blog-o-rah-mah

On Cat Behavior

2012-01-31T09:17:00.000-06:00

He does this all the time. Why? Does he think he is wearing shoes? Or, a shoe?

Privacy, or, Google Schmoogle

2012-01-30T09:13:00.000-06:00

Once, a long, long time ago, I started a Wordpress blog. I am revisiting this project–if you went there, you could see I posted once already in the distant past and once yesterday–in the event that I must swiftly abandon Google and Blogger and the rest and find myself cut off from the rest of the world like the people in Luddville. It’s because Google is so darn nosey! Anyway, I’m not paranoid, really, and those of you at Homeland Security who are scanning my posts especially, take note of my mental stability, but I am tired of being “targeted” and “specified” and all that advertising stuff, because I sincerely believe that while I will occasionally bemoan the random nature of the universe, I realize that randomness is essential for life to go on, and targeted ads will eventually lead to more and more specific ads, and a narrowing of my interests and activities farther and farther until all that is left is a total darkness amid a deep purple droning tone two octaves below middle-C.

The same point could be made of dating services, something I have been thinking about in a purely academic fashion since Paula has been writing about them, that maybe you don't want to date the seventeen people in your state who match you in twenty-five points of deep compatibility [shudder] or whatever the frak because maybe that person is like your brother or your sister or your "best friend" or someone equally boring. Like the Internet, I am suggesting, maybe dating should be "wide open," if for no other reason than to provide your life with some movement instead of churning around and around, as if Fate is a baby holding a befisted spoon and your life is a bowl of mush. Fate, instead, is a cat, and your life is a breathless mouse with its little heart beating so fast it is humming, or perhaps fate is more like a bolt of lightning, or at the very least a flat tire. Fate is really not like a Swiss watch, and your life is really not like a German train station. (I hope) More like Fate is a sundial that just got backed over by a VW Microbus, or it is the Microbus, and your life is the road, or fate is the road and your life is an armadillo. I could go on and on, but I think I may have already gone too far.

But back to Google and the privacy policy. No problem, but it did remind me that the Internet is primarily an advertising medium and so it is doomed to becoming more and more intrusive and calculated and boring.

World's Biggest Flying Hippo

2012-01-28T15:10:00.004-06:00

Pictured above is some art on a wall bounding a liquor store parking lot in midtown. Just for your edification.

Today Google reminds us that in 1972 Montana hosted the world's largest snowflake.

Montana has 1.4 elk per square mile. Also 1.4 antelope, and 3.3 deer per square mile. When the deer and the antelope play, there are about two deer just standing by. There are 0.4 Indians per square mile in Montana. For every 2.3 square miles, there is one indian, 7.6 deer, 3.2 elk and 3.2 antelope.

If you didn't look, the biggest snowflake was almost 15" in diameter.

Actually Finished Reading a Book

2012-01-23T08:02:00.000-06:00

I finished reading 11/22/63 (Stephen King novel) and, as I do with most SK novels, found the journey interesting but the destination leaving something to be desired–not to be critical, it's just not how I would have ended that story. But then, I lack literary depth and probably read too many Donald Duck comic books when I was a kid. (I could never figure out why sometimes the lawns were yellow, in those comics, until I moved to the midwest.)

But some strange things happened while I read it. The Kingmeister himself talked about the harmonics of the past and the present–what I would call synchronicity–and while I got through the part about the protagonist having language difficulties while stalking L.H. Oswald and his Russian speaking wife, a friend in a faraway place who did not know I was reading that told me that she just had a dream in which I was trying to fix her TV set because it was "in Russian" instead of English. Other things happened, like Paula's poast featuring a poem with missing words the very day I was reading a section of the book where signs had missing letters which changed their meanings. Then, just as I was thinking about these coincidences, and also pondering the slight differences in the "stream of reality," shall we say, caused by our character's rummaging around in the past, and comparing the idea to Heinlein's other parallel worlds in The Number of the Beast, my wife looked up at me from where she sat on the couch, stitching, and said, "This sampler has no letter 'J'." (One of the first worlds discovered by the characters in The Number of the Beast was exactly like our world except there was no letter J.) So, you know, I'm freakin' out, man.

The one thing, Stephen King doing such a superb job of leading the reader by the hand through 1958 to 1963, I could never hope to do so well.

is this or is this not

2012-01-19T07:27:00.000-06:00

I have a "day off" today, because I have nothing to do that can't wait until tomorrow. I wait until Friday to limp my son's motorcycle into the shop for an estimate after some anonymous person backed into it and knocked it over, there are no scheduled get-togethers or breakfasts for today, I don't absolutely HAVE to go to the DMV, although it looms large in the near future, other people in the household are working today, so I don't even have to look busy, and there are plenty of clean underwear.

Life is good.

About the damaged motorcycle: these things happen. It is amazing, though, how expensive the damage will likely be, given the bike just fell over powered only by its own weight and gravity, but each and every little part of those motorcycles is very expensive. For example, a foot peg, like the kind you would rest your foot on while riding, can be $50, not counting the hardware to mount it. Really? Yes, really. Hell, the gas tank is $600, someone told me--and it is damaged in a way that it probably can't be repaired and repainted, not mentioning the fact that a repair would probably cost even more.

What is dismaying is that this make four incidents, now, between my son and his girlfriend, of motor vehicle mishaps in the last few months that are the fault of other people--and in all four of those cases those other people fled the scene. Apparently people just can't be bothered.

I have been thinking about Paula's poasts, and it resonates with something else I have been thinking about. Many things in our lives are not really very big or onerous, but they seem to be. Things in the future can easily loom large in an artificial way, sort of like having to go to the DMV next week. The only cure for that is to stop it. I have found that things I worry about in the future almost never turn out as bad as I thought they would. In fact, when they do, (rarely) I am very astounded, even flabergasted, dumbfounded, and unbelievably annoyed, and I feel compelled to tell everyone around me, usually starting with "I KNEW this was going to happen!" But it's easy to see I didn't really think it would, or I wouldn't be so surprised.

Things in the past of course don't even exist, in the sense that they once existed, then stopped existing, leaving only memories and possibly some trace behavior patterns. And then there are the things that never were things at all, even at the time that we thought they existed. We put labels on groups of ideas then we start thinking they are "things," then mourn their loss when events don't support the ideas anymore.

I'm sure this sounds ridiculous. It does to me. I'm just trying to get my mind around it. So far I'm only just slightly sure that by labeling something, we make it easier to "hang on" to it without having to think much about what it is actually comprised of--or was comprised of--and thus contribute to the source of our unhappiness.

Russia Under the Mongolian Yoke

2012-01-13T08:28:00.000-06:00

The blog title is the sub-title of a section of Alexander Nevsky by Prokofiev, Russian composer. (Maybe. If memory serves.) It is a very thematic piece of music and to me it always supplied the perfect grimly dreary sound track to pulling back the curtains and looking out the window at the mounting, wind blown snow drifts across the driveway. Winter is here. I am not in Santa Cruz. I'm not even in Albuquerque.

OK it's not snowing that had. Maybe not at all, anymore, but when it came it came as a shock. Of course with it came the annual realization by many drivers that with snow comes a special dispensation and all laws of God and man are temporarily suspended. You are no longer required to stop at stop signs. Park where you want. You may run a red light as long as you actually saw it turning from green to yellow to red when you were within 300 feet of the intersection, and in any case, four-wheel drive vehicles always have the right-of-way, or, in the case of a tie, the vehicle with the most mass. And finally, reduced traction caused by snow and ice on the roadway does not require any extra stopping distance. That is an urban myth. Everything's computerized now. Just stomp on the brakes. Anyway, last winter was a long, long time ago and the laws of physics have probably changed since then.

More importantly, there is the phenomenon of aluminum sliding glass door frames getting really cold on the inside surfaces due to the cold air outside. One of those pesky thermodynamic laws which does not go away ever, and in the presence of warm, humidified air causes ice to form on the door frame. And, right, I'm like you: SLIDING glass door. ICE. Things slide on ice, right? It should open even more easily than usual, should you need to let a cat out, or let one in. But NO. Turns out it is more like WELDING the door in place. So, the scenario goes like this: cat weaves in and out of vertical blinds, making them clatter and clatter for a long enough period of time that the clattering pierces the veil of sleep, first insinuating itself as a plot element in whatever dream you're having . . .

Sela Ward: What's that clattering noise??
Me: I don't know. Just ignore it.
Jodie Foster: Whatever it is, it's really distracting.
Sela Ward: Yeah. I'm not in the mood anymore.
Jodie Foster: Me neither

. . . until you find yourself awake and you realize one or both of the cats wants out. You get up and grab the handle of the sliding glass door and pull on it until a sharp pain shoots through your right shoulder. Dimly, you become aware of distant memories from last winter. Oh, yeah, the frikkking door freezes shut when the humidifier comes on. You pick up the cat and carry it to the front door, and let it out there. You go back to bed. Slowly, you approach a state of sleepiness until you hear a tick . . . tick . . . click . . . tick click . . . pop . . . click pop pop and you remember that is the sound the cat's claws make on the rubber seal around the glass on the outside of the sliding glass door because now the cat wants in. You can't leave a cat out for too long, because last night the TV weatherman said "KEEP YOUR PETS INSIDE TONIGHT" so you get back up and go look at the cat through the glass. But of course you still can't open the door. You get dressed so you can walk out the front door and around to the back, then pick up the cat in your arms and CARRY it around to the front and come back inside. The cat is puzzled the whole time, but happy to be warm again and rewards you with NOTHING.

You give up and turn on the coffee maker, maybe write a blog post.

Ramblin' Ramblin' . . .

2012-01-04T10:32:00.001-06:00

Look at the date. Time is flying so fast. New Years Day seems like it was just half a week ago. I actually do have a resolution, though informal, to stick to my workout schedule. It is just to keep my muscle tone good enough to keep my old skeleton from disassembling and keep my lower back aligned properly, and not to chisel my pecs, or whatever. Funny, though, how a commitment of minutes, really, per day can be so inconvenient. As if taking away from precious time spent staring at the wall is going to be a hardship.

Not to even think about establishing a theme for this blog (that would be a drag) but one of the things I have found in retirement is that the more free time you have, the less you can get accomplished. When I was a telephone company repair person, we thought nothing of fixing a line at the airport in the morning, and then driving 40 miles to pick something up across town, maybe then work a couple of trouble tickets before lunch. Oh, and coffee breaks. Now, I get frightened and confused if I have to do two things in one day. "What? I have to go to the store AAANNNNNDD the post office???!!!!"

This is because I need to somehow transport a used motorcycle (Suzuki SV650) to a point 100 miles south so the dealer can fix the brakes. Yesterday I spent some time experimenting with how to dress to ride a motorcycle when it's 35 degrees outside. Here is the list of clothing items which when combined seemed to work:

Boots/socks,
t-shirt,
long johns,
jeans,
flannel shirt,
sweater,
bib overalls,
wool scarf,
one rather snug fitting leather jacket,
another, roomier, leather jacket which also has a "thinsulate®" liner,
gloves,
something called a balaclava,
helmet with face shield.

I rather like the two leather jackets. Except for some air infiltration through the collars and zippers, this is a real good way to cut the wind, although a little cumbersome. However, as a bonus, should I elect to pull into a biker bar parking lot and accidentally knock all the motorcycles over like a row of dominoes (you've all seen the movie) I can, in the ensuing ass-kicking, just kind of roll myself into a ball and wait it out.

Anyway, I finally realized that it's one thing to dress to go out walking, or working, and another to basically just sit in a 50MPH wind for two hours. Oh yeah, that's the other thing: no, don't go 70 MPH.

An old friend is in the hospital recovering nicely from an emergency surgery. He was my best friend in grade school after we met while he and his little sister were climbing a tree behind my house the summer before the third grade, and we have stayed in contact, more or less, since then, and we both carry memories and secrets that will die with us. He is in Minnesota now. So, starting with New Years Eve, we have been texting back and forth. That's what I did for New Years Eve, as a matter of fact. Fitting, really. At least sometimes, it seems like there are no new years.

Last Day

2011-12-31T08:44:00.000-06:00

No one respects or fears me. Otherwise the fact that I don't have a 2012 calendar on my wall would inspire fear of the world ending this very night. It seems like everyone thinks that the world is going to continue, and it is just a matter of me not being diligent enough to buy a new calendar before December 31st. I'm just one man. Not so in the case of the Mayans who, sort of like the early DOS developers who thought 640K was more than enough, failed to keep supplying us with dates so we would know what to do.

I have my own theory regarding people who have nothing more to worry about than the real cause of the twin tower collapse and the moon landing hoax and this latest iteration of the end of the world thing: their lives must be pretty spiffy and squared away as it appears they have nothing left to do. They probably already have their Christmas lights taken down and put away in the basement. Personally, if I thought the end of the world was nigh, I would leave the lights up. Perhaps as a beacon. You never know.

