Actually...

It was, "Hey good-lookin'... we'll be back to pick you up later."

As I confirmed just moments ago on the Internets.

Good morning, Vietnam!

Went back to sleep and had a dream about a bunny rabbit falling out of a helicopter. He landed on a Target store. Woke up wanting a root beer.

Just kidding.

Anyway, it's off to another day of not being hip enough, fresh enough, sexy enough, exciting enough, affluent enough, Edmond enough, hyperanimated facial expressions enough, blah blah blah enough.

Hey, good-lookin'... we'll be back to check you out later.

Dream addendum

The helicopter from which the guy fell was dark green, about midway between forest green and olive drab, and had the initials 'IBC' on the side in white, gray or silver. It was a serif typeface, possibly Bodoni, and there was some kind of border around the letters, like a shield or square.

IBC could be the bank, the root beer or something else. I did a quick Google image search, but didn't find any matching logos.



Something like this. I don't know what it means.

Why is this stuff in my brain?

A dream

Just woke up, soaked with sweat, from a dream in which a lot of odd random stuff happened, including guys riding around in a red forties-era roadster stolen (according to the handy information packet that seems to come with many of my dreams) from an heir to the Target family fortune. (I have no idea if there really is a Target family fortune. Someone should call the Daytons and the Hudsons and see if they have a car missing.)

At the end of all this random stuff happening are two helicopters flying, not together, but in the same general area. One is performing clearly dangerous aerobatic stunts. I'm watching from the ground, wondering not if, but when the pilot will make a fatal mistake. The pilot of the other helicopter is now hovering nearby, watching the first pilot with alarm. Sure enough, the first pilot suddenly loses control and the helicopter plunges to the ground. And as the people on the ground are screaming and gasping with alarm, someone falls out of the second helicopter and lands on the street about thirty feet away.

His landing, while probably not scientifically correct, is very graphic (but not bloody)... he lands on his back, bounces about a foot back up, then comes down again. He lands again on his back, more or less at his shoulders. His body rolls backward, so that his legs and feet fold over his head, and he is briefly folded almost like a jackknife at the waist. Then his legs straighten out again, and he comes to rest flat on his back, and presumably dead, on the pavement.

My dreams seem to be frequently filled with violence or threats of random or accidental violence. I am never committing the violence in my dreams, nor is it ever directed at me. I have a lot of dreams about plane crashes, and they always occur with me standing on the ground watching –– never as a passenger or a pilot.

Plus all the dreams in which tornadoes drop down out of the sky, and the occasional drowning dream.

My inner psychologist says these dreams are not so much about violence as about me feeling like I have no control over my own destiny and feeling like I'm just tossed about by threatening conditions. If I retired to that cave near the monastery, would I still have nightmares?

Maybe I have calm, peaceful pleasant dreams I don't remember.

Does anyone dream about quiet, blue lakes? Fields of flowers? Bunny rabbits?

The Weekend

Spent another weekend being an indolent sloth. I did some laundry Saturday and pulled weeds for about twenty minutes Sunday, but other than that it was a weekend of eating, sleeping, some drinking and a lot of sitting around.

The sage acts without effort.

Ate lunch Sunday at Pho Cuong on Classen. Vietnamese chicken soup was a new experience for me -- good stuff.

iTunes: Prabha, Debashish Bhattacharya

The Kitten Welfare State

A few weeks ago, I heard a small squeaking noise in my back bedroom, which is piled high with boxes of old clothes, obsolete computers, books and art supplies.

I moved some debris, and found the source: the squeaking was coming from one of three kittens who had, unbeknownst to me, been born back there.

They are now beginning to explore the house:







As soon as they're old enough to get new homes, I'll be too attached to them to let them go.

Something terrible

I know something terrible's about to happen to me.
If I have to, I'll arrange it myself.

But other than that, things are peachy

It's 6:15 am. I've been up since 4, obsessing.
So many things that can go wrong.
So many disasters, poised on tiptoe waiting to happen.
A pile of rocks is precariously balanced at the edge of a cliff.
I stand at its base, checking my watch,
Wondering why it's taking so long for them to fall on me.

Cats live in the moment

...but cats also, at least in domestic situations, live in the perfect welfare state. Their needs are met by others. In my neighborhood, they wander from house to house, mendicants grazing for alms left in bowls on the porches.

Easy to 'just be' when someone else puts the food and water out.

There's been some research on this subject... when domestic cats are placed into situations where they must hunt and otherwise forage for themselves, taking responsibility for their own survival and well-being, they cluster into workplace task groups where they spread rumors about each other's personal lives, circulate 'who's hot and who's not' lists of co-cats, spam each other's email with 'Proud to be a Bush Republican" Flash animations and snark about each other's fur markings.

Do I need air conditioning in a cave?

Back to this Cold Mountain thing... Han Shan didn't live in a monastery. He lived near a monastery. I don't know how far a day's walk is in that context, but I would guess eight miles or so. (Or in my case, eight blocks.)

For me, the point is that Han Shan somehow managed to survive in that environment unemployed, out of the system, off of what constituted "the grid" in those days. And he was happy with that life, as I suspect I would be today.

And Han Shan was not without friends whom he occasionally visited, just as Thoreau would do 1100 years later while living in seclusion at Walden Pond. Neither lived in total isolation.

It's a little after 6 a.m.; I've been up since 4, obsessing.

The browser cache

I frequently use Firefox as a web browser, which caches certain form information I enter. For example (as I just discovered), about one hundred Google search terms are cached. Some of them are searches I did months ago, but I can still refer back to them instantly.

(Oddly enough, there must be hundreds more I've done that weren't cached. I wonder why some were saved and some weren't.)

One of them was the words 'Bonar' and 'twin.' I don't even remember doing that, I can't imagine why in the world I would have. I had to click on it to find out what it was about.

Bonar is the twin brother of actor Conrad Bain, who was in... Diff'rent Strokes? Mork and Mindy? Some sitcom or other. ('Bonar'... what a crappy thing to do to a kid.)

And at some point in the dim past, I apparently needed to know that. Or thought I did. "Bonar is the twin brother of Conrad Bain." More trivia to clutter my brain.

iTunes: Raga Madhu-Kauns, Ravi Shankar

Cold Mountain

I mentioned in some previous posts the poet Han Shan, who lived in China circa 700 AD and spent his life living in a remote cave about a day's walk from a Buddhist monastery.

I'm reading Red Pine's translation of his work.

That life still looks appealing to me. I get worn out dealing with other people.

I'm old and tired and not very interesting these days. Previously, I was younger and tired and not very interesting.

I keep running into people who think I have a personal obligation to them to change myself into something more to their liking. Why can't I be shorter, taller, thinner, younger, named Blaine or Ridge or Austin? Why can't I drive an SUV or a BMW? Why can't I, like, you know, totally talk like, you know, real people, mmmkay?

(Or, alternately, how come I ain't folks? How come I ain't got a mullet? How come I ain't in the Assembly of God? How come I ain't got a king cab pickup, and bowling ball callouses on my fingertips? Why do I hate Mur'ca?)

When I worked in TV, I was frequently told by my bosses that I wasn't "accessible," which was a way of saying –– well, I never figured out exactly what they were saying, nor could they explain it. The best I could figure was that it seemed like they were happy with my work, but they thought I sucked as a human being because I wasn't 'Edmond' enough.

If I lived alone, away from other people, I wouldn't have to be 'Edmond' enough. I wouldn't have to worry about being too big, too puffy or dumpy, too sleepy-eyed, too this or too that. I could just be me, and no one else would have to look at me, be offended by me or feel uncomfortable around me.

