Friday PM

I stubbed my little toe today - hit it on a table leg or something. The skin isn't broken, but the whole toe is solid purple.

It's Friday

I had made up my mind that I was going to quit blogging about my spiritual beliefs and blog about my life and topics that interest me.

There's been only one hitch: my life is pretty damn boring. As I've said before, I like it this way, but I realize most people prefer a little more excitement.

I don't have any answers for you.

Brrrp

I ate about three times as much dinner as I needed to.

Wednesday PM

Later I got up and went around to my usual haunts. It was the first time I'd visited a couple of them in two weeks.

As usual, there's not much going on. But I feel like I'm getting better.

Wednesday AM

I got up and fed the cats. Then I scratched my leg. Now I'm going back to bed.

Tuesday PM

A few days ago a friend sent me an email which I'm excerpting below:

"I tried very hard to convince someone you are not completely depressed. It's as though you are just waiting to lay down permanently. Perhaps you are. It's as though you have given up on life.

"Even monks take care of their physical well being. They walk, they eat healthy, they appreciate their surroundings. They are not wrinkled-up messes, moving like snails. You don't even smile anymore. You don't seem happy. Your energy feels sad and lost."

I would probably choose different words to describe it, but what my friend suggested is essentially true. In a way, I am waiting for the end. Who isn't? It's going to come one way or another, and the only difference for each of us is how we spend the time between now and then.

My friend is basically an extrovert. She enjoys crowds and goes out almost every night.

I am basically an introvert. I go out frequently, but big crowds overwhelm me. I don't like noise. I have always had trouble understanding conversations in noisy environments, and my hearing seems to have deteriorated even further over the past two or three years.

I know I move slowly. I'm reminded about it pretty regularly. When I walk, I'm usually aware of the weight of my arms and legs moving and the feel of my clothing against my skin. I tend to get focused on it now and then. I find myself thinking as I walk, 'Here I am on the street,' or 'Here I am walking up to the counter,' or whatever.

As I've said before, I'm at a stage in my life where I have few deadlines, few schedules and am mostly free to come and go as I please. I have no sense of urgency about living my life or getting things done. Even so, I think you could say I spend an unusually large amount of time inside my own head.

As for being happy, I don't care much about being happy. During those times when I am happy, I'm thankful for that and enjoy it while it's present. But I always keep in mind that it's temporary, that there will always be ups and downs and that I shouldn't get attached to any of it.

I don't want to fall into a situation where I decide to see myself as being unhappy, then go out and churn up a bunch of drama and chaos in my life while trying to make myself happy. I feel like I'm fortunate to have what I have, and I don't want to risk it trying to grab something else that may be only fleeting if it exists at all.

My lifestyle, though dreary and unsatisfying by most people's standards, is the lifestyle that works for me. And although it may seem to you like I'm missing out on a lot, I don't feel that way.

Garfield Minus Garfield

Check this out quickly, because I think copyright issues will lead to its demise.

A blogger has taken a few weeks' worth of the Garfield comic strip, and simply deleted the title character. The results are – well, your mileage may vary, but it certainly appealed to me.

Garfield Minus Garfield

It's Tuesday

Well, I'm grateful for the night's rest. But the freedom from coughing didn't last and now I'm back to wheezing and coughing all the time. I'm thinking maybe I accidentally double-dosed on the medicine RJ gave me and that's why I got the temporary respite from coughing.

Back to normal?

I've had an almost cough-free night. I've slept pretty well, although I'm up now, as usual. But I'll be back in bed soon, and I hope I'm getting back to normal.

Singing Kittens

They're Australian. The one who whistles is the best.

More here

Ouch

I hurt my back during another coughing spasm overnight. I'm not in mortal pain, but it's a little sore. I can get up and walk around, etc., but I get a twinge when I bend or twist.

Health update

I'm still coughing, but I seem to have some progress today.

My central heat unit has a built-in humidifer, which I assumed was running – but as I discovered last night, it was turned off. I don't know when that happened. The last time I looked at it was probably three years ago or more.

So I turned it up to about 25 percent, and that seems to be helping. Plus, I'm still taking the medicine RJ brought over the other night.

