Moonmares

Tomorrow is another full moon. And you know how I get around a full moon. Well maybe you don't know how I get around a full moon, but trust me it isn't pretty. Or at least my blogging isn't pretty. I tend to get morbid and irritable. And there is a good chance that some squid beaks are on the horizon (see Ambergris by any other name is still whale puke).

I know many people pooh pooh the power of the moon, but I can't ignore it. And it does bring out the nutcases in Seattle...well more than usual. Yesterday a man was walking down the street in downtown Seattle, dowsed three people with lighter fluid and set two of them on fire (the third beat him off with an aluminum cane).

I don't venture uptown downtown much anymore. I stay in the fringe here in the International District where the crackheads are more predictable. Oh I have to deal with the kilt-wearing geeks that work at Amazon.com, but you tune them out like the camoflage wearing drug dealer who hangs around Tullys coffee shop in a beret eating raw onions.

Life truly is odder than fiction. Which is why I don't understand why people need to make up shit when they blog. All you need to do is write about what is going on around you and you are immersed in about as much fantasy as any one can deal with. Open up your eyes and look around you and you'll never say your life is mundane again. All life is drama.

But I digress.

The moon. It does something to my dreams. I don't get to have those nice bizarre dreams they have in the television commercial with the groundhog and Abe Lincoln playing chess. That would be kind of cool. My dreams during the full moon are filled with Lord of the Ring like quests through amusement parks and swamps. And no, I don't believe in analyzing dreams. Mine have nothing to do with not being breast fed or being frightened by a Zamboni at a hockey game when I was a toddler (don't ask). Mine are just odd and intricate and I'm sure woven by the full moon.

But nevermind. I need to go get a cup of coffee. I hope the camoflage-wearing drug dealer with the beret isn't there. I hate the smell of raw onions in the morning.

They call me Mr. Potato Head

When someone hears I grew up in Idaho, I generally have to endure a tirade of potato jokes. Because there's nothing more people in Idaho or from Idaho like more than a good potato joke. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

But when I think about it, we did eat lots of potatoes when I was growing up in Boise. Idaho was, after all, the "Famous Potatoes" state. Our license plates reminded us of that on a daily basis. Ironically, Idaho probably produced more sugar beets per capita than potatoes. "Famous Sugar Beets" just didn't have the same ring to it. Now I think they have options for license plates with other slogans on them (like "Land of the Skinheads" and "You da pimp, Idaho"). The potato lobby must not be as influential as it used to be.

Potatoes were my father's specialty when he was forced into the kitchen. He loved potatoes. He particularily liked them ground or fried with bologna. I get a bit queesy to this day just thinking of the electric frying pan filled to the brim with gray slices of congealed potato and pink slices of bologna curling up at the edges as they fried in Crisco oil.

His ground potatoes weren't much more appetizing. He'd pull out this old metal hand grinder and attach it to the bread board and then start cranking out the potato pulp. He'd put a pan on the floor to catch the starchy liquid that would drip out of the end of the grinder as he cranked. Then he'd fry up the ground potato in much the same fashion as he would the sliced potatoes. If my memory serves me, he fried them in Crisco, too. My cholesteral level leaps just thinking of it.

Don't ge me wrong. I like potatoes. But I like mine baked or mashed. I like a good potato salad, too, and potato pancakes, but I can take or leave scalloped potatoes. Potato skins frighten me, but for a guilty pleasure, I'll take french fries, tater tots or Sour Cream & Onion potato chips. When I was in Cub Scouts we got to go on a field trip to the Clover Club potato chip factory in Boise. I remember thinking I was in heaven when they let us eat hot potato chips right off the conveyor belt as they came out of the oven.

Oddly enough, one of my favorite meals as a kid was Banquet fried chicken TV dinners with mashed potatoes. I loved the way their mashed potatoes tasted. It wasn't until years later that I realized the reason I liked Banquet's mashed potatoes so much was that they put real butter on top of them. All we ever used on a daily basis was that cheap tub margarine, so real butter was a gourmet treat to me.

