Friday, September 29, 2006

Finances

Woody Allen: "Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."


Monday, September 25, 2006

Scruffy Critters

Overheard At The Water Fountain

“You’ve got all the negative prejudice of a man too sure of what is right in a world that’s all wrong,” she told him.

“Then I can leave you alone, right?”

“That’s right,” she said, and threw her pencil at him.


Can three rights make a wrong?

Friday, September 22, 2006

Beautiful With Brains?

Doris Day: "The really frightening thing about middle age is that you know you'll grow out of it."


Thursday, September 21, 2006

Kill Them All!

Kill Gmail, Google, Blogger, Beta

I am having a damnable time getting Gmail to accept my tried and true username/password, so it may or may not continue to resist me today! I don't think I've spaced it out, and I even keep the password in the computer and on paper, but swell Gmail doesn't like those, either. I think Google is going to be the ruination of the planet, if Microsoft doesn't beat them to it! This Googleized bastard, Blogger, sometimes refuses my password in the same way, over and over again! I can't prove what causes it, but I know it didn't start until about the time of Blogger Beta! So far, Beta has done everything but murder babies in their crib. I hope they all get thrown in jail and sodomized! So there!


Your Right To Be Heard

Hubert H. Humphrey: "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously."


Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Fulminations

Here's some clever men and women now!




















I have an artist’s foul mood, I guess. That’s what I blame the crazy part of me on, anyway. When I see a woman who’s really made a mark in business, I’m very much impressed because she’s doing something I couldn’t do! But then, I don’t want to, either! If she were an artist I’d know her somewhat.

Of course, men have done business for long centuries and I am not going to worry about praise for them any more. When Bill Gates first started having success, I gave him some credit for being so young. But it was the young innovator that impressed me so much, not the young businessman. He ain’t young any more, and I don’t entirely admire the middle-aged businessman. Maybe he’s doing as well as can be expected. Save that for another day! But the curvy or clever businesswomen fascinate me. Martha Stewart fascinates me, though maybe not as much as a female poet would fascinate me. That’s one thing I like the blogs for; they’ve allowed lots of women to write, and many of them write poetry. I like to see that, whether it’s very professional or just to decorate the blog. Poems are more essential than other writings. They show a more essential part of us, a part where everything is shaped and cultivated and pared down. The desire to craft it carefully and to make the words sing for someone "out there" is sometimes a very great one! Such impetus and imagination should not be suppressed or thrown aside.

Love you all, ladies!

Okay, okay, I like you, too, gents—at least the ones with any brains!


Monday, September 18, 2006

Rat Race

Lily Tomlin: "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."


Switch Just Flips!

What really happens when you surf all these blogs? I don't do as much as I used to. I peruse a smaller number at a time, but just as thoroughly. By that, I mean that I look at their Profiles and usually read several posts before I quit. Sometimes I realize that they're awful, sometimes that one of the blogs is perfectly charming. Blogs about new babies are charming, but I soon realize I need to get out of there! Somebody will decide I'm a pervert if they ever realize this Single Guy is stalking their baby blog! Some of the adult blogs that I thus canvas are also charming at first, then (with some) I realize they always stay at the same level, and I leave them alone, too. I feel friendly toward them, but not like I'd ever be much of a friend. Some blogs (especially the famous ones) make me feel very friendly, but I don't last long writing to people who already get thirty or more comments per post. That is a very good thing for the blogger, but it feels a little crowded to me! Sometimes I forget to make friends slowly, and that's not nice. Sometimes, I'm a hair's breadth away from being a fool or a stalker! But, when I realize it, I know that that shit's got to change! Sometimes, the blogger (usually women) realize it before I do, and I am then deeply chagrined.

You can't make things happen on blogs any more than you can in real life. I remember from the seventies that one new friend was speaking of a third party who was being too pushy and remarked that he already had enough friends. Stewart WAS talking about the other fellow (I knew him as well), but I realized that his remarks probably referred to me as well, since I was a new friend of his at the time. I lightened up after that, though in fact I lasted a while longer as his friend.

I usually encourage people on the Internet, since you can't tell what might happen. I might have fun, and so might you. If I have bad breath or don't bathe enough, you'll probably never suffer from it. If I stutter, you won't suffer. I can gross you out, though; I don't have to be there for that. I don't plan to do that, but sometimes a switch just flips inside of me and I become a monster. God protect us if I can't get control of myself. If I've never been mean to you, praise the Lord and pass the peanut butter! We'll pretend we're just little kids and make up!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Best Paradigm

What's the best paradigm in your life or in you? Or do you have one? I'll answer it, too, but later. If 3 or 4 of you should find that you're not dead or gagged and bound, let me know. Otherwise, I understand. You're lazy.


Saturday, September 16, 2006

Drink Formaldehyde?