I've let some chores go while was in bed and trying to get better. I hope I can get started on some of those tomorrow.

The God of Fountain Pens

He makes nibs.

8:41 am

Blogblah's advice helped. Got about 3 and a half hours of sleep, during which I dreamt about coughing.

4:15 am

Advice has arrived from Blogblah!

I'm going to try it. Meditative thinking (not really meditation, but mind-quieting exercises) usually helps, but tonight it's not.

3 am

Still awake.

2:25 am

2 am

Still awake.

Still awake

I'm still awake. I want to sleeeeeeeeeep.

Non-attachment!

This is just a note to myself:

Let go. Let go now. Don't go there, don't look. Don't argue. Just let it go.

---

I'm trying to get back to sleep. But once again, I'm too tired to do anything, not sleepy enough to sleep.

Saturday afternoon

I got out for about an hour and a half this afternoon and spent the time at the RC. But the coughing attacks started back up and I came home.

Back to bed, I think.

1:30 a.m.

...however, I would also like to be where I am, but asleep. I've been up all night, tossing and turning, coughing and hacking, smart and awake instead of stupid and sleepy.

I should also mention

that in addition to the chicken soup, RJ brought me some drugs that will not make me sleepy or stupid.

So I'm wondering why I would want to take them.

Seriously, this is sort of like the first time in my life I've had a family, and it's turned out to be a very pleasant experience. I feel very fortunate to be where I am.

The funniest thing I have seen in, like, forever

Maybe you have to use Photoshop to appreciate this. Or maybe you have to use Photoshop and have cats. But I laughed until I cried.



There is a whole series of these. I haven't watched them all, but the ones I've seen are pretty hilarious.

And yes, I learned some Photoshop tips from them.

3D Virtual Reality

This is pretty incredible... a Carnegie Mellon grad student has developed a home-brew 3D video system using a Wii remote. Watch the whole video... the 3D part is mind-bending.

Movie Posters

The moviepostersaddict web site has posters for all 79 Oscar® recipients for best movie.

Some of them appear to be posters for re-releases, but you still get an idea of how poster art has changed.

I agree with guy who wrote that the poster for "All Quiet on the Western Front" is the best of the bunch. I'm also partial to the "All About Eve" poster.

The power of the intertubes

Less than 15 minutes after commenting on the previous post that I wish I had some chicken soup, RJ showed up at my door with... chicken soup, hot and homemade. I feel less sleepy and smarter already.

Thank you very much, RJ... I needed that!























I wish I had a winning lottery ticket right now...

Friday

It's Friday. I'm still hacking and coughing. I'm out cough syrup. I'm just plodding along. I've slept most of the day.

Man, you look like shit

No... really.

The Twilight Zone

If you've ever been stuck at home for a day or two with a cold or the flu, you'll know what I'm talking about: you're too tired and enervated to do anything, especially if the weather's bad, but you've slept so much already that you can't get back to sleep.

I suppose I could do some housecleaning – oh, bullshit. Who am I kidding? I can't even make myself clean house when I'm well.

I've coughed and hacked so much that all the muscles in my chest hurt when I cough. Or sneeze. Or anything. This is the most exercise I've gotten since I retired.

I ran out of NyQuil, so I can't sedate myself with that. I do have some Formula 44D, and I guess I could go take some more of that.

Brrrr

The temperature has stayed below freezing all day, and it's dreary and overcast. I've been in bed almost all of the day, hacking and coughing. Fortunately, I've had the Blanket of Sublime Bliss to soothe and comfort me.

I like sleep.

Sensual pleasure

I'm attached to a sensual pleasure. It's my blanket. I bought this blanket at Target back in December or thereabouts. I just grabbed a blanket off the shelf, not spending a lot of time on different types.

Well, the more I use it, the better it feels. It's perfect. I'd like to just sew myself up in it and stay there, at least until spring. And maybe when spring gets here, I could just crank the AC up full blast and stay in it until fall.

I didn't get up until after noon today because I was so comfortable under the blanket.

Simple pleasures are the best.

It's Wednesday

I think that about a third of the people I know are now hacking with the same kind of cough I have. It's everywhere.