I could just be me.

I have no ambition to be anything other than me.

("Gasp! You bastard!")

Get buy-in from the stakeholders

I used to laugh at that expression (along with 'conceptualizing strategic initiatives' and 'leveraging robust assets') but I have lately become convinced of its truth.

You're dealing with the person you think is the go-to person for a project, only to discover after you've gotten into it that some other person you didn't know about –– who maybe isn't even directly connected –– doesn't like what you've done.

And it matters.

Years ago, in my previous life, I worked long and hard on a project that was scuttled by my boss's boss's wife. I didn't get it then, but she was a stakeholder. Maybe she shouldn't have been, but she was, and a more savvy person than me would have seen that.

Now I deal with it all the time. When the chain of command is fuzzy, the list of stakeholders is likely to grow.

And everything is about human relations, human needs and psychology. By "everything," I mean everything, whether you're talking about building a skyscraper, writing a screenplay or running for office.

So identify the stakeholders, and get that buy-in.

Then you can leverage those robust assets.

Tuesday

This is the first night I've come straight home from work and stayed home in, like, forever. I keep saying I'm going to spend more time being a hermit, but something always drags me out.

Food, mostly.

Too bad you can't get wisdom at drive-through windows. Kentucky Fried Enlightenment, with a jumbo Diet Pepsi.

iTunes: San'An, Tajima Tadashi, followed by Sanya, Kohachiro Miyata

A dream

I dreamt I was riding on something like a big rocket- or jet-powered sled. Everyone else on the sled was a Japanese teenager. We were in a huge parking lot for a grocery store.

The sled was being chased by dogs. One of the dogs caught up with us, and the teenagers were all kind of hopping and scrambling across the sled to keep the dog from biting them.

But as it turned out, the dog was after a sandwich I had in my hip pocket, and once he had it, he left us alone.

Then I woke up.

More on the compelling inner life thing

Lifted from flibbertigibbet!

"There's nothing so delightful as being aware. Would you rather live in darkness? Would you rather act and not be aware of your actions, talk and not be aware of your words? Would you rather listen to people and not be aware of what you're hearing, or see things and not be aware of what you're looking at? The great Socrates said, 'the unaware life is not worth living.' That's a self-evident truth.

"Most people don't live aware lives. They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts--generally somebody else's--mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical reactions."

- Fr. Anthony De Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

Lifted from Network! by Paddy Chayefsky:

"You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal! You do! Why, whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing, WE are the illusion!"

-Howard Beale

Lifted from a coffee mug that came with my space-age foam Tibetan meditation cushion from Zen Mountain Monastery:

WAKE UP!

I can't speak for all those people I suspect are just zombified by marketing, media and materialism. I can only tell you that I was 45 years old before someone finally explained to me what was going on with me, and gave me enough info that I could get myself started on the path that led to where I am tonight.

My therapist had worked as an adviser to a governor, so he knew whereof he spoke when he went down a list of people –– famous, powerful people in the state –– whom he personally knew and whom he suspected simply had no inner life or sense of introspection. Like De Mello, he was pretty sure that a lot of people weren't much more self-aware than a typical household pet.

There is a level in some forms of Buddhism called 'stream-enterer,' which is sort of like being a novitiate in some Christian denominations. A stream-enterer isn't enlightened, but has decided there must be some such thing as enlightenment and wants to find it.

(Remember what the Zen master said, though: "If you look at it, you will see it. If you look for it, you won't.")

But how do you start to look for enlightenment or anything else if you can't pry your eyes away from Desperate Housewives or the mail order catalogs?

I remember a time in which I was almost hypnotized –– or so it seems now –– by GQ, Esquire and other men's fashion magazines. All my desires were dictated by what I saw in ads. I didn't have time to think about what I wanted –– I was too busy processing what Ralph Lauren and other big-name '80s designers were telling me I should want.

I went to a movie at Quail Springs over the weekend. I used to go in the mall all the time and think nothing of it. Now, after years of inner city living and spending most of my consumer time in small, locally owned businesses, the mall seems like a freakin' space station. It's like Logan's Run in there. All the neon and processed air and animated kiosks. But it took me years to notice.

From the time it opened to about 1999, I was so used to wandering around in the mall with my eyes glazed over, bombarded by canned music and sale ads and mannequins in windows that I never even noticed how bizarre it was. I was a consumer, and it was my job to consume, dammit! Must... have... Mountaineer Jacket! Must... have... Adirondack Boots!

I was, as Howard Beale said, a human slowly turning into a humanoid.

Thanks to a series of remarkable incidents, I have gotten most of my humanity back, and I live among the other humans in the little human enclave in the old part of town.

Blow up your TV.

Get out of the mall.

Live.

That mcarp... man, he's fat. But he's so wise.

Now the question is whether it would be easier to lose weight or gain wisdom.

---

dzaster: Are you still in town?

nina: That is the pic. Keep that one.

Wise man update

First a quick note on the weekend: I did next to nothing, and enjoyed every minute of it. Spent much of Saturday slightly buzzed on 3.2 Tecate and a Sierra Pale Ale, and just sat around the Red Cup and later, after the beer, the Paseo.

Saw 'Snakes on a Plane' which I would say see or don't see, not that big a deal. Samuel L. Jackson needs some stronger supporting cast in this.

Suzanne and I went to an art show at OCU's Norick Gallery based on tip from Buddhist friend JenJen.

Ate wonderful stir fry Sunday evening prepared by soartstar. I mean freakin' awesome stir fry, best I've ever had anywhere.

---

Now, on to this 'wise man' thing. First of all, I realized over the weekend that some of this wondering is ego driven... sort of idle daydreaming about what it would be like to be recognized as some sort of –– well, not a guru, really, or a teacher, but just as a sort of serene, laid back dude who had a lot of answers. "Yeah, that Carp... he's really wise." Total ego thing, as well as pretty far removed from reality.

Seriously... I actually found myself thinking that since I can't keep my weight down anyway, I could just blimp up like Hotei, the fat 'laughing Buddha' you always see in Chinese takeout places, and just sit around being a fat wise man.

(For the record, I have few answers. I know most state capitols, but that's about it.)

I remembered something I posted back in February:

"Wen-tzu talked about the Taoist sages who did nothing to draw attention to themselves. That included not obviously seeking to avoid attention. Imagine that there are sages among us today, yet we don't see them because they blend in so well as to be invisible. Maybe you passed one on the street today and didn't notice him. Maybe you saw her just moments ago and you've already forgotten her.

"If you made a list of all the people you know, public and private, who might be sages, you'd miss the ones who actually are. They wouldn't occur to you."

Well, yeah. That's what it is.

I need to focus on wisdom versus being a wise man, and by wisdom, I should say a deeper awareness of and flow with the Tao.

---

What I really want to do at this moment in my life, by the way, is sit around on the Paseo, eat and sleep. And maybe drink beer. I am totally without ambition now. I'm ready to be fat, lethargic and totally introspective.

If I were a wise man, what would my life be like?

I'm wondering about this a little.

I don't mean a wise man in the biblical sense, but just a guy with some wisdom. And I don't mean, "How would I arrange my life if I were wise?" so much as "How would my life be if I had wisdom?"

Because I'm thinking that were I truly wise, my life would be different because I would make different choices. I wouldn't be thinking, "Oh, here's what a wise man would do." I would just have a different life as a natural result of having wisdom. I wouldn't even see it as a wise man's life –– I would simply have that particular kind of life, and it would be as natural to me as the life I have now, except that I wouldn't find myself questioning my own wisdom for the choices I'd made.

