What The Waitress Thought About It

(From Dogger Gatsby's 1978 Notebook)

Dogger Gatsby continued speaking sympathetically to her about her health, but at the same time he looked distracted, as if he was having other thoughts. Even the bearded man who’d started watching them could tell that Dogger’s eyes were traveling up and down her long slim body. She looked pretty plain and unprofitable to the older man, but Dogger seemed to think something else. The older one chewed his food and wondered what she thought about it. He wondered what it'd be like to fuck her. He didn't realize it at first, but he'd begun to chew his beard along with the sandwich.

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I Believe In You

I had already recognized the singer on the radio as Sinead O'Connor, but it took a minute longer before I paid enough attention to what song it was. It was one of Bob Dylan's better odes to God, a song I was not aware that O'Connor had recorded. I think back to years ago when she blew herself out of the water with the public when she tore up the photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. I had always liked her and the Pope was never any very great entertainment to me, so I was sorry that it had happened. I felt like the general public never realizes that the truth is that one of us can't really hurt (unless we shoot!) someone as big as the Pope or Jesus or the President of the Kiwanis Club!

Nonetheless, it all happened, and I suppose she's had a thorn in her hoof ever since. The Pope is dead and she's not, but there's another one already. He didn't die from any barb or disrespect of hers, and that's good. But the woman can sing very well indeed, and I hate censors of any kind, so I'm in favor of whatever recovery she's been able to make in her career.

I don't know if her choice of songs here is indicative of a change of heart or just an appreciation of a well-written song. I wasn't a Bible Beater when I originally liked Dylan's version of the song many years ago, so I don't mind if she's being very ironic or is Reborn herself. I'm tolerant, I congratulate myself. I hope she is, too. If The Public weren't such a senseless beast, I'd wish they were as well, but I think I'd be pushing my luck. Let's see, who was it nailed Christ to the cross? Was it the Romans or The Public? The Romans may have done it, but it was The Public who insisted. That's my story, and I'm stickin to it!

In any case, it brought this atheist's attention back to some very good song lyrics. Attaboy, Jewboy Bob! Manipulate us again!

I Believe In You
by Bob Dylan

They ask me how I feel
And if my love is real
And how I know I'll make it through.
And they, they look at me and frown,
They'd like to drive me from this town,
They don't want me around
'Cause I believe in you.

They show me to the door,
They say don't come back no more
'Cause I don't be like they'd like me to,
And I walk out on my own
A thousand miles from home
But I don't feel alone
'Cause I believe in you.

I believe in you even through the tears and the laughter,
I believe in you even though we be apart.
I believe in you even on the morning after.
Oh, when the dawn is nearing
Oh, when the night is disappearing
Oh, this feeling is still here in my heart.

Don't let me drift too far,
Keep me where you are
Where I will always be renewed.
And that which you've given me today
Is worth more than I could pay
And no matter what they say
I believe in you.

I believe in you when winter turn to summer,
I believe in you when white turn to black,
I believe in you even though I be outnumbered.
Oh, though the earth may shake me
Oh, though my friends forsake me
Oh, even that couldn't make me go back.

Don't let me change my heart,
Keep me set apart
From all the plans they do pursue.
And I, I don't mind the pain
Don't mind the driving rain
I know I will sustain
'Cause I believe in you.


Copyright © 1979 Special Rider Music

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Eye Surgery

I have a cataract surgery at least tentatively scheduled for early in January. I'm not sure my brain has yet absorbed it. It is expensive, but not as much so as I feared, so suddenly I feel like it's something doable! I see that they say in general that surgery can really help, though the eye doctor warned that it may be only a degree of help in my case due to mine being diabetes-induced. Or something to that effect. In short, though I've heard good things can come of it, he soft-pedalled it to me with that caution. I guess I'll be back to thinking of it as very expensive if it doesn't make much improvement.

Shitfire in a basket! (Maybe that's a Texas idiom; I learned it as a child.)

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Sarah’s Hint

She took his penis and encircled the forefingers and thumbs of both hands around it and overlapped them, working that grip back and forth while she kissed it. Then she slipped it between her breasts and held it there while she rubbed the head of his penis against the tip of her chin.

That hint of fellatio came close to frightening him. She'd told him once that she'd never had oral sex, not even with her husband. He'd therefore assumed she'd never do it for him, either. Perhaps she never would, yet suddenly she'd done this! It mystified him, horrified him, electrified him. He was all for it. Though it was momentary, it was unquestionably great!