New link

Added to the sidebar links is Damn Interesting, which is a compendium of random stories of a historical and/or scientific/technological nature. If I were writing answers for Jeopardy!, I'd be checking this site every day.

It's Tuesday

I got the car back and I got out for a walk this afternoon, and got in a little RC time.

But the cough is just wearing me out. There's no fever, no aches, no nothing else... just the cough. I'd be more worried if it weren't for the fact that I know three or four other people with the same thing.

It's keeping me awake at night and generally dragging me down. I just want to sleep, but I can't.

I am worn out.

Dragging

The car's at the garage and I'm at the Red Cup this morning.

But I've retreated to a corner by myself so I don't hack and cough all over people, and also so I can have a little quiet. My energy level, which is not very high under the best of circumstances, is very low this morning. I feel like I could go to sleep right where I'm sitting.

Sunday afternoon

I finally got enough NyQuil in me to get some sleep and I'm in a little bit better shape now.

Yesterday, before the car crapped out on me again, I went to the pet supply store and bought two brand new extra large industrial strength self-cleaning litter boxes. I've been using these for about seven years now and they're a godsend. The drawback, at least with the earlier models, is that they tend to get little chuncks of litter down in the gears after a while and then they lock up.

I swapped out one of the recently-dead boxes last night and will do the other one today.

In addition to everything else...

I have a cough that has refused to go away after almost a week. I'm loaded up on NyQuil right now, although it doesn't seem to be helping.

Serpentine conundrum

The serpentine belt on the minivan came off again this afternoon. I guess I'll get it worked on Monday. This will be the third serpentine repair or replacement in three weeks and the fifth since I bought the car in 2000.

As it turns out, this is apparently a long-standing and well-known problem with Voyagers and Caravans, dating back to the mid-nineties.

I really don't want to buy a new car, but judging from what I've read today, I'm also about due for a new transmission ($2500). The Honda and Toyota vans are more expensive, but apparently more reliable as well.

Existential conundrum

It's my hair, which I haven't cut since August. Cut it short? Let it grow? I don't know.

Music on order

On the way from amazon.com:

Ahir Bhairav & Bhairavi

Hindustani Slide Guitar

Debashish Bhattacharya

The Art of the Shakuhachi, Volume One

Raga Pahadi Jhinjhoti - Hindustani Slide Guitar

Mandolin Melodies: South Indian Classical Music

Well, I've done it again.

I've blown my non-attachment getting worked up over stuff I ought not to care about.

I have no good reason to worry about the production values of campaign commercials, or the Sonics thing or the Patriots thing or even the champion beagle. (Okay, maybe the Sonics thing is fair since it will involve my sales tax burden.)

Ninety-nine per cent of the stuff that destroys my peace is stuff that comes nowhere near me on its own. Instead, I go out and find it.

God grant me the wisdom to stop clicking pointless links. Maybe I need that Internet vacation more than I realized.

If you used to work at TXN...

...say hello here. You know who you are.

Somebody gets it...

...but it's not Arlen Specter, who's 'investigating' NE Patriots coach Bill Belichick's apparent secret taping of opponents' defensive signals.

Read the story on The Huffington Post, but also read the comments below the story.

Hey, look! The seventies are back!

Beagle wins at Westminster

Now here's some interesting news: a beagle wins best in show at Westminster for the first time.

Fast motion people

I have some friends, all younger than myself, who radiate energy - sometimes of an almost manic quality. I'm slower now than I've ever been in my life, but even in my twenties, I wasn't like any of these people. Watching them is like watching a movie running in fast motion - it looks almost unreal.

I can't imagine what it's like to feel or function that fast. Does the rest of the world seem to run in slow motion for them?

I love my bed

Have I mentioned how much I love my bed? It's not a particularly nice bed - just a mid-price futon I bought about ten years ago. It's in the dining room, isolated from the rest of the room by a wooden screen. (I think I've mentioned before that my actual living space has been shrinking as I adjust my space to my lifestyle.)

My bed usually has a few books on it, stuck in the corner, and a bunch of big throw pillows along the wall. I can sit on it or sleep on it or read on it. I can light some incense in the living room, put on some tabla or sitar of shakuhachi music, and zone out.

It's pretty cozy and private and that's why I like it.

