Buzzed

Suppose that twenty or thirty years from now someone were to write a musical employing all the saccharin icons of the 'aughts'(a la 'Grease'). How will they manage to cast that wispy gauze of nostalgia across the current brew of pop culture, itself in a search to recapture the Bradyesque naivete of simpler times. We need not wait till then. I present my rough outline for 'Buzzed- A Preemptive Musical Assault On The New Millennium'. Act One. Scene- Lantana High, the 10th reunion of the Class of '07. An inspirational warm-up speech is delivered by class valedictorian, Quaat Ooling. Flashback to the metal detectors at the front entrance. The Company, six obese and four anorexic thirty-somethings cavort as they imagine teenagers do delivering the first production number, 'He "Yo"ed Me In Rehab, And I "Yo"ed Him Right Back'. Tableau ending. Dialog- 'The Belly Gurls' are introduced to Blythe, an ashen Goth who could step through a coat hanger only as far as the hair. She speaks of her latest crush, Josh, whom she met at the Out-Patient Clinic. She had captured his imagination by feigning interest in an abstinence pamphlet. Scene- Dialog- Josh (think Kevin Federline) holds court with his boyz, 'The Hoodies', regaling them with ribald stories about the "fresh piece of gash" with whom he is smitten. Song- 'I'm Takin' That!'. Scene- The Belly Gurls are having a hen fest at Lexus' house, they initiate Blythe to the sublime pleasure of raw cookie dough and blueberry vodka. Someone produces a bag of raw carrots and girlish party games ensue. Song- 'Text Me!' Waiting until the other girls are packed into the bathroom piercing each others labiae, Dexie escapes out of the window to meet a cab. Scene- Dexie arrives outside of 'Muffins 'N More' waiting for her 'boyf', VanBuren, to get off work. Song- 'The Muffin Man'(he sings playfully in his 'Barney' voice). They drive off in his Kia Sedona to meet the other boys who have assembled in N'Ron's basement to watch 'American Idol'. They abuse chocolated laxative and speak of available credit lines. Song- 'I Gotta Get Me One-A Them' VanBuren lets on his plan to join the National Guard, promising to foward an email address as soon as he is settled in volcano-ravaged Hawaii. Song- 'Bye, Bye, BEOG' Scene- The Hoodies meet The Belly Gurls in the Best Buy parking lot. They pair up, N'Ron with Cashe, Thrill-A with Lexus and Mo'neek. Neil and Bob awkwardly settle into a discussion of third generation Nascar competitors. Dexie sings 'Iraq My Heart Over You'. Blythe takes umbrage with Josh over his 'Big Bottomed Girls' ring tone. Entire Company sings- 'Hopelessly Desensitized [To You]'. Act Two- Scene- Prom Night. 'Hillary-ous' [to the tune of 'Hail To The Thief'] is sung by the Company as they choose partners for the 'how low will you go' dance contest. Blythe [sporting a new foam 'fanny'] laments her estrangement to Josh in song- 'I'm Venus, He's A Martian'. Josh and his hastily acquired revenge date, Cha-Cha LaRue (in a cameo role [and also packing foam]), win the contest with their free-form dance interpretation of the political posturing of Independent, Joe Lieberman. Scene- Outside of Taco Bell. Blythe and Josh explore their deepest inner rumblings in the duet 'Is It Love, [Or Is It The Ecoli]'. Scene- Party at Cashe's father's twenty-car storage facility called, endearingly, the 'Garage Mahal'. Dexie relates her nearly successful attempt to purchase firearms on-line and muses on running away to become a Canadian pharmacist. Cashe sings 'Daddy's Little Secret S-Corporation'. Thrill-A brings the scene to a climax with his 'No Hands' dance method of car polishing. All join in. Scene- Outside of Appleby's. Blythe debuts her completed transformation with a new Britany Spears haircut and factory-wrinkled wardrobe. Song- 'Slack Is The New Black'. Her rotund retinue sport strappy high-heels, petal pushers, and bared navel bling. Josh and the boyz are outfitted in a fetching melange of faux army surplus, licensed NBA court apparel, and knitted Aspen skull-cosies. Blythe and Josh reprise their 'Is It Love, [Or Is It The Concerta] duet. The entire Company joins them, seguing into the spirited 'All Hopped Up'. They break from another tableau and launch into the Finale, 'Buzzed- You're The One That's Better Than The Last One'. Curtain. I'll probably have to tweak this a bit, in the remaining three years more stuff is bound to 'go down'. We might wake up tomorrow and discover that Joe Lieberman isn't funny anymore. Who smells a Tony.