At any rate I felt compelled to post something, one last thing, in 2011. Too bad I seem to have deleted my prior blog so I can't really recall that many specific details from January, 2011 to May, 2011 when this blog started. Not that my posts were comprehensive at all. As I thought of that this morning while still considering the ramifications of getting out of bed, I was kind of dismayed at how little I could actually recall of the personal events in my life this year. Perhaps not coincidentally, they are like old jokes--you can't just sit there and remember them when you want to, but they are still in there and come to mind when needed to add hilarity to any gathering.

Except that joke about the camels and the watering hole. That's just not that funny anymore. But I digress.

Here is a blog post from 2004, about as far back as I can find something on my hard drive. It still makes sense to me today, so there's something . . .

The sun is shining. I have always liked that expression, the sun is shining. It sounds like it could be a line in a Kindergarten rhyme. Up on the wall above the chalkboard there would be a cheerful yellow circle made of construction paper, perhaps with a smile drawn on it, and sunglasses, and wavy yellow rays emanating from it. All because far out in the blackness of space there spins an enormous, raging, perpetual hydrogen and helium explosion creating unimaginable planet-vaporizing temperatures --temperatures so hot that even on a cold winter day 93,000,000 miles away, a little upturned Kindergarten face will be warmed by its rays.

God is an old man with a long white beard and fierce eyes. God's girlfriend is a warm blanket. If you pray to the wrong one, it will wind up doing you no good whatsoever.

You Say You Want a Revolution

2011-12-28T09:31:00.002-06:00

Something happened and now I seem to think of the winter solstice as the marker of a new year, rather than the round number calendar date previously used. Christmas seemed anti-climactic, not surprising given my advanced age and level of cynicism combined with a modest but adequate amount of buying power--witness the two motorcycles--but hopefully I haven't gone off the deep end yet.

No resolutions. At least, not the formal kind where you announce them, take credit, then go on as if nothing happened. A couple of things are actually changing for me, but it's hard to tell because it is sort of a dynamic process involving no one event. I suspect the lack of resolutions might actually be serving to keep the way clear for the real changes that are coming. You can build a levee to stem the tide, but in the end, the sea will win. It always does.

And speaking of dynamic, I did play around the Google's "dynamic" views but, wow, talk about over-eager development and premature release. If the steam powered locomotive was introduced while the technology was in its explosive infancy, we would all be going to Chicago on donkey carts and stuff at this point. Google--wait until it actually works before releasing it. No, not everyone wants to be a beta-tester. I allude to a variety of mixed metaphors, for which I apologize.

I am driving to south Missouri today to look at a motorcycle. It is a Moto Guzzi. I am attracted to the idea of owning one since I am in part, after all, of southern European ethnic extraction. I live in North America, so this would make me molto internazionale! By the way, in my research, I stumbled across an Internet forum argument concerning the proper pronunciation of the name, Moto Guzzi. I understand Moto is going to roll of the American tongue as, "moh doe" but Guzzi is another matter, as we already have a handy reference point in the word, pizza. All of this said, "moh toe GOOTS tsee" kind of sounds affected. As I am going to be in south Missouri, I will of course be careful how I pronounce those eye-talian names so as not to draw undue attention to myself and get beat up. I kid the southern Missourians. They are actually a pretty sophisticated bunch, and quite easy to get along with. As long as you're not from Kansas, which I am but I don't tell them. As Steinbeck points out, I and the boys always throw an old shop rag over the license plate . . .

This Just In

2011-12-25T09:45:00.002-06:00

During his Christmas Eve appearance, the Pope cautions us to look beyond "the superficial glitter" that surrounds us. You don't need me here. Some things are just their own punch line.

Happy Holidays.

OK OK

2011-12-21T07:08:00.000-06:00

So I could have just done what I always do which is to ignore the blog and come back and post something when I'm ready, like everyone else does (some to a great degree, and you know who you are) but, you know, not dramatic enough. And I'm all about drama even though you wouldn't know that if you observed my life, but you would not be looking into my head, which is where all the action is.

I'm not finished refurbishing my psyche, and probably won't be until well after "the holidays" but I got some kind of break. Part of the problem is that I had a reunion of sorts with an old friend who goes back to my college days, and the brush with my past left me agitated and a bit worn out, to be honest. No matter what we think, there is a clash, a dissonance, in encountering our past, because it seems like we do change, for all that we say we don't, and it's difficult for our current self and our old self to be present simultaneously.

Right now I should correct that statement to add: in my case. I make the assumption that we are all basically alike. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

There is still in me the 1959 science fiction boy so I liken this to the time travel paradox where if you meet yourself in the past, you take the risk of irreversibly changing history and therefore the present and therefore your present self. You don't really want to know what would happen if you knew then what you know now. And the path to enlightenment is strewn with . . . well, everything, eventually.

Time To Go

2011-12-18T20:40:00.001-06:00

I'm wishing everyone a fine, happy Christmas time, insert usual politically correct caveats here, and/or an uplifting and/or inspirational winter solstice and/or angst free resolution season and remember chocolate is still a fairly complex carbohydrate so don't do anything drastic.

For my own personal sanity and/or to afford myself some sort of rejuvenation I am going to close up shop, probably just briefly but who, as they say, knows?

I leave you with a picture I stole from somewhere on the Internet, lest we forget what we were thinking back there in the first grade when we were told "the sun is just a star."

Last Tolerably Warm Day

2011-12-17T22:31:00.000-06:00

I went for a motorcycle ride today for no real reason except that I could. This will hold me over for the next week or so as we plummet toward winter solstice and the days grow shorter and the nights longer and blacker. I guess I'll see you on the other side.

You know, I have decided that the beauty

of these things is that you can see how

they work. Everything else seems to be

such a Goddamn mystery.

The. Best. Title.

2011-12-07T10:40:00.001-06:00

A book about zombies, entitled World War Z. Brilliant. Don't even need to read it. Great title, though.

2011-12-05T09:20:00.000-06:00

This is the third post I have started this morning. The first two didn't get off the ground because I didn't know what I was talking about. Now this is a testimony to your own intelligence and high standards, because if you didn't have that, I would have tried to get away with it anyway. However, I am stubborn, so here are the conclusions, in each case, which I would have tried to reach had I done so.

Art is a simplification and a smoothing of real life. It has ups and downs, but not as steep, and not as high nor low. Art is the rolling hills of Sicily, real-life is the Rocky Mountains. This doesn't always seem to be the case, and I guess it stands to reason that a representation of something is usually going to be smaller, simpler, have less elements in it, and more non-essential elements removed from it, just due to the human limitations during the creation of the art in the first place. Like I said, I don't know what I'm talking about. The musical scale, though, is very small and manageable compared to the range of sounds we normally hear, from normal human speech to crashing waves. Music is a very simple representation of life and seems to be more about capturing only the feeling of something, rather than the creation of an historical document of sound waves. Music is quieter than the world*.

Things with a single purpose are more aesthetically pleasing than things with multiple purposes. This was pointed out to me by my friend during a texted discussion last week. A motorcycle designed strictly for off-road use is more visually and aesthetically appealing, usually, than one designed for multiple purposes. Of course. It's simpler. Consider most SUVs, or, say, "crew cab" pick up trucks. Ugly. Now think of an old flat-bed truck. Elegant.

A poem about one thing, of course would demonstrate both things.

Just wanted to get that off my chest. If I write any more about either of those things, however, I will start to sound stupid, (considering that I am at my smartest when I keep my mouth shut.)

*OK. Not Blue Cheer although I worked on the printing press for a newspaper once and it was fricking loud.

ugh

2011-12-02T07:29:00.001-06:00

Keee-rap I am off kilter today. I ran out of fake grocery store Claritin ® four days ago and haven't bothered to go get some more, and I drank beer last night. Then right before I went to bed I ate a couple of cookies which seem to have kept me up all night. No, they were not Dutch Windmill cookies, though those have been known to upset the brain's chemical infrastructure, besides the fact that when you dunk them, they don't seem to absorb any milk. (or whatever) When I did manage to sleep, I not only dreamt of work, but of working in Oklahoma. This is the newest twist on my nightmarish ex-work dreams. Now I am up, but my eyes are burning.

There. I have shoved this off into the cyber-ether(net) also known as cosmic griping, or e-whine. Please absorb it, shake it off, pity me. Going out to breakfast now, which is something. I'll be back.

2011-11-24T12:14:00.001-06:00

To the turkeys: run. Run like the wind. It is not noble to be below us on the food chain. To the Americans with whom we broke bread 390 years ago, now: I am sorry. To that other 1% of Americans--the ones who can't afford to buy dinner today on Thanksgiving day: the remaining 99% are thankful, but as is so often the case, by the very act of survival we are diminished.

Red to Positive, Black to Negative

2011-11-20T09:29:00.001-06:00

OK. Not to complain . . . I have been trying really hard to only see positive things, but unless I was supposed to radically revise my definition of "positive," I have failed miserably.

I won't even try to talk about the other matter that is sort of a continuously operating negativity engine with occasional positive hiccoughs, so let's start with my motorcycle shopping tour of yesterday. (Just, really, really bored, folks.) I must have been doing something wrong because before I left one particular business establishment, I was wading hip deep in bullshit and thought I was never going to make it out.

You see, the sales guy, who is my age, started by telling me about how his girlfriend died five years ago, and somehow he worked in his Viet Nam injuries and--I ain't lyin'--he pulled up his pant leg to show me the scars from the multiple bullet-wound injury.

It was touch and go for a moment where I thought I wouldn't be able to resist saying something about how glad I was that he wasn't shot in the left buttock like Forrest Gump, but managed to check out the scars and nod in that delicate dance between empathy and awe, not sure, at the moment, which he was looking for.

He continued his story, how he met his current wife of two years, and it was she who dragged him to church, and eventually there was some sort of biker get together involving the blessing of the bikes. The Blessing of the Bikes? Anyway . . .

He watched me carefully as he told this story. Independence, MO, has more than its share of super-religious folk and a good business man has to cover all the bases. When he saw I wasn't buying into it, he kind of chuckled and scoffed, as if to say, wives, what are you going to do with them? Yeah.

Then the real lying started. It had to do with a 2007 model year Kawasaki that was still "brand new." This was something he never managed to sell, somehow since he got it in the crate from Kawasaki. He told me they were $7,200 new, but of course he had to mark it down to $5,995 even though it still came with the full one-year factory warranty.

Wrong. The MSRP on the bike in 2007 was $6,295 so even if I was buying one way back then, (five [5] model years ago,) a measly discount of $300 would have been just a little insulting. Four years later, it borders on the outrageous. But he was sure to tell me that he was only going to make $200 off of this bike, and if he couldn't do that, he wasn't going to sell it, and to prove this assertion, he even showed me, not the invoice ("Anyone can write up a fake invoice and show it to you,") but a recipe box with index cards in it, which he riffled through to find the card for this bike and there, scrawled with ballpoint pen, was the incontrovertible truth of the matter. There was the bike, VIN number, and amount he had to make to get $200 profit, and he showed it to me and said, I'm just showing you this because I can see you're the kind of man who appreciates honesty.

It goes on. I could buy the extended warranty, at these prices, for 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, respectively, which is half, HALF, what Kawasaki wants him to charge, but he's here to help his customers, not to make Kawasaki happy--and here he told me how they call him up at regular intervals to complain about this good-guy policy of his, and to drive his point home, he acts out their part, then his part on the phone, complete with a very bad Japanese accent which I find not only discomforting but insulting as well, as if this is the icing on the cake, that he has done his best to sell this bike to me because he has done everything he knows to do, provided that I am a religious, superstitious, bigoted idiot who doesn't know how to Google something or even do simple arithmetic.

So perhaps I brought this on myself. I got cocky with all this "positive" stuff and the universe is now slapping me around a little bit. Or, perhaps the universe is showing me that while appreciating, even expecting, the positive is a good idea, car and motorcycle dealers are exempt from this Karmic loophole. With them, you have to fall back on the law of the jungle; you are on your own.

Something Good

2011-11-17T07:53:00.001-06:00

By a remove of only a couple of Internet links (thanks to Kristiana, sometime blogger,) I stumbled across the idea of "pronoia," which is supposed to be the opposite of paranoia. I thought that was a real nice idea, even though to place it opposite paranoia implies that it would be the insane expectation that something good is going to happen to you. But, well, you know, define insane.

I realize that paranoia, and negativity in general, probably does cause bad things to happen to us. I mean, we're looking for it, right? We expect it, and when it comes, we see it right off, and start fighting it. (And, crazy thing is, when you start fighting something, you become inextricably tangled up with it.) Pronoia, on the other hand, could, at the very least, be just as simple and easy as not doing that. But it could be even more, I'm thinking, if we started noticing good things as they wafted by. The universe has everything in it, I'm told, and we are here just looking around and acting on what we see. We are small, (no, really, we are,) so we can only interact with a small amount of things, but imagine what we have to pick and choose from.

So, of course this is not going to work, but it's a nice thought. And if I'm wrong, and the universe really is just waiting around looking for ways to help people, God loves a sarcastic bastard.