There were other thrills during that night, he said later, but not that one.

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Liars

H. L. Mencken: "The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

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World

Another small detail--a whole world, with a shadow.

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Big Frog

Hmmm... I guess the mailto just fixed itself. That's good. But I fixed the lighthouse; killed it dead. Maybe I'll put a big frog there. Oh, the drama and anticipation!

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Harbor Template

I don't mind this Harbor template all that much, now that I have added back some of my decorations and background colors. The sky is nice enough, but I have no fondness for the Lighthouse or whatever it is. I think I've seen in the template 2 or 3 jpg's that appeared to be separate parts of that background image, so I may later figure out how to delete one or all of them. Since I have enough colors in the post backgrounds, I wouldn't mind getting down to the minimum or to a blank page.

I put my photo back in at the top due to complaints from the peanut gallery! If some of you other peanuts now hate it, that'll just have to be the misery of the Silent Majority; it is not something I consider much. I always figure that "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"--or the squeaky rat! Know whut I mean?!

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Eeww!

Eeww, it came back! That photo at the top of the blog, I mean! You must suffer for your sins, you know, because I WON'T DO IT FOR YOU!

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You Know Who You Are

William Shakespeare - Sonnet #29

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

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Fame And Fortune

I keep forgetting to write this up, though I've pestered most of my friends with it by email. Blogger Buzz has given me along with three others an attaboy (pat on the back) for useful work performed in the Blogger Help Group. We have been declared Blog*Stars!

Hell, everybody likes recognition, even a rat-bastard like me. Though the fame is small and the fortune less, it's still a pleasant thing. My ego may balloon up and carry me away in the first strong wind!

Is this what they mean about being a big frog in a small pond? I expect so. Of course, prestige is not usually a horse that one can ride very far. Most shining moments are soon dimmed, but this is pretty nice!

All you little frogs, beware!!!

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The Artsy Fartsy Rat!

I thought I'd never guess my way to the template location to glue this rat! It was all "trial and error", but you can see that it's now at the end of every post, even back to the beginnings of time (well, 2004, anyway).

Chuck Croll (The Real Blogger Status) advised me to expand the widgets and I did. I was still guessing, but I managed to place the photo URL in the right place, as shown below.

If I had not expanded the widgets, I wouldn't have found all the code. In fact, I can't search for "artsy" in the template even now without again expanding widgets! A new trick from the Blogger bastards!

   <div class='post-body'>
      <p><data:post.body/></p>
      <div style='clear: both;'/> <!-- clear for photos floats -->
<img alt='artsy rat' border='0' src='http://photos1.blogger.com/
x/blogger2/6621/3732/400/748907/artsy%20rat.jpg'style='CURSOR: hand'/>
    </div>


   </div> 

Sincere

Jules Renard: "I am not sincere, even when I say I am not."

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No Cucumbers

Yes, there were no slap dash cucumbers eaten this Thanksgiving! Not a one. The day came and went. Miles were driven and redriven, all in one day. I was just a passenger. Home again, and the garbage truck came early this morning and carried all the debris away. A clean start. What could be better?

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Slap Dash Cucumbers

I don't know what that means. I just thought it sounded good. If you have a story or blog to go with it, take it, it's yours. I can't be bothered with it! You think it's an escapee from a sandwich? It could be. I like cucumbers, but seldom eat them; they give me burps. How about you--is your backwards on head? Mine is. On head, I mean. Hey, don't crowd me, leave room for the cucumbers!

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More Bilious Universe Blather

I hope that I've now placed my Site Meter back in operation here and the StatCounter in MFBQ. Not long enough to see the numbers increase, so I'm guessing. I've determined that my mailto is scrambled, but it's at my end; readers can apparently still email me with it. I don't need it to work for me on my own site. However, I won't be able to use the mailto on other people's sites, so I guess I better know the important addresses already! I think I do. So, uh, fuck the universe! You know?

