Groucho Marx: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."
There is a sort of unbearable beauty that youth often has, especially these adolescents who seem so physically prime and mentally eager for new and radiant experience when they are barely able to recognize the concept of a pedophile. Sometimes I feel like I am a pedophile in my mind, which at first is thinking "Ruff, ruff" like I was a ranging dog or a hungry wolf. Until I realize, "Oh, yeah, I'm civilized. It's my job to help protect these sweet young things and not stand too close to them. Rats."
It's easy enough to see why criminals do what they do. They never have to think of their victims as anything but that. They don't feel related to them. I can't do that. I feel like shit if I only cut someone off in traffic. Part of me questions whether conscience is really any good for me. But conscience isn't meant to be good for me, I don't think. It's there to keep the society, the civilization, intact. This isn't a perfect culture we have in America, but it is wrong to trample people's rights, whether they are young or old or in-between.
Somewhere I've lost a partial list. It was one of those Titles Never Used kind of lists. I wonder where I had it stored? I thought it was here on the site (Draft), but no. Then I thought it was in the directory called blog-stuff, but it wasn't there, either. Now I'll have to look in perfectly stupid places for it. I'll feel shitty by the time I find it! If I were smart, I'd forget it. But I know damn well I'll go and look for in a minute.
At least it's not as bad as when I found I'd lost my Visa card earlier today and had to pay actual cash for my supper! Luckily, I found the card in the first shirt pocket that I encountered, so that was pretty good. But it was a bad 10 or 15 minutes!
Who's reading this damn thing, anyway? Seems like the same 10 people all the time! A chewing gum wrapper gets read by more people than I do! Bla bla bla, bla bla bla (spoken in Eeyore tone of voice)...
When I think about it, I guess it's appropriate that I've been cursed with this or these illnesses. I have always been a lazy or sedentary person, and I guess it's as if my unconscious were involved in selecting what's bugging me. Some things are under control, such as the diabetes and high blood pressure. Yet the neuropathy in my feet and my anemia band together to give me the symptoms I need to be as lazy as I always have been, and more. Now, instead of just doing nothing, I can do nothing and feel tired and dizzy. I have an excuse for not getting things done. Even as I type, there are things being left undone! There was a coat rack I bought that didn't get installed for three months, and it was hell to get it done when the day came that I did do it! And there's a new printer laying around that came with my computer (half a year ago) that's never been connected for lack of a connecting wire. So I never print anything out any more. I won't give a list of the maintenance I don't perform for my car! And that stupid new camera that won't communicate with Kodak files in my computer, so I can't get anything out of it! I can't concentrate on the instructions for it at all! What a perfect illness, though, that gives me the excuse to leave things undone!
You know, something I never say In Blogger Help Group is that Team Blogs suck. Yeah, they do. I've never seen more than one of any consequence. Maybe there are some, but they're private? Could be. But I see questions about them constantly that suggest to me that they don't work very well. I've been seeing questions for a long time now, yet I've seen very few answers (or none). People must be using hammers to force their way through the difficulties because I've seen no nice precise answers! But why would anybody even want to be on a team blog? I'm too egotistical myself, it would never work. It's been proven over and over again that I am not a joiner. I am too much of an individualistic freak! The only good team blog I've ever seen is one in which only 1 of the 2 members has frequent input, so it's really just a regular one-person blog. No doubt the other person is very nice, but he/she's just not THERE!
Ms. Cherry was always a nice lady. When I met her, she was in charge of the Parking Office at the University. Her deceased husband had been a big shot on campus, had even had a building named after him. But she never put on any airs like some of the other widows and connected superfluities who considered themselves major domos of their territory on the campus.
I remember there was all that long history of rats in the ceiling of the Parking Office. One of my first experiences (there or anywhere) was being able to hear the rats overhead and moving some tiles to get a good look overhead. And then discovering one rat that leaned down to look me in the face just as I shifted the tile! He was so close! I jumped, even though I was standing on a ladder! I put the tile back in place for a minute. I remember later reaching up above the ceiling to remove one dead rat at a time, over and over. Then tearing the place to pieces and getting rid of all the dead bodies and all of the piss-stained insulation. God, it was awful, and the ladies in the office below, of course, had to be temporarily relocated from all that stink and falling insulation and tiles.