Don' Worry--Be Happy

2011-11-13T13:41:00.001-06:00

eleven, eleven, eleven--at eleven eleven--for you sticklers out there

2011-11-11T23:11:00.000-06:00

This post contains eleven words--no more, no less, no shit.

NoFuWaDo*

2011-11-10T09:45:00.002-06:00

As a non WriMo participant, I have lots more free time on my hands than I would otherwise have had, which is why I'm going ahead with a new post, even though it's only been a week. I am obviously embarrassed that I am not doing WriMo, and am overcompensating.

So, yeah. What's new?

Did you know that the word "skyscraper" was originally intended for use on old ships? It refers to the tallest main mast of a sailing ship. This is a great word because if you were standing on the deck and looking up at the very top of the mast, and especially if there were just a few clouds in the blue sky overhead, it surely would look like it was scraping the sky as the ship moved forward.

I heard that on the NPR radio show, "Way With Words." Great show. You can listen to the podcast weekly.

I was almost on that show because when I emailed them with a question about a word, they emailed me back and said, hey, be home at this time and we'll call you and you will be on the show. I never did it, though. My question had to do with something that somebody said in a comment on one of my posts wherein I put up a picture of the Missouri River. Don quoted the old song, saying, "... I'm bound a-way, 'Cross the wide, Miss-ou-ri ..." which for some inexplicable reason made me think of death, and then of the origin of the phrase "bound away," as I wondered if it had anything to do with funereal bindings. Perhaps, I thought, it was all tied in with the idea of being "bound for glory." I just didn't know. So I emailed the hosts of Way With Words about it, but as I said, I didn't call them back, so to this day I still don't know the answer. However, as they will tell you, sometimes a word with two meanings is simply two distinctly separate words that happen to sound the same.

Which is a lot of stuff (all the words I just typed, above,) about a couple of words. The show A Way With Words is really proof that a word is worth a thousand words. Which means that I would only need to write fifty words for NaNoWriMo and I'm done. Right on!* Or, as my son would say, werd.

*footnote: Yes, we used to say "right on" and sometimes, on occasion, "far out," and even, when under extreme duress, "oh wow," however, I note, personally, I never, ever said "groovy," except when poking fun at hippies.

*another footnote: NoFuWaDo is the word I am coining right now, speaking of words, to denote non NaNoWriMo participation. It stands for "no f*cking way can I do that."

November

2011-11-03T08:43:00.000-05:00

November came like a sudden vagrant wind through an open doorway. One minute we were all sitting in the bright sunlight in wooden chairs at the beach drinking imported beer and waving at yacht crews who floated by just offshore, and the next peering through a slit in the curtains out the window at a bleak landscape of naked trees and cold wet leaves and corners of snow and, you know, Russian doctors with hacking coughs shambling by like holdovers from Halloween.

I walked through November's whistling doorway at a slightly bent, odd angle due to a bulging disk, or some such. I've had lower back problems and the attendant muscle spasms, which are bad, but this new thing with shooting pains and a deep, agonizing ache down my left hip which kept me awake at night, this was not amusing. I had a doctor's appointment anyway, so I brought it up and was told to Google "lumbar stabilization stretching" or something, and I did, and found all kinds of useful information, as the Internet is often wont to supply, so I bought an exercise mat and started stretching. It worked! I am now very happy and intend to keep doing this forever in hopes of not having the two or three times monthly ordeal of my back "going out." And of course to never, ever, experience the sciatic nerve pinch, upon which the Vulcans have nothing, let me tell you.

One second while I get out my virtual calculator:

50,000/(30-2)=1,786

Perhaps it's still not too late to start Nanoing. I am going to enlist the help of the versatile yet humble apostrophe to keep that word from sounding like, BA-BOING!!! Nano'ing. Still not too late. That's only--what?--three and a half typewritten pages per day. Maddeningly just within reach. And I have no excuses whatsoever. I am resolved to spend all morning thinking about a new story, because the old one is getting stale in my head, and the remainder of the day thinking up excuses. I'll get back to you. For those of you who are Nano'ing, I salute you. No--don't salute back--that would result in words with missing letters as you continue to produce a flow of wordage with the other hand. Stay the course.

World Series

2011-10-28T09:27:00.001-05:00

OK. It's not "the world." It's just the U.S. OK, not really the U.S., but Texas and St. Louis, so if you put any stock in geographic proximity as a guide for sports teams enthusiasm and psychological investing, you have St. Louis representing the eastern part of the United States and the midwest and sort of Chicago, I mean the Paisans on The Hill sort of sound like Chicagoites anyway, and even if you just know me, and you're out there on the west coast, then you have a connection, so you can all root for the Cardinals, and then you have Texas, for whom you can root if you are from Texas or if you like George Bush or LBJ or that Rick guy or even if you're from Oklahoma and you're just afraid in case Texas secedes and you become a buffer state and have to learn how to talk both ways.

So, all that said, how about that game last night? The amazing thing is that no one got hurt. Thank goodness I don't intent to recap each inning. If you didn't watch it, I will say you missed a hell of a game, and you really ought to look into baseball as an allegory for life. If you did watch it, WTF? I mean, right?

OK well that's enough of that.

Test Post

2011-10-26T10:54:00.001-05:00

I need to post anyway. I am using some program for Mac called "New Journal" that theoretically allows me to write a blog post in a "friendlier" text window and then either email it or send it to Blogger.com. So, maybe it's easier to write in something other than Blogger's edit window. I realize they recently went to some pains to improve on it, and it appears that they have accomplished that. I'm just bored. It's cold and rainy outside, after weeks of warm, sunny weather, and it feels like a good day to stay inside and do nothing. Or next to nothing.

I don't understand why there is so far no program that lets me type anything I want, in any font, and drag pictures into the thing, and then send the whole mess to blogger. Why wouldn't blogger actually be the one to design such a program? Just seems like it would be an easy thing to do. However, "that said," (I guess "that said" means "however,") I am now thinking it's so easy to use the blogger window, why bother with all this stuff. If I really can't stand to type in someone's windows, I can always use any of a million various text programs and then copy and paste what I wrote into blogger's window. It's really just a couple of mouse clicks. We lose our perspective on this computing stuff. I found myself one day complaining to someone that I hated some aspect of some program because the way I commonly used it required me to click on something, and then click on something else, clear on the other side of the screen. Do you realize the wrist movement required to do that? Sometimes, yeah, sometimes, I even have to move my entire hand by swinging my forearm to the left or right a distance of two or three inches. Yeah, I know. Really? Of course, that's human nature for you. Cruise for the good parking spot close to the front entrance of the gym where you are going to walk on a tread mill. I'm not immune.

It has stopped raining, but it's dreary looking out there. The sky is a monolithic dark gray, and the leaves that have fallen thus far are plastered to the lawns and streets and sidewalks.

I will now attempt to "automatically" send this to blogger. In a row of icons across the top of this window there is an orange square with a fat, white "B" on it, and I don't even need to read the manual to know what that means.

Oh. TINFM. (There is no f!!king manual.)

OK. The program doesn't work. I clicked on the orange square and got an error message. And since TINFM, I must either give up, or spend fifteen minutes clicking randomly on stuff until I get some sort of response. This is why, I think, the Prime Directive exists, because imagine what would happen if I found a phaser on the ground.

Swipe, right click, save, move the mouse arrow al-llll the way over to the blogger window, click click click. I'm exhausted.

2011-10-09T10:23:00.001-05:00

Paula's talk of headaches made me think of my own ailments. I just got over a classic 10-day cold, or thought I did, when I experienced a couple days of random, general inflammation that had me lurching and groping for the ibuprofin. Odd. I felt like I had the flu, but with the only symptom being the body aches. I have finally knocked it back and I will use the always good advice of my friend who once worked for the company that invented ibuprofin, (or made it, or marketed it) which is to keep dosing one's self for about four days after the outward symptoms finally go away. The idea is there is still inflammation lingering there that you can't feel but which still needs to be totally gotten rid of. Sounds like good advice, even though I have trouble with it because after about three or four days, ibuprofin does not agree with me.

Now that I have added "ibuprofin" to my laptop's internal dictionary, I want to know if there's a way I can look at a list of all words I have added, just to check and see how many of them are spelled incorrectly.

I respect and admire greatly anyone who gets lots of headaches yet still functions in the world. I totally do not have that ability. I am truly a baby when it comes to headaches, and count myself very lucky that I don't get them often. When I do, I am such a baby. OMG and all that. Can't handle it. "Wuss" is the word. Not going to bother adding that to my internal dictionary.

Here is a picture of my motorcycle, taken last March:

I have been thinking about it this morning because it is supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, and I want to go ride it around today. Earlier last week I put the stock mufflers (called "silencers" in the UK, where I believe this bike was made) on it and then decided, nahhh, and put the louder ones back on. They're still called "silencers" but that is a mostly euphemistic term.

After riding around on a bike for several months, as I have, anyone would develop a new attitude about what is or is not offensive to other drivers. Mainly, you get so you don't care. I realize that there are thousands and thousands of all different kinds of drivers out there, but if you were to combine them all into one "typical" or "average" driver, it would be someone to whom you would make no apologies concerning just about anything regarded as offensive or annoying that you might do while riding. If someone turns their head to glare at me because of my loud pipes, my very first thought is: Good. You see me. Now maybe you won't veer into my lane, or turn in front of me.

To be fair, about 99% of all drivers (Hmm, I wonder if they are all not bankers nor corporate executives . . . ) are polite and very conscientious. I believe the presence of a motorcycle within their radius of concern makes them extra careful. I also understand that they may, in their minds, hold an image of a "typical" biker who roars around, weaving in and out of traffic and otherwise violating all rules of driving etiquette and common decency as they bomb from one destination to another, where they drink too much beer and steal your daughters away when not preoccupied by beating each other up. I understand all that. Because, one look at me, and it all sort of falls into place and makes perfect sense.

OK enough of that. In closing, I can't think of any way to link headaches and motorcycle riding, so this post will have to stand, or not, on its own merit, or lack thereof, as one that is strangely hinged in the middle.

My Special Day

2011-10-07T08:14:00.001-05:00

In a shameless bid for attention, I'm blogging to tell you that today is my birthday. As such, you are all invited to sit and ponder for a moment, some time today, how important I am to you. I may be the wind beneath your wings, or the tea in your pot, or the pot in your tea. It's true I may have put the lo in blog, the ting in writing, the no in novel . . .

Got to find the horoscope in the paper, as it will contain special instructions for those born on this day. I already did my Tarot reading. As usual, it wasn't specific enough, but it ended with the King of Cups.

That is me. :)

I am older than five

but younger than 105.

Name, Rank, and NYSE Ticker Symbol

2011-10-03T20:22:00.001-05:00

Or even puts one in jail, or takes away its driver's license, or, let's see . . . taxes it to the point where it kind of hurts, or drafts one. There we go.

Oops. There is no draft. Sorry. I watched a TV show about 1968, and it got me all fired up. So, point is, this is kind of silly in the sense that corporations obviously can't be executed because they are not living entities, no matter how much we tend to think of them as such, either in the positive or negative sense.

What this is saying is people see the double-standard. The sight of corporations on welfare, and otherwise being pandered to, but without the accountability all of us peons seem to have, stirs in us a sense of injustice. Corporations are actually machines that we allow to operate in our country, like cars, or tractors. They have to be licensed, as they should be, and follow the rules that we make. There's the problem, of course.

Hypothetical Herniated Himalayan Hibiscus Eaters

2011-10-02T09:17:00.000-05:00

The weirdest thing about Tigger's hyperthyroidism is that when I was texting my son about it, when I typed as far as hyperth... my iPhone's auto-correct filled the rest in. I thought, what are the odds of that really being the word I intended to type in here? Then it occurred to me that everyone who uses an iPhone actually does have hyperthyroidism and so it was included in the auto-correct dictionary a long time ago.

Another mystery solved. On to other things. BTW Tigger is much better today. Eating, pooping, sleeping–essentially the entire classic repertoire of the neutered male cat.

Peace on the streets: the passive-aggressively inspired slogan of certain of the local bicyclists who perceive hostility emanating from cars whose drivers they have inconvenienced by being in their way.

The other evening I was walking around an exclusive outdoor shopping area in Kansas City when the perfect faux plastic Spanish architectured ambience was disturbed by an enormous, gaggle of hundreds of bicyclists. This means trouble. Already the area had been hit by two or more "flash mobs"and of course there are always the professional panhandlers who thank goodness don't congregate together and are seldom seen actually moving. Now this.

The first thing I noticed is that none of them were wearing spandex cycling outfits. This is possibly because they are all under 30 year of age, it looked like. So by the time I had the fleeting thought that this extra wind resistance may be why they are going so slow, and kind of weaving, now that I look, I realized they were yelling at people as they spun by. Not all of them. About half of them.

"Happy Friday! . . . Happy Friday! . . . Happy Friday!"

