Harrison's Blog

A Few Notes On The Lower Middle Class

2012-02-11T17:32:00.001-05:00

...that, I must admit, I despise more than the ignorant and belligerent working class -- that is, white trash/rednecks.

ONE
It's basically white-collar people with a blue-collar attitude. They're trapped economically between the middle/upper-middle classes and the working class. Its members usually don't rise to the middle class or higher, no matter how much they bow and scrape to them, and are scared to death of dropping into the blue collar working class and the loss of social status that comes from that.

TWO
They often lack a certain class or style. They are often uncultured and boast about that. They tend to be rude, hostile, and belligerent against the arts and artists.

THREE
They are often strongly bigoted against women, minorities and gays. But in secret. They don't have the courage of their convictions, no matter how terrible.

Opposed to them is the upper class, whose members often are just as bigoted but don't hide their opinions because they won't be punished in any way for them. Also opposed to them are the lower classes, who are often just as bigoted but don't care about the consequences from their bigotry.

FOUR
They rarely openly defy authority, but burn with anger and sometimes hatred of it. It was why so many of them back in the 1960s hated the radicals like Students for a Democratic Society in its more militant phase or apolitical hippies who often went their own way.

FIVE
They tend to be anti-Semitic. Just as many blacks believe THE MAN -- that is, whites -- keep them down, the white lower middle class blames THE JEW for their misfortunes.

SIX
Looking back, I had an uncle who had that attitude, even though he was an executive for a telephone company. I worked for an editor who had those attitudes; he was the first anti-Semite I ever knew personally.

Infamous people with that outlook include Richard Nixon and ... Adolf Hitler.

The Republican party has courted those types of people for the last 40-plus years. Often, that has bit its members in the ass.

SEVEN
I've been writing around these people in this blog. As the year passes, I hope I have the tenacity ... and the courage ... to deal with them and to expand my notes into a more formal post.

Jumping

2012-02-11T06:31:00.000-05:00

Jumping from bridges into rivers or lakes or bays or other bodies of water ...

Jumping to conclusions, often wrong, when you don't have all the information you need to make the correct decision, or much of that information is wrong.

Jumping out of a plane? Make sure you're wearing a parachute.

Jumping for joy? What a cliche. Celebrate like an adult. Please.

Jumping jack? The exercise? The picture above is poor form for it.

Jumping beans? From Mexico. And they do exist. Please clink the link here if you want more information.

Highly...But Not Lowly?

2012-02-11T06:21:00.002-05:00

Hghly is often used as a synonym for very of plausible. But you never see or hear lowly used as a synonym for not very or implausible.
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When A Victorian woman wanted to get fucked, she say to a man: "O live, kindly possess me in the carnal manner."
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The drinking glass is bipolar; it's either empty or so full it's overflowing.
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I was watching Cops the other day. I wasn't sure if the episode was in the South during the early 1990s ... or the South today.
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if truth be told,
then truth be bold ...
or so you hope.
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Meanwhile in the back woods, a brown bear wanders...it's either 10 feet tall or 10 feet long...depending on if he's vertical or horizontal...and weighs 1,500 pounds...that doesn't depend on if he's vertical or horizontal...
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During the early 1980s, the Reagan administration's economic policies were described as trickle down -- not flow down. I wonder why.
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it's strange how a couple who's vocal while sexing can often sound like either he or she or both of them are getting tortured or killed: especially if the woman doesn't lie there like a sack of potato flour.
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The weight of the injustice in this world can crush your soul to the size of a pea.
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"Did someone say chicken pot pie?" the stoner asked. "Woah, dude, those are three of my most favorite things."
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He liked his women the way he liked his kiwi fruit: firm yet yielding, sweet yet tart, and with short, fuzzy brown hair.
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O well ... that's done ... put a spork in it ...
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NOTE: I'm revamping the format of jottings. I'm deleting sentence fragments and individual words from the posts, but leaving complete sentences. I plan to do this as an ongoing project for all the jottings post.

Notes On The Super Bowl

2012-02-07T07:01:00.001-05:00

I've written some notes on the Super Bowl, which was played Sunday in Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis. They're some personal observations of things that interested me. Those of you who want more information, including a story with more details about the game, can check the Internet.

ONE
The New York Giants won the Super Bowl 21-17 over the New England Patriots. Giants quarterback Eli Manning, seen in the picture above, lead a fourth-quarter comeback and running back Ahmad Bradshaw scored the go-ahead touchdown with 57 seconds left in the game.

The Giants had beaten the Patriots 17-14 in the 1998 Super Bowl, thereby denying New England a perfect season.

Manning was the game's most valuable player. He had 20 completions of 40 passes for 296 yards and a touchdown. He also was the most valuable player in the 1998 Super Bowl.

TWO
From what I heard, people who visited Indy for the Super Bowl were very pleased with the layout of the venues. All close together and stuff. Because of that, I bet that Indy will host another Super Bowl within the next 10 years, if not before 2020.

For your information, the next three Super Bowls and their sites are: New Orleans, 2013; New York, 2014; and Phoenix 2015. Nothing else has been set after that.

THREE
Weather helped a lot. The week before the game, it seemed a lot more like early spring than midwinter. Last week, temperatures were often in the high 50s and not much rain fell.

(UPDATE, FEB. 11: About half an inch of snow fell the night before. Strong, cold winds were blowing. The high temperatures were in the lower 20s. I must admit: As for the weather, the Indianapolis area was lucky.)

Also, during the last two to three months, several manhole covers in several downtown Indy streets blew off. Luckily, none did the week before the Super Bowl and the day it was played.

FOUR
The people in the Indianapolis area were predominately cheering for the Giants, because Eli Manning is the younger brother of Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. It also cheered against the Patriots who had a strong rivalry with the Colts for the last decade.

FIVE
There was a slight controversy after the game. Gisele Bundchen is a Brazilian supermodel and the wife of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

After the game, a Giants fan yelled at her, "Eli owns your husband!" She was caught on video saying to a friend, "My husband cannot fucking throw the ball and catch the ball (at) the same time. I can't believe they (Patriot receivers) dropped the ball so many times."

I must give her credit for standing up for her man. But, on the other hand, she doesn't seem to be very bright or deep. I once read at my local library a cover story about her in Vanity Fair magazine. The author had to pad it to make her interesting.

SIX
I watched the game through the end of the third quarter, when the Patriots were ahead 17-15. I was getting tired and didn't want another cup of coffee. Plus I wasn't strongly emotionally invested in either team; I could wait until Monday morning to see the results.

I also was watching the game through a stream at NBCSports.com. However, it was sluggish and got stuck too many times.

I've had problems with viewing videos since I've been hooked up to the internet at my new apartment. I plan to check on how to speed it up.

SEVEN
I also bought a six-pace of beer Saturday,because Indiana doesn't have any retails sales of alcohol on Sundays. However, I didn't even drink one of them.

Love And Potatoes

2012-02-03T07:26:00.001-05:00

with valentine's day a week and a half away, i thought i'd post this. it's somewhat offbeat, i admit, but appropriate in its way.

if you say 'my love is like a red, red rose,' i disagree.

if you ask why, here are some reasons.

roses only last like a couple of weeks; that is, if you leave them in water. and they really only exist to be pretty. so if you say 'my love is like a red, red rose,' that's like saying 'my love for you is temporary and transitory and based solely on appearance.'

but a potato is entirely different...and in some ways better.

potatoes last for a long time. in fact, they actually sprout even if you just leave them in the sack. that part alone makes it a good symbol. it means, 'my love grows even when i'm alone.'

but wait; there's more!

there are so many ways to enjoy a potato; you can even make a battery with it! here's a link to show how it's done. that's like saying 'i have many ways in which i show my love for you.'

try doing that with a rose.

potatoes are somewhat plain, but to compare your love to one is like saying 'it doesn't matter at all what you look like, i'll still love you.'

(photo from chan4chan.com)

Masquerade

2012-02-02T06:12:00.000-05:00

Life, after all, is just a masquerade in a dimly lit ballroom ...where everyone rotates and changes partners until the lights come up...

Then you find yourself dancing with death. That embrace lasts forever...and ever...

Happy Groundhog Day

2012-02-02T06:06:00.004-05:00

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and razor lay crossed...

...at first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes

First published 90 years ago today in Paris: Ulysses, by James Joyce.

So noted.

Above is a picture of the author, stylin' and profilin'.

Super Bowl Media Day

2012-02-01T09:01:00.002-05:00

Yesterday was Media Day for the Super Bowl, which will be played Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

It has become a big hoop-dee-doo, with hundreds, if not thousands, of media representatives from newspapers, magazines, radio, and television -- and some blogs -- asking questions of the players and coaches of both teams

This is the only time before the game that the teams will be available for questions. After that, they will go into game-prep mode; talking to the media, the coaches believe, would be a distraction.

It's often been called a circus, with several people who have no business being there asking questions. One example is a woman from a Mexican television network who often wears revealing outfits.

Bob Kravitz, the sports columnist for The Indianapolis Star, wrote an amusing column about media day as a minute-to-minute diary. If you want to read it, please click here.

If I was a credentialed media representative, I'd skip the usual subjects -- the starting quarterbacks and the star defensive players -- and would talk with members of each team's offensive line.

They rarely get any mention in the media except when they make a mistake from which the other team profits -- possibly for a win.

They also are usually the second-smartest group of players on the team, next to the quarterbacks. They would give thoughtful comments and incisive answers, which I'd love to read.

If they are good enough and aren't seriously injured, they usually have the longest careers of any players. Many have played for at least 10 seasons. Some have played for 14, 16, and even 18 seasons. I believe that's so because they hit and aren't tackled by players larger than themselves.

Pictured at the top of this post is Rob Gronkowski, tight end for the New England Patriots, who received a high ankle sprain in the American Football Conference title game, where the Patriots beat the Baltimore Ravens. He was seen wearing a protective boot when he arrived Monday in Indianapolis.

He probably won't be at 100 percent effectiveness for Sunday's game. As for his condition, he said Tuesday, "We are going day to day. We're making new steps every day and feeling better every single day."
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NOTE: I haven't posted much about the Indianapolis Colts' 2011 season because of the off-and-on breaks I took last year from posting. I plan to write more after the Super Bowl.

Lucy ...

2012-01-31T10:08:00.001-05:00

in the sky with diamonds, of course.

This is a collage I made about eight years ago, when I got my old Dell computer. I took pictures of Lucille Ball, a city skyline, a paisley background and the red diamonds used on playing cards.

I used MS Paint, a primitive photo-editing program which I rarely use these days.

I also wrote this vignette to go with it:

I can imagine Ricky walking through the door and saying, "Lucy, I'm home."

There's no answer.

Then he sees the Mertzes. Ethel is lying on the floor and is out cold. Fred is gazing out the window with a look of shock on his face.

Ricky says, "Fred, what's going on?"

Fred says, "We came up here to borrow some flour. Lucy wasn't here. Then Ethel looked out the window and fainted, and I...I just can't believe it! Look for yourself, Ricky!"

Ricky looks outside the window and sees...

Lucy...

In the sky...

With diamonds...

I had posted this at another site. I got 13 votes up and 18 votes down, along with this one and only comment:

Lucy would be flattered...I think.

Stop And Correct

2012-01-28T13:00:00.001-05:00

Just as parents and their children often will look alike, I'm beginning to believe that some act alike subconsciously.

One example is my mother and me.

My mother had a stroke in 1994 that left her with a moderate case of aphasia and had a hard time speaking. On a scale of 100 to 0, with 100 equaling full conversational ability and 0 equaling muteness, I would say she was between 40-50.

Often when she spoke, she would mispronounce a word or couldn't think of it. Instead of stumbling along with her speech and saying a nonsense word as a place word, she'd either stop speaking and give up or go back and try to get the correct word.

And I, as I write these posts, will often go back and correct the spelling of words and the meaning of sentences as I write, instead of going ahead and writing post, and then going back to correct it.

That's most of the time. As I write this post, I've become self conscious and not correcting the spelling and wording; I will wait until I through.

Some Notes On Race And Class

2012-01-28T12:48:00.003-05:00

Last week. I jotted a few notes bout race and social/economic class in the United States. Please consider them just notes that I might expand for a later essay.

White rednecks and black original gangsters have some things in similiar. An exaggerated sense of honor and respect due to them, a quickness to anger and attendant violence with it are two things.

But there is one big thing that separate these two groups: Most of the times, blacks dress better than whites.

