More Perfection?

I think I've got this subscribe/notification stuff working now, or at least it notifies ME! Someone else will have to tell me if it does any more than that. One little problem with it is that I am used to performing fairly immediate rewrites and revisions, but I may have to curb those a little in future. It didn't matter before, but if some people are only going to see the copy that's emailed to them (their choice, not mine) and since only one copy per post is ever sent, I need to have it more finished and pristine that I've been doing! La di dah, I'm so upset because I can't get it perfect... Always have been, always will.

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Turtle Delayed

Do turtles bite? I found one (about 4-5" wide) on the patio the other day, but I was on the way somewhere and he didn't seem active enough to worry about. Later, he was gone, so he wasn't Inactive.

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Illness On and On

All this shit just goes on and on. The “anemia” part of this illness has gotten worse, I guess. I don’t have energy for much, not even for the things I’d begun to do (like mowing). It has slipped up on me so that, though I’m not aware of being depressed by anything, I seem to have an anemia of the mind where I can’t remember to follow up on various important things, like leaving symptoms not fully descibed to the doctors and medical practitioners. Though not “depressed” that I know of, I hardly feel like doing anything. Habit forces me out of bed most mornings, but I can slip badly and snooze on to a ridiculous hour. It feels so great to be unconscious and to not be having to move about in such an unbalanced manner…

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Subscribe?

Testing, testing, over the ocean blue...

This is just a test to see if I get notified from the new TRS Google Group that's supposed to allow you to Subscribe to this blog and to be notified of each post. I'm pretty sure that the whole post will be contained in your email notices, so don't leave your emails out to horrify the kiddies and the virgins and the little old ladies. I'm not as obscene as I used to be and I don't do it as often, either, but I am still a nasty shit. But you already know that if you've paid any attention at all! Some of you rodents better Subscribe or I'll think you're all happy without me. How happy? Hippity Hoppy Happy!

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Write A Book?

QUESTION: If you or your past or present significant other became famous enough to create the market, would you consider writing a tell-all book?

MY ANSWER: Not me; I'd blabber! I'd end up telling so much sleazy and treacherous shit that I'd ruin all chance of ever getting laid or loved again!

Feel free to send me your own answer. Better than a sharp stick in the eye, you know...

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An Old Song From "Desire"

Sara
Bob Dylan, 1976

I laid on a dune, I looked at the sky,
When the children were babies and played on the beach.
You came up behind me, I saw you go by,
You were always so close and still within reach.

Sara, Sara,
Whatever made you want to change your mind?
Sara, Sara,
So easy to look at, so hard to define.

I can still see them playin' with their pails in the sand,
They run to the water their buckets to fill.
I can still see the shells fallin' out of their hands
As they follow each other back up the hill.

Sara, Sara,
Sweet virgin angel, sweet love of my life,
Sara, Sara,
Radiant jewel, mystical wife.

Sleepin' in the woods by a fire in the night,
Drinkin' white rum in a Portugal bar,
Them playin' leapfrog and hearin' about Snow White,
You in the marketplace in Savanna-la-Mar.

Sara, Sara,
It's all so clear, I could never forget,
Sara, Sara,
Lovin' you is the one thing I'll never regret.

I can still hear the sounds of those Methodist bells,
I'd taken the cure and had just gotten through,
Stayin' up for days in the Chelsea Hotel,
Writin' "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" for you.

Sara, Sara,
Wherever we travel we're never apart.
Sara, oh Sara,
Beautiful lady, so dear to my heart.

How did I meet you? I don't know.
A messenger sent me in a tropical storm.
You were there in the winter, moonlight on the snow
And on Lily Pond Lane when the weather was warm.

Sara, oh Sara,
Scorpio Sphinx in a calico dress,
Sara, Sara,
You must forgive me my unworthiness.

Now the beach is deserted except for some kelp
And a piece of an old ship that lies on the shore.
You always responded when I needed your help,
You gimme a map and a key to your door.

