The end of the world, coming soon to your neighborhood

The way I figure it now, we've pretty much hit the end of the road. Global warming is here to stay and accelerating. Our seacoast cities will be underwater in my lifetime. Hurricanes the size of Alaska will roar through the Gulf.

If Jesus comes, he'll rapture some third world people who've always gotten the short end of our stick and tell us to drive our SUVs straight to suburban mall hell.

With luck, the world will end on a Friday or Saturday night and we can all hunker down at the Cup and listen to folk music and pretend nothing's wrong right up until the second a five-mile wide tornado sucks the air from our lungs and sends us into oblivion and the moon crashes back into the Pacific.

Have a great weekend.

Root canal

The root canal is done. The dentist said I was a good patient. The TV stations were doing 'continuous coverage' of severe weather as I was being treated.

Use your imagination, or ask me at the RC, 'cause I ain't sayin' nothin' else.

Dating sucks.

I briefly had a crush on White Tara, the Asian goddess of motherly compassion.

From ReligionFacts

"Her white color signifies purity, wisdom and truth.

"In iconography, White Tara often has seven eyes – in addition to the usual two, she has a third eye on her forehead and one on each of her hands and feet. This symbolizes her vigilance and ability to see all the suffering in the world. The "Tara of Seven Eyes" is the form of the goddess especially popular in Mongolia.

"White Tara is seated in the diamond lotus position, with the soles of her feet pointed upward. Her posture is one of grace and calm. Her right hand makes the boon-granting gesture and her left hand is in the protective mudra. In her left hand, White Tara holds an elaborate lotus flower that contains three blooms. The first is in seed and represents the past Buddha Kashyapa; the second is in full bloom and symbolizes the present Buddha Shakyamuni; the third is ready to bloom and signifies the future Buddha Maitreya. These three blooms symbolize that Tara is the essence of the three Buddhas.

"In religious practice, White Tara is believed to help her followers overcome obstacles, espeically those that inhibit the practice of religion. She is also associated with longevity."

Wouldn't be great to meet someone like that? I guess that sounds silly, and perhaps to someone who believes the 21 incarnations of Tara are real it sounds like sacrilege.

Well, I eventually got over it.

Had a brief thing for Green Tara on the rebound, but I got past that, too.

One can visualize the wise, knowing Taras in their myriad incarnations floating down to earth, their gentle smiling expressions filled with compassion and care for humankind.

Then, looking at my junky minivan or the cat hair on my clothes, they say 'Eww!' and ascend heavenward again.

Dating sucks.

Dream

Some military general is talking to me. He's balding, has beetle brows and his large eyes are made even larger by the lenses of his eyeglasses.

He's telling me about the informal agreement he and the other generals have among themselves regarding protocol in the event of imminent nuclear war –– an agreement intended to reduce the likelihood the threat will turn into an actual nuclear exchange.

I feel a little better, I guess, knowing this. But the general looks like some famous character actor, and I'm wracking my brain trying to remember who.

Then there's some sitar music int the background, which turns out to be real, coming from my iTunes as I woke up.

Overnight dream

Society has collapsed in the aftermath of global warming and rising sea levels. We're in a Ford Econoline van, driving cross-country to somewhere in the desert southwest where we've heard there is some last semblance of civilization. I'm driving, and Leslie and a few other unidentified people are in the back.

We've arrived in a small town somewhere in the midwest in the early afternoon. Me, Leslie, some others. We're in some small town. The streets are quiet but we know it's controlled by a right-wing fundamentalist militia so we're trying to maintain a low profile.

I look out the window and see Beasley the cat a half block down the street. I brought him with us but he's gotten out. I call him and he looks around, sees me and comes back, but Leslie doesn't realize he's my cat and lets him out again. I call him, but this time a small piglet jumps in the van, then promptly jumps out the opposite window.

I see Beasley again and call him a third time and he comes back. Then I wake up.

Ever have that feeling?

The feeling that you could go live in a shack in the woods the rest of your life with the amimals for company, never see another human being for the rest of your life, and sleep like a baby every night?

Humans. Social contact. Bah.

What the hell's he doing with that camera?

I'm no photographer, either. But I took some pictures Saturday night for a project I'm working on –– candids, taken in a certain local coffee shop.


