You should have seen that monster...

2008-05-07

Good evening Boys and Girls.

Just mowed the lawn here for the first time of the year. Smells great out there and, as usual, I have a sinus headache as a result.

Mixed emotions here. Looking forward to seeing my kid at Second City, Saturday in Novi, Michigan, but missing Sweet Lady and crew out in Iowa.

Good roomie Dot - now actually, ex-good roomie Dot, as she's already moved into her new apartment with beau Terry - is having some medical concerns after an appointment today regarding a breathing problem she's been dealing with for some time. Tests at the hospital Monday. Hope it's not too serious.

Roadie, the five-year-old Calico that owns a good chunk of my heart, went AWOL last night for a few hours. Couldn't find her anywhere. Then, just before I went to bed, and as I was yapping with Sweet Lady on the phone, I found her in the basement purposefully staring at the area between the washer and dryer.

Glad to have found her, I said goodnight to Sweet Lady and went to sleep quickly.

This morning, when I went to make coffee, I noticed something on the floor, just under the back of the easy chair Roadie jumps up on a few times a day to receive her treats. At first I thought it was a hairball. Nope. A dead baby mouse, tiny as can be, obviously presented as a trophy just for me. Roadie has no front claws, and to my knowledge this was her first kill. I was so proud.

Of course, earlier today, Sweet Lady pointed out to me that it's unlikely there's just one baby mouse down there and that I ought to be concerned about the ones Roadie didn't - or, as I prefer to see it, hasn't yet - killed.

Considering the of this place, I'm surprised there aren't more mice around here than there have been. Other than when we first moved in, and we caught a few, this is the first of them. I know, however, that babies don't appear magically, so obviously there's at least a pair of them floating around.

I'm not worried.

I have a hunter cat.


Be good to everyone.

 

Just went to my kid's website and saw this. Someone did a weird youtube video to one of Ryan's strangest songs.

If you're interested, go to ryanparmenter.com (He's not in the video at all, but it is him singing.)

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Mike Tiabbi's Rolling Stone article. My take.

2008-04-30

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I've thought about this post for a couple of days, and, as usual, it won't get through to anyone who needs to understand what I'll write here... Maybe if I start it out as though it carried great weight. Maybe if I plagiarize a half a line or so....

When in the course of human events, it is discovered that a wrong is being perpetrated on the people, it is the responsibility of any and all to point it out to both the folks on whom the wrong is being perpetrated as well as the rest of the populace.

So, how is it that wrongs are discovered within a largely closed mini-society? Well, in the case of the polygamist bunch in Texas we've seen so much about in the news of late, it was brought to the attention of the outside world and the authorities - though to my way of thinking, it's hard to understand how no one in authority knew about the situation long before - by a poor young girl, a victim, who made a phone call herself to complain about what was going on there.

Meanwhile, because it took so long, hundreds of other children were also victimized for YEARS by people who held sincere beliefs that their way of life, and what they believed, were no one in the outside world's business.

I'm sure millions of people in this country, would conclude that since these people did what they did out of religious conviction - and as I mentioned before, I don't doubt for a second that their convictions WERE, in fact, sincere - that the state had no business interfering, ESPECIALLY since the way they lived was entirely based on their faith. I'm sure that had any reporter infiltrated the little closed society and written a piece about it - a piece that surely would have cast aspersions on the thinking and actions of those same sincere believers - evidently, some silly folks would have considered the reporter dishonest, and that, I'll guess, that a disservice had been done to our precious freedoms.

After all, they'll say, where's the harm? What's the problem?

The problem is, for example, there is no such thing as speaking in tongues. It's a sham. Oh, I'm SURE there are people who are convinced they do it all the time, but it's simply not real. There's also no such thing as a philosophy demon. There's not even such a thing as a demon of alcohol, or lust, or any of the other demons that the preacher Mike Tiabbi describes in his article claims to have helped the folks, (those who attended the weekend getaway his article focuses on), rid themselves of. No matter what they claim, it's pure hogwash, and only fools will conclude otherwise. Am I calling those who believe it to be so fools? Alas. I suppose I am. I'm not calling them hypocrites, mind you, that's not my point. Yes, I think they're plain silly people, however, I think they're sincere as can be.

In fact, I don't doubt for a second that the preacher who led the weekend retreat is himself sincere, or that that he thinks he is indeed doing the Lord's work when he engages in this sort of "instruction", OR that many of the people who attend churches that encourage this sort of behavior feel far better about themselves after having attended such shindigs. They FEEL the spirit; they FEEL the demons - often demons they didn't even know they had - exiting their bodies.

They FEEL that they've found out something new and wonderful and uplifting. Fine. I have no problems with it, at least on it's face. It's meant to make them feel better about themselves, and because of the way our psyches work, it does just that. What I do have problems with is that just because all this stuff makes them FEEL what they feel, doesn't mean what they feel has any basis in reality, (hence, by the way, the need for constant reinforcement and repetition of the same sorts of events over and over again; hence the deliberate shutting out, to whatever extent is possible, the "world.")

Why do I care? I care because people who either don't or, more often aren't able to understand (or care) that what they've come to feel is so easily explainable (given any sort of desire to explore the phenomenon), probably won't question much else they're told either - which is, of course, the simple explanation for why it's so easy for the leaders of the religious right to motivate (read "manipulate") the faithful into such a powerful, and largely monolithic, voting block; a voting block that could very well sway elections in this country for the foreseeable future, and may very well, in time, turn our wonderful - if flawed - country into a place that is dangerous for not only free-thinking and truly thoughtful people, but, once it's too late, even dangerous even for those who think "all we need to do is to create one big happy Nation 'fer Jesus".

They'll deny it of course - pshaw, they'll say - as we all say goodbye to habeas corpus; as we, for the first time in our history, actually engage in a national debate as to whether we ought treat torture as a necessary evil, or as we long have, treat it as something to be avoided at all costs simply because it's wrong and evil; as we allow these folks to rewrite history, turning our Founding Fathers into a single group of born-again 20th century evangelical Christians, instead of the diverse rag-tag bunch of men from more than a dozen religious backgrounds, (and remember, back then, even two churches of the same denomination situated right down the lane from each other, were often as different as they could possibly be, because of the lack of organization within the various denominations, which in turn explains why those same dozen or so denominations would split into well over two hundred over the next century and a half); as we justify killing thousands and thousands of other people - nothing new about this one, of course - in the name of, or supposedly, with the tacit approval of Jesus, whom, these folks will tell you sincerely, was far more concerned with racking up large numbers of "saved souls" than he was about our loving one another, (despite his own words to the contrary); even as we actually debate whether it's good and proper for one person to tell another what they can do to and with their own bodies.

Mike Tiabbi did the piece on this church because its leader and founder has said some pretty scary things, one about an entire group of people, claiming Old Testament wrath had been shown to an entire city because the city hosted a Gay Pride parade. He was probably simply unintentionally wrong because he believes foolish things. After all, I doubt he lied intentionally. Either way, what he said was hateful, hurt people and was patently "dishonest." It's important to have such people "outed" and to keep the people who think like them from ever getting a chance to make policy for the rest of us.

Remember, this is important. Just because charismatic leaders, by their very nature, have the ability to convince people to believe something - 'til their followers eventually hold those beliefs with all their heart - doesn't mean those leaders have the right to pass out killer kool-aid, or make their followers think that when they off themselves they're going to meet a big comet in the sky - or that they can have demons cast from their bodies by holding their mouths open while a list is read, or create communities where incest and pedophilia run rampant. So here's the thing: since it's impossible for anyone to know anyway, never trust ANYONE who tries to tell you they have a clue about what God wants, no matter what authority they claim, especially when they claim Jesus or God as that authority. You hear that from anyone, run fast, but yell out to everyone while you're running too.

Here's why:

You show me a defender of any religion's right to unfettered practice - without occasional oversight from the outside - or someone who uses the Bible as their authority to claim they have even the slightest clue about what God wants with regard to any specific situation, and I'll show you someone of whom any thinking person ought be very, very wary.


Be good to everyone.

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Let's try a redirect...

2007-11-05

Click this ----> http://surrogate.tblog.com <---

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Wow. Tomorrow? -I'm climbing Mt Everest in my sleep...

2007-10-29

Gooooood evening Boys and Girls.

I've been listening to Steven King's "On Writing," during this trip. It's a book I've read bits and pieces of previously, but one I'd also purposely avoided reading straight through because, though I've always enjoyed what King I've read, he's not a writer I'd especially aspire to emulate, at least with regard to his style. No biggie, I suppose, since it's rather doubtful he'd want to emulate me with regard to either my style OR my lack of success to date.

So - I like to think - that makes us just about even!

That said, I've really enjoyed, "On Writing," so far. It's an unabridged audio version with Mr. King himself doing the narrating - always a big plus to me if the author has any reading chops whatsoever since, you KNOW you're hearing the words exactly the way they were intended to be read.

And, going further down that road for some reason I haven't fathomed - or planned - it reminded me that last night a friend read one of my old posts to me over the phone.

We'd been discussing something about it, but I really don't recall the details. Funny. Regardless, I asked her to do it, and for me, it was interesting.

See, I'd always wondered whether the way I hope something reads, is in "the voice" I intend when I put something down here. Often I worry that because I do tend to write the way I speak, I find myself concerned that since you can't HEAR it as it sounds in my head, that either my meaning will be distorted, or that the tone will come off as far harsher than I mean for it to.

I can say that she seemed to nail it perfectly; pausing where I would have and with exactly the tone I'd hoped for. Even so, afterward, I wondered aloud whether someone who doesn't already know the way I talk would have done as fine a job, at least to my ear.

Who knows.

Last night, as I drove West toward a never-reached point where the dark horizon met a beautiful night sky, I found I'd just crossed the Mississippi River - and that I'd done so without even realizing it.

Honest.

Zowie.

This, to me, is tangible proof that, in some respects at least, life has gotten a little too damned easy.

Be good to everyone.

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Capricorn One?

2007-10-23

Gooood morning Boys and Girls.

When I was a kid, about the biggest cool thing going on in the world - at least as far as I was concerned - was the Apollo Program. My formative years were defined by the decade of the sixties and perhaps began when John Kennedy articulated the seed of his giant idea during his inauguration speech in early 1960 and ran right through Apollo 11's landing on the moon in July of 1969, an event I remember watching at my grandparents little vacation trailer in Canada on lake Eerie, with six of us crowded around into a booth at one end of the trailer watching the tiniest black and white TV I'd ever seen.

