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Updated Saturday morning!

I was bored, boring and isolated yesterday.  Didn’t answer the phone and didn’t much leave the house. 

Go Pokes!  It was fun to listen to the OSU Cowboy football team win yesterday, the only Big 12 team out of three to win a bowl game that day (K-State lost to Rutgers and Tx A&M lost to Cal).  The ‘boys almost pulled one of their famous choke jobs in the 4th Quarter, but found a way to win with a “last second” field goal.  Makes a 7-6 year seem like a success.

An ice shelf broke off the Canadian Arctic.  It’s the size of 11,000 football fields and is known to have been there for at least 3,000 years.  Here’s a link to the story:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/na/cp_n122847A.xml.html

However, and a big HO HUM, there’s no such thing as global warming.  Nothing to see here folks, move along.  Ignore the man behind the curtain.

My friend Dzaster got stuck in Tucumcari, N.M. by the snowstorm that closed I-40, but she was on her way again midmorning Friday.

I was restless and wanted to go out last night, but there was no one I really wanted to hang with and I didn’t want to sit someplace alone nor did I want pot luck at one of my hangouts.  Part of the trouble is my finances.  I really don’t have the money after Christmas to go out and party.  Also, I don’t have my mind right.  I’m self described as restless, discontent and irritable and that’s no time to go out prowling.  Too much of a danger to my sobriety.  So, I stayed home and prowled the internet.  (That’s how I knew about the ice shelf breaking off).

Some of you know my Mom was in the hospital just before Christmas.  We talked yesterday and her health crisis has passed for now.  She’s going to be just fine, I’m thankful to say.  My in-town sister had taken my daughter out on the porch for a little private talk about how grandmother might not come home from the hospital … ever.  So, I guess miracles still happen.

By the simple expedient of sloth, my face became grizzled over the holiday and part of the big fun I had all by myself yesterday was to shave but leave a “jazz beard” consisting of a trimmed moustache and a circle of fuzz that outlines my chin.  I may wear it for a day or two, but I really don’t think it’s all that flattering.

I’m trying to read a little Aristotle, but as Thomas Gray observed that’s a little like trying to eat dry hay.

I’m taking a new medicine to help me stop smoking.  My quit day is New Year’s day, Monday.  One effect of the pills is to make the cigarets taste bad.  It’s working. 

Poor Jerry Ford is dead.  He came to town once and my Mom, then a Republican, provided support staff help for him and thought he was a terrific guy.  Back when I was a reporter, I once interviewed Betty Ford and I really liked her, thought she was a world class woman.  Seems a shame that history will always remember him as an asterick in the Nixon saga.

Pray for peace and resist that urge to surge.  Peace out.

Post Script:  I forgot to mention that I wasn’t the only one plagued with not much to do over the holidays.  I watched a segment of local news in which Cherokee Ballard — with a straight face, I might add — broadcast the stunning news of a fight in a jail all the way up in North Platte, Nebraska, over flatulance.  Yes, two prisoners got into a fight over stinking farts in the cell.  Like that doesn’t happen every freakin’ day of the year in some jail somewhere!  I about fell out of my chair.  Think she’ll include that piece in her farewell roundup of highlights of her career?  They even had a talking head bit of film of the local sherriff in North Platte saying both men had been charged with assault.    What TV news producer approved this?  Was this some cruel joke played on a TV broadcaster with a famous mastectomy?  Show us your tits, Cherokee, just like old times in college when you were a hot legged sorority chick!  Cruel, cruel, cruel and the biggest cruelty of all was to her viewers, including me.  I didn’t want to know about prisoners and stinking farts, thank you very much.

Aaaaaaaaaahhooooooooooowwwwwwwwww!!!

You can see the rest of the world from the windows at the psych ward at St. Anthony’s, but almost no one ever looks out to see.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhooooooooooooooooohhhhhwwwww

The pain of being so alone in a world where we all feel alone is about to put me under.

AAAAAAAAAHHHOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHH

 Mary’s Mind is Over.

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHH

There’s a hole in my soul shaped like God.  Sometimes, He has other things to do and I’m left restless, irritable and discontent.  Tonight is one of those times.

Thank you, Lord, for waiting until the liquor stores are all closed.

howl

I’ve prowled the Starbucks and flipped the channels and browsed the B&N.

AAAARRRRRGGGHHH

AAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW

I’m chewing over lost loves and might have beens and it’s tasty, but hardly fulfilling.

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH

Drat and Dharma!  Don’t you just hate existential angst??!!!??

AAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH

I’m not ready for 2007.

howl

whimper

sniff

Have I mentioned “Bah!”?

How about “Humbug!”?

Would it be redundant to observe that Christ would be horrified at the materialistic plundering that goes on in His name this time of year?

Would it be less cliche for me to note that the crowds in the mall are anathema to me and my only contact with them has been to endure incredibly bad traffic trying to get from my home to anywhere in the bubble past the Penn Square juggernaut?

Less than a week away and I’ve bought the obligatory and desultory item here and there, but at this time, I have absolutely zero in the way of “Christmas Spirit”, so-called.

Ugh! and Erk!

Consumerism amok!

Blogblaaaawwwwwwwhhhh!!!

A Special Message From Santa Claus

December 12, 2006 | Issue 42•50

Cut-and-paste

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Ho, Ho, Ho! I Saw You Masturbating!

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Season’s greetings from your old friend Santa! My, oh, my, only 12 nights left until Christmas Eve! Things are getting so close now, we can hardly contain ourselves here at the North Pole. And from the looks of it, my young friend, we’re not the only ones set to burst! Why, Jolly Old Saint Nick hasn’t seen a Yule log this lit in ages!

Now, don’t be shy. You know what Santa’s talking about. You just couldn’t wait to open your present this year, could you? Ho, ho, ho! Dear child, I saw you masturbating!

And it hasn’t been just once either! Oh, no! Santa’s seen you at least twice splashing away in the bathtub, three times in the attic with one of your mother’s old art-history books, and more times than even he can count spread out like a stunned partridge on that beanbag chair of yours!

 

Why, old Santa might just have a heart attack if he popped out your chimney on that cold winter’s night and, instead of milk and cookies, found his dear little pen pal shamefully hunched over the family computer.

Oh, what a naughty, prolific rascal you’ve been!

You see, dear lad, Santa’s been keeping a list. Just like the one you keep in your head of all your favorite classmates. The one you’ve checked so much more than twice. Except when Santa thinks about his list, he doesn’t rub his crotch feverishly against the smooth contours of his writing desk. Ho, ho, ho!

I see you when you’re sleeping, child, and I know when you’re awake. And, believe it or not, I even know when you’re just pretending to sleep, but really have your rosy palms down the front of your britches.

Yes, I suppose you could say old Kris Kringle knows everything there is to know. Well, not everything. You did teach me a thing or two about scented body wash! Ho, ho, ho!

Tell me now, what do you want Santa to bring you this year? A bright red bicycle? Some fun new board games? Or should I just have the elves wrap up a fresh batch of those satin pillows you enjoy straddling so much? Or maybe St. Nick shouldn’t bring you anything at all this Christmas. After all, Mrs. Claus knitted you a special pair of socks last year, and just look what became of those!

Oh, what ever happened to that sweet, freckle-faced angel we all loved so much? Such a bright little youngster, so good to your mommy and daddy, and quick to make friends. Now all you seem to want to do is play by yourself for hours on end. It makes everyone here at my workshop very, very sad. Why the reindeer haven’t been able to keep down their feed since hearing about how you slap yourself around. And Mrs. Claus, do you know what she did when she found out? She cried. She cried for the first time in almost 700 years.

Where before we enjoyed visions of gumdrops and candy canes, now we see you, once so dear to us all, kneeling against a plastic chair, spitting on two fingers, and putting them lordy knows where.