Fortunately, there is no expectation of Cartier-Bresson-like greatness here.


I probably crop better than I shoot.


I also have an advantage in that the web is very forgiving of crappy work. These would never print well.




If I could be said to have a 'style,' it would be that I look for oddball moments, and like to collect two or more people in a shot doing disconnected things.

Slow weekend

Not much going on in my corner of the world this weekend. Still taking antibiotics for the tooth abcess.

Spent much of the weekend at the Red Cup, as usual, and slept a great deal.

That's about it.

I got yer drug-induced delirium... right here.

Happy spring

I just saw snow.

One man's tragic burden: facing a root canal alone

I'm okay most of the time with being alone, as I've said before. But when you're lying there in bed, popping painkillers and trying to sleep, it crosses your mind that it would be nice if there were someone else in your life who cared about you when you were sick.

The Tao is about, in part, the balance of contrasting forces –– including masculine and feminine. Obviously I don't get a good balance cooped in my one-man monastery all the time.

Well, Bodhidharma (not a Taoist, of course) sat at the wall for nine years and I'm sure he got sick once in awhile, too.

Spam asshats

I got email today indicating that someone named 'Mazy' and/or 'Britney' had posted three spam comments somewhere in this blog. I can't find them.

Those of you who use Blogger know what happened: I got the email notification containing the posted comment, but nothing suggesting to which post it had been added. There's a link to an online payday loan company in each comment.

I want to delete them, of course, but I can't find them.

Okay, enough of that. Let's talk about me.

I'm on some huge blue and pink antibiotic for a few days until the swelling goes down. Then it's off to the dentist for a root canal. I've had enough of these now that I'm pretty humdrum about the pain.

It's the injury to the bank account that really hurts - almost $800 for this procedure. Ouch. I could buy a 1-terabyte hard drive for that much and have money left over for cherry pie.

What it is, yet again

Once again I feel compelled to post a link to John Long's Blogbah!!! and encourage you to read the whole post.

Even if you're not in recovery or working a program, there's a lot there from which anyone can benefit.

God bless you, John. I mean that.

Reality check

Maybe everybody does this and I just never realized it...

Once in awhile, I have to look around my home, take stock of the shape it's in, and make a note of things that are out of place but which I would normally not notice.

For example, there's a fork from the kitchen on the floor here beside me. I was probably eating soemthing at the computer one day and the fork fell on the floor when I was done eating. I was in the middle of something else, so I didn't pick it up. Now, who knows how many days or weeks later, it's still there. I've looked at it a dozen times at least, but without it quite registering in my mind, 'That fork is on the floor when it should be in the kitchen with the dirty dishes.'

I don't know why things that are obviously out of place don't make an impression on me. But somehow, they often just go right by.

So, on occasion, I go through the house, almost trying to pretend to be a 'normal' person, thinking, "Okay, that old magazine on the hall floor doesn't mean anything to me, would someone else be offput by it?"

I must love pain

"You must love pain!" – RJ.

Well, it's not so much that I love pain as that I'm used to it. I got my first really bad toothache when I was nine or ten, and my parents were in no hurry then to act on it. The first abcessed tooth came not long after that.

So I know what to expect.

I grew up with what I think is probably the typical poor person's attitude about dentistry -- too expensive and too painful.

After getting past that first dentist -- the one with the huge hands -- I've never had a really unpleasant experience with a dentist. But old mindsets are hard to change.

Update II

Looks like I've got a golf ball in my mouth this morning. I'm calling a dentist at 8.

I still hate teeth.

Update

My face is swollen and it feels like I've got a soccer ball between my cheek and gum.

Praise the lord, I found some Tylenol with codeine unused from some previous doctor visit and I've stayed stoked up on that.

I alweays stayed away from Tylenol with codeine because when I was a kid, they warned me that codeine would turn me into a duck-tailed, spit-curled junkie with my cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of my T-shirt.

But I'm 53 now, I don't have that many years left ahead of me, so if I end up being a codeine addict, so what?

I hate teeth. Tell me again about intelligent design.

Teeth

I hate 'em.

(Well, just ignore 'em and they'll go away! Yuk, yuk.

