what are YOU looking at?

say you're ugly. do you know it? seriously. am i ugly? would i know? would i care?

we all look around at the available mate choices and evaluate them on our own terms but there's no one who does not include "good looking" in their criteria. the difference is how we define good looking. or, so we say. we all seem to agree that brad pitt is good looking. i don't hear anyone denying julia roberts is good looking. we can all agree that christie brinkley, mel gibson, and johnny depp are good looking, right? what about adam sandler? laura san giacomo? jesse james? hmm? there are some people we all agree are good looking, and then there are people that we say... well... it's a matter of choice.

so how does this work? do we all have an innate sense of how good looking we are? are we genetically programmed to find someone in our own range of looks?

sometimes people pick a partner who's better looking. lyle lovett married julia roberts and say what you want about interpreting good looks - that guy is not good looking by any traditional standard, and ms roberts is universally considered to be good looking. yeah, yeah, lyle's a musician and that goes a long way. musicians are known for being sensitive and caring and intelligent and blah blah blah - and he may very well be all that & a bag of fritos. but - he is not good looking, and that's what we're talking about here. obviously in this case, julia was blinded by his other attributes, but their relationship didn't last - and was that in any part due to their mismatched good-lookingness?

so - we all sort of match up with people in our look range. from the first time i saw my old man right up to today, i have always thought he is quite handsome. i would like to think i am not too far off base on that b/c here's the thing -- i see ugly couples all the time gazing at each other like they are the bee's knees and i just have to think - what are they seeing? do they really see A Gorgeous Person, or do they see A Good-Enuf Person? are they like - oooo, look at my best-i-can-do mate, my settled-for partner! um... i don't think so. i think we all look at our mates and think - ah, now that's a looker!

if you look at your partner & don't think you've nabbed a looker, well that's just kind of sad.

today is thursday.

besides the obvious - postee notes on my computer monitor, use of my chair as an inbox - one of my major pets peeves is people saying, «i wish it was friday» all week long. firstly, the proper grammar is «i wish it were friday» but the real point is that wishing it waswere friday doesn't do any of us any good. for yourself, you are wishing your life away, but for me, all you frookers with your combined wishing for friday are pushing the earth to rotate more & more fasterly. ::sigh:: why can't you just be happy you are here, now?

the good news is - tomorrow's friday!

in a totally not creepy way

1. world peace
2. cds - killers, airborn toxic event, matt kearney
3. chicago manual of style, 15th ed
4. tent

i have given this tent thing some thought and concluded that what i need to go with the tent is a child. but in a totally not creepy way. or in the least creepy way possible. the problem is that i am a grown up and grown ups aren't allowed to sleep outside in tents for no reason at all. if you are homeless and sleeping in a tent - excellent. if you are hiking the appy trail and sleeping in a tent - stupendous. if you are a scout leader and sleeping in a tent - more power to ya. if you are a random adult who pitches a tent in the backyard and sleeps out there right next to a perfectly good house - weird. the way to overcome this weirdness is to have a child to sleep in the tent with, but i know you can see right there that you run the risk of replacing the merely weird with the downright creepy. what i need is a geniune kid who i genuinely know who genuinely wants to sleep in a tent and genuinely asks me to go camping in my own backyard. if you are a kid and you're reading this and you like to camp out and talk about grammar while listening to some good music, let's get together - in a totally not creepy way.

my, my... that went well, i think.

coffee talk

this is a pic of my coffee can from work. notice the easy open top. it's a thin metal sheet that is vacuum sealed to the can and is removed easily with the handy pull tab. between this type of pull tab and the more common looped pull tab there should be no need for a can opener. ever. there is seriously no reason why every can should not be made with an easy open top. i know you agree with me.

notice also in the pic my coffee spoon. it is conveniently notched. i have no idea when this happened, but i noticed last week there was a piece of plastic in the coffee in the can. i was like «omg!omg! there is plastic in my coffee can!» and i could not figure out where it came from and i was going to file a lawsuit and i knew the first thing i had to do was fish it out & get a better look at it, so i grabbed my coffee spoon to fish out that piece of plastic and - d'oh!

notice the coffee is don francisco's cimmanon hazelnut. mmmm! don franseeeeskoh! this is like the coffee ever. probably would be better as freshly roasted beans. wonder if i can get some freshly roasted don franseeeeskoh! i delegate this to you - find me some don franseeeekoh beans. now!

in conclusion, merlin's on. gotta go watch!

bif! bam! pow!

woke up at 4am with a toothache and realized today's the day that tiny nagging turns into an actual pain. zoinks!

glad this happened on a workday and not the weekend, called the dentist & he got me right in. huzzah!

surely it's just a cavity and he'll fill it right up, but the xray shows... a crack. blimey!

the cure for a crack is a crown but he can't crown me with many crowns today b/c his assistant is out, so we make an appt for wednesday and the dentist-office lady shows me the estimated bill. egad!

spent a good part of the remainder of the day exploring dental options and learned my provider is not in the network. bahstad!

so his charges are higher and the percentage the insurance pays is lower. dastardly!

glad to learn the truth about my dentist and glad that he didn't do the crown before i learned this truth, i scoured the in-network provider list provided by my insurance provider and located a familiar name. ah-hah!