I predict...

... a shiny future for YouTube rockers Fiona and Emily
(fiomily) .

verbosity

A cousin of mine remarked that my recipe for cabbage was "...verbose!!!" (and she received the edited version!). Since I take all things to heart [yet can be equally dismissive] I will state my wordy case for verbosity, but only in regard of the printed word. A concise and succinct use of the language should be the golden rule of writing. "Don't alienate the reader"(Strunk & White). That challenge is rarely met anywhere. But there's no ceiling for the number of things one may describe concisely toward one's effort to be succinct. It was, for example, not only a matter of style for Oscar Wilde to preface nearly every entrance of a character into a room with two or three pages devoted to how the room was furnished. His frequent use of italicised foreign terms and phrases come closer to alienating the reader than the overall number of his words. If the room did not contain the twelve or so objects and patterns worthy of exhaustive description how could he have made you believe in the next page or so that this character was either worldly or perceptive. "He flung himself into a [adjective, adjective, proper noun ] chair and languished [something-ly]..." To do this in a room and in a chair unworthy of notation describes a dull man preparing himself (and the reader) to get duller. But okay, that's fiction, not a recipe. The basic recipe from 'Joy Of Cooking' (Rombauer/Rombauer Becker) economically describes six steps to incorporate six ingredients. My recipe entails (say) ten steps to incorporate eight ingredients. Any fool can cook cabbage- the recipe is mine because of the expansion, includes options to suit individual tastes, and outlines it's conversion into a main dish with really only one additional step. My choice of the narrative form condenses oompteen pages in 'Joy Of Cooking' that address cabbage, browning, parboiling, sauteing, and seasoning. So my re-tooling of all this information is actually an abridgement. Admittedly, I get into parenthetical trouble sometimes, but considering the venue is a blog and with that an implication that the editor should not be completely trusted, I would be willing to defend a description of say, the contents of a woman's purse up to five hundred words, probably not far past that. Too verbose? Feel free to skim. If I were my cousin [my Dad would be his own brother](see?), I would have gone after my tendency toward unevenly punctuated run-on sentences. Past such time as I am able to confirm that my penchant for clarity (sometimes at the expense of brevity) is the reason I am so widely unread, I'll be knotting these daisy-chains of unbridled verbage 'round things probably few more people than just I find interesting anyway. In the three-dimentional world, I just sort of wander around mumbling to myself. This is likely my best shot at making myself understood.

