Get Away Before You Explode

Dogger Gone, Solid Gone

I'd like to feel you up, he said, and if not you, then someone else would do. What's your pretty sister doing? Or, for that matter, the homely one? I'm not in love and can't pretend to be. You got a sister who just likes to wiggle, or a mommy who used to be a bouncy busty beauty before everything went South, or even a pair of rubber gloves--I could teach you how to do it, it ain't hard, or rather, it IS hard and I got to do somethin' about it, can't you tell!!! I'm lonesome, lass, and I can't do a thing about it...well, there's that, but I avoid it because I might get addicted to it, you know, he said laughing, emphasizing the addicted until it sounded like ad-dick-ted, so why in the world did she continue to stand there with him, it was a big world, a big piece of beach and lots of people and if she waited long enough one of them cops in shorts would come along or maybe two of them, probably one to chat with while the other one did the arrest. Old crumb bum, she didn't know why he hung around like this, he often did, she never felt so naked as when he came out and stumbled over and glued his eyes to her crotch or made her nipples do little dances under her swimming top instead of just sitting there like they were meant to do, almost like they were trying to get excited, but how'd that be, she'd been a beauty back in high school and wasn't that far from it yet, so why's SHE getting stuck with this derelict who probably wanted to fuck almost anything female he saw. If she was like him, she'd want to fuck almost any man she saw, and that would be pathetic. So why tolerate Him? "Goddamn, get away from me," she finally said. He went away into some corner and most of the day just seemed to disappear with him. Nothing else happened, or at least no one could remember it!

Revert To Never-Never-Land?

I found a curious thing, though I may be among the last to discover it. I just took a recently-created blog, played with it, then subjected it to the Revert to Classic button. Oddly enough, the system "reverted" it even though it had never been a classic template. I didn't test everthing about it, but I thought it was very curious. Maybe someday I'll think of some use for this marvellous piece of information. Till then, la di dah, on we dance...

I Don't Wanna!

I Don't Wanna Pickle...

I'm just tired of hearing bloggers whine about not wanting to give up their precious old Classic template and be forced to Upgrade to New Blogger. Now that it's been many months, it's like some kid insisting on staying on his tricycle when we all know it's time to ride the bicycle! Shit, get off the pot, willya!? So what if this is America and nobody wants to be forced to do anything. I was reviewing some of my posts in my help blog, "Most Frequent Blogger Questions", when I realized that one of the posts contained instructions Only for the New Blogger. I thought for a moment that I'd add instructions for how to do that in Classic when I realized that I no longer knew how to do it in Classic! It was like trying to remember how to hand-roll a cigarette or something, it was buried in the back of my cast-iron brain! Maybe it could be retrieved, but what the fuck for?! I'm not gonna smoke it! So I just backed the hell out of that post and left it the hell alone. Hell! (Get my drift?)

The Usual Beat

Bloggers? They write gooshy posts about Christmas and further foul up the season, don't they? There's already enough carrying on and tra-la-la-ing going on if you ask me. I've never understood why you can't just shoot the silly sonsofbitches. It would be a lot quieter.

All Together

What is it with this "rcs" in my signature instead of my name at the bottom of these posts? Am I a supreme egotist? Well, yes. The substitution for "Ron Southern" has been going on since I was a teenager when I began signing poems and letters with those initials. At the time, I would scrawl an "x" under the initials and later it turned into a curly rat-tail connected to the "s". In the Internet world, the "x" turned into a period ("."), don't ask me why. Email and blogs may have curtailed all the cursive writing in the world as well as my esoteric "signature", but there remains this keyboard signature. So the current "rcs" dates back to when I was 17 or so, and that means about 40 years of scrawling or representing that signature. Isn't that boring? Am I so famous? Not exactly. I seldom send any real mail any more, so that old signature has little chance for expression. But I am not the only one. Every lazy boy and girl I know does much the same, signed their messages to me with their initials as if no one else in the world might have them. And oddly, I do know them at a glance. If I see a "JE" or "gk" or "pt" or "go", I do know exactly who that's likely to be, even in the machine fonts of the Internet. I guess initials are a form of familiarity--of humanity, even-- and the Internet can't entirely overcome that. Humanity survives, even in the machine. What was it the Beatles said? "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together." Yeah, that. Clear as mud.