I went from being concerned about car traffic, which by now was backed two blocks up the hill, to a kind of bemused incredulity to a happy grin. This was so stupid it was brilliant and wonderful.

Cat Report

2011-10-01T11:14:00.000-05:00

I know. It seems almost unbelievable that I would write a cat post but not include pictures. Anyway, Tigger, the good cat (not Porchy, who is a bad cat,) was under the weather but seems to be better now. The problem is that he is 17 years old, which makes him about as old, in cat years, as, you know, me. He got so skinny this summer we took him into the vet's, who did some blood work and told us Tigger's numbers are pretty good. Very slight hyperthyroidism but that is all. So, he got his shots and we brought him home. Then he got worse--possibly the result of the shots?--but now he is slowly getting better. At least he is basking in a pool of sunshine in the living room, whereas before he had been hiding out in a cardboard box in an unused room, and has started eating again.

Mc Donald's Has No Sugar Free Syrup?

2011-10-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning I met with some people at a Mc Donalds (or is it McDonald's, or McDonalds, with no space?) for our usual Friday morning breakfast. I hadn't been to a Mc Donald's in quite awhile, but I deferred to the group decision to go there. While in line I tried to figure out which of the meals would not have too many carbohydrates for me (as a type 2 diabetic) and decided that since I needed some carbos, some scrambled eggs, sausage and pancakes would be just right. Everything else was all starchy crap piled atop more starchy crap. So, I order, and ask for sugar free (or is it sugar-free, or sugarfree?) syrup and I'm told, "We don't have sugar free syrup."

I order a cup of coffee. While waiting for that, I ask a different clerk if they have sugar free syrup, thinking, that can't be right. "No."

"Really? You don't have sugar free syrup?"

"No."

"Unbelievable."

"OK."

Yes, I think, OK.

Trust me, they don't have your best interests at heart. I don't care what they say. Nutrition is not a consideration beyond a nod to public concern. It is a business model and absolutely nothing more. We're probably all just lucky that DDT pesticide isn't tasty.

Or is it??

"You see, we never ever do nothin' nice . . . and . . . easy."

2011-09-24T09:14:00.000-05:00

I began this post by saying that blogging was losing its magic. That, for me, there is a necessity to suspend disbelief -- as I said, I thought all of you were real -- and not so much sit in a dimly lit study typing into a little box, but attend a little cyber party populated with sparkling guests. The kind where you get to talk all you want and nobody interrupts. It was because of a certain paucity of caffeine in the bloodstream at that slightly earlier hour that I thought this. I'm OK now. I deleted that. Working on the third cup.

I have been thinking hard about NaNoWriMo, how I might give it another try. Just yesterday I was listening to a saved MP3 of a podcast of the NPR show, A Way With Words, and one of the hosts was talking about a book on writing that advised writers to not even try to get it right the first time. All good writing is re-writing, he said. OK. Everyone seems to agree on that. I must shake the image of turkey quills and pots of ink and beautifully long, compound sentences that take you by the hand and lead you to the window, open the shade, and wonder what might be coming up the path, of the Great Author slowly and deliberately penning one word after another with a great and powerful focus of the intellect until the thing is done.

When my son was in middle school he played guitar a lot, and liked to "shred," which is to play lead rock and roll riffs as fast as humanly possible, and he got quite good at it. One day we went to listen to a guy from Gibson guitar company demonstrate some Gibson guitars at the local music store. Afterwards, all the young guys were hanging around, and my son picked up a guitar and started playing it--really he was showing off for the Gibson guy. Well, he caught his ear, and the guy turned to him and said, you are really good--you remind me of how I used to play when I was your age. Let me give you a tip: you don't need to play that fast. Slow it down a little. Pour a little soul into it.

So, that's what I'm thinking about. Because if you don't have any soul, what are you doing playing the guitar anyway??

Tasteful Artistic Expression

2011-09-23T07:20:00.001-05:00

The sensibilities of antiquity always seem so spot on. I saw this, though, and thought of misc.writing. Do you remember "beverage alert?"

The Releasing of Endorphins

2011-09-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

My retirement so far has been working pretty well. I thought of this because it seems to be a common theme with me, especially now that I am an "empty nester." You know, I remember when that term was invented, and I don't like it all that much. It's true what they say--once you label something, you sort of stop thinking about that thing because you figure it's already been defined. Trouble is, the definition of empty nester is pretty short, and the list of things one might be or become once the children move out is very long. I guess you could say this is an example of "power-point thinking." Everything reduced to slides with simple, often humorous graphics.

Don't even get me started with " . . . years young." What does that mean? I'm too old to talk right?

"So, how old are you, sir?"
"I'm sixty years young! I die or the house at the corner with the yardage and mumble dog-face to the banana patch!"

When the correct response is really, "None of your f*cking business." (Now we're talkin'. That's the kind of old guy I want to be.)

"Re-invent myself": The assumption here is that I invented myself the first time. No, I didn't. I just crashed around trying to make do, and that's what I'll continue to do.

Anyway, as I was about to say, I'm embarrassed to say just how little I am concerned about my lack of productivity, but even so, years and years of thinking a certain way make for very deep-rutted neural pathways. It's like my son's moving day. I told him I would help with a truck and that since I am old, and have some lingering back injuries, I will be the driver only. Well, all my life, when people asked me for help moving, I have never turned anyone down. I don't feel right about myself as someone who can't jump in and help other people move. So it was very difficult for me to stand around and watch two skinny young guys wrestle furniture up a switch-backed stairway. Yeah, eventually I wound up helping.

So, to summarize, I have dropped the corporate rah rah give me more hours twenty-four seven hey look at me I'm "multi-tasking" can I have an Ibuprofin mentality and reverted to hunter-gatherer, and it's working out really well. Just don't everybody do it or the country will go down the toilet, as if it's not already. But you know what? It ain't my fault.

Chapter XCIV of the Book in My Mind

2011-09-08T09:14:00.000-05:00

My son just moved out of the house. Of course, he may be back. We told him he could come back. I know a lot of us either have, or will, wrestle with this particular stage of life. As I've said before, it's not like the time flew by. It was like a lifetime in itself, inside my lifetime. Now, I suppose there's room in there for one more lifetime.

Not sure what it will be like, especially, you know, starting out so old.

I am returning to this post. I read it, and it seems strangely depressing. Well, maybe not so strange. I re-read it and I wonder what else could be said. A brief synopsis of my experiences as a father? A much longer list of all my mistakes? A highlight or two? Some bragging? That last would hardly be appropriate, as pretty much all things are genetic, out of our control, and if I wasn't lucky, I wouldn't be sitting here with nothing to do but write a blog post, now, would I? We are the lucky writing to the lucky.

The non-genetic things, the occasional wise choice, good decision, spate of furious and energetic productivity--why brag about that?

The prayers that the laws of probability hold out just a little longer, that he may be at least as lucky as I was? The vaccination that doesn't kill or, best case, cause ADHD, or a tiny bit of intervention for the lady who will return to her house to find her lost glove and then run the red light in front of the school bus on her hurried way to work?

Well, I'm proud of him. May he find something around every corner, as I have.

And, of course, he may be back. At least for dinner some night.

The Cool Breeze of Myth

2011-09-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

I am always complaining about the weather in Kansas City, so I guess it's only fair that now that we are having several beautiful days in a row I should acknowledge that here. This weather is so good that, were it permanent, one might want to live here! And the dew-point right now is 50º, which is entirely acceptable.

It is all giving me the bug to travel. I miss my home. I want to see the oak dotted golden hills and walk in the fog and consider the surfers while Fender guitars play in my head. (Bob...) I would like a bowl of clam chowder on the wharf, with a piece of sourdough bread and butter on the side while the seagulls watch me through the window.

Labor Day

2011-09-05T13:33:00.001-05:00

I should say happy Labor Day. When I worked in repair at the phone company, once in awhile we would get dispatched to a trouble report location where the customer, usually an older man, had specifically requested they not send someone on Labor Day. I guess some people remember the reasons behind all these holidays.

I am about ready to hop on the Triumph and go make a bunch of noise, but first, this picture of one of the (many) fountains in Kansas City:

I suppose it is appropriate to post this on the last day of "real" summer, things should be cooling down, you can't wear white after tomorrow (whatever) and all that. Here is a closer shot of some of the fountain's denizens who got bored being fountain-like and got to fooling around, probably thinking, it's not like this is Rome or Florence or someplace like that.

various

2011-09-01T09:39:00.000-05:00

First, a few housekeeping chores. The proper way to pronounce "blog-o-rah-mah" is this:

blog oh RAHHH MAHHHHHHHH

It also helps to open the mouth wide and raise both eyebrows on the last syllable. This will then put you in the proper state of mind to actually read the drivel contained therein.

Political ideology in this blog: Rick Perry is so weird. I mean, really. He's the front runner?? That is just so weird. I long for the good old days of ethical, straight-forward politicians like Richard Nixon. However, I said once I didn't want to do politics on this blog, so I just say this now in case anyone is wondering what I'm thinking. Oh yes you are.

Onto our Subjects:

Weather: Oh man, it's back. 101ºF yesterday, according to the little thermometer in my car, and I believe it. It is so humid that fish in the river have been seen to swim a couple inches above the water! Speaking of historical imperatives, if I was a pioneer, I would now willingly get in my conestoga wagon and plunge headlong and willy nilly into hostile Indian territory, just to put an end to the pervasive heat and possibly seek a remedy to the marked lack of cultural expectation which is another real problem but let's not go there.

It is hard to use the word "propensity" without seeming judgmental.

I have given some thought to the idea that God may not be male, gender-wise. I know that sounds stupid, but it seems like I cannot think about God without also assigning him traditional cultural male attributes. I know I am way behind the curve on this one, but it's just something I thought of. It's interesting to try to make God female--actually much more comfortable and reassuring, somehow. No one needs to jump up and say something about how God has no gender. I wouldn't argue that point, but that might be like saying, don't think of this car as red, or yellow, but think of it as having no color at all. So that would be kind of lame. If we're going to make God something useful, we probably need to assign both genders. Non?

I probably thought of car color just now because I bought that Honda Civic, and it's black. I wouldn't do that again. It looked good the day I drove it off the showroom floor, (I actually did drive it off the showroom floor--nice touch, Honda guys) it has never ever been clean, really. Only just, roughly. Since I am not seventeen, I have no desire to go get car wax and a chamois and do that thing every weekend. Just don't. Also, driving a little black Civic makes other drivers want to pass me, for some inexplicable reason. Just something I've noticed. By the way, the best thing about the new car is the USB port for the radio. Sure the iPod port is nice, but I use the USB port all the time for podcasts. Good idea.

Are you other people real? Yes. I think you are. I had a caffeine-fueled discussion about something like this yesterday at the coffeehouse. My definition of consciousness is that you must hold, in your head, an analogous world in which you can place yourself. You populate the analogous world with things and people and therefore, in your imagination, you can think about them and manipulate them. So, I do this with y'all, just as surely as I do it with the people who wander into my line of sight in the non-cyber world. And--here's the reason I am saying this--those physical people I see quite possibly do not reveal their inner thoughts to me as often or as well as y'all do, so an argument could be made that you all are more real. And without trying to qualify or rationalize or defend or explain, my online friends are real. I may make this one disclaimer--perhaps it would be more interesting to experience all the sights and sounds and smells and the body language and the micro-expressions, but, you know, you take what you can get.

That is all for now. Seize the carp.

I Don't Even Know

2011-08-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

After reading Aileen's post about abandoning hope (in a good way) I am now not sure I understand exactly what that means. I am also worried that I am one of these people:

" . . . people who think they’re more enlightened than the rest of us, but really, aren’t they really just more show-offy and generally insufferable about their spirituality?"

But, as always when in the face of shame and ridicule, I press on:

I read something about "acceptance" the other day, and it seems like such a spiritually evolved thing to embrace, but it makes me uncomfortable. It sounds too much like "giving up." I mean the very first thing I thought of was the sometimes very real-seeming possibility that I wind up homeless and there I am sitting on a concrete ledge by a park downtown practicing "acceptance." Then I go, no no no, and get a little angry. Then I realized that like the men folk in the opening of Grapes of Wrath staring across dusty, wasted fields with puzzled, frightened looks on their faces that slowly turn to anger, which then makes their women folk relax "Ahhh . . . now he's pissed, and not all is lost." we sometimes rely on anger--in fact this is probably what anger is for.

Anyway, acceptance is an uncomfortable thing, but it serves a purpose as well. It is, or could be, as I sit here wondering, the necessary first step toward fixing something that might be fixable. If you rant and rail about a situation, or if you deny it, constantly ignore it or "work around it," it doesn't really exist as a problem. You are using your intellect to pretend the problem isn't there, yet at the same time you are attaching it to your life more firmly.

Acceptance, letting something be, would instead allow you to get a good look at the problem and work toward fixing it. Ultimately everything is fixable even though it sometimes comes down to priorities, but at least acceptance lets you see the thing consciously instead of indulging in the weird pycho-dance we all too often resort to in order to feel good.