typewriter

Forget 'BlackBerry's, we didn't even have trash bags when I was growing up. It was several years after I left college that a computer any smaller than a 'Cooper' could be found in school. (in my area I think Drexel had PCs first) This thing I'm tippy-tapping away on once required the strength of one's fingers to actually produce a typed character. It was kind of like a keyboard, a printer, and a BowFlex all wrapped into one. We learned to type in school to the accompaniment of specially produced '45s', played on a 'record player', which super-imposed the sound of a metronome onto songs like 'Baby Elephant Walk' and 'The Alley Cat'. The teacher would 'flip' the '45' and the same song would play a little faster. "Fingers on the home row and...asdf..." We were up to 35 wpm in no time (I think they were 'Royal' typewriters). I'm trying not to sound like my Dad here, though it's inevitable. When I was young, I found Walkie-Talkies and a clock radio under the Christmas tree- when he was young he found unshelled nuts and a 'Moon Mullins' doll [whatever the hell that is]. So I'll never make a strong enough case for being 'technologically deprived'. But it was several years after college before I was able to afford my first 'electric typewriter' (a 'brother' [{sic}, among the first brand names to dispense with a capital letter, that should have clued me]). On it, the now bulging muscles of my fingers produced words like 'suuusssstttaaaainnnnnnnablle' and 'waaas', suddenly I was typing 112 wpm (I had to revert to the hunt-and-peck method). It required an ink 'cartridge' that offered a pretty clear trade-off with the ink 'ribbon'- you could no longer type in red but you could backspace and retype a character holding down a correction tape button and, voila, instant white-out! Maybe one day I'll offer up some snippets of the oblique poetry and unsolicited manuscripts I chattered out on my 'brother'. They comprise a quite marked era because... about two or three years after perhaps my first purchase over $100. every 'brother' ink cartridge for 'electric typewriters' disappeared from the shelves. (They never deserved a capital b). If you are under 30 you probably aren't horrified but in my day, we expected things that cost A HUNDRED DOLLARS to last forever. I was to write in long-hand for the next twenty years. Now I'm not saying I mistrust technology on the whole, I certainly don't have a problem with the price of keypads, and oh the choices!

To their credit, you could pour a five pound bag of sugar through the keys of one of those old 'Royal's and it would keep on thwapping away. But there is a moral. Back-up. In school we had carbon paper, which I don't miss. The 'brother' had a memory key which would automatically produce a second copy. But the 'recordable disc' is the hi-tech equivalent of putting the carbon paper in backwards. My advice, before the '_+R' goes the way of the '45': Get it in writing.

pink

Almost a year ago we moved from a 180+ yr.-old farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere to a conveniently situated 1958 pink brick & vinyl-clad 'California split". We bought it from the estate of the original owner who, until the day she went into a nursing home, lived in the original decor. Avocado green sculptured and gold & orange shag carpets, brown kitchen appliances with pink and gray Formica, pink tile and tub, a blue and white foil 'chinoise' dining room wallpaper mural, a gold and silver foil 'bonsai' wallpaper mural on the living room feature wall, pink brick fireplace, and an exhaustive study of pink wallpapers. Considering that outside, under the pink vinyl siding lies the original pink asbestos shingle siding- inside under what carpet we haven't yet been brave enough to pull out lies pink and brown asbestos tile - 'Mother's' fondness for pink will probably never be completely unrealized. What few upgrades that had been made must have happened past the age of available pink options for toilets and sinks- she chose green (in the case of one lavatory sink, green with swirling gold flecks). This must have been painful to her, she held on to the original pink toilet tank covers. (I know that pain, you can't get pink Chuck Taylor high tops either.) Pink azaleas dot the yard. The exterior doors were painted 'pepto' pink but they were the first to go. We're still easy enough to give directions to- not one other pink house in the whole neighborhood. I'm a little sorry I missed seeing the car and the wardrobe. There was a husband-years ago. From the contents of the shed I surmise he spent a lot of time outside. Older neighbors told me he had been an orchestra conductor. That explains the stacks of 'Etude' magazines dating back to the nineteenth century we found in the basement. They also told me he had an idea of recultivating some ancient South American grain that would feed the masses. Apparently this was more than just a passing fancy, something called a 'seed sorter' the size of a cement mixer occupies a corner of the shed along with some other piece of machinery of the same scale. When we first looked at the house there was a huge organ in the 'rumpus' room (origin of that word, please). A good fifth of the basement is out-fitted with a model train platform. (Conductor/conductor?) He's been dead for twenty years but they're still sending his voter registration card in the mail. (hmm) She still gets mail from the RNC (how large is that constituency?). We even know the names of the children, they have their own assigned fuses in the fuse box. We found a small photo of the exterior of a piano store bearing their name. We also found unopened reams of stock certificates in the basement... also a garden statue of a napping Mexican. The attic contains hundreds of life-jackets. Isn't that interesting?