Sara, oh Sara,
Glamorous nymph with an arrow and bow,
Sara, oh Sara,
Don't ever leave me, don't ever go.

Copyright © 1975 Ram's Horn Music

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Lucky Dog

Walking down the long sidewalk from the house to the garage (half of which contains this study from which I assault the world), I spied a young woman or girl who is not all that familiar to me, but I assume she belongs to the family at that nearby house. From her demeanor and calls, I concluded that she was calling her dog, though I couldn't see the dog. Suddenly she rushed forward toward the street and in a loud panicked, panicking voice cried out "Lucky, Lucky, no!" I thought she was about to see her dog get squashed before her eyes, but a split second later the dog appeared and so did the barely moving pickup truck that had nearly run over Lucky. The guy in the truck may have been shaken up, as he proceeded very slowly before resuming any kind of speed as if he was unsure if the dog had gotten out from in front of him. Meanwhile, the dog, playful and romping, was trying to tussle with the girl and she was not in the best mood in the world about it. I think if she'd been more muscular, she'd have picked the dog up and carried it under her arm at full speed! I didn't observe any more after that, though she and the dog may have had further conversation with one another. I'm sure the dog was never meant to have gotten out of the big fenced area in the back yard, but people are always driving too fast down that street, so if he gets out many more times, he will get squashed. I hope I don't have to clean it up.

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Arts And Farts And Farce

E. M. Forster: "Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake."

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Accidents

Nathaniel Borenstein:
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents."

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Belief

Do you believe in Beef?

Well, brisket maybe.

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Moderate Comments?!

For months now, if not in fact the whole past year, my Dashboard has blithely declared that this blog had at least 2 comments needing moderation. If there was a real comment needing moderation, then the Dashboard would declare that there were 3. A moment ago I checked and the Dashboard said there was only 1, so I didn't know what the hell that meant! Was it suddenly accurate or only suddenly half as inaccurate? Turns out that it was Accurate, though God knows why. Nobody but me could see the numbers, so wazzit matter? I had long ago given up on it fixing itself, but I guess that's what it did. I guess it was just the final way for it to fuck with my head. Blogger has always been this way about one aspect or another; I felt lucky that it was only this screwed up. I answer questions for the hapless people who whimper for help on Blogger Help Group, so I should know how much worse troubles you can have from Blogger. I was lucky all along, but now that even that is fixed, I'm worried that the planet will now spin off it's axis! Why not, after all?

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Communicate

Tom Lehrer: "I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up."

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Getting Into Heaven

A little while ago I heard the County mosquito sprayer go by slowly on my street. I didn't get up to look, but I know it by sound after all these years. Besides, I wouldn't want to step outside until it's long past. When I was a kid, we used to run behind the noisy bastard and suck up it's fumes as if was the only important thing in the world to be protected from mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, hell, I imagine it protected us from vampires and wolves! When I worked at Mosquito University, part of my duties as exterminator was to drive a tractor version of that sprayer around campus early in the morning. It was bad enough as it was when it drifted onto my skin instead of all blowing behind me like it was supposed to do, so I wore a half-face respirator while driving to keep from inhaling it. I'm not sure I did myself a bit of good, but I suppose I scared a few early risers who happened to notice my gear. God knows I killed billions of mosquitoes. Maybe I'll never get into heaven... Or maybe I'll get in first...

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Abraham Lincoln Gabe In Space