I wish.)

Apparently this headache/jawache/sinusache from yesterday has its origins in a bad tooth. Feels a little swollen this evening, but I don't know if it's abcessed or just swollen from having been bumped around while chewing, being explored with my tongue, etc.

Thank god for Orajel. I had a tube in the bathroom that must be ten years old, at least. Fortunately there's no 'best if used by' date on Orajel. I guess it lasts forever. Plus I'm loaded with aspirin.

My front teeth are all in good shape. The molars are a disaster area, full of crumbling 45-year-old fillings put in by a 6'4" dentist with huge nostrils and hands made for the NBA.

I don't know how old my Dad was when he went to full dentures. No one in my family made it to retirement age with all - or any, I guess - of their teeth.

About seven years ago, I began a lengthy process to have all my teeth upgraded, patched, resurfaced, redecked, energy efficient lighting, whatever. Spent about two thousand dollars on the first round of work, then lost my job and could go no further.

Every time I get a toothache I think of that song "Ol' Dan Tucker" –– he died of a toothache in his heel, the song said. I've never heard of anyone actually dying of a toothache, but it seems like it could be possible. So, I'll lie awake tonight worrying about that.

I hate teeth.

Art

For someone who is supposed to be an artist, at least kinda sorta, I haven't been around a lot of art. I astonished (I think) someone today by telling her I have never been inside the new downtown home of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

So I went to see The Mexican Masters (not a golf tournament!) exhibition this afternoon, in spite of a nagging headache/jawache/toothache/sinusache/side of faceache that impeded my enjoyment and made it difficult to focus, physically as well as mentally.

I apologize to my companions if I seemed out of it. I was out of it.

I live less than five minutes from the museum, and I still stopped for aspirin at 7-Eleven on the way home... I was that desperate.

What the hell happened?

I mean, with anything. What the hell happened?

New toys

Had to be done, really.

Bought Macromedia Studio 8 to get Dreamweaver and Flash up to date, plus installed them on the laptop.

"This is a dream, isn't it? I want to stay."

We're in a car, myself and a couple of other guys. Brian the carbonated lasagna inventor is driving. We're going north on May Avenue, and we're out past the north edge of town.

The sky starts getting dark as we drive under lowering clouds. We're talking about something but I interrupt to point out cloud-to-cloud lightning crackling overhead to our right. Everyone stops talking to watch it.

Ahead to our left, there is what looks like a row of small fires running on an east-west line down a hill - perhaps started by lightning. The sky is quite dark now. As we get closer, I see there's an amusement park on the side of the hill and the lights I thought were fire may actually be some sort of lighting display in the park.

Suddenly, there's a tornado behind us coming up the road and crossing diagonally from southwest to northeast. Brian is about to turn east - it seems like we're at Edmond Road, but there's something about us going to Quail Springs.

"Don't turn! Don't turn!" I yell, because turning right would again put us in the tornado's path.

Brian keeps driving north. A smaller, less well formed tornado comes over the hill, travelling south and coming straight at us. It's smaller, and we can see clear through the dust it's kicking up. Brian hits the accelerator and we barrel straight through it. The car is bounced around some but we reach the other side. Another tornado appears, exactly like the one we just encountered, and we barrel through it.

We're still driving beneath the dark clouds and another funnel appears behind us, traveling north and gaining ground on us. Then, ahead of us, there is suddenly a huge, and I mean huge, piece of heavy road equipment. There's a flat cylindrical wheel like the ones on steam rollers, only it's the width of the entire road and maybe twelve feet high. There's some sort of superstructure above it that I can't clearly make out. The thing is barreling along at a surprising speed, but not as fast as the tornado closing in on us from behind.

The machinery is too big for us to get around. The tornado is behind us and gaining ground. Then suddenly there's a second road machine behind us and we're sandwiched between them, with the tornado still presumably behind it.

The driver of a small car ahead of us sees a little opening beneath the structure of the road machine ahead and darts through, making it by only a hair's breadth. There's no room for us to get through.

"What are we gonna do?!" I yell from the back seat.

Brian turns around and yells, "Relax. It's a movie."