Before that worse-case scenario, I recall the incident where Paul, the Grounds Superintendent went over to the Parking Office one day when I wasn’t there and he couldn’t find the dead mouse stinking from behind the fridge. Ms. Cherry was so sweet and amazed at how quickly I located and removed it, but she was clearly perturbed about Paul not finding it the day before. I told her, “Well, we all have our fields of expertise” or something to that effect. She smiled, but probably figured I was just covering up for Paul being a little incompetent. Not really, I just dealt with it all the time. At any rate, I’d gotten on her good side with that one, and that couldn’t hurt. Maybe that's why she didn't lambast and kill me when we had the terrible roof rat problem descibed above!
Years after I left the campus, I happened to catch a glimpse of Ms. Cherry on the TV as a political supporter of somebody or other. It was just a moment or two, but I was happy to have seen her. She wasn’t “an old friend”, but she was an old Something—maybe just a nice old lady, but that counts for much in this world. I’ve known a few old people who’d just as happily club you and me and the baby seals to death. As far as I’m concerned, those old people can kill their own damn rats! Here's hoping that pleasant Ms. Cherry, wherever she is, has no rodents of any kind in her life!
What, my page ranking dropped a notch?! Jesus, what do I have to do, masturbate in public? Maybe I always thought that, if it changed, it would go UP, not down! Maybe I'll just erase it so that nobody knows! Or maybe not; I'm pretty lazy.
I stole this from one of the blogs I read, but Christ, I can't remember. The thought that they stole it from somewhere first warms my heart and cools my sense of guilt. I always thought my passwords were incredibly stupid, but they're very complex compared to these.
According to PC Magazine, these are the ten most popular computer passwords:
10. Your first name
9. Blink182
8. Password1
7. Myspace1
6. monkey
5. letmein
4. abc123
3. qwerty
2. 123456
1. password
Ever since I started going to doctors over a year and a half ago (how long ago was Katrina?), my taste buds have been abnormal. At first, I was fairly unaware of them and just didn't feel compelled to eat. After I was going to doctors and taking lots of pills, I became aware that nothing tasted normal and almost nothing tasted good. I had lost a tremendous amount of weight and was down to 145, approximately. I've gone along at least a year like that, until just lately. A month or two ago, some things have begun to taste good again, though I'd still argue that nothing has begun to taste Normal. I'll settle for what I can get, of course. Suddenly (to me) some things taste good enough that I start to want more or even get hungry for extra snacks. While my taste buds were ill, I didn't do that much. My weight is about where it should be (though still way down from the good ole fat-man days. I need the weight to stay nearer to the 160 lbs. than to rise again to the 200's and more. But it is interesting to think how obviously better or normal my taste buds were back when I was 200 to 245 lbs. When food tasted "normal", it was so good that I guess I couldn't stop eating. Though it is now starting to taste so good that I am beginning to have various snack yearnings, I am yet able to think how fucked up it would be to lose track or lose control. I don't wanna be a fat man again.
There may be metabolic things at work on us other than taste which increase our appetite, I'm no expert, not even a doctor. I find I can still watch other people eat and not get hungry, and that's good. But I do have an appetite of my own again, even though I'm mostly following the clock-schedule that I set up. I'm used to eating at noon, for instance, so that's when I eat. Some foods had gotten to where they were almost repellent, but that has changed, partly. Last year I couldn't stand one of my old favorites, Picante Sauce, but this past month I've relished it again! From having none in the house, I've moved to buying the half-gallon size. I don't eat it on everything, but I love it on Chee-toes! That's something else I had ceased to eat until lately. Hamburger meat became repellent for a long time, but less so now, and I'm willing to cook that or even buy a hamburger. That's a big step. I'd gotten to where I'd only eat chicken, and sometimes I'd be sick of chicken and only eat salads.