There is a hierarchy of dress among three social/economic groups.

The one which dresses better is black, whether white collar or blue-collar, whether middle class and working class.

After them are white-collar, middle-class whites.

At the bottom is working-class, blue-collar whites.

As for the blue-collar whites, their way of dress might be a way to say, I'm not a middle-management tool like you, dependent on the approval of those above you for work and respect. I'm free to dress how I want.

Kid-Glove Evil

2012-01-28T12:36:00.002-05:00

While I was going through my books, because I brought most of mine to my new apartment and found out I don't have enough room for all of them: Or possibly three-quarters of them.

One of them I plan to sell or donate is One Half of Robertson Davies, a selection of essays by the Canadian author. It has one quote I want to put here so it's on the record and easy for me to retrieve.

It's from the essay "Phantasmagoria and Dream Grotto," which was one ofthe lectureshe gave in November 1976 at Trinity College, Toronto, on the theme Evil in Literature.

He mentions the 19thcentury English novelist T Atnohny Trollope, which he said some people read "in search of a special quality of well-bred nullity, relieved by intrigue."

However, he mentions Trollope's seriousness of intent:

The Trollopian world is a disquieting place, when you really explore it. I never cease to be surprised that Victorian fathers and the fussy Puritans who controlled Victorian circulating libraries allowed Trollope to fall into the hands of innocent young women;a girl with her head on straight could learn more about the kid-glove evil of the world -- about selfishness, money madness, sexual manipulation and cold-hearted social climbing -- from Trollope than from any other Victorian, and it was all presented with a manner which seemed to say: this is how it is; what do you make of it?

And I have seen the kid-glove evils that Davies mentioned among the middle class of central Indiana, especially those who tend to vote Republican and set the moral tone here. And this is why I despise them.

I have also been reviewing some books about Nazi Germany. Now, the sins committed by the kid-glove wearers is nowhere near what the Nazis did. But those folks are rarely blameless.

And I am sure that many Germans of the time practiced these kid-glove evils while looking away at the greater evils.

Now Connected!

2012-01-28T07:56:00.001-05:00

I'm now on the internet at my new apartment, after about a month without it.

The new modem arrived Thursday, but service wouldn't be provided until 8 last night. This came about because I didn't get internet access for the previous month, according to a customer service representative from AT&T, the provider.

One good thing will come from this: I won't be charged for the previous month's internet access.

Right after 8, I started putting together the equipment and attaching it to my computer. Then I couldn't get on because of an internet feed problem, which I fixed. I forgot what it was; if I remember it, I might post it here.

Then I had to register with AT&T and that took at least a good 20-30 minutes.

Finally, at 9:55 last night, I got on the net; and I've been enjoying it since.

Later today, I plan to post some things.

Below are two previous posts explaining my situation. I'll leave them as i had posted them.

JAN. 17: I'm posting this at my local library because I await internet connection at my new apartment. That's why there's been so few postings in my blog, even though I said I would post more.

I believe that my new phone service will be sending me a modem to connect to the internet. As of last Saturday, it hadn't come. No mail was delivered Monday because of Martin Luther King Day. And the mail had not been delivered as of 1 p.m. today, when I left to do some errands.

If it doesn't come today, I'll call them to see what the situation is.

So in the future -- say a week or so -- watch this space.

JAN. 19: Finally called AT&T, my new phone company, about a modem I was supposed to get when I hooked up with them. I

It said a modem was delivered back on Dec. 23 and left by my door. However, I don't remember seeing one.

I checked with the apartment's management and no package to me was left there.

AT&T, however, said it would send me a new modem for free and that I should get it next Monday. I will wait until then to post new items.

See The Sea

2012-01-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

-- See the sea?
-- No. I view the ocean.
-- Don't be a smart ass.
-- Why not? It's better than being a dumb ass.
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The expression "my two cents' worth" entered the general conversation in 1939. Because of inflation, two cents then is equal to 31 cents now.
Therefore, please update your cliche.
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The snarfage is up 300 % from last year.
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It is of an opiate nature...
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Why should I shoot him?
I fight my own fights. This one isn't mine.
If you want him dead, shoot him yourself.
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I like my women like I like my coffee -- WITH BIG TITS!
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Book title: How To Lose Friends and Aggravate People
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John the Batshit
John the Bag of Shit
John the Bag O'Shit
The old bag of bat shit
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He tried to get his act together. Unfortunately, it was the last act by a desperate man in some damn dog-and-pony show.
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"of course, i am a pervert..."
"jonn, stop licking the windows!"
"things went better than expected."
"it went okay."
"yada yada yada...i fistfuck sheep..."
"dignity -- who has it?"
"dignity -- dig it!"
"hurfur durfur."
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dem
dem derr...
dem derr peeple...
doze derr peeple...
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yet for edward
a wild tiger appears!
ah yes!
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"We won't be the last to die..."
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The word pothos means a passionate yearning. It seems that Alex had that.
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From a review:
The erotic film Rooftop Angels was a powerful story of love, loss, gain, selfdiscovery...and boobs!

A Suprise Christmas Gift

2012-01-05T11:20:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, the best Christmas gifts are things that you didn't want, but are very glad to get anyway.

Such a gift came to me a little more than two weeks ago.

Between 2:30-3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23, in a parking lot on West 86th Street in Indianapolis, I was unloading some paper grocery sacks full of books from my car.

I was planning to sell them at Half Price Books to see what money I could get for them instead of just donating them to charity. I did it as part of my move from my old apartment to my new apartment.

As I was putting the bags on a cart the store lent me, an overweight woman came up and said, "Are you planning to sell those books?"

I was tired because I woke early that day to do several chores related to my move. And when I get tired, I often get angry.

I thought No bitch, I'm fucking putting these book on a fucking cart for my own fucking health. Why the fuck do you want to know?

But I held my tongue. I wasn't that angry. Besides, it was still the Christmas season; peace on Earth and good will toward men would still apply at least for me.

"Would you take $80 for your books?" she asked.

"Hell yes!" I said, taking the assured money, because the price I had received before for books I've taken to Half Price Books has varied greatly. One time I had taken six grocery sacks full of books and only got $40 for them.

(Note: Recently I took four grocery sacks full of books and a half-full sack to Half Price for sale. I received a bid of $37 for them.)

I helped the woman put the books into the trunk of her car. She said her company, a radiology business on the northwest side of Indianapolis, donated books for U.S. military personnel overseas.

So that was my Christmas present for the season. My brothers, their families, and I don't exchange gifts. And my parents, in the last few years before they died, gave us money instead of gifts.

New Year, New Entry, New Efforts

2012-01-05T11:04:00.004-05:00

First, I hope you all had a happy holiday season and so far are having a good, if not great, 2012.

Second, this is my first entry in this blog in about three months. I've decided to restart it after a big change in my life.

I moved out of the apartments where I had lived for nearly two decades to a apartment complex in my home town. It's on the western outskirts, halfway in the country; you can tell when the winds roar from the west, as they have during a few nights last week, with no buildings to stop them.

It's about 11.5 miles southeast of my old residence, but seems like a county or two away from my old haunts because I'm not as close to Indianapolis as I was before.

I finally got tired of living there because management -- and this is the second or third management group -- has promised but hasn't acted on improving the complex. Plus, the complex was filling up with white trash.

Someday, I'll write more about the situation, but not now. I need to get more details.

I'm writing this at a computer terminal in my new local library; before, I had posted from my home. But I'm in the middle of unpacking and trying to determine if I currently have phone service or internet access.

I also have too much furniture and need to sell or give the extra pieces away. I must determine how and when and where to do that.

I also plan to write more about my life -- my past and especially my present. As of today, I'm 58 years, 3 months and 19 days old, and the 40th anniversary of my high school graduating class will be later this year.

(UPDATE AS OF FEBRUARY 3: A 40th-year reunion is being planned for some time in October.)

Because of my age, I've decided to take more of a review of the whole process, but after I get hooked up at my new apartment.

Therefore -- watch this space.

Pause ... Or End?

2011-10-10T09:52:00.002-04:00

It's time to announce another hiatus from this blog.

I don't even know why I say I'm going to restart posting, when that is one of the last things I want to do.

Part of my lack of desire is a slough of despond, as John Bunyan titled it in Pilgrim's Progress. I'm walking in it and i see no end to it.

I wanted to post one thing: Peyton Manning's neck injury and how it's affected the Colts. Well, it looks like he'll be out for the rest of the season, the Colts are 0-5 and the rest of the season looks bleak.

So now I've noted it, however briefly.

So long for now. Possible forever. Don't know for sure. But when I get back to it, I plan to do it at least five times a week at the least.

Eight & Fifty

2011-09-17T07:20:00.001-04:00

Today's my 58th birthday.

Or as Ronald Reagan would've said, paraphrasing Jack Benny, the 19th anniversary of my 39th birthday.

(I didn't like Reagan's politics or policies, but the man could tell a joke and had the good taste to steal from one of the best.)

I plan to take the rest of the day off; that is, I won't do any major chores or go on any major errands. I also plan to listen this afternoon to some college football games on the radio because my television set it on the fritz.

I usually review my life on my birthday and New Year's Day. I won't get into too many details, but I'm not happy with its direction.

One thing I want to decide is whether to continue with this blog in a regular fashion or retire it. Someday, I don't care if things don't get posted. If I want to continue this blog, I ouught to care.

But tomorrow ... it's another day.

Sad Picture From These Times

2011-09-17T07:09:00.003-04:00

That's a picture I found on the internet. It was taken the next-to last day of a Borders, in a location I forgot to note.

As you might know. Borders declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and decided to close all its stoies. I had written about the bankruptcy earlier this year; one of my posts is here.

I remember when the first Borders opened in Indianapolis just before Thanksgiving 1986: Almost 25 years ago. Before it opened, Indy was not well served by its bookstores; most of the new books were sold at BDalton or Waldenbooks in the malls, and the selection was primarily best sellers and paperbacks.

I remember going into the new Borders and finding books from the Loeb Classical Library of the Harvard University Press. That was a pleasant surprise because it was something you'd never see in the mall bookstores. Although I never bought a book from the series, I was happy to know that they were easily available.

During the week before Labor Day, I made a couple of trips to two of the Borders in the Indianapolis area that were still open. Among my purchases were, in alphabetical order:

Bright Star, a collection of poems and love letters by John Keats, inspired by his love for Fanny Brawne;
Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky;
The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald, about price fixing by Archer Daniels Midland;
Laugh Lines, a collection of short comic plays;
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov;
The Secret Lives of Hoarders by Matt Paxton;
Red to Black, a espionage novel by Alex Dryden;
Snow, by the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.
And Spies of the Balkans, another espionage novel, by Alan Furst.

I'd like to think that my purchases helped, in their small way, to settle Borders' debts.

ADDENUM: The last 31 stores of the chain, located in 18 states, will close tomorrow, according to a story in The Huffington Post.

Conjugation

2011-09-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

Speakers of the English language, be glad most verbs aren't conjugated like the verbs ring (ring, rang, rung) and sing (sing, sang, sung).
.
One of those verbs is fix. Instead of fix, fixed and fixed, it would be fix, fax, and fux.

And that would be fucked.

So I guy can never tell you I fux it and you think O really?

An Apology

2011-09-04T09:57:00.000-04:00

As I have told you before, my friend Frank often corresponds with me.

Lately, he's been in an apologetic mood.

Here's an excerpt from his latter letter to me:

to all the women i called bitches before ... i apologize ... that's sexist ... instead, i should've called you assholes ...

Boot, Stick, Hen, Dog

2011-08-31T06:35:00.003-04:00

Among the dust. And a few rocks.

Cryptic.

Keystone Towers Kaput

2011-08-28T13:13:00.002-04:00

As of 8 a.m. today, Keystone Towers is no more.

About 750 pounds of dynamite and other explosives were ignited, therefore imploding the abandoned building on Indianapolis' near northeast side.

I had written about Keystone Towers and what it had meant to me before in this blog. For those who'd like to know what I said, please click here.

I had driven by the building Saturday morning because I wanted to see it one last time.

I was surprised; it was a bare skeleton of itself.

All the glass and about 600 tons of steel had already been removed. Some constructions workers were wrapping the building in layers of fabric and chain-link fence to force the building's remains inward during the operation.

I wasn't going to see the implosion in person, even though two public viewing areas had been set up north of the site. I didn't think it was necessary for me to witness it.