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Beta And God

I got so used to being a knowitall (not quite) about Blogger that I was doing okay. Now that I've converted to Blogger Beta, things work fairly well, but I find that there's a learning curve to it. I am also old and slow, but I knew that! But I'd developed such a habit of answering questions in Blogger Help Group under the classic system that it's hard to restrain myself when people ask questions now. I try to judge whether my classic info will still apply or if I need new info. Sometimes I'm sure, and sometimes it's a guess. If I screw anybody up because of it, I'm sorry. But I won't kill myself. I'm going to splash around in that puddle whether I save you from drowning or not! I ain't your mama; if you drown, I'll blame God. He's known you longer than I have.

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Polemics, by Dogger Gatsby

Every time I tried to compose a comment just now, a thousand things collided in my head and wrecked my brain. I have nearly nothing to do with American natives (Indians), but I can recognize when a people is being crapped on by self-deluded white people who congratulate themselves as humanitarians since we didn't ACTUALLY exterminate the last remnants.

No country's history is much different or much better, of course--everybody's land was stolen from someone and their cultures destroyed or nearly destroyed in the process. The original Hawaiians would have probably disappeared by now, if it weren’t for the tourist trade.

Anyway, you are quite right and I have to shut up now as my face always gets quite red and my heart beats too fast when I think about it. Where did anybody ever get the idea that justice or fairness really exist, I wonder? I guess I was sold a bill of goods when I was a child, then didn't grow up.

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Stress

Jane Wagner: "Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it."

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Another Disney Park

I guess you can see that I got some of the color back into my posts. My little Disneyland. Possibly some of the new templates aren't as sneaky as this one, but it was hard at first to see where the "style sheet" or CSS part of it was located. This template uses a code for it, so the only place you can find "style" or "CSS" is in the source code, not in the actual template. After I knew that, I was able to get my bearings again and to introduce my carefully crafted instructions back into the template! It is actually a very butt-boring procedure unless you are the one wrestling with it, so I'll hush.

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Mailto not working; Comments are

Now my email isn't working. I thought it was working yesterday, so I don't know what it is. I'll try to correct it if it doesn't fix itself. For those of you who know my email, it is still working; just the mailto is stifled!

Whatever may happen with that, I took the easy way and turned on the damn Blogger comments! So I will not feel so all alone! Haloscan was good, but it was too much trouble to turn back on, at least for now.

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The Great Gott

Hmm... When I finally customized and upgraded the last remaining one of my blogs, I suddenly didn't have to log in to Blogger every time any more! Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's a sign. But it chose to actually "Remember Me" and not just promise to do it!

The great God Blogger has been appeased (and is getting off my back a little)!

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Spoke Too Soon

Comments Missing!

Well, I spoke too soon! Not only do I appear to have lost all my Haloscan comments, but the stupid Blogger comments didn't turn on. Give me time. I guess I can find the Haloscan code in an old copy of the template and restore it. It's like being thrust into the light with no clothes on. Fortunately for me, the only people who will notice are already on my side...I hope!

Also, I lost at least a couple of the Intelligent Blogs. Email me if I left you out. This is getting confusing (to me, at least!).

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Good TV?

Marvin Minsky: "Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know."

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Whoopie

I don't know when I'll get around to completing the Beta process on this site. Eventually, I will. I will have to start building from the ground up. I built the site an hour or more at a time over years, I didn't get it done all at once. I used to have old versions of the template saved that went back to the beginning. Now I've changed computers so often that some of that history got lost. It never mattered except to me, of course. My four years of blogging stretches out in my memory, and seems almost as lengthy as my life has been (though at 58, that's unlikely!). In any case, I remember a lot of the stages that the blog template went through. I remember learning HTML before I even discovered blogs.

I am starting to feel a strong itch to just go on and start the process of change and rebuilding. But it's as if new cars had suddenly been redesigned to run on beer cans and garbage and no one was selling gasoline anymore! It's a forced break with the past. It won't matter much to many people, but it will matter to me. I like my blog like you like your dog; I'll hate the change when it's gone. Yet I'll go on and on till I'm dead.

What was it that Country Joe and The Fish said all those years ago? "Whoopie, we're all gonna die!"

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Don't Forget About #2

While I am still dithering about Beta Blogger, I may make more new entries in TRS #2 than here. Don't forget about The Rat Squeaks Two for the present. At some point I may merge them and have only one again, but so far I'm getting some practice and not able to be as decorative as I used to be. Maybe that'll be better in the end, to dump all my old ostentatious habits!