I remember being angry with my folks for having chosen that particular weekend to visit them there, because the television's reception was awful and the picture was grainy and distorted. It wasn't until later that I realized that everyone saw that same horrible picture that night; that it wasn't the TV at all.

It was just a few weeks later when I walked into the Post Office in the little Northern Michigan town where our family's cottage was to pick up the mail, when I overheard the Postmaster there giving his opinion on the moon landing to the fellow who owned the cottage just two lots down from ours. "It's was fake," and he waved his hand away like he was swatting an especially slow fly. "They've never been to the moon, and they'll never go to the moon. Physically impossible. Did you see those television pictures? Of COURSE they were lousy. If they showed it clearly, we'd have been able to see it was all cardboard and paper mache."

I was astounded. It never occurred to me that anyone didn't think we'd "done it," let alone that we COULDN'T do it - ever!

I was just thirteen at the time, and I don't think he was more than twenty-five. Last time I was up that way he had just retired as the postmaster - a job he held for thirty-five years - and he was still just as skeptical about anything scientific.

Over the years he became sort of a joke to me - a nice fellow, really - but he was forever spouting his ill-informed opinions to anyone who'd listen. After a while, you'd just smile and nod, and completely ignore him since his opinions got formed FIRST, and then he'd carefully ignore any information that got in the way of him thinking whatever it was he'd decided to think.

I get sort of a kick out of it, and I'm reminded of that postmaster every time I hear Steve Forbes, or any of the other idiots who don't get that global warming is not only a fact, but that it makes perfect sense that we'd be placing a bigger and bigger strain on the planet, ramble on smugly.

Good grief, the population doubles every thirty-seven years. There's never been a time to compare with the present one since we've never had this many people, this much industry, this much deforestation... We've just never had this many doing this much of so very many things. Oh well, so be it.

It's not a good or bad thing, a liberal or conservative thing... It's not even a moral question. It just IS. Just because the TV is tiny and the picture's still a little grainy doesn't mean we're not seeing what we're seeing.

Do me a favor, next time you hear Thoolou, or ottomanprang, or any of the other goofy naysayers (either within the blog world or out in the real one) try to convince you that Global Warming is (a.) not real, or (b.) a liberal plot to steal your money, or (c.) invented by Al Gore as a ruse to help him be drafted into the presidential race, or - my favorite, since it flies in the face of the rest of their logic - (d.) if it IS real that there's not a blessed thing we could ever hope to do about it and so we shoudn't even give a hoot, ask them if they think we really went to the moon back in 1969.

Wouldn't be surprised if they're skeptical about that too.

Finally, ask them if, in their attempt to counter the mainstream argument, they're using information from another time in the planet's history when there were 6 BILLION people living on the surface - and, if so? -find out exactly when that was. I'd like to know.


Be good to everyone.

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And when we come back from commercial? -we'll tell you something else you already know.

2007-10-22

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I've been accused by more than one person of being a bit mamby-pamby in my posts of late; of not providing the hard hitting opinions (backed up by facts, knowledge and experience, of course) some readers have come to expect from my digital pen.

And, that while I may have been personally happier of late, that somehow I'm letting down those of you out there who count on my brilliant takes on matters both imminently relevant to all of us, as well as my occasional attempts to convey broader thoughts on humanity itself and our long term survival within the confines of the known universe; you know, the very stuff that's made this blog the "must read" source of all things "surrogate," for all eleven of you out there who "get it."

(This would probably be a good time for those of you in the know to execute the secret handshake. If no one's around who knows it? -I'd suggest you do it to yourself.)

I suppose the bitching is justified.

I suppose I've been almost deliberate in my gradual toning down of the rhetoric I use here.

I suppose that if you don't like it, you can go straight to hell.

There.

How's that for hard hitting and edgy?

(Snicker. I wonder if they know hell isn't even real? -except here on earth, of course, where we work quite diligently to create one ourselves...)


Be good to everyone.

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Be good to everyone? -Yeah? What about Roadie? You cad....

2007-10-20

Good Saturday mornin' to ya'll...

It's bright and clear here with a bit of "crisp" in the air.

Been wondering what to write about the last few days. My mood has consistently been pretty darn good of late and for the first time in years, I find myself sneaking peeks forward as often as I look backwards - even though I still try to root myself (as preached in all the self-help books I abhor so much,) in the "here and now."

Is this glancing ahead dangerous? -sure. Will it bite me in the ass? -probably. Will it stop me? -don't think so; not for now, at least.

Roadie has been meowing at my feet for most of the morning even though I've petted her a million times and given her more treats than she ought have in a whole day. I think she's finding herself very needy right now, as though maybe she can feel my affections shifting a bit. And though I've told her repeatedly she's the only cat in my life, I'm sure she senses a possible betrayal afoot and is doing her level best to quash it before it happens.

For Roadie, this is "General Hospital," "Santa Barbara," and "As the World Turns," all rolled up into one giant hairball she's having trouble coughing up.

I stand at the back of the chair she jumps onto at my command a dozen times a day. "Come on. Come on Roadie. Up here... That's a good girl. You need a treat, don't you.... Ohhhh, you good kitty cat, you..." And I give her a little one armed hug.

Still? Her eyes tell me what she's thinking. "You Judas. How DARE you! Fine. Give it to me. I'll eat your tainted treat. I know. You expect that, don't you. -surrogate holds out the treat and I'm supposed to act all appreciative. Fine. I KNOW what's really going on here."

And I find I must look away, shamed.


Be good to everyone.

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Want a tiny pumpkin muffin?

2007-10-18

Good morning Boys and Girls.


So...

A few months ago, good roomie Dot asked me to attend a one-evening class with her sometime off in the future. "Me?" -I thought. "A class?" I was dubious. Didn't sound like me.

But, Dot really thought I'd like it, and she assured me that she'd even pay for it if I'd be willing to go. "Sure. "I said, "knock yourself out. Sign me up."

And, truth be told, that was that - I kind of forgot about it.

Last week sometime, Dot reminded me about it and said it was next Tuesday - meaning the night before last. Unfortunately, when Tuesday came, by the time I got home from work, about the last thing I wanted to do was go attend this class. I'd not slept well the night before and had awaken at 3:00 a.m. and then hadn't been able to get back to sleep - a VERY unusual circumstance for me - and, to make matters worse, work had been hectic all day. I was exhausted.

But...

I'd promised.

So it was that Tuesday evening I found myself sitting in the Freshman Center auditorium of the Rockford High School to watch a lady named Deanna House cook holiday treats and to learn to make some new ones myself...

Oy. I wasn't pleased. I was soooo tired and I knew I'd have trouble staying awake for the two hours, let alone not really being interested in the least in the learning to make the rudimentary recipes as outlined in the little programs we'd been handed as we walked in. Hell, I love to cook, but I've never made many "Holiday Treats," of this sort anyway.

Why, I wondered, had good Dot insisted I'd enjoy this? Oh well, I thought, it's just two hours. I looked at her sitting there next to me, all smiles, SURE I'd get a kick out of what was to come. I can honestly say that, at that minute, I thought she was nuts.

I looked around. No men. None. I stood and looked more closely. Nope. Not one. I did a count... Ten full rows plus a few partially full ones of... let's see... I counted the number of seats in each row. Twenty-four. So, way more than two-hundred and forty women...

...and me.

I'll say it again. Oy.

Dot had asked me to give me her impression of Deanna House when I saw her, and frankly, it was stark and immediate. I saw her and thought, "Why look! It's Robin Williams playing Mrs. Doubtfire!" -which, I think, was exactly what Dot was darn sure I'd think.

What a hoot!

She didn't have the fake English accent, and her hair was shorter, and though she did have a big old-fashioned looking apron on, this was the first time Dot had seen her sans a big frilly dress that, she assured me, added to her "look." Yes, Dot has gone to see this lady any number of times over the years.

Exactly at seven, she took the stage and immediately told us all, with calculated if frantic gestures, that she was extremely worried about finishing all ten recipes before nine.

Early on, Mrs. House made a silly joke about the fact that her husband had brought her and helped her set up all the stuff she needed to cook there on the stage, but then as soon as things were ready to go, he'd disappeared to the McDonald's across the street saying he didn't want to be "in the way," -though she made it quite clear that he'd really left because he simply did not want to stick around and listen to her do her schtick for the zillionth time.

Honestly, I did have trouble staying awake for the first twenty minutes or so until I "won" a sample of the pickled red cabbage she'd just made. Incredible! (Everyone had been given tickets with number on them to facilitate the passing out of samples as door prizes throughout the night.)

The woman was an absolute riot. Funny as can be and quick as... well, how about Robin Williams? Evidently she's a retired Home-Ec teacher who's been doing these "evenings" all around the Midwest for twenty years or more. I can't even remember a single "joke," really, other than the one about her husband, (who did return at some point to wild applause from the crowd when she made fun of him again - which earned her a scowling wave from him, making it clear that her "wit" was not the least bit new to him, and was something he's quite tired of by now, which, of course, was funny in itself.) No, no real jokes. She was just plain... funny! She really enjoys doing what she does, and her effect on the crowd was... Aw hell, it was just plain touching.

Anyway. I just went to her web site at http//www.deannahouse.com and wasn't overly impressed. It looks nice enough, I suppose, but it really gives no clue as to her professionalism and talent, nor her sense of humor. A shame.

All I can say is this: if you ever get a chance to see her, (even if you're going to be the only guy there,) spend an evening with Deanna House. You may or may not learn a darn thing, but you'll laugh a lot. -A fine thing indeed.

Thanks Dot!

 

Be good to everyone.

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Five hundred and nineteen miles, one way. Exactly.

2007-10-14

Good afternoon Boys and Girls.

Got home here about two and a half hours ago. I'm tired but pleased as punch about the trip. Drove a little over a thousand miles since Thursday evening and really enjoyed myself as did, I'm pretty sure, the friend I visited whom, by the way, may have one of the best smiles on the face of the earth. I find I keep looking through the pics I took just to get a glimpse at that beautiful, sardonic and happy grin. Safe to say we've all seen one very much like it.

This new Jeep Liberty Commercial that's just popped on the tube again; the one with all the animals singing "Rock Me Slowly" along with the driver? -Brilliant.

Some of you know I have a wonderful friend and roommate named Dot with whom I own this house. Well, she too had a great weekend and I'm really glad for her. She's all smiles right now and I'm lovin' it. You go girl!