Nothing to think about

Y'know, I don't even have much enthusiasm for self-pity anymore, which is kind of a first.

Nothing cheers me up and nothing seriously upsets me.

I've been reading a book called Lieh Tzu: A Practical Guide to Taoist Living, translated by Eva Wong. (I haven't finished the Scots history book, but I will eventually.)

In the introduction, Wong discusses how at various times in ancient China, it was safer to extricate oneself from 'the system,' with all its political intrigues, and live both physically and philosophically 'off the grid.' This is a theme other modern Taoist translators and commentators have expressed.

I don't feel like I'm in any physical danger, but I do feel like I've been in the whirlwind of craziness at various times in my life, and I'm glad to be out. Moreover, I'm glad to find some philosophical support for my decision to drop out.

Nothing to do

I received a belated birthday gift today from the commenter occasionally known as dzaster.

It's a book entitled "Meditations for Men Who Do Next to Nothing (and Would Like to Do Even Less)". Its author is (the perhaps pseudonymous) Lee Ward Shore.

This book is meant to be a humorous sendup of self-help books, but within the humor are some gems of wisdom.

"What good is furniture if you're too busy to sit on it?"

"An obstacle isn't an obstacle until you try to overcome it."

"Today, I will not clutter my mind with thoughts."

"Today, let me not only go with the flow, but celebrate it."

Minivan foo

More car problems today. Got ready to run some errands and discovered my passenger side front tire was flat. It was fine this morning, so I assume I ran over something coming home from the coffee shop.

Field of Schemes

In light of our upcoming vote on the Ford Center expansion, I've added a special guest link to Field of Schemes.

"Fieldofschemes.com is the companion website to Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money Into Private Profit, by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause. Since 1998, we have been casting a critical eye on the roughly $2 billion a year in public subsidies that go toward building new pro sports facilities."

There's some ongoing coverage there of the Ford Center/Sonics story along with coverage of developments in other sports venue issues around the country. Please check it out.

Yes we can/No we can't

Maybe you've already seen this:



But what about this?



Or this?

The Iran backstory

I've never heard of this organization, Just Foreign Policy. But I know from previous reading that the story described in this video is true.

My Fitness Plan

If we bought a bunch of those Hawaii Chairs for the Red Cup, we could all sit there on our asses and passively wiggle our way back to svelteness.

I don't care as much about bowling

I don't care as much about bowling as I used to.

There was a time – I've mentioned it here – when I would see a woman I thought I'd like to go bowling with, make up some idealized fantasy about the kind of person she was, fall in love with the fantasy, then be shattered and heartbroken when I discovered she wasn't like that at all.

Later, I would meet a woman I thought I'd like to go bowling with – I've also mentioned this here – and my mind would immediately flash-forward to the scene where she's at Flip's with her girlfriends, dishing about a bastard I was. And probably about what a lousy bowler I was.

Now, I see a woman I think I'd like to go bowling with, and within about 15 seconds, my mind has wandered somewhere else: noticing how blue the sky is, or the music on my iTunes, or thinking about something I read in a book. (I'm currently reading How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Don't ask me why.) Or sometimes I just zone out.

I assume part of this lack of interest in bowling is just age. Men, I've read, lose interest in bowling in their later years.

But I think part of it is also attitude, or what some might call 'the practice.' I hesitate to say that my mind has expanded, because that sounds so pretentious and Timothy Leary-like, but I don't know what else to call it. A lot of things that seemed important in the past seem less so now.

If you look up at the sky, it just goes on forever. Literally forever.

It stinks of Zen

I haven't written much about Buddhism or Taoism lately, and that's by intent. There were times when my posts stunk of Zen, or at least of what I perceive Zen to be. My beliefs should apply to and enhance my daily life – otherwise, they're just a hobby, and I could write about them the way I might write about stamp collecting or model railroading.

It occurs to me that if my beliefs are really applied to my daily life, then I should be writing about my daily life in that context, rather than just talking about my beliefs as an end to themselves.

Years ago, I became fascinated by personal computers. I swapped out video cards, replaced memory, added hard drives and built one PC from scratch. I spent more time fiddling with the computers than using them. At one point, I had five Linux and Windows PC networked in my house, plus a few webcams.