Climbed Out Through the Bathroom Window

Let's skip today. Yawn...

Goodnight!

Well, I got a handful of comments--just round up the usual suspects, Louis! Nobody wanted to argue, so that much was good. I hate it when I have to kill a friend. Or have such done to me, for that matter.

Bah, it's late, and my brain can't be trusted to continue long. It already seems like a very long walk from here (my study) to the house. Off I go. Uh, I been off for a long time, come to think of it!

Twiddler--Izzat Something Sexy?

No damn new comments today, either! But Loren sneaked one in last night, so I guess that counts somewhere--whether yesterday or today, it counts!

La di dah, twiddling my thumbs again now...

Sniff, Approximately

Big Weep
I usually have a comment or two every day. EVERY day. Not so today! Bold Jesus, what has gone wrong? Will the planet tilt next and the big yellow-cheese ball plummet out of the sky? I'm worried. I don't care if some of you are dead (I couldn't control it in any case), I just wonder what I'm going to occupy my day with if this keeps up!

Christmas Grrr!

I just finished putting together a 3 year old's Radio Flyer "little red wagon". Whew!!! You'd think it would be easy, but you wouldn't have talked to me, if that's what you thought! I can make anything difficult. The wagon isn't my present to him, I was just the workman. The tricycle, also Radio Flyer, hidden in the garage at present, is the present I'm getting him. For a kid his age, he's about to be rich! Lord knows what other treasure he'll rack up this Christmas! So will his older sister, but she's has more prior experience that he's had, and besides she can read, so nothing much can be said about that here. Of course, she'd probably get a whipping if she was found browsing in horrid sites like mine. I might even be the one to whip her! Hope none of her treasure has to be put together. If so, her Daddy will have to do that--I've done my one good deed for the season! The rest of you can just Beware and Bugger Off! Mad dog here, nobody approach!

Appearances

Two years have elapsed in Aruba (as well as here) and it appears that Natalee Holloway's still missing and still dead.

Goodbye Winston Hello Stalin

I've finished one giant bio and started another. Finished is this one: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 by William Manchester Pub. Date: September 1989 and picked up Stalin: The First In-depth Biography, Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives, by Edvard Radzinsky, 1997 It's a move into major darkness from the spark and light of life, but I'm not very deep into the Stalin book yet. I read so slowly these days, it's exasperating. I get uncomfortable and have to soon reassemble myself somewhere, and that's the end of the goddamn book for a while. One day's reading simply isn't very much. I wish it were, but it's not. In some senses, Churchill can be said to have saved the planet. Stalin had a nearly opposite effect. Yet, now that he's gone, he's nowhere near as Present as Churchill, though the Englishman's just as dead!

A Season In Hell

I have new neighbors. When I met one of them, he seemed alright, but now that his dogs have moved in, I hope he dies in hell. The damned fucking dogs are just little dachshunds, but they never stop barking at anyone in my yard, whether it's me or children, whether it's minutes or hours. I am starting to have fond thoughts of beating the two of them to death with my walking stick, and that's no joke. Jesus, what a bad trip having neighbors is!

Sugar-Free Snack Patrol

Hill & Valley makes some fabulous, great big oatmeal raisin cookies, big enough for the greediest of cookie monsters! That's the ticket—ummm. Alas, there are no more of the big damn cookies at present. I ate the last one just minutes ago. Hope I remember to get some more next time I'm at Wal*Mart. They aren't inexpensive at $3.47 for a dozen, but they're sugar-free and tasty, and you know that can't be bad!

Another brand of very good sugar-free cookies is "Gotta Have", the stupidest name for a product that I can recall, but they are inexpensive, it seems to me. (No link for them at present, so either they're new or dumb.) I always forget the name if the package isn't right in front of me, so I have to search for it rather than have a store clerk go get it for me! But, at least for this diabetic, they please the taste buds with 3 different types of cookies: 1. one is a fudge covered graham cracker. 2. another's an exact ripoff of Keebler's chocolate stripes on shortbread. 3. lastly, some kind of frosted oatmeal cookie. I realize I failed to give the exact names, but I generally eat 'em, I don't make personal friends with 'em! If you try them and they suck, send the unused portion to me and I'll dispose of them in a sanitary manner.