They called it a Sharkie because it had a peculiar shape, sort of like a shark. The astronauts didn’t care if they were referred to as the “pilot fish”, didn’t care because it was just a good ship to them and they didn’t want to argue about silly-ass names the civilians hankered for. That’s all it was, Gabe thought, just names that Generals and general contractors thought would appeal to the public. Maybe they were right, though Gabe couldn’t imagine how they found time to think about it. Most of the time that he saw them, they were as endlessly busy as he was. Somebody was always building the ship, wiring the ship, fitting the ship, welding, pasting, riveting, inflating, deflating, testing. It was a wonder that the ship didn’t get worn out by so much traipsing back and forth before it could get into space! Gabe, most of all, felt like he’d spent 24 hours a day on the ship lately, almost never leaving it, almost never going home without having an emergency call to come back and test a new connection or a new fit. Could he operate the buttons in the dark or if he lost his sight? Was it possible to return to earth in the Shark with injured men or an injured pilot? Everyone hated to talk about it, but the sensible ones knew they had to plan for it and for all other contingencies. Everyone on the team knew it intimately, Gabe grinned inwardly, like they’d know a woman at a late-night bar who had bad breath.

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Immortality

Susan Ertz: "Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

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Recent Things I Did

1. Drove my mother to get new eyeglasses.
2. Went to the podiatrist where I had an appointment.
3. My mother, who had no appointment, got in to get her toenails trimmed before I got to see anyone! I had to see the doctor, but she only saw one of the nurses. In any case, she had to wait for me to get out, so I suppose it didn't matter. I just thought it was odd. Never put it past an old woman to out charm you!
4. Went to the Super WalMart and bought everything I could think of, and it didn't amount to much ($50). I must go there too often; half of that total was pills. I had meant to buy a clock/radio of some kind, but backed out. My ability to be Decisive is very unpredictable. Since I couldn't decide immediately, I decided to wait to decide! You ever do that? I think I am the Professional Unshopper.
5. Spent two hours with friends from out of town. Seemed like a very short visit, but I guess everything was taken care of. It's not as if it's Business where I should've had a written agenda.
6. Got my car registration.
7. Got car inspected. Duh, I'm legal again. Did I say Lethal?
8. Babysat today with 3 year old nephew John, who thinks he's Superman Spiderman Batman and Flash, one at a time. Oddly enough, he thinks my long shoehorn is Darth Vadar's green light saber and he won't turn loose of it! As you can see, he also steals my blue hat.

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In The Shithouse

Eric Hoffer: "You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

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I don't care what you don't say; we're in the shithouse now!

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Overheard on Late Nite Radio

Thought It’d Be Easy

He thought on one hand that it’d be easy and on the other that it would be ridiculously hard. He’d met her recently on the Internet and he knew it was completely silly and he wanted to court her, charm her, disrobe her with his most charming charms. When he could remember that she wore clothes, he wanted to remove those, too! Did he think she was ignorant of sex in this day and age? No, he didn’t; maybe she was ignorant of men her father’s age (which she knew he was) wanting very badly to screw her! That’s what he wanted, so badly that it was hard not to say so. But such crudeness would not work for anyone much, much less on a woman so utterly charming and cute but who just barely existed on the Internet. He was no longer even sure that he existed there! Maybe soon he would be rudely disenchanted...

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My Education Is Lacking!

Robert Frost: "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."

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Happity Hoppity

Oscar Levant: "Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember."

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Two Nations Meet

You intrigue me,
But you don't much entertain me.
Have you been here all this time
Or are you just visiting?
Are you proposing war or peddling peace?
Anything could be the case,
We are all such put-on's
Even when (goddamn) the time is running out.

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Wobble

Got up with less trembling and wobble in my legs this morning, but it ain't cured, I'm sure of that. Later,

Signed, The Artful Dodger

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Crippled

After my first stint at the computer earlier today I got up and found that I almost couldn't. My legs had gotten wobbly and so remained. It's been a couple of hours now. I've had slight experiences with this before; it's happened pretty often, but nowhere near as wobbly! After nearly falling over left and nearly falling over to the right, not to mention nearly falling over period, I confiscated an unused cane to keep from nosediving. It helps a lot. But still this total incapacity to stand on my own is a big surprise; it has never been so bad before. Maybe in a few hours or by tomorrow, it won't be so bad. Or maybe it will.

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Comparative Numbers

The numbers here keep moving slowly and the counter clicks on Most Frequent Blogger Questions (MFBQ) keep climbing fast. In a month or so, the numbers on the newer blog will catch up and surpass the older blog. That seems strange to me, but reality has always been strange to me. This blog increases by dozens while the count at MFBQ increase by the hundreds and thousands!

