Weblog

Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Sunday, 22 February 2009

  • Tagged! I'm It?

    I was tagged by  Caerynn in an indirect way

    1. What time did you get up this morning?  4h00. LAy in bed watchung bad TV until 6h00.
    2.  Diamonds or Pearls?   I like pearls  I love to use them in my jewellery.
    3.  What was the last film you saw at the movies?  The International
    4.  What's your favorite TV show?   Supernatural
    5.  What do you usually have for breakfast?   Coffee
    6.  What is your middle name?  Depends who you ask - If you ask me Horatio. If you ask the birth certificate Robert. If you want the story ask me.
    7.  What food do you dislike?   Not a big fan of pasta
    8.  What kind of car do you drive?  3 year Mazada 3 Sport
    9.  Favorite sandwich?    Turkey club.
    10. What characteristic do you despise?   Someone who is melodramatic.
    11. Favorite item of clothing? My suspenders
    12. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go?  Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
    13. Are you an organized person?   I can be.
    14. Where would you like to retire to?   Retire?!? Me?!? .
    15. What was your most recent memorable birthday?   I don't really have one.
    16. What are you going to do when you finish this?  Think about going to Wal-Mart.
    17. Furthest place you are sending this?  somewhere just past the second start on the right
    18. Person(s) you think will send it back?   No one - then again I aint sending it to  anyone.
    19. When is your birthday?   August 5th
    20. Morning or night person?     Both - though my energy fades between 14h00-16h00
    21. What is your shoe size?  10EEE
    22. Pets?  Three cats, Shipadoodle, Ringo and Dreydel
    23. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share?   Not really I'm so uninteresting
    24. What did you want to be when you were little?   A biochemist
    25. How are you today?  Tired
    26. What is your favorite flower?   Snapdragon
    27. What are you listening to right now? Nothing 
    28. What day on the calendar are you looking forward to? April 11 - My daughter's 18th birthday.
    29. The last thing you ate?   Chocolate wafer
    30. Do you wish on stars?   No
    31. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?   Orange-red.
    32. How is the weather right now?  Snowy and wintry
    33. Last person you spoke to on the phone?   Friend of my wife's Johanna
    34. Favorite soft drink? Diet Dr. Pepper
    35. What is your favorite thing to do outside?  Flying Kites
    36. Hair color?   Brown with flecks of grey
    37. What was your favorite toy as a child?  None
    38. Summer or winter?  Summer
    39. Chocolate or vanilla?    Chocolate
    40. Coffee or tea?   Coffee and lots of it
    41. Do you want your friends to e-mail you back?   If they feel like it
    42. When was the last time you cried?  Last night at then end of a tv program - I forget which one
    43. What's under your bed?  Dust bunnies and some books
    44. What did you watch last night?   Stuff on the PVR
    45. What are you afraid of?   That something bad will happen to my kids.
    46. Salty or sweet?   Depnds on the moment
    47. How many years on your current job?  17
    48. Favorite day of the week?  Saturday - day of rest - ahhhhhh.
    49. Do you make friends easily?  Yes - I I don't put up a gruff exterior
    50. How many people will you send this to? None - if they read my blog then they will see it.
    51. How many will respond? I expect only 1 response
    52. Do you like finding out all this stuff about your friends?  I suppose

Wednesday, 18 February 2009

  • What the shit?

    I like language and even playing with language. I also like to figure out when things have changed and when language shifts its meaning. Consider the following:

    It's the shit

    and

    It's the shits.


    Now in the first case I'm total this is a good thing - it supposedly describes a situation that is good. In the second case it describes a situation that is bad. So here we have a word that started out as a noun and turned into a verb and is now an adverb and it has different means depending upon whether you use it singularly or plural. I mean - what the shit?

    Seems like it is true  - shit happens, but apparently it evolves as well. The late (and great) comedian George Carlin did a great bit of shit. If you have not heard it, you should google it and listen it is truly inspired and so true.

    But such a versatile word, from describe excrement to describing how one feels, this is truly a jack-of-all-trade word. I can feel like shit. Look like shit, Have a day that is the shit or shits depending upon which shits appeared to make it a misery. I could drink until I'm shit-faced, then lose my job and be shit-canned. Now let us pause here for a moment is being shit-canned worse than being canned? If so just how much so? I wonder about these things. I could do something for shits and giggles or I can do it like a give a shit. Such a visual.
    I could be pleased and have a shit-eating grin (this one disturbs me) or I can have a shitface (in which I would scare most people).

    So you can take shit for no one or be shit on. You can be in deep shit, shit's creek or until to you ass in shit. SO shit is also locational and geographical.