One thing I could never stomach were Idaho Spud bars. They were these gross marshmellow things covered in chocolate spinkles and shaped like a potato. They still sell them in Boise, but I think only tourists buy them. These are the same tourists who buy the "Darth Tater" t-shirts and the postcards with the giant potatoes on them.

Regardless, I am not ashamed of my Idaho roots and the potatoes that were attached to them. But ironically the one toy I never did have growing up was a Mr. Potato Head. Go figure.

Growing Panes

I marvel sometimes at how my point of view regarding things changes as as I...mature (I almost said "age"...the two words aren't necessarily synonomous). I suppose it is to be expected. Experience is supposed to teach you what to expect. So logically experience teaches you to rethink your expectations. So you look at things differently after you've been through them a few times.

This is not to say I consider myself a particularily wise man. I just look at things differently than I did when I was...less experienced (I almost said "younger").

Now looking at things differently doesn't necessarily mean I don't occasionally repeat the same mistakes even after having experienced something that one would think would make me try a different tactic. This mainly involves engaging my mouth before my brain. You'd be amazed at how much faster my mouth is than my brain. I know I am.

I've always had this uncanny ability to be able to blurt out a response to something that, although occasionally quite funny, is often inappropriate or ill timed. Why? Because my brain is usually still reviewing the pros and cons of what I am considering saying while my mouth is already dashing out the door with it like a male dog unleashed on the neighbors poodle in heat. The results are initially quite satisfying but ultimately can lead to a high degree of unanticipated ugliness when the puppies are born.

I'm not even sure where that analogy came from, but it oddly fits (or fits oddly).

Fortunately when I was a child, in addition to having a quick tongue, I also had quick feet to run when what I'd say would sink into my brother's slower brains.

When I got older (yes older) and slower, I learned to control my penchant for blurting things out by mumbling. That way only people with very keen hearing can understand what I'm blurting out. In school this often caused problems for anyone sitting next to me in class. They would burst out laughing at something inappropriate I'd interject regarding the teacher and then get the brunt of the teacher's anger for interrupting the class. I would just sit there smiling angelic-like until I found another opportunity to mumble a wisecrack.

This coping mechanism has stayed with me as an adult in the business world. I get bored easily at meetings and mumble uncontrollably at times. The unfortunate side effect is that my normal speaking voice seems to have become one big mumble. Tess is always asking me to repeat things. Depending on the topic of my mumbling I normally just say in a slightly louder voice, "Oh nothing."

Perhaps this is why I became a writer. It allows me think a bit longer before I speak and it is difficult to mumble when you write. The closest thing there is in the written word to mumbling is gibberish (and some bloggers have turned gibberish into an artform).

Unfortunately, electronic communications have chipped away at that lag time writing used to provide us between thinking and speaking. E-mail (and blog comments) allow us to type before we think. But this is where experience kicks in (I bet you were wondering if there was a caboose to this train of thought). I have learned to type my unthinking responses and then think about them before I hit send. Then in most cases I do the right thing and hit "delete."

I wish I had a delete key for my mouth.

Dark clowns

Well they're some sad things known to man
But ain't too much sadder than
The tears of a clown when there's no one around
Oh yeah, baby baby, oh yeah baby baby
--Smokey Robinson, "Tears of a Clown"

Sometimes being a clown is no laughing matter. If you look beyond the joy buzzers, whoopee cushions, seltzer bottles and pies in the face, you just may notice that the grease paint smile cloaks a grimace.

To "send in the clowns" is a signal at a circus that a disaster has occured and the clowns must create a distraction. A rodeo clown is summoned to flirt with death to rescue the cowboy from the horns of a raging bull. Balloon animal sculpture clowns are called to hover in hospital wards to take patient's minds off pain with inflated poodles and giraffes. But who eases the pain of a clown?

It's time for all of us to take a moment and thank clowns for all they do turn our frowns upside down. Join the Save the Clown Foundation today and brighten a dark clown's life.

Call 1-800-RED-NOSE, today. The clown you save may be your own.

