I woke up last night. My sweetie was laying there crying.
A few nights ago part of my anti-virus clean up program wasn’t working right. I pay 50 bucks a year for this program. So I called the company, told them the problem. They verified my account and wanted to LAN in to my computer. I let them. The dude obviously knew what he was doing. Scrolled thru file after file. Asked a few questions like “Do you do banking on the computer? Do you make online purchases?” Well, yes and yes.
On 8/21 maintenance responded to my complaint of ants in the kitchen presumably by leaving a little white box for me to fold up and place on the floor that would get rid of the ants. I dont know if they also sprayed or not. All I got was the box.
A week later I hadn't seen any ants, but there weren't any in the box either.
Then last night I left a few fried pies from Turner Falls on the counter and had a million ants swarm out! I took the box and put it up there with the ants and they crawled all over the box, but none ever went in it. Not a one. So I squished as many as I could.
I hope you will send someone over to do something more than leave an ant motel on the counter for me to install, and they will let me know what they did. I’m really missin’ those fried pies.
I made my kids watch this old movie about the giant ants. When the ants came out they groaned and said “Aw Daddy,its so FAKE!”
"The mind wants to live forever, or to learn a very good reason why not. The mind wants the world to return its love, or its awareness; the mind wants to know all the world, and all eternity, even God. The mind's sidekick, however, will settle for two eggs over easy. The dear, stupid body is as easily satisfied as a spaniel. And, incredibly, the simple spaniel can lure the brawling mind to its dish. It is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg."
Annie Dillard, writing about an Eclipse
Watercolor by Joseph Zbukvic
Somehow I wound up in an Honors algebra class in the 9th grade. I wasn’t smoking pot for another year, but I discovered Rhonda, and how much fun getting my hands in her pockets was, and I also discovered that I was brilliant enough to pass Algebra without doing any homework. This set the tone for the rest of my academic career with the discovery that a class could be passed without actually, you know, knowing the material. I may have PASSED Algebra, but by no stretch of the imagination could I actually DO Algebra.
The chickens came home to roost the next year in Geometry, where I was surprised to find that knowing some Algebra would have been good. That’s how I flunked my first class ever. Oh, the pot probably didn’t help.
The next year I was in Chemistry, and without any Algebra or Geometry skills, I was toast there too, and ended up in a remedial math class as a Senior, because the State required its students to have passed at least one HS math class.
It was Speech Class and the Debate Club that saved my HS experience. Watergate had been going on, and Nixon resigned at the start of my senior year, and I was into it enough to think I might want to be a lawyer. I thought I did until about April, when I was called to the Deans office because I hadnt attended any classes except for Speech and Government in months. I had to sit outside his office and wait while he got ready to bust my balls, and it was while I sat staring at pictures of past Principals lined up on the wall that I had an epiphany.
I was a horrible student.
I didn’t want to be a lawyer, if being a lawyer meant another 8 years of school. I didnt want to be a lawyer if it meant even one more semester of this shit. So I decided then and there to be a chef. Because, well I like to eat.
The last day of school when you clean out your locker and turn in your books? I had to go to the office and find out my locker number and the combination.
My mother asked me if I remembered
The time we got drunk and cheered for the Cowboys.
When I was about 9 years old I would sneak up to dads room. I’d open the top drawer of his bureau, move aside the three stacks of handkerchief's, and pull out his .22 caliber revolver with the 9” barrel. I’d feel the heft of it in my hand, aim it at the window, feel the resistance on the trigger.
1. I will practice self-restraint as a top priority today.
2. When angry, I will act the opposite of how I feel.
3. If I feel like my anger is about to erupt I will QUIETLY leave the situation.
4. I will find truth in all criticisms directed towards me today, especially from my partner.
5. I will say “You are right” in a sincere meaningful way when criticized.
6. I will give an example of how the person who criticized me is right.
7. I will repeat this to myself “I am better off being wrong, because when I’m right, I’m a real jerk”
8. I will avoid trying to explain myself.
9. I will listen to my partner when they tell me about their day. I’ll make eye contact, and turn off the TV.
10. I will avoid giving unsolicited advice to anyone, especially my partner and children.
11. I will avoid blaming people for things today, especially if it was their fault.
12. I will avoid trying to make people “understand”.
13. I will look for opportunity to praise everyone today, even the cat.
14. I will humbly commit to removing my angry behaviors today as my contribution towards a more peaceful world.
Paraphrased from Newton Hightowers "Anger Busting 101"
"We are going through a phase where its less if you can have, have, and more if you can have, have quickly"
I don't know if Dave posted this, or if he said it, but last night I dreamed he did.
"“Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”
From a cool article here.