Besides, I had seen Market Square Arena in downtown Indianapolis imploded on July 8, 2001: Just a little more than two months before 9/11. Looking back, it gave me an eerie preview of the falling of the World Trade Center.

Advanced Explosives Demolition, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, was in charge of the Keystone Towers implosion, and also for the one at Market Square Arena.

(Photo from indystar.com.)

The Transmission

2011-08-27T19:17:00.004-04:00

When the radio astro-physicists of the world heard the transmission, they were surprised and puzzled.

It went like this:

P'ssssss-up ... if tee ... so thirty ... then thirtythree ... so eighty ... then eightyeight ... nnnnn ... mmmmm ...

Then it changed into static for about 35 seconds when it repeated itself.

This went on for about three days ... more exactly, 68 hours, 48 minutes and 12 seconds ... before it stopped.

A Few Notes On The Season ...

2011-08-25T15:05:00.002-04:00

The end of summer, that is, for that is what people usually call late August and name it in their minds, even though summer doesn't end until September 23.

Two things happen around this time:

The first is the beginning of school for kindergarten through grade 12. That started for some school systems in the area about two weeks ago. This is much earlier than when I was going to school and is a precursor of all-year school.

The second is the college football season. Most schools will be playing on Thursday through Saturday of next week. Indiana University, my alma mater, will start its season against Ball State on September 3 at Lucas Oil Stadium, Indianapolis.

Also ... four months from today will be Christmas. And the year will be two-thirds over at 4 p.m. next Tuesday.

Stop, Children ... Decades Later

2011-07-06T19:15:00.000-04:00

One morning I heard the Buffalo Springfield song For What It's Worth on the radio.

It's the one with the chorus Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.

When I heard that I thought: Damn, I'm old. I remember when that song was first played on the radio.

After checking on the net, I found it was released in January 1967. That was 44 years and 6 months ago.

Damn, I'm old.

Not Fully Human

2011-07-06T19:08:00.000-04:00

Here are two examples of people who are not fully human. One never had full humanity. The other had lost it.

One
A boss I had about 35 years ago had the personality of a wall. But it was a wall made of concrete blocks or drywall and not from, say, bricks. They have some character with the mortar sticking out irregularly between them.

Two
There was the mub: Half man and half grub. I once knew a man like that. He was pale with a very light yellowish tinge to his skin. He was bald and short: No taller than 5ft6in, if that. He also wore those eyeglasses where the lenses turn dark in sunlight; his glasses were like that when he was inside.

What was most creepy was that he spoke in low tones, as if he was selling drugs and pornography. And not, say, marijuana and Sports Illustrated/Playboy pinups; it was more like heroin and pictures of teenagers fucking.
*
These are from notes I found in my put-this-in-the-blog-folder. I decided to combine them because they are somewhat related.

Plain ... Beautiful ... What Is It?

2011-07-06T18:53:00.000-04:00

I was surfing a forum on the web/internet/whatever last month when I saw this statement from a guy to his gal:

Yeah, it's plain to see, baby, you're beautiful ...

When I read that, I thought WTF? Plain and beautiful are two different things: Very different.

Damn. Just another example of cliched and lazy writing from automatic thinking.

Now if he had said It's easy to see, baby, you're beautiful, it would still be a cliche. But at least it wouldn't be contradictory.

One Smile Needed

2011-07-06T18:42:00.001-04:00

A woman committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

The police found her car. In it was this note:

I'm going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.

interview/innerview

2011-05-31T19:12:00.008-04:00

and for what reason do we owe this interview ... or innerview, if you will?

i had published a list of gas prices at several locations in the area. it was the first post in this blog for about six and a half weeks. and it was made for two reasons: i wanted to get something in the blog during may; and it might as well some sort of news report.

as i finished it, i realized that i had started put put aside this interview ... or innerview, as i will.

what was the question you were asked to start that?

in the middle of may, i turned 57 years and 8 months old. my birthday will be in the middle of september; i'll be 58 years old then. and in 2012, i'll be marking the 40th anniversary of my graduation from high school. and i'm not looking forward to it.

why?

time. it passes. and regrets. and it's true. you have more regrets for the things you didn't do. and i haven't done a lot of things.

what are they?

too many to list here. probably later. if ever.

why not do them?

again, age. they are things i wish i had done when i was a younger man. a man my age doing them seems foolish. and i didn't do them because i was psychologically crippled. unfortunately for me.

at times, i feel like i'm stuck at a certain age mentally: like i'm back in high school and i haven't gotten any older. substance abuse counselors and experts say a person gets frozen at a certain age when he or she starts abusing substances, especially alcohol. i might go into the reasons why i feel this, but later, as i said.

and location. this is indiana, where offbeat things and people aren't truly appreciated. i'm tired of anticipating a beforehand explanation of myself and what i do. i'm not doing anything illegal. so shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone. and definitely do NOT try to stop me.

you haven't posted that much this year as you have other years. why is that?

i've found other things to take up my time. but i've lost a lot of interest in this blog. plus, i'm going through a nothing-matters-much-so-why-do-anything mental outlook. it might just be a hangover from dealing with the death of my parents.

i've been halfway tempted to delete a lot of these posts and leave just a few remains. i don't get a lot of traffic here, i'll admit that. few people will miss them. many of them don't add that much to the internet conversation. but i they are a lot better then some of the blather i've read in some blogs -- especially the political ones.

but there are four things i'm proud to have written, and i'd leave them here:

my story about Batman and his discovery of bagels;
an observation i made of what i call the egoless i;
my short story 'a few things as the gas and go.'
and a conversation between a man and his friend named saunders.

jesus, i'm even too fucking lazy to post links to them. prowl through the labels at the right side of this blog; you'll find links to them there and possibly other posts you might enjoy.

so ... what now?

i don't know. i'll just leave this blog here. possibly delete some posts. maybe come back to it later ... definitely by july the fourth, if not before then. because i don't want to delete all of it.

plus, i need to get a new computer. i bought this one in 2004 and it's starting to get slower because it's old.

i noticed you don't have any capital letters in this post, as you did when you first started. any reason why?

i like the look of all small letters.

any last words for today?

gentlemen, whatever you feel for a lady, don't call it love if you just want to get laid.

also, frank wrote me lately. he had this line i want to quote:

be grateful you're alive. and don't be grateful if you're dead. do you think jerry garcia is happy?

ADDENUM: for the record, this is the 570th post in this blog.

Gas Prices: An Informal Report

2011-05-31T18:42:00.004-04:00

While i was out Monday running some errands (and taking advantage of less traffic on the streets and roads during Memorial Day), I noticed some gas prices.

In my town, which I'll call PPX, the price was $3.829 a gallon at a Gas America station. In a town five miles southwest, which I'll call 5SW, prices at the two gas stations there were $3.849 or $3.859 a gallon.

In Oaklandon, prices were listed as $3.839 at a Thornton at the corner of German Church Road and Pendleton Pike and $3.849 at a Shell station about two miles northeast of it at Pendleton Pile and Oaklandon Road.

I had written down gas prices per gallon at other locations through the year. Here's a list of them by date:

FEB. 12

$2.899 at a Gas American in 5SW.
$2.949 at an AM/PM at East 56th Street and Post Road on the northeast side of Indianapolis.

MARCH 13

$3.659 in XPP, up from $3.549 a few days before.
$3.584 as the average of three stations along Ind. 37 on the east side of Noblesville.

MARCH 25

$3.549 in G., a city 13 miles southeast of me.
$3.509 in PPX.

MARCH 26
Prices average $3.857 a gallon nationally, up from $3.851 the day before, $3.815 a week before, $3.566 on February 26 and $2.867 on March 26, 2010.

Around Indianapolis, prices were listed from $3.829 to $3.999. Some outlets were selling gasoline as high as $4.099.

APRIL 20

$3.849 a gallon in G. and in Noblesville.

APRIL 30

$4.159 at a Kroger at East 116th Street and Olio Road in Fishers.

MAY 20

$3.749 at the Gas America in 5SW.
$3.739 at the Shell station at Pendleton Pike and Oaklandon Road.
$3.789 at the two stations in XPP.

MAY 25

$3.679 at a Gas America in XPP.
$3.639 as a gas America at 5SW,
$3.779 at a British Petroleum station at East 86th Street and Westfield Boulevard, Indianapois.
$3.959 at a Marathon station at West 86th Street and Ditch Road on the northwest side of Indianapolis.

Guidelines For Times In The Day

2011-04-24T09:11:00.002-04:00

For 11 a.m.
1. It's a strange time of day because it's not truly morning but not yet afternoon.
2. Any meal eaten after then is lunch. It is NOT breakfast or brunch.
3. Any all-day project you start before then should be completed. If you haven't started it by then, put it off until tomorrow, at the earliest.

For 2 p.m.
1. Any food eaten after that is a snack. It's too late for lunch and too early for dinner.
2. Any nap should start no later than 2:30 p.m. and last no longer than 45 minutes.

For 5 p.m.
1. It's the start of the evening, which will last until whenever the sun goes down over the horizon. And 4:50 p.m. is not the evening; it's late afternoon.

More will come as I think of them.

Three Observations About English

2011-04-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

1. Offensive tackles are misnamed. Their purpose on is to keep the ball carrier from getting tackled.

2. Women are often compared, sometimes unfavorably, to cats. But if you want to truly insult a woman, call her a bitch.

3. The K sound (as in Kansas) is represented in four letters of the alphabet: C, K, Q, and X.

As long as these differences and discrepancies are around, I'll never get tired of reading about English. Often, I'll write about things like that in this blog.

His Father's Hat

2011-04-22T18:25:00.000-04:00

He got up from the chair and looked for his father's old hat.

He found it in the closet in the same room. He took it and sat back down in the chair.

His uncle, his mother's brother, had kept it and had given it to him a month ago.

He held it in his hands and thought:

I've never known my father in all my years. But thanks to the Internet, I've found him now. And I'll be meeting him in a few days.

Thank you, Internet, for finally accomplishing something for me.

Pi/e Time

2011-04-22T18:15:00.001-04:00

Locke woke up three nights in a row.

Every time, he looked at the digital clock next to his bed and saw these numerals, big and glowing red:

3:14

On the third night, he thought:

It's pi time...wonder why i didn't notice that before...I was gonna go to the kitchen and get a piece of pie...but i remembered i don't have any here...

Semper Fi Suicide

2011-04-18T19:37:00.000-04:00

Dave wanted to kill myself in the worst way. And that was in more ways than one.

Once, he shot himself in the chest. When he survived that, the medical people called it a miracle.

He also stabbed himself several times. He lost a dangerous amount of blood but lived.

He also slit his throat and was declared dead. But when he was in the morgue he woke up.

Then Dave decided to join the U.S. Marine Corps. He had an idea on how to make a successful suicide attempt.

He would wait until he was deployed overseas. There, in either Iraq or Afghanistan, he would be killed by a car bomb while he was trying to save some of his fellow Marines.

If things happened that way, his family would get benefits and his younger brother could get a scholarship to college. He's also be called a hero for his actions, which would make everyone happy.

Gerunds And Consequences

2011-04-13T15:11:00.004-04:00

He was fucking her.

As she lay flat on her back, he held her ankles and spread her legs as wide as possible. He liked it that way because it showed that he was fucking her, that his cock was going deep in her pussy.

You could say he was drilling her, hammering her, nailing her, plowing her, pounding her, screwing her, spearing her: All of those gerunds of aggression, if not violence, often used to describe sexual intercourse, especially when one partner wants to orgasm without concern for the sexual desires of his (usually) partner.

As he said, "Take it all, you hot little fuck. You know you want it..."

He came.

Three years later, he met his son...the one he had fathered that moment...the one he never knew he had...

So he must have plowed her, because he had planted a seed that had grown.

Larger Than Life...And Twice As Beautiful

2011-03-23T16:35:00.007-04:00

I heard around the middle of this morning that Elizabeth Taylor had died. The cause was congestive heart failure, for which she had been hospitalized in Los Angeles.

About two weeks ago, I read she was in the hospital. I said to myself then: Well, that's is for her. She is suffering from heart failure and it's just a matter of time before she goes.

I had posted two pictures of Taylor as cheesecake. If you want to see them, please click here and here.

A third one, obviously, is at the top of this post. It's in color to best show her beauty -- especially her "violet eyes to die for," as a former co-worker said in the early 1980s, quoting a line from Doonesbury in 1979.