True colors

Flowers are Red by Harry Chapin
(Spoken)Your son marches to the beat of a different drummer, comma.
(Spoken)But don't worry,
(Spoken)We'll have him joining the parade by the end of the term

The little boy went first day of school
He got some crayons and started to draw
He put colors all over the paper
For colors was what he saw
And the teacher said.. What you doin' young man
I'm paintin' flowers he said
She said... It's not the time for art young man
And anyway flowers are green and red
There's a time for everything young man
And a way it should be done
You've got to show concern for everyone else
For you're not the only one

And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen

But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

Well the teacher said.. You're sassy
There's ways that things should be
And you'll paint flowers the way they are
So repeat after me.....

And she said...
Flowers are red young man
Green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than they way they always have been seen

But the little boy said...
There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

The teacher put him in a corner
She said.. It's for your own good..
And you won't come out 'til you get it right
And are responding like you should
Well finally he got lonely
Frightened thoughts filled his head
And he went up to the teacher
And this is what he said.. and he said

Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen

Time went by like it always does
And they moved to another town
And the little boy went to another school
And this is what he found
The teacher there was smilin'
She said...Painting should be fun
And there are so many colors in a flower
So let's use every one

But that little boy painted flowers
In neat rows of green and red
And when the teacher asked him why
This is what he said.. and he said

Flowers are red, green leaves are green
There's no need to see
flowers any other way
Than the way they always have been seen.

But there still must be a way to have our children say . . .

There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one

Thanks Harry, wherever you are!

#550-Shadows

It's hard to top Sperm whale vomit as a post topic. I mean where do you go from there (hopefully up)? I suppose I could talk about my mixed feelings about being part of a team blog -- Freedom's Place.

First I am still a bit fuzzy as to the point of a team blog if you are all randomly posting about unrelated subjects. Isn't the point for everyone to write about the same topic, like needlepoint or yak butter recipes?

Second I was never really keen on the name "Freedom's Place." It sounds like a commune out of the 60s and conjures up images of hairy-legged woman wearing Birkenstocks with purple socks.

I would have opted for something a bit more esoteric without any political overtones. For example, maybe it should have been called "Ambergris" with the subtitle, "We write about whatever irritates us and comes up."

I've also never been much of a fan of committees, nor am I a joiner. I don't like being part of clubs, organizations, religions, mailing lists, or fraternal organizations that require you to wear a fez. I am an introvert and find groups of any kind rather distressing.

Okay, we all have our own blogs anyway. What is the point of posting on a team blog what we could have posted on our own blog? Wouldn't it be easier to just have a link to our blog than posting on another blog?

Don't get me wrong. I admire THE Michael's social experiment. I think Freedom's Place will be a great outlet for some people. But personally I think it does take a village to raise an idiot and something tells me that is the niche reserved for me in Freedom's Place.

So I may occasionally visit Freedom's Place, my real place is here at Dizgraceland. I feel more comfortable in the shadows than the light.

Ambergris by any other name is still whale puke

Well, actually ambergris is Sperm whale puke. It's this fatty substance that upchucked from a Sperm whale's intestine when they are trying to get rid of an irritant they've ingested. Squid beaks are apparently the most common irritant found in Sperm whale puke (I'd suggest going easy on the calamari at parties if you are a Sperm whale).

For some inexplicable reason, ambergris has been used as a fixative in expensive perfumes. It helps keep scents from fading quickly. And even more inexplicably was a fad during the Renaissance to craft jewellery out of ambergris.

Did I mention that this is Sperm whale puke we are talking about? Who was the first person to think up the possible uses for Sperm whale puke? More importantly, why?

The weird thing is that abergris is worth a small fortune. If you find a chunk of it while you are beachcombing you are talking major bucks if you recognize it as ambergris and not just a chunk of gunk with squid beaks sticking out. Depending on the quality of the ambergis you find, is worth about $20 a gram. That's premium puke.

This proves to me that people will buy anything (which is why eBay is so successful). I'm seriously thinking of going out an find me a Sperm whale and sticking my finger down its throat.

I find it odd

I have never been a person who had lots of friends. Oh, I have work friends. You spend 40-plus hours a week at a place and survival dictates that you have a group of people you can go to coffee with or lunch. But work friends come and go as they get new jobs and move on. So you develop this attitude like a kid who moves alot growing up. You keep work friends in perspective. They come, they go. When they go, they are gone.