Nobody I Know

Nobody I know is up so late unless they're working or in pain. Guess I better give it up. Happily I fall asleep like a log most nights. I don't know why. I used to count minutes, nanoseconds, whatever before I could get to sleep.

Fear, What Fears?

What am I afraid of? What about lizards and snakes?! What about sharks at the beach and bears in the woods? Or spiders (or even just the sensation of spiders) beneath your shirt? (After mowing the lawn, such things are more than feasible!) Or ice down your back. Such fun. Should one remove the shirt or not?! I have always thought that some men are afraid of homosexuals and that’s why Texas boys beat the shit out of otherwise unoffending queers! Some men (maybe the same ones?) are afraid of their mamas! Houses that creak at night when no else but you is home! Fear of heights gets a lot of us. Other drivers. The road itself! FDR said all we had to fear was Fear Itself—that doesn't entirely make sense, but it worked okay for him in wartime. Now, Claustrophobia is big, I know that—but I never thought I had it until I’d been in a utility tunnel (underground) at work for more than an hour, and it was LONG ENOUGH! I had to get the hell out of there, using one of the emergency manhole exits and crawling like a tobacco-breathing monkey up and over the various pipes (hot, cold, and electrical)! Whatever you’ve got, fear is neither functional nor fun—I think it’d be better to be stupid, naive, and bold—except then the bears would get you! Fear of the number 13!

Fragment

I'd throw another conniption fit,
Dear Carmen, just to get your approval,
If I thought I could throw it very far.
Besides, those fits take a lot out of me these days.

Nother Clown Stamp

Maniac Clown

Old Friends

Here's a poem that means a lot to me, so that makes it "good". Yet it's also bad. I can't explain. Click Beautiful Diana for a fairly long but conversational read.

Cute

Kill me,

I'm cute!

Humanity I love you

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old Howard
Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush your pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
always making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you

by E.E. Cummings

---

One Bullet

[A Pox On Your House!]

Why can't I get no fucking votes? I don't mean the meaningless Poll located in the sidebar here, but the two Polls in my other blog, "Most Frequent Blogger Questions". Both polls there are serious, both attempting to determine what percentage of people are getting any help from the site. If there ever were to be a significant number, perhaps I would mend my ways and improve the site! But so far, the votes have dragged in slowly like children forced to walk to school. If you all happened to line up single-file and God gave me a gun with a single unstoppable bullet, I'd be in heaven! Skunks to you all!!! And troubling mice as well! May rats nibble your Bibles and crap on your velvet portraits of Elvis.

Dorothy Finds A Father Figure

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! He's only adjusting his pants!

More Than Thirteen Terrible Thoughts for Today

General idea stolen from Frustrated Writer. It's sloppy, but it's useful! Raise skunks, kick 'em in the guts, then box them up for transport in a horse-drawn carriage. I think I need to find some medicine to take for arthritis. My back feels terrible; soon I'll be all humped over! Maybe I'll take generic Tylenol until my next doctor's appointment. Pricks and Praises--where did THAT thought come from?! Laughing all the way to the tank. You can't beat that. Lots of people try, though. Don't bend me twice. I'm out of whack; how about you? Some of us were sincere. How come all Presidential candidates try to pretend there are no such words as piss, fuck, or shit? And then insist that they don't use them even if there are? How long are these pretenses going to go on in a world where we don't mind saying Kill all day long and depicting it all night? Some of you monkeys have gone Ape-shit, you know that? Are you lusty, are you slim, Are you sick yet of all this vigor and vim? half-formed lines of poetry that lay around waiting for me like stagnant pools of water... Hostess Camel Cupcake--what?! Where'd that idea come from? Who would pay for one, much less eat it! Is this more than thirteen? Jesus, that's all the thinking I can do! How does it get so late these days? What keeps my brain busy? Wait a minute! Ha. Why does this tiny box of Sun-Maid raisins seem to always have stems and other inedible bits in it? There's so many uneatable bits in my mouth when I've eaten the raisoins that I wonder how many other stems and bits I swallowed! I see that Sun-Maid bitch on the package is as cute as ever, even if her raisin quality now bites the big one like all this other name-brand shit. Modern love slurps. Another extra thought: if you want to see how bad things have gotten, think of something you used to enjoy using or that worked really well for you, then go out and buy a new one exactly like it. Either you won't be able to find one at all or you'll find it and it'll be of far lower quality--won't work as well, won't last as long!