But ss time went by, I became less interested in the mechanics of the computers and more interested in using them get other things done.

That's where I am, I think, with Buddhism and Taoism.

How complete and correct are my beliefs? I don't know. And I realize part of the reason I've avoided any organized activity here is that I'm afraid to find out. What I feel inside, in terms of calm and serenity and contentment, is working very well for me. I don't want to find out I'm 'doing it wrong,' and then be saddled with some new 'correct' practice that makes me neurotic and stressed out.

I can write now about my every day life, but of course there's not much to say. My daily life continues to be excruciatingly dull by most people's standards, although fine by me. I could probably create some sort of macro that writes "I went to the Red Cup this morning, then went for a walk" every day and then just let it run by itself.

So I don't know what I'll write about now. We'll just have to see where the blog takes itself.

Safari 3.1 and HTML 5

If you're a web designer, this is a big deal.

Safari still has a pretty small share of the web browsing market, but having someone commit to these standards increases the possibility others will as well. If Safari has these fetaures readily available this year, we might expect to see them Internet Explorer as early as, oh, 2011.

(Sex sex sex fucking sexual expression sex sex)

Free expression

Posted recently on Flibbertigibbet!:

"I made it explicitly clear that though sexual expression comes much easier [now], I cannot just have casual sex. Perhaps I am old fashioned in that regard. Freely expressing myself sexually? Sure, but only within a relationship am I comfortable doing so."

What is the difference, I've been wondering, between 'sexual expression' and fucking?

I finally decided 'sexual expression' is simply more refined than plain fucking. Fucking is like belching and farting; 'sexual expression' is like languidly brushing stray strands of hair from your face.

'Sexual expression' is classy, like interpretive dance. Fucking is more like... bowling, maybe.

A bargain at twice the price!

As some of you know, I don't watch TV.

Maybe you've already seen this, but I just encountered it. If it's old news to you, I apologize.



I wonder if they've actually sold any of these.

Election analysis

I'm tired of the phrase 'delegate-rich state.'

The Mission

At the Red Cup a few weeks ago, a woman to whom I had been recently introduced asked me, "So... do you do anything?"

"No," I replied.

A couple of weeks after that, someone asked me, "What are you doing to make the world a better place?"

"I'm not actively fucking anything up," I replied. "I figure that puts me ahead of most of the Bush administration."

That's my mission, and I'm pretty content with it.

Why we shiver when peeing

Because it feels so darn good.

In fact, it feels so good some people apparently faint.

Who says there's nothing to do in this town?

Ooga ooga

I'm going to name one of my cats 'Ooga Ooga.'
The when I call her and she ignores me, I can say, "Hey, Ooga Ooga, can't you hear me talkin' to ya?"

Try to find an electric fan in a store in February

I almost always have a fan running in the house, evn in winter, to keep the air circulating.

Whern I was a child, my grandmother had an electric fan with a small oil reservoir. You occasionally had to put 3-in-1 or some other oil into it, but the thing ran forever. You can still find old fans like that on e-bay.

What I have is a more recent fan, about four years old, which is 'permanently lubricated' for the life of the fan. The 'life of the fan' is usually defined as 'until the permanent lubrication is gone and the fan blades seize up.'

That's exactly what happened to my fan. Now I have a 'hot spot' where I sleep, getting little breeze or ventilation.

I visited some stores over the weekend, looking for a replacement - even a cheap fan that might tide me over until the home improvement and discount stores get their seasonal merchandise. But one was not to be had.

I took the blade guard off my old fan a little while ago, squirted some 3-in-1 onto the shaft, and got it running again. I hope it holds on for at least a few days.

Even though I have plenty of experience with things wearing out due to daily use, I am still surprised and dismayed when things quit working. I expect things to last forever, although I know there's no rational reason for this.

This also goes to my notion of getting along with less stuff. It's not just the up-front cost and the clutter of having lots of gadgets in your life that impedes us... it's also the additional time and energy required for maintenance. I am so laz about maintenance, and have such a low tolerance for fix-it chores, that I would rather try to do without than have to always worry about something breaking down or freezing up when I need it.