Anyway, most of my friends now are blogger friends. It is a bit like having imaginary friends. You never actually see them, but I'll be darned if they aren't more real than any non-virtual friend. I get involved in their lives. I get to know their quirks. We tease each other. We support each other. We get mad at each other and we forgive each other. But like my work friends., they come and they go. When they go, they are gone.

This is another aspect of aging. You get used to this pattern of friends, real or virtual, coming and going. I don't pretend to understand it. I've just grown to expect it and accept it. I can't say I ever have really gotten used to it. I have always envied people who have had life-long friends. I'm not sure whether it is just me that lacks the life-long friend gene or it is a myth that they exist.

Maybe that is why I blog. Maybe that is why Norm hung out at Cheers where everybody knows your name. Sometimes you need to be in an environment where people accept you...know you (or think they know you)...and are happy to see you. Because if there is really no meaning in life, at least you want to mean something to someone.

Match Point

I'm actually amazed at the number of phrases in the English language that contain the word "point," especially when you make a point to use them.

See!

By the way, a moot point is not one that isn't worth talking about. It means a point that is open to debate. I thought that was kind of interesting. I just wanted to point that out.

See!

One thing you may have noticed about me if you've read my blog for any length of time is my tendency towards obsessiveness about topics. Once I'm going down the path with one I have a hard time letting it go without making as many pointed remarks as possible.

See!

I think I've made my point.

Vanishing point

It does seem pointless at times to try and make a point. Points are fleeting at best. Even the sharpest points are mutable with time and experience. Case in point, the meaning of life. I think it changes depending upon what point you are in your life.

I realize I'm probably not scoring any points with those people who are used to fixed points or are expecting a thousand points of enlightenment. All I can do is point you in the right direction. At that point you are on your own.

BTW, the photo above is not an example of Pointillism.

The point of meaning...

In a recent comment, Hayden questioned the purpose of searching for meaning in life as opposed to (and I paraphrase) simply being. It is a good question. Do we need to know the meaning of our existence to exist? Or do we need simply need to exist to have meaning?

Why is it that good questions always seem to raise more questions than answers? I have been sitting here pondering whether I actual seek meaning in life or whether I simply live. I know I have admitted that I accept who I am becoming, but is that the same as accepting why I am here?

I think it is impossible to live a life that doesn't somehow intersect or impact others. Whether you believe you are a world unto your self or the world is your oyster, the very act of living is subject to cause and effect. Even if you are a lump that never moves, you breathe your share of air and produce your share of waste matter. Shit really does happen. And one man's shit is another man's fertilizer.

I'm not a big believer in randomness. Just look at Fibonacchi numbers. It is a number system modelled after the rate at which rabbits muliply (have babies, not do times tables). Fibonacchi numbers can be found throughout nature, including the spirals of pine cones. How random is that?

That old game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon involved trying to name any film actor in history and linking them somehow to Kevin Bacon, the actor. The game was a microcosm of that phenomenon of life that defies randomness and ties us somehow with everyone and everything else. Because like it or not, we are all connected somehow and in some way. So, I suppose a life may not have a point, but I believe it always has a meaning.

Well hell

One might believe that because I don't believe in the traditional hell and heaven that I am not a spiritual person. This is not true. I believe in karma. I believe in Quantum Physics. I believe in the power of the mind. I believe in spirits. I believe that children are our future.

Okay, you get my point. Don't assume that because someone doesn't believe in the same thing that you do that they don't believe in something. And never believe that your belief system is the only one that has any validity. That kind of arrogance will get you your own level of hell (which doesn't exist, but you'll go there anyway because you believe in it).

I believe we all create our own reality (I'm not sure who created George W. Bush, but could you give us a break and pull your head out of your ass). Everything we see, hear, say, do is sucked through that wrinkled gray matter of our own brain and then projected on the screen that is our life. That is the reality of things. If you don't like the script, toss it in the trash and open a new one.

But this time, write a happy ending.

The devil you say

I don't believe in hell. At least I don't believe in hell, the place. Well, I do believe there is a town in Grand Cayman called Hell. But you don't go there when you die. You go there when you are on a Caribbean cruise. That is an important distinction.