Wise men: I'm thinking of people like Ajahn Chah, DT Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama. All four are religious figures. What about secular figures? I can think of a lot of people who are smart, even brilliant, but not necessarily wise.

The wise man, I suppose, would be someone who isn't necessarily successful in the material sense. Maybe he's rather poor. He may not be popular, but he is not widely disliked. He conveys to those who know him a sense of serenity and calm. Maybe his advice is valued, or maybe he doesn't give advice. He's never angry, never manic, always pleasant but not gratingly cheery. He is tolerant and compassionate.

I know people personally who have some of those traits, but no one who has all of them. The monks, teachers and lamas I listed above may not have all those traits, either. I've never met any of them; maybe I've arbitrarily ascribed these traits to them because they're the kind of traits I want a wise man to have.

Maybe the Dalai Lama loses the keys to his minivan, and gets frustrated and rants under his breath while he looks for them under piles of magazines and fast food wrappers. Maybe Thich Nhat Hanh needs to clean the litter box.

Maybe the wise man of which I am thinking doesn't exist, and is just an impossibly perfect fiction.

I am not always the most talkative person in the room, but I'll tell you I usually go home in the evening thinking I've talked too much. I am frustrated at the end of the day at the things I've said which would have been better left unsaid. The wise man probably doesn't speak much.

Do you know a wise man?

I think you have the capacity to be happy

I said a few days ago I would respond to this comment, and I've delayed it long enough.

The original comment from Patrizia:

I think you have the capacity to be happy. I think the single revelation that stands between you and happiness is this: everyone on the planet has an inner life as compelling as your own.

I think once you realize this, you will see those Tommy Hilfiger-clad souls sitting in restaurants as brave & gallant & doing the best they can under circumstances that are far from ideal -- just as you are -- and that will move you and release you from your anger towards them.

'Cause you know, depression is really anger turned inward...

I drafted a response to this that included quotes from the Buddha, Wen-Tzu and my therapist as well as an embedded photo of George Bush and then realized I had gone on for nine paragraphs and was getting nowhere.

And so I come back to Seung Sahn:

I just don't know.

That ain't much, but that's what it is.










By the way, here's the Bush pic. Make up your own context:

Beta switch

I switched to the new beta version of Blogger this morning, and discovered after the fact that this may affect the ability of some people to post comments. All I can say is try it and see what happens.

3:40 am

I'm at an odd point in my life -- I suddenly seem to have more friends who are humans than friends who are cats.

I guess the cats are okay with this. I'm not as home as much as I used to be, and sometimes they eat late because I don't get home at the same time every evening.

Sometimes I miss having the time with the cats, though. Cats are easier to deal with because they think whatever I want to pretend they're thinking. I don't have to deal with a lot of differing opinions or temperaments.

On the other hand, I haven't had any humans shit in my potted plants.

Then again, I haven't let any humans in my house yet -- except one who goes by the nickname Kat.

Make of that what you will.

Hey, all you crazy cats and chicks!

Whilst sitting in the loft at VZD's tonight, Blogblah! wondered about the definition of the word 'kemp' as used on the hand-lettered signage across the street at Beck's Garage: "Hot Rods • Kemps • Motorcycles"

I didn't know it, either, but here it is, courtesy Kustom Kemps of America:

What is a Kemp? It’s a slang word used by teenagers in the late 50’s, and early 60’s to indicate a car or a truck. When you say Kustom Kemp, it means kustomized car or truck. So a kustom kemp can be any make, model or year vehicle, from 1903 to current year. The word "kemp" gained national recognition on a famous TV show called 77 Sunset Strip, where Edd “Kookie” Byrnes used it often, and in the little 25-cent Rod and Custom magazines.

I should mention for some of you –– maybe most of you –– that 77 Sunset Strip was a detective show produced by Warner Bros. back in the late fifties, when WB pretty much owned the detective and western genres on TV. Kookie was a sort of Fonzie-like character (although predating Fonzie by twenty years) who hung out with the detectives.

Here's more.

Kookie drove a T-bucket hot rod built by Norm Grabowski, and here's more on Grabowski and the car.

Monday PM

I sat on the porch this evening.
Rain running down the gutters,
Lightning forking across the sky.
Satori the cat sat beside me on the glider
Grooming himself, unconcerned.
A breeze blew, cool and damp: 73 degrees.
Rain, lightning, wind, cat –
All one thing.
I'm only looking at myself.
Why does anyone need a mirror?

Nothing, really

There was a man who had nothing.
Having nothing, nothing could be taken from him.
Wanting nothing, he was never disappointed.
When he died, he had the same thing as everyone else.

Gimp the Cat

Still pretty ratty-looking, but at least he's put on some weight.

There's nothing wrong with his eye, by the way. That was the second flash shot, and he's still squinting after the first one.

Here's some good news...

Well, for me, anyway.

Forget casual Fridays. In many workplaces, it's casual everyday as corporate dress codes have gone the way of fedoras and white gloves.

Office workers, from executives to receptionists, now wear pretty much what they want...

Los Angeles Times

Too hot to think

...which is my excuse tonight for not responding to Patrizia's post, or blogblah!'s excellent comment.

I went out in the early afternoon to shoot pix for work, and got a few that were usable. The temp was in the upper nineties, but I was comfortable.

Then, for dinner, I went by the Red Cup with the intention of hanging out the rest of the evening. But just the drive from downtown to 31st and Classen took a lot out of me -- up to 102 or so at this time -- and I ended up leaving early. When I got home, I was wiped out. I fell on the sofa at about 7:45, fell asleep almost immediately, and didn't wake up until about 11:30.

The capacity to be happy...

patrizia said...

I think you have the capacity to be happy. I think the single revelation that stands between you and happiness is this: everyone on the planet has an inner life as compelling as your own.

I think once you realize this, you will see those Tommy Hilfiger-clad souls sitting in restaurants as brave & gallant & doing the best they can under circumstances that are far from ideal -- just as you are -- and that will move you and release you from your anger towards them.

'Cause you know, depression is really anger turned inward...

I just want to acknowledge this post right now, because I'll come back to it. I don't want to respond with some glib BS, so I'm still thinking about it.

iTunes: Kaede No Hana, Yamato Ensemble

Just sayin'

A later evening dream

Went back to sleep and dreamt I was watching a TV commercial in which Fred Flintstone and Jack Nicholson were duck hunting or something like it. I'm not sure. It was a younger Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces era or thereabouts. He was wearing a white shirt with a cardigan pullover sweater and slacks. Fred Flintsone was wearing what he always wears.

Jack was upset because Fred was just shooting sort of wildly into the air and was still getting more ducks than Jack, who only had a golf club and no rifle.

An early evening dream

I just woke up from a very disjointed dream in which a young woman is trying to remember something or trying to understand a reason for something... I'm not quite sure what the situation was. It was very disjointed compared to my usual dreams.

The young woman sees or acts out a few scenarios that explain how certain undefined events happened the way they did, and finally concludes that a friend of hers -- I think it was a friend, anyway, but maybe it was a stranger -- drowned in a car.

I wasn't in the car, but it was like I was right there with the car as it sank into deep, still water, darker and darker as it drifted downward.

Then I woke up, slightly gasping for air, heart racing. Good lord.

I frequently fall asleep and begin dreaming right away, and wake up just a short while later.