I guess I do this rather than drink whiskey or beer or smoke pot. I miss smoking pot, though; I bet my tastebuds would wake up a little! Would abnormality lead to normality? I don't guess I know any reliable dealers any more after 20 years and more of being Clean. There's nothing wrong with pot except that there's alway government officials who detest it. They never die, the sons of bitches! I wonder if they drink formaldehyde to stay fresh while they're deteriorating inside?


Let's Get This Straight!

sycophant \SIK-uh-fuhnt\, noun:
A person who seeks favor by flattering people of wealth or influence; a parasite; a toady.

I've known a few in my life, less often have been one myself, but no one's immune.


Friday, September 15, 2006

Thick Of It

I’ve never exactly been tolerant or appreciative of fat women or of fat-women jokes. In fact, I’ve often observed to myself how foolish and empty-headed the Opera joke about “when the Fat Lady sings” is, how many decades it has held onto the population’s imagination. I can’t help it, I just dislike any sort of cliches or lame guff, even if it’s the traditional stuff.

At any rate, the Internet has been the beginning of the cure of me. So many of my best acquaintances have become fat women, but I figure that’s their business and I attempt not to make smart-aleck remarks. Of course, I’m not sure I can be commended, they’ve won me over with superior intelligence and grit out here In the Web World! They made me love them by being so terrific, whether they are fat or not, and in some cases I don’t really know. But it better Not matter! I won’t like myself if I can’t do better now than in my past. I can't guarantee that I'll be less of a prick. Of course, in my past I was a FAT MAN, so it’s peculiar that I felt free to notice. Men can’t be trusted, women know that, I’m afraid.

I’ve learned that you can’t trust nobody, thick or thin. I just have to accept the flow of things. It’s not the sort of thing that was ever my business, anyway! I used to be a monster, and sometimes it slips right out of me before I can get a leash on it! That’s a pitiful excuse, I guess, but it’s what I do. Now I'm thin and don't know how to act sometimes. If I didn’t forgive myself, how could You forgive me?

Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

No Get Your Feet Wet


We'll ride you in the Car-car. You can do the driving, even though your legs are too short. I'll ride beside you and push the pedals once in a while. Maybe we'll find you a tall block of wood that we can tie on your right foot! We'll use your belt. We'll listen to Beatles CD's as we go, especially the White Album with "Helter Skelter" and we won't give a damn if we crash! What can we lose that we wouldn't lose later anyway? No regret, no regret, don't think about it or get your feet wet with that drip you've got!


Jesus, How Things Change

Recent Gmail remark: "You are currently using 96 MB (4%) of your 2764 MB." I remember when I had to throw away emails on Yahoo in order to try to squeeze my ass down smaller to fit in that mere 6 MB! It was constantly letting me know that 4 MB was what everyone else on Yahoo was limited to, but I had apparently gotten into Yahoo in some former regime before they got stingy! I don't know if Gmail came along and tore them a new asshole, but somehow, after getting stingier, they All had some sort of breakthrough and could give us kabillions of MB! I suspect it was entirely a matter of the businessmen holding back while the technology was racing ahead at a rate businessmen couldn't imagine, at least not at first. Of course, I can remember further back to when I understood what email was and didn't have it. Secretly, I slavered. Excuse my vulgarity. I still sometimes drool, but THEN I slavered, you hear! I don't know how many millions of emails I've sent since then, but it's a lot. Don't take up with me unless you want to drown in emails! (Better than drowning in my slaver, I'd think.) So I'm really a nice guy if you think about it. Don't hold me accountable for being crazy, though. Hell, I remember writing letters by hand. Tons of letters. Used to be that my handwriting was legible (maybe even a little elegant) and not this crap you would see these days.

Everything passes, everything changes.

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Blunt

Lester B. Pearson: "Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects."


Who Do You Hate?

It's worth considering. Now bug off!


Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Memo For The Girl I Didn't Send It To

Breaking Up Is Not That Hard To Do!

People on the Internet may think you're funny or they may just look at you funny. This may be more than most people want to know, but I came to be a little acquainted with one young woman who concluded that I had "stalked" her since I seemed to know her email at her private college or whatever it was. I felt like I'd just been slapped hard on the snout with a rolled newspaper. I told her and maybe she believed it, that the Blogger Help Group (which is where I encountered her) lets any of us write another person on the site directly and they sent it on with the sender never having seen any email address. I call it a blind email. My young lovely had concluded that I'd worked hard at my stalking all on account of not knowing that. I guess she thought I was hot for her body. Could be, but not in the Slob fashion that she apparently viewed it! Then I cursed her, and that didn't help anything. She wanted nothing further to do with the stalker and I wanted nothing to do with the stupid girl (which I guess she wasn't, not really, if she'd given herself a chance).

I hate that. But things go to blazes on the Internet sometimes much faster than they do elsewhere!