Of course, Taylor was known for her beauty. But she had the acting chops. Many film critics praised her performances in National Velvet, Butterfield 8, and Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

Some people remember her performances in A Place In The Sun, Giant, and Suddenly Last Summer. And some people might also remember the wretched excess that was Cleopatra.

Her health problems and romantic entanglements -- the overall messiness of her personal life -- made her not just the queen of the tabloids, but their empress. And she had a long reign; she died at age 79 and had been in the public eye since she was a teenager.

That life, along with her friendship with closeted gay actors like Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, and Roddy McDowell, made her a gay icon.

So I wrote this brief note of a life that was amazing and interesting. RIP, Miss Taylor.

An Old Friend Returns

2011-03-08T21:26:00.001-05:00

As Alanna sat on the bed, she thought:

Why is my marriage over? How? What exactly did I do to cause him to walk out?

She felt dejected and sad enough to cry when she felt a heavy, furry thing on her shoulder.

She turned and saw Teddy, aka Theodore T. Urso, her imaginary friend from her childhood

"Teddy!" she exclaimed.

"Alanna," he said to her calmly, the way he always talked with her. "Do you remember when you were five years old?"

"I...uh...barely," she said. "Oh, sorry about the pun, Teddy!"

"No problem," he said. "Now if you don't remember, I do. Your family had moved into a hew house in a new neighborhood across town. Few children your age in the neighborhood wanted to play with you. Your older sister hated you because you had taken all the attention away from her. Your older brother ignored you. And sometimes your parents didn't pay the best attention to you because they were busy.

"I came to you then. I became your friend. I helped you get through those sad, bad times.

"I am truly sorry about your marriage. Now that you need some friendship, I've returned. Because I never left you. I'm a part of you. And if I helped you through some bad times when you were a girl and knew nothing, I sure can help you now because you're an adult and you know more...and better."

Alanna put her hand on his paw and sniffled. "Thanks, Teddy. You're a good bear."

"You're welcome," the bear said. "And when you get over this guy and you might be looking for a new romance, I'd recommend that you get a dog. Project your love onto him or her and he or she will return it. They are truly man's best friend. And I won't be jealous. I'll be happy that my friend has a good buddy.

"Though I've learned this through the years...men sure w0uld love to be our friends in real life. I think it's because we're big but cute."

A Woman Has A Close Male Friend

2011-03-07T19:39:00.004-05:00

A woman has a close male friend.

This means he is probably interested in her, which is why he hangs around her. She sees him strictly as a friend. This always starts out when she says, "You're a great guy, but I don't like you in that way."

This is the equivalent of the guy who goes to a job interview and the personnel manager tells him:

"You have all the qualifications we are looking for, but we're not going to hire you. We will, however, use your resume as the basis for comparison for all other applicants. We're going to hire somebody who is far less qualified and is probably an alcoholic. And if he doesn't work out, we'll hire somebody else. But we still won't hire you. In fact, we will never hire you. But we will call you from time to time to complain about the person that we hired."

And this one reason why platonic relations between men and women rarely work.

(Reworded from a joke found at the qdb site c/o bash.org)

Lack Of Education

2011-02-28T16:55:00.000-05:00

He was a business major in college. He received a bachelor's degree in science in the field of marketing -- that is, sales.

Because of the requirements for his major, he never took many humanities classes, like art and literature. Therefore, he didn't know that profit was a sure sign of quality.

Worse, because of the requirements for his major, he never took any philosophy. Therefore, he didn't know that profit was a sure sign of morality.

Some Takes On Ayn Rand

2011-02-28T16:51:00.004-05:00

I wrote of libertarians in a post last Wednesday. If you'd like to read it, please click here or feel free to scroll down to it.

The post caused me to think about Ayn Rand, their unholy combination of patron saint and holy mother. Then I also remembered I had a few things about her that I had collected from the internet.

I post here for your entertainment or enlightenment.

The first is a graphic:

(Please click to increase size)

Then there are these three vignettes:

How He Reads Ayn Rand
I read half a page of one of her books and think:

HOLY FUCK! I HATE YOU AYN RAND! RAAAAAAAAAGE! RAGE! RAGE! RAGE! RAAAAAAAAAGE!

I throw the book across the room.

I pick up the book about a half hour later. I read another half a page and think:

THIS BITCH HAS TO BE BULLSHITTING EVERYBODY! FFFFFUUUUUHKK YOOOOO BITCH!

I throw the book across the room.

I repeat this until the book is completely read.

The exception is Anthem, because it's easy enough to enjoy as a decent story and you can look past the screamingly blatant hurr-durr-dumb-commies undertones in it.
(From the infamous forum/chat board 4chan.)

Ayn Rand Back In The Day
Her diaries from that time (the 1920s), when she worked as a receptionist and an extra in Hollywood movies, lay out the Nietzschian mentality that underlies all her later writings. The local newspapers were filled for months with stories about William Hickman, a serial killer who kidnapped Marian Parker, a 12-year-old girl, from her junior high school. He raped and killed her, then dismembered her body. He sent parts of it along with letters of mockery to the police. Rand wrote long stretches of prose in praise of him; she said he represented 'the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatsoever for all that a society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. (He is) a man who really stands alone in action and in soul. Other people do not exist for him and he does not see why they should.' She called him 'a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy,' shimmering with 'immense, explicit egotism.' Rand had only one regret: 'A strong man can eventually trample society under its feet. That boy was not strong enough.'
(From Slate: http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/)

Two Novels
There are two novels that can change a bookish 14-year old's life. They are The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged.

One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes. That often leads to an emotionally stunted and socially crippled adulthood where the readers of the novel are unable to deal with the real world.

The other novel, of course, involves orcs.
(Site of origin not noted. My error.)

Suze

2011-02-28T16:28:00.001-05:00

I was off the internet during most of today; in fact, I wasn't even near a computer most of the day.

So I turn on my computer around 4 p.m., get on the internet, and see this sad story:

Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's longtime girlfriend during his fledgling days as a Greenwich Village folk singer and the woman who appears alongside him on the famous cover of "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," passed away this weekend at her home in Manhattan following a long illness, Rolling Stone reports. Rotolo was 67.

In addition to forever being captured on the Don Hunstein-photographed "Freewheelin' " cover, Rotolo's three-year relationship with Dylan, from 1961 to 1964, also inspired him to write three of his early love songs, "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," "Tomorrow is a Long Time," and "Boots of Spanish Leather." (Dylan's breakup with Rotolo also influenced one of his most vitriolic tunes, "Ballad in Plain D," a song Dylan later regretted recording.) Rotolo is also acknowledged for pushing Dylan toward the political awareness that flavored his Greenwich Village work.

"All is gone, all is gone, admit it, take flight. I gagged twice, doubled, tears blinding my sight. My mind it was mangled, I ran into the night. Leaving all of love's ashes behind me," Dylan wrote in "Ballad in Plain D" after his breakup with Rotolo. "The wind knocks my window, the room it is wet. The words to say I'm sorry, I haven't found yet. I think of her often and hope whoever she's met, will be fully aware of how precious she is."

In the many writings about the pair, their relationship is invariably described as "tumultuous" or "rocky." In its obituary for Rotolo, The New York Times points to her autobiography, "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the 60s" where she describes her difficulty with being a "boyfriend's 'chick,' a string on his guitar."

Following her August 1963 breakup with Dylan, Rotolo reunited with film editor Enzo Bartoccioli, who she met in Italy a year earlier. She later married Bartoccioli, and the couple remained together until her death this weekend. Over the past decades, Rotolo rarely spoke about her time with Dylan, but that changed within the past few years. She was interviewed for Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary "No Direction Home," and later authored the highly regarded biography "A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties." Rotolo was also a noted illustrator and artist.

She was the woman in the famous iconic album cover of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan: One of my favorite records. Here it is:

I read her book either last year or during 2009; I've forgotten exactly when. I remember little of it now as I think about it. But it had an explanation, which I finally understood, of the idea of the grapevine: How the vines on a grape arbor get tangled and go off in all different directions, like talk often can.

(News story from Amplifier, a music blog at Yahoo.com.)

Gas Prices, Present And Past

2011-02-23T13:29:00.002-05:00

I heard this news today over the radio: Gasoline prices average $3.309 a gallon around the state. At some gas stations in Indianapolis, they are as low as $3.269 a gallon.

Today I noticed, at a service station in my home town, that the price was $3.339 a gallon.

A week and a half ago, prices were $2.899 a gallon at a station southwest of my home and $2.939 a gallon at a station on East 56th Street east of Post Road on the northeast side of Indianapolis.

When I think of those prices, I remember back to 40 years ago, when I was in high school and the fathers of many of my fellow students worked in factories in Anderson. The service stations there often had gas wars, with prices as low as...and get this:

25 CENTS A GALLON.

I'll repeat that:

25 CENTS A GALLON.

That's including state and federal taxes on the gas.

I don't know how much the price of a gallon of gas risen in the last 40 years. That is, the gasoline itself and the increases in taxes. Someday, I might look that up.

Libertarians

2011-02-23T13:17:00.001-05:00

I've found that there are usually two types of libertarians.

The ones on the right mostly are upset about money. They are upset with the size of the governments, especially the federal government, and the amount of taxes used to run them.

The ones on the left mostly are upset about power. They want the government out of their lives so they can smoke marijuana, fuck their same-sex lover, or not have Christianity shoved into them in public spaces.

For the record, I've found the second type, who I call left libertarians, to be more interesting than the others, who I call right libertarians. If you take away the money and the goods and services the right libertarians buy with them, there's not much, if any, to them. They're as boring as many a small town, churchgoing Republican businessman. And just as interested in social acceptance.

The left libertarians are more outlaw and scofflaw and bohemian in outlook and often are not that boring. They have interests that don't cost much, if anything.

Facts About Humanity

2011-02-23T13:12:00.000-05:00

Experts

2011-02-23T13:07:00.001-05:00

I tend to be skeptical about experts, especially if they have advice on how to improve my life.

Some of them have good intentions but don't know any better either through ignorance of other ways or unwillingness to learn.

Some are not truly concerned with you and your problems and issues. They have their own agenda, which you should...or must...follow.

Some are outright frauds.

Some are good. I would use them as advisors; take what they recommend under serious consideration before you act on those recommendations.

I came to think that way about them after I went to a couple of psychotherapists. I thought: Why not get friends or lover to talk with? Hiring someone to listen to you talk is like hiring a prostitute for sex.

But I found out that they can give an outside perspective that you could use.

Twenty Best Things

2011-02-23T12:53:00.005-05:00

I've found an interesting interactive site on the net. It's called bestthings.info, where you choose which of two choices set b efore you that you like best.

If you don't like either choice, you can write your own and add it to the bank of choices.

It also has listed the 20 top choices. They are:

Being outside at night when it's the perfect temperature
Waking up to your crush knocking on the door and proceeding to make mad monkey love all afternoon
Being able find the perfect, witty response to everything someone says to you
Being able to come up with comebacks right away
Having a 100 percent sarcastic conversation with someone who thinks you're serious
Meeting that 1 percent of the population that you actually get along with and can call your friend
Being able to teleport anywhere you wanted just by willing yourself to
Be able to do anything, I said ANYTHING!
Having a pair of magical pants that always have money in its pockets
The ability to make every woman in a room simultaneously hit orgasm simply by walking in.
Secret passages behind bookshelves
Hair that does whatever you want just by thinking about it
Discover that you can stop time at will
Saying the perfect comeback at the perfect time.
Having crazy mind control abilities
Movies that get better every time you see them.
Having feet. It's pretty awesome.
Being able to read minds...and being awfully good looking.
Finding a lamp with a genie who offers you three wishes, and you can wish for more wishes.
One of your personal best things in the world that isn't listed here.

A Few Thoughs About Humor

2011-02-23T12:44:00.000-05:00

One
I have found the internet equivalent of wit:

Not using LOL or emoticons like :) after you tell a joke.

If you use them, it's as if you don't trust your audience is smart enough to get the joke.

Two
Laughter has two effects for the hurt soul: A medicine to sooth and heal it, or a shield to cover it.

I'm reminded of this when I thought of an episode of Friends, when Phoebe dated a psychotherapist. After he met Chandler, he said, "I don't know if I want to be around when the laughter stops and the crying begins."

Three
A joke. I don't know if it's original to me, or if I read it on the internet and wrote it out subconsciously:

Q: What's the name of the guy who made Citizen Kane but he was also known for setting buildings on fire?

A: Arson Welles.

The Tabloid Mind

2011-02-23T12:33:00.000-05:00

On the Internet, I recently came across a site that showed a series of pictures of celebrities, mostly women, without makeup.