a/symmetrical talking head

MSNBC court moderator Dan Abrams was filling in for Joe Scarborough last night, revealing more than his playful side. In one segment I was reminded that he kind of looks like a Sylvester Stallone who's gone through five weeks in a rock tumbler. I'm dying to get a look at his Mom- he bears not the faintest resemblance to his Dad (General? ? Abrams, ret.?). Start with the hair, an unusual high-riding left-side part (the anti-John Edwards) that sort of flattens out top-right. Down past a whole lot of forehead to the eyebrows, an enviable ogee- the left one, slightly more full, wants to stay a little lower but jumps archingly north at the turn of a phrase. The right one will travel, but seems to take it's orders from the left. Eyes- fully lidded, the left eyeball and iris noticeably larger, and lower in repose, but when excited the right one widens to mirror it. Overall, the effect is Botticellian. The right nostril is slightly higher than the left. It's not as if the bridge veers off to the left, at least not like that Iraq correspondent on CNN (He's another chapter in the book of asymmetry)- could it be that while the nostrils themselves are centered horizontally on the face, and the lumber-straight bridge perfectly plumb, it is oriented a scoshe to the left? where is my HDTV? Though on the whole his mouth is smallish, he is capable of quite a wide grin. The lips are full and expressive, presenting a retinue of shapes so rapidly variant you have to wonder if it's all being done with a flip-book of head shots. I'm reminded of the old 'Clutch Cargo' series with filmed mouths super-imposed on cartoon adventurers. The top lip is what I would call 'eely', the right side rising frequently into an Elvis sneer and then less often mirrored by the left side- operationally converse to the eyebrows. The right ear is by a good half inch larger than the left (a challenge to the trimming of sideburns), and the upper left canine more prominent than the right. One lower right incisor does not reach the height of it's neighbors (almost canceling out the effect of the larger left iris). In total, each horizontal variant is ameliorated by some vertical counter-[thing], the geographical center of the face remaining where it should; at the intersection of the (mean])eye line-nose bridge quadrants . Though I hope he too will take the advice I offered Ralph Reed (are they hanging out together?)- he was definitely a refreshing alternative to watching Joe, who can be rendered with a keypad [ : [ }>== , but he needs more substantive copy to capture an interest in anything but that squirming palette of entrancingly lop-sided features.