Suddenly we are watching the giant machine on a screen. We're no longer sitting in the car, but in a theatre, and the audience is applauding. Is the movie over, I wonder, or are they applauding because Brian finally got me to quit yelling?

Now on the screen is a scene from another source, seemingly built into the plot of this film, about a child who also somehow confuses reality with a movie. While this scene seems familiar to me as I experience the dream, I don't as I sit here writing whether this was something I saw once, something I dreamed in another dream or something made up as I dreamt tonight. But sitting in the theater, I notice the nested levels of confusion between reality and film.

I also notice we're watching this on some sort of huge TV screen. There's a swinging hinged door which has been opened out to make the screen visible. Below it, a conventional movie screen has been covered with a drop cloth held in place with duct tape.

Suddenly I'm in a new location. It seems to be a college campus. There are other people there, but not anyone I was traveling in the car with. Another tornado appears behind me, bearing down on me, but I'm walking into a large sturdy brick building and the approaching tornado doesn't fill me with the same dread the others did.

As I walk in the building, I'm in a spacious lobby area and there are several other people around. "There's a tornado coming," I say calmly. "Maybe we should head to the basement." Everyone moves to the stairway, but no one seems frightened or alarmed. One of these people seems to be Larry, a photographer whom I knew many years ago in TV.

We're down in the basement. I glance up through a window near the ceiling and see the tornado hitting the building above us. Some windows break and some guttering or other metal is torn off and crashes againt the wall, but other than that, the building holds.

I'm standing in a corridor. Several other guys are down there standing around.

"This is a dream, isn't it?" I ask. No one replies, but a couple of them look at me with a Spock-like arched eyebrow. "I don't know what's going on here," I add, "but I want to stay. I don't want to wake up."

"You were never groomed for leadership, were you?" one of them asks. His tone is sympathetic, not mocking or condescending. He opens a door -- one of those big double doors that separate hallways in school buildings -- and disappears behind it.

Next I am sitting in a room. It looks like a college classroom, new and well-lit. I'm sitting at a table and there are two or three men across from me. One of them hands me a piece of paper. "Do you know what this is?" he asks.

The paper is about a half-sheet of typing paper, folded and unfolded many times, well-creased and dog-eared. There are some hand-written notes on it. The writing is small and crabbed and the lines uneven. The paper has been wet at some point, and the notes are smeared.

I can't read all of it, but I recognize the words "Lyndie England" and "CBS News."

There are two or three more men sitting at a separate table to my left, placed perpendicular to the one at which I am sitting. They look at me quizzically. I feel like I'm being interrogated.

I start to explain who Lyndie England is in 'my world,' that is, this waking life. They look at me like they don't believe me. They seem suspicious. I look at the note again, feeling some pressure to decipher it and explain it, but I can't.

And then I wake up.

There were no women anywhere in this dream, except among the audience in the theatre, for whatever significance that may have.

---

Since about 2001, I typically have had dreams involving tornados when there were important decisions approaching in my life. One may be approaching now, although I can't discuss it here yet.

More kittens (not at my place, thankfully)

Backtracking through my "who links here" data, I found the Watermark blog, which in turn reported this crucial link:

The Daily Kitten

I'm too old and morpse to love kittens, but I do anyway. (Should there be a comma between 'do' and 'anyway'?')


Addendum: 'Morpse' is not a word. It was supposed to be 'morose.' But 'morpse' has a nice sound to it, don't you think? More found art.

Reading

By the way, I've finished 'The Dharma Bums,' and I recommend it to the 35 other Americans who haven't already read it in college or wherever.

I'm now reading Robert Thurman's 'Inner Revolution.'

Chop wood, carry water

"Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water."

- old Zen proverb

"You know you're in trouble when you see one of those 'house of squalor' stories on the 6 o'clock news, and it doesn't look as bad as your place."

- some guy on a web conference somewhere

I hate chores worse than about anything. I use big industrial-grade mops, brooms and such because when I do get around to cleaning, it's always a huge chore. I broke a mop handle in two the other day trying to get some kind of crud off the kitchen floor back where the doorway leads to the enclosed back porch.

I've had philosophical discussions both with myself and with others about hiring a housekeeper. And a lawn person. And someone to clean out the minivan, get the oil changed, etc. But good lord, who could I ask to undertake such a task?