Roadie the cat missed me; a good thing and a real ego boost. Always nice to come home to furry friend who wants your attention. "And exactly where have YOU been?" She seems to ask with each rub up against my leg. I answer with my standard reply:

"Nosy!"


Be good to everyone.

 

Addition: My son Ryan just sent me this link to a video he recorded for my daughter's birthday featuring their cats. Funny and adorable... Check it out. http://youtube.com/watch?v=M783O65Excc

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Ya wanna have a catch?

2007-10-10

Gooood morning... Well, actually, good evening Boys and Girls.

I'm outta here tomorrow afternoon. Not sure whether I'll be posting over the weekend. I'm off for the weekend to see a close friend; looking forward to the drive. From what I understand, I can point the car west and go to sleep for a while. I'll let you know how that works out.

Ya know, when I was a kid, we were promised cars like that by now. That and a helicopter in every garage. Hell, I remember the little movie; I saw it in school at least two or three years in a row. -That movie and the one about the discovery of butyl rubber. Same narrator, if I remember correctly, and definitely the same production crew since the music and credits were just alike.

"Imagine..." (the grainy black and white shot would be pulling away slightly from a standard 1950s garage door,) "when you're your parents age, you'll be able to simply fly to work..." -And the "Dad," would pull the little copter out of the garage on a wheeled tripod, unfold the prop, and start the thing up with a tug of a cord.

Seems to me I remember thinking the far-away footage of the copter flying wasn't of the same contraption "Dad" had wheeled out of the little garage, but hey, I was pretty sure the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz were fake too, though, for some reason, I don't remember having any doubts whatsoever that Superman could fly.

Is this heaven? No. Where is it?


Be good to everyone.

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It's gonna be war!... Or a snooze...

2007-10-09

Goooood morning Boys and Girls.


Here in Michigan tonight, we're hosting the 2037th debate of the current presidential campaign; this one featuring the Republicans and brand spankin' new debater, Fred Thompson, known to his wrestling fans - as opposed to fans of his acting - as "The Tenacious Bulldog."

Many people fondly remember Fred's tactic of waiting around the outside of the ring during any number of those made for pay-per-view wrestling epics wherein a dozen or more wrestlers take each other on - in a cage, or on the roof of a very tall building, or - my favorite - within the confines of a small snake-filled pit of some sort where the surrounding fence is electrified - until a single champion emerged, standing proud, even if scratched and weary - his newly acquired belt held high for everyone to see.

Bulldog would usually wait to enter the fray until only one or two wrestlers were left, spending his time prior to getting involved walking extremely slowly around the outside of the venue using an index finger to tap at his temple, while he pointed at his own chest with the other one, all this while grinning a toothy grin and saying virtually nothing of substance. Even then I remember the lettering on the back of his robe reading, "I don't know much about anything, but at least I'm conservative - just like Reagan. You DO remember Reagan don't you?"

It would have been hard to read all that on a flowing robe, but he walked so slowly - without any apparant enthusiam - that it made it easier.

Welcome to Michigan boys!


Be good to everyone.

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Another unoriginal thought...

2007-10-07

Good morning Boys and Girls.

This morning, fog - on little cat feet, no less -  casually makes its way across the fields and hills and forests around here.

Thought about playing golf early, but following the ball in the sky is a tad difficult when it's been swallowed by clouds. Another couple of hours and things'll clear, I'd guess.

During the trip back from Detroit yesterday afternoon, one that should take no more than three hours, but took damn near five because of road construction, I had plenty of time to think silly thoughts. I'd had breakfast before leaving with three of my favorite people, all of whom tend to make me smile just from being around them, and all of whom are twenty-plus years younger than I am.

My son has been taking classes at Second City one night a week and has been enjoying them thoroughly - meaning he had plenty of stories to share about what he's been learning and the people he's met there. I'm glad he's decided to do this as it strikes me as being right up his alley. Besides Ryan, two of his friends, both of whom I consider my friends as well, joined us.

Jenny, a great catch for any guy who thinks smart, attractive, creative, funny and honest are neat qualities, was there. She showed us her new engagement ring she'd just received from a guy she's known forever and has been dating for a year or so. She was beaming and couldn't resist calling her sweetheart and putting him on speaker-phone for a minute so he could share in the banter and so we could offer our congrats.

Chris, a friend of Ryan's from as far back as elementary school, and his college roommate for a year or two, was feeling tired. His wife has just moved out to San Jose to start school this semester and he's ultra busy finishing up the chores required of him to be able to move out there to be with her as soon as possible, and this while his current job is putting all kids of stress on him. I don't like seeing Chris feeling this much pressure. I liked it better when he was a happy-go-lucky kid rarely seen without a video camera and constantly talking about this idea or that.

Good souls, and I love'em all.

Know what I want for them?

I want there to come a time when the exuberance of youth isn't slowly sanded away by the friction of life.

Handle that, would ya?


Be good to everyone.

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Reality draft.

2007-10-04

Good morning Boys and Girls.

When my kids were young, they participated in an after-school bowling league for a few years. Whenever I could, I'd sneak away from work those Thursday afternoons to watch them.

It gave me a kick to watch the two of them as team-mates pulling for each other, especially since their two-and-a-half year age difference and their divergent personalities often meant they saw things a differently at home, where squabbles between them were, if not a regular occurrence, also, not all that rare.

So watching them high-fiving and hugging each other and their team-mates was a ball. I don't ever remember them doing anything other than encouraging each other when they were bowling. Usually my ex would be there too, having served as taxi driver for ours and, sometimes, one or more of the other kids too.

After the bowling, which finished up right around dinner time anyway, we'd often pile into one of the local family diners, the favorite of which was only a few hundred yards down from the bowling alley.

At the time, my ex worked part time for a lady from the old Yugoslavia, who, though a very nice woman, never smiled much and had a rather sour disposition. This despite her having, to all appearances, found a pretty nice life here in the good ol' USA with a successful small business and a husband who seemed to tow the line pretty well.

Her name was - and hopefully still is - Donna, and she was a great Mom and a good soul even though her outlook was anything but sunny. One day, I remember asking her if everything was okay. I forget what specifically prompted my concern, but she said everything was fine. "Oh, good," I remember responding, "You don't look at all happy and I was worried something might have happened."

"I no trust happy," she said, and continued with whatever she was doing.

"Pardon?" I asked, sure I'd misheard.

She shrugged, and frowned, and honestly, I thought she was going to cry, when she repeated herself. "I no trust happy." She looked at me. "All my life, every time I get happy, something terrible, it happens."

And she gave me a few examples from her life that, by the time she was done with them, made me understand her attitude. If I was her, I decided, I wouldn't "trust" "happy" either.

One year, her son - I'll call him "Ben," - who was a couple of years younger than my daughter, asked to bowl on my kids' team. This created a little dissension within the ranks because, frankly, Ben could be a little difficult. Though he'd been born in the States, his grandparents had recently come over and lived with their family and so the language of their household was the one they'd spoken before arriving, meaning that even at ten years old, Ben's English was spotty at best and he tended to speak in fractured bursts of syntax challenged speech.

The phrase that stuck with us all for years afterward, even after Ben was completely "Americanized" and became a star lineman for his high school football team - by which time he'd dropped even the slightest trace of the accent that was so pronounced in his speech as a child - was the one he'd used constantly during bowling whenever he wanted to run to the vending machines for a candy-bar. "I could have a quarter?" he ask, -his standard, and often repeated request for funds for the string of machines that, even then, required far more than a single quarter to give up any single treat. Sometimes he'd even petition for some of the money his mother entrusted to our safekeeping before throwing the second ball that constituted the completion of his turn, something that struck all of us as hilarious - at least the first fifty or so times it happened. He did have trouble grasping the concept of the game, though throwing the ball hard was somethng he really seemed to enjoy. For the first few weeks - oh who's kidding who - for the entire year, the challenge for Ben was in "keeping it between the gutters," and understanding that he got two rolls of the ball each turn. He'd roll that first ball directly into the gutter, and then cheerily turn to either my ex or me, and smiling, ask in that innocent and oblivious voice of his, "I could have a quarter?"

After a while, my sweet children - those two kind and generous souls, the ones we'd raised so very well - wanted to kill him.

 

After a while, it became funny, and it stuck. Though it was probably mean, within our family for years afterward, anytime someone needed cash for something from another family member; any amount of cash; the plea, no matter whether it was for a buck for a soda - or hundreds of dollars for a college course or a car repair - would often be, "Hey Dad, I could have a quarter?"

........

But all this came to mind today primarily because of Donna's self-protective philosophy, the one that bangs into my head from time to time like a struck gong, the percussive attack reminding me that, while it's probably not the most pleasant way to go through life, at least it's one that helps you get THROUGH life with minimal wear and tear, because, really, it's not whether the glass is half full or half empty. No. What it is, is this: sometime there's something in the glass, and sometimes there isn't. That's it. Best to treat it the same either way. Don't get too excited by what you find, cuz tomorrow? Well...

I know what she meant.

These days, "I no trust happy," either.


Be good to everyone.

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Explaining the unexplainable - yo - yo

2007-10-02

Gooood evening Boys and Girls.

So, first...

Five days. No backsliding, and fifty bucks in my "I didn't buy smokes today so I might as well save the money," jar - which is a clear plastic gallon jug that apparently once contained "Spinsel's Braided Butter Pretzels," though, since I don't remember ever eating or buying any "Spinsel's Braided Butter Pretzels," tells me that perhaps I picked up the plastic jar from one of my kids or something...

Regardless, I'm thinking that the fact I've mentioned "Spinsel's Braided Butter Pretzels," three times in just three paragraphs ought to warrant some sort of significant payment from the manufacturers of "Spinsel's Braided Butter Pretzels," (four times now...) to yours truly.

The other night I was talking with a friend about the fact that though I like to write song lyrics and music every now and again, that my mind works far too slowly to allow me to ever be the least bit successful in the Rap genre.

We yapped and yapped about the possibilities and eventually, one thing lead to another and soon I found I'd made the rash decision to entirely change the plot for my next novel from the well thought out and intricately woven story I've been devising for months to another fake biography; a format I've toyed with before.

So now, the next story will center around a large Caucasian female rapper whom, since she doesn't exactly look like Beyonce, finds it relatively easy to take on a tough "bad girl" image, an image she fosters and builds upon for a number of years.