Drag The People

I've used this before, but it's so exceptional!

"Why of course the people don't want war... It is the leaders...who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along...all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Hermann Goering


Books On The Quick!

I've loved these last two books (see sidebar) I've read. Actually I'm not quite through with Crusoe, but I love it already. I loved it after the first 2 pages! If I read it in my youth, I don't recall it, though the general story is known to all via movies and TV, I think. It's a greatly interesting book to a sod like me, who can't be pleased with car crashes (been there, done that) and grisly killings by the pound (ditto). I'd forgotten (if I knew) all the trials and tribulations poor Robinson Crusoe endured before he ever came to the deserted Island where he had to spent so many years alone. I won't detail it, since some fraction of a per cent of you out there might decide to read it. You guys have probably forgotten it, so go ahead, read it again!

The Horse Whisperer was also pretty primo. I read it pretty quickly and really hated to put it down when it was over. Go for it if you run across it.


How Things Work Out (Or Don't)

I can't get anything to work out. That's how it seems. For a fellow who'd like to have control of everything, I have control of very little.

I was just thinking of some of the Blogger newbies, the ones who are always asking how they can list every single post in their sidebar. I used to think like that, but it's too much trouble. I'm done with ways for you to read or be drawn to my old posts. I have the unexciting Archives with 900 posts, the Pretty Good Ones with 57 posts, the 10 Previous Posts, and lastly the Categories list if you wish to concentrate on any one subject--that seems like a heap to me, probably too much for any but my most excitable fans. Or most unbalanced fans, I am tempted to say. I don't write as glibly or as smoothly or as much at length as I used to. Did I use up all the good material? I used to have much old stuff that I could polish up and trot it out for The Rat Squeaks. Lately, I've relied on my own current sorry output and that's not good! I write about writing. Or I write about not writing. I don't just sit down and write about something! I think about Goddess or Cricket and wonder how they can have such output every day. They amaze me at times.

I'm getting to the point where I can't just sit here without tiring. My ass gets tired, of course, but it's also bad for my feet. Lack of moovement seems to make the neuropathy worse. My feet go more "to sleep" while I fiddle at the screen here. And my back begins to ache. These are all things I've tried to ignore or keep in perspective, but they really occupy (or define) a greater part of what is me than I wish it to be!

Things might get better. Or they might get worse. I frankly wish they would do one or the other. Soon, please.

Some Day

Well, it's not as if my eye is getting worse at a terrible rate or my ear completely deaf. Each is happening slowly. Just like me, slow as Christmas. Some day I'll get something done about it. Or keel over and die, I don't know which!

Monday, September 11, 2006

Memo To Another Murdering Bastard

Am I a little too brittle or inconsiderate? As with most men, it is more assuring to me to bullshit than it is to "get down" or show one's soft side. Something in me even started to not use the flower words "daisy" or "pansy" as a password, but I wouldn't have been hiding it from anyone but God, so what's that about? God doesn't care about that, he doesn't have time to waste on my passwords! I do, though. And other things besides.

Now my left eye needs surgery and my left ear may or may not be going deaf. Ten thousand dollars one of them wants for the cataract surgery and everything attached to it. Insurance companies have ruined these sonsofbitch doctors and nobody feels like anybody is paying for it when the insurance company pays. Of course, I have no insurance, so I guess I'm supposed to go die.

But not just yet.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Memo To My Friend Buttercup

I can't stress enough how good it is to hear from you and to get more than a sentence or two, which is everyone's habit these days in email, including me (I'm sorry that I do it). I seldom seem to get new people to love, so I have to appreciate the old ones as much as I can! If I were as happy as a lark, I might drop you like a hot potato. (Duh, I don't think so!)

Goodbye, Buttercup!

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Ever Been Dogged?

Sue Murphy: "Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives."


Acephalic Bodies

(Overheard On The Go)

I went to the convenience store where I usually buy gas the other day, but it kept saying my card was unreadable and to go see the attendant inside! So I did that. I wondered aloud if my card was too scratched up (it didn't appear to be). The nice young lady said it might even be the fault of the machine needing to be cleaned. She turned on the pump and I ran some gas and went back inside to sign the Visa card.

While waiting in line, I overheard a drunk old man talking out loud to himself. Actually, he may only have been 5 or 6 years older than me, but I'm pretty old myself. At any rate he was talking aloud about a recent crime in which two cousins had decided to punish a crippled man who was behind in his rent. The cripple was renting from somebody's mother. Anyway, they went too far, and left the man for dead after they beat him. They'd thrown his prosthetic legs into the creek below and threw the man down the steep bank. The old man in the store was talking about how the injured man spent 8 or 10 hours crawling up the bank far enough for the highway patrol to see him when they passed. But the injured man died at the hospital. The drunk was outraged and couldn't stop talking about what he'd do to those young men. The law had them in custody already, of course, for they were very stupid. The kind of young men that you see on TV and you just KNOW they're stupid. Not to mention the stupid things they'd done!