Those of you on the Well will probably have already heard this story: a few years ago I bought one of those 'take control of your clutter' books. I lost the damn thing that same day and didn't find it until two years later. It was under an unopened Homeland Security size package of Double-Cloud Soft Unscented Charmin.

(I call it the 'Homeland Security' size because it's got 48 rolls, or 24 rolls of 2-ply, or 18 rolls of 2-ply with a tiny roller core or whatever. Anyway, it's a huge wad of TP. If the worst happens, I figure I'll get by without the duct tape, but I sure as hell don't want to run out of toilet paper.)

Well, anyway, getting back to the story, the book was under the Charmin and the Charmin was under some laundry, as I recall. But I finally read it, and made up my mind I was going to declutter my life.

I threw away and gave away tons of stuff. Old suits and sport coats. Sweaters that didn't fit when I bought them, and fit even worse as I gained weight. Old hard drives and shorted out USB cables. I usually fill about a fourth of city trash can every week. For twenty-something weeks in a row, I filled two of them full.

And I am still awash in crap.

And it's not just clutter. Some of it is plain old dirt.

Men, I think, are more prone to this than women. Lint and dust on the toilet between the seat and the tank mean nothing to us. It's just lint and dust, after all, and it's not like any part of our body comes in contact with it. And it's hard to get out of there. So why bother? It's not like it's hurting anything.

And men who are prone to depression are worse than those who aren't. You really don't want to get back there behind the toilet seat if you feel life is a pointless exercise in any event.

Buddhists talk about having an 'empty mind.' I tend to think of this as like having an empty room. If you walk into an empty room, yeah, it seems bare. But it also seems spacious and calm. It's ready to be filled with furniture and mementos and whatever – until it gets too full and if you can afford to, you empty it out and start over. So we do the same thing with our minds (again, just my interpretation/visualization), emptying out prejudices, assumptions, worries, old grievances, bad habits and so on until we have an empty room in which to work.

After I got into the 'empty mind' concept, I realized that the 'empty room' concept has some literal validity, too. A clean, simple, minimalist environment can encourage calm and serenity. Maybe eventually I will have one.

But at the moment, I am still awash in crap.

||||||||||

I'd like to be able to say I care about something, anything, but right now I don't seem to. The dog is sleeping, and I think I shall do the same.

Two Elvis impersonators and Frankenstein

I went back to bed at 3:30 or so.

I dreamt I was watching something on TV. There was a swimming pool, and people were jumping into it. But after they jumped, and just before they hit the water, they disappeared. There would be big splashes where their forms hit the water, but the jumpers themselves were invisible. One of them was Brian, inventor of carbonated lasagna, but the rest were strangers.

Then there were four people standing at the edge of the pool, right in front of the camera. One was a game show host kind of guy, two were Elvis impersonators, and one was the Frankenstein monster.

One of the Elvis impersonators was a Las Vegas Elvis in a white jump suit and the other was an Ed Sullivan Elvis in a tangerine-colored sport coat and white shirt. The Elvises were arguing about something and the game show guy was trying to stop them while the Frankenstein monster just watched.

Then I was at my front door. There were two guys there. They were talking to me but I couldn't hear them because my ears were ringing. I have mild tinnitis in real life, but never so bad that I can't hear. At first I thought they were upset about something, but then I finally realized they read about Haley, She Who Does Not Sleep, on this blog and wanted to meet her.

The front porch of this house was not the front porch of my house, but seemed more like the porch of the house where I lived when I was in high school.

Then I was back inside, and there other people in the house and more were arriving. It was a party of some sort. Don, a college friend of mine with whom I also worked (but who is a different guy than the one I described from the dream in the earlier post) was there, along with an identical twin he does not have in real life.

The house became really crowded. There were too many people and I started to feel uncomfortable.

There was a woman walking through the house -- a stranger -- with two bags of groceries. By this time I realized I was dreaming. I told her to put down the groceries, which she did. I took her in my arms and kissed her, which she seemed to enjoy. I looked up, and there was another woman standing there. I decided to kiss her as well, but then I woke up.

---

I laid there awake for I guess five or ten minutes. I fell asleep again, and the dream picked up where it left off. Most of the people had left, and I guess I was trying to encourage the others to leave as well.

