Books I have read multiple times and would suggest you read at least once:
The Nature of Personal Reality Jane Roberts
A Confederacy Of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
Leaves Of Grass Walt Whitman
On The Road Jack Kerouac
Crossing To Safety Wallace Stegner
Wanderer Sterling Hayden
Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov
October 2, 2011
Books I have never read and don't encourage anyone to:
Being A Nationally Known Useless Nobody For Fun And Profit Kim Kardashian
I Moron George Bush
Big Boobs Are Priceless Jessica Simpson
How to Fleece The American Sheeple Sarah Palin
Boys! Boys! Boys! The Pope
October 3, 2011
You do what you do and then later find out that what you did was not what you thought you did so you hastily redo it trying to make it better only the redo makes it worse and so compounds the original error that you double down your efforts and wind up so far off track that the only hope you have is to start all over again and pray that what you have already done doesn't make that impossible, moot, or make you look like an idiot. That ever happen to you? Hello? You still there?
I went out of town yesterday and used the GPS navigation on Susan's smartphone for guidance. It wanted to route me down the old back road instead of the modern highway. The old road is a twisty two lane affair that hugs the mountain side, takes approximately 40 minutes longer and is used primarily by logging trucks out to run over anything in their way. Why would the GPS do that? Was I being goofed on? Is there some little guy in a satellite laughing? Well?
October 6, 2011
Frankly, I think maintaining an even keel is overrated. The person who is never up and never down and appears to the outside world as balanced and unemotional just has to be a powder keg of bottled up, tightly wound, highly flammable inner repression just praying they don't come in contact with the open flame that could spark the whole thing, shatter their facade, release the tension and explode their brain. Are too.
Though this photo clearly shows that the short lived high pants craze was started by Melvin Murmish on a cruise to the Balkans, it ended tragically just two weeks later when Mr. Murmish found the upper limits of his high pants and choked himself to death near the port of Zubrensk.
October 8, 2011
I'm standing in line at the movies two people behind an attractive gal wearing a mini skirt. At one point, the line is jostled by a man who trips, bumps into the person behind me, who then pushes me into the guy in front, who bumps into the girl with the mini. She turns and says to him coldly, "If you want to feel me up, you better buy me dinner first." The guy, clearly embarrassed, waits a full 15 seconds before whispering with hope, "Is McDonald's all right?"
October 9, 2011
Made a car rental reservation and they said they would send me an e-mail confirmation number. No e-mail. Two days later I call them again and they say they have no record of the reservation. I go through the whole thing again and again they say they will e-mail my confirmation. No e-mail. I call this morn and unbelievably, they once again say they have no reservation in their system. This is a huge, nationally known car rental company. Do they think I'm going to do this whole thing a 3rd time? Just to let them know, I send an e-mail to their complaints dept. I get an auto responder back - it's a blank e-mail. Nothing in the body, just a subject line that reads, We're sorry you're having problems. Uh, no, it's you guys who are having problems. Me, I'm going elsewhere.
October 10, 2011
I had pumpkin pie for breakfast and I feel great - look at me! This is the cutting edge. The medical establishment doesn't have a clue. Nutritionists don't even know about it. But I'm here to tell you that pumpkin pie for breakfast is all you really need. Pass it on, eh.
I'm at a gas station and walk past an old guy trying to fill a flat front tire with an air hose. I can plainly see a huge nail sticking straight out of the sidewall (how did that happen?), but the old man is just pumping it in as fast as it's going out. I point out the nail, the hissing sound the air is making as it escapes the tire, and the fact that since the puncture is in the sidewall, it's probably not repairable and certainly isn't going to hold air. He looks at me and sneers, "What do you know? You don't know nothin'! This is my car! Get away from me." Whoa. Ok, pops, have fun. An hour later I pull up to a 4 way stop. There, across at the other stop sign is grandpa, driving around on his flat front tire with the spike still sticking out. As we pass in the intersection, he shoots me a sneer and the finger. Suddenly I get it. That nail wasn't picked up by accident - someone hammered a spike into this unpleasant old man's tire. Payback's a bitch, eh pops.
October 13, 2011
If you didn't know that geese mate for life, now you do.
