one small voice saying thank you

memorial day is a USA holiday dedicated to honoring those who have given their lives in service of the country. that is, people who have died in wars. i'm sure i am not alone in extending the honor to police, firefighters, and others who are generous and brave enough to stand in the gap between danger and the rest of us. the trust we have is these folks is so innate we don't even feel it, cannot even really acknowledge it. they are simply there. it's like turning on a light switch and expecting electricity or turning on a faucet and expecting water or sitting in a chair and expecting to not hit the floor butt-first.

we trust them so much that it's easy to take them for granted. today's the day to try to remember not to do that. today's also the day for big sales at the mall, and swimming pools opening officially for summer. it's hard not to get distracted.

memorial day was originally known as decoration day. most accounts report that the practice of gathering in the springtime to decorate the graves of the fallen was the bright idea of some southern ladies right around the time of the civil war, but i am here to tell you they didn't think it up. they just brought it over on whatever boat they came on. i mean, folks have been decorating graves since there were graves to be decorated, but just because it's an ancient tradition doesn't make it unimportant.

so, thanks go out to all those who protect us.

and, thanks again.

many, many thanks.

a high maintenance wolf in low maintenance sheep's clothing

so that year he gave me a gift certificate to get a pedicure at the spa and of course when i opened it and saw what it was, my head started spinning around and pea soup spewed out my mouth. i was either yelling or perhaps just talking a bit too loudly about not being that kind of person and why couldn't he just accept me for who i am and not try to change me. yeah. uh-huh. and needless to say, he was bewildered because who views a certificate for a pedicure as mandate to change their core personality? someone who is mad, that's who. freaking completely barking mental. who can take a gift of pampering given with care and turn it into a giant gaping hole of screaming fear? again, only someone who is completely mental. blah blah blah. time passes. waters flow under bridges. pages turn in the books of our lives. sands through the hourglass. et cetera. i am certainly not the one who can vouch for my being worth the trouble, but there must be something to be said for the adventure that is me because yesterday he went with me to get my first ever pedicure. and surprisingly, i lived to tell about it.

cursèd cursor

the page is blank
like my brain.
the cursor blinking blinking
blinking...
waiting for me to think of something to say.
unliving cursor - you could wait forever,
and you would wait forever.
you do not live, and yet you exist.
you become arrogant.
you demand that i produce.
but...
without my power, you do not exist.
you demand that i produce?
fine.
i produce your demise.

dance clubs have changed a lot in the past 20 years.

i am not here to talk about sestak-gate. if you don't know about sestak, i suggest you google the name. i am here to tell you my carpool buddy said mr clinton did what he did at the bequest of his supervisor and now he is being held for the stapegoat. so, i think that is probably all the summary you need of the situation.


speaking of politics, i saw this sign out in a yard while running. the way the 2010 is printed, the way it looked while i was out there dazed from the heat, the way i read it... it said "state senate zoo". zoo!! fairly accurate, eh?

so you know what is really cool? when you're doing the laundry and you go in there to check what's in the dryer, and it's not dry yet, so you switch the dryer back on and you don't have to fold anything right then. it's like the folding snooze button.



can't tell if they are male or female!! hahahah!! yeah, i don't know... i just thought it was funny.

comfort inn ad says - when you need a place to relax after a long day of vacation - what kind of a wacked out jacked up vacation tires you out?

so i was in the restroom at work (not the one with the gnome shower) and i was just finishing up, warshing my hands.

they say one way to know you're warshing your hands for as long as you're supposed to warsh your hands to really get them clean and kill germies is to sing happy birthday while you're warshing, but i've also heard that happy birthday is copyrighted and that if you sing it in public you have to pay royalties to the family of the writer of the song. this is why i sing it in my head instead of out loud. see? i am always thinking!

but i digress.

so i was in the restroom at work (not the one with the gnome shower) and i was just finishing up, warshing my hands. a young lady walks in. i recognize her as an events fulfillment worker, id est: she selects items from shelves according to a customer's order and places these items in a box for shipment, id est redux: she's a pickerpacker. so miss pickerpacker comes in the restroom, looks under the stall doors, spots the feet she seeks, and declares -- «debra! ryan out there doin' yo' work and he lookin' for you!» immediately, if not sooner, debra emerges from the stall.

this confuses me. was debra co-inkie-dinkally ready to leave the restroom right when miss pickerpacker walked in? or, does debra have powers to bend the space-time continuum? or, is debra simply really fast at getting her pants pulled up & buttoned up? or, was debra not using the restroom stall for the purpose for which it was constructed? and, if the latter, what was she doing in there? could not have been smoking b/c the room is simply too small for that. could not have been making a phone call b/c there is no phone reception in that room which is something i'd know if i were playing scramble while sitting on the pot, which i would never do, so let's just say i know about the phone reception and leave it at that.

but i digress.

this confuses me. what was debra doing in there? eating? sleeping? taking drugs? hiding from ryan? i would have asked her about it, but i was fully occupied trying to keep up with the happy birthday track that was playing in my head.

by node id tobbed ub.

we were down to the last bar of irish spring so i stopped at walgreens to pick up some soap and kind of browse around. i enjoy the occassional browse around walgreens. there's a bit of serendipity to it. gallon tub of orange slices candy? check! picture frame? check! sleep aids? check! shampoo? check! shirt emblazoned with corona beer symbols? check! socks, chapstick, playing cards, hardback children's book? checkity check check checkerooo!!

all day i've had a sort of building sinus congestion - all muzzyheaded and half out of it and breathing through my mouth like a damb special olympian. (oh, just relax and laff.) sneezing and sniffling. at the office, they tore up the molded carpet back in the corner there, and then they did whatever it is they do to get the carpet glue up, so it's pretty dusty. and it's hot outside for what that's worth. and at the soccer field where i was last night they're always mowing or fertilizing or something.

walgreens would be the perfect place to get some zyrtec-d, would it not? why yes it would. unless you have some at home that you can take when you get there and save yourself the 15 bucks but then you can get it because you'll always use it even if you have some but if you have some you don't need it. so i got my irish spring, hairbands, g2 (2 for $3!), and artificial cheese flavour snacking crackers. skip the zyrtec-d. there's some at home.