Not believing in hell bothers some people. One, it doesn't mean much when they tell me to go there. It's kind of like calling your parent's bluff when they say they are going to count to three when they are trying to make you do something. Though my mom generally only got to two before I caved. I never really wanted to find out what happened after she counted to three. My father never counted. He just smacked you.

But I digress.

Not believing in hell conversely means I don't believe in heaven either. So, I'm really messing with some people's punishment-reward motivation concept in controlling behaviour. But if punishment-reward motivation worked, we wouldn't have so many prisons now would we? So what good is hell and heaven in controlling morality?

I'm amazed that there are people who can't accept that heaven and hell aren't literally, physical places that people go to when they die based on which side of the moral ledger they end up on. If anything, heaven and hell are metaphors for the states of mind we can reward or damn ourselves with.

Isn't that a hell of a concept?

Happy belated birthday Elvis

Many years ago I attended an art show at Seattle's Center of Contemporary Art. In it were several artist designed shrines. I couldn't afford to buy one of the work of art shrines so I decided to create my own. So I built the one stop worship shop and shrine to the King of Rock and Roll.

I bought an old cabinet at St. Vincent's and spray painted it black on the outside and gold on the inside. The top shelf was dedicated to Elvis. The bottom shelf contained symbols of everything we hold holy: cars, cigarettes, food, alchohol, sex, science and money. There were a few religious icons thrown in as well.

I placed the shrine on top of two carved kneeling camels I'd salvaged from an old bar I bought at an auction. They were originally from Thailand. I spray painted them gold.

I maintained the shrine for more than a decade. I'd add things to it every year when the Shopping Channel had their annual Elvis sales. It eventual expanded to pretty much the entire family room of my old house.

In retrospect, it was kind of an odd thing. Fortunately I was a bachelor and very few people ever saw it. The Elvis shrine was more or less dismantled and discarded just before Tess and I got married and combined households. The King may be the King, but love is love.

January 8th was Elvis' birthday. He would have been 72. I missed the birthday. Sorry Elvis. This would never have happened when I was Tim-Elvis. But Tim-Id is getting older and forgets things now and then. Elvis, however, is still the king and shrine or no shrine still deserves some recognition. Happy Belated Birthday Elvis! You rocked dude!

Bless the beasts

The East Coast of the United States may be basking in balmy, spring-like weather, but here in the Great Pacific Northwest, our winter of discontent continues. In short, everything is frozen. But our cats remain blissfully oblivious to the frozen tundra outside the front door. They truly know how to relax.

Keliki, the big ol' boy sprawled out on his leopard print lounger (Tess' purchase) wrote the book on relaxing. Keliki was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. Tess was teaching there several years ago and found him on a golf course when he was a kitten and adopted him. He immigrated to the United States in 2001 and has grown fat and sassy in the land of milk and honey.

Lahaina, the one with the Phantom of the Opera mask, was born in Puyallup, Washington. She has 13 toes total on her front paws. This is known as polydactyl or "many toed." Her paws are like baseball mitts. Although she is laying around like a normal cat in this photo, she also spends a great deal of time sprawled out on her back with her legs stretched out. I think she picked this up from Keliki.

I like to watch the cats kick back. They don't worry about much other than where to sleep next, when to eat and where to cough up a hairball. I, on the other hand, have to worry about getting up in the morning, driving on roads that look like a Zamboni proceeded me and going to work.

Sometimes I wish I was a cat. But then again, Keliki had his testicles removed by an Indonesian Vet named Dr. Daisy.

I guess I'm good just being me.

I, Tim Id

Self-image is an odd thing. How can we look in a mirror and truly see ourselves when everything...literally everything is filtered through our mind.

Ironically, I think this is why I hate photos of myself. And ironically, this is why I think I Photoshop so many photos of myself. I want to fix those flaws my mind's eye sees.

I realize this isn't particularly entertaining or enlightening for anyone but me. But I'm really fighting this trap of blogging what you think people want to read.

What is it though that makes you read other people's blogs? Sometimes I read someone's blog and I feel like a voyeur peeping through a virtual window. But then I realize that I wouldn't be looking if they hadn't left their virtual shades up. What is the point of blogging if no one reads it? If you write a blog and no one reads it, does it still make a point? What is the sound of one hand blogging? Show me the face you had before you were blogging?