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Funk & Mull -- Sounds Like A Law Firm

I've gone along in a long funk the past month or two, partly annoyed with Blogger making the change to Beta just when I'd begun to master the old Blogger, partly fucked up because of medical situations. I grew more and more bored and more helpless and more intimidated by it all.

I have now come out of that funk just enough to jump into the Beta pot! Is it hot chocolate or is it glue! Or is it shit? I don't know. Although I'm not really utilizing Beta for this TRS site, I am using it in a dummy site (test site) called TRS TWO (see sidebar).

I am also using Beta in Most Frequent Blogger Questions, utilizing it for the presentation and appearance, but all the info presented is still pre-Beta. I am not master enough of any of the new info to try to disseminate that Beta info. Not yet. In Beta, I am still bouncing along and asking myself, "Whut was that?" or "How do you do that?" over and over again.

Welcome to another new absurd world, I guess.

You may have heard me go over all of this before. But it's what I keep having to mull over.

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Another Opinion

Thomas Jefferson: "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

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Daffy Traffic

For those of you daffy enough to wonder about it, this is the address of the site I've been playing with to see what's what in Beta. You can't tell that much, I guess, though I'm sure you can plainly see how far afield and in the dumpster it is. Far from my preferences! I started with an exact copy of the TRS template, then "customized" it a little. I'm still discovering things by hit or miss! I put an intro and one post and one comment on it. My main goal was to at least get it to where the various text is readable to an old guy like me. It may look terrible to those of you out there, so take a look if you like.

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Smoke

Until such time as they force me to "customize" TRS, I won't do it. Maybe I'll go forward with MFBQ in Beta, though the how-to posts there will still not be about Beta! This is all as clear as mud. Or smoke.

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Save The Life Of My Child!

I'm confused. Though I've "gone" to Beta, I think I'm stuck in some halfway nether world. In order to "customize", you seem to have to "upgrade" your template to one of Blogger's boring current ones. If I do that, I'll lose all the hundreds of hours I spent in customizing this blog! I started out with a much older blog template, but it's no longer normal, since I've made many changes and Blogger has also made changes in the template styles it provides.

I hope I'm missing something, but it appears to me that I have to throw away a great deal of past effort before one can begin to utilize all the new Beta features. This will require even more effort if one is to end up with a template that even looks interesting, much less looks like my old template.

Maybe it's possible to do some things that I haven't understood or found yet. I hope so. I made this change because I was bored and because it was ultimately unavoidable. The change was coming within a couple of months and would at some point have been forced on us. Maybe I'll have to give up this old style of extreme decorations in the end. I'm not eager to do so, however.

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Pushed The Button!

Wow. I pushed the Beta button about 3 minutes ago and it translated all my blogs in quick time! I have fallen into the next world, for good or bad. I haven't had time to figure out what might be askew, but it looks like nothing is wrong at the moment! Everything looks normal. I'm astonished. It probably won't do simple stuff like tie my shoelaces, though.

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Voodoo Intuitions

True evil always discerns what you care for —
more quickly than love, it knows what you dare for.

True love is impulsive, implosive, impendent;
intuitive and perplexing and repentant —
yet never more knowing or caring
(never more reckless or careless)
than evil's discerning eye.

What judgment can be made?
In what book is the judgment made?
We see the light pass clearly through the glass,
yet still the pages fade.
See how the pages turn?

The words appear and disappear
and reappear in smoke —
but what does the message mean
when the final word's a joke?

True chaos always knows its master;
time is reframed by time
and sex is infested with sex —
now as your heart beats faster,
everything simple grows slowly complex.

Through the long dormant season
everyone’s sullen and silent:
the right, and the wrong, and the dead;
men who must only listen
care nothing for what is said.

See what the words have wreaked? Our souls
are not passions to be carelessly piqued,
nor iron in the fire to be easily wrought;
we are intemperate, yes, yet steel,
no matter what pleasures we've sought.

[Oh see that girl with the red dress on,
She know how to shake it, just for me!]

Love comes by surprise, by unreason,
by unfeasible touch in a hot, dry season —
so cool, cool to the touch,
the touch of unpressable flesh pressed,
the rise of unraisable hope risen.

True love is impulsive, implosive, impendent;
intuitive and perplexing and repentant —
yet never more knowing or caring
(always more knowing and caring)
than evil's discerning eye.

rcs.
6th draft: 04/22/05

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Above poem is recycled (reprinted), but I don't care; do you? If so, skedaddle, no one's holding you here!