It reminded me of what I've learned of the tabloid mind.

The tabloids -- that includes publications like The National Enquirer, television shows like TMZ, and certain web sites -- will often built up celebrities. With the same effort, they will tear them down.

Sometimes it'll be with pictures that are somewhat silly, like celebrities out shopping while wearing very casual clothes. Often, and with a meaner attitude, they show female celebrities who make a living from their beauty without makeup. At times, they look like horrid hags.

It also will show some celebrities at personal bottoms in their lives, such as when they are under the influence of drugs and alcohol or in terrible medical condition.

They follow hierarchy but will secretly mock it.

Another example of the tabloid mind is denouncing the loss of public morality while running pictures of topless women. This happens in England and not in the United States.

(By the way, I've yet to see a general magazine published in this country that ran pictures of a fully naked female bosom, showing especially show the nipples.)

The tabloids, if you want to describe its political outlook, is conservative: Bowling to traditional authority and a strong flag-waving jingoism that has crossed the line from patriotism to nationalism. This is dominant in the lower middle classes and working classes, the traditional tabloid audience. And it is why the proles, such as they are, will never be in the vanguard of any revolution.

It is no coincidence that Rupert Murdoch's media outlets, like The New York Post and Fox News, have this as an approach.

Justifications

2011-02-23T00:13:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, I came across a picture of "The Altar," a poem by English poet George Herbert.

Here it is:

Its form makes it a pattern poem, which is a 17th century version of concrete poetry.

Herbert also was a member of the school one of metaphysical poets; John Donne was the most famous of them. To these poets, religion and lust are often co-equivalent.

Then I thought of a person who once told me that sex was like a sacrament. When I heard that, I rolled my eyes are one of the most foolish things that men do:

Using God, their beliefs in it, and its power to justify your beliefs.

I'm reminded of the Roman Catholic Church, which considers all -- all -- sexual activity sinful unless it's between a husband and wife to conceive children.

I would respect organized religion in general and Christianity specifically if they were not so quick to use God as their theological support for anything they want.

ess & ess

2011-02-17T16:48:00.002-05:00

eliot ness...
loch ness...
it's all strangeness
miss agnes...
and to that i will confess...
so with my mind
please do not mess...
or things will get crazy...
no need to guess...
they truly will happen...
as sure as the sun
will set in the west...
as sure as jim tressel
will wear a vest...
as surely as bugs
are nasty little pests...
and the men you know?
i'm definitely the best...
and of the story
you now know the rest!

Borders Bankruptcy

2011-02-16T09:47:00.004-05:00

Borders, where I worked one Christmas season and where many of my friends had worked, has filed for bankruptcy.

I had read about a possible bankruptcy on the net and had noted it in my journal, but now it's official.

Here's the story, as reported by Reuters:

NEW YORK – Borders Group Inc., the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain, filed for bankruptcy protection, after years of sharp sales declines that made it impossible to manage its crushing debt load, and it plans to close nearly one-third of its stores.

Its inability to garner significant online business and its near absence from the growing digital books market have made it difficult for Borders to compete with larger rival Barnes & Noble Inc. and online retailer Amazon.com Inc.

Borders had liabilities of $1.29 billion and assets of $1.28 billion as of December 25, 2010, according to documents filed on Wednesday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

Borders Group President Mike Edward said in a statement that the chain "does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor."

Borders said in January it might have to file for bankruptcy if it could not meet certain conditions for securing a $550 million credit facility from GE Capital, a unit of General Electric Co.

It failed to meet those conditions, which included arranging financings with other lenders, vendors and landlords.

In bankruptcy, GE Capital will provide Borders with $505 million in debtor-in-possession financing to allow it to continue operating, contingent on court approval.

Borders, whose second largest shareholder William Ackman has said it was his worst investment ever, had been preserving its cash by delaying payments to suppliers, such as publishers and landlords.

Sales at Borders declined by double-digit percentage rates in 2008, 2009 and in each quarter in 2010 it has reported.

Borders, which has 6,100 full time staff, operates 508 namesake superstores as well as a chain of smaller Waldenbooks stores.

The company said it would close about 30 percent of its stores in the next several weeks and plans to continue to pay its employees.

Borders' largest unsecured creditors include major publishers that provide the books it sells. Borders owes Pearson PLC's Penguin $41.2 million, Hachette Book Group USA $36.9 million, and CBS's Simon & Schuster $33.8 million, according to court documents.

The case is In re: Borders Group Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No: 11-10614.

ADDENUM, FEBUARY 17: Borders has announced that it will close two of seven stores it runs in the Indianapolis area. One is in downtown Indianapolis. The other is in Carmel.

I wrote in this post that Borders has five stores in the metropolitan Indianapolis area. Besides the one in Carmel, it has one is Noblesville, two in northeast Indianapolis and one in Greenwood right across the Marion County line. I had forgotten about the store downtown. Also, I didn't know of a store it had at the Indianapolis International Airport.

But now, you have the correct information before you.

One Big Mistake

2011-02-16T08:45:00.003-05:00

One big mistake I've made in my life is having a lack of courage, or acting like a coward, especially at work.

I have put up with idiots and the idiotic situations that theymade. I can only think of a handful of bosses who i respected as superiors. The rest were idiots who weren't better than me; they were just higher up on an organizational ladder. After I left, those bosses and their organizations were worth only my scorn.

As I look back, many people take silence as approval and acceptance. Unfortunately.

I blame myself. I never had the courage to get away from one thing I wanted: Approval of my father, who ran from confrontational situations and never...never...taught me...or even urged me...to stand up for myself.

The reason is that he never stood up for himself. His mother psychologically castrated him: Cut out his backbone, guts and balls. That's why I despise the bitch.

Meanwhile, his father was distant and didn't get emotionally involved with my father's raising.

I know the word cunt is the deepest insult for a woman...much like nigger is for black...but my paternal grandmother is the one woman who I would call cunt.

That's about it for this post. More self revelations to come.

An Admission And A New Direction

2011-02-15T09:12:00.002-05:00

When I read and think about yesterday's post, I was surprised at how direct it was for me and what I've posted in this blog. Direct because I said there were some women who I just wanted to fuck with no concern for their wants and needs.

One was a Jewish woman with whom I worked at at newspaper in the Midwest. She admitted she was a J.A.P. -- a Jewish-American Princess. Yes, I know it's an ethnic slur, but she called herself that. Also, a J.A.P. is the Jewish version of the gentile Suzy Sorority. I despised her, yet she was one of the few women who worked at that newspaper who I wanted to fuck. That olive skin, that black hair, that Roman nose...damn, if I were decades younger I'd get an erection and masturbate -- or I could say get a hardon and jack off.

Yes, I am an angry, bitter, cynical, depressed and despairing middle-aged man. I have no lover in my life. I have few friends. I'm close only to one relative: My younger brother. I've given up on most of central Indiana, this state and the Midwest. I think it's conventional, conformist and conservative for the worst reasons: fear of change in general. Therefore, I'm a bit of a recluse because I find it hard to tolerate dealing with most people and don't know how to reject them or put them off without telling them to fuck themselves in all their holes.

I'm semi-retired, or haven't worked for at least three years, I'll admit that much. For now. Never did find a job that paid well enough or a career that satisfied me. If I had to do it all over again, I would've taken a civil service job with the federal government, put in at least 20 years and go from there. But it's too late for that. Or so I think and feel. I've inherited some money from my parents' estate and can live off it for a while.

Those are some of the details that I haven't written before. More will be coming. I guess it comes from the thaw we're having; two weeks ago, central Indiana had a terrible ice storm that shut down things for at least two days. and the desire for a new leaf...a green leaf...which is appropriate because spring will be here in about a month.

So...watch this space.

Valentine Notes

2011-02-14T18:01:00.003-05:00

Today is St. Valentine's Day, a day to show your love to your lover, or whatever you and society call him or her.

I decided today to make a list of the women I wanted to fuck. Love, or at the least affection, I felt for some of them. But mostly it was lust: The desire to put my penis deep inside their vaginas for my sexual satisfaction. If they were satisfied, that was up to them.

I decided to do this because I'm an angry, cynical, depressed and despairing man these days. Also, I don't have a girlfriend or lover or wife who might be pissed off at my list.

Most of them I didn't fuck because of circumstances. Two big ones were their involvement with others and my cowardice to make a move.

I included women who were costudents in high school and college, some coworkers, some I knew outside those two areas, movie actress and porn stars.

I came up with between 45-50 names off the top of my head. That's much less than the 72 virgins that militant Moslem suicide bombers are promised when they enter Paradise. The list was longer when I made it before.

I won't name the women I knew out of courtesy to and respect for them. I won't name any movie actress or porn stars out of courtesy to and respect for me.

And as I thought of Valentine's Dayespecially its commercialization, I also thought of the people who complain about it but give in to social pressures to follow it and do nothing about resisting it.

No wonder this country will never have a broadbased revolution to change society. If people won't resist the commercialization of a minor holiday (few people, if any, automatically got today off work) because of what other people would think of them if they didn't go along with social expectations...well fuck them. They deserve the shit this life has to offer them.

To call these people pussies to insult good cats and good vaginas. Instead, call them by their rightful name:

COWARDS.

If you readers have someone in your life, I truly hope you and them had a happy Valentine's Day. I also hope you do all you can to keep having good Valentine's Days in the future.

Notes On The Super Bowl

2011-02-07T11:42:00.007-05:00

The Green Bay Packers won their fourth Super Bowl Sunday night in Texas as they defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25.

I've found, when I surfed the internet today, that this story at slate.com is a very good combination of review and commentary about the game. To read it, please click here.

I guess the halftime show, featuring the Black Eyed Peas, was abominable. If so, less said better. No more about it.

Also, more than 111 million Americans watched at least part of the game. That sets a record. The old one was about 106 million, set last year.

One last thing...

Today's Indianapolis Star said it would be 363 days until Super Bowl 46 (I'll be damned if I use Roman numerals for them).

Indianapolis is scheduled to host the game if the NFL players and owners agree to a new collective bargaining agreement . The current one is set to expire March 4.

If:

All sides get to an agreement;
There is no lockout;
There will be a regular season during 2011;
And the Super Bowl will be played;

Then I must prepare myself to be psychologically assaulted by boosterism from many...too many...of the locals.

I must make sure my mind will not be butthurt.

The Line To The Super Bowl...

2011-02-06T10:40:00.003-05:00

The line of appearances, that is.

Sometime between 6 and 6:30 tonight, the Super Bowl will kick off. About four hours later, there will be a National Football League champion.

Representing the National Football Conference is the Green Bay Packers. Representing the American Football Conference is the Pittsburgh Steelers.

As for news and comments about the Super Bowl, please look for it elsewhere. There's a lot of it on the Internet.

Instead, I want to iemphasize this fact: The AFC has been represented in three teams for eight straight years and nine of the last ten. Besides the Steelers, the others are the Indianapolis Colts, my home team, and the New England Patriots.

This is no coincidence. They are among the bestrun franchises in the league because the owners -- the Rooney family of the Steelers, Jim Irsay of the Colts, and Robert Kraft of the Patriots -- hire the best people they can for personnel and coaching.

AND THEN STAY THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY.

That's worth repeating.

AND THEY STAY THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY.

This is opposed to two types of owners of NFL franchises:

Those who interfere to the point of micromanagement. Among them are Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders and Dan Snyder of the Washington Redskins.
Those who don't seem to care. Those include the Bidwell family of the Arizona Cardinals and the Brown family of the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Steelers have been among the premier franchises since Dan Rooney took over the franchise in the 1970s and moved it out of the Cardinals/Bengals situation. During that decade, they won four Super Bowls.

This is relatively new territory for the Indianapolis and New England but their glory days started when Kraft bought the Patriots in 1994 and Irsay took over the Colts from his father in 1997.

As for which team I favor, I won't mind if either of them wins. A sentimental favorite among many seems to be the Packers.

However, I'll be listening to the game on the radio. My television set went on the fritz and I can't get it fixed until later this week.

I had planned to rent a room in a nearby motel and watch the game there, but bad weather has come across central Indiana during the last week. Heavy snows and freezing rain have fallen, and they have made traveling a little too tricky for me.

I remember that the Super Bowl is only a game. That's why I'm not going to a motel to watch it. If I fall asleep during it and miss a great deal of it, I can find out the results by going on the internet.

I hope you remember that it's only a game, too.