traffic

It's a shared experience that should unify us. Why it doesn't may take a bit of parsing here, but I already suspect the answer will be found somewhere in the disconnect of our ability to see ourselves as others do. And that goes double for those who adjust the rear-view mirror onto themselves. I'll start with a few of my own callous observations even though I'm bound to include myself (as I don't see me) and everyone else I love in one description or another. I might as well start with octogenarians- sorry Mom and Dad. First the plus side- when you see that jaunty little driving cap or that swath of grey hair that bearly peeks over the top of the headrest, you know what you're in for. Slowly pass- no sudden moves, and everyone comes out unscathed. I have nothing against slow and careful. But when this approach is employed after pouncing out onto the road from 0 to 35 in two seconds, well, I gotta wonder if their desire to see a cake with one hundred candles on it is terribly strong. Just to deflect any cries of ageism, all drivers turn into eighty-year-olds when pulling into the supermarket parking lot. And most drive at eighty miles an hour to get out of one. The most unfortunate aspect of that is that we both occupy the same space doing it. Segueing into fast drivers here, people in BMWs seem to flaunt the fact that they own whopping chunks of the world while Honda drivers use the same tactics to lament the fact that they only aspire to that condition. And neither one of them gets their money's worth out of the turn signals. Young men in pristine micro-Asian pickup trucks with an image of Calvin relieving himself stuck to the rear window have only ever envisioned one use for their vehicle, two sassy young wams up front and all their jealous buddies bouncing around in the back. Good for them, we all need a dream. Just don't let me see them carrying their dog back there! Middle-aged men in fourteen-year-old cars with the roof felt sagging down over their ears... wait a second, that's me. People with an array of stuffed animals across the rear dash are just as sad. They're as likely as any child to have wasted their last quarter in a claw machine, and it's painfully obvious that what they actually long for is to be at home in bed. Political bumper stickers? C'mon. You're only inviting the palpable hostility of half the country and as a direct result, the teen-aged kid in the back seat will ultimately make it his goal to cancel out your vote for the rest of your life. So who goes first when four cars arrive at an intersection at the same time? The person on the phone. What if they're all on the phone? The person who's the angriest at the person on the other end. I guess I've seen it all- a Mini-van loaded with kids cutting off a school bus loaded with kids- on a highway... book-reading, latte-slurping nose-pickers... brakes applied going up a hill... dual task rear-view mirror usage (lane change and mascara application)... the proverbial ambulance chaser. At the level of invisibility some people believe they're operating, why every other driver on the road won't get out of their way should come as no surprise. I blame the car manufacturers. The relative sense of safety and entitlement sold to us along with the fifteen different ways to gauge our trip, fifteen more to help us forget we're not at home in our fat chairs in front of a TV, and the expectation fostered by the commercial that we will be the only driver on the Pacific Coast Highway, has blinded us. So have tinted windows. We need a way to get back in touch with the world around us. Bring back the big pointy metal parts on the outside. They might serve to remind us of the consequence of getting too close. Replace names like 'Viper' and 'Intrepid' with more sober ones like 'Matlock' and 'Dutiful". And my last suggestion goes out to everyone I've ever jumped ahead of or have been cut off by. Let's all agree not to take it so personally. Each time we turn the key (that's how fourteen-year-old cars start) we could beg a little patience for others and some more for ourselves. If we truly saw ourselves as others see us, we wouldn't need reminding. Maintain an adequate stopping distance and signal your intention. Two hands on the wheel, eyes on the road, and use the extra time it takes driving a little slower to make up better excuses for being late.

cabbage

Only random thoughts today, having published ten themed piques in one shot last night (right, below). Raked the house, picked up the lawn- I see now the kind of thing that slips past you once this audience of so far no one begs your attention.

la, la, la, good buys on pork these days. Oh yeah, cabbage! Cheap, filling, great for a low carb diet, goes with pork! Lots of Vitamin C if you don't boil it, here's my favorite method. Large frying pan, Stainless not No-stick. Before there was No-stick there was 'deglazing', works like a charm. Fry up some bacon and set it aside. Dump all but about three tablespoons of the fat, and sautee a coarsely chopped medium-sized onion, reducing the heat a bit. Add a few finely chopped cloves of garlic, giving it all a good toss- if the garlic is browning too quickly, take it off the heat. . Aside from the bacon, this is not really a cooking step, per se. You're actually priming the smell of your dwelling with a heavenly aroma that will make it nearly impossible to detect the smell of cabbage. Add a half a medium sized head of cabbage, eighth inch slices, enough to make a nice pile above the lip of the pan. Increase /regulate the heat and toss every couple twenty seconds or so until the volume decreases enough to get a lid on the pan (without terribly scorching anything). Add a splash of liquid- water, stock, beer, just nothing acidy or you'll have hot cole slaw. One last good toss to clean the bottom of the pan ( ta-da, deglazing), reduce the heat to a low flame (sorry, I'm too visual for electric ranges) Cover tightly, and do an occasional check and toss until everything is un-crisp. Remove from heat, crumble in the bacon and add about a quarter a cup of sour cream ( or somewhat less of some non-cirtusy pre-prepared asian sauce, if that's where you're going with it [I'd balance the sweet out with a little Dijon]) and ground pepper (til your arm gets tired). Ready to serve. A variation on the same recipe will turn this into a one pan dinner- Substitute country style pork ribs for the bacon ,except; boil them first for a minute or five to remove some of the fat and tenderize them, brown them quickly at a high heat, and then return them to the pan when you add the liquid, with juices, increasing the amount of liquid somewhat but leave the lid cracked for steam to escape. They're done when you can't get triginosis from them. FYI- salt cures many things, but not high blood pressure or overcooked meat ( it will draw out the juices you are trying to keep in {unless you are rubbing it onto the skin of something [to make it crispy]}), tenderizing is best accomplished by boiling or with a tenderizer (read; hammer)-also more fun., so add salt after you've taken the dish off the stove.