Not that it's terribly important...

...but I did get the 'dead' hard drive out of its enclosure this afternoon, pretty much trashing the enclosure in the process. But the connection which seemed to be the problem is on a circuit board, not wired, so the point is probably moot.

I ordered a new enclosure from Other World Computing, and I'll just keep this HD as a standby or extra or something. I don't know.

Giving up the Internet

No, I'm not going to, at least not yet.

But I've been tempted to give it a shot for awhile just to see what happens.

I find that about half the stuff I read every day is useless. There's nothing, for example, on Ain't It Cool News that I need to know. I mean, nothing.

I read macsurfer.com, which is an aggregator of Apple-related news items from around the web, and that's not much help.

The Huffington Post is also an aggregator, with a lot of good national, international and political news, but also a lot of celebrity and lifestyle crap.

The one thing that's climbing my favorites list with a bullet is the Clear Mind Zen blog, permanently linked at the right, which is a wonderful mix of Zen and everyday life by someone who knows what he's talking about. (Although not right now, apparently: a spammer seems to have hacked the writer's account and posted a bunch of gibberish with some links buried in it.)

I don't like being entertained very much. I feel like my brain is already cluttered with so much useless debris that I don't need to add more.

But when I'm sitting with nothing to do, or when I'm sitting with things I ought to be doing but don't want to do, such as housecleaning, I find myself using the internet the way other people use television - which is to say, something to just take my mind off reality.

I'm thinking that maybe I would have more internal calm and peace if I distanced myself from the net for awhile.

You get what you pay for

...and this looked like a bargain. I bought a one terabyte external HD, made by a good-but-not-great nationally-recognized brand, from a large national computer chain that was going out of business (guess which one). It was marked down about 15 percent.

That was three weeks ago.

Now, it's dead.

Eventually, I can pull the drive, which is probably still functional, out of its enclosure, which is not functional, and perhaps use it as an internal drive or something.

But I ordered another new drive tonight, this time from a top-tier manufacturer.

Buy now! Operators are standing by!

Found via Atrios:

"In a business culture that sees its role as selling to the consumer something it doesn't need to produce its profit, deception becomes a necessity. Calling the present disaster a 'strong economy' presumes you the consumer will allow yourself to be given dirt and believe it's gold.

"When we are cajoled to buy products because they supposedly will increase our feeling of self-worth, not because they are a good value, we as consumers have been reduced to ignorant slaves. We are caricatured as having no judgment, but only ego needs, and are a commodity to be used and discarded."

There's some things in this blog post I don't agree with – I think it's a reach to compare modern-day consumers with 16th-19th-century slaves – but the gist of it is on the money, in my opinion.

More here.

(The preceding quote touches, as you may know, on one of my favorite themes, which is that is you feel that your self worth is dependent on what you buy, or what you wear, or what you drive, or where you live, you're thinking exactly the way these mf's want you to think.)

John Cage

Here's John Cage appearing on "I've Got A Secret" in 1960. Garry Moore was the host.

I'm almost certain it's Saturday

I have nothing to report.

Campaign contributions

This is pretty cool: a Huffington Post/Google map showing contributions to all the presidential campaigns.

You can search by name, zip code, occupation and more. Here's the link for Oklahoma City

Freedom of religion

One of the things I've learned in the course of all my Buddhist readings is that Buddhism has suffered violent setbacks over the centuries, with monks murdered and temples destroyed.

The Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet is the most recent example of this, but there have been others.

I wish freedom of religion was more expansive than it is in the US, and I worry that the trend is toward less freedom of religion, not more. But it's useful to remember that there are still many places in the world where having the wrong religion or belief system can get you killed, and we're fortunate to live in a place where people are mostly free to pursue their own beliefs.

Dreary news update

I won't post a bunch of links, but I'll mention that the tech punditocracy seems split abut 55/45 on the proposed Yahoo! buyout, with 55 percent saying it's a bad business move.

Dreary news

Microsoft bids $44.6 billion to screw up Yahoo!

Almost every service Yahoo! provides is also provided by Microsoft, only in a more bloated, less user-friendly way. By the time MS gets through 'fixing up' Yahoo!, it will be worthless.