After some solid sales with a smallish label, she signs with an established recording company run by "The Notorious D.U.D." To avoid contractual problems, she decides to change her name from Blond-Ora, the handle she'd used for years and the one that made her famous.

After much deliberation, and some focus group analysis, she and her manager decide on her new moniker, and at a hastily arranged press conference, "Attila Vanilla," is introduced to the world.

Unfortunately, even though her first CD release is enormously successful, it's found that her live performances feature not only almost constant lip synching, but that except for a couple of carefully timed "live" walk-ons, her entire stage show showcases a CG version of the poor gal. Attila Vanilla, it seems, has out Milly Vanilli-ed, Milli Vanilli...

And when someone throws water on her while she's in mid-performance?

Well, no-one can figure how or why she can be zapped into oblivion one moment and then come blasting back in-time for the next song...

Cool story?

No?

Oh well.



Be good to everyone.

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Snap, crackle and pop, Mofo... You want some of this?

2007-09-29

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Hope you're all doing well this morning.

Personally, I'm about ready to rip someone's face off. Any volunteers?

Yesterday afternoon? -someone had the audacity to say hello to me, the bastard.

Like an expert in karate, I timed my blow and aimed through to the back of his head, "pop." Then as he fell, I put my boot through his behind. Finally, when he was down on the ground, laying there on his back, already out cold, I jumped up as far up in the air as I could and landed with my heels driving hard right down through his face - which made a nice satisfying squishy sound with a little "crack" underneath as the facial bones broke and his muscles and brains became nothing more than a soft pile of goo. He was dead before I caught my balance, and I smiled...

Okay, okay... So I'm lying.

Big deal.

Twenty-four hours with no nicotine makes one a little irritable if one is an addict - as am I.

Send me encouragement folks; I need it. But don't get too close right now; my fangs are poised and ready.


Be good to everyone.

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Ones and zeros...

2007-09-27

Good morning Boys and Girls.

In front of me here on the desk is a little package of multi-colored "flags" I bought at Office Depot a few months ago to use to mark places I wanted to edit in the book I've worked on this year. They're called flags on the package, but they're really just itsy bitsy post-it notes the size of a piece of Scotch tape... Holy moly, did I just have to reference one 3M product to describe another?

Anyway...


I've never opened the things, and there's a thin patina of dust covering the package.

It made me think about all the things I've purchased over the years to use for some specific purpose, that for any number of reasons, I've never used.

A few weeks ago, I ran across a hundred-pack of 3.5" floppy discs in my stuff. Brand new and unopened, the cellophane wrapper shows a little discoloration. Why on earth, I wondered, would I still have these? Surely I haven't even owned a computer that can accept the things for more than five years.

Finding that while elephant inspired me go dig up my trusty old floppy disc storage tray. Probably the fifth or sixth I'd owned over the years - smaller ones slowly being combined and replaced by larger units that held more and more disks - this last model held at least a couple of hundred discs, and mine was filled almost to capacity, with each disc labeled in some fashion - and none of which I've inserted into a disc drive of any sort for years.

I opened the top drawer and thumbed through the tray within. Three columns of discs, each separated by two or three little movable flippers I remember finding annoyingly difficult to adjust. Suddenly  I found myself transported back fifteen or twenty years as I read my own writing on the many labels, most of which were abbreviated in a crude shorthand I developed specifically for the purpose, and one I found I couldn't immediately recall during my perusal.

Dozens of the discs held the names of companies for whom I did projects, with dozens more labeled with snippets of sentences or key words meant to help me recognize them for what they are. Many had the names of one of my kids or my ex, along with the project the thing contained: book reports, drawings, Christmas card ideas, recipes...

The little beige plastic disc dresser contains four good-sized drawers, and I eventually got around to opening the bottom one, where I knew I'd always kept my own personal stuff: "artistic" works in progress; story ideas and outlines; business and project ideas and the like. Goodness me, how many ideas I've had over the years, and how I always wished I could find one I could focus on for the rest of my days.

Suppose one of these days I'll buy a disc reader and go through the things, but it'll take weeks, and it's not something I felt the need to do then, so eventually, I just closed it up, never an easy thing to do being as full as it is and semi-flexible plastic being what it is.

-I'll bet thousands of hours of our time went into the creation of the millions of ones and zeros held on the hundreds of those little magnetic discs, and yet, I'll bet the contents of the whole damn dresser could be easily transferred onto a single DVD - something I should probably do at some point.

Surely there are a few things in there I'd feel bad about losing forever. There must be. The problem is, that frankly, I don't remember what any of them might be.



Be good to everyone.

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Slivers from my lifeline...

2007-09-24

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Over the weekend, amid some wonderful hours of sparkling conversation, I was reminded of a couple of events from my youth.

Two of the memories that somehow jumped out of my head to be offered as lame responses, or unwitting attempts to "one-up" - something I'd never do intentionally, but worry I may do without meaning to from time to time - involve seeing Victor Borge, the funny Danish pianist and comedian at the old Orchestra Hall in Detroit when I was in Junior High, and the time, a few years later, when I was acting as the pianist/organist for a dying Church in Highland Park Michigan, that Duke Ellington and his Orchestra came to play a benefit Concert to help prop up the church.

Both performances were impeccable and made lasting impressions on me, though being peripherally involved in helping with the Duke Ellington performance - one of his last actually (I arranged for the rental of a bunch of folding chairs and the risers on which the orchestra sat) made that particular event truly special.

The concert raised quite a lot of money and was a rousing success, but alas, the church still folded a couple of months later and I lost the only job I've ever had in a church. I remember playing Elton John's ever-so-secular "Funeral for a Friend" as the recessional for the final service.

Hey, I was a kid.

Last night upon returning home, I saw that Marcel Marceau had died. I, like everyone else I know, hate mimes as a matter of principle - especially marginally talented street mimes who trap you when you're walking toward your hotel in Manhattan and force you to watch part of their routine and drop a buck or two into whatever glass box they've created before allowing you to pass - but I saw Marcel Marceau at some point on that same Orchestra Hall stage, and I was mesmerized.

After the performance, as we audience members walked out of the theater, I remember someone ahead of me commenting that Marceau had been "past his prime," that he'd "lost some of his luster," and I remember wondering how he could have ever been more amazing than he'd been that night... On the other hand, I'd never seen him perform as a younger man.

Sometimes I wish I'd seen more of the performers who entertained the people of my parents era and brought smiles to those of "the greatest generation." I know those three, whom I saw only when they were all long past sixty, still affected me in a very positive manner, and made my life richer, something for which I'm extremely thankful.

I find I'm humming "Take the A Train" in my head, though silently - out of respect for Mr. Marceau. In fact, in another part of my brain, I'm pretending I'm throwing a flower on his grave, blowing him a kiss goodbye, then frowning a little and tilting my head to the side.

Be good to everyone.

Here's a few fun Youtube links:

youtube.com/watch?v=BcV19rylSZc

youtube.com/watch?v=AOHqWk_wLNM

youtube.com/watch?v=HNqDdsgit0E

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shouting the "f" word.

2007-09-16

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Well, it's happened.

Frost.

It's the middle of September and it got that cold overnight. I don't like it. I don't like it one little bit.

Now, at nine in the morning, it's melting away, thankfully, but it was there alright.

I hereby vow that this will be my last winter in cold weather. As a younger man, I never minded it all that much, but the dread I feel right now about simply being cold for four months is something that is definitely getting in the way of my spiritual well being.

Alas, it's doubtful I'll keep this particular vow to myself - I make it every year and I never seem to -  but this year, I will buy a better class of long underwear, nicer gloves and hats, and some sort of warm jacket that both keeps me toasty and allows for plenty of freedom of movement, (so as I go through my elaborate dance routine for everyone I meet throughout the course of a day, my sleeves don't bind on that last leaping quadruple twirl.)

They love me at the grocery store, but the kids at Starbucks always bitch that I don't put the tables back where they go when I'm done. I tell them they just don't appreciate art.


Be good to everyone.

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Okay, so it's a weak analogy. Shoot me.

2007-09-14

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I work on the periphery of the car business. I have, off and on, since I was a kid. I've never sold a car, or done an oil change, or done anything truly necessary to any transaction. Nevertheless, my work has kept me keenly aware of how the American auto industry is doing; when they're doing things well and when they've screwed up; at least with regards to minimally satisfying the customers who buy both new and used cars. I've always enjoyed that aspect of my work.

While I watched President Bush deliver his speech last night, I was reminded of the first time I came to realize independently that GM had screwed up big time on a model.

I was about eighteen working here in Grand Rapids, and I'd been in business for myself for less than a year. One day I arrived at a dealership where I was scheduled to work for the day just before seven o'clock in the morning. The service department wasn't quite open yet and five cars were in line outside the drive-through waiting for the doors to open.

Four of the five were current-year-model Chevrolet Vegas. It struck me as funny at the time, but as it happened, that day, the reason I was there was to do my job on fifteen brand new Vegas out in the back lot. I knew it was at least a full day's work and I'd wanted to get started early.

So there I was, enjoying the morning, cleaning the cars a few at a time so I could do what I needed to do. Now remember, these were BRAND NEW cars.

On one of the cars I noticed that there was a tiny little rust spot on the painted sheet metal right where the front bumper protruded through. Odd. It didn't affect what I was going to do so I didn't think much of it, but a few minutes later I noticed the same thing on another one. Wow, I thought, that is really weird. So I went looking.

Yep. All of 'em had exactly the same little rust spot.

Now this would have been 1974, fully three years after the Vega had been introduced, though it was just the second year the new impact resistant bumpers were required - (back then, in '73 I think it was, new Department of Transportation rules mandated that cars needed to be able to sustain a five mile-an-hour crash from both the front and rear without being damaged, a great idea that for some reason was done away with later.)

Well, the point is that the design flaws in the Vega - a model rushed into production to compete with the the new Japanese small cars that were just beginning to take a big bite out of the market - made themselves obvious very very quickly. -And the motors and drive-trains were just as bad.

Eventually, GM realized there were so many things wrong with the Vega that they simply couldn't fix, that five years after it was introduced, the Vega quietly disappeared. It didn't kill G.M. and God knows they've had plenty of boo-boos since, but they were smart enough not to try to continue to sell a poorly conceived product that only rarely lasted through its brief warranty period without having serious problems - which, back then was only twelve months or twelve thousand miles.

I thought to myself last night, no wonder this Bush guy never ran a successful company. No wonder the only way he could make it was to trade on his father's name.