I must say, the sights you conjure up while you lie in your bed have even Santa Claus scratching his head. I doubt any of the high-school cheerleaders have ever even set foot inside a boiler room before, never mind done anything like that!

And other things—other terrible, frightful things. If your outlandish fantasies didn’t make me quake with disgust, I’d say you were the most creative child in the world.

Is it Clara? Is that who you think about when you rub yourself raw? Ho, ho, ho! Why she doesn’t even know your name, dear child! You didn’t really think you had a chance with her, did you? A pretty girl like that? But your face—it’s covered in pockmarks, for goodness sake!

Don’t cry now, little one. I’m sure some of the Barbie dolls you steal from your sister’s room find you very attractive. I bet they hardly even notice your embarrassing stutter, or that pungent and sickly body odor of yours. Or even how pathetic you really are, my child. What a sad, lonely, feeble little shit you are, and how your life—your wretched little life—will be filled with failure after failure, both personal and professional, until the stench of disappointment and heartbreak grows so strong that you’ll barely be able to breathe.

Well, it looks old Santa has to get back to work! Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night—except you, you sick little fuck!

MCARP has a blog post on 3:40 a.m., linked at right, about the experience of blogging.  My sister, Mary, has posted about blogging and begs for feedback at MindOverMary, also linked at right.  The post below referencing Andrew Sullivan is my own thinking about blogging.  All of us reached the “what the hell am I doing?” point independently.

Please respond to one of the three threads, if not all of them.  Do so anonymously by all means if you want to say something negative.  I feel sure I speak for my fellows when I say we would really appreciate anything you have to say and that honesty is appreciated.

I also think the related topics of “false intimacy”, self expression and “Was I blathering?  I didn’t mean to blather.” are interesting topics of themselves.  Yes, blathering.  All of us do it and we know it and sometimes it just punches us in the face.  We’re not stupid, you know.

Anyway, push a freakin’ button and type a few words to one or more of us. 

PLEASE

Here’s a bit from Andrew Sullivan’s blog.  Over on 3:40 a.m., MCARP talks about the effort it takes NOT to blog and how he thinks he’ll go to an every-other-day cycle.  I’ve written about how my “intimate” friendship with MCARP is two-tiered: we see each other a couple times a week or so, but we read each other every day and it seems like I know him better than I actually do or don’t (or something).  I have a similar feeling of knowing my readers and the writers of other blogs. Elsewhere on AS’s Time Magazine sponsored blog, there’s discussion of “Lost intimacy” and “False intimacy” and “Forced intimacy”, all powered by telecommunications and the internet.  Maybe someone somewhere sometime would actually like to talk over coffee about such subjects with me, but I think it more likely that will happen online.

blogblah!!!

 

Chris Bowers unloads here about what blogging has done to his consciousness, sense of self, and general life. Money quote:

Try to imagine this: spend a week where you write for about sixty-five hours. Now, consider the following conditions on that writing:

    * Whatever you write will be read by tens of thousands of people
    * The material and research you use to produce that writing will almost never be of a personal nature.
    * What you write must mesh with a perceived set of expectations of the content you have previously published.
    * This is done almost entirely in virtual space, where your contacts take place over email, in comment threads, and on the front-page websites. Overall, you hve little human contact with either your colleagues or audience.

If you did this for a week, you might start to sense, however slightly, your ego merging with your writing. If you do it for three years, at some point you might notice that your ego has been largely subsumed into this activity. Think about this. First, your thoughts are always directed outward toward matters that do not directly refer to you. Second, commentary on you is always directed toward your writing and your blog, never to you personally. Third, there is basically no one with whom you can commiserate about your activities on a daily, or even weekly, basis. If you do this long enough, eventually your sense of self will be largely subsumed into the activity of blogging, and even into your actual blog. And maybe your blog connects to other blogs, and even to a wider movement. Your sense of self can be merged with those institutions as well.