Jerry seemed to brush them off, and we had to go do something else. Once away from them I turned.

“Why didn’t you want to talk with them?” I asked. He grimaced.

“We didn’t really visit with them back in Henrietta,” he said, “so why should we want to stand around here?”

I had no answer for that. It seemed to me that we should have talked to them, though I don’t know what we’d have said, other than exclaiming how we were both there in the Seattle museum, though obviously that part was evident immediately when we saw them. It just seems polite to say hello to people you know when you meet them 2,000 miles away from home. I’m still not quite decided on this point of etiquette.

Finally, Space Needle and sandwiches and museums exhausted, we packed our camping gear and headed down the coast. We’d brought an oversized book which claimed to show all the camping grounds in the USA, and so we were able to drive from campground to campground. And in the book we spotted a likely campground just north of San Francisco. It was called ‘Bootjack Camp’ and to our Texas accents it appeared to be located on Mount Tamalpish.

Arriving tired, and very late at night, and not just a little woozy from some more beer along the way, we drove up an eternally winding narrow road with a huge precipice falling away on the left. We found Bootjack Camp, but no camp sites that were actually flat, and slept on an angle in our sleeping bags beneath the trees, to awake with squirrels running noisily about and birds chirping dementedly. We brewed coffee, packed, and drove back down the road, appalled at the drop-off beside the road, falling down almost forever.

The sun was bright as we drove across the Golden Gate bridge. (It’s actually red-colored, rather than gold, as I’d expected.) We speculated about the story that the engineers tried to prevent a dog or cat from walking across the suspension bridge, on the theory that the animal’s regular footfalls would cause a sympathetic vibration to set up, shaking the cables loose and causing the bridge and all the cars to plummet into the sea. I thought it likely. Jerry thought not. Having thought it over since 1961, I’m inclined to believe he may have been right.

We drove from the bridge to the Marina Green, where some very fancy homes look across the tiny park into the blue of the San Francisco Bay, with Alcatraz a tiny rock far out from the shore. We looked at the ritzy houses, assuming that the houses in San Francisco were probably generally like these houses. They sure were close together, but …

“Gee,” Jerry said, “The houses in San Francisco are really nice.”

We spotted a weird building nearby, and struggling to navigate through a labyrinth of narrow streets, we arrived before it. No sign. No open entrance. Just a huge, round-domed building of a sandstone color, with elaborate two-story columns and each column with an equally tall statue of a woman in Grecian dress leaning upon the column. Before a round portico a lovely pond with swans. Not a soul in sight.

What was it? Like finding a Greek Temple in downtown Dallas. What was it’s purpose? We drove around it. Something caught my eye.

“Stop the car!” I called. He did, and I popped out to run over to the building. There, at the base of the building in the bushes, I’d spotted something irregular. I ran back to the car.

“It’s chicken-wire!” I said. “The whole building’s a fake! It’s made of paper mache or something on chicken wire! It’s not a real building!”

How could such a thing be? Years later, living in San Francisco, I found out. But at the time we were stumped. It was crazy. impossible. Such a thing of beauty. Unused. Unexplained. Unreal.

According to our oversized book, there are no campgrounds in the city of San Francisco, so we had to find a hotel cheap enough, which we finally did. The Hotel Wurlitzer, just outside the Stockton tunnel which links downtown with Chinatown. After some rest, in the afternoon we walked through the tunnel to Chinatown, where we marveled at shop windows containing dried ducks and weird vegetables. Jerry spotted a woman standing at a bus stop across the way.

“There’s a whore!” he whispered. “I’m going to find out how much.” I tugged at his sleeve.

“How do you know?” I asked. He looked affronted.

“I can tell ’em,” he said. And off he went. From my vantage point I watched. He walked up to the woman, and spoke to her. She said something and he went off around the block, arriving from the opposite direction. I looked puzzled at him.

“She told me to ask a cab-driver,” he said.

He got some beer and we drank in the hotel room. I grew sleepy, and he grew adventurous and went out. In the early dawn, he returned and fell into his bed. There was a long and garbled story about his meeting up with an ex-prizefighter named Frankie and their adventures together in bars, and getting thrown off a cablecar. And then Frankie had said he knew where some prostitutes were, but they wound up in a deserted area near the wharf and Lefevre grew afraid that Frankie planned to roll him, and so Lefevre ran away, leaving Frankie standing in the empty street, calling “Jerry! Jerry!”

Unfortunately, Lefevre couldn’t remember the name of our hotel. He knew it was some name like a manufacturer of cornets — Jerry had played cornet in the school band some years before — and so he spent some hours, out of cash and walking, tracking down the Hotel Conn and Hotel Selwin, and other such names.

That day, gawking in amaze at the narrow streets and steep hills and tall houses with no space between them, we drove slowly out of town and started down the coast. We ate cracked crab on a beach. We tried Buffalo Burgers at a shack along the way. We had popcorn and V8 for lunch, which is still a favorite of mine after all these years. We came in time to Los Angeles where Jerry visited the girl, but apparently his plan for her didn’t work out. Just as well by me.

I was ready to go home.

Secret Megatar Laboratory, Mount Shasta, 2/18/2007: For Immediate Release.

Six months and one day ago (8/15/06) Mayor Smokey Barnable of Edgewood cut the ribbon on the new Mobius Factory, declaring August 15th to be ‘Megatar Day.’

Today — six months and one day later — was a banner day in the annals of Megataria, as the first production batch of TrueTapper instruments emerged from the newly-completed Mobius manufacturing facility. Although we’re running warp drives at a mere fraction of the speed of light, precision and alignment are holding well, according to Engineering.

Megatar-starved earthlings rejoice. Additional music generators on the way!

A small Japanese marketplace, 1959: My uncle Eugene, known as Commander Hurn in the Navy, was in charge of finances of a navy base in Japan, and had to learn to speak Japanese.

That’s why he understoodd what the men said behind him in the marketplace. One man laughed, turning to the other.

“Look at the Yankee Devil,” he said quietly, “and the red socks he wears.”

Commander Hurn stiffened, and turned slowly, all dignity, to glare down from his 5′ 11″ height at the shorter men.

“Those are not my socks,” he said slowly, in Japanese. “That is my underwear. And therefore it is not your concern.”

The Japanese embarass easily. The men blanched, glanced at each other, and scurried away in different directions.

Researchers from Technische University (Munich, Germany) reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association that patients with migraine headaches were helped just as much by acupuncture needles stuck randomly into their bodiese as by needles at the precisely prescribed pressure points.

And nay-sayers claim that acupuncture doesn’t work!

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The Virginia Employment Agency, which handles unemployment compensation, recently laid off 400 of its workers. The reason was that unemployment in Virginia was so low that the unemployment workers had nothing to do.

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A support group for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome based in Nelson, New Zealand, said that its members would generally not attend the public International Awareness Day held to expand awareness of the debilitating illnes. The group chairman said that members would probably not attend, because the members are usually too tired for such events.