Another of Frustrated's Lists

Thirteen Famous People I Would Like to Taser Madonna--zzzzzz... Dan Rather--retirement is good, boy; ask Walter Cronkite. Paris Hilton--she probably got nobody to ask. Dr. Phil--oh, yeah! O.J. Simpson--well, why the fuck not! Hugh Hefner's three girlfriends--are they more than one person? Barbara Walters--the old bitch won't get off the air and won't get off the pot and die, either, so what else is there to do? John Cougar Mellencamp--never could tolerate him. First time I saw him was an interview by Tom Snyder, and that's about how I've always seen him. How cool can you be being popular with Tom Snyder? Brrr! Britney Spears--oh, why not? Tom Cruise--what an invented superstar/authentic asshole John Stossel--I don't think he knows what Merit is. Nancy Grace--just so she'd shut up 5 seconds. Bill O'Reilly--well, why not? do it just for fun! Shit, I'm sorry to stop. This list could go on and on!

Send Brothers, Blogs and Money!

("The Shit Has Hit The Fan")

No, it hasn't! I am actually here to play, as always. It's blogging, and blogging has become a part of how I live. I can try to consider ads and such, but so far it has not taken. I was poor before I found blogging, I guess I can be poor some more. Wasn't that a novel? "Poor No More"! Song and book titles stick in my mind like bread crumbs with jelly. Read it as a teenager--something about Africa, but I can't remember what!

Oh, but should I have more ambition here, you ask? Or maybe it's I who ask. Yes, but it was always so, and I am still this poor Thing you see (or read), no better! Who knows? I have always been in need of a (nonexistent) older brother to straighten me out in these and other matters. Maybe he'd have gotten me laid more or drunk on my can more often. Or gotten me to vote Republican--naw, that would have been pushing his influence. But I have to guess at all that. All I ever had was some rambunctious cousins who were too close to my own age or too far away geographically to suit the bill as "big brother" substitute. I had a couple of "young" uncles, but that ain't the same, either! So on and on we go... That's ANOTHER song lyric. A kiss on the lips to whoever guesses what song or where it's from! (Ha--a poor prize, but mine own!)

So what was this post about--brothers, blogs or money? Even my memory is poor!

The book below even looks like the cheap paperback edition that I read as a kid!

Human Impulses Be Damned

When I was younger I was always getting a great hardon for some girl who didn't want me to, who didn't even want to know about it! Now that I am older, the hardons are few and not so hard, but the girls (the women, too) have all the same objections, and more. Is it always morality and repugnance, or are they sometimes just subverting our instinctual reality for a lark? I don't think they would tell... Maybe lady Bloggers would? But they aren't close enough, are they? My hardons for them are really literary, not literal--call it purely ephemeral! So sad.

Hungry Recliners, Lazy Humans

Well, goddamn, I've been fooled and fucked. My old favorite pocket knife (Buck #501) wasn't lost this past year and more! It was hiding under a big recliner that nobody ever completely moved when vacuuming. It's hard to say if I was glad to see it or not since I'd already replaced it a few weeks ago with another locking-blade knife, a Winchester something-or-other. Sorta nice to have it, but if one remembers to carry one's knife in one's pocket, what the hell use is there for a spare? What WILL I do with two, and WHICH one will I carry? I love the old one, but am still shamefully enamoured of the shiny new one! Maybe some friendly thief will come and relieve me of the burden of this ownership and then I'll have to fall back on the old one? Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right! Maybe I'll become a collector like our friend Frustrated. No, I can't do that, I'm already collecting cheap hats. Bought another $2 hat yesterday--it's even a different style than the others, though similar enough. You wouldn't mistake it for a goddamn cowboy hat, anyway.