Shit. I sound like a broken record. And the full moon has waned. What do I blame it on now?

Paint by numbers

One of my father's hobbies was painting those paint-by-number kits you could buy at K-Mart. He mainly painted horses and a few landscapes He was actually pretty good at it. The framed horse paintings hung on the walls of our family room for years while I was growing up.

I suppose in the purest sense, it wasn't really art. But it made him happy.

I feel the same way about my Photoshop creations. Sure I'm simply slapping my face on someone else's painting and making a few clicks of the mouse. But damn it is kind of fun. And there is an art in doing it in a way that isn't totally obvious. Plus it fulfills my rich fantasy life of being famous or infamous (delusions of grandeur?).

I am easily pleased. But hey, some people drape fabric along a stretch of highway and call it art. At least I'm building on the classics.

We art what we art through art.

Is it unbecoming to be becoming?

Hayden wrote another one of her great, "damn now I have to think" posts called "Becoming." The post was about finding yourself versus becoming yourself (my interpretation). She did not intend it as a Meme, but she did ask all of us, "What are you becoming?"

This question makes more sense if you are middle aged and comfortable in the fact that you don't know anything than it would if you are in your 30s and a little pissed that things aren't working out the way you planned them when you were in your 20s and knew everything.

First, I have learned many things as I fade into middle age. One is that John Lennon was right when he said, "Life is what happens while you are making other plans." I have spent a lot of energy in my life wondering what my special purpose is (not the same special purpose that Steve Martin discovered in the movie "The Jerk"...I discovered that a long time ago). I'm pretty sure that the meaning of life is living it.

I know that aging does not guarantee you are becoming wiser. Some people just get old. Some try and stave it off by trying to act young and spouting cliche shit about "you are as old as you feel." If that is true then sometimes I feel like a freakin' 100-year old.

I would like to say that I am becoming better with time like a fine wine. But anyone who has drank their share of wine know that even really old wine can suck, especially if it is "corked." The best wine is the one you drink and get a mellow buzz from. Some of these wines have screw tops instead of corks.

I won't say I know what I want to be when I grow up. I do know that I more or less have always wanted to be a writer. And I write. Now granted, I write a blog read by maybe nine people on a good day, but they are good people. And I am becoming content with just writing and not caring what anybody else thinks about the quality of my writing.

You know. What I am really becoming is content. I tried religion, therapy, crystals, affirmations, anti-depressants, co-dependence, self-loathing and more self-help books than I care to shake a preverbial stick at. It wasn't until I finally got married (at aged 47 mind you) that I stopped always focusing on myself and started thinking my becoming may just be enhanced by putting something else before me.

I won't go as far as saying I am totally comfortable when I look in the mirror, but I sleep at night and I get up in the morning. So what if I'm not the president of the United States (wouldn't that be a downer). So what if I haven't written the great American novel (most of the world doesn't speak English anyway). And so what if I am not a household name. While the famous age and then fade into oblivion, screaming to be remembered for who they were, I age and simply am who I am.

I am enjoying starting to enjoy my becoming and be-going.

Field of Dreams

Tess and I went to the Seahawks first playoff game tonight against the Dallas Cowboys. We had pregame field passes and got to watch the Cowboys and the Seahawks warm up. I saw Terrell Owens up close.

And of course Shawn Alexander.

There was Drew Bledsoe:

And Matt Hassleback:

Cool.

They also won.
Priceless.

Makes me want to scream

Around Halloween a year ago, I wrote a post called "I ain't afraid of no ghost." It was my typical tongue in cheek post about ghostly orbs in a photograph I took in Salt Lake City. I Photoshopped Brigham Young's face into the photo. It was obviously a fake. Today I got this anonymous comment on that post from some twit who had stumbled in via a Google search:

"this shit is FAKE!!!i went to scool at marchman tech,for commercial art and we did that crap all the time!!u guys are NUTSACKS"

First I hate anonymous comments. Second I hate the fact that people aren't required to take an IQ test before they are allowed on the Internet. Here was my reply to the twit:

"Dear Anonymous,
Really? Fake? You think so? You got me there. Who said cousins mating can't produce a freakin genius? And Marchman Tech must be one hell of a "scool" to have have trained such a sharp tool such as you.