That was creepy as hell. Now I don't want to go back to sleep.




iTunes: Mandala Offering, Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbets

If I smile, please give me some bad news

Unless we've attained a certain amount of mastery over our own brains through meditation or some similar process, we're always thinking about something. We even think in our sleep, which is dreaming.

It has always been true that my mind tends to focus on the negative. I even know, from my serious therapy years, why this happens: home life as a child and adolescent was full of weird shit, mostly alcohol-fueled but also driven by oddball parental sexual hijinks with family friends –– along with all the drama those escapades were intended to create –– and I was constantly on the alert.

I watched vigilantly for things that might intrude on the stability and well-being of the small calm space I tried to reserve for myself, and which was always under seige. I always worried about bad stuff happening because bad stuff really was about to happen.

In 2006, the situation has changed, but the habitual thinking of 1966 is still there.

When I am alone and in a quiet place, I find myself occasionally dwelling on bad things that happened to me in the past, and much more frequently worrying about bad things that are about to happen to me in the future. Although I haven't been successful in changing this mode of thinking, I have at least come to understand why it happens.

Soartstar and I were in a far north side restaurant the other day, and we noticed how the people all around us seemed happy. They weren't happy in a way either of us would want for ourselves –– they had that sort of bland, glazed-eye, pasty, doughy happiness that comes from a general ignorance of the world in which they live. They've managed to surround themselves with plenty of Tommy Hilfiger and Chevy Tahoe body armor, and the credit cards haven't maxed out yet, and their news comes from FOX and the Oklahoman, so they think they're okay and all's well with the world.

That's not for me. I don't want to be happy because I'm ignorant. But is it possible to reorient one's mind so that, in those quiet times without distraction, you really are, forgive the Pollyanna-ish expression, 'thinking happy thoughts' about daily life?

I very very rarely find myself naturally thinking about the good things that have happened to me. Granted there haven't been as many for me as for some others, but there certainly have been some, and it's hard to keep those in mind. Occasionally I will catch myself in the midst of negative thinking and try to make myself reorient my thinking. But I usually draw a blank... nothing good comes to mind.

Meditation has helped to get the 10,000 screaming depressed monkeys to shut up now and then and give me a few moments peace, but I'd also like to find out if there are any cheerful screaming monkeys who would like to have a say.

I know people who had the same kind of childhood I had, only amplified a few hundred percent, and they seem to be able to conjure up some pleasant, positive hopeful thoughts now and then.

Sometimes I think this is the point where a real physical in-the-flesh guru or teacher might help, as opposed to relying on books to self-help my way out of this. I believe there must be a physical process to modify this (without becoming a sheep), but I don't know what it is.

I will tell you that the negativity is exhausting. The older I get, the more it wears me out. I wish I could quit worrying and obsessing.

Also...


iTunes: Wild Geese Descend on the Smooth Sand, Lui Pui-yuen

Photo redux

A friend says this picture

doesn't capture my "sparkle."

Well, maybe so. It is kind of a glum, bleak photo. I looked around in that folder, and found another that is maybe more sparkle-ish...



It's amazing how a smile can completely transform a person's appearance.

Happiness is overrated

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about happiness. She believes in it.

I believe in it, but with the following caveats:

Happiness and misery are different sides of the same coin; as with yin and yang, light and dark, hot and cold, you can't have one without the other. Don't seek one if you don't want the other as well.

It is better –– for some people, at least –– to seek a middle path that embraces neither happiness nor unhappiness. We have that 'reach out for the gusto' attitude in our culture which encourages people to constantly seek happiness (or, more accurately, pleasure) and distraction and entertainment. That road doesn't go anywhere in particular; it just kind of peters out in a field at the edge of town.

There is an ancient taoist parable of the ugly useless tree which survives to old age because its wood has no apparent value while the younger, more attractive trees are cut down for furniture and woodwork. If you are happy, you're like the attractive tree and someone will try to take your happiness just because it's there. We have a government now that thrives on human misery, and blooms like a flower in the desert when death and destruction are all around. I imagine Donald Rumsfeld, for example, viewing peace, calm and happiness with great unease and alarm. He and Dick Cheney are simply more comfortable in a world of war, violence, misery and unrest, and they have the power to create it. The sages also talked about staying the hell out of the way of governments and politicians, which was easier in the sixth century BCE than it is today.

If you are already unhappy or at least neutral, people will leave you alone because you're like the ugly old tree no one wants.

(Of couse, the author of that ugly tree parable never saw an expressway or a planned unit development come through and take out everything, whether it had value or not, simply because unpaved surfaces are an abomination unto the Lord.)

Getting back to this picture for a moment... it's not very flattering, but it is, after all, what I actually look like. This is why a I need a proxy to pretend to be me for public consumption. It's hard to persuade people your ideas are fresh, sexy and exciting when you look like this.

Heat

From Blogblah! ...

MCARP says he’s no longer young and I wonder if he, too, finds just going to the grocery and the dry cleaner and sitting outside at the RC is a chore.

Hell, yeah.

So to speak.

Fortunately, I don't have many dry cleaner problems (good lord, dry cleaners are insufferably hot whenever the outside temperature is above 60... I can't imagine what they're like now) since I rearranged my wardrobe to be more washing machine-friendly, but everything else has been basically draining.

The air conditioner in my car doesn't work. A relatively inexpensive part is broken but I've read on the net that a full day of labor is involved in replacing it. I can't afford it and more importantly, I can't be without the car for a day.

But what makes this heat especially insufferable is the fear I have that this is not an anomaly, but a preview of most summers to come. And as the temperature climbs, and as the glaciers and ice packs melt and the aquifer water tables drop, our number one national climatological goal is maximizing oil company profits.

I suppose when the trophy wife of some Exxon/Mobil director has a perspiration-induced mascara meltdown on a Riviera beach, the situation will become serious enough to warrant a comprehensive and coordinated federal response. In the meantime, we're reassured by our president, vice president and our senior US senator that nothing's happening, everything's fine and we need to quit being so selfish and show some Christian compassion for our suffering millionaires and billionaires.

Besides, with all the gay marriage going on, Jesus is bound to come back soon to settle accounts, so why worry about the heat?

A certain lyrical quality

"watching cat hair float through the air on a Saturday night"

I don't know what this is about, exactly, but what a wonderful turn of a phrase!

Cat people are familiar, of course, with the gentle drift of cat hair, sometimes even in small clumps, drifting along through the air, and the way the afternoon sunlight streaming through a window catches individual strands –– especially the light-colored ones, sailing along carefree.

God is doing much better, by the way

Gimp looks markedly better than he did just a few days ago. He's more alert and he's already put on some weight (eating four tins of cat food a day -- I finally realized his teeth were too bad for him to eat dry food comfortably).

The first time I put food out for him -- on a shelf where I feed the other cats -- he made a feeble jump that took him only about seven or eight inches off the floor then dropped him back. Now he's climbing around everywhere like the other cats. I don't think I've seen him looking this healthy in the past four years. He slept by my head last night.

So what if Gimp is god (or vice versa)?

One of the stories from the Bible that still rings with authenticity in our time is the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham was instructed by God (or so he thought) to make a human sacrifice of his son, Isaac. We've all seen the famous painting in which Abraham has Isaac pinned against a rock, knife raised over his son's chest, when God suddenly says, "Never mind."

This story has the ring of authenticity because this kind of thing still happens all the time. I recall a story I covered about a woman who drowned her child in a bus station toilet because God told her to.