Out And About

I've been out and about lately, buying this and buying that. After having the carotid ultrasound test (easy, over in no time, very expensive!), I went for a drive in my car (which I'd just spent 300-plus dollars on) to the nearby Good Will Store. There it took forever to go through the pants because the manufacturers and the store personnel seem to conspire to place the size tag where it can't be found when clamped into one of Good Will's magic fuck-you hangers! Just to add a kick in the seat to a kick in the teeth, some pants sizes could not be found when removed completely from the hangers and turned inside out! I even tried to look for places where a tag had been cut off, but didn't find it. One wonders how they ever sold the pants when they were new. I felt like an enemy agent from whom they were hiding important information! Quite successfully in some cases. Finally found 3 pair of pants and two shirts that were the right size, made a quick tour around the store in case they were selling gold for lead, and then got out of there!

Since the office equipment store was nearby, I cruised by there and checked out various things, but mainly their selection of office desks. The cheaper they were, the less I liked them, and the more outrageously they were priced, the MORE I liked them! The really nice ones were $1700 (oak) and $1500 (cherry). I thought the price of the one for $500 was extravagant for me, though it was humbled by the high price and gorgeousity of the top of the line models! I had office desks when I worked at the University, but they were always used ones whether they were wood or steel. NEW would be nice. But my tastes exceed my grasp. It would take every cent I own to get either of the expensive ones. That's not what would be considered wise.

So I went on a small spending spree to get the poison out of my system. I don't remember it all. I bought a new ball point ($2). I bought some multivitamins (ugh, I must be old). Some clip-on sunglasses ($18). Two low-price CD's ($14 total)--Elvis and Ray Charles. Can't do without the dead guys. Went on a junk-run in the grocery section: sugar-free soft drinks and cookies, along with wheat bread, raisin bread, various items I can't think of now and can't ever do without. Oh, Cheetoes--that's one! Etc.

Came home and wrote some checks to some sonsofbitches I owe money to. Some of them are doctors or clinics who didn't "find anything". They charge for examining you, not for curing you! It's a pretty good system (for them).

Among the emails here lately have been a few from my friend George, who decided to crawl out of the muck (I don't really know what it was) after five years and let it be known he was alive and doing fairly well. I wish people wouldn't do that, but then I love him, and that's a fact I can't knock down with all my chagrin about his absence. Hope he stays a while.

Further Inanimate-World Speculation

Not to mention that sometimes I just bore me shitless!

This is, however, NOT a poll!

Life?

Robert Frost: "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

The Inanimate World

Do you ever think that the inanimate world is out to fuck you over?

Just a thought.

Jeez. I Furfingfluffered!

Oops! I got to adjust something, I don't know what, but I'll hurry! Too many scrolls per post (in some posts)!

Okay, okay, I saved it. Hopefully no more multiple scrollydividers!

Profoundly grateful to all of those who held their breath for five seconds...

No More HR!

I was using <hr color=crimson>—I guess that stands for "horizontal rule"—at the end of every post so that I (or you) could tell at a glance where each post ended or began when one was browsing. Now I've shoved this row of scrollydivider S-looking things—whatever they are—into a more appropriate "end of post" position in the code. It was more difficult to locate. Naturally, I think I'm a genius (as I always do) when anything goes right or when I figure anything out with the furfingfluffing damn code! Ha! Beat you down, you goddamn wretched sonofabitch template!!!

No doubt lots of smart people in the blog world shrug about my victory, but I don't mind. For me, it's rocket science! Not to mention, just having the patience to find the right place! Getting old is no fun, boys and girls. I trip on every pebble and rejoice at every feeble trip across the finish line!

And NOW, once again, comes the famous Scrollydivider!!!

Doppler Neck-toid!!!

I spoke too soon when I mentioned "the next procedure some mad scientist wants to perform". At any rate, it took no time before just that occurred. What I thought would be some fairly uneventful chat (since that's all I've been having lately, sonsabitches), but this medical practitioner thought it'd be a great idea to have me take a carotid Doppler test! What am I, a weather system now? Apparently, Doppler in this sense is a synonym for ultrasound. Oh. Sounds like nuthin'. Except when they start finding blood clots and clumps of cholesterol and half-digested carrots and thin-shaved ham sludge showing up in there. Then they'll have some other torture machine to attach me to. I just know it. Probably something worse than the slow speed on one of those cowboy-bar bull rides. It won't kill me, maybe--but something will, and knowing too much makes me feel like it's hurrying along. I'll be paying for this procedure in increments for four months. Whoopee, we're all gonna die!