Things That Don't Make Sense to Me

2011-08-28T08:41:00.003-05:00

Multi-tasking: It started out as something a computer with the Windows operating system did, and was considered a good thing since it meant your computer was more powerful than your buddy's computer, which translated directly to penis size. (If you were a woman back then, you very likely didn't have a computer at all, which kind of validates my point.) Now, it is for everyone, but why would people want to pretend to be more like a computer? I say, let the computers try harder to be like people.

Listening to FM radio while driving to work: WTF. There's almost never any music. It is all commercials and angry sounding DJs.

Being in a hurry to get to work: This one puzzled me for years. Of course people probably don't want to be late, but, every single day? That is why they invented alarm clocks.

Excessive acceleration toward a red light.

Hybrid SUVs: duh

The Mormons, who said after having just travelled through miles of beautiful mountains and suddenly seeing spread out before them a hellish, arid plain of dirt and salt and a lake of poisonous, brackish water, "Ooh yeah, THIS is where we want to build our city.": double duh. Note: great powder, and snow boarding, were probably not a consideration at the time.

Whoever put a city where Houston is.

This post: I thought this was such a great idea, but I'm amazed at how fast I got tired of it.

Edit: Sorry, I was unable to fully comprehend the run-on sentence I constructed and I fixed it, just because.

Friday Already Again Redux Redux

2011-08-26T07:03:00.000-05:00

Trash day, sometimes thought of as the flat spot on the wheel of life, the bumpy wheel on that runaway cart which is careening willy-nilly down the hill of time, has rolled around again. Thanks to a youtube video from the U.K. I saw once, I now know that the thing I roll out to the curb for the trash guy to empty is called a wheelie bin, and as I slowly ingest more and more coffee this post may begin to make more and more sense.

Or not.

But that's not the point. I don't think. It's always Friday, or, if not, then some place in between. Kind of like the rain in Portland, Oregon.

I had a great week, if only because I got to see someone I like a lot and who I only get to see once or twice a year. This year, anyway. Before last year, it was more like fifteen years. But this week--it was like a smooth spot that just rolled by so fast you had to pay attention or you might have missed it. It was like a clean, cool breeze toward the end of summer.

Just to Say I Did

2011-08-23T13:52:00.001-05:00

I am blogging to you from a coffeehouse via my iPhone. I can touch four keys at once if I want to. Like a St. Bernard puppy performing brain surgery on a hamster.

dissonance

2011-08-22T08:11:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I did not get a haircut. I thought surely they would be open, since they are open Mondays. Perhaps another casualty of the Bad Economy. I then went to the City Market and got a hot dog and a diet Coke. Maybe it was Pepsi--although the true identity of the drink is probably not as important as that of the hot dog, but I don't want to delve.

Parking was problematic, since the City Market is right across the river from the downtown airport (you take the Broadway Bridge) and there was an air show going on. Parking for the air show had trickled down to the River Market area, so I found a Civic-sized spot requiring lots of steering wheel action and a long walk, and then I milled around in the tanned, sweating crowd, ate that hot dog product, and found nothing of interest at the flea market section where, by the prices, the vendors seem to be in a constant state of cognitive dissonance as they at once get rid of their junk yet fall in love with it at the same time. The guy with the healing magnetic bracelets was still there in his tent-like booth, surrounded by his wares. He looked very healthy. I have one of those magnetic bracelets right here by my desk, thrown over a bookend, a safe distance from my laptop.

Saturday, the previous day, a bi-plane pilot died during the air show as something went wrong during one of his stunts and his plane fell onto the runway and burned. The air show was then closed, but opened again Sunday. So while I milled around, I could occasionally hear the droning sound of an airplane engine, and if I looked up over the buildings to the north, in the distance I could catch glimpses of a little craft winding its way up into the blue sky leaving a trail of white smoke. It would teeter there at the apex, then fall back to earth, casually turning, unwinding, flat-spinning, and, from my disconnected vantage, then disappear behind the nearby buildings. Those at the air show could see him maneuver and level out, and collectively exhale, but I had to wait for the droning sound of his engine as he climbed up again.

keeps on slippin'

2011-08-19T09:30:00.002-05:00

I've been thinking about the perception of time lately. A couple days ago I was talking to someone about my last days of work before I retired. That was a little over two years ago, but it seems like way back, as in "wa-aaay back when I worked for the phone company . . ." And then yesterday I Googled something I was trying to find from the old Usenet days. 1999. That was twelve years ago but seems more like 20. (The bad news is that I don't seem to be getting smarter.) But as always I note just how slow and un-dog-like Internet years are. It has always seemed, among you bloggie types, that two or three days without being heard from is a very, very long time. When people drop off for months, it's almost as if they are dead. When they reappear, it is as if they returned from some extended foreign assignment or another planet or something.

My son's birthday is in the vicinity. That day seems so very far away. Another world. And that got me to thinking, hmm, what was I doing when I was his age (23)? I do remember. Not the math nor most of the history, but Friday and Saturday nights, and some notable days in between. But, that was another world, maybe even another universe. When I think of the duration of my time at college, it seems, of course, like forever. Like grade school did. But still, nothing lasts as long as a grade school summer.

But, all in all, time steadfastly refuses to speed up for me. I don't really want it to. If anything, I want to remember more, so time will go even more slowly. A few years back I had one of those embarrassingly invasive "procedures" involving a tiny camera being snaked up into my guts, and I was given something in my I.V. that caused me to shut my eyes and then open them, with twenty minutes in between that I have absolutely no perception of passing, that did not exist, and do not exist. Sure it happens every night, too, but I don't like it.

rock'n robin

2011-08-16T13:51:00.000-05:00

So with Twitter-like timeliness and a perfunctory sort of élan born of low blood sugar, (and with an eye toward infusing as little extra meaning into the blog as possible,) I write with nothing more to say than that I wish it wasn't raining so I could roll the Triumph out of the garage and fire it up and piss off the neighbors. Instead, I will skulk away to lunch in my stealthy black Honda Civic, leaving barely a ripple in the force.

No Meaning Whatsoever

2011-08-16T08:43:00.002-05:00

Just the right combination of lengthening nights and shortening days and (very slightly) cooling temperatures is making me feel like it's fall. Time to put on shirts that smell brand new the first time you wear them, anyway, and go to school and relish the first few exciting days with all the new people, and some of the old people, taller now, before the inevitable sorting process occurs and I wind up standing voluntarily on the very fringe.

That is one of many huge, generalized memories of mine, since we have all been talking about that, perhaps made all the huger, if not blobbier and less well-defined, by frequent visits where sometimes, I have found, they are edited for content and clarity, and their rough, jagged edges smoothed out so they are bearable, and they are often even dressed up in modern clothing, or at the very least the collars made a little smaller and the bell-bottoms a little less ridiculously floppy oh happy days we probably all looked like clowns, and the decade before that, where I doubt we mowed the lawn and painted our houses all that often, although I do remember running back and forth through the sprinklers, even though there may have been weeds in the lawn, and Mother did not bring cookies out to us every single afternoon, but made them just that one time when it made such an indelible impression.

I don't know if through design or universality or just my particular experience, newness and rebirth seem to occur around fall and early winter, and not spring. Spring is when stuff thaws out and hard paths turn to mud. It feels more like a mid-point, to me, to be slogged through, maybe triumphantly at times, so that the world opens up to fecund summer, where I might doze off.

Less Meaning

2011-08-15T13:33:00.000-05:00

I thought I would have one more run at this meaning thing. So, sometime in the not too distant past I said something like, one could almost argue the point that the meaning of one's life, the culmination of all that came before, is the very thing one is doing at that moment--even if it is just taking another step on a walk, or sipping soup from a spoon, or walking across the room, or turning a page--if you are waiting for something momentous to crop up, it will be awhile.* It would probably be embarrassing and at least very humbling to find out just how infrequently you are actually doing something important or meaningful.

Or, looking at it another way, you are constantly doing something important and meaningful, which sounds a bit pretentious and monumental and so we are going nowhere, unless we either redefine the word "meaningful," or maybe we drop the whole thing and just quit worrying about it, as it has been shown to likely mean nothing, and just enjoy life and try to live it by our own lights.

To that end, I have decided to continue blogging.

*Neil Armstrong probably took millions of steps in his lifetime, and, really, only one of them had any meaning.

More Meaning

2011-08-14T11:45:00.001-05:00

I feel compelled to keep droning on about this meaning thing. I thought the overall tone of the last post was negative. Not really. Part of my mind keeps balking at the idea that the "ego" is really not the real, inner me. That it is just a structure created over the years consisting of all my thoughts and all my experiences, possibly as modified or filtered by my own particular genetic predispositions.

But, isn't that me, then?

Not according to Eckart Tolle, the author of the book I read. The real me, which is remarkably stable and consistent over the decades (as I think about it) is the observer of all these thoughts. Again, this kind of makes sense to me. But it is not the total annihilation of the "ego" I'm seeking. Maybe I just want a slightly different perspective on it, a realization that the ego is not in charge. Given the generally grabby, defensive, argumentative, confrontational and paranoid nature of the ego (in my case only?) it might be appropriate to compare this idea to the government and the military. The military is a good, necessary thing when it is needed, but, no, you really don't want generals making foreign policy decisions, for a variety of reasons. Do the generals know more about these things than the average stay-at-home politician? Probably. Do you want a contracted house painter to decide what color to paint your house? Probably not.

So, so far, it helps to know that the world I imagine with my ego is just the tool my ego is using to help it do what it thinks it's supposed to do. But I still would like to be the one in charge, even if it means the ego doesn't get to play--the little unruly brat.

The really refreshing thing about the ideas in the book, which are not new by any means, is how life thought of as the very moment in which you find yourself, the here and now, is usually quite pleasant and usually nothing is going wrong and since it is all you'll ever have, it probably deserves your full attention, especially if you would like to actually live your life and not spend eighty years worrying about something that is already done and gone, or may or may not happen at some future time, or makes no difference whatsoever, really.

The interesting thing is that, I have found, approaching things this way does not in fact undermine the "real" stuff in your life, the nuts and bolts stuff you gotta do. This very busy construction of ego has no problem keeping you up-to-date on stuff. It IS you, after all, and wants to be helpful. Like a little kid, it will tell you when it's hungry or thirsty. Like the unruly brat that it is, it will also tell you it wants an ice cream cone, and a balloon, and to stay up late and watch TV and not go to school, etc. etc., which you then tell it to shut up.

My apologies to Mr. Tolle for having certainly at some point gotten it wrong, or spun off on my own tangent.

Meaning

2011-08-12T18:52:00.000-05:00

I'm starting to think meaning is overrated. We search for it all the time, maybe even try to apply it to our lives, but I 'm starting to think it either doesn't exist, or if it does, it's going to be kind of disappointing.

I was reading a book about "the power of now," and how all there is, is "now." The past and the future don't exist, and all we have, ever, is just right now. And that makes a lot of sense to me. Now the point of the book seemed to be that all the time you spend thinking about the past, or the future, is really kind of a waste, and even a bad thing, since all this thinking is keeping you from fully "being" in the here and now.

Pretend, for example, that my Life's Work seems to be this blog. Now, I can aspire to Greatness, but in reality, the blog consists of things I have written, one at a time, each in their own "now." When I am writing a blog post, that is all I am doing. I am not writing the ones I already wrote, and I am not writing any I might eventually write in the future. I just have the one. Greatness is just an idea that may or may not be applied to some other idea someone has when they think about my blog, in general, at some later time.

Here's what gets me: It's not just blog posts. It's also when I eat dinner, or go for a walk, or play my guitar or fix the faucet, (OK, well, bad example) or watch TV, or any of the small things which taken together comprise my life. Each of those things, in their time, are the only thing in it. Everything in the past in gone, there is no future, just me eating my spaghetti, or walking, or writing a blog post. It's hard for me to fathom the meaning of life when I consider that while I am walking around the park, the entire culmination of my life, everything I did or thought, is the very footstep that I am taking at that moment.

That is all. One could say, were I to drop dead one second later, that the meaning of my life was to take that step.

Missouri River

2011-08-09T16:45:00.003-05:00

Going to Kansas City

2011-08-03T11:11:00.004-05:00

It's the old song. And if you remember any of the several dozen artists who covered it singing "they got some pretty little women there, and I'm gonna get me one," you may be remembering incorrectly. After an exhaustive research of several Google-recommended web sites, every version of the song I found said "crazy way of lovin' there" or, later, "crazy little women there," but never "pretty women," or "pretty little women."

And we have lost our innocence, haven't we? When I read "they got a crazy way of lovin' there," I admit that the first thing I thought of was something involving a mango, a jar of mayonnaise, a Bic lighter, and a three-day weekend.

But, anyway, despite all this lyrical misdirection, there are a lot of pretty women in Kansas City. Are some of them crazy? Perhaps.