    So remember shit happens and it will likely happen when you least want it.

Thursday, 05 February 2009

  • Where's my Jet Car?

    Here we are it's the 21st century and I want my jet car. I also want my personal robot, the twenty hour work week and a magic pill that will keep me slim and beautiful. Ok I'll settle for slim. Now like may of my age, pushing fifty and male. I grew up with the bright and shiny future portrayed in many science fiction stories, publications and movies. I also grew up with popular "men's" magazine like Popular  Mechanics. I say men's because I never ever saw a single woman, girl, female in my entire life pick up one to read. I have seen them pick just about everything ekse, but not Popuar Mechanics or Popular Science. Now before you get all upset and say I'm a sexist - life is experiential and truths are personal observations. So my truths are I never saw - doesn't mean it never happened, just means I never saw. So if you are female and you did read these magazines, then where's my jet car?

    The future promised by these magazines ,was shiny bright and full of promise. Robots were common, flying cars were the norm and people all loooked great! So what happened? Where did the wheels fall off. There is a Billy Joel song "We didn't start the fire"  (sorry no link, Goggle is your friend), that relates in song a history of the world from about 1950 forward. The song progresses slowly through the years until the Kennedy assassination and then the song zips through the 60s forward. What does that mean? Well the world changed after 1963, it got fatser, it got more stressed, it got confusing. Suddenly there were options, choices could be made, There were consequences, but people could choose. Army no, draft dodge yes. Free love yes, 2,5 children and a white picket fence NO! So afuture that was predicated on a normal linear progression, got turned on its ear and went exponential.

    That is probably a gross simplification, but the world changed dramatically, but not in the ways we expected. Technology soared, but became consumer-oriented as opposed to society-oriented. Moral values eroded. The whole way the world worked changed and our expectations as well. I still don't have a jet car or a personal robot. but I can talk with a person in Wales or  Texas, that I have never met and call them friend. Truly the world has changed.

Wednesday, 04 February 2009

  • Some thoughts on the seasons

    We find ourselves at the midpoint of the winter season, traditionally a time for fertility and purification. So whether you are celebrating Imbolc, Candlemas, St. Brigid's day or even Groundhog's day - this week marked the midpoint of the Winter season and also provided use with the first quarter of the moon. A definite time for things in the middle.

    I also find myself at a mid point in my life. Now into my 50th year and while not at crises point, I find myself casting about for something else to do with my time. While this posting is not the proper forum to dicuss it, I bring it up apropos of nothing and it will serve as filler, though I suspect blogs in general are filler for some aspect of the life of a netizen or webble (web people). We wobble, but we don't fall down. Oops those were weebles. So I guess webbles, bloggle and  they don't fall down? Now this is definitely a digression into the ridiculous.

    In a conversation with a a friend (her blog can be found here http://www.xanga.com/Mom_with_a_Chainsaw), we were discussiong the seasons and which seasons we liked. We both agreed on Autumn and then we were discussing which month. She likes November. I hate November. I actually call it Scumber. For those without a better than average vocabulary of obscure English words, scumber is fox droppings. Actually it can be the spoor of any small wild animal, but fox shit is essentially what I think of November. I offer the following poem as a outlet for my feelings on the month.

    It is cold
    and grey.
    Rain
    drips everywhere,
    like some oily
    slime -
    the leaving of
    some mensal snail
    slowly moving
    through the garden
    of Time.
    The rain,
    like the cold
    is ever constant.
    It is not the
    freezing cold
    of Winter,
    but rather it
    grips the very
    soul and holds
    it fast -
    numbing the senses
    turning all to misty
    images of dinginess
    and ash.
    Even what green may be
    found is turned
    glaucous and rank -
    like leaves left
    too long to rot.
    November brings
    the death throes of
    Autumn - odious,
    festering and grey
    all but devoid of
    life or joy.

    As you can see, not my favourite month. I suspect it mostly because I am an urban dweller and that my vision for the wonder that is the changing of the seasons is clouded by the grey and ugliness that is left. I feel the same way about Winter and March.

    Here are some thoughts on March:

    March.
    It arrives like a wild wind
    or a quiet cancer,
    slowly eating away the cold
    rot of winter.
    Leaving and ugly grey pallor
    on the city streets.
    And in the hidden places,
    the side alleys and lanes,
    life springs forth,
    stunted, crooked and broken.
    Twisted caricatures of floral growth.
    Mutant grasses, claw through the concrete.
    Grasping, gasping in the meager light
    of the murky alleyways and lanes.
    Slowly spreading like a silent blight
    on the colourless month of
    March.

    Yugh.
    On that happy note I will conclude this post. Maybe next time I will write about something happier.