Tip Toe Through The Tulips

I used to write health (or medical) updates to a set of friends via email, but I haven't kept that up for some time. People drift apart, for one thing. For another, I don't seem so dramatic a subject to me any more. Without getting well, my diseases are made commonplace and unworthy of remark. I take my medication and until the next procedure some mad scientist wants to perform, it is difficult to focus myself on the current state of health sufficiently to have words for it all. I've worn out many of the words, and am sick of myself, so how could my friends not be sick of me? Therefore, I've tapered off, and seldom have much to say. I use the cane more and sometimes wonder if that doesn't make me more dependent--it's a vicious circle, maybe. Even if it does, it insures against me falling to the floor again, an experience one cannot relish! I really only fell (completely) once, but once is all it takes to make me stop trying to "bull" my way through all this feebleness in my head or neuropathy in my feet that contributes to my present state of inattention. Am I "dizzy" or not? I don't know--the word has a tendency to sound comical and therefore I shun it when I can. But the semantics don't really matter much, do they? The only bad thing about the cane these days is that once in a while you have to prop it somewhere for a moment, and when I do that, it is apt to slide askew and fall to the floor! Damnation! I cobbled together some bits of leather I already had lying around and made a sort of "holster" for the cane to hang on the back of my belt, out of the way when I need to employ both hands at once. That works pretty well unless I forget it's there and start taking full steps with it, causing the cane to swing and almost trip me. Nothing's perfect. This method sure isn't.

---

Dog Remarks, Etc. by Diogenes

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

I am called a dog because I fawn on those who give me anything, I yelp at those who refuse, and I set my teeth in rascals.

The sun too penetrates into privies, but is not polluted by them.

What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.

---

What Drags

Everything is nothing, and the rest just drags behind.

---

Ode to a Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat

Remarks By Jackie Kennedy

Can anyone understand how it is to have lived in the White House and then, suddenly, to be living alone as the President's widow?

He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. it had to be some silly little Communist.

I don't think there are any men who are faithful to their wives.

I don't understand it. Jack will spend any amount of money to buy votes but he balks at investing a thousand dollars in a beautiful painting.

I want minimum information given with maximum politeness.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

Sex is a bad thing because it rumples the clothes.

The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse.

---

Don't Worry

Don't worry, I'm not offended.
I'm just living in an empty bucket
and hearing echoes, dreadful echoes,
feeling the vibration but not the good
of metallic pings,
Gulping water just to get
All these throat-clutching pills
Down each morning.

I write sometimes just to hear
What I think sounds good
To my lazy tortured ear,
Though at the time it doesn't sound well,
And maybe I just want to see how long
It takes a penny to fail (oh how it falls!)
Or how far the teeter-totter pail will fall
(oh what a pall!)
Into that insensate bottom of the well
Where I live.

---

Ignorance--Whut?

Bernard Berenson:
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."

---

Deadly Misstatements

Fatal Erection Died In The Saddle Dyed In The Bucket Kicked The Bucket Kicked His Boots Kicked His Horse Stuck It In A Barrel Hoist by his Own Windemere Have a Plush Flushie For A Sex Snack Quotidian Murphy On My Bum Lapsed Bagel Soup Perverted Troikas And Fushy Wushies! Outdated Young Neurologist Is Anyone On Fire Yet? Sweet And Sour Dreams of Soap Scum What's A fuckin' Meme, Anyway? baba yaba, we're through!

Meandering And Dithering

I have occupied myself with small details, arranging things in my primary rooms (bedroom, study), all without moving any heavy furniture, of course, over and over again. If you read TRS, you know some of this. But I keep working at it. Today I decided the small awkward desk in my bedroom needed a "post" or leg to support the fold-out extension. It may be nicely balanced for light use, but once or twice I'd leaned on the wrong part of it and the desk started to tip over in that direction. Bad move with the new tuner/CD player perched on it. But that led me out to the garage, in front of which I saw many branches I'd meant to pick up and burn and so I ended up on that side trip for an hour or two because I found more debris to pick up as I went. Shit. What fun.