It's a bit sad to think that even if I where invited to smart cocktail parties these days, this is how I might be regaling someone. Storys of trading spittle with 'The Cramps' at CBGB's in 1977 replaced by my favorite cabbage recipe. Yeah, that's what I was worried about in 1977, low carbs & high blood pressure.

fr## sp##ch

I'm a bit miffed about the Don Imus affair. The man played a huge part defining 'radio personality' and that could not have been easy, I've always found the term to be an oxymoron. I've never listened to his show nor could I stomach Howard Stern- another pop culture crucifixion (titties on the radio- pleez!). They will not be missed, at least by me. But here's the part I hate- anyone with an appetite for talk radio gets what they pay for. Any topic I've ever [over]heard them discuss quickly plunges subjectivity into absurdity. The line in the sand used to be 'dirty words', in my view capable of being both euphonious and concise. They describe something the way a cute acronym describes a pancake house; idiomatically. Words themselves are no better or worse (my point) than the people who use them. Huge numbers of our own elected officials promote the most hateful prejudices and destructive policies, employ the most idiotic arguments to justify them, and all in the most decorous language. Where is the outrage?
A sense of proportion is required. A girls basketball team can look out for themselves (something I know), but who' s acting indignant on your (our) behalf? Please don't say the Justice Department. Maybe basketball players will stop buying Snapple. But who do you (we) hold responsible and what will you (we) stop buying.
It is not my intent to digress into a political rant (if successful, I'd probably be the first blogger not to do so). Censorship in the hands of merchants at the behest of self-appointed public opinion shapers on behalf of college girls is a pretty long way around to accomplishing respect for one another, however deep the outrage or noble the intent. They all seemed like nice girls, and my impression was that all but one were using relaxers (go gurl, keepin' it real). A tactless reference to them diminishes them in my eyes not one bit. If I or any one of us were to be colorfully described in three words by someone who had no personal knowledge of our complexities, what three words do you think they'd use. [moment to reflect] Okay now. I'm offended too (mine was 'fudge-packing leftie'), but, I choose to use a filter that any one of us is free to employ. On or off air, I simply don't care what other people say about me, sticks and stones... When a tired-looking french fry of a man in a stupid hat is cheated out of his due of millions of dollars for blathering on about New Jersey and Sealy Posture-pedic mattresses, well man, we're just not living in America anymore.

message to Ralph Reed

Dude, You'll never look as dangerous as you really are, lose the face fur.