I only had one teacher ever lay a hand on me. It was Mr Gittins in the 1st grade. I lived in Detroit, it was November and the water that pooled in the cement sandboxes we had at school had frozen over. I was out there with my buddies banging my heel into the ice, and the water underneath was splashing all the way up to my knees. It was probably about 32 degrees being November and all, and I was just about sopping wet and having the time of my life when suddenly a hand grabbed me by the nape of my neck and pulled me out.
Back in the 50's, when Eisenhauer was president, we were doing a lot of research in the Arctic.
For the first time, an eskimo was going to come to Washington and visit the White House.
So he comes, and sets up an Igloo right there on the White House lawn and that night attends a fancy state dinner with President Eisenhauer.
After dinner, the president walks him back to the igloo On the way they talk about Arctic exploration, Baby Harp seals, the Russians and some of the issues of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic.
They make it back to the igloo, there on the White House lawn and the president asks the eskimo
"So whats it like in that Igloo?"
And the eskimo says "Its fucking cold"
In a dream someone told me this joke. I woke up, and shifted dreams. In my new dream I was telling the joke to to Denny Crane and James Spader. When I got to the punchline I was laughing so hard I couldn't say it. I couldn't get it out.
"And the eskimo says......ahhahahehee... The eskimo says hahahahahehehe...he says its f-f-f-f hahahaha.......says its.....hahaha..... the eskimo says "Its fucking cold".
Crane and Spader just look at me like I'm an idiot, clink their martini glasses together.
Spader says "Well, I'm satisfied" and Crane says "Lock and load"
Then I woke up.
Where did I hear this eskimo joke? Or did I really just dream it?
I'd forgotten about Blue Bayou's immaculate origins. I had bought her for my sisters birthday. Got a little glass bowl, filled it with those pretty glass rocks and some green seaweed, and Blue, a purplish blue and pink fan tailed Boa. I took it up to the rehabilitation hospital where my sister was recovering from a neck surgery.
I entered the room 'Happy Birthday Lisa!" but Lisa had had a bad day. She didnt like it there at all. There was a sign on her door that she was NOT to be disturbed for any reason before 9am, and that day Lisa had trashed her room like a rock star. I don't think she had thrown the TV out the window, but she had given it her best shot. She didn't want any part of me or Blue, and the next day she split from Rehab against medical advice and walked home.
Luckily, it was only about 5 blocks, but I think she would have tried it even if it had been 50 miles.
And that's how I came to have a fish named Blue Bayou.
I was out of trash bags for a week. Every time I went to the store, I forgot them. Last week at 10 O’clock at night I decided I was tired of the trash that was collecting on my table, on the counter, in a nice neat pile there by the front door, so I went to the grocery.
All the way to the back of the store I go. Past the dish soap, the spray starch, greeting cards, light bulbs, charcoal and paper plates Here at last, the garbage bags!
Why would they put a pallet of chocolate chip cookies there by the trash bags? Cookies are supposed to be at the other end of the store. And its not just chocolate chips, but the ones with M&M’s, brightly colored, and pecan sandies, and even those chocolate dipped marshmallow rosettes on the cookie crust.
I hadn’t bought cookies in a year.
I looked. I resisted. I looked and started to step away, Stopped. Started. Why would they do this. Brightly colored M&M’s. They call. The pastel tans of the sandies. Beckoning, like a white whale. Huge chunks of chocolate.
Away! Away! Get thee away!
Two steps and back.
Four steps and back.
Yet again.
I staggered ten steps to aisle 9 and started to take a left.
Stopped. Started. Away!
I can’t. I must.
I go on. Halfway down the aisle now. I can’t go on.
I’m hooked. I knew from the minute I saw them.
In a half trance I turn and moonwalk back to the brightly colored reds, blues, yellows.
All the little elves, dancing gaily from the hollow tree.
They want to go home with me. I want to take them there.
I limit myself to one package. Only one stop more now.
A half gallon of milk.
And home.
"How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren’t, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames, our one work
is
to open ourselves, to be
the flames?"
"I want to apologize to all of my American friends for failing to either die or get better. I know many of you hate the very word socialism, but as of today I have become a beneficiary of all of your labor in a purely socialist way; as of today, I am receiving . . . ahem . . . Medicare. Yes sir, I am right now enjoying a barium shake that all of you have paid for. Thank you!
I thought I would have died by now but here I am persisting in this not-dead-yet-not-fully-alive limbo, with no end in sight. I never wanted to be a burden to society. I drink very little and have never smoked or done drugs. I exercise. I try to be kind to the people I meet. But here I am, sucking on the big tit.
I hope you all will forgive me for not pulling my weight as Americans of my age are expected to do. People with my illness, who don't succumb to it in a timely fashion, cannot be treated profitably and thus screw up our whole profit-based health care system. I'm the problem and I know that. For what it's worth, I will promise to do what I can, short of hanging myself from the railroad bridge on the Don Tyson Parkway, to resolve my health situation one way or the other as soon as possible. In the mean time, thank you again. The shake is delicious!"