Something else happened after that but I don't remember what it was.

Or maybe not

I have to think some more about that previous post.

Am I in the right place?

I was driving around Saturday evening a little bit lost, looking for something in a rather unfamiliar part of town.

"Am I in the right place?" I asked myself.

And it occurred to me that the answer to that question is always, "Yes."

New blog

Well, new to me.

You may have noticed a couple of comments here from "The Rambling Taoist." I'm adding a link on the right to remind myself – and you – to check his blog frequently.

I'll especially recommend this list of Taoism books, some of which I've read and some of which I've never even heard.

Ghosts

With Haley sleeping in the bathroom (and growing more acclimated to it with each passing day), I getting more sleep at night. Nonetheless, I still find myself awakening in the wee hours, mind rambling along too fast for me to quickly get back to sleep.

Three times in the past few days, I have had dreams about people from my past. The first was a dream in which I walked through a house and found my ex-wife sitting on a sofa in the living room, crying. She looked as she does today, not as she looked eight years ago when we were still together. I knelt beside her and asked what was wrong, but I woke up before she could answer.

(Parenthetically, I'll mention that my ex is a wonderful person. She deserved better than she got from me and better than she got from life in general.)

When I fell asleep again, I dreamt I was walking through a different house. All the doors to the rooms were closed, and each had "2003" written on them... in Futura Extra Bold. I understood that in the dream to refer to the year, noit that they room numbers. I could hear voices coming from one of the rooms, and they were talking about my friend Bob who died over the New Years holiday. I went from door to door looking for them. Some doors were locked and some opened into empty rooms, devoid even of furniture. I woke up before I could find the people who were speaking.

Just now I had a dream about some of my current coworkers, and someone with whom I went to college and later with whom I later worked suddenly entered. I haven't seen that guy in probably 15 years.

Trading places

I'm sleeping on the futon and the dog is sleeping in the bathroom.

Lark the Cat returns

Lark the Cat reappeared tonight, after being at large since last October or thereabouts. She winters across the street, then comes to my place in the spring. I assume she's with kitten, but it was impossible to tell in the dark.

Dog

The dog's up. I'm up.

Carbonated lasagna

There was a cultural watershed event tonight at the Red Cup, and even many of the regulars missed it. Years from now, many will no doubt say they were there even though they weren't.

Kathryn, Brian, Hugh and I put our heads together in an outside-the-box brainstorming session, and laid the groundwork for concepts that, years from now, will be so much a part of our everyday life that many will simply take it for granted they were always there, and marvel at the stories told of the evening they were first expressed as the germs of ideas.

Kathryn revisited her baby-caught-in-a-pipe air bag, but in a collective free-wheeling jam session we added that the bag, originally conceived to stop a baby who had fallen down a pipe from falling any further down pending rescue, could actually be deployed with a sudden burst likle an auto airbag, thus popping the infant into the air to be caught on descent by waiting firefighters.

Hugh suggested the formation of MABIP -- Mothers Against Babies in Pipes -- to help raise the level of baby-in-pipe awareness.

Your correspondent suggested flavored nose spray -- black raspberry being my personal favorite -- to help relieve the discomfort that occurs when one inhales too much in one sniff and some of it runs down your throat into your mouth.

But Brian had the most innovative idea of all -- carbonated lasagna that goes off in your mouth with a subtle popping sensation.

The man is a culinary Edison!

So there you have it. Tanner was there, but no one else. If, years or decades from now, you hear someone else say they saw it happen, well, they didn't.

Maybe you should print this page out and save it for future reference, just to keep the record straight.

All this thinking wore me out. I feel exhilarated but exhausted. I'm going to go to the bathroom and get some sleep.

Later.

Slept in the bathroom again...

...all night this time. Gosh, it's quiet in there. I could hear my alarm clock ticking for the first time. It was dark, too.

Haley slept on the other side of the door and I heard her get up and thump around a couple of times, but nothing like what she does when I'm asleep on the futon. Not being able to see me seems to calm her down.

Ties update

I have just completed the online purchase of three extra long Jerry Garcia ties.

Never worn by copier salesmen or Jay Gatsby or James Bond.