There is something else I would like to point out, about the corner of 12th Street and Vine. And that is, no. Uh uh. Maybe then, but not now.

If you are standing on the corner of 12th St. and Vine,

you are nowhere.

This is Really Boring

2011-08-03T08:48:00.001-05:00

A CNN reporter said yesterday when talking about the final resolution of the debt ceiling debacle, "I guess there's nothing like a looming deadline to make you focus on something." (extremely paraphrased.) As if all the politicians finally were forced to sit down and "focus," really "get down to work" and get this done.

Really?

It reminded me an awful lot of how those car dealership salespeople run back and forth to their "manager" and "work" to get your "best deal." Wrong. It's just (very expensive) theater, in both cases.

Now, to move past politics, (not to say, any specific issues of importance in our country,) I would like to move onto something near and dear to my heart, which is complaining about the weather. We are having a heat wave. And I don't like it. It has gone on too long and it's wearing me down. Yesterday while I was driving around, my car's thermometer reported that it was 111 degrees. This is too high. It was cooler in Las Vegas. (AND drier.)

What Is the Dew Point?

Dew point is the temperature at which cooling air can no longer hold, in vapor form, the amount of moisture that is in the air at that moment. If the dew point is 58º, once the air temperature falls to 58º, the relative humidity will be 100% and dew will form on the grass, on car windows, and the like. The dew point is simply a function of the amount of moisture in the air. Humidity, which is to say, relative humidity, is a measure of the humidity in the air in relation to how much moisture the air can hold.

Relative humidity is an interesting number, but the dew point is the number that is going to tell you how sticky and humid it "feels" to you. In my experience, when the dew point exceeds 60º, it is starting to feel kind of muggy. If it is over 70º, most people will say it is really, really muggy and uncomfortable. Think about the 70º dew point number: that means if you go outside to get the morning paper, and air is a hypothetical room temperature, it will be so humid that dew is forming on your car windows, and on your lawn. If you do anything at all--walk briskly--you will break out in a sweat. If you had left your windows open in your house, your carpet would feel damp when you walked across it in your bare feet. Yuck.

Las Vegas vs Kansas City

A typical summer day in Las Vegas will give you these temps: high of 103º, dew point: 25º. This is that famous "dry heat" you hear about all too often. A typical Kansas City summer day gives you, say, 90º with a dew point of 72º. Now when you talk about the heat to your neighbor, you don't say, "but it's a dry heat." Instead you say, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity."

Why I Would Rather Live in Palo Alto

High today 77º, dew point 58º. Ah.

sorry

2011-08-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

After reading all the juicy blog posts about religion and air brushing and status symbols, I feel like in my blog I should shoot for something evocative and debatable. I have inferred that I want to steer clear of politics, though I want to say I'm glad something was finally done with the debt ceiling. I haven't read up yet to even find out what finally happened, but I see the stock market opened this morning. I will say this: to watch these antics while thinking of the government as an outside force, maybe even an antagonistic outside force, is annoying, but to watch this kind of stuff and think of the government as "my" government, run by people who I hired, and who I pay to run the country, it's unacceptable.

What do we tell our children? "If your big homework assignment is due a week from Monday, then work on it a little every day this week." Does anyone really think it's OK to try to solve all these debt and spending problems by "cramming" over the weekend? If this stuff is so important, wouldn't it be better to work on it on an ongoing basis, and avoid waiting so long that all there is time for is sound bytes and scare tactics? I call bullshit on the whole lot of them.

I say all this not to infer one solution is better than another, only to say that this process should be given enough time for the solution to be something coherent and capable of being successful, starting with a clear understanding of definitions and goals. I think the whole thing, in principle, is pretty simple. You spend, you borrow, you pay back, and everyone in Washington seems to understand that--except for that the strange, elusive idea of giving tax breaks seems to be thought of as something apart, when in reality, I feel, it need only be thought of as another form of spending to be put back into the original, very simple, equation. And, since certain people see me as a liberal thinking person, let me say that, as spending, tax breaks can be evaluated like all other spending: what are we buying, can we afford it, and is it worth it to us?

This is where it begins to get complicated. But, if these jokers started on their homework early enough, they could, I'm sure, get it done in time for the deadline.

Of course it does not matter how I think.

Rap

2011-07-29T08:09:00.000-05:00

I confess that I find it difficult to brag that my son has his own rap group. I feel like I have to explain. Like when I was working at Ma Bell, and I wanted to discuss something work-related, I always had to preface said discussion with a short lesson on how and/or why/why not the phone company did things so that the listener would become suitably enraged when I told them, guess what they did today??

But I have learned some things. Rap is a legitimate form of artistic expression. It's true. I found that the word play is astonishing in some cases, once I started to listen. Granted a bunch of Anglo-Saxon boys who practically glow in the dark are going to put a slightly different slant on it--but the originality is there, even some of the bad-boy raw edge references and associations. It is, in that regard, much like rock and roll. And that, as they say, will never die.

The beat, the musical track in the background, is another art form, albeit one that I don't understand for a couple of reasons. 1.) I will probably never get the technical aspect of slicing and dicing samples of existing music and running them through filters and reconstructing them in ways their original composer never intended, and 2.) I will probably never get the artistic aspect of same, though people familiar with the genre tell me it is very sophisticated. Or can be. My son's beats are more musical than most rap beats you may (or may not) have heard. I understand that. He has a good ear. The final mix downs are very polished too, and clean. (But not TOO clean!) I'm glad that he has that sensibility.

They have been well-received and possess that ability to draw a crowd. Highly prolific (something like 15 songs in three months,) they have performed in an assortment of venues, including, lately, two legitimate clubs that actually paid them real money!!! Awesome.

Still, occasionally I will walk past the study and hear my son in there playing the guitar--just for fun. I love listening to him play, as he's quite good. Better than me.

About Me

2011-07-26T17:44:00.001-05:00

Having added an "about me" page to the blog, I thought I might as well post it as well:

I was born in Santa Barbara on the day NATO troops in Korea crossed the 38th Parallel that separated North Korea from South Korea. My father went to war, where at least one casualty seemed to be his marriage to my mother. I was raised around the San Francisco Bay Area and left town when I graduated from high school. I spent the next twelve years working lots of jobs (none of which I ever got good at) and I even went to college for awhile, until I ran out of money. When I was thirty, after having twenty-three jobs in my lifetime, I landed a job at a huge corporation known, at the time, as the phone company*, and I was just smart enough to realize I better try to stay there. They took reasonably good care of me, which allowed me to marry and buy a house and get deeply into debt, until finally one day I had enough and took the money they offered me and ran away from there.

* (Since I was four when I started the first grade, I was always the youngest in all my classes in school. This meant, to those little barbarians in grade school, that I was small and "uncoordinated," a word oft overused by them, and in truth not particularly athletic, at least not so much that I could overcome being an entire year younger, which, then, was a big deal. I grew up thinking this about myself and it was only years later, when being trained by the phone company to climb telephone poles, that I realized I was actually pretty good at stuff like that.)

So, retired, and not particularly ambitious, I am now trying to figure out what to do next. Nothing seems to be jumping out at me, but the days, which sometimes seem endless, and sometimes all alike, are not so bad. I could do with some drier air and I wouldn't mind moving away from here (Midwest) but since all the places I've lived in the past are now too expensive for me, I would probably wind up in Albuquerque, which would be fine, I suppose, although it's pretty hard to spell.

I have definite political opinions, or I think I do, but I also learned that while it's fun to have political opinions, it amuses no one else--much like juggling bean bags--so, you know, I won't bore you. However, I will say that if you think you can figure them out anyway, based on what I may write here, you need to understand that you are projecting, and the minute you think you are doing that I want you to walk away from your computer, go get something medicinal, and enjoy the day doing something else. Looking at clouds or something. Your life is too short. Your life and my life combined is too long.

I drink too much coffee, but I have quit smoking.

I would end by putting my location down, like "Stratford on Avon," but if I typed my town's name here, it is so ridiculous as to cause you to chuckle and detract from the seriousness of this blog*.

*Pretty damn serious.

A Rose in Any Other Iteration, Depending . . .

2011-07-14T09:57:00.000-05:00

A power failure at the Busy Bee the other day resulted in a brief failure of the Alternate Reality Generator in the basement, resulting in the default reality obtaining temporal dominance for most of the day. The rain cooled off the tropical heat wave we have been having here, although it did, of course, nothing for the humidity situation.

Knolling Schmolling

2011-07-12T17:09:00.001-05:00

I read about "knolling" here, at Paula's blog. I am frightened and confused, like a thawed out cave man suddenly encountering a rational mind. The reason is this:

However, if you look close, you may see that there is a criteria, a hidden agenda, a method, if you will, to the madness. Maybe. I'm guessing all of these things are objects that I decided should not be on the floor. So, you know, what beautiful symmetry is this? They are also all non-edible objects, for the most part. Otherwise they are kitchen counter things, though my wife may further categorize them into "refrigerable" or non-refrigerable. I try not to step on any toes.

I note that I did place these African Violets in a nice row.

Also, good thing I decided to take this picture because I saw they needed watering, so I did that.

Edit: The lower leaves on the plant on the left have responded well to the watering and now no longer droop. I have good luck with African Violets. I water them with room temperature or slightly warmer water, but mainly I think they thrive because mostly I ignore them.

The Summer So Far

2011-07-09T10:20:00.001-05:00

Summer's here. So far it has been a matter of trying to adjust. Heat and humidity don't play well with me, nor do allergies. I wake up every day with a headache. Sleeping in will never work, because once the sun comes up and sleep turns to light sleep, the headache pushes forward and takes its place.

Still dreaming about work. It's also about authority. I do about as well with authority as I do with pollen.

Either way, dreams or hay fever, getting vertical is the solution.

Selling off the guitars has been problematic. Of the five I had for sale, I have actually sold only one. That was painless, but there was another one that I sort of sold but haven't collected all the money for yet, and one that I thought was sold but is not, even though I loaned it out for three weeks. It was returned ("I just don't have the money for it") and I had to then clean it up, including re-stringing it. I have a buyer for the fourth one, but in Salt Lake City, so subtract shipping costs, keep fingers crossed that UPS doesn't use it as a ramp or something on one of their stops. However, I note, it could be worse. It could be accordions.

Yard work. What can I say about yard work that hasn't already been said about death and taxes or getting poked with sharp sticks. The Five Year Program has begun to work. Total neglect, including no fertilizer, has had its effect and the grass is stunted to the point that it grows only very slowly, but weeds still stubbornly spring up. One gets the impression that they are actually happier in the dry, meager clay than the hybrid lawn grass is. It seems as if they would take over the world if allowed. At least the neighborhood. They must be occasionally mowed down to achieve the low, smooth profile I am looking for to reach and maintain my personal goal of not having the worst lawn on the block.

Motorcycling is like juggling bean bags. It's fun, but no one really gives a shit. Bikers are, therefore, sort of like mimes. They hang out together for a reason. It would be trés cool to say I use my motorcycle for economical transportation, but there is something wrong with our culture that doesn't quite allow that, here in the U.S. of A. So, anyway, if anyone cares, or even if not, I ride around on my motorbike when the mood strikes and it's not rush hour and when there is nothing else to do, all at the same time. I have a "scrambler," which is just a motorcycle that pretends to look like it could go off-road if you got a wild hair to do so, and one of its features is the exhaust pipes both come alongside the bike on the same side, and high up (pretending that this allows you to ride across streams and rivers.) What this means is that when your air-cooled engine ain't really that cool in the 100 degree heat outside, the exhaust pipes running right underneath (in my case) your right leg get real hot. It gets worse while waiting for red lights to change. The same engine heat has nowhere to go so it just envelops the bike, you, and nearby things, until you begin to question the efficacy of summer riding altogether. And I confess I just like using the word efficacy.

There is something interesting to say about the relative perception of time passing while sitting on a hot motorcycle waiting at a red lighted intersection which is similar to how hallway corridors in office buildings look longer if you are wearing tight, uncomfortable shoes. But that is more segue than this blog post could handle.

Happy 4th

2011-07-03T22:19:00.000-05:00

Sometimes art is so serious you can miss the point. And then, sometimes there is no point. Here, however, it is synchronicity at its most sublime:

Would you let me walk down your street
Naked if I want to?
Can I pop fireworks
On the Fourth of July?
Can I buy an amplifier
On time?
I ain't got no money now,
But I will pay you before I die.

-Moby Grape

Gently Weeps

2011-07-03T08:54:00.000-05:00

We leave Laslowe and Denise for a moment and return to the mundane. Where is my guitar money?! I gave the guitar to this guy who sings for tips at the City Market, and he hasn't paid me yet. He gave me half, and was supposed to give me the other half on Wednesday, which due to a long, tedious string of unlikely events (as related to me by his friend) did not or could not happen, and so yesterday . . . but, then . . . still no dice. Apparently the extra money in his pocket, like a magnet, drew bad luck and an unexpected bill came up. (What?! They want me to pay this monthly bill AGAIN?! I just paid it a MONTH ago!) Well, shit happens, and instead of the bumper sticker, some people should just have it tattooed onto their forehead. I note at this point that the estimated amount of tips he made playing my guitar, by now, would easily have made up the amount he owes me.