The Supremes And The Brady Bunch

2011-02-04T07:25:00.002-05:00

Ace: Deuce, I have a question for you. How many Supreme Court justices can you name?

Deuce: Uh...Bush? And Clarence Thomas...who can forget him? Public hairs on Coke cans and all that. Also there's that Jewish lady...Ginsberg? Goldberg? Or is it Judge Judy? Oh...John Foster Marshall...Duke of Earl Warren...Frank Lee Wright...

Ace: Don't you mean Frank Lloyd Wright?

Deuce: Yeah. I couldn't remember his exact name.

Ace: Well, except for Clarence Thomas, you're way off. Although Judge Judy wouldn't be a bad choice.

Now I have another question: How many members of the Brady Bunch can you name?

Deuce: Easy. Marsha, Cindy, Jane, Peter, Bobby, Greg, Mom, Dad and Alice. Might as well count Alice. She was member in all but biological kinship.

Ace: You're right about all of them. Now, what does that say about you?

Deuce: That I'm kinda ignorant about the government?

Ace: At least the Supreme Court. And by the way...Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect.
*
ADDENUM: This is a reworking of something I saw on the internet.

My Blues...Not Lennon's

2011-02-03T21:40:00.001-05:00

yes, i'm lonely.
wanna die.
yes, i'm lonely.
wanna die.
if i ain't dead already,
girl you know the reason why.

in the morning, wanna die.
in the evening, wanna die.
*
but in the afternoon, well, i feel a lot better because i eat a good lunch. i might have a bowl of soup, especially on cold days. i usually eat a piece of bread with a little peanut butter spread on it. i also eat some fruit and maybe have a light salad. after that, i take a nap for about an hour. then i'm good to go for the rest of the day!

girl, you know the reason why.
*
and now you know the rest of the story.

Happy Birthday...

2011-02-02T13:01:00.001-05:00

to Ulysses by James Joyce, published on this date back in 1922.

Seen with one of its most well-known readers.

Among its lesser-known readers...yours truly.

So noted.

Also, some wag put this picture on a web site:

The Funk

2011-01-30T21:28:00.000-05:00

...or whatever you want to call it has hit again. The result: No new posts since January 17.

Honestly, I don't know when I'll post next.

I post this to let you know what's going on and to make at least one more entry this month.

Just keep watching this space. More details...and posts...to come.

Conditioning And Conditioner

2011-01-17T07:40:00.001-05:00

Here's some more correspondence from Frank. I got it about a week ago:

the conditioning...or the indoctrination...didn't take with me. for whatever reason, i couldn't be socialized 100 percent. Now watching other people is like staring at a fish tank or going to the zoo. it scares the shit out of me. if you ask why, it's because the animals are behind barriers...but the people aren't...except the ones in jail...and they're the worst of the lot. i wonder if i have become callous or indifferent to people in general and people in specific. i wonder if i could just kill one or two or more of them without feeling...

and thinking of conditioning makes me think of conditioner...the stuff you put on your hair to help it...so i think...i don't use it...and what are the conditioners used by society? the usual...sex and money...

An Example Of Narcissism

2011-01-17T07:30:00.002-05:00

This thought came to me suddenly about two hours ago.

An example of self interest is this. If a tornado's coming, you worry about you, your loved ones, and your stuff.

An example of narcissim is this. If a tornado's coming, you worry about how it's going to mess up your hair.

I tried to show the difference in intent: Seriousness versus frivolity.

Maybe it works for you. Or it might not. It works for me now.

Roses From Ashes? Not So Fast...

2011-01-16T09:29:00.003-05:00

Somewhere on the net I read a post by a woman who changed her life for the better.

She said and I quote:

From the ashes grew a rose of a self, dedicated to a new life.

I thought: If you want to improve your life, that's okay with me. And it's a nice metaphor, if a little too cliche for me.

But...but do roses grow all that well in ashes?

So I surfed the net, especially for sites about growing roses. One rose grower said he would use ashes on roses only once or twice a season because it would interfere with the PH of the soil. He also said he would do it only if the ground was too acidic.

Therefore..adequate metaphor, if cliched, but bad botany.

More Closed Sidewalks

2011-01-16T09:19:00.000-05:00

Back in October 2008, I wrote a post about the ignorance or stupidity of people putting signs on sidewalks. A link to that post is here.

Well, the state is fixing and widening one of the main north-south streets through my town from the business district/downtown to the interstate. They've completed the first part, which runs about halfway through town, but...

The state put up signs that the sidewalks were closed.

I gave my reasons how and why that is stupid in my previous post. I find it hard to believe that they continue doing that.

New Labels

2011-01-16T09:09:00.000-05:00

I decided to relabel/reclassify some of my posts yesterday. Some I did in the morning, most I did in the evening.

I made these changes:

Funny Stuff From The Net to Found On The Net or Humor;
From The Net to Found On The Net;
The two-word phrase common place I combined into one word.

I also thought of reclassifying all posts with the "the news label as just news. But I decided against it. The news sounds all right by itself and is an accurante enough classification.

I alsothought about changing Jokes FROM The Public Domain to Jokes IN The Public Domain. But I didn't do that because I was tired. Maybe later.

Gas Prices

2011-01-15T18:31:00.001-05:00

This afternoon, I made some errands on the northeast side of Indianapolis, specifically the Lawrence/Oaklandon area, then went to Fishers and Carmel.

I decided to note the gas prices because I hadn't done it in a while. Here are some of them:

$2.929 a gallon at a convenience store/truck stop about five miles north of me;
$2.949 in my home town;
$2.959 a gallon at a convenience store five miles southwest of me;
$2.979 a gallon at a convenience store across the street from the one above;
$3.039 and $3.049 at two gas stations at separate corners of East 116th Street and Allisonville Road in Fishers;
$3.059 in Oaklandon.

You Open Your Mouth For Me...

2011-01-15T05:52:00.001-05:00

You open your mouth for me and I enter...

You close your lips around me...

My in-and-out motions are sometimes slow and deliberate...

Sometimes they are fast and furious...

Sometimes they feel fabulous...

Sometimes a hair or two get s stuck between your teeth...

I always leave a white fluid in your mouth...

Afterward, you rinse out your mouth and spit out that liquid...

Sometimes you swallow it...

Sometimes you notice the taste is not that bad...

Sometimes your mouth feels pretty good after the whole thing is over...

You ought to do it once in the morning after you wake up and eat breakfast...

Then once in the evening before you fall asleep...

Hey...

Get your minds out of the gutter...

I'm your toothbrush...

(Photoillustration from the goodhousekeeping.com site).

A Haiku That Works...

2011-01-13T18:33:00.001-05:00

At least in English.

It's one of the few I've read that DOES work because it fits the 5-7-5 syllable scheme and has a succinct message.

Here it is:

I am done trying.
If you want me in your life,
let me know. Good bye.

I found it on the net and wrote it down. Now, I present it to you.

A Sad, Sad End

2011-01-13T18:21:00.002-05:00

Back in October of 2008, I ran a cheesecake picture of this actress...Brittany Murphy.

Earlier this week, I remembered the picture when I noticed that a story about her last days was on the internet.

Murphy had died in late December 2009 from pnuemonia, anemia, and prescription drug abuse. She was only 32 years old.

So I read the story today and was surprised at the sadness in her last days of life and also the praise she got from critics from her acting.

If you want to read the story, please click here.

It's sad. She was beautiful, especially her eyes; I'm a sucker for a woman who looks like that. Or at the least, she was a cutie.

I knew she could be make a decent living through her looks, but I didn't know that critics like Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert and David Edelstein, said she had the talent to be a good actor.

I won't provide a link to the earlier picture out of respect for the departed.

RIP, Ms. Murphy. You need it.

Baggage

2011-01-05T10:47:00.002-05:00

I've been working on some psychological issues in my life. Some of them weigh heavy on my mind.

The general/colliquial word for that is baggage.

And we all have baggage. It just depends on what type it is:

Louis Vutton;
Samsonite;
Big black trash bags held together with silver duct tape.

Remember...

2011-01-05T07:55:00.001-05:00

The moon is watching...

The Colts And The Playoffs

2011-01-03T08:16:00.001-05:00

Well, they halfway lucked into it and halfway played into it.

The Indianapolis Colts, my hometown team, will play the New York Jets Saturday night in the first round of the NFL's playoffs to see who goes to the Super Bowl.

They backed into the playoffs when the Jacksonville Jaguars, their biggest divisional rival, lost 34-17 to the Houston Texans. They played into it by defeating the Tennessee Titans 23-20 on an Adam Vinatieri field goal with no time left on the game clock.

I'm a little surprised that the Colts made the playoffs. They had suffered a boatload of injuries during the season; 17 players were on the injured reserve list.

And back on December 5, they stood 6-6 after a 38-35 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

But they won four straight, including a 34-24 victory over the Jaguars. It was needed because the Jaguars beat them 31-28 earlier in the season. They also had two wins over the Titans.

As for Saturday night's game, I won't be surprised if the Jets win. They have the better team this season. Also, the Colts won -- as well as lost -- a lot of close games this year.

But I also won't be surprised if the Colts win it. Peyton Manning can pull something or anything out of his pocket to make sure of a victory.

But if they do win, they must go to Pittsburgh to play the Steelers on Jan. 15.

At the least, the Colts made it into the playoffs. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Giants both had 10-6 records -- the same as the Colts, by the way -- but won't be in the playoffs because the Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West title -- with a 7-9 record. And division winners, no matter how bad they are, get into the playoffs.

First Conversation Of The New Year

2011-01-01T08:33:00.007-05:00

Ace: First...happy new year.

Deuce: And a happy one to you, too.

Ace: Did you celebrate last night?

Deuce: Yep. Started about ... oh...about 3 in the afternoon. Maybe 3:30. No later than 4. Started drinking the bubbly. Some sort of sparkling wine. Asti Spumanti, if I remember the name. Had some cheese and champagne crackers with it.

Ace: For dinner?

Deuce: More or less.

Ace: Damn. Eat healthier. Try to make that one of your new year's resolutions. I just opened a bottle of some dry red wine and drank two glasses of it . Went to bed around 10 p.m.

Deuce: I gotta admit, I went to bed a lot earlier than that. Woke in the middle of the night and finished off the sparkly. Hair of the dog and all that.

Ace: You did all of this at home?

Deuce: Yes.

Ace: Good. You stayed off the roads. I know you can be dumb sometimes and crazy at other times, but at least you're not stupid.

Duce: Hey, you were talking about new year's resolutions. You got any?

Ace: One of them is to stay away as much as I can from racists. Cut them out of my life if possible. And I think they're going to be more prominent. Obama's halfway through his term. He's had a lot of opposition. From the public, and I know --I just know -- that's a lot of it is because he's black. And it's true schadenfreude on my part to know that it gives them pain that a black man is president. To them, he's an inferior person; if he's a person at all and not some cross between a primate and a human.

Deuce: How do you think he's doing?

Ace: As best as he can. The Republicans in Congress will be sand in the gears of government and will act worse than they did during 2009 and 2010. They'll oppose him for the sake of opposing him.

Obama's too reasonable. You can't be reasonable with them. They're like dogs. You gotta be hard with them. It's the only thing they respect.

And who's more like an animal: Obama or the congressional Republicans?

But fuck them and fuck those who support them. They remind me of Nazis.

Deuce: You know what they say on the internet. Once you mention Nazis, it can only go downhill from there. Or so I remember.*

Ace: Fuck that fucking bullshit. I'm not talking about your redneck stormtroopers or your psychopathological SSers. I'm talking about your basic hometown Nazis. Like a lot of Germans were in the 1930s.

But at the same time I realize these Republicans and their supporters aren't Nazis, who wanted to a big transformation of Germany. They're more like Francoists; Instead of radical revolutionaries, they're radical reactionaries, with evangelical Protestantism and big business taking the place of the Catholic church and the nobility in Spain. So you might as well call them home town quasi-fascists.

Deuce: Damn. You don't like those people.

Ace: I never have. When I was younger and Richard Nixon was president, they used to show the uglier sides of their souls too much in public. Nixon was the dark soul, the demonic side -- their shadow, to be Jungian about it -- of what they were.

I also used to read and see a lot of comparisons between a lot of my "fellow citizens" and Nazis in the 1970s. By the early 1980s, those comments disappeared. Don't know why. It still applies.

But enough of that now. I gotta start walking. Wanna get in shape and lost some weight.