And even though we now treat this as mental illness, most of us still somehow think that in Abraham's case, it was the real deal, and ascribe all sorts of complex theological meaning to it.

We now sometimes call Judaism, Christianity and Islam the 'Abrahamic' faiths because of their common origin with this hallucinating tribal chieftain, and of course, we all note how famously all his descendants get on.

I personally believe God is 'way more likely to visit me in the form of a hungry stray cat or dog (or even a homeless panhandler, for whom I admittedly show less sympathy) than as a burning bush, pillar of fire, or red-faced cable TV screamer with perfect hair.

Friday night!!

I am a bundle of energy, always on the go.

An old cat

I brought Gimp the Cat in Tuesday. Gimp has been around the neighborhood as long as I've lived here. I call him Gimp because he has a bad leg or hip that causes him to walk with a stiff, awkward gait.

He looks like he's older than dirt, and over the past year he's gotten thinner and thinner. He was stretched out on the porch, barely moving in the heat, and he looked miserable. So I brought him in. I want to say he wandered in by himself sometimes a few years ago, but my memory may be wrong on that.

He ate voraciously when I put food down for him. I think he was abandoned here by someone who moved away, and he's had to forage for food. As he's gotten older, this has gotten harder and harder for him.

Last night I bathed him. He's never been good about grooming, and he had gotten filthy. He's part-Persian and he had matted hair with pieces of twigs and stuff trapoped in it. I've had a bit of experience in bathing cats and it's not really hard if a) you know what to do and b) the cat's too old and feeble to resist.

So he was clean and fed, and he had more energy yesterday than I think I've ever seen him display. And he stuck to me like glue. He would've slept with me, but Smudge growled at him from her position by my knees.

He's so thin it's obvious he's lost muscle mass, and I don't think he'll make it through the summer. But at least he'll spend his last days in a cool and confortable place.

My electric bill

$256, which is only about ten dollars more than last year.

But the heat is wearing me down. Will it ever cool off?

By the way

I feel led by some unknown force to repost this series of pictures, lest anyone who reads this by some chance be thinking about trying to unnaturally preserve youth through cosmetic surgery:

God loves me and has a wonderful plan for my life.

soartstar previously commented:

"This isn't a dress rehersal; we're well into the third act of closing night. And you keep choosing the same part to play? You must get something out it."

I saw the light, I saw the light.
No more darkness; no more night.
Now I'm so happy no sorrow in sight.
Praise the Lord, I saw the light!

Image vs. Reality

I don't watch a lot of TV anymore, so I don't know if stations still do this.

But at one time, you'd see an occasional news promo showing Keanu Ogle or whomever jumping up from his desk, shouting instructions to the newsroom staff. Then, he'd dash out the door, necktie flying over his shoulder, and leap into the NewsUpdateStratoCopterCamCopter, which would then take off and disappear into the sun.

What you didn't see, after the marketing department photog had all the shots he needed, was the NewsUpdateStratoCopterCamCopter turn around and land, dropping off the anchor who would then return to the coffee and Chips Ahoy! cookies at his desk.

Because generally speaking, anchors never get off their asses except to shoot promos. I mean, why do you think they call them 'anchors'?

But in TV, as one of my bosses used to say, 'perception is reality,' so if a lump of gelatinous anchor flesh is shown being carried aloft to pursue the Big Story somewhere over the Oklahoma horizon, it must really be happening.

Meanwhile, the people who actually covered the stories labored in relative obscurity, because although they were doing the work, they didn't look like people who'd be doing the work, so they were unsuitable for the promos.

The issue for me, then, to clarify my previous post, is not whether I'm an artist, but whether I look like an artist, or more specifically a creative class "Graphics Design Consultant."

(Because, gawd, who wants to be a 'commercial artist'? That's some nerd with an X-Acto knife clipped in his shirt pocket and spots of formerly molten adhesive wax solidified into his pants. Have you seen my sheet of 10pt Helvetica bold LetraSet? How did my Zipatone get all creased up?)

And to narrow the scope even more, the question is whether I look like a Graphics Design Consultant to someone who has a certain conception of what a Graphics Design Consultant looks like, which is to say younger, thinner, more Lycra-clad and skinny-eyeglassed than me.

Because although I may be doing the work, I may not look like I'm doing the work. Perception, reality, etc.

What it is.

I'm a Happy Bomb Maker, Paul Hipp

Remington Steele

Remember how on Remington Steele, Stephanie Zimbalist hired whatisname -- James Bond number five -- to be Remington Steele because no one would believe she could be a private detective?

That's what I need: a 30-something dude with skinny glasses to pretend to be me... just go hang out at LiT and SKYY Bar and the art museum handing out my card, so people will think I'm actually an artist.

Getting older

One of the problems with getting older is that you are no longer young.

It's not only you that's old: your lifetsyle is old, your clothes are old, your ideas are old. Dressing young and acting young only makes you look ridiculous.

Several generations back, we turned physical attractiveness from an attribute –– like shoe size or hair color –– into a virtue –– like honesty or compassion. Then we did it for youth as well.

The rest of us are the old people, the boring people, the stupid people. We're the bad people. I was old, boring and stupid as a TV reporter when I hit forty. Now I'm old, boring and stupid for everything else.

You are a bundle of energy, always on the go.

That's what my fortune cookie said this evening at Grand House.

Soartstar's cookie, on the other hand, said,

"You are a bundle of energy, always on the go."

More war needed

There's a story on Talking Points Memo today about the weekend's events in Lebanon.

Josh Marshall quotes a line from Sunday Jerusalem Post article:

[Israeli]Defense officials told the Post last week that they were receiving indications from the United States that the US would be interested in seeing Israel attack Syria.

and then links to a Haaretz.com article containing this quote:

...this is the true surprise - a surprise of statesmen and not of intelligence - of the campaign in the north: no American red light, no flashing orange light, and not even a mere green light, but the blaring siren of the sheriff's car sitting behind the hesitant driver at the intersection urging him to get moving.

As you have no doubt read, the current U.S. position is to oppose a cease fire in Lebanon, because... well, because why? A cease-fire would appear to benefit all sides. Israel is still being hit by Hezbollah rockets, Hezbollah is still being hit by Israeli airstrikes, and Lebanese civilians are still being caught in the crossfire.

And our official position on this is that we're not ready for it to stop.

Marshall, who as a DC current events/politics blogger knows way more about what's going on behind the curtain than me, has his own take on what's really happening, which has to do with what he sees as a 'double or nothing' mentality the administration has toward turning around the mess in the mideast.

But here's something else that caught my attention: the sudden chorus of punditry referring to this as World War III, which it is not now and probably won't become. But the drumbeat is there: World War III. This is World War III.

Here in the US, November elections are looming and GOP prospects look bleak. (Not in Oklahoma, of course - we're still deprogramming ourselves from the notion pounded into us by two generations of Gaylords that grouchy rich white authoritarians rule by divine right.) Two years ago, Republicans 'energized the base' and held onto the White House.

So, my deepest paranoid fear now is that the administration is deliberately trying to spread the war to neighboring states and escalate the bloodshed and death to stir up the premillenialist wingnuts who think all-out war in the mideast will bring the rapture.

Sunday, 3:23 a.m.

Yawn.

Saturday

I was a real homebody today. Did the RC for breakfast, came home and worked on a freelance project. Went to Target... I don't remember what I went in there for, but I came out with some T-shirts.

Oh... I went in for a fake plant, which I found. I have a mix of live and artificial plants inside. The artificial plants are in places wjere there's not enough light or where it would be hard to reach for regular watering.