But do me a favor. Next time you call someone a nutsack, at least have the balls not to remain anonymous you dimwitted ass."

I just wish the mental midget actually could find their way back to read the reply. But something tells me this piece of crap isn't smart enough to find his ass in the dark with both hands.

Lunatic

Another full moon. Once again I felt it before I saw the damned thing. I swear the gravity of it sucks all of the blood into my brain and aggitates the heck out of me. It seems logical, doesn't it? The moon causes the tides. Why wouldn't it have the same effect on my brain?

Great. That Kia commercial where they sing the song from the Sound of Music just came on. Now it is floating around in my moon sucked brain singing over and over again, "So long, fair well, aufweidersehen, good bye. Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you." Khaki wearing, car selling bastards! Make them stop!

Sorry. Ignore me. I'm not myself. It's the moon talking. I'll be fine tomorrow. The moon will wane. I'll be back to normal.

Whatever that is. How can anyone be normal in a world where something called El Nino is messing with the weather everywhere. I wouldn't be suprised if it starts raining bullfrogs and iquanas.

That would actually be kind of cool. It would be hard to clean up the driveway though. I wonder if the leaf sucker works on bullfrogs and iquanas.

Oh well, adieu, adieu, to you and you and you.

Bastards.

Eye of the beholder

"I see," said the blindman as he picked up his hammer and saw.

I'm of the opinion that most people look at the world but don't see very much. Ironically, that is an observation.

I'm probably just as guilty of not seeing as everyone else. I work in downtown Seattle. Although not a big city by New York standards, it is a city. And I am able to walk by a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk without seeing them just as well as any New Yorker.

It is a defense mechanism. If I see poverty and suffering I will feel this twinge of guilt that I should be doing something about it. Handing the homeless person the 73 cents change from my Grande Americano with room I had at Starbucks never seems to be enough of a payment to keep the guilt at bay.

But this blog entry wasn't really intended be about my liberal anst over poverty in America. It is about not seeing. It is about looking in the mirror, sucking in the belly and imagining you aren't really overweight. It's about wearing plaid or a pink tuxedo and thinking you are styling. It's about lipstick applied a few too many hairs above the lip line and thinking you are ready for Vogue. It's about baggy pants hanging way too far below the crotch level exposing boxers that were never intended to see the light of day and thinking you are fly.

Open your eyes people! The emperor really isn't wearing any clothes. No one looks good in a Speedo and men look like idiots in kilts.

Eye there's the rub.

Flights of fancy

Despite many of your attempts to do an Icarus on my buzz (a reference to a Greek myth that may require some of you to do some Googling) about thinking young thoughts and staving off the ravages of Father Time, I'm holding fast to my resolve. And even if I do say so myself, my young self is looking pretty hot...at least in my mind.

Even when I was at the gym this evening, fighting to get a machine in the madness of the post New Year's resolution rush, I was thinking young and slim thoughts. Even my profuse sweating seemed to be that of a younger, sweaty man.

Go ahead and scoff. Think your old thoughts in your same old way. But I'm getting younger as we speak. Even as I prepare to face my last year in my 40s I'm not daunted by 50 wagging it's wrinkled old behind at me.

But shoot me if I ever tell people I'm almost 49 years young.

Father Time

"Time keeps on slippin, slippin
Into the future."
--Steve Miller

I realize the passing of a year is an artificial event. Our current calendars are based on the whimsey of Pope Gregory who messed with creating a new one a few centuries ago. I guess he had too much time on his hands.

But the point is, time doesn't really pass. We do.

Still, every new year is an opportunity to reflect on the flow of time. I just wish I could ride on the river of time instead of letting it wash over me, bleaching my beard and hair.

I am not really an old man. But sometimes I think old thoughts. And that is what truly ages us. We age ourselves with our wrinkled thoughts.

So I am going to walk into 2007 with a resolution of thinking young thoughts. And the mirror can go to hell.