No wonder he thinks he can turn his Vega around.

And then I realized something else. By the time the Vega went away, even during that last year when its reputation was already pretty well known, there were still lots of people out there stupid enough to buy'em.

If George Bush was running GM back then, he'd have just repeatedly renamed the car and kept selling it until they either fired him, or he retired, and he'd have claimed that ending the production of the Vega was cutting and running - a sign of weakness.

And you know the worst part? -If Bush was in charge, he'd have tried to disallow the warranty claims too, even as those tiny rust spots turned into full-fledged body cancer over the course of a year or two, and the aluminum engine blocks seized prematurely.

Meanwhile, any designers who warned him ahead of time that there were serious design flaws would have long before been fired and called traitors to his glorious and doomed marketing cause.

I want to make some bumper stickers: "Iraq; George Bush's Vega. Are you a buyer?"




Be good to everyone.

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Rah! Rah! Rah!

2007-09-12

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Just received an email from my Aunt announcing the birth of her new grandson. This, of course, is impossible since in my mind, her daughter is only about ten years old and still just a little girl herself. Certainly she can't be twenty-eight already and off having babies.

Zowie.

Watched quite a few hours of General Patreaus on the tube the last couple of days. He said very very little of substance. His plan to remove thirty-thousand troops from Iraq next year is moot since (thankfully) more than that many have to come home anyway unless their tours are extended - again.

He says he has no idea what will happen if we continue the current strategy, but he's POSITIVE about what will happen if we leave. Brilliant.

When asked if we're making America safer by playing this silly and oh-so-deadly game, he couldn't even get himself to take a stand one way or the other.

I'm sure this is a man of integrity. I also know his job is to answer to the commander-in-chief and do what he's told. It ISN'T his job to make determinations as to whether the overall plan is a good one, or whether what he's doing is good for the country, or the planet.

Still, I find it ironic that he can foretell the future with such certainty with regards to what would happen if we leave Iraq, but he can't offer an opinion as to whether him doing the president's bidding is even a good idea National Security-wise, or even what will happen if his objectives are met to the letter.

It's a sad joke. I feel sorry for the guy.

It doesn't matter. The people in power can and will justify war for whatever reasons are expedient, and those reasons will change as often and as drastically as necessary, just so there's a war to cheer for. It's like planning a robbery for years and then, after you pull the job, you justify it by claiming that the bank had it coming because they'd charged you one too many overdraft fees - so what if you never even had an account there.

It still freaks me out that people can so easily ignore the fact that GWB claimed he was going to be "a war president" long before he even began officially running for the office.

This isn't outrageous to them. No. That's fine.

But MoveOn.org's ad? Now THAT they find completely outlandish. Amazing.

So, killing and dying for reasons as changeable as a sand hill in a windstorm? -Perfectly acceptable.

Questioning it? Treasonous.

Senator Warner (repeating the question, ever so slightly exasperated): "Does - that- make - America - safer?"

General Patreaous: "Sir, I don't know actually."

What a battle cry! What glorious justification!



Be good to everyone.

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Poof.

2007-09-08

Good afternoon everyone.

My life has been marked by more than a few failures, or better said, I have marred my life with more than a few.

Eh. No biggie. Probably most of us could say the same thing.

Monday, though, I mark the date of the only failure in my life I care about. Monday would have been my 30th anniversary if I was still married. And, even after being divorced now for six years plus a little, it still gets to me, and causes real heartache.

My life these days is just fine, and I'm happy for the most part. -And who knows, maybe it'll get ab-so-toot-ly wunnerful again one of these days. There's no tellin'...

But Monday? Monday's gonna be tough. I'll do a bunch of playing "what if?" I'm sure. I'll think about our little family; my ex, the kids, me; and how much being a part of that little unit of ours always meant to me, and how very much I loved - and love - whatever that weird mix was that constituted "us." I don't have a clue what it was, and I couldn't see it, but my oh my, I felt it every single day.

Oh well... 

 
"All the things you planned?
-just sand castles washed away
On tidal waves of tears,
fears overpowering...

Your complex dreams?
-just slither down; drowning in rocky pools...
-Or smashed and dashed on peril's course,
divorcing prematurely, thoughts of lasting love..."

(from "Thirty Years" by U.K.) 

 

For what it's worth, Happy 30th Anniversary Leenie.

 

Be good to everyone.

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Lazy, thoughtful, Labor Day

2007-09-05

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I'd planned on writing a post over the weekend teasing friend Kurt Maddox. I even gave him a heads up on the idea and he was a good enough sport about it to encourage me, saying he'd get a kick out of it.

I'd planned to start out by saying to him that I considered it a fact that in this world, no matter what, two and two are four. It's a given.

Rather than accepting my premise, he'd argue the point. In response to this assertion he'd write a overlong meandering reply taking issue with my statement citing everyone from Milton Friedman, Dr. Phil and, of course, Ayn Rand - complaining that as an objectivist, he's seen little proof of my contention being so other than that which he'd been taught by people with an ax to grind on the subject, but, that it was perfectly okay for two intelligent people to have divergent views on the subject, which, in turn, would drive me apoplectic with frustration.

Alas, once I got started, it wasn't turning out as funny as I'd hoped, perhaps because my mind was on other things. In the end, I concluded the only people who'd like it would be me and hopefully Kurt.

Another time.

I went away Monday for the day and gave myself some time to think. I'm really hoping my next book is a goody; a "worthy" book. I've been working out the story line in my head for months and I'm really looking forward to starting on it in earnest when the weather turns cold. I want to have the story so firmly ingrained in my brain by then that writing it becomes an exercise in retelling a story. I want to have so thoroughly thought through how my characters have been affected by what transpires along the way that it has become a vivid memory I can retell with empathy and warmth, and even though it will be entirely fictional, I want it to move the people who bother reading it.

Not asking for much am I?

I just want to get better.

I know I'm good at what I do for a living, even though I don't have all that much talent. Like so much in life, for me it's just been a matter of doing it over and over and over, and paying attention to what I've discovered along the way. Maybe that's how it is with writing too.

So I stopped by the house upon returning yesterday morning and flipped on the TV while I was changing my clothes to go to work. The last ten minutes of "Field of Dreams," was on. Ray was just refusing to sign over the farm for the last time, and he and his brother-in-law were arguing. When his daughter fell off the bleachers and Moonlight Graham - "Doc" - makes the choice to cross that foul line to help that little girl, I welled up. Not, this time, because of the story - hell, I know it so well I can speak most of the lines in that part of the movie along with the characters - but because I desperately want to write something that powerful and beautiful myself, even if it's just one page among hundreds, or thousands. Even, in fact, if it's the last thing I ever do.


Be good to everyone.

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She did have that wonderful smile...

2007-08-31

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Chill air this morning. Woke up shivering.

There's no getting around it, this summer is winding down. Played in a golf outing yesterday afternoon and the fella I shared a cart with had two football games to make appearances at last night in which his kids were taking part. I saw a few minutes of a televised pre-season Detroit Lions game a week or two ago and realized that this could only mean winter is breathing down our necks; a depressing thought if I let myself dwell on it.

This morning on MSNBC they're showing the tenth anniversary memorial service for Princess Diana.

I've decided I want to have an internationally televised memorial service for me on the tenth anniversary of my death. Nothing till then, but it seems that a decade after I'm gone would be a fine time to become famous.

Anyone who'd like to accept responsibility for setting up this little shindig on my behalf ought to send their resumes and an outline of precisely what they have in mind to my P.O. box no later than one full calender year before I expire.

Checks to cover the cost of the event should be made out to me and mailed along with your resume.

I don't want to imply that there will be a bidding war, but how else do you expect me to choose from among the thousands of applicants?


Be good to everyone?

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Musings.

2007-08-29

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Leona Helmsley died a few days ago. For many years, she was fun to dislike. In death, she continued her weirdness. She left her dog twelve million bucks.

Yes.

Last night I saw a video shot of "the" stall in which Senator Larry Craig allegedly took what he called his "unusually wide stance" at the Minneapolis Airport this past June; so wide that his foot inadvertently rubbed up against the foot of the policeman in the next stall. Well, if the shot if I saw was really of the stall where this encounter took place, we're talking more than a wide stance. We're talking Paul Bunyan wide.

I don't know if the guy is guilty (although he did PLEAD guilty,) but he's certainly a liar.

I see we're getting serious about shifting the blame for our staying in Iraq to the Iranians. Wonder what next months excuse will be?

I remember 1979 when those Iranian students took all those Americans hostage. It was a despicable act. Of course, the fact that we'd propped up the Shah all those years prior to that act - something that made hundreds of thousands of Iranians seethe with resentment - didn't matter. In fact, as usual, we just labled the whole damn country murderous and  washed our hands of our own culpability.

I love my country, but as a people, we are obtuse. I despise that about us.

We have too damn many people who check their ability to think logically at the door in favor of their form of giddy patriotism, or a simplistic religious fervor, or, something that really does scare me - in what has to be the strangest soup of a world outlook this world has ever seen - both.

I'm not thrilled with the Iranians, but are they expected to forget we supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the ten year war they had? Are they supposed to write off the tens of thousands of people killed by the Shah's secret police a generation ago - someone who was in power only because it "served our interests?"

The situation as it's evolved just isn't as simple as it's being presented.

What's new.


Be good to everyone.

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Avoiding writing what i want to write about.

2007-08-24

Good morning Boys and Girls.

7:42 a.m. Friday.

Been up about an hour.

Pretty outside. Sun's peeking through high clouds and the hill outside my window here is greener than it's been since early June, what with all the rain over the last few days. I think mowing the lawn is in the offing, for only the fourth or fifth time all summer. It's been that dry.

Poor Roadie, the cat, absolutely freaked out during the thunder storm the other night, taking refuge under my recliner and refusing to emerge for quite a while. she'd been sitting in one of her favorite places near the patio door that faces the back of the property, calmly staring out the big window when a big flash of lightning hit somewhere nearby. It lit up the sky so brightly you'd have thought it was noon for a second or two and that was it for her for the rest of the evening. -Poor widdle bebbe.

I feel like I've been playing "dodge the drops" all week at work though I've accomplished enough to make it worth the effort, so no complaints from me. It's been hot and humid during breaks in the rain when the sun has popped out to steam up the wet ground, but nothing like they've experienced elsewhere in the country. Fourteen days in a row of temps over a hundred in Nashville? -Zowie.