discussed the saga with carpooling coworker who turns out to be a patient of the potential provider. shutUP!

called potential provider & made appt, but learned potential provider is on a mission trip and won't be back for a week so the appt will be delayed. drat!

disappointed about the appointed date but happy with how this turned out because current dentist used to be all nice & caring about teeth but now he's all with the closed circuit teevee showing elaborate tooth capping and whitening procedures he performs right there in the office for a small fee. cha-ching!

and as a bonus - my new dentist works at the tooth-of-pain! ppfahahaha!

aren't you tired of living in a house?

some images gathered while pondering what the hell is our collective damage that so many of us live in such sameness when individual beauty is within the grasp of each of us.

i am tired of living in a house.

i heart books. | .skoob traeh i

currently reading ken follett's world without end and yes some critics say the characters are flat & polarized and the plot is without embellishment. however, the detail of life in the 1300s is fascinating. the setting is a character. i am not totally sure he's got everything right - for instance, would a poor village boy in the england of 1337 have heard of leopards? not sure. but then, one presumes mr follett researched these things.

so, this is my current book - world without end - and it's 1014 pages, and it weighs probably 7 lbs and really, when one is on crutchers, one wonders what compels one to choose such a weighty tome. even not on crutchers, one still hesitates to lug around a tome of this volume. i can see the appeal of the kindle. wouldn't want to read from it all the time but it would be nice to be able to read from the real book at home and carry the kindlized version around for reading in the car. or, for reading while on the stationary bike.

this is the uk and aussi cover. i like it better than the usa cover.


and speaking of the stationary bike - which i rode for an hour [!!] this morning - riddle me this: why don't those things have a book holder? let's get serious, folks, we're not going anywhere. it's a stationary bike. stat.ion.ary. do we really need handle bars? i think not.

yeah, i rode for an hour this morning because i was just humming along there and presto it had been 45 minutes so i figured might as well finish out the hour. and that is testimony to the power of a good book. a good book of which i am on page 315 - barely 1/3 of the way in. so what did i do at b&n this evening? get a couple more books to put on the to-read pile, of course. there are 3 books sitting right here beside me on the to-read pile, plus a few on the bookshelf, plus a couple on reserve at the liberry, plus a book wish list that i carry around with me. are the books on reserve and the books i just bought ones off the wish list? ppfahahaha! no. that would make some sort of sense. these are books - where's the sense in that?

betty boot lessons

as betty boot & i have travelled thru this summer, she has taught me many lessons.

when people see me with betty boot, they will ask either -

«what happened?»

-- or --

«what did you do?»

i have noticed that guys usually go with «what did you do?» and gals do «what happened?». guys assume that i did something that caused the injury because guys are all the time doing stuff to cause injury. gals as a rule are more passive - if they are injured, it's b/c something happened to them. people inquire about others from their own context.

another thing i've noticed is that when you're on crutchers, people will try to help you by holding doors & carrying your backpack & such. these people fall into categories as follows:

» those who actually don't try to help at all.

» those who try to help because they feel sorry for me. ick. they are awkward and all with the "bless your heart". ick. pity is so completely useless, absolutely serves no purpose at all. i really try to avoid accepting any help from them b/c i don't want to validate the pity, but then they end up saying something stupid like "you're doing so good" as if crutchers have made me a drooling eejit. [with apologies to all actual drooling eejits out there]

» those who try to help because they think they are supposed to - they are not exactly begrudging of the help, but not exactly cheerful either. to them it's a chore to be completed.

» those for whom helping me is inconveniencing them, so it's like i'll owe them something if they help me. i don't actually need much help, and i don't want to owe anyone for something i didn't even need, so i'll do my best to avoid accepting the help of these people. usually can accomplish this by simply continuing to move along - not allowing them the time they need to get their act together to help me.

oh, and here's the irony - in many cases to accept help, i must go out of my way, slow down, wait. is it really help if it's not really helpful?

where was i?

right.

» those who try to help b/c they think it makes them look good. performance assistance. these people will only help if there are other people around to watch them helping. unpleasant.

» those who help b/c it is in their nature to help. to accept this help, i don't even have to accept it. does that make sense? these people are such natural helpers that they instinctively know how to help without inconveniencing themselves or me. they can open a door at my pace while stepping out of the way. they can reach for a backpack or a water bottle without being awkward at all. they get there first and don't even ask what i might need. they just naturally do it without calling attention to themselves at all. these people are all that and a bag of fritos.

define: libertarian

olympia snowe - pictured at left - republican representative from maine always votes with the dems. when they are counting reps who are voting with the dems on this or that - they always mention ol' olympia and usually her fellow republican from maine, susan collins. now i have no problem with these women voting in whatever way is representative of the population of their state, but if that means they vote democratic, then why don't they just go ahead and switch over?

see, there are committees that do a lot of the work of the house & the senate, and the chairmanships of these committees are given to the majority party and the minority party in certain ways that are supposed to keep things equal, but if you have democrats masquerading as republicans and taking chairs for the minority but voting with the majority, then that's subverting the system. not that anyone would be surprised by this type of subversion going on in washington deecee, but still - let's call it what it is, shall we?