The other guitar, the (and I give you the whole title so you'll realize why it is worth the money) American Deluxe Custom Shop Telecaster with Noiseless Pickups, was returned to me yesterday by the brother of the guy to whom I thought I had it sold who had been performing and recording with it the last two or three weeks in order to decide if he wanted it. He still hasn't been able to make the trek across town to look at the other guitar that he may want instead. So, I get it back. And, after cleaning it and replacing the strings which have somehow corroded in the time he had it, I will put it back up for sale. So, I now have two and a half guitars for sale, kind of.

I'm glad I don't do this for a living. Or, if I did, I'll say I would have to become a bit more pragmatic and not so nice. If I didn't need the money, I would gladly keep them all.

A Busy Bee Interlude

2011-07-01T10:00:00.001-05:00

Something just occurred to me. Just this morning as I was sitting at the end of the counter, in my customary place in front of the tropical island poster on the wall, reading the paper as I monitored out of the corner of one eye the disposition of the Busy Bee breakfast rush, I was startled, as always, by the brief, strident ringing of the Alternate Reality Generator warning bell. (On the wall above the ice machine.)

It always seems like no one ever hears it but me. As I always do, I checked out the front window, where there is a row of four-top tables between the front door and the east wall. As always, the tables have red formica tops and are bounded on the edges by a chrome strip. The chairs match. No one but me notices that the landscape outside has changed. It looks like the Gobi desert to me, the diners are all wearing shorts, boots and capes, one moon is setting, one is still above the horizon, and the sun is a hot red-orange torch above them both. The tables have red formica tops and chrome strips around them. This never changes. Same with the counter where I sat.

Denise passed by the end of the counter carrying a full glass coffee pot and filled Laslowe's coffee cup with a quick, controlled slosh. He looked up appreciatively. The crisp, pale green waitress uniforms never changed either. I looked past the grill out the window in the back door and saw Laslowe's ornithopter where it squatted ominously, dominating the back lot. It never changed either, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out if the thing was supposed to actually fly in all these realities--it looked like such an ungainly and unlikely machine--or in just a few with lower gravity and thicker air. Where did he build it? I thought back and realized it was in the "real" reality, the one I considered my home. In which case, it was more fantastic yet. But I was starting to forget where that was anyway.

Two men entered the front door, and the little bell mounted above it gave a jingle. The men wore suits. That never changed, even though it seemed to put them at a distinct disadvantage, since this is no doubt why Laslowe rose and set his paper and coffee cup down in one fluid motion and in the blink of an eye was across the dining room putting a hand on each man's shoulder.

Denise was not so quiet, because the first thing she did was drop the coffee pot and then, with all eyes upon her, she spun around, her red hair fanning out, and drew a handgun from her apron as she crouched and fired two sharply cracking rounds. Laslowe stepped back as the two men dropped dead to the floor.

To Write a Book

2011-07-01T08:31:00.001-05:00

This is one of those times that I have nothing to say, but I'm typing anyway. You never know what will happen. I suspect entire books have been written this way. Which brings up the subject of NaNoWriMo, something I have shunned since its inception, save one tragic year, when I lasted about three days. I admire greatly anyone who can "win" this thing. I just wish I had it in me. I can't write a book the slow way, either.

I like writing. I mean, on a lower level, I enjoy forming letters with a pen. I like doing crossword puzzles. I liked writing letters that way. There is something fundamentally relaxing and stimulating about the process. I like typing. I like writing blog posts, even mindless ramblings like this one. I liked writing the one opening chapter that I did, back in that tragic November whenever it was. I like looking up and seeing the neat blocks of text I have just created.

I need an outline. I need a story that carries itself forward. This is my problem. The actual creating part. I hope it's not old age, because I have this growing sneaking suspicion that that's not going to get any better. Maybe vitamins.

And why isn't maybe spelled maby? There is a stubborn neuron buried deep in my brain that thinks so.

Origami Hell

2011-06-22T08:59:00.000-05:00

Read this and weep.

"By using paper you help keep trees growing.
The fact is when the demand for paper declines, tree farming also
declines taking all of the important ecological impact with it. Decreasing
paper use may cause a forest somewhere to be replaced by development.
According to USDA estimates, in the next 30 years the U.S. could lose
44 million acres of forest to development."

This is why, actually, smoking is good for us. Thing is, recycling is bad, since it deprives the logging industry of the opportunity to deforest the globe in a timely manner in order to halt the insidious crawl of development, (see above.) Cigarette smoking has the advantage of destroying the paper used so that it will have to be replaced, thereby increasing the demand for paper. (A good thing: see above.) If you're really concerned about the planet, and you're a Republican, you can further the cause by lighting cigars with $100 bills. (If you're a Democrat, you might have to settle for burning stuff in a barrel in the back yard while you sit around and drink beer.)

Next week: How paper condoms encourage quick sex and more subsequent post-coital cigarettes.

Yeeee Haww

2011-06-17T20:21:00.000-05:00

Would You Believe . . .

2011-06-17T12:30:00.001-05:00

Going Mo Bile

2011-06-16T11:30:00.002-05:00

This is a test. Pictured is the purchaser of my Epiphone guitar, playing same. And the accordion lady.

For those with mobile devices, I have enabled the mobile template. How do it know? No idea. If you use a smart phone, it just knows.

One Space

2011-06-16T08:29:00.000-05:00

I was going to be half way to Columbia, Missouri, by now. My friend asked me if I wanted to ride along as he drove to Kentucky today to visit his parents. This also had to do with That Other Matter, of which I usually don't speak. Yesterday I felt sick, and by evening I was stricken with the sort of lower G.I. distress which precludes sitting in a car for nine hours, so I had to back out of the trip. I think it was a wise choice, but I'm in a bit of a funk right now.

I even bought a piece of luggage for the trip. I don't usually fly, so over the years I have gotten by with this old soft-sided suitcase I bought in 1982, and it's huge. I bought a smaller nylon one yesterday. It has a zipper that runs around it and "opens up" more cubic inches of space, or zips back up and reduces the bag's size to official carry-on dimensions for the Airline Nazis. It has, as a rough estimate, about fourteen to twenty-seven zippered pockets, and, I discovered, straps hidden away so it can serve as a back pack. It has little clips that serve unknown purposes, as well as straps and snaps. I actually found one zipper that appears to have no function whatsoever, like stairways in the Winchester Mystery House that lead to the ceiling, or doors that open up to solid wall. As I was looking at it last night I realized that this was the most complicated piece of luggage I had ever seen. I think they should be banned from airports because no normal person could ever comprehend, at a glance, where all the pockets and compartments are, therefore making it easy to sneak hair shampoo aboard. You could, I'm sure, lose items in it and find them eight years later. But not today. Today it sits in the closet, empty.

A General Unfocused Rant

2011-06-15T07:46:00.000-05:00

I am trying to retrain my cats. They think that as soon as they can detect human activity in the house (and, how they do this, I'm not exactly sure,) they get to come inside.

Not to stay. Oh, no. To eat a bite, hiss and growl at each other, and then begin the game of wanting to go out if they're in, and in if they're out. I know what you're thinking, but one cat has learned how to make a distinct clicking sound on the rubber seal around the sliding door glass with his claws, and the other can sound like a baby in distress. Some kind of weird parallel evolution thing, this ability to make sounds that are alarming to humans. So this morning, having gotten up early (not sure why) I let them in, let them eat, and put them out. At this moment I am ignoring the clicking and the whining and the nagging feeling in the base of my brain that I am failing at my cosmic duties as steward in cat-heaven. But damn.

On to other things. Is it just me, or are everyone's pants fitting too tight? There is no scale in the house, but perhaps there ought to be. Last I checked, I weighed 195 pounds--my "fighting weight," what I weighed during those plateau years of my life when I worked outdoors and actually did things. But that last weight check was quite awhile ago, at the doctor's office.

A quick word about those scales in the doctor's office. Do they really need to keep using those mechanical scales from the 1920s? The ones with the graduated levers and the counter-weights? Didn't the ancient Egyptians use those for weighing grain? How much do you think those doctor scales cost? I'll bet they're, like, eight hundred dollars. Probably more. And, get this, they have to calibrated. Because I told one doctor once I thought his scales were off and he said, yeah, some kids were jumping on it last week, and the guy who calibrates it won't be back until next month. Holy shit. Is this why health care costs are so high? How about this? Go to Target and get a digital bathroom scale, for the cost of about two co-payments.

One last thing before I pass out. I am still trying to figure out if I am supposed to single or double space after a period. My personal opinion is that if I only single space, it looks crowded as I see it on my computer screen. I don't care about old offset printing methods or anything like that. But the reason I bring this up is that HTML has at its core an assumption that there is supposed to be one space, not two, after a period at the end of a sentence. If you try to use two, it will strip it back down to one. This Google powered editing window in Blogger is the same. If you use two spaces, it will grant you them, but to do so it has to insert a little extra space code ( ) in there. With no code at all, you get one space.

However, my Apple iPhone operating system seems to differ. If I double space after a word (say, while composing a text message) it will assume (correctly) that I intend to end the sentence. It will automatically insert a period and TWO SPACES. And this is just one more installment of my seemingly never-ending rant about how technology is supposed to be taking its cues from us, not us from it. Unless you want some computer programmer to decide for you how to do . . . anything.

Blog Style

2011-06-10T10:42:00.000-05:00

Because I am such an egotist I was skimming through my posts, so far, on this relatively new blog. I noticed some patterns. I found the usual overuse of the word "just,"which I'm going to have to start searching for every time I think I'm finished writing something. I also realized that I end every post with some sort of Important Thought, some sort of zinger, a punch line of sorts. It's really kind of stupid, and I think more than just a little affected. Yeah. I looked again. Every single one. So how should these blog posts come to an end?

Seriously. Who do I think I am? I realize that a handful of people may read this (or not) and it's very possibly true that each of them is smarter than me. I.Q. is such a slippery thing. It helps to know that someone is reading this, but its primary purpose is to help me verbalize thoughts that would otherwise vaporize when a.) I sleep next, b.)when someone looks cross-eyed at me, c.) a hat drops, d.) another thought crowds it out.

2011-06-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

The latest indignity the Internet slapped across my face was the email from Cindy. Cindy was my classmate in high school, though I didn't know her then. Later in life we met via email, and later still I visited her and her husband where they lived in California. She was a very sweet, earthy woman with a zany sense of humor and no pretensions. When I wrote the email list about my recent type 2 diabetes diagnosis, everyone was quiet but her. She was indignant. "That sucks!" That's all I wanted. Cindy died from cancer--I don't remember now--two years ago.

The day before yesterday, I got an email from her. The subject line was blank, the first sentence was "I satisfied with their work." (sic) Then there was a link to a web page. Spam. The recipients were people (one of them dead) who were in Cindy's address book.

An unfortunate kind of immortality, someone wrote. I called AT&T, the host for the old email address at pacbell.net. This is an unusual request, I started out, then explained the odd situation. Is there any way someone can just pop in and verify that this email address has no Internet provision connected to it, and then delete the email account so this will stop?

I forgot just how stupid and intractable my old company can be. No, no one had the authority to just remove an email address. When the service was disconnected, an order "flows" (code for : "does not flow") to the techs who then clean up the email data. After my single phone call was basically routed from Sacramento to India to Texas, and beyond, (do not ask what is beyond Texas) one bright young woman came up with the suggestion that I change my email address so I won't get the spam anymore. I tried to explain, again, what I was trying to accomplish, but I kept getting louder and louder, because, I thought, stupidity is merely a form of deafness, and if one can yell loud enough . . . but it didn't work any better than it does on non-English speaking people. It's irreversible.

I gave up. Now every morning I get an email from my old friend Cindy, which I dasn't read. I am reminded of two things, both useful: of Cindy's zany sense of humor and her contribution to my life, even though small by some measure, and of the true nature of evil, which is simply ignorance and randomness.

Chapter XCII of the Book In My Mind

2011-06-04T07:05:00.000-05:00

To the girl in the coffee shop who thought I was talking to her, and answered me, when I was really talking to someone else, but it was OK because your smile was so sweet: come back!

Oh. I bet she doesn't read my blog. Anyway, men are such suckers. But it's amazing about smiles.

I still remember the awesomely radiant smile of one Ms. Enoch, one early summer morning after my freshman high school year as she pedaled her bicycle past my apartment and said, "Hey!" Of course now I know (pretty sure) that she was there on purpose. I'm so stupid! It lasted about one second, in reality, but I never forgot it.