quantum physics

Don't be frightened by the title, I only ever made it half way through 'The Elegant Universe' before the certainty of my limitation to understand 'abstract' concepts (I'm almost sure that's not the right word [I can usually grasp abstractions of reality, realities based on math problems is another matter]) came crashing down. I'll address what I understand to be the most subjective theme in this book; perception and actuality. And I must add a disclaimer here, my understanding of actuality is based wholly on perception [see; opinions, May 14, 2007].
We esthetes have a particular disadvantage in this world, we tend only to believe what we see. Our communication with other people is based on somehow recreating that visual understanding of something for them. It's not too complicated a process to create fine art for them- in that venue they are usually already prepared to be confused/awed. But imagine trying to convince a man wearing Sans-A-Belt trousers that it is not in his best interest to use a circus clown on a sign to advertise Persian carpets. It's a pitch that ends unconvincingly for both of us. More formitable is the limitation placed on my kind to participate in a day-to-day world. When one's ability to pay bills on time is predicated with a reliance on the spacial relationships of a calender page, one is laboring under a distinct disadvantage. How does this relate to quantum physics? I'm not exactly sure that if does, but I kinda remember something in that book about Bim and Bam (or was it George and Gracie) traveling in seperate spaceships. Was Bim traveling faster to arrive at his destination light years before he was born? And/or was Bam watching his friend from out of his porthole, aging in his wake. Oh yeah, one of them had a watch.
The difficulty of making our experience understood to one another seems all the more insurmountable added that our measures of success differ so greatly. As great as our capacity is to impress one another, so is our ability to disappoint. There was a bit of relief in the former understanding of all things ending in a finite dot. They should have left it at that, what could be tidier. Now to think that that dot is actually a string? How is humanity served by broadening our scope of the unknowable. That just proves to me that these theorists have gone beyond mixing fractions with letters from the greek alphabet in an effort to out-think one another and confound the rest of us. And all sheerly for the dramatic effect of restating something we all ache to say on our own behalf, " I'm really not as dumb as I look."

opinions

I begin each day with a sense of excitement that someone I never met will piss me off. I am rarely disappointed, for tucked into my morning paper is one of the few true venues of solicited opinion. As much as the cup of coffee, it serves to open my bleary eyes- literally and figuratively. I have on occasion added my own words to those pages, have even been picked up by other sites whose cause I have added more words to and by bloggers who parse them for evidence of an addled mind. Both are equally fun. But I really have only ever espoused one opinion, and it is really more of a commentary. vis; Some opinions are genuine and deserve consideration but most are the unexamined residue of some past indignation, like that impervious layer of brown crud around the edges of a Pyrex baking dish. Studies have shown (to use one of their own most commonly deployed phrases) that the human mind is [qualifying adjective here] unable to separate fact from fiction if something is presented as fact from (just) two separate sources. Never mind that both versions of 'fact' may have origins in the same source. And never mind that one or both of those sources may never have purported to be presenting something as fact. And also never mind that in many cases the LACK of evidence from any particular source to support a contrarary stand can itself be used to qualify an opinion. So here is the recipe for the circular thinking that comprises most of the opinion floating around out there. Step One- the earth is hollow, I read it in a book. Step Two- I asked Sister Charles Bronson about it, she said it certainly WAS true- "where do you think God puts all the sinners!". Step Three-I looked down a well once- I couldn't see the bottom. and D- If scientists are so smart, how come they Draw pictures of the center of the earth, this book I read had Photos.
Any MSNBC junky will tell you this; when someone starts off with "Look, the fact of the matter is..." your skeptical human brain has been warned.

opening

This relates a bit to rearing children, to managing a romantic relationship while rearing chidren, and to whatever energy might be left over for managing a career. I've been pushing myself to be effective, keeping everyone fed, maintaining some semblence of order in the home, supplying empathy for anyone in need of it, committee work, all the thankless jobs that have turned this once vital and ambitious young man into an underemployed, disheartened, middle-aged harpie. Where was all this effort getting me? There has been the occasional expression of gratitude, sometimes a bit of satisfaction when a goal is met, a glimmer of an opportunity opening up- but by and large no real feeling of effectiveness. Instead, something more like a treadmill. My opening; I remembered trying to keep my garden weeded. The lawn seemed to be leaking into a flower bed, I spent two or three years yanking out an area I thought was grass only to find it reappearing in a week or so- I mean, I was stubborn, but I was getting no where. When finally I had given up and set my sights on a new garden bed, I was completely amazed to find that this clump of grass that grew to the size of a trashcan repaid my efforts to destroy it with hundreds of purple flowers, closing up each night, but lasting all summer long- and every year after, a display that completely overshadowed my lame attempt at introducing some garden center perennial into the bed. I won't moralize here, it would only lead to a ,well, a what? of metaphors (such a dangerous language) Who won't recognize their own frustration- who will not have had such a surprize. Do what you can to develop a new synapse that links one to the other.