can you guess the punchline?

we have zyrtec sans "d". gah! we went through every cabinet and bag and drawer, spending more time looking for something that's not here than it would have taken to go back to walgreens. and then, i go back to walgreens. the cashier was like - dude. and i was like - i know, right?

they've moved the "d" behind the counter. you have to sign a DEA waiver. they take your driver license numero, name, addy. you have to promise scout's honor not to make meth with it. like i could make meth. pffthth! i can't even make a cake without a box.

i will build a boy -- -- -- from sticks and mud and stones -- -- -- his name will be apache fog -- -- -- he will be my own.

we had a double-header soccer game this evening. lost the first game 1-nil because we couldn't get our act together. won the second game like 7-nil because the other team didn't have an act at all. the player i was marking in the second game was seriously special needs. i am not talking about haha-stupid -- i am talking about old school short bus retarded. oh, there you go - climbing up on your politically correct high horse to ride on over to your politically correct soap box, but you can just climb the hell down because i don't care what you say, special-needsers do not belong on that soccer field. yes, we are not olympians, but no we aren't kidding around either. she is going to get hurt or get someone else hurt. everyone can't do everything everywhere all the time just because they think it might be fun. i can't enroll at rensselaer, she can't play soccer in a league that's not special olympics.

SIT DOWN. SHUT UP. THAT'S LIFE.

in honor of the anniversary of the birth of sweet baby james, we talk politics. go!

i don't care which side you're on, but you have to admit that arizona is more effectively calling direct attention the immigration issue than anyone has been able to do so far. people are talking about ways it's playing out in practice, not just idly debating theory. did you hear that los angeles was planning to boycott arizona until arizona reminded LA that arizona controls LA's electricity and could just switch it off? that zipped LA's lip quick enough. arizona's latest move is to declare that babies born in the arizona of folks who are not here legally shall not automatically be declared citizens. this is a point with which i agree, insofar as it applies to those folk who come to arizona on what are known as babycations - pregnant ladies making trips to the USA specifically to give birth here. does it happen? yeah, i am sure it does. how widespread is it? i really don't know. i don't fault them their valiant attempts to give their children a better life, but the USA is going to go broke supporting this type of thing. we, and by we i mean the USA, need to get organized about this stuff and decide how to handle it in the most humane way possible that will not bankrupt our country. it's not like we can be the land of dreams if we can't afford to have any.

tweet

do birds talk to each other? are they like "hey, how are you? wotcher been up to today?" like, the mr bird gets back to the nest in the evening and the missus is all like "i have been here all day with these little birdbutts and do you even bring us any worms? eh? no. you do not. worthless! you are worthless. where have you been? eh? down at the baths? the feeders? fine - you know what, that's just fabulous. here i am stuck all day in the nest and you're out at the feeder. who is it? eh? it's that little wren, isn't it? oh, don't you lie to me, you worthless turd!"

the last event held in this venue before today's event was the rodeo, so the venue smelled - more than a wee bit - of cow.

we went to a graduation this morning. i've sat thru my fair share of the pomps & circumstances. i've seen the bagpipers, the barefoot graduates, the sayings pasted to the mortar boards - "hi mom!" "thanks dad!" this morning, several of the girl students - graduates? under grad? don't know. - sang songs they'd written and covers of sentimental moosh before the procession began and that was something i'd never seen -- like a mini-concert while everyone was milling around, trying to find their seats.

i've graduated twice myself - once from high school, once from college. the latter was an outdoor affair in an unshaded field on a fryingly hot day surrounded by people i didn't know very well. the former, however... can you say glory days? at my high school some people played sports, some people were on speech team, some people smoked pot, some dated abundantly, some were in french club or on the yearbook staff, some worked jobs after school. i was valedictorian.

in its truest sense, the position of valedictorian belongs simply to a student who is selected to deliver the farewell, or valedictory, speech to his fellow students at the graduation ceremony. here in the states, the honor is generally confered upon the student with the highest grades. that is what was done at my high school. so, when i say that in high school, i was valedictorian, i am not saying that i just bided my time until spring semester of my senior year, at which point i wrote and delivered a graduation speech. being valedictorian is not one thing that happens in one day. being valedictorian is the culmination of years, months, weeks, days, hours and hours and hours of work. i worked my freaking arse off and i am done apologizing for being so freaking smart.

the high school i attended also has a junior high, but i went to junior high at a different jr hi, so when i came to my high school, i was an unknown quantity. by the end of the first semester freshman year, when the class rankings were posted on the bulletin board in the auditorium, everyone knew where i stood. i stood at #1. (we now live in a world where public recognition of success is thought to be detrimental to the self-esteem of the unsuccessful, which is a grave disservice to the successful folk and to the advancement of success itself.)

i graduated with a gpa just below 4.0 and that was back in the days before they added extra bonus points for advanced or honors or AP classes. that was just pure grades - my calculus grade up against whatever johnny (who now sells insurance) could manage in basic maths or whatever it is the stupid kids take. even without the extra bonus points, i was #1.

i studied a lot. i don't mean like i studied in study hall or that i put in an hour or so a couple nights a week. i mean i studied hours and hours, nearly every night. i read. i underlined. i summarized. i memorized. i highlighted. i reviewed notes. i made new notes. i made songs out of my notes. i made study sheets and practice tests. it's a misconception that high IQ automatically translates to high grades. IQ is talent, genes, something you're born with - grades take work.

i did not ever cheat on even one thing. there was a day the physics teacher accused my partner & i of cheating on our lab results because we got the same results. uh... it's kind of a basic rule of thumb that lab partners will get the same results, and needless to say we'd been getting the same results all year. that was a rather kafkaesque experience and although we got it all straightened out, it was a good lesson in the random quality that life can take on. my entire academic honor reputation was staked on the word of the odd little man who was the physics teacher.