Things have changed. I still can't eat all the crap that's made with sugar or with too much salt, but I'm hopeful the Bad Old Days are over. I'm still sick, but maybe that mysterious metabolic change my body subjected me to isn't necessary any more and will eventually pass. If it does pass, I'll have to worry about gaining weight like anybody else. That'll be new. I didn't worry about it most of my life; that's the advantage of being fat, you don't have to be a worrier. For the first time since I was a teenager, I'm not really fat; if my taste buds get normal, I'll be fighting the same devil as everyone else, I guess. For now, I'm in a safe zone, I guess. I wonder how long it'll last?
Albert Einstein: "Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
Every time I mention Judy Garland, I get comments from someone who belongs to some Judy Garland group or fan club and wants me to belong, too. I guess they're never going to read enough here or elsewhere to learn that I am the ultimate isolationist. I am not a joiner. Everywhere I've gone in life, I didn't belong. Each time it came to that, whether right away or in the end, whether right or wrong. If I joined anything, I always resigned or left. So, can you imagine how little I wish to join with goddamn Judy Garland schnooks? So, I deny his comments when I moderate so that I won't encourage it all.
By the way, I finished the Judy Garland book today; the one that was oddly named "Get Happy". Whew! Very tiring, so much high drama and trauma. So much sadness to learn about.
A song of love is a sad song,
Hi lily, hi lily, hi low.
A song of love is a song of woe,
Don't ask me how I know.
A song of love is a sad song,
For I've had a love and its so.
I sit by my window and watch the rain,
Hi lily, hi lily, hi low,
Tomorrow, I'll probably love again,
Hi lilly, hi lilly, hi low.
I've been reading a biography of Judy Garland and I'm not quite finished with it yet. As much as I thought I knew from occasional TV pieces and so forth, I wasn't really ready for the long hard haul. She was definitely a woman ruined by men, the old-fashioned kind of man--one who may dress in Armani suits, but still drags his caveman club around with him. It seems so sad. But she was a sort of willing victim because she NEEDED a man so badly. It seems that without the constant attention of a man plus the applause and adoration of her fans, she thought she was nothing much. Maybe just a pill-popping fool. Of course, she seems remarkably likable to us who were never there when she overdosed, or hit somebody in the head, or pretended to be slashing her wrists, or set fire to a closetful of her lover's clothes! She threw rocks, clocks, and kitchen knives at departing employees' cars (and she didn't miss). And, in an environment of stupid macho daddies who'd pester her and deride her, she couldn't help but fail.
Judy was the ultimate entertainer, they say, and it may be right. But I suspect she could have been less crazy if her mother and MGM hadn't shoved pills down her throat for years when she was young and if the men in her life had ever been very stable. So many of them fleeced her for unearned portions of her revenues from singing, it's amazing. Bad enough that a woman could be so careless and be such a total junkie in front of so many admirers, but in addition to that, the men she loved and/or was married to could never refrain from stealing her money. She liked to think she didn't care, but it kept leaving her bankrupt and hounded by tradesmen and employees for their payments. It was partly her fault and partly our fault, but it had to be admitted that the world beat her up pretty badly. These days she is such an icon that she almost is not a person, but we should remember her and watch out how we treat the next Judy Garland. She was such a flower, despite being rude and crude at times. She still liked to think that she was a Lady, but she was often so demented by pills (which finally killed her) that I can't see where she was. She was becoming a tough old derelict toward the end at 47.
She's been dead since 1969 and yet we still celebrate her, still long for her. It seems odd to me, what a Force, what a Beauty she was (many times) and yet what a loser! We can't change that. Think of it, though, the next time you feel tempted not to cut a poor soul any slack. Try not to sing a sad song.
I'm alive but barely even able to keep thinking it
Perhaps because I am so clearly sinking,
And there’s no way to go through this cold knee-deep snow,
You know, no way to plow or go round or straight through,
And there’s no way to turn but which way the wind blows…
The demons in the new-grown crops have a compass up their butt
And are ready for a fling; they are ass-deep
In it all with minor sins and little limp things, and,
Handsome though sins sometimes are, they’re nobody’s friends.