Friday Already Again Redux

2011-06-03T08:43:00.000-05:00

It's Friday again. Trash day. Only not, because of Memorial Day pushing out the garbage pickup schedule. I bet those guys hate holidays, because it means they have the exact same amount of work to do but now in a shorter period of time. And now with the mechanical arm mounted on the trucks that makes it all a one-man operation, the workers have lost one valuable tool that they used to have: the ability to work faster when necessary for short periods of time. The driver/arm-operator really can't do his job any faster. He still has to drive up to the garbage cans, get out, operate the arm, get back in the truck. But the old way, with the two guys on the back, lent itself to spurts of higher productivity--the guys could run up and down the street and collect and empty more cans per truck stop. Not that they would like doing this, but when you're young and someone says either work Memorial Day, or let's see if we can still get everything picked up in four days, you rise to the occasion. It is the intangible aspect of human workers, a kind of natural flexibility that you just don't get with machines and computers. But the promise of an improved bottom line is so enticing, companies cave. Of course I know better, but there is an optimal middle ground that no one bothers to find, most of the time. Usually, in my opinion, it is found by asking the question, how can technology help the humans I have working for me, rather than the other question: how can technology replace the humans I have working for me. But, perhaps is just an ideological preference.

Well, since I don't take notes during the day, I forget almost all of the outrageous, bloggable things that I see and hear, but I still remember the label on the case of bottled water that I looked at a couple weeks ago when shopping for a couple of bottles of water. It was the store brand. Eight bottles of filtered Hy-Vee water on a cardboard flat all wrapped in cellophane. Somewhere on the printed label on top, it said, "Party Size." I remember thinking, well, I don't necessarily want to go to hell, but I really don't want to party with these people. But most disturbing was the fact that in the very first milliseconds after reading that, I was attracted to that case of filtered HyVee bottled water. I got this vague but thankfully brief feeling that water was happy. Then, continuing to be disturbing, I realized that this was the most rudimentary form of mental manipulation ever, save Russia's advertising campaign for Coca Cola in the Sixties ("Coca Cola Tastes Good!") and I almost didn't catch it, and I realized that there were many other forms of mental manipulation going on in that store that must have been more sophisticated and which I therefore did not catch.

My soul felt like it had been stretched out and wadded up and thrown on the sidewalk. How badly had I been damaged? How long before I would get an inexplicable yen for some Moon Pies, or a loaf of Wonderbread, or a Party Size package of dental floss threaders?

Sunday, During Which I Have an Awkward Moment

2011-05-30T08:13:00.000-05:00

Mood is mostly chemistry, but first, you have to get a good night's sleep. I thought I would open today's post with a Deep Thought, but now that I look at it, it's not as good as I had hoped.

I spent most of the day yesterday at the City Market (farmers market) but did not buy any produce. Instead I browsed the flea market at the northeast corner (I see they have the same stuff as last week, if memory serves) then walked around the whole place to hear the buskers (the guy playing the flute was there but not the girl with the accordion) then blew my daily allotment of carbohydrates on a honey-nut death muffin and a cup of coffee.

Then I heard a guy singing while playing a Kay guitar. Kay made guitars for Sears and Montgomery Wards back in the Sixties and possibly Seventies. The kind that would have made better egg slicers or possibly cheese graters, but had a great quality for the kind of stuff this guy was doing. Besides, you're not going to drop a dollar bill in some guys guitar case if he's playing a sixteen-hundred dollar Martin.

Then I bought a hot dog, for the protein diversification of it all, and saw the girl-who-won't-look-me-in-the-eye, which is always a little disturbing, but it's only because she didn't shut the bathroom door upstairs in the coffee house all the way and I walked in on her, three weeks ago. Trust me, I was more embarrassed than she was, and to tell the truth, I didn't see who it was, but only figured it out later when she wouldn't look me in the eye anymore.

After that, I walked past the collection of old Ford Thunderbirds. Odd, that, since I was just talking about the glamorous days of the American automobile. Back then, I never really cared for Thunderbirds, but to my jaded twenty-first century eye, they looked pretty cool, even though, I confess, I am spoiled by modern automotive technology and have come to expect cars to 1.) start and b.) stop when I want them to. And negotiate curves without tilting 45 degrees to the side, except for, of course, the Austin Mini Coopers which were way ahead of their time, and you should go out of your way to see one because they are not really too much like the new iteration that BMW has been making.

I was thinking there was no song about the Thunderbird, then remembered the Beachboys had one in which they stated they would have "fun, fun, fun" until her daddy took the T-bird away. "Fun, fun, fun," if you need a translation, means "really, really fun," or sex, which is why just about all the owners of these fine cars yesterday at the City Market were sixty-plus-year-old rich guys. Which, now that I think of it, disqualifies me because I'm not rich.

2011-05-29T09:55:00.000-05:00

I sit here wondering what of interest might have happened yesterday, and I'm coming up wanting. I went out for breakfast with a group of guys who like to talk about cars, then I came home, and several hours later went to bed.

Not that cars aren't interesting. I've had several of them myself, mostly interesting. "Interesting," like in "interesting times." But cars are just machines. I didn't used to understand that. When I was sixteen, cars seemed different. It was the advertising. They were presented as magical conveyors not only to destinations but to states of mind and pinnacles of success. And it must be true, because how else could they command such a huge price? Were they mere machines, how would one possibly build up that kind of fiscal enthusiasm?

It's like sending your kid to college. That's a lot of money to pay for a series of lectures and a certificate at the end, especially when you think of what the certificate implies: you are smart enough to know what everyone else knows. Congratulations; you are an intellectual Buick.

Uninspired

2011-05-27T08:57:00.000-05:00

Such is my life that in order to come up with subject matter for a blog post I am forced to resort to free association, and the letting of the chips falling where they may. Yesterday I drove to Lawrence, Kansas. Kansas is the place, you may remember, where the religious fanatics staged a jihad against the state school board, took it over, and attempted to mandate curriculum in the form of giving Creationism "equal time" in the debate against evolution. Don't get me started.

Lawrence has a great music store which sells instruments on consignment, enabling me to unload some guitars that I have acquired over the years when my son and I were "into" guitars. Now we're "into" motorcycles, which are not only too expensive to collect in numbers greater than, about, one, but are too big to stack up in the closet. As for motorcycles, we each have one, and that is enough to keep me from pulling my new car all the way into the garage during threats of hail.

Before I forget, if you are in the market for an electric guitar, speak now. I have two Strats and a Tele. If you don't know what that means, you probably wouldn't pay what I want for them. Remember this is free association and I don't really think any of my known readers would want a guitar, but optimism reigns supreme.

I've played the guitar since I was about fifteen, and I never have gotten very good at it. I do like to write my own compositions, though, which always come out sounding like a cross between Terrega and Scott Joplin (only, you know, worse.) Hobbies are funny things, because they are a sanctioned form of incompetence in a world that has grown competitive and corporate and bottom-lined. Screw that.

The Weather

2011-05-26T08:45:00.000-05:00

No one ever talks about the calm after the storm. It's nice. Cue the Bugs Bunny music, (Rossini's Wm. Tell) It's a beautiful morning out there, especially in the aftermath of that weird storm system that slowly spiraled its way across the Kansas City area yesterday and dropped all these little funnel clouds making everyone a nervous wreck. I believe the reported funnel cloud that dropped to form a small tornado about four miles south of my house is the closest one has ever come, if indeed it existed.

I still can't get my car all the way into my garage. This has something to do with all the crap already in there. Since the car is almost brand new, I have this idea that I want to protect it always from hail. With the car nosed into the garage as far as it will go, I still had to cover the trunk lid with a quilt blanket. Of course this will not help in the event of "baseball sized hail," but in that case, probably neither will the garage roof.

Three Things

2011-05-23T06:37:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning at around 5:00 a.m., got up and had a drink of water, went back to bed, and then lay there thinking of three things. Can it be that there is not just one thing in my life not going the way it should, but three? Granted, the third thing is not so much a problem as just a thing I want. Well, no, it's a thing I want with a fresh problem, I guess. Normally things I want don't keep me awake. So I lay there not thinking of the three things like this, one, two, three, in a line, but more like a swirling morass of congealing angst: ontewthoreoneetwthoronee . . . Or, to put it another way, think of hostile alien robots carrying a-bombs coming to audit your last year's income tax. Any one of those things might be manageable, but not all of them, not all at the same time.

So I got up, hoping that caffeine augmented consciousness would evaporate, say, one or two of the problems, but I've always been suspicious of that process. So here I sit, having commanded my subconscious to get back with me when it has sorted things out a little better, say, next week.

OK, you know what? After the second cup of coffee, it's really not so bad. Really, I have only one problem I need to address right away. The hostile alien robots. Piece of cake.

If It's Sunday This Must Be Heaven

2011-05-22T09:38:00.000-05:00

A strange thing happened this morning. The sun came up.

To put this Last Day of the World thing in perspective, imagine the world itself, spinning either fast or slowly, depending on your reference point, in its orbit around the sun, an even bigger body in space. Earth weighs, according to my references (google) 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kilograms. A kilogram, if you are not metric, is about the weight of a shoebox full of pot. So, anyway, point is, the Earth is pretty big.

Now compare all that mass to something I'm not sure has any mass at all, which is two brain synapses firing in tandem, followed by some more synapses firing down the arm toward the hand, which is holding a Bible, followed by a "thump" sound.

Now imagine that second mass, that tiny electro-chemical reaction which leads to a small, dull sound, suddenly obliterating the first mass, the six bazzillion squillion holy shitillian OMGillian tons of rock and water and lava around a dense nickel core.

I'm not buying it. Of course, yeah, I wish I wrote this yesterday, but the argument is no less compelling just because you already know I'm right.

So, in summary: random spurious thought, enormous celestial body spinning in space, the world didn't end any time yesterday, (or if it did, I apparently slept through it,) and today is the first day of, if not the rest of eternity, then The Last Week of May. And that just doesn't happen that often, May being one of twelve months and all, not to mention an elusive state of mind.

In this case I invite and welcome comments, so I know I'm not the only one out here.

A Non-Story

2011-05-18T08:47:00.000-05:00

I noticed that I can't write about anything too soon after it happens. Stories evolve. On the rare occasions that something that happens seems instantly meaningful, right then as it happens, it is almost mystical. (We love meaning.) Otherwise, chalk it up to the story itself, living and breathing and seeking recognition and fame and acceptance and love.

So yesterday I rode my motorcycle a hundred miles south, to El Dorado Springs, Missouri. Not much happened. At first, even though it was sunny, it was too cold to ride, especially wearing the clothing I had chosen. On the ride down, then, some primitive part of my brain made the decision to clinch all of the muscles in my torso, shoulders and neck, thinking that would make me warmer. If memory serves, forty years ago clinching my muscles for two hours might have been sort of fun, or at least something that could be done without consequence. Now, it is not recommended. But, as they say, what does not kill us, makes us annoyed, and achey.

Occasionally, though, as I sat on my rather loud, droning machine that sent it and me plummeting headlong into the wind, I would forget about the cold air that pushed relentlessly into my clothing and notice that I was rolling along the countryside, and it was nice.

Spring is sort of over here, and summer is sort of getting off to a cold start, but it's that sort of countryside now. I didn't see a lot of people, but everyone was doing something productive, except me, of course, rolling along, pushing air and creating a noise which, from the distance between the highway and the middle of a farm field might have sounded like a sort of purring that peaks and tails off. Just me.

I am back, now with new Avon tires on the bike's wheels and a gallon of 100% fully synthetic Castrol oil in the crankcase.

An Inauspicious Start

2011-05-14T10:41:00.000-05:00

Coffee cup in front of me. The remnants of a headache that woke me up at five. Dreams that are fading so fast that there is no time to fill the hole with consciousness. Cold, cloudy weather outside the window. A gray day. The prospect of another breakfast at Sharp's with the Car Guys, the prospect of weird scrambled eggs, or leather-like French toast. I don't know what happened to that place. I had another phone company dream. This time, it wasn't my truck that I lost, but my wallet. Someone in the dream said I was losing my mind. Or that I "really was" crazy. But you can't trust the judgement of those dream people.

I am back from Sharp's and breakfast with the Car Guys. Lies were told, some by me.

The day before yesterday I had one of those weird days where I felt oddly disconnected from everything, as if I were a holograph, and was really somewhere on Jupiter. I spoke with the barista at the coffeehouse about it. He said he was having the opposite kind of day, and that he was full of himself. I think that is it. On days when reality seems thinnest, it is because I am not as connected to my ego. Reality belongs to the ego. These are the days, too, when I don't ever get road rage, but am content to get from point A to point B in one piece and maybe even enjoy the ride, which all makes sense now.

Wanted to say, I have trouble with comments. You can write a comment, and I will read it, but if I don't respond, please replace in your mind the cogent, witty rejoinder I might have typed with the image of me nodding sagely at your remark, in a gesture of complete approval.

Blog-o-rah-mah

2011-05-13T22:17:00.000-05:00

Not sure what happened there. It was lost and now it is found. I spent more time, actually, trying to decide on the background picture. This, I think, is the room above the Busy Bee Cafe, where Laslo lives.

Not that any of this is helping me think of something to write about.