at any rate - i worked. no doubt i am a genius, but they don't designate valedictorian based on potential. valedictorian is about results. and not to be all uphill-both-ways-five-miles-in-the-snow about it, but these were the days before computers. writing an essay meant writing rough drafts and outlines long-hand, revised painstakingly through three or more versions. there was a strict limit on the number of corrections, by scratch-out or white-out, per page. too many correx and you had to do the entire page over again. not like your modern word processor, eh? writing a research paper didn't mean googling - it meant going to an actual liberry with actual books and copying actual phrases onto actual note cards. the note cards themselves were graded - in case you don't know there is a specific format for note cards, or should i say formats, different formats for different type cards.

tedious does not begin to describe the work part - getting the grades. what kind of freak would study for studying's sake? the work part is not what it is all about. the being #1 part - THAT is what it is all about.

it's difficult to be a fan of graduations - trite cliché-filled speeches, figgety kids in the crowd, too hot, too cold, endless parades of graduates punctuated by senseless yelling accompanied by even senselesser air horns and cowbells. but because my high school graduation was icing on a very difficult and long-baking cake - a red velvet russian double chocolate tiramisu hummingbird baked alaska king cake -- because of that, my high school graduation was solid, and because it was solid, the memory of it buoys all the graduations i attend. while i realize that the pomp & circumstance can be wearisome, i do so enjoy a chance to bask in the glow of a shared camaraderie with the valedictorian, for whom this day is the glory day.

if i have counted correctly, 9 people were there.

i had this important conference call yesterday and so right before it i was getting my notes together and it reminded me of speech team in high school. yeah we called it speech team. i don't know why we didn't call it forensics or something. lame. anyway, speech team included everything from debate to poetry interp. i very much wanted to do dramatic interp but i couldn't make the "coach" understand. mostly she was really busy trying to sleep with the boys on the team. no joke. she was picking up high schoolers before it was really the hip like it is today. i guess you could say she was a trend-setter in that sense. her complete focus on this goal, however, caused her to pretty much disregard the aspects of the team that didn't include sleeping with the boys. like, you know, evaluating the participants, helping them develop skills, doing her job. so anyway the depth of her "evaluation" of me was to observe that i am a genius and to declare i should do extemp. i had zero desire to do extemp, but it was that preparation for extemp competition that reminded me of prepping for the phone call. that, in turn, reminded me also of a brief foray into original oratory that ended before i had even originated a single oratory because the suggested topic (from the "coach") was youth in asia. i just couldn't come up with a solid speech about kids in china & japan. turns out, that's not what the topic was about at all.

4501

i am planning a little get-together for tomorrow evening. i know, right? i mean, ace is not known for being a party planner. remember that fête in honor of elvis's Big Move? that one turned out well. and mini-me's sweet 16? yeah, that one was stellar. in my defense, this one tomorrow is not technically a party. but still, i am pondering how many people i need to get committed to showing up that it would be enough that they won't notice i am not there.


double-lane drive-thrus which are attended by one person are completely wack. an example of unwack is like at the bank where they have multiple lanes with multiple tellers officiating the administration of the lanework. at the pharmacy, they have one tech on the drive-thru, but they have 2 lanes. invariably, someone jumps line. today, there were three cars on line when i arrived, so i pulled in behind the last one. seems only right. i mean, those people have been waiting, i can wait. but then mr littlewhitecar pictured here popped into the right-hand lane. what the?? what you see here shows only one SUV in front of me b/c the car in front of that SUV has already been serviced and driven away and the van in back of that SUV got disgusted after being line-jumped by mr littlewhitecar, and the van drove away. yes, i failed to get a Good Picture of the event. still, i am fairly certain you are with me here, yes? i blame mr littlewhitecar for being a toad, but i blame the engineers - cranes, not trains - of these things for being completely wacked out.

speaking of engineers - trains, not cranes - i saw one such today in his natural habitat. i was on the viaduct peering over (well protected by a chest-high wall structure) at the train travelling below, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a man in the cockpit of the train. i waved. he waved back! i made the universal honk-honk gesture. he honked his honker! hooonk -- hooonnnnk! simply fabulous. used to be the honkers were called whistles, but that one didn't seem very whistly to me today.

meus bloggum meus iustitium

this is a faucet in the restroom at my work. it's below the sink. you can see it a bit better in pic1 which is not the first pic. the first pic is pic2, the second is pic1. this is about pic names, not pic positions. try to keep up. what is this faucet for? you may think it is to ease warshing the floor. NO! it is for gnomes to bathe. how do i know? well, if you have to ask, you can't afford it.




what is this office for? what? what?


cute troll. could possibly bathe in the restroom at my work except it is made of yarn so it's can't move around on its own. well, not when people are watching, anyway.

i decided to have the chicken salad and read my book instead of doing the dishes and writing something for you people. and, now i am going to the game. you think you need me so desperately, but really, you'll be fine here on your own. if you get bored, you can do the dishes. please do not throw the fribsee inside, and no colas after 8pm. oh, and don't touch that cake - it's not for you, it's for the garden club.

to the left - to the left - everything you own in a box to the left... everything? really? i think not EVERYthing he owns is in that box.

until yestereve i had never heard the name "ronnie james dio". no, really. never. and today i have heard it like a bazillion times everywhere from the local morning news on teevee to all things considered on npr to the running message board on the wild & wooly webernet. yestermorn, the name ronnie james dio would not have rung a bell in my head and now it eructates a clanging cacaphony. ronnie james, ronnie james, wherefore art thou famous ronnie james? ronnie james dio was a singer whose apparent claim to fame is that he ringo'd ozzie ozbourne's place as the lead singer of black sabbath. rjd was in the news here recently b/c he died yesterday of stomach cancer at age 67.

i am confident there are a plethorae of pasttimes about which i know nothing. nada. zip. zilch. zero. i know a wee bit about a few things. i am a little grey cat in a square box on a striped chair in a room with two windows. i don't follow heavy metal, much less black sabbath, although i have heard of black sabbath and i have heard of ozzy ozbourne and i like that "momma i'm coming home" song and "crazy train" is a classic. but i'd never heard of ronnie james dio and i am fairly certain my life was no less rich for not knowing who he was.