field trip

Ma n' Pa, I'd like to say our arrival at Ellis Island was the day of wonder and excitement it was for our forebears, but the primary objective of keeping rein over the three 11 yr. olds it was my obligation to chaperone over-shadowed all others. Our itinerary was shattered in the first one-and-a-half hour long line for the ferry and the time was never recovered. Too ambitiously, we were sent to Liberty Island first for a tour of the lady- another line we never got to see the front of before bagging the idea and heading over to Ellis. By the time we arrived, the eleven year olds were completely working against me- absolutely no interest in the museum experience, mine was in preventing them from tipping over senior citizens.
My contention that we all might have been able to have this experience without the ten-out-of-twelve hours devoted to bus & ferry travel and waiting in lines was confirmed by young K. who, on the ferry back to the buses, asked if we were going to Ellis Island.

My back is torturing me today as a result of my role as pack-mule for the expedition- I'll take labor over 'recreation' any time. Luckily, or not, I'm unemployed and don't have to call in sick anywhere.

Well, I may not have had an opportunity to do any more useful research, but I think I did get a taste of what a trans-Atlantic passage in the steerage section and an alien processing might have been like. Love P.

diatribe/ apologize to sender

RE: Don't pump gas on May 15th

thanks for the serial spam- I generally only get gas for going to places I
don't want to go, is that activism? If I have my way I'll be spending the
ides of may at home on my ass, unless I have a reason to go to South Jersey
where gas is five cents cheaper, is that too a message to a deaf
administration?
Do your part and get these people on the right track. Stop spending money
going to places you don't want to go! Walk to the dry cleaners and call
your boss, " I'll be late because I have to walk to the dry cleaners" Tell
your Mom " I'd love to come over and listen to how many ways my life could
have been easier, that should certainly be worth 39 cents, write me a
letter". Tell your doctor " I'm sick, remember house-calls?" I don't care
about being glib and impractical, these people rely on you, TELL THEM THAT!
Stop this stupid hippie stick-it to-the-man approach and get your bosses,
doctors and Moms to fight for you. When haven't they won.

Subject:TWI
That would be 'Typing While Intoxicated', my apologies. I seriously threw my back out chaperoning A's field trip to Ellis Island and had employed a Kevorchian dose of bourbon to combat my (southern) discomfort last night. Once upon a time I would probably have woken up in another state with a new hair color- these days not only can I baffle a large group of serious people I never laid eyes on, but I can also manage to undermine the closely held outrage that would bind me to them, and oh, leave my email address. On the flip side of that, I was typing- not driving, and as I stated, my plan, if possible, is to spend the day in a chair- not a car. I have been powerless to shake the compulsion to play the devil's advocate despite my high regard for tact. At it's most ridiculous point I argued that when assembling a PBJ it is more consciencious to spread the peanut butter first because it is easier to leave jelly in the peanut butter jar than it is to leave peanut butter in the jelly jar. Also, it is not a JPB. That one got me thrown out of the house, well actually, the trailer of a girlfriend I had hitchhiked three hundred miles to see. (despite my contrition, I still make them that way) I digress. If these are people you actually know ( I ,personally, am not, to my knowledge, in the same social orbit as employees [or those with questionable access to and useage of the office equipment] of jcpenney) .... I was going to say 'make up some story about your stalking and hacking former fiance' but Michael had a much better idea- in a matter of seconds he created a blog for me. With your permission, this posting will be my first entry. Make it quick though, I'm going out for chinese food and as soon as I get back, I'm off and running! x P.