susan collins - pictured at right - is pro choice, pro stem cell research, pro lgbt rights. let me make it clear right now that i am steadfastly ambivalent & conflicted on these issues - but i am not a senator of the united states who professes to be a member of the party whose platform does not endorse these stances. now -- if she switched sides and declared herself a democrat, the dems would have as much of a problem with her as the republicans do b/c she's got her conservative side, too. she voted against senate oversight of cia activities. that's pretty key to the liberals - exposing to the light of day everything the spies are doing - and she's against that and she's for a whole slew of national security measures. see? conservative.

olympia snow, also is liberal on social issues, supports legalized abortion and gay rights - yet she also supports the death penalty is a strong supporter of the war on drugs and the embargo on cuba. in fiscal matters and on defense particularly, snowe is generally conservative.

what is going on here? how can these women be on both sides of the aisle? hmm... perhaps like most of us who are not in wash-deecee -- aka blackandwhiteland -- most of us who live out here in greyland where issues are not so clear cut -- maybe like us, these women have a mix of thoughts & feelings. maybe they work to choose what is best in each case to rightfully represent their constituents who are no doubt real people, too.

we could use a real third party. not a ralph-nader halfass third choice. a real third choice that could actually appear if some powerful people would simply say enough. but - oh yeah - if you're powerful, the system is working for you, so you have no incentive to threaten the status quo by having anything to do with a choice outside the system.

in conclusion, it's just all frogged up.

wishing for something to happen

right up until the incident - it was a day just like any other day. she woke up, went for a swim in the basement pool, returned to her apartment via the back stairs, ate oatmeal with blueberries, showered & dressed, walked to work - everything so precisely the same as every other day that you couldn't really blame her for wishing something would happen to break the spell of doldrums.

but when you get to the point that you are wishing for something to happen, then you need to snap out of yourself and make something happen because simply wishing for something to happen only gives you about a 50% chance that the "something" will be good. no - probably more like 35% chance that whatever happens will be beneficial to you because if you are so lazy that you start wishing for any old something to happen, you concede control & open the door to fate.

and that's exactly what she did. she conceded control & opened the door to fate. she wished something would happen.

so that's exactly what happened.

she walked to work, same as always, and as she entered the retro-green glass office tower she caught a glimpse of motion at the edge of her vision. it was just enough to register her attention and by reflex she turned her head towards the motion. before she could focus her mind enough to process the action her reflex was performing - much less focus her eyes enough to process what she was seeing - she was sucked into the vortex.

post 1111+1

it's day 30 for me & betty boot. that's longer than the marriage of dennis hopper & michelle phillips - married in 1970 for 9 days. 10 days from now, i am hoping to end the relationship amicably and put ol' betty boot in the closet.

today on the way home betty boot & i got behind a pickemup truck with a sticker in the back window: «drive it like ya stole it!» and if by "like ya stole it" they meant "really slow and kinda swervy" then by golly they were a-one on target with that one.

in case you're keeping score, obama's appointed at least 21 csars. these csars report only to the president and are not vetted by the congress. drug csar, urban csar, energy csar, car csar, border csar, iran csar... iran csar? don't they already have their own csar, right there in iran?

news from the world of tech - «if you are looking for weed, check twitter.» riiiiight. «weeder get the goods at 4th & main 5pm» «weedme w00t! RT@weeder: get the goods at 4th & main 5pm» «weedme2 RT@weedme: w00t! RT@weeder: get the goods at 4th & main 5pm» that's a good plan, man - just show up looking for weed based on a tweet. can see nothing wrong with that plan, man. not that i know anything about weed. it's just a brief analysis of a news story, man.

coo coo ca choo!

post 1111 - the ace of posts

knives had never bothered her near as much as spoons did. people, she felt, had a fundamental misunderstanding of the inherent danger of spoons. forks with their pointy tines yelling «caution!» and knives commanding nearly unfathomable levels of respect... by comparison, spoons appeared harmless. but this very appearance of harmlessness was the key to their power. spoons were stealthily. no. not stealthy - that was too generous, implied too much intelligence. spoons were not all that smart - but they were sneaky. sitting there all prim and prissy next to the sharp knife & pointy fork. «i'm just a sweet li'l spoooon. you don't have to be afraid of li'l ol' me!» spoons lull you into trusting them - then you pick one up and then! then the spoon has you right where it wants you! the evil, conniving spoon turns on you, weilding its untenable power of persuasion and before you know it --

16-24 july 1969

so you've heard of buzz aldrin and neil armstrong - first men to walk on the moon - but what about michael collins? heard of him? eh? what does an irish revolutionary have to do with space travel, you ask?

no - not that michael collins, ya eejit!

michael collins was the command module pilot on apollo 11. this means that on the flight that took 2 men all the way to the surface of the moon, astronaut collins drove the get-away vehicle. he circled the moon waiting on his compadres to get done vandalizing the pristine lunar surface, then he picked them up and hustled them back to earth, a quarter million miles away.

michael collins orbited & waited. michael collins was relegated to simply biding his time, alone. for 48 minutes of each orbit, he was out of radio contact - completely & totally alone in space, on the dark side of the moon. did he feel left out? lonely? clearly, his was a vital role, but did he envy the men on the moon?