Deuce: I'm gonna go to the grocery story. Get some green leafy vegetables. You're right. I should eat better.
*
ADDENUM: Deuce was referring to what's been called Godwin's Law. For an explanation of it, please click here.

A Toast...

2010-12-28T07:30:00.002-05:00

to the upcoming year.

The other projects I mentioned before are going all right, but slower than I expected.

Just thought I'd post this picture to keep a little bit active in this blog. And damn...I didn't realize that I hadn't posted here in 20 days.

I wish all of you a Happy New Year, along with a healthy and prosperous 2011.

Goodbye For Now

2010-12-08T19:10:00.005-05:00

I'm sure you've heard of the old saying, "See you later, alligator!"

But I found recently that there are other ways to say goodbye and use animals in the salutations:

Keep it real, spotted seal;
Oh take care, gruff black bear;
Lotsa luck, you silly duck;
All best wishes to little fishes;
Gotta go, buffalo;
In a few, cockatoo;
Bye bye, fruit fly;
See you soon, you big baboon;
Peace out, river trout;
Good day, sting ray;
Another time, porcupine;
Ciao, brown cow;

And my favorite:

I bid adieu, mon caribou.

While I post goodbye to you in several different languages, I'm going on hiatus.

I have two reasons. Other (and more interesting) projects are before me. Also, I lack the desire to continue posting here for now.

I plan to return. I don't know when.

Goodbye for now. I wish for you have a good December, whatever holiday you celebrate.

A Happy Hanukkah...

2010-12-01T11:55:00.002-05:00

which starts at sundown tonight, to all of my Jewish readers, and especially to Ben Grimm, also known as The Thing of the Fantastic Four.

You didn't know he was Jewish? I cite Wikipedia:

Born on Yancy Street in New York City's Lower East Side to a Jewish family, Benjamin Jacob Grimm had an early life that was one of poverty and hardship, shaping young Grimm into a tough, streetwise scrapper. His older brother Daniel, whom Ben idolized, was killed in a street gang fight when Ben was eight years old. This portion of his own life is modeled on that of Jack Kirby (co-creator and original artist of the Fantastic Four)...(Kirby) was born Jacob Kurtzberg, grew up on Delancy Street, his brother died when he was young and his father was named Benjamin.

If you want to read the rest of the article, please click here.

By the way, the drawing was done by Kirby.

As for the writing on Ben's collar, I don't know what it says. This gentile is no Hebrew scholar.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T10:09:00.000-05:00

I wish that everyone I know and for everyone who reads my blog.

I have one exception, though. His initials are H.S. He's from Cincinnati. And he's native American: Half Iroquois, if I remember correctly, and half another tribe whose name I forgot.

This day, for him, is like Adolf Hitler's birthday for a Jew, however orthodox.

Also, it's one month by the calendar and 31 days total until Christmas. If you aren't going out tomorrow to shop, be thankful for that.

The Taste ... And The Crave...

2010-11-24T06:37:00.001-05:00

wolf: one time when i was masturbating...i tasted my own sperm!

c-zee: wolf, that's just fuckin' sick...but...i'm curious...how the hell did you do that...?

wolf: well...I hadn't jacked off for a while...and the pressure was so strong...it just shot up high on my chest...i just reached down and dipped a finger in the was...then put it up to my mouth...

c-zee: what did it taste like...?

wolf: well...there's one way to find out...

c-zee: fuck you...i'm not gay...!

wolf: nah man...i don't mean that...just do what i did and taste your own...then it's not gay...vain probably...narcissistic definitely...but it's not gay...

d-jon: don't do it c-zee...if you taste your own sperm it'll turn you...homosexual...!

wolf: fuck off d-jon...i've never had any desire to suck any cock...

d-jon: wait...it'll come... it's like eating at white castle...once you do you develop...

THE CRAVE...!

this is how it starts....so listen and listen well...

you eat at white castle and you don't eat there for a while...but all of a sudden out of nowhere you're craving a sack full of sliders...and you'll travel any time...between midnight and 4 a.m...and travel any distance and go through all types of bad weather...like heavy rain or heavy snowfall or heavy fog...to satisfy and fulfill your craving...but it's fulfilled for only a while...the crave returns...once you get it, it never goes away...never fully vanishes...

now...say you're lying in bed in the middle of the night...you wake and you're horny...so you jack off...you produce your man cream...and since you're half asleep and you've just jacked off your judgment is impaired...you wonder what it tastes like...so you dip your finger in it and bring it to your mouth...you taste it and DAMN if you don't want more...you gobble the rest of it down...but it's not enough...and you can't get hard so you can jack off for a while...so you find the places where men suck off other men to fulfill their perverted addictions...and the next time THE CRAVE hits you drive there...most of those men, believe it or not, were 100 percent heterosexual before they became addicted to sperm...it's an addiction that's as hard to break as an addiction to cigarettes or heroin...

wolf: well d-jon...if it comes to that...where are some of those places...?

c-zee: d-jon knows where they are because he goes to them all the time...probably has his favorites there...sends them birthday and christmas cards...

d-jon: you are mistaken c-zee...i know about those places because i have what you would call a...sociological interest...in this issue...and i read the police reports in the newspapers where the cops bust guys for sucking off each other in public places...

wolf: okay d-jon, but...man cream?...what the fuck?

Batman Versus...The Milkman?

2010-11-17T14:09:00.001-05:00

Ace: I saw this on the net. Some guy said, "I want to watch a piece of cheese kill Batman." That might be an interesting fight.

Deuce: One piece of cheese wouldn't be enough to kill Batman.

Ace: I knew he was tougher than damn dairy product.

Deuce: Instead, it would have to be several thousand pieces of cheese. And if they killed Batman, it wouldn't be in a fight...at least not directly...

Ace: What?

Deuce: Say Batman, in his secret identify of Bruce Wayne, eats a lot of dairy products like milk that's not low in fat and rich cheeses and butter and not margerine and ice cream and so forth. His body and physiology might have a tendency to produce or retain cholesterol. The walls of his arteries and veins might get heavily coated with cholesterol, causing possible blockage. And he might have a heart attack or stroke...possibly fatal...because the blood doesn't flow properly through his body. An incident might be especially provoked during a vigorous fight against some villians or even one villian.

Ace: So... the cheese is a stealth killer!

Deuce: If he has one of those incidents, he could be crippled until he dies. It depends on the severity of the incident and the medical treatment he gets afterward. If that would happen, it would be more fiendish that anything the Joker or any of his enemies could do to him.

Ace: Dammmmmmmmmm! That's...interesting.

Deuce: And that's why I tell you to cut back on the dairy.

The NFL: A Few Notes...

2010-11-12T18:54:00.000-05:00

Halfway through the 2010 season. I wanted to wait until every team has played at least eight games -- half of the regular 16-game schedule.

The hometown Indianapolis Colts are 5-3 and coming off a 26-24 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. Coming up are the Cincinnati Bengals Sunday in Indianapolis.

Up to 23 Colts have missed a total of 63 games because of injuries. Four of them -- strong safeties Melvin Bullitt and Bob Sanders, tight end Dallas Clark, and wide receiver Anthony Gonzales -- are out for the season. Running back Joseph Addai, linebacker Clint Sessions and Gary Brackett, and cornerback Jarraud Powers have missed a total of eight games.

All of the above named are big contributors to the team.

Wide receiver and problem child Terrell Owens has found a home with the Bengals and could give the Colts' defense problems.

After the Bengals, the Colts play their biggest nemesis -- The New England Patriots -- a week from Sunday in Foxboro, Mass. After that come the San Diego Chargers and a resurgent Oakland Raiders along with a rematch with division rivals the Jacksonville Jaguars and two games against the Tennessee Titans.

With this before them, though, the Colts should -- I repeat, should -- qualify for the layoffs. But don't be surprised if they miss them.

Of course, if Peyton Manning is injured and out for the season, the whole thing is kaput.

At least the Colts don't have the soap opera-like problems of the Minnesota Vikings and the Dallas Cowboys.

The Vikings had to go to Mississippi to cajole quarterback Brett Favre to return. They are now 3-5 and he has not looked good at times. But last week he led the Vikings to a 27-24 comeback victory over the Arizona Cardinals. If they had lost the game, they would've been 2-6 and head coach Brad Childress might have been fired.

It's been said that the players have little respect for their head coach, especially Favre, who calls most of his own plays against Childress' advice.

And Randy Moss, another wide receiver and problem child, was with the team for only four games. He was traded from the Patriots in October but was traded two weeks ago to the Tennessee. This gives Titans Titans Vince Young a long threat, which is something the team has lacked and something for the Colts to be concerned with.

The Cowboys were favored by some before the start of the season to play in the Super Bowl. However they're 1-7 and lost last Sunday night 41-7 to the New York Giants on national television. Some said the team had quit during that game. This record and the lack of effort led to the dismissal of head coach Wade Phillips and the elevation of offensive co-ordinator Jason Garrett to lead the team.

I'm sure this pains Cowboys owner/chief narcissist Jerry Jones because the Super Bowl will be played in Dallas' new billion-dollar stadium.

Old Gold And Blue, Fading Away

2010-11-05T07:01:00.003-04:00

Western Michigan? Tulsa?

Notre Dame football fans, I tell you this: You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. These two teams are NOT great tests on the gridiron.

You ought to face this fact: the Fighting Irish are no longer a national football powerhouse and hasn't been one for the last few years. I don't know exactly why that happened, but one reason, I believe, is that it can no longer get premier players because of its strict academic requirements.

(It's not because football players are by nature stupid. But if you had a choice of spending most of your time practicing and playing football, as the professionals do, or dividing your time between going to classes and studying or football, the ones focused on football will have the advantage.

( I'm looking at you, Southeastern Conference schools. All of you, except for Vanderbilt, are not know for your academics. You continue and perpetuate the idea that in the South, "book larnin'" is for sissies and faggots.)

Notre Dame's record so far this season is 4-5. It lost -- yes, lost -- to Tulsa 28-27 last Saturday. It lost to Navy for the second straight year after a decades-long record of beating the Middies and also to a Michigan team that is down this season.

The Irish will now rest and recuperate until their next game November 13 against...Utah. Good luck , Irish. And after I wrote that sentence, I was surprised that I wished them good luck against Utah.

But Notre Dame fans still continue and want to think the Irish are a national powerhouse, and run off/fire any coach who doesn't get them a national title, let alone a Top Ten standing.

Face it: Your team is like Army and Navy. They're in Division I, the big boy category in college football, because of tradition. They ought to be in Division I-A.

They have faded, just like Ivy League football faded when the Big Ten came to prominence, and the Big Ten faded (for a while, though) when the SEC and the Pac-8 (now Pac-10) came into prominence.

As for the whole scene around the team, I have mixed feelings. Notre Dame football is like Jesus; the two of them are good in and of and by themselves, but some of their fans are among the biggest assholes you will ever meet.

That's especially noticeable for some Irish fans in the Indianapolis area. They react to critics and criticisms of the football team as if they're anti-Catholic.

There was the South Bend radio fool who said God gave Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio a heart attack for cheating against Notre Dame. If you want more details, click here for the details.

This is the kind of ignorant foolishness that some Irish fans would've believed back in the 1950s and early 1960s. I think he was kidding, but some people might've thought he wasn't.

(Michigan State, by the way, defeated Notre Dame 34-31 in overtime on Sept. 18.)

That outlook has much to do with the provincial and inward mentality -- parochial, in other words -- of midwestern Catholics. Surrounded by Protestants/heretics/non believers, they turn inward in fear of persecution or corruption by these influences outside their church.

I remind you that 50 years ago, when John Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon for president, many people wondered if Kennedy's loyalties would to be toward the United States or the Vatican. And 90 years ago, when the Ku Klux Klan dominated state politics, the Klan was known to be anti-Catholic, besides being anti-semitic and anti-black.

Notre Dame, although you lost to Tulsa, you might -- might -- go to a bowl. It won't be one of the big bowls, though, and you probably won't be going to any big bowls in the future.

NOTE: This is a post updated from one I wrote October 26. A few additions were needed to make it more relevant.

Two Poems About Marriage

2010-11-04T19:44:00.005-04:00

I didn't write these. I found them on the net.

In
her $667.16
satin wedding gear
she said,
"I do!"
and high heeled
it
to the champaign.

By the way, I believe $667 and change for a satin wedding dress and accessories is very cheap. The poem must've been written when that amount was a high price.

Marriage
is
two
people in love
standing
in
the same
bathroom.