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Be Sure

James Russell Lowell: "Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people."

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Roy Rogers Wouldn't Have Liked It Here

What? Are there no complaints or remarks that I changed the Description below the blog title? I can't believe it. I thought you rapacious guys and shapely lasses monitored my every move and mood! Is it possible that you had something better to do? I hope you weren't having sex with your cat.

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Appropriate To The Moment

Alexandre Dumas: "Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest."

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Purpose

Quentin Crisp: "The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us."

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Flu Shot

I drove to the county health department this morning to get a flu shot. I can’t believe I let myself be scheduled for 8 a.m. but that’s what happened. It was so early for me! I usually don’t get up for an hour or more past 8. My eyes were wide open (no sleepy sand, you know), but I guess I was so taken aback to be abroad in the land at such an early hour that I got lost and ended up 20 minutes late, though no one seemed to mind. Except for me; I was embarrassed about it. One trouble with that hour is getting caught here and there in the heavy traffic going to work. I’m not used to that any more!

I seemed to be the youngest person who was there as a patient. Only some of the workers were younger than me. The flu shot was $20. I overheard a couple of elder men being told that the pneumonia shot would be $45—ouch! So I got by on the cheap side, I guess. This is only the second year that I’ve gone for the flu shot in recent years, but I’m getting to where I think I need such things. I’ve been so sick with diabetes and fatigue and such over the past year that I’d hate to cultivate any extra diseases or disabilities.

I don’t guess I will, but I feel like going back to sleep. If death were as good as sleep, I don’t think I’d even mind about death any more. Sleep is damn good, except that it’s hard to wake up.

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Haste

Soren Kierkegaard: "Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."

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Tough And Rough

I dropped a few from my "Intelligent Blogs" list this week. No antipathy, just lightening the load. No relationship had ever developed there and no comments to and from, either, so I dumped them. Maybe they weren't weird enough; certainly I myself am a very weird and cultivated taste. I take up with these blogs because they're clever, but I only keep them if they're either decidedly likeable or think that I am. Is that playing too tough? I think not. But you never know. We are all diamonds in the rough, but I still like to see some sparkle now and then. The funny thing is that at the other end, I sometimes make some great friends with whom I don't immediately exchange links. Or maybe never do. It's a mixed up world.

So there you go--my blog, my world, my rules. Be glad you have your own!

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Dogger Gatsby's Scribbles

Dogger's 49th birthday was coming up soon when he sat down and wrote this out in an old notebook. Later he typed it on an old electric typewriter in the year of his death. I came along later and entered it in my computer, where it was almost forgotten the past 9 years or so.

"What could possibly be more boring than this? Nothing comes up, arrives, or develops lately. Life just goes on. No fruit, no regards, no pity. I've been so polite and estranged for several years now that the concept of Old Flame seems to be bogged down in some cave age anti-diaspora, blistered by desert rays and hot stray winds, a fancy form of remembering someone else's life, not mine.

Shall the form ever be reassumed? Will there ever be a gain amidst this loss? What loss? What gain?

The Harlot and the Harvest are heavy symbols, but take me flightily and fightingly along. I'm light and bowled over and out of sync with myself. I've ceased to anticipate and pray that I stay so. But oh, alas, such beautiful strangers come along, disturb my day, my heart, my head! Where do they come from? I come to know them, of course, but on the surface of the skin and in the narrow of my marrow, and out on the way to Mayfair I realized that I had finally arrived alone at last. My ribbons were in a tangle and my clothes improperly zipped and everything I've worked for is in a hapless pile at my feet.

I'm on the sickbed to Disaster at a galloping gait, on the nightmare to that fear factor fate we dread at a gutbucket rate, on the way to my last slow defense and defeat by addle-pated nomenclature. Now, next, out the gate on the other side. I'm restless, I'm tired, I'm worn completely out. How much worse can it get... "

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Conceit

Bruce Barton: "Conceit is God's gift to little men."

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Seriously

One of my favorite words: facetious.

I wallow in it!

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Tremble

Who knows where the time goes?
Phones ring and fiends sing
And nobody puts down a deposit.
The TV talks incessantly in color
While politicians show their teeth and fester
And never say a thing.
As usual, our hearts remained unmoved
And only our bowels tremble.
The men in charge are Murderers.
The men in charge are Us.

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