i have heard that we [and, by "we" i mean the collective consciousness (and by "collective consciousness" i mean rocket scientists)] no longer have the knowledge required to land on the moon. difficult to believe, eh? apparently, the notes were written on - get this - paper and the paper has been lost. ha! eejits! why didn't they store the notes in their iphones??

seriously - some documentation was destroyed by grumman, the company that created the lunar module, but there are actual lunar modules in nasa's possesion which were built for apollo missions that weren't run b/c nasa's budget was cut. i'm fairly certain a rocket scientist could figure out how the lunar modules were made by inspecting these existing models. why did grumman destroy the documentation? i'd guess b/c it was top secret but could have been b/c people can be eejits.

speaking of eejits - someone at nasa erased the original tapes of the transmission of video data from the apollo 11 moon landing. there are secondary tapes created simultaneously, and i won't bore you with the details, but to sum it up: the secondary tapes are completely valid but not as good quality as the primary tapes. in the 70s and 80s when satellites began to proliferate and generate a plethora of 24/7 data, nasa was scavenging for tapes and apparently erased & taped over the moon landing. not sure really how that could happen. weren't they marked «moon landing - save»? and, if the faded ink on the peeling paper label was unreadable - didn't they look at them before they erased them? and, what were they doing so short on tapes - why didn't they run out to officemax and get some more?

we are undoubtedly a rampaging pack of eejits.

can we still put a man on the moon?

do we still want to?

2am

effortless. that's how she'd describe swimming. effortless like breathing is effortless. like something you do without thinking, without expending... effort.

the pool was a 24/7, swim at your own risk, olympic size extravagance in the basement of her building. a throwback ammenity in a throwback apartment building in a throwback neighborhood. building & pool both old but not forgotten - mended yet clean. neighborhood? the residential neighborhood was all-but-forgotten, a few midrise apartment buildings bounded by generic midrise office park. the area was once considered hip & urban, the eager development team touting the walk-to-work concept, but it turned out that few hip urban professionals have a desire to walk to work, preferring the sterile comfort of a car ride from home garage to office garage, never mussing onesself with the outside air.

she favored swimming at 2am. on rare occassions there was another in the pool, but it was generally abandoned at this hour. not that she cared if others were present. she didn't choose 2am swimming for the isolation - she chose it because of the insommnia. she was awake and it was not her style to worry about why she could not sleep or to fritter the time in mindless web surfing. of course - after years of 2am swims, the likely explanation for not sleeping at 2am was that her body expected to be swimming.

gliding through the tepid pool she let her mind wander over the events of the past week. if you had told her 7 days ago that she had a sister, she would have laughed in your face.

ace of all trades

my work tends to be quite reactionary. i spend all day holding up words of protest hand-painted onto flimsy poster board nailed to scraps of splintery wood. haha. no, not that kind of reactionary. more the white collar reactionary whose task list is the outlook inbox and who righteously endeavors to respond to -- id est: react to -- each request as quickly as possible. you could say i am very helpful, but it's more correct to say that knowing people come to me for answers feeds my ego. it's not about being generous - ironically, all my giving is about being selfish. i am your go-to guy. you can count on me. i am Important.

there are 3 major divisions of work in my dept and i work across all the divisions b/c... well, we've been over this -- it's b/c i'm your go-to guy. you can count on me. at any rate, i work across all 3 but all 3 are not created equal. one is supposed to be getting more of my attention than the others, but it is also the quietest one. it hums along merrily in the background. it's an automated assembly line not requiring constant attention & nurturing to keep moving. all sorts of pieces begin to pile up in my queue but since they don't knock on my door [okay, it's a cubicle... all knocks are on the metal strip that runs down the side of the canvas-covered wall unit] or email me or set up a meeting with me - they don't have the same quality of urgency.

but today i drew the line. today i dedicated to project 1 and told my boss and he said «good plan». i hunkered down and dug in and focused on project 1 all day.

emails arrived from my coworkers, all needing something. they came knocking on my metal strip pleading their desperate cases. everything from graphic design to number crunching b/c - did i mention this already? - i am their go-to guy. they count on me for everything. want that jpg tweaked? that report pulled? that file uploaded? got a word document that won't print or that you need proofread or researched or turned into a pdf or folded into an origami swan? give it to ace. ace will do it. ace is our go-to guy. we count on ace for everything.

but today was different. today i said «no». i said it over & over & over again. sometimes it feels like saying «no» takes as much time as actually doing the whatever, and i know that's what these people think - that they will wear me down with the incessant insistence and eventually i will Just Do It.

but not today. today was different. today i said «no». felt pretty good at the time, but now all that slimey backwash is going to come out in monday's sip of work. ew!

heh.

raydee'anne

raydee'anne allowed her eyes to trace the path of the server's white-gloved hand as he gently placed the next elaborately executed dish directly in front of her on the polished mahogany table, and she sighed. the sigh wasn't loud enough to reach the ears of her father, seated at the head of the table some twenty feet away, but jared stokes no longer had to hear his daughter expel breath to know when she was nearing her limit. the sag of her shoulders and the bend of her long and innately aristocratic neck as they bore the weight of her resignedly bowed head revealed what he already knew: raydee'anne was too weak for this life. fourteen months had passed since she had appeared at the sables of many maples and collapsed into the arms of jared's personal liveryman, who had been cleaning the mud and ice from jared's hunting saddle, and in those fourteen months her strength had waned with each passing day.