Oh sing it all to me, little sister, you’re so pretty,
I want to kiss you in the very worst way, I want to engulf you,
Devour you, imagine you, impregnate you, turn you
Promptly from a ghost to a cloud that covers me.
So bring us on home from there,
We are friends to the mangy cat and the dog who lifts its leg.
The arrows on the highway are pointing in every direction
But here, and we are lost on a well-known road.
Russell Baker: "The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him."
I mope along with my diseases and try to pay them little attention and to grin at people's inept remarks, but they always remain--the discouraging diseases and the people who mean well. I take my medicine, of course. My blood sugar has remained under control, so that's good. When I went to the nephrologist lately, he seemed to think my blood pressure was not so good, so he prescribed one of the higher doses of the Benicar I was already taking. My anemia is the most noticeable symptom to me, for I am constantly aware of it. Simple tasks are very tiring. Doing the laundry tires me out. I can't very well pick up my nephew who's almost 3 years old, and that stinks, because I love that little boy. Lately, I've forced myself to cut the grass, but I only last 20 to 30 minutes at a time. I find the mower and the weedeater to be very heavy and very tiring.
I just finished 25 minutes on the mowing and I'm wrecked. My neuropathy in my feet seems to result in soreness in my ankles. At any rate, I have both, and pushing the lawnmower exacerbates it.
I mowed the same twice more today. It's all I can stand.
It seems to me that being on the Blogger Help Group for many days at a time warps my view of Blogger. It could be true. It's like being a visitor to the hospital--pretty soon you start to imagine that everyone on Earth has trouble with Blogger, unrelenting trouble. I don't think that's true, though. Everybody's not sick! Or walking around with broken legs.
I consider how few of my friends and visitors move from this site to my help site, Most Frequent Blogger Questions, and also how seldom they ask for my advice. I can't help but think that the Blogger troubles are not very intense. In short, only one or a few of us are suffering at any one time. Admittedly, we're the noisy ones, but you know what they say about the wheel.
Fyodor Dostoevsky: "The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half."
I have slowly begun doing more work around the house, though I still feel acutely anemic. Over the past year, my nephew has taken up the slack for me on the mowing, but now I'm taking it back, whether I want it or not! Twice over the past weeks I have mowed and trimmed the lawn, though each time was an ordeal and I only worked at it in half-hour increments (if that). It takes two days to do the job when you do it that way, assuming the weather permits me to work the second day.
Yesterday a giant rotten limb fell out of the oak tree close to the road. The limb, about 30 feet long, laid across a flower bed, a water-filled ditch, and nearly into the street. I trimmed it some and dragged it out away from the ditch to where I could work on it with the saw, etc. After many breaks I had cut it into sections and put it in the burning barrel.
By the end of the day it was gone. So, nearly, was I. Over the past year I've been so weak that just putting the laundry in the washer or removing it all from the dryer and hanging it up made me tired. The most candy-assed job imaginable, and I can barely handle it. So, it takes a violent act of will on my part to make myself try these other things. The lawnmower is heavy and so is the weed-eater! My feet (with neuropathy and aching ankles) are generally okay if I can stay on level ground, but woe is me if I try to work on an incline, such as a ditch.
I am inclined to be a sedentary Internet lobster, whether sick or not; I might say I enjoy it, if I had that much energy. Lord only knows how hard it'll be to mow the grass when the real heat of Texas summer begins! If I were rich, I believe I'd go north just to escape the worst of the heat. At present, it's still moderate, but it's coming, and it's no fun to anticipate.
Evan Esar: "America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week."
George Bernard Shaw:
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
H. L. Mencken: "Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them."
Mark Twain: "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
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DEAR SIDEBAR JUNKIES: Have I been eccentric enough lately? Lord knows I try. I'd hate to be accused of being too kind. |