the social mind, our collective intelligence, binds us together through shared experience from which we glean shared allusions. shakespeare to the simpsons, physics to let's-get-physical - it's all there in our giant brain. it's what makes us turn to each other and grin several times a day. well, it's what makes my old man & i turn to each other and grin several times a day. we do share one brain. wait. what? to continue - i haven't read all of shakespeare's works and i've never seen an episode of the simpsons. i did take a physics class in high school and i have heard of jazzercise. so i am getting maybe... what... 15% of the collective cultural allusions, on a bad day. on a good day i am getting only 10%.

ba-dum-CHING!

rain. rain. rain. rain. rain. rain. soccer cancelled again this week. rain. rain. rain. rain. rain. rain.

this picture has made the rounds in email, usually in combination with a bunch of other pictures of hokey fixes like duct-taped refrigerator shelves and some guys in a wading pool with an electrical outlet. that latter one, i am really not sure why those guys aren't dead unless [gasp!] the picture is faked. this one, though, i hope this one is true because i would like to have a bicycle like that. putting aside the question of how you steer it, wouldn't it be useful for errands? going to the liberry, walgreens, the grocery. hell, you could ride the thing around inside the grocery! oh, man. that would be da bomp. you could put a bicycle bell on it "chreeng-chreeng!" ha! comin' thru the frozen foods - chreeng! comin' down the cereal aisle - chreeng! deli - chreeng! dairy - chreeng! wow. that would be great.

i just now checked the time on the clock and apparently i have spent like an hour - between the first paragraph here and this paragraph here - spent an hour on this project which i just now completed. the project? i downloaded a new ringtone & installed it on my iphone. the reason it took so long is because anytime you do a computer thing it triggers like a dozen other computer things. update itunes. update iphone. update apps. all i wanted to do was sync ringtones, but there was this scary "you will lose everything" message that stopped me for a while. i kept trying to see if i could get around it and then i was like, how bad could it be? it didn't erase anything, so trying to get around it was a waste of time. just goes to show you sometimes it's not worth trying to avoid the inevitable - it's better to take the plunge and rip the damb band-aid off. anyhoo - the new ringtone... heh. i got that ringtone off the geico commersh! ringa-ding-ding-dingdee-doh - ringa-ding-ding-dong-ding! that's right - i am the person with THAT ringtone! haHA!!!

it's 81º inside this house.

today we got up and had something to eat. then my old man went to work out and i went for a run. the run was somewhat of a disaster - it was okay at the beginning but i ran out of gas. going to have to figure that out. anyway, got home and my clothes were literally dripping with sweat and humidity (possible running out of gas contributing factor). so i dumped all it into the warsher-chine and took a shower. ahh! oh, wait - first i dranked my protein like a good girl, THEN i showered.

while my old man mowed the lawns (ours and the next door's) before the rains came, i balanced the checkbook and answered a couple emails and i sort of took a nap but didn't really fall asleep. after he got done and the rain started, we went to loretta lynn's to work on the phone lines which have been wack since the big rains came a couple weeks ago. we did that about 3 hours and could not get it all working. the jack in the back room is still dead and the caller i-d that is supposed to work thru the satellite receiver isn't working but the satellite tech support said it's probably the modem in the receiver and they're sending another unit. managed to get the computer back online by moving the modem & router to another line (thanks to elvis for the help getting that all back up).

we were going to eat with all the folks but ended up just us at panera. woowoo panera! they are running this special where you can get a pastry for 99¢ when you get a meal + drink, so we did that and then the girl was completing my transaction with my my-panera card, she said i was due another pastry, free. so we got a cimmanon roll and a blueberry muffin and some kind of apple cimmanon muffin that is all puffy - looks like it sploded. we ate our sammiches and went to the mall to get some of this spray you can get at the "lids" hat store that when you spray it on your hat before you sweat in your hat it keeps your hat from smelling sweaty or getting stained. cool, huh? we stopped by jc penney to look at the lawn furniture and might have found a good choice. we will shop further online.

after that we went to best buy and got me a new boombox for the kitchen. woowoo! i purchased it with birthday money plus the best buy rewards certificate that we got from the computer purchases at christmas. it's got a place to plug in the ipod and it's got radio with preset buttons and it's got a cute little handle to carry it out to the deck when i want music outside. i asked the guy at the store, does it have radio? and he just pulled up the antenna that was already halfway up. ppfahahaha! go ace!

after best buy we went to old navy and got some shirts and shorts because we wanted them. we stopped quickly at the dollar store and got kleenex, propel, and coke zero. i suspect my old man engineered the dollar store trip to be less than 5 mins before they closed because he knows i could stay in that place a loooong time. next we went to the wine store for a couple bottles of... wine. finally we came home and made some coffee and had the sploded pastry with coffee. mmmm!

and, that's all so far. now you are current on the haps!

sweet potato pie & shut my mouth

not too far from my house is a dramatic sweeping bridge. it's an architectural marvel. it's a tourist attraction. it's beautiful and it's deadly. a couple weeks ago a high school girl leapt from it and while there's not too much certain in this world, you can pretty much bank on the fact that if you drop 44 metres through the air, you aren't going to live to tell about it. she was by no means the first leaper nor will she be the last.

you won't read about it in the paper. it's sort of an open secret around here that folks jump off that bridge with a fair amount of frequency, but the authorities don't want to give any sad folks any bright ideas. i mean, if you've seen the bridge, it's not like you would not be alerted to the possibilities, but hearing about someone actually pulling off the feat can instill a different level of determination in a confused brain.

i've been in a car on the bridge and it's thrilling. i've also been on foot on the bridge and that scared the living hell out of me. i hated it. the barrier between road and air is markedly insufficient. it's relatively low, to allow those in cars a dramatic view of a sweeping vista. i distinctly remember feeling like one false move and i'd be over the edge, drifting, falling, plummeting, down all those metres of air for all those seconds of regret before the bottom.

i don't get dizzy when i climb a ladder. i enjoy the skyride and the rolly-coaster. i like to climb trees. i am not afraid of heights in a crippling way. i have heard, though, that a fear of heights is actually a fear of self -- a fear of poor impulse control. i am not afraid i will fall. i am afraid i will jump.