tripping to the liberry

why is it so freaking hard to find a good book? i wandered around the liberry tonight for over an hour and when they announced «the liberry will be closing in 15 minutes» and i got really desperate for something - anything! - to read, i finally remembered i wanted to read ken follett's world without end - sequel to one of my all time faves, the pillars of the earth. i am fairly certain wwe is not going to be as good as pillars b/c it's just so much to live up to but the POINT of this BLATHER is that i spent over an hour wandering around the liberry, looking in the liberry catalog online, looking up «people who bought this also bought that» on bn.com, wandering, scanning shelves, using computers, wandering, gazing, wandering.

here's one thing i realized while wandering - if you want to have a bestseller, pick a pen name that will get your books shelved near a Big Name Author. this holds true for bookstores and liberries both and is especially important if you are going to write in a particular jonray. like, if you are going to write legal thrillers, use a pen name that will get your books shelved near grisham. i suggest grishal or grishan. either of these names will put you right there next to ol' john. and see here's the idea - folks come looking for grisham and all the grishams have been purchased [bookstore] or checked out [liberry] so they will go for the nearby book of same jonray and wahlah - it's your book. here's some pen name idears for ya, by jonray:

horror - koonty
legal thriller - grishal
chic lit - evanovici
mindless blather - steeld
talking animals being oppressed by the man - orwelm
talking animals that are actually plush toys - milnf

and so on. see? easy.

tonight while wandering, i picked up several books & did not put them back where they belong. most places moving the merch around is Not Approved, but in the liberry there are signs everywhere telling you not to attempt to reshelve the books yourself. if you remove a book from its appointed place, and you do not wish to check it out, just put it down. drop it like it's hot! put it on a table or cart or simply place it on an empty shelf. do not under any circumstances attempt to reshelve the book yourself. highly dangerous. something would probably splode.

books 2009

currently:
world without end
[ken follett]

complete:
the associate
[john grisham]
dragonfire
[donita k paul]
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

blue pockets

the blue pants were not her favorite ones. that honor belonged to the black pants only because they were long enough to not look like highwaters. the black pants had no other redeeming feature - they were button fly [hassle], denim [hot], flat front [not slimming], high waisted [dorky], and didn't have back pockets [useless]. but when she wore a longish top to hide the high waist & flat front and carried a purse to compensate for the lack of back pockets, at least the black pants were long enough to sort of bunch slightly around the tops of her shoes and this allowed her to pretend that she was not freakishly tall. 6'3" - too tall for a woman. seriously. sure - women who are professional athletes might be tall, but they can also afford to buy pants that are long enough. or, have them made. yeah, they probably have them made.

the blue pants were certainly not her favorite ones, but they had back pockets and tonight she would need back pockets. there are some activities you simply cannot participate in without back pockets, and for what she had planned tonight, back pockets were a necessity.

of scooting & swimming

i've been pondering this swimming that i am now allowed to do and i would like to know this - how am i supposed to get from the locker room to the pool? there is no good safe way to do this. without people staring holes in me. while i am hobbling on crutches. in a swimsuit. speedy suggested a device from elementary school p-e class which i believe is known as the "seat scooter". here is a picture of a helpful 1st grader demonstrating the seat scooter. back in the day when i was a 1st grader we did not have seat scooters. we had kickball and dodgeball and four-square and all these games were played with the same dull red rubber playground balls with the rough outside surface like they were embossed with little stars or something. that's all we had for reals and so when we could play outside we played kickball and four-square and when we were stuck inside we played dodgeball.

at any rate, speedy suggested the seat scooter, which i do not think is a very helpful suggestion. i could take my chances with walking out there, sans crutches, but that doesn't seem feasible. so, i could do crutches, barefoot, but that means leaving a $3freaking50 piece of boot-style equipment somewhere in the locker room which means bringing a lock. or, leaving the boot bel grande in the car. hmm... that's a real possibility.

the thinking is beginning to come together:
- come home.
- put on trisuit.
- go to rec center.
- leave boot in car. or at home.
- hobble in on crutches.
- enter pool room wearing shoe on usable foot.
- disrobe feet.
- scootle to poolside.
- slither in.

now, the only problem is getting back out! too bad i can't do that cool thing where you push up on your hands and turn around so your hind quarters lands on the poolside. yeah. all the cool kids could always do that. i would probably end up breaking another bone. sheesh.

the pencil

don't know what the pencil was doing there. the frosted plastic bins each had a designated content and the pencil was definitely not in the correct location. affixed to the side of this bin was a piece of red plastic label tape with white embossed letters - the kind that comes from one of those gun-style label makers. this piece of tape read «ink pens» and that meant this frosted plastic bin with the blue snap-on top was the place for ink pens. not pencils. ink pens only. there is no good explanation for the existence of the pencil in the ink pen bin.

son of crutchtastic

when you're on crutches... - the good and the bad

more random people smile at you.
more random people stare at you.

people help you out by opening doors for you.
people trying to help you out open doors into you.

