Thaddeus Gazette 2/10/99

We wander this fascinating physical plane cloaked in flesh and wrapped in skin, separated and attached to all that is matter and energy, time and space, around us. But physical connection never lasts -- just ask any butterfly. Sooner or later, the bond is dissolved, the flesh evaporates and the bones crumble to dust or mutate to fossils. Living in a body isn't a steady job. Oh well.

But there are other realms than the merely material. Our minds and spirits range free within the collective information universe of our species, a gossimer kingdom of theories and myths and stupid jokes, where all is mutable, the playing field is concave and any kid can grow up to be an archetype. Here, an afterlife, of personality artifacts at least -- or even personality itself, who's to say? -- is a goal attainable by the most mundane of sacred clowns.

Sandahbeth and I have always felt more drawn to informative commemoration than to that more universal alternative, offspring. We tell people who ask us why we don't have kids, "That's all right -- you make the hardware, we'll make the software." Hey, it works for Microsoft, don't it?

And some of what we set out to do, we've done. Our music has been a part of many, many people's lives, and we've busily constructed living metaphors of freedom, fidelity, marital co-creation and the nurturing of communitarian traditions throughout our travels and performances and overnight visits on people's living room floors.

But as I grow older, I begin to feel the need for a more personal hereafter, a little less grandiose, something closer to home. Closer to me. I affirm Woody Allen's line, "Some people seek immortality through accomplishments and good works. I prefer to seek immortality by not dying." But, as we noted before, all flesh is blah blah yadda yadda phooey. However, this past weekend, I was party to a revelation, a premonition of the immortal possiblities, if not of my own sweet ass, at least of an aspect of my personality. It was a heartening and, yes, humbling experience.

Those of you, my fine feathered correspondents, who have spent any time in our company probably know that T Spae is a fix-it kind of guy. Not, perhaps, the formidable McGyver Understands-All type, but at the least, a person with a nodding acquaintance with duct tape, coat hangers and triumph through sheer cussed stupid persistence. A person for whom poverty and itinerant lifestyle have provided stern but enlightening lessons in making inanimate objects go that extra distance. Sometimes literally: one of our vans had been restored from immobility so many times that friends in Arizona dubbed it Lazarus. In my time, I've repaired everything from hot tubs to Macintoshes, from toasters to RV's. My resume of kluge includes experience with chemistry, electronics, internal combustion, hydrodynamics, metallurgy, software, environmental extremes and so much more.

I'd never thought that much about the amount of technical improvisation I've done in my life. One of my joke definitions of car repair (one of the more printable ones, that is) is "Car Repair: a series of insurmountable obstacles which, when overcome, lead to the resumption of the status quo." Like a housewife, a fixit guy's work is never done, and it's most evident in the absence of malfunction within their environment. I'm far (FAR) more likely to remember my (relatively) infrequent failures than dwell on any successes. You're only as good as your last fix.

Last weekend, S and I hopped down to Portland for the birthday party of one of our favorite people, an angelic 3-year-old named Symphony, combined with a quick stay with other old friends, professionals in the local Silicon Rainforest. They welcomed us with open arms and bedded us down in their high-tech living room, next to the big screen tv and the bookshelf loaded with esoteric toys and formidably academic titles.

After a very late night of warm and spirited conversation, the next morning found gravity lingering heavily upon me, and I availed myself of their apparatus for the manifestation of that most enlightening fluid, coffee. The auto-drippper seemed an obvious enough piece of equipment, but I found the switch for starting it frozen. About then my host, as recently restored to consciousness as myself, wandered in. "Oh, just plug it in.," he said. "The switch broke, so I thaddeused it."

Thaddeused?

"Well, I hope you're not offended, but around our house, the term 'to thaddeus' has come to mean, 'To fix something which otherwise would be thrown away, in as cheap and low-tech a fashion as possible, and probably not for very long.' If something breaks and we can make it work by some sneaky trick, we say we've thaddeused it."

Offended? How can I possibly be offended? My name is a verb. I've been neologized. If only in this one small corner of the hideously huge infoverse, an ingrained behavior of mine has become -- dare I whisper it? I shall -- slang. A buzz-word. An inside joke. I'M THE EMBODIMENT OF CRAPPY REPAIR! I -- AM -- A -- GOD!!!!!

Whoo-hoo, that felt good. But there's no point in dwelling on it. I have to get back to work. The hot tub still isn't quite right. And there's that water seepage in the basement. And I still have to move the electrical entry...

I can see there's gonna be lots more opportunities to invoke the God of Fudge around here. I just hope I'm up to the responsibility of being an avatar.