weird.

it's not that i want to hit bottom. not that at all. it's that i want to do that thing that's all woo-hoo! lookit me! watch this! and then blam, before you know it you've ridden the skateboard off the roof onto the trampoline, bounced off and landed on the concrete porch with a broken collar bone and a mouth full of blood.

i've been a pedestrian on that bridge, so i've faced that fear and lived to tell about it, and i ain't got nothing left to prove in that particular category, thankyouverymuch. check that one off the list. i was on there and did not jump... that time. who wants to go back and find out if they'd jump the next time? jeezumpete, count me out.

but what about those poor pitiful people who go up there planning purposefully to plunge? sigh. what makes that happen? i mean, i understand "sad" and i understand "really sad" and "not getting out of bed all day sad" but a sad that is worth dying for, i just don't get that. maybe your life is all crap, but at least you know what you've got. maybe you don't want to face it, maybe you want to sleep, but just chucking it all over for the unknown? hell, there's an excellent chance it's going to be worse out there, and once you're dead, well you've kind of played the trump card and where you gonna go from there?

sticky-sticky-stombo-no-sir-ombo-hotty-botty-bosco-icky-nine-newy-nine-tomo-romo-tombo fell in the well! what shall we do?

say you have a friend pedro and pedro really likes chocolate so every time there is a pedro-gift-giving occassion, you give pedro chocolate. birthdays. soltices. working step 9. whatever. you give pedro chocolate. one day, say it's... i don't know... say it's purim and you give pedro chocolate and pedro goes - «i do not like chocolate.» and you go - «haha. very funny, pedro. of course you like chocolate.» and pedro goes - «no. no, i do not. and, i never did. and, the fact that you think i do now or ever did like chocolate or that i would appreciate your gift of chocolate now or in the past or in the future - this proves you do not know me at all nor appreciate my personness.» wow. pretty much that's all you can think right there - simply... wow.

this revelation of pedro's chocolate non-liking is rather startling. thinking back, you realize you believe pedro likes chocolate because when you give it to him [in the past, before The Change] he goes - «thank you!» and then he eats it and when he eats it he goes - «mmm... chocolate!» and so either pedro is like some great actor of the sir john gielgud varietal or he likes chocolate.

and, as you ponder, you realize that you are not the only one who has been giving pedro chocolate on the assumption that he likes it. everyone has always given pedro chocolate. it is common knowledge in the circle of friends and family that surround pedro that he likes chocolate. in fact, pedro buys himself chocolate. he doesn't even make that much money in his job at the petting zoo, but any extra money he has, he spends on chocolate.

how can he say he doesn't like it?! he spends his own money on it. he makes the mmm-mmm sound when he eats it. it's common knowledge that he likes it. pedro:chocolate::narcissus:narcissus.

c'mon, pedro! stop fooling around. you know you like chocolate. everyone knows you like chocolate. don't try to deny who you are or you will deprive the world of the youness of you.

free to be you & me

finished the magicians and passed it along to mini-me. i'll give you my review when she's done b/c i don't want to spurl it.

tomorrow night is the last night of indoor futbol for the season. it's the tourney and it's double-elim and we have no tourney losses so if we win tomorrow night at 19:00 we win it all, but if we lose we have to play again. i think. something about the way double-elim works. anyways, i am hoping for 1 game. win the simple way - just win! sunday we have a double-header outdoors. we have had so much rain that we have to jam 6 weeks into 3. double-headers galore! right when it's really starting to get hot outside! yipee!

books 2010

currently:
the local news
[miriam gershow]

complete:
the magicians
[lev grossman]
benjamin pratt & the keepers of the school: we the children
[andrew clements]
water for elephants
[sara gruen]
the last child
[john hart]
the youngest templar: the keeper of the grail
[michael p. spradlin]
the last song
[nicholas sparks]
the magykal papers
[angie sage]
the memory of running
[ron mclarty]

i made some more elvis bread. ya want a piece?

one of the best things about the new computer is i can unplug it and take it outside and use it. simple as bomp! the old computer had battery life sufficient to sustain its brain operations for approx the time it would take you to desperately replug the ill-fitting plug when it dropped listlessly from the socket in the computer's rearside panel. that plug is on suicide watch - it is always sort of moping around until it just droops of the socket. it's not as if it has a deathwish exactly. that's too proactive. it's more like such a complete ennui that it simply cannot be bothered to even notice that it's slipped out again. you can almost hear it sighing. life is too much for that plug. but the new machine can go outside without an electicity I-V.

the kid whose backyard backs up to my backyard has a 4-wheeler. he likes to ride it in his yard. back & forth, back & forth. i guess he is amused, but talk about boring. jeez, it seems interminably dull. but that's probably because i am listening to it, not riding it. the sound of a 4-wheeler being ridden across an expanse of field will range from a low-pitched growl to a high-pitched whine depending on the engine size and what performance is being requested from it - but it will be a generally consistent level of growling. the sound of a 4-wheeler being ridden across an expanse of 1/4 acre, most of which is occupied by a colossally outsized home whose windows are strategically placed NOT to align with the windows of the neighboring colossally outsized home 6 yards away... the sound of a 4-wheeler being ridden in this locale is a constant revving. rev. ving. rev. rev. revving. rev. revving. rev. ving. ving. rev. revving. rev. rev. revving.

it's too dark for him now - he's shut off the revver and gone inside. it's currently extreme twilight. the color is slowly draining from the neighborhood. the grass is still green, but the house next door is not blue but instead, grey. on this side of the backyards, the houses are small and the yards are big - opposite of the house-to-yard ratio on the 4-wheeler side. a rather large black cat is stealing across the yard, under the sycamore. he must be after something... he's not walking, he's stalking. the inside air is glowing gold through windows, the outside air is purplish, cooler. birds are settling in, reminding each other where the nests are, reclaiming territory for the night. the level of light has just reached the tipping point - the bugs are more attracted to the computer screen than they were a mere 30 seconds ago. an airplane passes overhead, rising, people going someplace else. i can hear the cars on the highway out front, but back here, there are crickets. and now, another minute later, the birds are quiet. i hear crickets, a frog, passing cars, incongruous but distinctive - a circular saw. i wonder who is cutting boards, and why. the raw wood, the damp earth, the clear air... it smells like brigadoon.