That's interesting, isn't it?

We're back

I don't know why the front page was blank much of the day. Obviously some people found it and were able to post comments.

Random notes

I read on John's blog last evening (it is now early in the a.m.) about an electric sports car that does 0 to 60 in about 4 seconds.

A few moments later, I checked an email from a friend about a Hawaiian therapy technique called Ho'oponopono. The email had been forwarded many times, and had some of the earmarks of an urban myth. Generally, when I get an email of that sort, I Google the subject matter to see if there's any more info on it.

In this case, though, the original text is genuine, and I found it here.

So, I clicked on that blog's home page, and found this link.

Synchronicity.

---

I have been more-or-less off my small social circle all month. I have spent more time in the confines of my own home, drawing, reading, doing laundry and other chores, getting reacquainted with the creatures with whom I share my home.

(Something we take for granted, and yet it continues to amaze me -- that a dog or a cat would rather spend more time hanging out in the company of a different species than with other dogs or cats. Cats vary on this, of course, but my grouchiest, touchiest cat is also the one that sticks closest to me.)

Before I started frequenting the Red Cup a year or so ago, I spent about 29 out of 30 evenings alone, either at home or maybe at a movie. Then I swung to the point where I was out 5 out of 7 nights a week (although still leading a fairly docile life; sitting on a patio drinking iced tea is still a little more low-key than a weekly parasailing group or tae kwan do lessons).

The change has been remarkable, but also somewhat destabilizing. There is nothing inherently wrong with either lifestyle, but shifting from one to the other is bound to create some stress, and I think I overdid it a little. So now I'm taking a little of what my therapist used to call 'turtle time' to let the slower-adapting parts of me catch up with the rest.

---

These new monitors are wonderful. When I was installing them, I briefly had one new one and one old one on, and I could see first hand how dim and fuzzy the old one was. Fifteen years ago, the NEC Multi-sync was the gold standard of CRTs, and priced accordingly. But now they're pretty run of the mill, in my experience, even for CRTs.

If you're still a CRT user, I'm a huge fan of Viewsonics. Built to last. Of the half-dozen CRTs I've been through over the past several years, the only two still functioning at all are two Viewsonics. One is about eight years old now, and it's a pretty low-res monitor, but it still works.

---

iTunes: Sagartha, Ishikawa Toshimitsu

Words fail me

They also failed World News Now anchor Gigi Stone... but in a somewhat different way, whilst making what the consultants used to call 'pithy chat' following a report about true life cannibalism.

The new monitors are here

OMG OMG OMG

this is, like, so kewl, y'all

Holy shit.

Very trezz chick.

Great picture...

of Kat in the Oklahoma Gazette this week.

Look carefully, and you'll see a lot of other stuff in it.

Her face, for example. (Fer gawd's sake, Kat, put something on! You'll catch your death of a cold like that.)

And a laptop. Not her laptop, but somebody's Dell. And Blake. They're staring at the laptop blankly. Maybe it's locked up or something.

There's some Lurch-like guy in the background with a lanyard around his neck trying to eat a bagel straight out of the basket. Probably trying to get all those other people at the table to feel sorry for him.

Speaking of self-abuse:

one of my coworkers has a brand new laptop, whose operating system shall remain unnamed. But here's a clue: it's locked up three or four times in the first 48 hours.

Picked a couple of winners

in yesterday's primary. Also a loser or two, but that's okay.

iTunes

I've been forgetting to post my iTunes songs, although by now I think I've gone through almost the whole list. I should just convert the playlist to a text file and post that.

iTunes: Padhasapa, Ravi Shankar

I should also mention that I am only posting performers, not composers.

Oh, man

I can take a lot of criticism, scorn and abuse, but I hope to gopod none of you has actually bought Microsoft stuff just to piss me off.

I'm not worth it. Your worst enemy is not worth it.

You know, I'm the guy who went with the Gary to the Apple Store to help him choose a laptop.

Because empathy without action is worthless.

By the way: maybe you've heard that Microsoft is coming out with a new iPod competitor to be called "Zune."

When will the OS be ready?

Zune.

When will it ship?

Zune.

It will eventually be renamed "Nazozune."

Have you ever seen this?




Does anyone know what that music is?

And now on to to more other things

Everyone has seen, I assume, the nude pregnant Britney Spears on the cover of Harper's Bazaar this month.

And if you're like me, you suspect from a first glance that it has been heavily heavily Photoshopped.

But pick it up off the rack, look at it closely, and tell me where. I still think it was Photoshopped, but it's the work of a master. Look at it closely, and you'll see lots of skin texture: freckles, moles, etc. I assume the photo was taken with a large-format camera. But try to find a place where any of it looks wrong -- too smooth, too perfect.

Viewed from a distance, she looks unnaturally good, but looking for the telltale clone-stamping and healing brush up close, I can find nothing.

Compare this to some of her pics in other magazines (cough, cough, People, hrrack, cough), where her teeth and the whites of her eyes have been whitened until she looks like a space alien, and the freckles and scars have been obliterated so her skin looks like the soft plastic of a bathtub toy.

(Ooooh... a soft plastic Britney Spears bathtub toy! Well, since I don't care anything about... that doesn't... well, nothing. Really. Couldn't care, wouldn't care. Not me. Ommmmmm.)

Unknown Photoshop person, I salute you.

Update: I looked at this on a website a few moments ago, and now I think the jawline is a little suspect. But still... I could never even approach what the Pshop person did with this pic.

And now on to other things

Karen's Journey to Simplicity post on homemade cleaning compounds caught my attention, especially the one for dishwashers. I always thought there was some special secret ingredient in dishwasher products that you had to have to put it in a dishwasher.


iTunes: Asturias, John Williams

Metatopic

Years ago, during the final months of my television career, I asked a respected and trusted friend why I was having so much trouble getting along with my boss and a certain group of my coworkers.

I didn't get to say another word in that conversation for about forty minutes as she started describing what she thought were some of my problems and issues, then began releasing a dozen years of her own built-up resentment over things I'd said or done during the time she'd known me, and wrapped up by yelling at me so loudly her voice carried through her door out into the newsroom. She worked herself into a wide-eyed fury describing all the things I had done that annoyed, peeved, offended or angered her.

One of the things she mentioned was that I was sarcastic, demeaning and dismissive of other people.

The truth is I have said some bad things about other people. I have worked harder on that aspect of myself than almost anything else, and I wish I were closer to success than I am. Snarkiness is habitual with me.

If I am the target of harsh criticism, maybe it's just karma coming back around quickly.

I want everyone to feel free to speak their minds here, anonymously or otherwise.

"Write what you know," the maxim says. I know me.

Yes, there are other people worse off than me. I can walk two blocks in any direction from my home and see some. I've mentioned a few of them here. But I can't write about their experience or their feelings because I'm not them. I can empathize with them but I can't be them.

I can write first-hand only about what I know first-hand. I could write more about art and design, but I don't think it would generate much interest. I could write more about computers and software, but there are a thousand blogs on those subjects, many written by people far more knowledgeable than me. Even when I write about Buddhism and Taoism, I'm writing from the perspective of a neophyte who can't even keep all the denominations straight in his mind.

This is the only blog about me. It's a fairly narrow field of interest, but it's the one I know best.

So I'm going to keep writing about me.

We appreciate your support.

What was that?

I rarely get heartburn. The last time was three years ago, and the time before that was probably fifteen years ago.

