Monthly Archives: December 2006

Yawn

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.

 

Howl

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

Christmas? Again?

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

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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!

Ho Ho Ho 

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!

Bald faced pander

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

Blog and Blah

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.

Mideast tidbit

The Saudi ambassador to the U.S., Prince Turki, packed up his shit and fled Washington after only 15 months, without an announcement and without the usual round of embassy going away parties.

His predesessor, Prince Bandor, had served for 22 years and was a brilliant, Western educated success.  The prince is back home for a year now, talking to the ailing king who will decide who will become Foreign Minister when Turki’s brother, who now holds the spot, retires.

Too arcane for you?

Well, consider this.  Saudi Arabia is important enough that the King literally summoned Dick Cheney to Riyahd and told him off right after the election.  Told him he’d lower oil prices to zero just to screw with Iran’s economy and that the Sunni Saudis would start backing Saddam’s insurgent Sunnis to prevent an Iranian backed Shi-ite majority from committing genocide.

What do you think happens to Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake and Oklahoma City if oil prices plummet from $65 a bbl to $25 in a matter of weeks? 

Prime Minister of Israel Olmert let it slip this same week the open secret that Isreal is a nuclear power.  It’s been Israeli policy for many years now not to acknowledge what everyone is pretty sure has been true for a long time. Why do you suppose Olmert would talk about it out loud after all these years, at great personal cost, perhaps, since the Knesset is calling for his head?

Worst strategic mistake in American history.  Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?  Worst president in American history.  That may not cover the territory.

So, back to the desert kingdom.  The royal family runs this kingdom, it is not by any means a democracy.  The nation is wahhabist, a conservative Sunni sect, and they are in charge of Islam’s holiest sites.  Prince Turki is engaging in a little palace intrique and has been forced into using blunt tactics because Bandar is on site, the go to guy who is Johnny on the spot.  Turki, a former chief of Saudi intelligence, WANTS the power of the ministry.  All the present ruling office holders are getting up there and this is part of generational positioning in the most important palace in the world.  Turki still has the contacts to make a palace coup, a risky move with a huge prize. 

Meanwhile, the Iranians are hoping Armageddon is brewing in Baghdad and twitting the nose of the Western world with its Denial of Holocaust puppet show and Hezb’Allah is getting ready to take over Lebanon with a little help from Syria’s Alawite monarch.

Egypt, jealous of Iran’s newfound regional leadership role, is routinely murdering dissidents while it sees what develops and hoping people are ignoring the fact that young Egyptians are joining jihadist cells.

Jordan is playing a sort of British peacekeeping try to be the balancer game but knows that the Israeli nuke is right next door, well within range.

Much of this is tribal and so very ancient.  Some part of it is like watching Lawrence of Arabia replay.

The trick, as Lawrence famously said, is not minding it.

 

 

Science news — solar cells

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=643C3D30-E7F2-99DF-3108C4CB8A197667&ref=rss

This is the link to a story in Scientific American about a new solar energy cell that doubles the amount of electricity that can be harvested from the sunlight.  Most solar cells are about 20 percent efficient and this new one is closer to 45%.

So what?

Here’s so what:  this means that solar energy can now be produced at about the same price as normal electrical production now on the market and coming into your home.

This is what is known as “disruptive” technological advancement.  It means that the way we live will change.  It means that the American southwest, including Oklahoma, can have the electricity we need without coal and gas fired plants.  One investment one time in land and these solar cells will provide us electricity essentially forever without using non-renewable natural resources. 

“Worthless” land that can’t be used for farming becomes a valuable solar collecting site.

What happens to the price of natural gas?

Oklahoma has more than 200 sunny days, on average, per year.  When the sun doesn’t shine, the wind tends to come up.

How about west Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona?  Same.

Now, export the idea to places in Africa, South America and especially Australia.

You see, it’s not oil, gas or coal we especially want.  It’s fuel.  Something to make things “go” or work.  Mostly, we convert all fuels into electricity (OK.  Yes, I know about cars.  Have you looked into the new electric car, the Tesla?). 

Trust me.  This is big. 

whether report

I have a sinus infection and bronchitis.

I have another large medical expense deduction for this year’s taxes.

Dr. Feelgood says I will stop smoking NOW or spend the rest of my life with an oxygen tank strapped to my back. He says oxygen tanks are not sexy and I will never again get laid.  Why didn’t nobody ‘splain it to me like that before?  I thought I smoked BECAUSE it was sexy.  That’s what all the commercials on TV said back when I started at age 15.

I am a sad man with stopped up ears, a running/stuffy nose and a hacking cough.

whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune …

 

Farts are funny

It is considered polite to light a match after passing gas. Not while on a plane.

An American Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing Monday morning after a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence, authorities said.

The Dallas-bound flight was diverted to Nashville after several passengers reported smelling burning sulfur from the matches, said Lynne Lowrance, spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. All 99 passengers and five crew members were taken off and screened while the plane was searched and luggage was screened.

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal a “body odor,” Lowrance said. She had an unspecified medical condition, authorities said.

“It’s humorous in a way but you feel sorry for the individual, as well,” she said. “It’s unusual that someone would go to those measures to cover it up.”

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. The woman, who was not identified, was not charged in the incident.

Copyright Associated Press

White Wedding Day

I’m in So. Car. for my neice’s wedding and the weather is BEAUTIFUL!!!  OMG it’s gorgeous.  Sitting on my sister’s back porch, looking over Hidden Lake at Isle of Palms is the best.  Right now, her whole resident family is off decorating for tonight’s reception, so I have her house to myself, in charge of three ( 3!!! ) identical grey cats and access to this computer.  It doesn’t get any better than this.

I left a foot of snow and freezing ass weather in Oklahoma, so this is the bomb.

The trip his was FUBAR.  Our layover in DFW airport stretched from an hour to four hours and we didn’t get to Charleston until 11 p.m. local time.  We flew on a smaller jet that bumped for three hours getting here.

As many of you know, I smoke.  Thus, since DFW is nonsmoking, I would strip as much as I could, go outside and smoke and then have to go back through the take your boots off or we shoot inspection.  FUBAR.  Eventually, I figured out that there was too much going on for them to catch me huffing a few quick hits off a butt in the bathroom.  (UHM. That didn’t sound like i wanted it to.  huffing a butt in a bathroom?  I would quickly have a portion of a cigaret in a stall is what I mean.)

Since we got into Charleston so late, the universe unfolded as it should and we waited another 10 minutes or so and greeted my daughter who flew in from Tucson.  She looks great and I was absolutely over the top delighted to once more be able to give her a hug.

At Mary’s, there were her two sons and her friend Robin.  We stayed up and talked and laughed past midnight until I just dropped in exhaustion.

I’ll try and do more blogging when I can, but I’ve got to get back to that porch.  It’s a drug.  I’m an addictive personality.  You do the math.