you hear about lurleen? had her baby down to the injun diner. dots, not feathers, ya know. oh, that rodney lee, he was worried, but it was all good.

and they named her real prettylike. gonna call her venda lou.

in the news headlines today was this - New Safety Rules for US Poultry - and i was intrigued. is there an osha for poultry? posha? oshap? and, what dangers do our nation's chickens face? do they now have to wear little hard hats around the coop in case their fellow chickies are standing on the coop roof wildly heaving seeds? maybe if they are free range chickies and there's a cattle pond in the area, they have to wear floatation devices in case they fall in? maybe it's more about rooster + hen "safety" ifyaknowwhatimean....

in other news, the brits have a hung parliament. i'll let you fill in your own jokes there, b/c really they are all kind of obvious. but, funny. laugh amongst yourself.

in other news, to squash a giant twitter bug - that is, a system bug in the online service twitter, not like a huge arthropod making high-pitched noises - twitter zapped all followers from all accounts. this morning, nobody had any followers. not that i care about that, but i did want to make that arthropod joke.

in other news, tiger woods had to quit last weekend's tourney b/c his neck hurt so bad. ignoring his stressful personal life, look at the stressful physical life - surgery last year on a knee he said was paining him 10 years, a nagging achilles injury, and now a possible bulging disk in his neck. too many workouts for too many years? too many one-more-reps? yeah, it's really rough to be a world-class athlete, but the worst thing is how you people pretend to know how it is for us.

nothing says "mothers day" quite like a basic pain-based beauty quest

a plethora of months in the past, i purchased some of this dr scholl's freeze away wart remover because i have this "wart" on my foot. you know, not like a disgusting actual wart on my foot b/c that would be gross but more like a "wart". so i got this stuff and i have had it for months but never used it because the directions seemed very complicated and i didn't want to perform the operation incorrectly have it not work because if it didn't work maybe it would backfire and put a "wart" on my face or something. i finally used it a few weeks ago - tried it on my hand where there is not so much a wart as a "wart" there on my hand. it did not work - likely because i didn't hold it on the "wart" long enough. why didn't i hold it on there longer? well for starters, it hurts like a mohfoh. and besides that, there is the pain. i valiantly tried again today and really held it on there for the full 20 seconds and it was making me break out in a sweat but i powered through. it's supposed to take a few days to show a result, so i'll give you an update later in the week.

in other painful self-beautification news, i am using walgreens whitening trays to liven up my big horsie teeth. while the whiteners do not match the intense mohfoh level of pain that the wart remover provides, they offer a more prolonged agony. wart remover = 20 seconds. whitener = 30 minutes. the main ingredient in the whitener is hydrogen peroxide. in case you aren't scientific, i'll tell you the formula for hydrogen peroxide is HO. no, not the call of santa nor the call of leerondell the pimp, but rather HO is symbolic of one hydrogen for each oxygen. hydrogen per oxygen. peroxide. GET IT?

so, you've got your HO and the thing about HO is that it's a bit unstable in character but through the instability is somewhat laser-focused on its life-mission: become H2O. sort of like julia roberts in pretty woman wanting to become a princess when she is a ho, all HO wants out of life is to become water, and all it needs is its own personal richard gere - some H to make this dream come true. it is so, so desperate to become H2O that it really doesn't let anything - even slap-happy little bully-men like that guy george from seinfeld who, yes, we all forget was in that movie - stand it its way. this unstable mission-driven laser-focus desire to be water makes HO a good li'l scrubber-dubber. it's pushes everything in its path out of the way in its single-minded quest for H -- dirt, grime, blood, coffee stains, laura sangiacomo, periodontal structures. it's like having gum-termites tearing away at your hard palate for 30 minutes and you don't get to wear a ruby necklace or even go to a polo match.

there was this total controversy over this old oak out to the mall - they were going to cut it down but they didn't and now everyone ignores it.

so i was at the dollar store shopping for birthday cards because cousin linebacker has a birthday today when the radio station that was blaring over the PA system quit playing music and started a commershal block where in that block was a commershal for the radio station itself that was a live feed from out to the mall where the DJ lady was collecting supplies for flood victims and she said they were collecting all sorts of things but only new things so please to stop bringing used clothing or furniture because they only wanted new things then she started talking about stuff to bring and listed household cleaning supplies so i was listening and just sort of standing there then i saw this lady go to this stack of buckets where she picked up two buckets then she went to the cleaning supplies aisle and filled them up with cleaning supplies so i was like hey, i can do that, so i picked up two buckets and filled them with hydroxitomic dish cleaner and brillo brand cleaning solution (one pine smelling and one lavender) and old school ajax in the can and two scrub brushes each and two sponges each and also a 10 pack of rubber gloves in each bucket then i took the buckets up to the front to pay (i was also buying some combos because i am a freak for combos and i had not had any lunch yet) so i took it all up there to pay which came to $18.01 so i found a $20 and a 1¢ to pay and accept my $2 back then i took the buckets and the combos to the car where i put the buckets in the trunk then got in the front myself with the combos which i munched combos as i drank coke zero (i already had that) as i drove out to the mall where there was a ton of traffic with people doing stupid things like coming to a full stop a the green light but i made it to the drop off place and handed the volunteer my 2 buckets o' chemicals for which he thanked me kindly when i said it's not much but as i got back in the car to drive away i couldn't figure out if i felt good for doing something at all or completely eejity for doing so little.

oil spill? what oil spill?

the irony of the flooding is that we're on water restrictions. we're not supposed to warsh our cars or water our lawns, and folks are reporting their neighbors for these activities. i don't know who you report that to. the water police? we're also supposed to conserve water in any ways we can such as not showering, not warshing clothes, only using water for cooking and drinking. i guess not warshing dishes? and of course some people are taking it more seriously than others. i read about this couple who took in 4 families and their pets, and the woman was like - "i haven't showered in 4 days." ah, jeez. this doesn't seem right, does it? i mean, if you're already making that kind of a commitment to helping, you should be able to take a shower. at my work, they cut off the water to the showers in the fitness center, so after my lunchtime run, i cannot shower. i am not 100% positive they actually turned the water off, but they put a "closed" sign on the closed door, so i am not going to be the one to go in there and try it out. that would be just too rude.