Talk of a trip north over the weekend to play a couple of good golf courses. There's also plenty to do here, much of which I've put off all summer. Time will tell.


Be good to everyone.

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Gray skies... Ahhhh.

2007-08-21

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I've been busy, till yesterday.

We've finally gotten a few days of rain around here and even now, it's looking pretty gray. Although it'll make work slow this week, man oh man, did we need it, so I'm not complaining.

Sure hope this hurricane Dean rushing through the Yucatan Peninsula doesn't take too many lives. They're saying it's larger and more powerful than Andrew back in '92 right now, and evidently making a bee-line for a lot of Mayan ruins and some huge oil fields. Doesn't sound good.

Seems like Shoutpost is having some of the same problems we had here with tBlog for a while. The messaging isn't working correctly and some of the pages are taking forever to load. Wonder what's up.

Having Jesus here last week was fun, though he was in a sort of a bad mood for him. He did say he was tired more than once while he was here, but I know he had to be in Australia for some meeting he wanted to attend by the 23rd. Maybe he'll write or call me and tell me more about it. Hope so. I didn't even drive him back to O'Hare in Chicago. He took the train from Grand Rapids. The weird thing was that he was just gone when I got home from playing golf late Saturday morning. He left a note, but I have no idea how he got to the train station.

I liked the last couple of lines of his note.

...and for goodness sakes, relax surrogate. If I can't get people to think, you don't have a chance. Just do what you do.

He'd been explaining earlier that the people he spoke to during his preaching years a couple of millennium ago had no trouble understanding him, because they were used to that style of speaking and story-telling, and knew when things were being said for effect and when people were talking literally, but that over the years all the hocus-pocus attributed to him has screwed things up. It's gotten in the way. "You know," he said to me, "I knew how to read and write myself. I suppose I could have written things down so they wouldn't get so screwed up in the recording and translating, but I had no idea they were going to turn me into something I wasn't."

It sure wears on him.

Be good to everyone.

Just heard that Dean's been downgraded to category three. Hope that bodes well.

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The Logical Song

2007-08-16

Hi. Jesus here.

I'm on my way tomorrow.

Pastor Dave sounds ticked off. You can read his comments over at the tBlog version of this blog.

A while ago Dave wrote a post saying he thought that you could love someone and still kill them - even that he was pretty sure I'd have approved.

And he wants any arguments to be logical.

So, I said Love God, yourself, your friends AND your enemies. Right?

Let's use logic.

Let's assume I meant what I said and that I was logical.

If, as Dave says, it's okay to kill enemies, I must also mean it's okay to kill your friends and loved ones. -Even that it's okay to kill God. I know he'll take issue with this, but...

It's not what I meant of course, but using Dave's craved-for logic, it's what I must have meant to say.

Then Dave complained that he thinks I should be more concerned about abortions than people killed as "collateral damage," in military conflicts. He thinks any abortion is murder. Okay. Let's be logical.

In most countries, there is no statute of limitations on murder - something I think is a good idea, and I'm sure it's a concept most people, even Dave, would agree with. Well, if abortion is murder, using logic, shouldn't everyone whose ever had one be tried for murder? No exceptions?

I say yes, if we're going to call abortion murder - abortion, by the way is something I hate, but I do think they should be available and safe since they've always taken place and always will - I think we should gather together every single woman whose ever had one, try them, and put them away for life. No exceptions.

No? But it's logical!

The fact is babies don't have human life till they've taken that first breath. Fetuses are POTENTIAL human life and are certainly alive, but if we're going to treat the unborn as if they have, indeed, already been born, then God himself must be a horrible murderer since there are still far more miscarriages than abortions. Simple logic, right?

Of course this is silly stuff, but whenever the "born again" crowd screams for logical debate, trust me, it's the last thing they really want.

They believe what they believe because they need magic to make their lives complete, and in the process they make the things I said to emphasize my points more important than the simple lessons themselves, which, ironically, these folks invariable LOVE to make complex and twist them into something unrecognizable when they realize the simple stuff doesn't jibe with the magic me I was turned into later by the historians who were also just doing their job. (Remember the other day when I explained how we made stories memorable back then?)

There's no explaining it to them. They're too busy waiting for the rapture or their own death to understand how harmful this thinking is to humanity.

Dave, for instance, claims that since I'm against the U.S. doing harm to civilians in Iraq, that, somehow, that means I think it's perfectly okay for Muslim extremists to do harm to U.S. civilians. That's absurd of course, and it's certainly not logical, but people like Dave can't think logically any more. Someday, he might realize it and decided to try, but for now, I'd suggest - surrogate is very worried about this very thing, by the way - that you not allow people who think like that to be making public policy.

They're so convinced they're right about what I had in mind, that they're blind to the harm they do and always explain it away, and, frankly, they don't care as much for this wonderful planet and its people as they ought because to them, this whole world is just a second best waiting room - sort of a cast-off gift from God. As incredible as it is, or could be, it's just  not enough for them.

Sad.

And Dave, I'm not trying to pick on you. You represent the thinking of millions of people, as you said - although, remember, the mere fact that lots of people believe something doesn't make it any more true. Sorry Dave. No logic in that thinking either. Oh well.

I'm off to Australia!

Be good to everyone.

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Simple or simplistic?

2007-08-14

Hi.

Jesus here for today and at least tomorrow too.

surrogate is annoyed. His friend Pastor Dave has implied that I'm a humanist and that MY message, as opposed to the one Pastor Dave and his folk believe - the one that came to be as a result of a conference that took place four hundred years after I died - is a simplistic one.

Makes me laugh. That's why these folks love the Bible more than people - a nice book put together by simple compromise and negotiation.

Ever notice how these folks will use Bible verses to justify just about anything? Well surrogate, my message was - IS - simple. It's certainly not simplistic, as it's a very difficult one to internalize when living in this world, but it is simple.

It's hard to learn to turn the other cheek, but it's simple. (Watch out for folks who try to complicate it. The minute they do? -ignore 'em.)

It's hard to learn to love your enemies, but it's simple. (Watch out for people who justify the killing of others, especially the killing of innocent civilians and call it "collateral damage." Remember, it wouldn't be collateral damage if it was YOUR family, would it?)

It's hard to take care of the poor, but it's simple. (This is really a no-brainer.)

It's hard to understand that we will never ever know what or who God really is, or what happens after we die, but it's simple. (Watch out for people who claim to know, especially those who describe it in detail. They are the worse kind of liars and deserve nothing less than their own version of hell.)

Want simplistic?

Simplistic is believing that all I wanted was for everyone to "get saved." Did I want people to be "born again?" Yes. But the meaning has been so corrupted and made simplistic by people who have an axe to grind regarding the practice, that it's become a silly thing; a magic bullet; arriving at home base in a game of hide and seek; a get out of jail free pass. And what I really dislike about it is that people have made God into a vindictive, petty, and  murderous entity by suggesting that he'd set up a scenario whereby if you don't jump through the right hoops, or come to have "their" version of faith, that God will send you to an eternity of torment.

THAT makes me angry. "No!" -they'll claim, shouting, "God gave us free will. We CHOOSE hell by not following the rules as outlined."

Uh, no.

Sorry, that thinking is simplistic and evil. Period.

Think about this: I taught forgiveness, but supposedly, God's timetable, known to him/her/it alone, means some people get eighty years to come to the "right" conclusions, while others, - perhaps cut down suddenly - if they've not "been saved," in time - are cast by God forever into hell. How dare people who claim to be serving God further this thinking. Rubbish. It's nice and easy to preach that gibberish, I'd guess. Nice and simple. Black or white. Fear or security. Heaven or hell.

Simplistic.

Relax surrogate. My message was simple, but it wasn't simplistic in the least. That's why people who've swallowed the easy route get mad when they read something different. They want to keep choosing who to love, who it's okay to kill, why I didn't really mean we should turn the other cheek. THAT stuff they love to make complicated and couch it as "the richness of the message."

Let 'em. Either they'll figure it out one of these days, or they won't and for goodness sakes, don't get mad. They believe what they believe because it's what they've been taught. Either they'll eventually use God's most precious gift, or they won't.


Be good to everyone.

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Another bit of rambling...

2007-08-13

Hi.

Jesus here again.

So now I've driven a golf cart for four hours. What a hoot! surrogate played yesterday afternoon at a really pretty course out on a peninsula on the Grand River and he dragged me along. The course is right in the landing pattern of the airport along I96 and has a railroad track running right through the middle of it too. On a few holes there's water all around and lots of people were enjoying the river on pontoon boats and jet-skis. The members of the golf club have nicknamed the place "Plains, Trains and Automobiles (and Boats.)" Interestingly though, even with all the activity around the place, somehow it still felt secluded and was very quiet most of the time.

It was a good time. I even tried hitting a few balls every now and again, but mostly I just watched the other three guys and tended the flag on the greens. One of the other two guys was really good, but surrogate held his own. I think he was second by a couple of strokes.

surrogate introduced me as "Jerry;" my idea. We didn't want to get into trying to explain who I am and all that. Besides, I heard my name quite a few times over the course of the day, usually after a missed putt or an errant shot. It doesn't bother me too much - I'm sure used to it by now. Even surrogate let loose with my name once after missing a four footer to win a hole. I gave him the dirtiest look I could muster and tried not to laugh.

On the way home, surrogate asked me what I was going to write about today and we discussed how best to put it so I told him the point I'd hoped to make, and that I hoped to do so without upsetting people. One thing I know for sure is that an awful lot of Christians get offended if anyone questions what they believe - even me. But then, I never once used the term "Christian," and had no idea all these derivative churches would be popping up over the centuries, each one based on it's predecessor with some insignificant difference that caused the split in the first place.

Trust me, when I told Peter he was the Rock on which I'd build my church, what has evolved since is NOT what I had in mind, and Peter should have known it.

Even the term "church," has been corrupted beyond belief. Let me ask you this, do you really think I'd approve of any organization started in my name that has paid clergy? Do you think what I was going for was a justification for politicians (who claim to have consulted me) to start wars? Do you think I was trying to start up "a religion" at all?

Please.

I know this, and I've said it before. If I made my presence here widely known and tried to set the record straight big-time? -I'd be killed so fast that the three years I preached the first time around would seem like an eternity, and like the Jews, whose boat I rocked a little by some of what I had to say, this time around? -it would be the Christians.

Want proof? Look how angry they get when someone tells them they might have things a little backward.