Of course, it's apples and oranges to try to compare them. This blog gets the handful of demented devotees who haven't been insulted yet whereas MFBQ gets all those hits from people who pass through once to get a single answer to what's bugging them and then go on with their lives. I would, too! But, still it feels like TRS is not much read these days. Maybe I should post nude photos of me squashing a hamster?

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Character

Evan Esar: "Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose."

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Huh?

Quack, quack, take me back, I fell in a spoon with a feathered loon, and everything's gone powdered. I haven't touched drugs or drink in about 20 years, and I'd just as well it stayed that way. I don't want a goddamn cigar, not because they might not be good--a couple of free Cuban cigars I had once were a lot like heaven!--but I don't want to smoke anything for fear of my stupid addiction to cigarettes regaining control over me. It's no pleasure to be a slave to some bizarre longing for burnt leaves. So speculate all you want, I am still here, even if it's just one goddamn paragraph!

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Price Of Freedom

Robert Jackson: "The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish."

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Page Rank and Polls

Did I ever mention that my Page Rank fell from 5 to 4? Out of a possible 10. I liked being at the halfway mark, but 4 makes me wonder if I should write more about sex and violence. Or include photos of Britney's shaved head or of Christ's hair shirt? I could even run a poll (or survey) to see who loves me and who doesn't, but those new Polls from Blogger don't ever work that I've heard yet and they're a lot of trouble to delete. I got along without one before all this, I can get along without it now. I do know how to delete the damn poll if you get one trapped in your blog, I think--I deleted a couple of them, one the way it was supposed to work, the other way was the hard way! But not that hard.

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Blogger "Favorites" Is Back

As of 8/07/07 Blogger has returned the use of the links to other blogs with the same "favorite" subjects across the blog world. Some of you were always bitching about the loss of it, and maybe Blogger heard you. But they never said it was coming back! It's the usual Silent Treatment from a mega-bunk Barney (the big dumb purple one).

As Blogger Buzz says: "Now you can go to any Blogger profile page (start with your own, or perhaps another popular blogger’s) and follow any of the links on the page to get list of other bloggers with the same industry, occupation, location, interest, or favorite book, movie, or music."

You may not want to actually contact any of them, but it's just interesting to see what kind of bloggers like the things you like.

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Television

Orson Welles: "I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."

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Our Sorrow

Sophocles: "The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities."

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Diane's Dead

An old friend of my sister's called the other day and said she was checking up on her. My sister had died on March 7 of this year, months ago, so you can imagine how startled I was to find that there was still a friend of my sister who had not heard that news. They were good buddies when they were teenagers and in their twenties, but had drifted apart for the most part, as you can see. Not to accuse her of being careless or anything else, though--after all, I hadn't known of her mother's passing for some similar period of time, though I didn't bring that fact up during our phone conversation! People drift away, geographically and otherwise.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling a bit stunned and tongue-tied to have to tell that news again so far away from the actual event. She died. She's dead. Everyone feels some bit of loss and others more. But it is weird to have to tell it. It makes it more difficult for me to push it away, to keep it at a safe distance.

Not too often, but once in a while, I hear about something and think I'll have to tell my sister about that, but then 5 seconds later I remember: Diane's dead. There is nothing to tell. And then I don't like to think about it, whatever it was I thought she'd like to know...

She threatened for decades to die young because of her diabetes and other problems, and finally she did die at 65, an age that only children think of as Old these days. But I guess she's more comfortable now, relieved of diabetes and dialysis (which she hated), and the foot they cut off, and her heart problems, etc. When she died, some people wanted to be completely sad, but I could remember too many times when she said she wished she could just die. She said that often, usually when I was driving her to the dialysis treatments 2 or 3 times a week. I sometimes thought she said it to me because I may have been one of the only people who didn't tell her not to think like that. I accepted it, though I tried not to agree with it. She stopped saying it finally, though clearly she didn't feel any better. There is probably no way to unravel the ups and downs of those conversations now. It was part of her, but it's over. I wondered a few times if I'd help her die if she kept talking that way and if she asked me, but I think she decided she was afraid to make God mad, and that saved me from having to face that demon.