so i usually take at least 2 showers a day - one in the morning and another after going for a run. i'll take 3 on days i have futbol. last night i showered after the futbol game, and so i didn't shower this morning or today after running. it's not like i use THAT much water, so in a way it's just symbolic -- but, if others are doing the same thing, it can add up. it's not like i didn't warsh up at all - i warshed my face & hands and also my feet in the sink. my legs were covered with sand because there is just so much sand blowing around now, so i rinsed that off. and then i used astringent, you know - like sea breeze?, to clean up and cool down and try to stop the sweating. (it was like 100º today.) i blow-dryed my hair and used hair spray to dry it out more. so i really did a lot of cleaning, but i didn't warsh my hair and didn't get that all-over clean.

and how do i feel now? disgusting. gross. ew. sticky. gritty. my hair itches. my skin is all hot and blech. this is just one day without showering, and yes i went out for a run in 100º weather which sort of exacerbates the sweat, but i am pretty sure that daily, or semi-daily, showering is not common throughout the world no matter what type of activity these folks are participating in. i mean, durr, there are millions of people that don't have showers at all, so clearly they aren't showering. but even in the parts of the world that are well-developed, i am guessing that multi-shower days aren't common. i haven't been to europe but it's my impression that no only is plumbing not as reliable, but bathing is less common.

i am not sure what my point here is. am i spoiled? eh. probably. am i going to change my behaviour on the long term? eh. probably not.

alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu nu xi omicron pi rho sigma tau upsilon phi chi psi omega

tonight at futbol i had like the worst game i have had in a very long time. i scored a own-goal, and also had a lovely assist - to the other team. gah! what a complete freak of athletic nature. lucky for me my teammates were not having the wacktard time i was having and we won 9-7. too close for comfort, in my book, seeing as how i could have easily scored a couple more goals FOR THEM. gah! so after the game my mates are all like - good game, ace! and it's formulaic and all that but the way they say it i am like - hey, did they not notice i was playing like complete crap or... wait just a minute here, do they think i always play like that?? because i most certainly do not! or, hey, here's a better one - maybe because i usually play so WELL they didn't notice i had an off game. yeah! that's the one i like. take it to the bank, ace! woowoo!

¡olé!

cinco de mayo is celebrated more in the usa than in mexico. it's an obvious excuse to let loose with the margaritas & tortilla cheeps, and what sane person would pass that up? i would venture to say that cinco de mayo is being celebrated right now in arizona with at least as much intensity as it is in every other state in our union.

okay, i really don't want to get into the arizona thing except to say that if part of the title of the group to which you belong is "illegal", then maybe that's a clue to your comparitive status. i am not saying that folks everywhere don't deserve a chance at that brass ring we call the american dream. i am not saying that folks who migrate to the usa do not work hard or contribute to their communities in ways both monetary and cultural. i am not saying that we citizens have any more basic human rights simply because we are citizens of the usa than do the folks who are here illegally. all i am saying is that "illegal" does not imply that you are unproductive or undeserving. "illegal" means that you are breaking the law. your choices where the law is concerned are straightforward - obey it or pay the consequences. (and, the slightly less straightforward - change the law.) if you break the law you pay the consequences, even if you don't agree with the law. in fact - even if a lot of people don't agree with the law, you still pay the consequences if you break it (and get caught). so, if you're an illegal immigrant to the usa, you face the possibility each day that you will be brought up against the consequences. now -- if the consequences of breaking the law to be in the usa are less than the consequences of living legally in mexico (or, finland, china, bora bora... anywhere), that is to say that if you are safer, healthier, more productive, able to offer your children more hope, stability, and freedom living in the usa with the status of "illegal" than living legally someplace else - well, then you are probably going to go for it, right? and, who's to blame you for that? seems an easy choice. the thing about it, though, is that making that choice doesn't let you out of suffering the consequences of breaking the laws of the usa - and one of those consequences is that you will bear the label "illegal".



okay, well, good thing i didn't want to get into THAT because gd only knows where we'd end up.

cinco de mayo is not a big holiday in mexico. it's a celebration in one part of mexico - a commemoration of the defeat of the french at puebla on 5 mayo 1862. a typical jaywalking contestant on the tonight show would likely tell you it's mexican independence day, and they'd be wrong. mexican independence day is on 16 september. no worries, though - the proprietor of your local taquería will gladly set you up with tequila and cheeps on cinco de mayo, or any other day. that is, as long as you can prove you are legally old enough to drink.

nonsense

we've had what you might call a wee bit of rain around here lately, and some folks are somewhat disconvenienced by it. like, their houses now contain a couple feet of water. or, mud. or, in some cases their houses and cars and shizzle are no longer there. whoosh! warshed away.

i saw this story on the news and then had it confirmed by a co-worker who witnessed it personally. there was this one family that saw the water rising, so they packed their belongings in the SUV and tootled on out down the road towards safety, but then got caught by the rising water and had to abandon their SUV and all the contents. in trying to save their stuff, they lost it. somewhat ironic and also a wee bit biblical.

this morning on the news, the lady reporter was interviewing this other guy and his story was that the waters were rising and he was sore afraid, but then the waters receeded and he was joyful. he said, «we prayed and prayed and our prayers were answered!»

okay, now. this peeves me a bit, when people do this «answer to prayer» thing. follow that out to its logical conclusion and what do you have? if mr drypants got his prayer answered, where does that leave mr wetpants? [wetpants... heh...] FOCUS! so mr drypants prayed and was answered and mr wetpants either (1) did not pray or (2) prayed to be all wet and his prayer was answered or (3) prayed to be dry and his prayer was not answered.

i think right off the bat, here, we can say that there's a very slim chance he was praying to get wet. maybe, if he had flood insurance and was already figuratively under water on the mortgage, maybe he'd like to be literally under water. but, c'mon that is just not realistic.