you spend a lot of time sitting on the couch.
you spend a lot of time sitting on the couch.

people help you out by fetching stuff for you.
getting even the smallest thing for yourself is a hassle.

crutching builds upper body strength.
crutching makes your chest & arms ache.

no one expects you to clean the toilet.
dirty toilet.

you've got plenty of time to catch up on reading.
you've got nothing to do but read. [and eat!]

healing well & been cleared to ride stationary bike which is not to be confused with stationery bike.

we have a fitness center at work, and i think i'll request that maintenance move a stationary bike outside so that i can experience fresh air & sunshine while stationarily biking. or, even better, they should get a pickup truck and put the stationary bike in the back of it and drive me around while i am biking, thus belying the "stationary" moniker with satisfying irony. i see absolutely no flaws in this plan.

the circus is in town & they're running a special deal where you can get circus tix in exchange for a gun. no, seriously. you give them a gun, they give you circus tix. right. um... how many freakin guns do you have lying around the house that you can spare one for circus tix? "c'mon daddy, i wanna see da elerfants!" "okay, okay, babyboy... let me see... the handgun or the shotgun... hmmm..." and how about this scenario - daddy-o takes his glock down to trade for circus tix, and gets there and finds out that the circus has sold out. babyboy won't get to see the elerfants. daddy-o loses his cool over the lack of tix, and lookie here how convenient - he's armed. whoo!! duck!!

many trains pass through the town where i live. not around the town or by the town. right directly through the town. so there are train tracks everywhere you look and trains on most of the tracks most of the time and occassionally the trains will blast their horns. a train horn blasting in the heart of the city during rush hour is much less romantic than the distant train whistle echoing through the hills in the long summer twilight.

today i was hopping around the restroom from the sink to the paper towel dispenser b/c i am not supposed to be putting weight on my left foot and i hate when the crutches are wet so i wanted to get my hands dried before i grabbed the crutches. a coworker came in and she was like - «what are you doing hopping around at your age?» jeeps. i didn't realize there was an age limit on hopping. good to know. wouldn't want to get a citation from the ambulation police.

stopped by the liberry on the way home and it was closed but it's cheaper to pay the fines than to purchase even one book so i kept one of the overdue books - the grisham - and turned the rest in. hope it's enjoyable b/c my plan for tomorrow is to sit around and read the book and grow bone.

the stock exchange in britain is called the footsie. yes, it is. look it up!

today in spain a norwegian won the 6th stage of the tour de france. trays inter nashee on nile.

the other night, my old man & i went to a chet atkins tribute finger picking guitar show. it was finger pickin' good! yeah. right. so anywayz - we went to the show and watched all these guys and one doll pick the heck out of their geetars. the bestest was tommy bahama rohma emmanuel, aka tommy emmanuel. [i made that other part up.] the way he played was like he was dancing with the guitar. it wasn't like jumping around all van halen-esque. it was like waltzing and doing the texas 2-step. it really looked like the guitar was moving on its own and he was holding onto it - like it was alive. it was really something to see.

2 of the folks played this instrument - a harp guitar. i had never even seen one before, much less heard one played, so that just goes to show you that there's always something new right around the corner. here's a pic of muriel anderson harpin' & pickin' and she is in fact the doll we saw playing the other night.

the technique appears to be that you get a baseline going on the harp and let that resonate and then you pick the guitar for the melody. sort of like playing bagpipes only not the same at all.

from the world of sports, this headline: "Phelps breaks fly world record at US nationals" which i believe means either that he is the coolest & best looking guy in the world or that he kneecapped a bunch of small insects. i am not sure which it is so i'll do some more investigation on that.

speaking of footsies - this morning i stubbed my right ring-toe on my right crutch. i was trying to not put weight on my left foot as prescribed by the doctor, and i had my hands full so i could not maneuver [sp??] the crutches with my hands, so i was holding them with my pits and then like raising up and sort of flinging the ends gently out a few inches and putting them down again and leaning on them and then scooting my right foot. i know this sounds like a foolproof process, but something went awry. i know! i could not believe it either! and in the awryosity, i stubbed my toe on the crutch. now both feet hurt. waaaa!!

tomorrow i go to the dr and i am actually quite concerned that i was supposed to be wearing this boot 24/7, but when i asked him last time he said it was for impact absorption which i took to mean i don't need to wear it if i am just sitting on the couch and so i have been taking it off on the nights and weekends which is only fair because jeez a boot's gotta live, you know? i mean, it wants to go out and have some fun. what do boots do when they go out? well, the boot scootin' boogey, of course!

hahahaha hahahah!!! aaaaaaaa hahaha hahaha!!! haha hooooo hahahaha! hahaha! ha haaaaaaa haha! haha! hahaha! haha. ha. ha.

ha.

books 2009

currently:


complete:
dragonfire
[donita k paul]
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

greetings, guys & dolls!

watching saving grace and on the show this guy ham picked up this woman loretta in the office setting which is a police room, threw her over his shoulder, and spun her around. clearly being a policeperson is acrobatic by nature. working in my office does not involve acrobatics.

so there is a guy named ham and the person named loretta is a... woman? a gal? a girl? a lady? the equal of guy would be gal, right? guys & gals. guys & dolls. this doll named retta. doll is definitely an underused referrant. i shall endeavor to up its usage factor.