“Have you ever thought… about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.”
Antoine de Saint Exupery
We play cheerful music on the suicide hotline—
cheerful but not too cheerful.
Nothing with lyrics.
Sometimes, when I finally talk to them,
they're crying, and sometimes they keep crying.
I fight the urge to tell them jokes.
Sometimes they get on my nerves.
Sometimes I ask them to see things from my point of view.
They gulp. They try. Even in crisis
they are polite.
I ask them where it hurts.
They always have an answer.
Here's what they don't know. When I play the music,
I'm still on the line. I listen to them breathing.
If their breathing slows, I keep playing
the hold music. I'm like a deejay and I'm like
a doctor. I adjust the music with care. I fine-tune,
giving them what they need at just that moment.
I'll ask them to hold and play the music again.
I have a button I can press that makes the music skip.
The same sound repeats for twenty seconds.
When I get back on the line with them, they never fail
to let me know about the problem. They're helpful.
"Thank you," I say. "We'll fix that for next time."
It reminds them they are part of the world. Then
they tell me things, sometimes haltingly,
sometimes in one big rush. How they feel,
how bad it is.
I can keep them on the line for hours.
The main thing is to keep them on the line.
Jessy Randall
I got a call from the Program chairperson from my NA group.
‘Steve, would you speak on the 12 Traditions of NA on Tuesdays this month?”
The 12 Traditions are kind of like the 12 Steps. But they are dry, boring, confusing, and the equivalent of reading Article III Section 2 of the US Constitution:
"The judicial power shall extend to all cases (blah), in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws(blah)(blah) of the United States(blah), and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority;--to all cases affecting ambassadors (blah), other public ministers and consuls;--to all cases of admiralty(blah), and maritime jurisdiction(blah),;--to controversies to which the United States shall be a party…blah, blah, blah…”
So I said “You know, I’d really love to, but I haven’t really worked the traditions. I’ve been SUPPOSED to be working the Traditions with my sponsor for the last year, but we haven’t exactly been knocking it out of the park, if you know what I mean.”
‘Which one are you on?” he asked.
“Would you believe Number 1?” I said, ashamed.
“Well this is the perfect time to work them then.” He said.
“Aw man, I know you are right but I’m just not prepared to do them”
And he let me off the hook.
But as soon as I hung up, I knew that the answer should have been yes. I didn’t call him right back, but I saw him the next day.
“Have you found anybody ?” I asked.
“No”
“Well sign me up, put me down. I’ll do it.
And that is how I came to speak on the 12 Traditions for an hour each night for four weeks in February.
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on NA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority— a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.
3. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop using.
4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or NA as a whole.
5. Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry the message to the addict who still suffers.
6. An NA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the NA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, or prestige divert us from our primary purpose.
7. Every NA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. Narcotics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers. 9. NA, as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. Narcotics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the NA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
They have finally convicted someone of voter fraud here in Texas. Right here in Tarrant County. She was a Republican. I hope they catch them all.
I mean, I hope they catch BOTH of them. (click here)
My dreams don’t usually need much interpretation. I had one about her last week.
Last year I had bought filters for her pool, 200 bucks. Then the pump went out and I gave her another 200, but she never got it fixed. Her pool looked like a big cup of coffee, and her yard was a wreck. I helped her get it all cleaned up, and it looked good but for the pool. The idea was she was going to sell the house soon, and she would pay me back for the pool.
About the first of June last year, after six years, I decided I’d played the part of the other woman hiding in a closet long enough, and told her to come get her shit from my place, and I hadn’t seen her since. She seamlessly moved on to another friend of mine who doesn’t know about me, and I’m not supposed to know about him. But I do.
I got this friend from my youth. He owns a business. His employees call him sir. His wife calls him husband his kids call him dad. He chews tobacco, coaches the softball team, plays third base and bats .330. Usually at home he is in baggy shorts flip flops and a tank top. Shaves his head an wears a beard. He dresses business casual at work, but sometimes wears a suit.
The thing is, when I knew him 45 years ago, he was a girl and one of the best friends I ever had.
So what restroom do you think this fellow should use?
Or some cookies, maybe some Blue Bell ice cream or something.
Usually when I get in a discussion with someone about this they start out with ‘Deport them all. Just being here is a criminal act”. But after a while they calm down a bit, and say “just the criminals who have committed other crimes” which was Obama’s policy. But not all of them tone it down.
It was eliminating Obama’s policy that Trump campaigned on, saying ““We will immediately terminate President Obama’s two illegal executive amnesties (DACA and DAPA) in which he defied federal law and the constitution to give amnesty to approximately 5 million illegal immigrants,”
I’ll be glad to think that he has softened this approach, but it doesn’t surprise me that they might consider it before realizing it’s a bad idea. I just wonder what his base thinks.
“If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