But something hit me all of a sudden at a restaurant this evening, and it was so painful I got up and left without dinner, and almost didn't make it to the car. It was a sharp pain, right at the end of my sternum.

Of course, this being me, I went through a whole panic attack over it. I broke out in a cold sweat. Was I having a heart attack? Or was the cold sweat because I had worked myself into a panic over the possibility it was a heart attack?

It didn't spread. My arms didn't tingle or go numb.

It's passed now, so I guess I'm okay.

Heartburn or Heart Attack?

"F" ... It's an "F"

The letter carrier did not print on the Certified Mail notice as legibly as he might have.

The "I" in "FBI" was actually another "F".


ie., FBF. As in:


































Forrest "Butch" Freeman

































Jeebus. Scare the crap out of me next time.

By the way

When weighing my advice and thoughts on sex, love, relationships, etc., please remember:

I'm full of it.

Me posting relationship advice on the Internet is like anyone else leaving an old refrigerator on the curb with the door still on the hinges.



iTunes: Shika No Tone, Ishikawa Toshimitsu

Work

I spent some time this weekend working on a small pro bono project that closely resembles the same thing I do at work most days.

I have said this before: the job I have today is the best job I have ever had. But as I have also said before, there are evenings on which, thinking about the next day's tasks, I am filled with a sort of low-grade dread.

Why then, would I volunteer to take on the same kind of work in my free time that seems to touch me with discomfort the rest of the time?

I think part of it was knowing that this project had a beginning and an end, and when I was through with it, I was truly through with it. At work, I can finish an individual project, but there always other in the pipeline right behind it, and the total process can start to resemble an assembly line.

iTunes: Dulcet Rhythm, Riley Lee

Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

Spending some more time with this book this evening. Thanks again to JH who loaned it to me.

Why don't I?

My Buddhist friend occasionally invites me to half-day and daylong retreats with her group. But I never go. Why is that?

I'll have plenty of time to meditate, though, when I'm in prison for whatever the FBI wants me for.

How long do you think I'll be in for?

I can probably do it standing on my head.

You've got mail!

I had a note in my mailbox this morning - my snail mailbox - telling me I had a certified letter waiting at the PO. The sender was identified as "FBI Treasury."

God knows.

Well, either one, really...

but as a matter of fact, I was talking about getting laid, which, experience has told me, is no cure for depression or anything else, except maybe fiscal responsibility.

I remember lying awake in bed, staring into the darkness, with my then-significant other beside me. She was asleep, or maybe pretending to sleep like I was.

It had been a not-so-great evening, culminating in not-so-great sex, and I was backtracking in my mind to figure out where it had gone awry. I finally decided the turning point was the moment she opened her front door to me. Everything had been fine when I was standing alone on the porch.

It doesn't matter when this was, or who the significant other was. It happened more than once. In fact, it was the norm.

I realize this is different for other people, but for me, sex is usually two long strung-out trains of emotional baggage, intellectual baggage, social baggage, financial baggage and consumerist baggage joined at the genitals. There's nothing fun or even pleasant about it.

And one day, I had to look at myself and say, "Y'know, you're not actually having any fun. You're mostly having sex out of a sense of obligation. Not even obligation to your SO. It's the obligation to peer pressure and marketing expectations."

And I hear too many other people complain about sex and tell dark sardonic jokes about it to think it's really as popular as the media lead us to believe.

Master Gotama, as you know, was a prince before he became an ascetic and later the Buddha. He was very wealthy, lived in a palace and could have any woman he wanted. He married and had children. And he walked away from it. You'll hear some Buddhists talk about 'tantric sex' and 'elite teachings for the initiates,' but here's the deal: the man himself had it, could get all he wanted -- and he walked away from it.

"Just get laid every once in awhile, will you?"

You talk about this like it's fun.

Ya know what?

I got me a hankerin' for a reptile.

So you think you want a reptile?

Just in case.

Identifying with depression

dzaster questions a few posts down why my posts about depression evoke more responses than my posts about other subjects.

I'm going to assay an answer to that, which may or may not be correct.

First of all, I seem to have a lot of people in my life these days who truly care about my well-being, both within the Neurosis Triangle (the geographic area whose three legs are terminated at the north and south ends of the Paseo, and the Red Cup) and within my online community headquartered out west. And that is something for which I am truly grateful.

Secondly... good god, aren't we all depressed? How could you not be depressed?

Our country's day-to-day affairs are being managed by someone who, when he is enrolled in the Ranks of the Great Statesmen, will fall somewhere between seventies-era county commissioners and those sheriff's deputies who are always being quoted about cattle mutilations.

("Wudn't no animal done that. That wuz done with surgical precision.")

In addition to that, it's hotter than hell out, at least here in the midwest.

Television sucks. When they promised us 500 channels, we figured they'd be able to jam pack pure shit onto only about 495 of them, so there might be five channels worth watching. Well, tastes vary, but I think we underestimated them.

We have more fighting in the mideast, and thousands if not millions of Americans who want to fan the flames of violence so it will more closely resemble the 'Left Behind' books.

Relationships are now controlled mostly by Madison Avenue, and are intended to be consumer exercises only. Abs! Abs! Abs! You'll die old and alone without them!

Cars suck. Fox News sucks. Windows XP sucks. Johnny Cash is dead. Some of us have leg cramps. Some of us have menstrual cramps.

Hell, yes we're depressed! Damn straight!

If I were enlightened, I suppose this stuff wouldn't get to me.

The Buddha is not in Nepal.

New toys

They don't make CRTs like they used to. I use a dual display on my Mac here at home, and I've been through four of them in five years. And one of the two I'm using now is flaking out on me.

At work, I use two 17-inch Apple Studio Displays. They don't make those anymore. But mine, now five years old, still look like they did when new.

It's possible to do serious graphics on a single-monitor display –– I know professional graphics artists working entirely on laptops –– but a second monitor gives a user plenty of room for all the little 'child windows' programs like Photoshop, Painter and Dreamweaver use to manage tools.

I guess it was inevitable that I switch to LCD's at home. Today I ordered two 20" Apple Cinema Displays from PROMac Computers on Northwest Expressway. (Locally owned and, as their website points out, you don't have to hike across a shopping mall parking lot to get to the door.)

These are the entry level Apple monitors, and yet they will give almost three times as much desktop space as the 19" CRT's I'm using now.

Which should make it a lot easier for me to produce serious art.

Stop this shit

Yeah... that's what I'm talkin' about.

People are crazy

I'm at the RC. It's one hundred-freakin-five degrees outside and people are sitting on the patio.

By the way

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the extraordinary job Kat the Miracle Worker did with my pathetic nasty kitchen Tuesday. Stuff that had been in the refrigerator for, I guess, years, is gone. It's empty. I need to get food.

Thank you, Kat.

Bananas

I woke up 15 minutes ago with cramps in both lower legs. They've just now relaxed to the point that I can limp to the computer and blog about it. (So of course, that's what I did.) My big toe on my left foot was curled impossibly upward, and the muscle was pulling up all the way up to my upper calf. The smaller toes on my right foot were trying to curl downward, but it hurt like hell if I let them. I had to remain standing to keep pressure on them from underneath. Sometimes these cramps are so bad that even after the spasm is gone, the muscle is sprained and hurts for a day or two afterward.

Too hot

I really really was going to go to the Paseo tonight. But it's so damn hot.

Got my teeth cleaned today, and all that gum probing they do gave me a headache which lingered all day and is still with me now.

Got a warrant in the mail for unpaid tickets (which I thought I had paid) and I can't make any sense of it. I guess I owe them $218. If I'm in County, of course, the MDA people can't extradite me.