okay, so here's what's been occupying my free time these past couple days. i am currently on crutches with dr's orders for no weight bearing activity on my left foot. yesterday morning i crutched over to the van and asked jerky mcjerkelheimer if he could drop me off & pick me up closer to my building than the 1/4 mile he usually does. he said, «no.» i said, «why not.» he said, «because i said so.» he said, «i will drop you off at the door this morning, but i shouldn't even be doing that. you can get a ride to the regular pickup place.» i said, «no, i cannot get a ride up there.» he said, «that's a bledsoe boot. i ran a marathon in one of those.»

firstly, «because i said so» is a stupid answer. secondly, what does «shouldn't even be doing that» mean? shouldn't? why not... afraid of breaking the crutchers-must-walk-1/4-mile rule in the jerky drivers handbook? lastly, nobody runs a marathon in a walking boot and as speedy said, jerky doesn't run anything but his mouth.

so it's pretty much all over but the crying at this point. i'm investigating my options and would like to introduce my new compadre - carpooling coworker. i'll call her cc and we'll see if she generates another name for herself.

july july july july july july

okay i am not going to erase my post from yesterday but let's just all cut ol' steve some slack. firstly, nobody's perfect. secondly, it appears mcnair may have been getting a divorce & dating this girl with sincere intentions. of course, that's the sort of thing 36 year old men say to 19 year old girls... but there i go again with the harshness. let's just wait & see what the detectives turn up. so far the detectives have said it's going to take a couple weeks to get back the lab results to tell us if the girl shot the gun. gunshot residue on her hands? on csi, they spray something on the hands and spwesh-spwesh wahlah - the hands turn purple, gunshot residue! this is the problem with the real world - no magic spweshing.

here's a pic from the restroom at my coffee beanery. evidence: several magazines draped together to mark the place in each one. conclusion: someone's been spending a bit too much time relaxing in the ol' water closet. motive: too much dipping in the house beanjuice.


speaking of beanjuice, new studies show that drinking 5 cups of coffee per day prevents alzheimer's. huzzah! clearly, all that coffee doesn't heighten memory to the point where you can remember where you left off in the fashion mags, but at least you still know how to find the restroom, eh?

tour de france. wimbledon. sports from around the world!

i am reading this book dragonfire which has elaborated helpfully on the cover - a novel - because you would not want to confuse this book with any actual factual books about dragons such as dragon handbooks or care of dragon instruction manuals. those would of course be shelved in an entirely separate section of the liberry. hmm... i just now clicked over to the dewey decimal classification system to enlighten you as to where the dragon handbooks & instruction manuals would be shelved, and blimey if the ddcs doesn't take up 4 freaking volumes! the intro alone is 3freakin7 pages! at any rate, you'd find the dragon books in a section such as "Obedience training (pets) - 636.088" or somewhere between "Deer - 599.65" and "Elephants - 599.67". the ddcs doesn't list factual actual dragons - it only lists them in the fiction category, and i'm really not sure why.

steve mcnair - former titans qb - was shot & killed yesterday, along with his 20-year-old girlfriend. turns out they've been dating for several weeks, although i am not sure "dating" is the appropriate term for what a man does with a woman when that man is married to another woman. i do believe that is called "catting around". so this girl worked at dave & busters, and mcnair was known to patronize d&b with his pals and his family, and he picked up this girl and started "dating" her. he co-signed for her cadillac escalade, and he was a passenger in this vehicle when she was pulled over for a d-u-i last week. [she reportedly told police she was not drunk, rather she was high. bright of her to clarify this, eh?] all this is coming out now - the co-signed loan, steve's presence in her car, her limo rides - which goes to show you that as much celebrity news as there is in circulation, there is much celebrity news that remains undercover.

mcnair was known for being a family man who contributed much to various charities - a well-liked, easy going, small town boy who made the big time through hard work & solid ethics. was this girlfriend someone about whom he was serious? she told a friend that she & steve were going to be married -- but that's doubtful, eh? more likely this was one dalliance among many. the complete cover-up from friends to police to car salesmen, the available condo, the wife out of town... no, this would not appear to be steve's first rodeo. so, mcnair's a womanizer - how does this affect his legacy of being a leader on the football field and in the field of charitable giving? also, what does it say about the lifestyle of his friends - that they take this behaviour in stride - are they all also living this way? is it just common among professional athletes to have wives & girlfriends?

what are the morals of people today? do folks believe in commitment & monogamy? and in the bigger picture - what is the definition of cheating & stealing? what's acceptable & what's across the line? where is the freakin' line, anyway?