Not that I believe in God, but that I believe in that demon.

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To Bed!

To bed then, and damn it all! Oh maybe I'll eat rice crispies and watch TV first...

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Eating Is Good (And That's Bad)

I think of eating multiple times a day. Or, sometimes I just keep eating after I've finished the actual meal--that's eating for "taste" rather than hunger. I guess that's how I got fat back when I was a kid and a young man. I don't feel the same sense of patience with it any more, though. I don't mind being a little fat again, but I want it to stop, maybe reverse by 5 or more pounds. I like all my new clothes. All the ones for the fat me are too old and worn. I should have given them away, though maybe I was playing it safe to put them away like winter clothes. It was good to regain my 15 or 20 lbs. so that I'd know I wasn't dying. But now I need to draw a line; I don't want the whole 100 lbs. to come back! There's no one but me who can do that bit of controlling me.

I lost about 3 pounds in the last few days, though my weight fluctuates by more than that sometimes. I need to find a line to center on that I like and fluctuate around THAT! But you must know what the real culprit is: when I was sick all this past two years, my appetite was nil because my taste buds had died. I didn't like anything much and many old favorites not as much. Now a brisket sandwich seems like heaven! I like mayonnaise again! Normality seems SO WEIRD at this point, and so does this having to worry about weight gain! To be honest, I don't much recall any point in life when I did worry about it. Maybe as a teenager. Now I've spent 40 years just eating what I wanted. That was bad. But this is fucking HARD!

Have I already written a post about this? If so, I'm sorry. I'm probably dazed from depriving myself of hamburgers and stuff!

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Too Cool To Be Hip

They're playing Brubeck's "Time Out" on Pandora radio. Very Cool. Of course, it's old as the hills, I guess, since it was new in 1959. Two or three years later I was pushing on to being a teenager and started listening to radio for "the cool stuff", not just "Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley" or country songs where the first thing a man does when he gets shitfaced is get teary about his Mama.

Anyway, Dave Brubeck was the coolest thing I'd ever heard, even though (up to that point) I may have been no more than a moron. He was my musical awakening. It's good to hear him still, all these decades later.

Other things, too, made me wiser and wider. Later, the Beatles and Bob Dylan would blow me sky-high. Folk music was very hip, and I attended the coffee houses in my area. They were dark and Halloween-painted places to go before you were old enough to drink. They had weird guests. Observe: they let ME in. They had weird names: The Inferno was one. They had weird drinks: there was a blue one called Gahena. Don't ask me how it tasted! It was sweet, that's all I recall. I think that Gahena means hell or death, or maybe decay. Nothing pleasant. We didn't know much back then, and the Internet apparently is no more well-informed than I was when I was ignorant in 1965 or so. Oh, well; still ignorant after all these years!

Time and fun sure flies when you need to hurry home to shit and can't smoke pot or cigarettes any more.

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I Am An Excellent Concealer!

Francois de La Rochefoucauld: "The height of cleverness is to be able to conceal it."

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Baby's Gone

My baby had just left me in a hurry
And I was fixated on some mild pain I'd gotten
When the door flew open and I spun in the rain
And I fell to the floorboards gasping--
Either that or I just came.
There's always the chance I pissed my pants
And didn't know it,
But that would be almost unbearably warm
And so why wouldn't I know it?
Amazing how much reaction skin
Can have to inner organ temperatures.
I almost thought I was bleeding!
Better check to see if my baby cut my nuts
In more ways than one when she left...
Things like that happen all the time.
Life is very hard around here lately,
Though mostly we just watch TV and stare...
Come on, crazy, what comes next?

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