Look At The Floor

2010-11-03T17:52:00.004-04:00

Adamas was on the way to Florida for a vacation he deeply wanted because he had tolerated a hard winter in the Midwest.

Halfway through Georgia, he checked into a motel.

He was dozing off and his attention was halfway focused on whatever was on the television set when he heard from the room next to his a slap-slap-slap sound along with a man and a woman moaning.

After Adamas realized that they were fucking, he heard a man's voice say, "Don't look at me. Look at the floor."

He heard someone mumble, slightly. He couldn't tell if it was "Rye?" or "Why?"

Then he heard the man said, "Because you're guilty."

That definitely caught Adamas' attention.

After a brief silence, the slap-slap-slap of their bodies, along with their moans and groans, started up again. The man moaned loudly. Afterward, all was quiet.

Then Adamas thought, for the first time in decades, of a woman who lived in his dormitory when he was a freshman in college. Her name was McSomething -- McKenzie, McIntosh -- he didn't remember. She had reddish-yellow hair, a larger-than -average nose and a slightly chipped front tooth. She was a little overweight and also wore too much makeup because her cheeks were a prominently darker-than-usual pink.

He didn't see much of her after his freshman year and had not thought of her since he left college. But when he thought about her in the motel, his cock grew hard.

Adamas imagined McSomething kneeling on the bed with a white nightgown hiked up to her waist and covering her head. Her ass and thighs were big. They and her pussy were exposed to him.

He stroked his cock and came as he imagined the two of them fucking to a mutual climax.

Crazies Outside Of Smoke-Filled Rooms

2010-11-03T17:32:00.002-04:00

I have this one thing to add. Strangely enough, I haven't seen or heard anyone write or say anything about it.

If it had been up to the old-fashioned nominating process, the crazies wouldn't have been on the ballot.

The Tea Party was behind nominating some Republican candidates with very extreme views. The two most prominent were Sharron Angle for the Senate in Nevada and Christine O'Donnell for the Senate in Delaware.

(If you want to read about some of their views, use your most favored search engine. I'm too lazy to post them here and I'd don't want such idiotic views taking up space in my blog.)

To get their nominations, Angle beat Sue Lowden, a former state Republican party chairman, while O'Donnell beat Mike Castle, a former U.S. Representatives.

It's no coincidence that they were nominated in a direct primary, because they wouldn't have gotten close if the decision had been left to a party-wide convention.

Sure, back in the past there were some shady deals done in back rooms far from public view and full of cigar smoke. But by God, the party bosses did not nominate any crazies for office.

Both ladies, thankfully, lost.

The Beauty In Life

2010-11-02T08:51:00.002-04:00

I got a brief note last week from Frank. I'll post it here:

at times i wonder how it is that anything beautiful is ever said in this world... people are ranting about sex and politics and the like...always ranting...and then all of a sudden I hear people make beautiful comments on, say, on love...or the winter snow ...or the pancake breakfast they ate that morning...it seems those comments and others like them would shrivel under the weight of the ugly comments said around them. ..but then i guess that's life...you have to push through the senseless refuse of the human condition to find something worthy...

I replied:

Frank, I beg to differ. Not all of the things said around me lately are about sex or even politics. About two-thirds to three-fourths of them...too many for my taste...have been by people complaining about their lousy love affairs. They bore me.

As for me, it's been a long time since love was in my life, the winter snow hasn't fallen yet, and i don't eat pancakes for breakfast. That's why I don't write about those things.

And this, to me, is life: A bunch of diamonds scattered and hidden in a field of mud, sand, rocks and dung. You're lucky if you ever find more than a few during your life.

One Thing Done At Least...

2010-11-01T20:25:00.000-04:00

I didn't post during the last two days because I had several things to do and I wanted to put some time and effort into them. I had put off doing many of them for too, too long. The weekend gave me a good start toward getting them done.

However, I only got a few things done. They were minor. The paralysis of my soul continues.

One thing I did was getting candy for the beggars/urchins who might've stopped by Sunday night for Halloween trick or treating. I usually get few to no visitors; but I was prepared, as the Boy Scouts suggested.

But I had no visitors, just as I thought would happen. I looked out my kitchen window and saw some of the kids who live in the apartment complex, along with their parents, walking away from the complex and toward neighboring streets.

Now I have a bowl full of 22 bite-sized Milky Way bars. I admit I ate a few of them before Sunday evening. I'll get them out of my reach and put them in my kitchen. That way if I want some, I must get up and move.

I hope you had a good Halloween. And I remind you that, as of today, it's only 25 days until Thanksgiving, 55 days until Christmas, and 61 days until New Year's Eve.

Fall Was Passing

2010-10-29T18:51:00.000-04:00

With one month down and two more to go for the fall season, I present this to you. It's an excerpt of a novel I wrote 15-20 years ago. Most of its pages have been recycled, but this one I kept.

"He" is the protagonist of the novel. It was based somewhat on my life:

Fall was passing through time and was about to leave. The leaves turned brown, orange, red, or any combination of those colors before they fell. The cornstalks turned bone white before the farmers plowed them back into the ground. Coolness came with the evening and stayed until the morning, often leaving a dust of frost for the sunlight to brush away.

Some days, the sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky, illuminating everything without the harshness and heat of the summer. 'Then, usually between 5:30 and 6 p.m., it was gone.

As the weather got colder, the world prepared for winter's rest. Drowsiness came with Thanksgiving and sleep came with the first snow that stuck to the ground more than two days.

Although it already was November, he wasn't ready to admit until then, when he thought of it, that fall's reign was over and it was near the start of winter's reign, which wouldn't be dethroned until St. Patrick's Day at the earliest.

He sighed when he remembered that he always hated to remind himself of that.

Friends? Please

2010-10-29T18:36:00.003-04:00

Recently I received a mailing that promoted the services of a local

It was addressed to Our Friends At...

I usually ignore these mailings and recycle them after a quick read. But this time I thought:

Friends? I don't think so.

First, there's only one person here. That's me. It's been that way for years now. If you were my friend, you would've known that.

Second, this friendship is a step below the friendships I have with some people on Facebook. I may not have directly seen or talked with many of them for decades, but at the least we know each other.

I would prefer being addressed as Resident on the instead of this false friendship.

Three Short Poems

2010-10-29T18:22:00.004-04:00

Full Of ...
My shoes are full of feet
My head is full of fuck
My soul is full of lust
My cock is full of blood
My mind is full of ... want! ... now!

Sign of the Times ... and Lives
A sign on the sidewalk...
Please smoke, eat, drink, argue, fight, kiss, hug, fuck, stab, shoot, love, hate, piss, shit, puke, and bleed ...
more or less live ...
outside this store.

Envy
Envy wears a long trench coat
and hangs out in dimly lit
hallways, alleys, streets,
doorways, closets --
any place with shadows --
always ready to take over
and conquer thoroughly.

Someone's Dream

2010-10-29T18:14:00.006-04:00

...or someone's nightmare, but not mine.

Unusual and striking, nevertheless.

When I first saw the picture, I thought of three references in literature, drama and film:

The quote "Tell me about the rabbits, George," from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men;
The 6 foot, 3.5 inch tall pooka seen only by Elwood P. Dowd in the play and movie Harvey, by Mary Chase.
Frank, the spirit seen only by Donnie Darko in the movie of the same name.

NOTE: Photograph from pictureisunrelated.com.

Keystone Towers

2010-10-26T09:57:00.003-04:00

There's some good news for Keystone Towers: Or at the least, the land on which it sits.

The city of Indianapolis will take title to it after no one bid for it and its $1.3 million in unpaid property taxes.

I've been fascinated by these buildings ever since they were built. Back in the late 1970s, I drove by it at night. When it was lit up, it looked like a monolith in the middle of a field. And that impressed me.

It was at the corner of Keystone Avenue and Binford Boulevard, northwest of the Indiana State Fairgrounds. It was at the west end of a trail that ended on the east side of Indianapolis at a three-way crossing among East 38th Street, North Shadeland Avenue and Pendleton Pike.

Also during the late 1970s, a friend told me that he had been invited to a swingers party there, but declined. He might have heard of a rumored swingers party there, but I doubt he was invited. I knew his upbringing, and because of that, he would not have known of or associated with swingers.

Cell Division, Explained Pictorally

2010-10-26T08:49:00.001-04:00

Someone on the net showed us one way to explain cell division:

o

0

8

oo
*
ADDENUM: With this posting, I've decided to add emoticons as a new label for my posts.

I've seen them...you can't help that if you're on the internet...and I like them, but I don't use them often because I find them juvenile. That's just me.

Two Types Of Hands

2010-10-15T16:50:00.006-04:00

The hand that rocks the cradle...is oftentimes the mother of...the hand that aims the gun.
*
I have 300 feet of love! And all for you, baby!
*
My exwife, Monica, unfortunately, has become the demon bitch DeMonica.
*
When I wake in the middle of the night, I feel so 330ish.
*
My marriage is sacred...but my honeymoon was profane! Ask my wife...
*
Miller's College of Barbering and Bible College...next to the Motel Indiana...on Route 57 three miles north of town...its motto: Shaving Chins and Saving Souls...
*
3.14 = pi. Backwards, it's pI.E...
*
Racism is ego masturbation.
*
"Remember this. The Italians invented pizza, but the Americans invented pineapple pizza."
*
I am of cowboy
So pew-pew-pew
To you-you-you...
*
See those two jackasses? They're twin turds dropped from different assholes...
*
When someone said Mongol hordes, he heard it as mongrel whores.
*
I have a five-fingered love for you.

Naked? Or Nude?

2010-10-15T16:38:00.003-04:00

Damn...it's emoticon porn...or should I call it pr0n?

And should I LOL it?

(Adapted from something I saw on the Internet.)

Some Short Subjects

2010-10-15T16:32:00.005-04:00

I post these here as one post because they fit better this way than as separate entries.

One
These words have two things in common:

Snuff, sniff, snort, sneeze, snow, snark, snide, snap, snag, snafu, snake, snatch, sneak, snipe, snicker, snug, snub, sneer, snob, snoop, sneak and snap.

Two
When I surf the Internet, I often wonder which one is a bigger waste of time, money, effort and space:

Sites full of half-naked women;
Sites full of half-baked opinions.

Three
If the patterns in the wall paper start talking to you...instead of ignoring them...talk back to them...hey, they might be friendly...and you need all the friends , crazy or not, that you can get to make it through this world ...

Some Wetness, But Mostly Dryness

2010-10-15T16:27:00.000-04:00

It's been very, very dry this summer and so far this fall.

Around two-fifths of an inch of rain fell Wednesday. That was the most since July 28, when four-fifths of an inch fell. And rain has been rare between those two dates.

The rain dropped the temperatures to the low 40s Wednesday and Thursday nights. It's around 60 degrees as I post this, and the low tonight is forecast to be in the high 30s.

Because of the overall dryness, the falling leaves will not become the colorful crowd of red, yellow, and orange on the ground. Instead, they've turned yellow and brown before they fallen to the ground.

The dryness has created a potential to cause some serious damage. A couple of weeks ago, I got a new pair of glasses. When I picked them up, I talked with the office manager of my eye doctor; her family farms in a nearby county.

She told me that the overall dryness, combined with the dust created from the harvest, caused a a couple of combines to catch fire in the field. Those combines cost about $450 thousand each.

It's Been A While...

2010-10-15T16:05:00.000-04:00

About three and a half weeks, since the last post.

Here's one reason. I haven't given a shit about posting because I've been in a deep funk lately. I have my reasons and beliefs why, but I'm not willing to tell you, dear reader, and the rest of the internet..

Here's another reason. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, thing before me is the state of my apartment. It hasn't been cleaned thoroughly for at least five years. I'll admit to that..

Cleaning this place is like a combination of two of the twelve labors of Hercules: Cleaning the Augean stables, which seemed impossible to complete; and killing the Hydra, because when one of its heads was cut off, it grew two more to replace it.

And since this blog isn't a job or duty or obligation, but something I do for my own pleasure, I've done it when I felt like it.

I'm still in this funk, and the apartment just sits here untouched. But I decided, after I went through some of my notes, to start posting again. Or at the least, post this one thing.

As part of my return, I present this slice of cheesecake to mark the end of the summer:

A Different Letter From Frank

2010-09-21T10:40:00.001-04:00

My friend Frank sends me his hallucinations and other mental storms in letters. Recently, though, he sent me what he called a different kind of letter:

I didn't know he had a sense of humor.