Solitary confinement

I just don't like using the bathroom as an isolation cell.

But Haley went into another of her 'why-are-you-sleeping-get-up-get-up' anxiety attacks at about 4 a.m., and I was desperate for sleep.

So I shut myself in the bathroom with the pillow and the blanket, and slept pretty well on the floor there for another couple of hours.

Kind of reminded me of being a young man.

When I was a young man

When I was a young man my ambition was to sleep on a mattress on the floor and have a home full of easels and drawing tables.

Then my unplanned career came along, and I spent 25 years as a walking advertisement for mediocrity, consumerism and superficiality.

I would have been better off sticking with the original plan.

Now I'm a tired old dumpy grumpy consumer struggling to be something more by being less and not doing such a great job of it.

Prajna the cat has lately become very interested in attention from me. She is such a tiny critter... still the size of a kitten at age two and a half and light as a feather. She's the second-smallest of the cats behind Midget.

Why am I here?

I've been out for a drive, taking pictures. Man, is it nice out tonight.

This would be a good evening to sit outside with five friends and some wine in a box and argue about whether Alan Watts was a Taoist when he died. But here I am at my computer. Monday night is the 'dead zone' in my corner of the world. No Galileo, no Red Cup.

Nor I have I sat in about a week.

Instead, I wore a necktie to work today. That is my achievement.

I need to hear a human voice.












































Bat shit.

First necktie since September '98

I had forgotten.

I wore a necktie to work today for the first time since September '98. It was an old regimental stripe rep tie, Kenneth Gordon make, and it had been in my closet since probably '91 or '92 and maybe earlier. Fortunately, it was conservative enough to be no more dorky than it was 15 years ago.

I knew intellectually I had grown unfond of neckties.

But I had forgotten how viscerally I had come to despise them.

At 6'0" and a 17" neck, I have a hard time finding ties that fit, anyway. The short end is always 'way too short, and at my current weight, the tie accentuates my stomach, especially in profile.

I'm always fiddling with the knot, the way I fiddle with my handlebar moustache when I have one.

I hate neckties.

Okay, one Oscar® result

I just looked at the current "Cutting to the Chase" (which see.)

Hey –– don't you guys know I'm reading "The Dharma Bums" over here? I can't have my mind polluted with all that worldly crap!

Oscar® results

I don't know.

And it's okay to not know.

What a great day.

It was just an all around great day today... sunny and 72.

The Red Cup crowd decamped to the patio for the first time since fall. Well, there are some people who stay out there when it's 35 degrees, but today there were more outside than inside... a general hubbub of people including many who had not been seen in weeks.

Cristen brought her kids and Amy brought Bella (certified as World's Cutest Puppy®), so they played together around the grownups.

Lesley moved from table to table. Brian gave Kat with a K a shoulder massage.

I have these times in my life when everything just seems 'in the zone.' They may last only an hour or two –– perhaps even less –– and they just have to be enjoyed as they come, and then let go of when they are over. This morning was one of them. I wasn't even actively participating, really; just sitting quietly, surrounded by lives being led.

I am reading "The Dharma Bums," the first Kerouac I have ever read (I frankly had a very incomplete education) and it has been a revelation, especially on such a clear, balmy day when one can easily visualize oneself sitting on a mat in a guy's house and talking about Zen versus Tibetan Buddhism.

I also assembled the new doghouse and aired up the tires on my bicycle.

Thank God spring is here.

Clothes III

James Bond is probably not the most-referred to fictional character in men's fashion magazines.

That would be Jay Gatsby, of course.

Proof of how far I've backslid.

Escape Dog!

I was able to watch stealthily this morning as Haley, She Who Does Not Sleep, plotted and executed her escape from the back yard.

It was a perfect demonstration of the principle that persistence pays off.

Haley is probably the least intelligent dog I've ever had. But she spent ten minutes sniffing around a newly-secured section of the fence looking for a way out, before finally squeezing herself through a tiny opening between two pickets.

More work is required.

Clothes II

I learned years ago that if you read 24 consecutive issues of GQ or Esquire, you'll absorb pretty much everything they have to say or will ever have to say.