::sigh::

the care & feeding of minor dragons would seem easier to understand than the foibles of humankind.

go fourth!

we were headed to a fireworks display but it looks like we might be treated to nature's fireworks instead.

books 2009

currently:
dragonfire
[donita k paul]

complete:
dragonknight
[donita k paul]
the archbishop in andalusia
[andrew greeley]
dragonquest
[donita k paul]
dragonspell
[donita k paul]
the spiderwick chronicles, vol. 1-5
[tony diterlizzi & holly black]
devil bones
[kathy reichs]
irish tweed
[andrew greeley]
the paradise war
[stephen lawhead]
hood
[stephen lawhead]
scarpetta
[patricia cornwell]

something i wrote for posting someplace else

my bars grow fat, as doth my ass.
when will this wretched season pass?
i know 'tis minor to be crutched -
as a malaise, it is not much.

endeavor i to remain cheerful:
what better way, you say, than beerful?
alas, alack, & truth be told -
beer like i not - i tell ye bold.

would i had a jack on ice -
ah, master daniel... would be nice.
or, perhaps a touch of gin
would be a fine place to begin.

look ye now - what time it be?
time for a wee spot o' tea.
long island tea, i mean to say,
would quite refresh this tiring day.

a sip of this, a splash of that -
i disregard my bars so fat!
i tell you this, though, i'm not funning -
i'd rather be now outside, running.

well, come in!

today is friday on thursday. wellkommen.

sitting at the 'shroom with my foot propped in a chair and people keep walking by and giving me the stank eye like my foot is in the way but jeezum there could be a person sitting there. i mean it is a chair and all. would they give the person the stank eye?? yeah maybe they would and you know the person's back would be getting the stanks so they probably would not even know unless the stanks were like feeler stanks with tines.

speaking of tines - we were cutting our pizza with our forks, you know how you'll cut with the side of your fork - wanka-wanka-wanka - back & forth. wanka. wank. a. yeah, well, you know how you'll cut like maybe pizza or waffles with your fork? we're sitting there tearing at the 'zza, and my old man goes «they should make forks with a slightly sharpened side, not like sharp-sharp but like sort of sharp.» and we looked at each other and went «yeah!» and of course my old man is all the time thinking up this shizzle and then we see like the next week that someone's making a billion off his idea, selling the product on an infomersh & in walgreens's «as seen on teevee» aisle. here's the thing about the slightly sharpened fork - firstly, if it's overly sharpened you'd just cut your mouth and that's bad but you know that forks have an established rep as being a wee bit dangereuse with their tines all pointy, so there's already a caution factor with the fork. the benefit of the slightly sharp side would outweigh the danger. and secondly, as per elvis & junior, the southpaw would require the southpaw fork or else they'd just be cutting up their fingers and be no further along on the 'zza and that's just an aggravation.

the waitress brought our check, and we were both wanking away at our individual iphone, and my old man goes to the waitress «we've both been sucked into email - haha.» and she goes «that's okay. it's thursday.»

well, come in!

just in time for tomorry's celabrations

«The metropolitan police department reminds citizens that it is illegal to sell at retail, possess, or use fireworks in the County, with the exception of properly permitted public displays. Police response to neighborhood complaints regarding fireworks violations could result in the issuance of misdemeanor citations and/or the confiscation of fireworks.»

oooo - a misdemeanor! oooo - they will take my fire crackers away! oooo! yeah, i am thinking the risk might be worth the fun.

watching a news story about how the statue of liberty is reopened to tourists after 8 years and the reporter looks just about as soaked with sweat as i remember being when we visited there back in the day. it was one of those family vacations where we visited some city in which mon père had business to conduct. working vacation, as it were. so we climbed to the top of lady liberty and let me tell you, that is a CLIMB. there's like a bagajazillion steps and by a bagajazillion i of course mean 354. average 20º hotter inside than outside. sweet baby james wasn't tall enough to see over the barrier walls around the spiral staircase and it was hot and he was tired and probably a little claustrophobic - so he climbed & whimpered and whimpered & climbed up and up and up. we finally reached our chance at the vaunted view and what a disappointment it was. water. from the crown of liberty lighting the world, you can see water. the best part was the light breeze blowing through the open windows. sweet baby james was not impressed. the constant flow of people pushed us along and soon we were going down the bagajazillion steps. sweat, whimpering, and a long long climb culminating in a disappointing view and unsatisfying breeze. ain't liberty grand?

sham? wow.

sham? wow. the ad says beware of imitators. imitators? sham shams? wow wow.

speaking of wowwow - what about that mark sanford? jeez man - shut up. you are humiliating your wife & kids. i'd say you're humiliating yourself but you are clearly enjoying this way too much or you'd resign and leave the spotlight. what's that? your wife's not returning your calls so you're using the media to talk to her? oh well - that's different. that's not humiliating - that's more like just plain ol' pathetic. jeezum.

received via email: "The Arts Commission is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts experiences to ensure the citizens have access to and participate in the arts." -- read that carefully - part of the purpose of the arts commission is to ensure the citizens participate in the arts. eh? what? you can't make me fingerpaint! i refuse to plié! no! noooo!!

hey - remember when obama said no families making <$250,000 would have any new taxes? hahahahahaaaa!! guess what's on the way - new taxes. health care taxes. energy taxes. taxes! huzzah!

«i ain't yo do-girl.» yesterday at the soccer field a young lady who was either the big sister or the nanny or the mom of a soccer boy kept yelling at him, «curtis! get yo water. cur!tis! git! yo! water! curTIS git YO waTAH! curtis! CURtis curTIS CuRtIs!» curtis would not get his water. finally, she busted out «i ain't yo do-girl!» and proceeded to carry curtis his water and hand it directly into his stubborn little hand. clearly, she was his do-girl after all.