Anyway, I wonder now if I'll ever repair or replace this stereo out here in the study? It was worth a lot of money, or cost a lot, in the old days but my tastes are not so demanding or esoteric any more. The amount I'd spend for someone to even check all these components might cost as much as some cheap-ass player that would probably suit me OK. I'd try to interest my cousin, the retired electrician, in testing the power amp and pre-amp, but he never seems to get interested in my sorry ass lately. I can't blame him. He makes noises like he's gotten better since his heart surgery some months ago, but I find him evasive and impossible to engage in conversation about anything for long. I doubt he's "changed", but I guess he's made his adjustments to it. He had another heart surgery decades ago when he was young; this one was probably even less tolerable since he knew what was to come. Possibly he's just old and crotchety, like others I know. Anyway, I'm not his problem.

I wanted to buy one of those armrest pillows (cushions) one uses to sit up and read in bed, but Wal*Mart didn't have them when I was looking the last couple of times. It's taking a long time, so I guess I'll have to shop elsewhere, even if I only phone other Wal*Marts! I've never really found anything that they didn't have when I went there, so this is a new experience. Other stores, yes, but I seldom shop at other stores.

I got the wild hair to buy a large or just full-size desk and I see that all the new ones are steel, or artificial steel, or plastic or something. I wouldn't mind a used one, but there again, that requires driving and shopping, two things I abhor and despise. la di dah.

I bought some cute animal fluffies (my name) for my niece and nephew. I hid them away because I'm not sure if they are Christmas presents yet or not. If I can't think of anything else good, they're Xmas presents. Bought myself an $11 paper shredder--not that I have so many important papers to shred, just that I hate tearing them up by hand or having to remember to take them to the burning barrel. Lazy is my middle name. Other than "Lucky", of course.

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Celebrate 140 Posts At MFBQ

Now http://20stickyposts.blogspot.com/ has exceeded it's original goal of 20 important sticky posts by 120. Most Frequent Blogger Questions now has 140 helpful posts or FAQ's, and that's weird. It was never meant to grow to such a tome. It was just that I had accumulated about 20 useful Notepad files and thought that I could just print them out, then point Blogger Newbies in that direction, and go off and dream my dreams. It didn't work. Maybe it should have; there were many guides and Park Rangers and Goody-Goodies to tend the tender Newbies along the way without me. I've become just one of the crowd. That's how I see it. There are some of the "experts" who know more than I know, and it's plain to see. There are also some experts who don't even write with any frequency on the subject of Blogger codes and such, yet some of them know more than the rest of us, I think. They are busy with other clever work, I think, and only drop in at Blogger from time to time. Sometimes I think all of them know more than I do. Nonetheless, I can help. And that's not such a bad thing.

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Shake The Goblins Off My Ankles

Life Is All The Same

I'll give those poems of yours a look, I said,
When I can shake these goblins off my ankles
Or goose my neck up far enough to take a gander!
Sometimes I get too damn caught up
In Blogger and its lost-child supplicants
And my own self-serving interest
In writing up those esoteric aspects
That I finally come to understand
In some eloquent post that only
Other bloggers will ever
Get the gist of or
Be so silly as to love—
So much for Ego, I admit;
It always takes it all.
The Poet in me doesn't understand
How I can fritter away so much time
With this, but it's true.
And understand myself just as well
When I waste or spend
(Call it what your will)
hours and weeks and years even
On a single poem that never really ends
And may never be read,
But that's the art I draw upon myself
Whether any witness knows my labor here or not.

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Sneaky Feature, Part Two

Fell Swoops!

Well, after following Panther's directions to replace my "Posted by" signature with a graphic of my initials, I couldn't quite get the graphic low enough. I wanted it to appear to be on the line with the other text, not floating above it. Now Semavil Lady has ridden to the rescue on her favorite Anatolian Shepherd Dog (hi yo, Silver!) and saved me. At any rate, she knew the rest of the steps to dance me through! Basically, I needed to use a transparent graphic. Now the "rcs." sits pretty much down on the same plane with the printed text. It's not that it looks so great that it will impress others, but it's what I wanted and thus it impresses me!

Therefore, I extend my own "Thank you, Masked Man's" to Panther (I'm sure Peter and some other experts had the info, too, but I bumped into Panther's first!), and to Semavi Lady (the smartest cookie in the box, I've told her!), and the Lone Ranger, too, (if he's still there) all in one fell swoop!

Remember "fell swoops", boys and girls? There were a lot of them when I was a teenager. It was one of my favorite cliches! But I digress. (What the hell else do I ever do here?)

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