By the way... "Mega churches?" How did THAT happen? What the?...

Love God. Love yourself. Love your friends, your family. Love your enemies. Take care of the gifts you've been given. Take care of each other.

Once you all get that down? -Then, maybe, we can move on to something else - though frankly, once everyone gets that part down? -everything else will become moot and self evident.

Be good to everyone.

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Trial balloon...

2007-08-12

Hi. Jesus here.

surrogate's asleep. I slept all the way back from Chicago late last night while he drove. He arrived about six p.m. - in time for dinner, which was lovely by the way. Marcy, a mutual friend of ours from way back, made sizzle rice at surrogate's and my behest. I'm not sure of her technique, but the stuff has sesame seeds, toasted almonds, raisins, onions, mushrooms, celery - even a little mint I think. It tastes like a cross between really great stuffing and a middle eastern dish, but a little crunchy. -Really great.

The discussion at dinner was interesting. I brought everyone up to date on my travels of late and tested out a theory I have.

I asked everyone if Bill Clinton was a good President. Honest. I did. I asked because I knew I'd get three different responses. Jack, Marcy's husband, is a life-long conservative. He piped in right away that Clinton was not only the worst president in the history of the country, but should have been removed from office and then prosecuted for perjury because he lied under oath. Marcy rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation at this, having heard it a zillion times before from her husband, but she didn't say much to dispute him, since, after all, after surrogate and I left last night, she'd still be there living with him.

surrogate, of course, said Clinton did no more than any red-blooded male would do in the same circumstances - and went on to praise some of the things Clinton accomplished or at least got credit for from his supporters.

Personally? I could care less. History will say what it will about the guy and will largely be based on the prejudices of the people who write the first drafts and are lucky enough have their version recorded and accepted. All the subsequent takes will be based on those early versions, written, of course, by people who will have slanted the facts to support their own views.

The gist of what I'd hope to point out when, afterward, I had my say on the matter was that whatever the history is, it will little to do with the facts. When I was walking around on the planet the first time, the scriptures were known by all of us who studied them to be dramatizations; history as told by people trying to make points; trying to explain that which was unexplainable to themselves in ways that lifted peoples' spirits and provided practical life lessons along the way.

We never debated whether everything written in the Torah was literally true, we knew it for what it was. Heck, it was written and recorded largely by my people, Jews. And trust me, if you were educated in the least back then, you learned quickly that the main way things were taught - in order that were better remembered - was by storytelling - the stories themselves always full of hyperbole and exaggeration. That's how it was done!

It wasn't till much later, after I died, and after so much more was added - including the stories of my life that were told in much the same manner, that some people started deciding that the Bible was the "literal" word of God, which is, frankly, laughable. -No offense to those of you who've been taught to think believe it to be the case. I understand, it's what you've been taught. Of course you believe it. Is it a healthy way to go through life? That's questionable, but it's certainly understandable.

But let me say this: this is a truism. Ready? Okay here we go...

Everything makes sense.

There. Got it? I'll say it again. Read it slowly. -Everything makes sense.

There are explanations for everything that happens. Everything.

Over the next couple of days, I'll try to explain my take on why this is such an important thing to remember in life - and how allowing the meaning behind the little bromide can not only inform our beliefs and attitudes, but why internalizing it can change the way we look at the the world and maybe, ever so slightly, help us to better understand our place in it.

Hope it's fun to read.


Be good to everyone.

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Phone call from Jesus...

2007-08-09

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Was just sitting here working last night when the phone rang.

(ring... ring...)

"Hello, Your dime."

"Huh? surrogate?"

"Oh... Sorry. Hi Jesus! How are you?"

"Hi. I'm fine. Busy as usual, but I'm fine."

"Where are you? The caller ID says the number reads "unavailable number.""

"I'm at Heathrow. I'm waiting in the security line. About to hop on a plane for Chicago. We're stopping at LaGuardia for a couple of hours but I don't have to change planes. I'll have time to get off and grab a Starbucks though. Hey surrogate, you have plans this weekend?"

"Um... Saturday morning I do. A golf outing for one of my clients. When do you touch down?"

"Five p.m."

"You gonna come here?"

"Well I've got a place to stay tonight and tomorrow, or longer if I want, I'm sure - I'm seeing Jack and Marcy. But I wondered if you'd have time to drive over and get me sometime Saturday."

"Sure, but it might be early evening. I won't be done playing till one or two, and then they're having a lunch I think. I could probably be there by six-thirty or seven my time..."

"Great. Why not have dinner with us and then either we'll head back afterward or you can stay with them too and we head back to your place Sunday."

"Shouldn't you check with Jack and Marcy?"

"Nah. They won't mind. They'll be glad to see you."

"Okay. Sounds like a plan."

"I've got some stuff I want to talk to you about and I have a couple of ideas for posts I want to write while I'm there."

"Wow. I thought you forgot all about the blog."

"No. Not at all. Just been busy - you know how it is."

"Yeah, I do. That's why I haven't hassled you about it. But..."

"Well, the line is moving here. I'll see you Saturday!"

"Thanks for calling Jesus. It'll be great to see you. Jack and Marcy too."

"If Marcy feels like cooking, I'll ask her to make her sizzle rice."

"Oh yeah! Mmmm. Haven't had that in years."

"Me either. Sounds good though, huh"

"Sure does. Convince her!

"Will do."

"Bye Jesus. See ya Saturday."

"Great. Take care surrogate."

(click)


Cool. I've had some questions rattling around my head of late. Wonder how long he'll stay? I forgot to ask.



Be good to everyone.

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Big Blue Ball...

2007-08-05

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Every time I think about it, I get a feeling of joy and trepidation.

Every time I venture out into it's beauty, I question whether it will be as wonderful fifty years from now, or a hundred.

It seems to spin faster every day.

I wonder how it can't be enough for some people who dream of and pray for and, in fact, expect a better one in another life.

The bounty it offers is as infinite as our combined abilities to make use of it that need only be tempered with a sense of responsibility regarding how we make use of it.

Went into a Target last week and saw twenty-two models of vacuum cleaners. Why?

I see that we've crossed the two hundred and fifty mark for automobile models currently available for sale in this country alone. Why?

Yesterday I walked down the bakery isle in the supermarket and counted seventeen different manufacturers represented in just the prepackaged-packaged stuff. Hell, there were ten different choices for plain old hot-dog buns.

I bought a CD a couple of weeks ago that took me ten minutes to open, and then I threw away the tough plastic packaging that was FOUR times bigger than the CD itself. I had a similar experience the very next day when I bought ink cartridges, and again just the day before yesterday when purchasing, of all things, a roller ball pen. The pen I actually damaged a little as I extricated it from its stubborn anti-theft packaging.

I believe in the availability of choices when buying products, but things are getting crazy. Did I mention in this blog a few weeks ago about my counting the number of styles of pens available at an Office Depot a few weeks ago as I waited for a few copies of my novel to be copied for submitting to publishers? -I forget the exact number now, but I THINK it was 586. I'm not kidding. -And I'm not talking about markers, or pencils, or artists' tools. I'm talking pens. Ballpoint, roller-ball and gel - the new kids on the block. Hell, I'm not even counting fountain pens, of which I don't remember seeing any. Do they still make'em?

When is enough enough? Ever?

I know, I'll be branded a socialist or worse for even voicing these concerns, but for God's sake, how can we claim that starvation is a problem that can't be solved when I personally had eight different choices of which style baguette I wanted with my sliced turkey, (of which I chose from nine distinct varieties at the deli-counter.)

I chose a sourdough brioche baguette and a heavenly lightly smoked mesquite turkey - after sampling it and the touch-of-honey...


Be good to everyone.

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free Discipline.

2007-08-04

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I was perusing my brother's web site just now and discovered a wonderful error. Right now, the sound samples he has listed are, for some reason, the complete versions of the songs. This has to be a screw-up cuz they surely weren't that way last time I checked.

"Canto IV"
"Diminished"
"Into the dream"
and a live version of "Between Me and the End."

That's almost an hour of some pretty great prog you can check out for free. Plus there's a link to the very weird video of him and the band doing one of their strangest songs about ten years ago. It's not my favorite, but "When the Walls Are Down," a song showcasing a severely disturbed person, was a definitely a favorite of some of their fans and allowed Matt to do his Magic Acid Mime character to the hilt.

If you've got the time and have patience to listen to some pretty long songs, check out strungoutrecords.com and click on the "sound samples" link in the upper left corner of the page.

I'm excited about seeing them play live again next year at Nearfest near Philly.

 

"And if the world must fall?

Let it fall.

Burn Valhalla, burn..."

                                -Matthew Parmenter

 

Be good to everyone.

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Enjoy the day peeps.

2007-08-03

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Quickie post.

I'm off to The Metro Detroit area for at least the day, and possibly two.

Got a nice response to my post from a couple of days ago that mentioned Sabrina Matthews, from... Sabrina Matthews. That was unexpected and fun.

It looks as though the weather will be slightly more mild today, something I'm thankful for, as the last couple of days have left me feeling like a orange after it's been relieved of its juice.

May the day find you all whole and without holes.

Be good to everyone.

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God, help me get over my anger...

2007-08-01

Good afternoon Boys and Girls... or evening, I guess.

Came home early today after starting early as well - a successful effort to beat the heat. I don't know how hot it got today, but I didn't want to deal with it any more than I had to.

Upon returning I was working on a couple of things here at the puter, and had the TV on. I flipped around while I waited for a quick response to an email to one of my suppliers - which, thankfully, I received within no more than five minutes.

During my flipping I came upon a show called "Ask the Pastor," which grabbed my attention because of the 70's set and large Logo announcing the name of the show behind the three pastors who sat at a game-show style booth. There was also an Alex Trebek dude in charge of asking the three flabby Lilly-white dudes questions. It wasn't a quiz show, but it was meant to appear like one.

Here's a list of the questions to which I listened to these three guys give their answers:

Is gayness something that people are born with or is it simply chosen behavior?

Is there ever a time when it's okay to have sex before marriage?

Is there any validity to any religion besides (your version*) of Christianity?

Is abortion murder?

Is the rapture due within the next five years?

...and the only one on which there was any disagreement - two of the three said it was important to separate the sexes when performing this ritual as a part of a worship service, though all agreed it was an imperative.

Is the washing of feet an important aspect of Christian worship?

I came into the show at least ten minutes in, and possibly forty, depending on whether it was a half-hour show or an hour-long deal.