"I'd cut off their fuckin' heads!" the drunk old man said.

I signed my Visa card ticket and left the store wondering what street he lived on.


Friday, September 08, 2006

Isn't Barry Lyndon Dead?


When Barry Lyndon fell, he fell far. We can only hope for that!

Men Eat Meat (No Matter What)

I can't write a daily post any more. At least, not a post of any consequence. I can blather. I can squeak. And squeal. And protest that there is oxygen! I also protest that there is fire. Whose idea was that? Okay, warmth in winter, we need it for that. You think it was a byproduct that we began cooking meat and potatoes with it? Animals eat it raw, why shouldn't we? If we had no fire, that's how we'd eat it. Sushi has a name that's not revealing. We could just as well call raw hamberger Plutzy!

"Oh, Mommie, Let's have some plutzy sandwiches tonight!"

"If Daddy doesn't eat all the plutzy during the first commercial, Bambi!"

Daddy is such a pig.


Dear Mr. President

Aldous Huxley: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."


Tuesday, September 05, 2006

I Piss On Your Pee-pee

Is that hostile enough? Perverted, too. But life is strange. Why shouldn't it be perverted, too? There's no one sensible left awake except you and me. And I'm not so sure about you. Sounds like I'm referring to some sort of intimacy, doesn't it? That's not what I mean. I don't mean that anywhere on my upper seven levels of consciousness. Maybe on the 8th level, but I'm not there yet. I know it's wrong to dream so much about Christmas and the other holidays. We don't seem to have an intelligent God, since he allows these things, but maybe we do. Maybe it's just that God is NOT laughing WITH us! But I'm alright; the instant I get outside I'll believe in God again. Maybe not in the good will of Man, though.

I wonder when we'll wake up about all this ethnicity and hatred? If I was a Negro or an Arab in this country, I'd know to be nervous. Why? Because white men have swollen heads and will find some reason to mistrust you. We know we're better. How can you find your way around that? I know I haven't. In 58 years, I've seldom had a foreign or colored friend. I've met lots of them, I've SEEN even more on TV, but I don't know them. I couldn't base a trust OR a mistrust on their behavior. The few I've known were about 20 years ago. I live with and around all these crazy white people now just like me. There's no escape. I wonder if I need to? I don't think I've ever met a person from Arkansas. Not even Bill Clinton, I didn't meet him, either. I must be one of the few!

Who talks to me on Internet? All kinds of foreigners and some Negroes. I think the Negroes are both women and both writers. Not famous, but not bad, either. Maybe I should give their links, but I don't think I will at the moment, since I'm in the middle of this pity fest. It's right, but it doesn't seem right at the moment. Besides, they might give me such a smack! Onward thru the fog, folks!




If I can't get along with you, at least I can get along with Me!

Monday, September 04, 2006

Easy Droppings

You know, I forget that a good per centage of people in this world not only don't know who Lillian Hellman is, some of them probably don't know who the much more famous Liz may be! Goosh gosh, I might as well go back to bed and sleep ten hours. It's not good for me, but what is?


Liz

Elizabeth Taylor: "I've only slept with men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?"



Lillian Hellman: "Elizabeth's never been in a supermarket, in any kind of market. She's never in her life stood on line to use a public phone- a public anything. It's like deprivation. Elizabeth's a true innocent. Every time she gets laid, she gets married. Nobody ever told her you can do it and stay single."


Sunday, September 03, 2006

Short Attention Span?

Most of my audience at present didn't know me when I wrote those few issues of "Southern Exposure". Internet Time is goofy, something just a couple of years ago is "old"! And everyone's attention span is getting shorter and shorter. I ran across this article and was impressed again with how touching it was. Maybe some of you rat fans will like it, too. Or, you can say you read it and then Don't! It's a somewhat long article; read it anyway! What else were you going to do today?

Read At A Far, Far Distance.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Bore

Ambrose Bierce: "Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen."


Tickle, Tickle

Tickle, tickle, who’s got the pickle? Is it large enough? Will it come out of the jar intact? Will it go back in if it has to? I would hate to see it break in half, I thought.

That’s when Meriam broke it in half. Men all over the dining room reacted to the sound for a nano second, then went on eating despite the fact that Meriam was somewhat noisily sucking on the rounded end of the pickle. I guess she found it delicious, but she didn't take a bite. I tried to pretend I wasn’t really with her, but it didn’t work very well when she kept asking me if I wanted some of her pickle! At long last, she dropped it on the floor and asked the waiter if he’d be so kind as to pick it up and dispose of it for her. The young man blushed and did as she asked, using a cloth napkin to retrieve it with.

He didn’t ask her if she wanted another one. I didn't, either.