A bit too cheery and bright for me

I'm getting quite a bit of feedback lately that I'm depressed, so there may be something to it.

Actually...

I guess those three new blog links are on the right.

Left, right, right, left.

All one thing.

Three new blog links

I've added three new blog links on the left: Journey to Simplicity, Quoting Buddha and My Zen Life.

from Journey to Simplicity:

While Spring Cleaning, I realized that the “some day” we knew would come when we could buy wants had already arrived leaving its mark under beds, in closets, cabinets, the garage, and attic. The clutter in our lives doesn’t stop there either. Our free time is consumed with too many activities and too much money is being spent on technology. Our lives are no longer simple, but have become complicated. Getting to this point was so gradual, we didn’t notice.

Reminiscing about our humble beginning brought back memories of contentment and simple pleasures. Although we have a wonderful life, we miss living a simple existence with complete contentment in each moment.

from My Zen Life:

one of the biggest reasons i have a stillness practice is because of what I do for a living. all day i fill my head with problems that need to be solved and all the puzzle like solutions to them. i frequently come home so wiped out from all the mental gyrations of the day that i find it hard sometimes to just go check email after dinner.

but if i go sit zazen instead i feel refreshed almost immediately after first sitting down. yeah, the knees begin to hurt as does the lower back most of the time as well, but the mind just feels this immense sense of release. all it has to do is just follow the breath and i think it finds its rest in that.

and Quoting Buddha is a collection of quotes from Tibetan Buddhist teachers, with HH the Dalai Lama being the most-quoted.

design note: I also want to mention the very nice and appropriate design of My Zen Life. The saffron-and-wine color scheme of Quoting Buddha is reminiscent of Tibetan monastic clothing, which I assume is the sense it's supposed to evoke, but it's a bit too cheery and bright for me. The neutrals of My Zen Life are more to my taste.

And now, this update

iTunes: Raga Hameer, Ravi Shankar

Y'know

Y' jis git Gail King t'git Oprah to stop doin' this shit, an' it'd be over.

Got any more o' them rolls?

Oprah: not gay

Oprah's not gay,
That's the big news here for you today!
She and Gail King
Just have this thing
It's nothing like all the tabloids say!

Oprah's not gay,
It's a rumor 'cause they seem joined at the hip!
They like to bond
'Cause they're very fond
Of each other but they never lock lips!

They talk on the phone four times a day
But they're not making out in any way!

And when we say, "O!"
"Yippee - i - oh - ay"
We're only saying, you're heterosexual, Oprah Winfrey,
Oprah Winfrey: not gay!
Or fey! Just straight! Okay?
Oprah Winnnnnfreyyyy: not gay!

Hey!

Stop doin' that shit! Am I gonna hafta git someone to git you to stop doin' that shit?

Peace in the Federation of Planets

Git the Vuhkins to git the Romilins to stop doin' that shit.

North Korea

Git China to git North Korea to stop doin' that shit.

See? Bein' prednet is easy as fallin' off a log.

Wow! Bush said 'shit!'

By now you've seen or heard or read about President Bush's 'Was that mic on?' comment to Tony Blair: "What they need to do is git Syria to git Hizbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over."

If you haven't seen the coverage, check
Crooks and Liars for some of the reports.

I personally am not offended by Bush's use of the word 'shit,' nor do I think it is particularly hypocritical for him as a born-again Christian to have said it.

But from the media coverage, you'd think Bush revealed to Blair the secret of faster than light space travel, or the formula for curing AIDS.

No, what he said was, "What they need to do is git Syria to git Hizbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over."

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell described that as "extraordinarily candid comments."

"A rather frank and dramatic exchange," said CNN's Ed Henry.

Good lord.

No one in the media seems to notice (or maybe they notice but they don't care) that this isn't candid, frank or dramatic. It's the kind of simplistic blowhard chitchat my relatives exchange during 'NFL Today' commercials. You know... just git 'em to do it. Git someone to git 'em to do it.

Is that the best Bush can do?

A dream

I dreamt I was looking at a magazine. There was a picture of a car at the top of the page, and below it, the headline, "Marines await trial; woman waits for used car"

Then there was the story, but I didn't read it. There was a red horizontal bar on the page, too.

iTunes: Cordoba, John Williams

4:05 am

Cave.







iTunes: Under the Stars, Riley Lee

Random stuff

A Chinese pistache tree has popped up in a very fortuitous place in my backyard. The only problem with these trees is that they are too damn hardy. I uproot fifty seedlings every year because they sprout everywhere. But this one has come up in a place where, if I allow it to grow, it will cast shade over the last sunny spot in my backyard. No more grass to mow! The previous owners planted some kind of ground cover under the elm tree which has gradually spread out over most of the yard as the elm grows and the crape myrtles get taller.

I have a cat who is pregnant. She's a fulltime indoor cat, and I assume one of the neighborhood males got in the house one day while the back door was open and whispered sweet nothings in her ear. Her names is Midge, short for Midget. She is not my smallest cat –– that would be Prajna –– but she is the second smallest, and even though she is a year and half old, she has the physical proportions of an older kitten rather than an adult cat.

It's too damn hot.

I'm still feeling a little depressed, and not ready to fully rejoin society. Soon, though, I think. Still a little stressed about changes at work, and the heat doesn't help.

Well, as for me...

My first thought upon pondering this was, 'of course I'd do it.'

But I don't even want to go to MDA jail for a couple of hours.

Messianic figure casting call

Someone comes to you with a proposal. Maybe he's an angel of the Lord, maybe one of the Men in Black, but whoever he is, you have no reason to believe he is not able to carry out the proposal he makes, which is this:

You will receive the ability to bring world peace, equality for all men and women, enlightenment for all sentient beings, freedom from hunger and fear and violence.

In exchange for this ability, however, you will be required to die a violent, premature death.

The offer is yours to accept or reject.

What would you do?

I have got to...

... get the air conditioning in the car fixed.

Just sayin'.

A dream

I've never had a dream related to my recently-acquired Buddhist/Taoist beliefs until now.

In this dream, I was with a group of people. As I've mentioned before, there are frequently people in my dreams who give me some vague sense of friendship, hostility, indifference, whatever, and they are almost always people who don't exist in my waking life. In this case, they might have been my Red Cup/Paseo friends except that there was no one in the group I actually recognized.

For some reason, I began chanting to myself in a soft, barely audible voice. And it seemed to hurt my throat a little to do that, so I pitched my voice a couple of octaves lower. I don't know music so I can't tell what key I changed to, but it was down in the baritone/bass range.

So I started to chant like that –– Om mani padme hum –– and when I reached the down-inflection on 'hum,' something really weird happened. I spoke 'hum' in exactly the same key as what I guess I would call the basic pitch of the universe, and I felt this resonating vibration that encompassed my entire body and seemed to spread out and cause furniture and other objects to resonate as well. It felt like I had hit upon something powerful and amazing.

I did it again –– Om mani padme HUM –– and again everything around me seemed to resonate with the sound. I felt myself floating off my feet and I remember I drifted toward a mirror, but I didn't see anything in it. I didn't come right up to it; it was more like I drifted to withing three feet or so of it, then started to drift away again. Then I sort of floated toward a coat tree.

Om mani padme HUM.

And then I woke up.

I don't think that means anything spiritually profound, but it was an interesting dream. I have those floating/flying dream frequently, but the chanting thing was new to me.

I always wonder what's happening in my brain that makes me have the dreams I have.