The classic navy blazer is part of the foundation of a man's wardrobe blah blah blah. Chinos were popularized by GIs returning home from WWII blah blah blah. English suits are blah blah blah, but Italian suits are blah blah blah. The classic rep tie is blah blah blah for any blah blah blah. The Duke of Windsor blah blah blah. Your cummerbund should be worn blah blah blah your symphony tickets blah blah blah. Only a blah blah blah would wear a button down shirt with blah blah blah. Lightweight worsted wool is blah blah blah. Your martini should be stirred, blah blah blah Bond, James Bond blah blah blah.

(I think James Bond is the single most-frequently referred to fictional character in men's fashion magazines. And when they talk about James Bond, they mean Sean Connery as James Bond. There is still no other.)

I thumbed through one of the magazines -- I couldn't tell you which -- at Borders yesterday afternoon.

Blah blah blah.

I can see now that my fascination with clothes back in the eighties and early nineties was in part a way to try to buy an identity for myself because I didn't think I had come with one pre-installed.

Maybe I didn't, but now that's okay. The sage neither seeks attention nor avoids it. Having no identity simplifies life enormously, and simple is always better.

But at work, where I am about the only guy in the building who doesn't wear suits or even ties to the office, I think my non-business business dress draws attention. It has become a manifestation of ego. And as I've written before, the way I see ego now is that it's just more clutter in my life.

But I don't like dress clothes anymore. Too expensive. Too uncomfortable. Too high-maintenance. Too boring.

And yet.

And yet it seems like it is time to begin dressing to not draw attention. Neither overly natty, nor assertively counter-culture. Bland, frankly.

Further complicating the issue is that I do not have the physique of Sean Connery as James Bond. I have the physique of Edgar Buchanan as Uncle Joe on "Petticoat Junction." My own fault: I am a sloth. But I'm an off-the-rack 48R, up from a 42L in my twenties, and nothing I buy is going to make me not look like an overweight middle-aged man.

I do not want to look like a copier salesman. But I'm too penguin-shaped for the clothes I'd like to wear.

On the other hand...

The Sartorialist's Blog

Clothes

Dogwoods in bloom

Dogwoods are one of the first things to bloom around here in spring. Last spring, when they were in full bloom, the trees looked like they were covered with snow.

The blooming of the dogwoods is the announcement, at least in my neighborhood, that spring is here and that other plants will soon be following.

Last spring, the trunk of the dogwood tree in my front yard was split in two by lightning from an overnight storm. I didn't even hear it. But when I walked out the next morning, half the tree was lying on the lawn.

I wasn't sure the remainder would survive, but all the branches are blooming this weekend. The photo was taken in the early afternoon.

Tonight

I fell on the futon almost as soon as I got home. I was asleep by 7:30 and didn't wake up until 10:30 or so.

AWOL

Twice this week, She Who Does Not Sleep has escaped for two hours or more. She's missing as I write this.

The weather has been nice enough that I've just left the back door open, hoping that being able to come and go as she pleased would calm her down, and it worked some. I didn't worry about intruders because I figured she would scare them off.

But although I thought I had the fence secured, both times she found a new way through.

And both times I discovered her absence by waking up and noticing how strangely quiet the house was. No pacing back and forth, no grumbling or slurping or growling or snarfing or belching or farting.

The first time it happened, I woke feeling good for the first time in weeks, because I had actually slept for a couple of hours instead of dozing through the series of 15-minute cat naps for which I've had to settle -- ever since she started having these nervous fits caused by my every cough, or a dog barking down the block, or a cat stretching in the living room.

Last night, I bought her a dog house at PetsMart, planning to assemble it this weekend and start letting her stay outside more often.

She will probably come back today after the sun's up.

I desperately want some decent sleep.

7:16 am update. She's just come back home.

Or maybe it's just my meds...

...because I cried at this, too.

Kittens represent youth and innocence. "The Joker" represents, well, youth and innocence. I was 21 when the original was released. So it's, like, all nostalgic and shit.

Plus, it's kittens. What are you gonna do?

What if?

What if Microsoft designed the packaging for the iPod?

Maybe it's just me, but I laughed until I cried.

By the way... what is this music?

Update: I have changed this link to point to a better vesrion of the same video.