As each minister gave their response to the questions, the shot was wide enough to see the other two nodding vigorously - with the exception of that last question, which must have been posed for the very purpose of showing that divergent views can exist on "small things," and the names along with the names of the various churches each represented were flashed on-screen below each of their puffy faces as they voiced their predictable drivel.

God, save us from people who claim the Bible was written by YOU, instead of men simply trying to explain things to themselves - as though you wouldn't have done a far better job.

Please don't write us all off just because some of us are morons. There are some of us who understand that no God who can make seed pods that travel thousands of miles on the wind, or an earwig for that matter, or a universe so huge that even contemplating it is virtually unfathomable, would make things so cut and dried as the men I watched today would like to insinuate you have, men who would make you small and hateful and spiteful.

Heaven and Hell, they scream! Sin and wrath!

Forgive them God. Forgive us all on their behalf.

Forgive me for being utterly sick of these people and their thinking. And God? Thanks for this incredible world and this life you've given us. It IS enough. Thanks again.



Be good to everyone.

*my additions.

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Now I know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall...

2007-07-31

Good morning Boys and Girls.

7:41 a.m. Tuesday.

The sun is out. The leaves on the trees and bushes are inching toward their late summer green; darker, drier looking.

Haven't seen a deer outside in ten days.

Rain? -an anomaly this summer. Nary a single all-day rain since May.

My golf game, which seemed to be working its way into shape nicely a month ago, has departed entirely again and my scores reflect the lack of concentration I've dealt with in all things "surrogate" over the past six months.

Work has been good this summer. I'm gleaning the benefit of having been in this town for a couple of years now, and have found that there's rarely time to do work for a "first time" customer these days; something I'm happy about.

I'm debating starting a complete rewrite of my recent novel. I'd deliberately written it in a style that left a lot to the imagination and made some of the transitions rather abrupt. Some of the folks I've asked to read it have enjoyed the style while others have said that it's taken them time to realize a jump has occurred after I've made one. This is a tough choice for me to decide on since I've started roughing out the next one and have outlined a few of the scenes already, meaning I'm itching to get started on it in earnest as soon as the weather turns. Rewriting this last would take me at least two or three months... annoying.

Life moves on...


Be good to everyone.

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Isn't it ironic? Well, maybe...

2007-07-29

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Anyone know about Sabrina Matthews?

She's a comedian(e?) whose oft repeated little special on Comedy Central makes me laugh every single time I catch a little of it. A few minutes into the special, she shruggingly announces that she's a lesbian - to which the laughter is loud and genuine, because - well - the announcement simply isn't necessary, and she knows it. She goes out of her way to dress in the stereotypical butch lesbian outfit, complete with the over-sized flannel shirt and rolled up sleeves, and seems to deliberately affect the posture of an extremely tired and overwrought truck driver.

And man oh man, is she ever smart and funny - and dry as toast.

The reason she came to mind this morning is that in the middle of the night last night, I was writing a note to someone, and I was going to call a certain situation "ironic."

Well, see, here's the thing: like the judge said about pornography, I decided, I may not know the exact definition of irony, but I'm pretty sure I know it when I hear it, or read it, or see it. But, I pondered, what if I'm wrong?  -Maybe I should check it out.

Why, all of a sudden, after at least thirty-five-plus years of assuming I grasped the concept, did I doubt my own understanding of the word?

Sabrina Matthews. It's HER fault.

One of the funny bits in her special is when she takes Alanis Morissette to task for the lyrics to her popular song from a decade ago, "Ironic."

Ms. Matthews contends that the litany of events Ms. Morissette describes in the song as being ironic are, for the most part, not ironic at all, but merely unfortunate.

"rain on your wedding day..."

"a traffic jam when you're already late..."

"good advice that you didn't take..."

-and quite a few more. Not ironic. Unfortunate.


What IS ironic, she says, is the fact - that the song "Ironic," became a multi-platinum hit for Alanis Morissette.

Funny stuff.

So...

I looked it up.

Irony, I decided, after checking quite a few online dictionaries and reading through the various definitions, is the older and wiser, and more witty brother of sarcasm.

Irony is me taking all that time to make sure I was using the term correctly in the letter I was writing, only to forget WHY I'd planned to use the term in the first place by the time I got back to my letter.

Oh, I remembered what I was writing about and even the next sentence I'd planned to punch out, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how the word "ironic" wold have fit within the context of what I was going to say.

But, I did come to a certain conclusion out of the exercise and it is this:

Irony is deciding you want to be a writer just as you reach the stage in life where short-term memory fades unexpectedly from time to time, and just often enough that putting together more than a few lucid thoughts at a sitting becomes impossible.

Or maybe that too is merely unfortunate.


Be good to everyone.

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A post about nothing much...

2007-07-27

Good morning Boys and Girls.

There've been six or seven small bright blue birds flitting around the back yard of late. They're not Bluebirds, and they're certainly not Blue-jays. I've never seen this sort before, but they are pretty. They look a little like good size Finches, except for the color. Suppose I'll have to research a little to find out what species they are.

It's been slightly overcast and cool around here the last few days, perfect work weather for me, and I've taken advantage of it. For me, it's not that I do more work on days like this, though I do ten to do more when it's comfortable, but for me, it's simply that I'm not as tired at the end of the day. When and if I could find a place to live where the temperature never gets much above eighty, or below forty-five or so - especially if it's near a decent-sized population center - I'd move there pronto.

I keep looking.

I've heard there's an area near the mountains in the one of the Carolinas where there's a hundred-mile square with this sort of climate, but I've yet to track it down. One of these days...

Well this has been a useless post!

Oh well. I could have written about Michael Vick's alleged dog fighting ring, but no. I'll do as he asked in court yesterday. I'll wait "till all the facts come out."

Then, if it's true, I'll gladly throw in my two cents and scorch his ass.


Be good to everyone.

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Four! -I mean FORE!

2007-07-26

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I've been exchanging mail with my friend Kurt Maddox over at tBlog - or here at tBlog, depending on where you're reading this - and somehow my love of golf came up in our conversation.

Eventually I bragged, as usual, when, inevitably, it got to that point in the discourse, that I am a professional golfer.

This is a true statement - the fact that I am the worst professional golfer in the history of the game notwithstanding.

Here's the story:

For years I'd entered a hole-in-one contest sponsored by the Children's Miracle Network at Beaumont Hospital in my hometown of Royal Oak, Michigan. Over the course of one Friday night, Saturday and Sunday morning each summer, you'd buy three balls for two bucks and take your shot at a little one hundred and fifteen yard hole. I usually spent about twenty bucks and got about thirty shots at the hole.

In 1996, I got a hole-in-one in the preliminaries and made the finals which constituted one shot at a 185 yard hole Sunday evening. The finals always included 20 people who'd either made an ace during the prelims or had survived a closest-to-the-pin playoff to make up the rest of the field.

That first year I made the finals there were seventeen holes-in-one in the preliminaries over the course of the three days, which sounds like a lot, but consider that there are hundreds of thousands of shots attempted, and frankly, even golfers with marginal skills can "zero in" when hitting the same relatively short shot time after time.

Anyway, that year, my shot in the finals sucked. I missed the green altogether.

Fast forward to 1999. In the preliminaries, my second shot at the short hole rattled the flag and dropped. Cool. I'd be in the finals again, and I'd only spent two bucks!

Something I didn't find out till I arrived for the finals late Sunday afternoon, was that because my hole-in-one was the first of the weekend that year, I'd go last in the finals.

It was the Sunday of the PGA championship the year Sergio Garcia busted onto the scene and was chasing Tiger Woods on the back nine. He hit this amazing shot from the stump of a tree which he then ran after to see how it ended up, jumping at the crest of the hill to get a better look. I remember a bunch of us standing around and watching in the clubhouse of the little driving range as we waited for our own competition to begin and laughing our butts off at Sergio's joyful child-like enthusiasm. I was reminded of it this past weekend when they re-showed the clip during the coverage of the British Open while Sergio was leading.

So. I was the last to hit. A hole in one here? Two million bucks.

There's a guy with a video camera out on the green for the underwriting insurance company who puts up the money. They'll only pay up if there's tangible proof someone actually gets an ace. Additionally, there are a couple of young girls in shorts and t-shirts with a long tape measure and clipboard, who record the exact distance from the hole each shot ends up, this being important because of the prize structure.

No one expects a hole-in-one and I certainly had no illusions about getting one. On the other hand, I wanted to hit a good solid shot and not embarrass myself, especially since mine would be the final shot of the event. After all, hundreds of people turn out for the finals, and I knew more than a handful of of them, plus my son and a good friend had come to cheer me on.

My name was announced. The closest shot to that point was eighteen feet plus a few inches away from the hole. I'd debated between hitting a full four iron and choking up on a five wood and playing a little fade - a left to right shot I'm fairly good at controlling. I'd decided not to make the choice till just before I hit when I'd check the wind.

It was still as can be. The four iron. Then I looked at my son. He seemed a little surprised I'd chosen the iron. I changed my mind, and took a couple of half practice swings with the five wood.

I took aim the the guy holding the camera who stood about ten feet left of the pin and I put my best relaxed swing on the ball.

Right away everyone started cheering and clapping. The ball would certainly end up on the green, or at least close to it; that was obvious. It was a high shot and as it reached its apex it had turned just perfectly and now, we could all see it would be very close to the hole if the distance was right.

It landed perhaps ten feet in front of the green and took a soft bounce where, upon hitting the short grass it tracked right toward the hole.

We could hear the camera man and the two girls out there suddenly screaming, and instantly, my heart started pounding.

The pin was back right on the green and the camera man shouted "Oh my GOD!"




It didn't go in. I saw the video tape. It ran over the right edge of the hole and settled two feet, ten inches away.




I took the five thousand dollar first prize gladly, as I was in the middle of expanding our home at the time and the money would be more than helpful.

When a person accepts any cash whatsoever, or goods exceeding three hundred and fifty dollars in value for any sort of accomplishment having anything whatsoever to do with swinging a golf club and striking a ball, that person relinquishes their amateur status.

You may, after a period of two years, and along with a check for eight hundred dollars, request the USGA to restore you amateur status after a further two year waiting period, during which an investigation is done to make sure you haven't taken any money in the interim.

Eight hundred bucks to become an amateur again?

Hell no!

I'd rather keep the story and remain the worst professional golfer on earth - which I am.


Be good to everyone.