it makes some sense to say he didn't pray at all. lots of folks don't pray. lots of folks do, but lots don't. some don't believe in prayer. some are too distracted by the practicality of the water rising that even if they believe in prayer, they forget to pray.

it makes the most sense, at least to folks in these parts, to say he was praying and his prayer wasn't answered. which begs the querschun - why the hell not? did he pray incorrectly? did he not live in a deserving way? maybe his prayer WAS answered and the answer was no.

if you see where i am going here, nothing's looking good for mr wetpants. mr drypants prayed and got his miracle. mr wetpants prayed and did not get his. why? why why why? WHY?

and, more to the point, why is mr drypants so all-fired happy about his miracle when the only logical conclusion to his stream of thought is that mr wetpants asked and didn't receive. does mr drypants wish bad things for mr wetpants? in the competition for the miracle, mr drypants is the winner. he got his!

that's what really gets to me. inside the implied finite number of miracles and the implied handout process - with all the people praying for their own personal miracles, it just figures some will not get answered - hiding in these implications is that if i get mine it will be at the expense of you not getting yours. on some level i need to want you to not get yours because if you get yours, i won't get mine.

i think the bottom line here is that we don't really understand - and very likely have less than zero influence over - whatever is in the pot o' miracles and whatever system is employed in distributing them.

getting answers, solutions, gifts, miracles, or anything else -- getting anything at all from outside ourselves is not the purpose of prayer.

peopl r funny

okay, i don't know what's going on in this one, but i really don't believe it's about actual stamps. do you think it is possible that "stamps" is some sort of a euphemism?

---

theirs no grammer in woodchipping!! also, yes, i feel safe just handing out my address to the anonymous woodchip guy. also, i think there's a chance that "woodchips" might be some sort of a euphemism.

---

yeah, um... teresa? if you want some "mulch" then call marc and leave your number. he will call you. about the "mulch". k? and, i think "mulch" could possibly be some sort of a euphemism.

---

call sugar bear for some sugar bear hair! "sugar bear" is definitely some sort of a euphemism. or, maybe it's "hair weave"....

---

"must take both" - why? because they cannot bear to be separated? no euphemisms here - that's just plain funny. "must take both". bwah!

---

confine yourself to one map at a time.

we're commissioning some maps for a project at work, and part of the map work involves the map indices which are the lists of quadrant locations which allow you to find the stuff on the map. like, you want to find minnetonka on the map of minnesota so you look in the index and find minnetonka and it says there beside it, for instance, d-5. so you go back to the map and you find the "d" which is either a column head or a row label, and then you find the "5" which is either a row label or a column head, and you follow the "d" line and the "5" line until they intersect and if the map is made in any sort of reasonable manner, the resulting d-5 quandrant where you land will be [1] a manageable size and [2] a container of minnetonka. you will thus locate minnetonka in minnesota.

the letters could be on the horiz or the vert axis, the x or the y, if you will. same with the numbers - could be on either the x or the y. now, on a particular map you will have only letters on the x and only numbers on the y or vicey versey. you will not have, for instance, "A - 2 - 3 - D" or even worse "A - 6 - S - 25". i mean, on the one hand you could still find the quadrant despite the labels being a bit wack, but on the other hand, it's a map, not a freaking puzzle. okay, well, it could be a treasure map and then maybe it would be a bit of a puzzle, but your everyday road map type map is designed to reveal, not disguise, information.

our maps are designed to reveal information, so the labels are in order. letters go this way, numbers go that way, and they go in progression. there are, however, maps that are oriented portrait style and others that are landscape style, and when you place them side by side with each aligned to the north, you might expect the letters and numbers at that point to be on corresponding axises. they are not. they are switched. letters on the y and numbers on the x and letters on the x and numbers on the y. it's weird when you look at them side-by-side and it makes you go - well, geez, why aren't they all the same? and then you realize that you have no idea what the standard is because you've never paid that close of attention. you use a map index by locating minnetonka in the list, finding the coordinates, then going and finding the quadrant on the one particular map. you don't then get out another map and compare how the quandrants are set up because you don't need to know anything else.

we were pondering all this in the production meeting when my co-worker says, "well, it appears what's best is to confine yourself to one map at a time."

and i was struck by the applicable, every-day wisdom of this. one map at a time. one game-plan at a time. one day at a time. i hear you saying that's boring or that's not how life works or any myriad plethorae of other objections to the feasibility of one map at a time but just a wee bit of focus to the task at hand and a bit of closure at the completion... that's a comfort from which, at times, we might all benefit.

did you ever casually google a casual acquaintance and subsequently discover that he/she is what could be described as famous? uh, yeah - me neither.

after yesterday's fiasco and with today's rain, i did not run today. it is a planned day off from running and on the one hand i could do something else exercisey like ride the stationary bike but on the other hand the stationary bike is sitting in the small stream that is running thru the basement because of the amount of rain we've gotten today and on the other hand i simply don't want to.

instead, i made elvis bread. this is not named for my elvis. this is named for THE elvis - because it's banana + peanut butter. mmmm! the recipe started as banana bread, but mini-me added peanut butter once and MAN was that a STELLAR idea! i like it because it gives me a chance to use the electric hand mixer sweet baby james gave to me like 20 years ago, and because it tastes good, and because it's easy to make, and because the recipe is easy to remember. it's as easy as 1-2-3! or, well, 1-2-3-1/4!!

cream together 1 cup butter + 1 cup sugar.
add and mix well 2 eggs + 2 cups all purpose flour.
add and mix well 3 overripe nanners.
add and mix well 1/4 cup peanut butter. (crunchy is best!)
bake at 300º for 1-1/2 hours.


i usually split the batter into 2 loaf pans. a few weeks ago, i went to find the loaf pans and there was only one and then i remembered that the other was used to provide water to that puppy who came to visit but has since been killed by a car and it was sort of weird to think about that. was the loaf pan sacrificed for nothing, since the puppy is dead now anyway? well, no. of course not. i mean, we're all of us one happy-go-lucky chase after a ton of rolling steel away from death, aren't we now?