We have just finished the long form trailer for our new social network. If you have a few minutes, perhaps you might take a gander:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qod57jt_ke0
October 15, 2011
What is the mainstream? Is it the lowest common denominator? The average ignorance? The vast asleep masses? Some say the real money isn't in pandering to the mainstream (dealing in volume), it's catering to the upper end. I say, satisfy yourself first and then whomever finds that relevant, will be your customers. In other words, seek your own level. And if that fails? Heck, the mainstream isn't going anywhere. You can always pander.
October 16, 2011
I'm taking a flyer. This is an act owing little to thought and more to impulse. I wrote to Sir Richard Branson yesterday. We'll see if he writes back.
If you're at a party and you find Death serving you canapés, my advice? Tell her you just ate. You're not the least bit hungry. You couldn't take one more bite. And that you have to run. Then run! Because I've seen guys try and make small talk with her, tell her they love her pearls, compliment her on how good she looks in black, and then murmur, Oh, just one canapé, what could it hurt? And they're now dead! Word to the wise.
October 18, 2011
I met an unpleasant, crass girl who worked at a call center as a telemarketer. She said they pushed all kinds of junk onto unsuspecting people. "Mostly old people," she let on, "they get confused easily. Especially when no means yes." Then she cackled. I noticed several prominent teeth were missing. She went on to say that sure, she was good at duping the geriatric, but really, she hated her job and wanted to leave, and would, except for the fact that she made a sex tape with her supervisor and he threatens to send it to her parents if she ever thinks about quitting. Then she cackled again and said, "Joke's on him! I was a foster kid and I ain't got no parents! He don't even know!" Yessss, she's a sly one. She went on to talk about meth, bear spray and huffing glue. Man, other people's lives.
October 19, 2011
The dogs and I came home to 4 deer grazing down at the barn. They didn't run off when the truck pulled up, and instead watched us park, exit the vehicle and enter the yard at the house. Once inside the gate the dogs plastered their faces against the fence and for the next half hour watched the mob graze. Eventually, the deer moved off into the woods, the dogs left their vigil, the world returned to the everyday and a memory was made for all.
Being a country mime was harder than Jean Claude thought, but he soldiered on, hoping somebody would come by to watch his antics, preferably some lost city folks who owned a club where Jean Claude could perform and get famous and finally be able to move from this god forsaken farm where he just never fit in.
October 21, 2011
I'm being shaken down by Peaches.
October 22, 2011
Got a gig tonight.
Be there or be square.
October 24, 2011
All things are relative. Up here, everyone would say that Vancouver is the garden spot of Canada. Yet no one in the US would say that Seattle is the garden spot of America, even though the two cities are practically on top of one another on the map. But I wonder, worry, what of poor, schizophrenic Bellingham, a border city between the two?
October 25, 2011
It's Tuesday. At 5:30 AM I take the garbage up to the top of our driveway. It's still dark. I think I see something up the road, but it's hard to tell. I start back down the driveway. The neighbor's dog starts barking ferociously. I go back up to the road. It's still too dark to see, but the dog is barking in the general vicinity of where I was looking. Unable to confirm or deny the existence of something and unwilling to walk up the road to see for myself, I head back down to the house. On the way I wonder how much of the unknown is just out of the range of our perception.
October 26, 2011
Associations! I lost a key. I needed a duplicate. I went to the mall to get a key made. I'm walking across the parking lot on my way back to my truck when I hear the distinctive sound of metal on metal scraping. Somebody in this lot was keying someone else's car. The sound stopped, and after checking my vehicle for damage, I drove off remembering a story I had read a long time ago concerning a body shop owner who, in a misguided effort to drum up business, paid juvenile punks to key random cars. When the kids got caught and in turn implicated the body shop, the town avoided the business and within months, the place was kaput. I lost a key; I went to get a key; I heard a car being keyed; I remembered a story about keying. We are associative machines.
October 27, 2011
Met a set of twins. I asked them what that was like. One loved being a twin, the other not so much. The one that loved it was gushing about how a doppelganger made her life more complete because there were two of them and she got to share in her sister's glory, while the other one said she hated it for precisely the same reason - they were two so she wasn't as special as she felt she deserved to be. They were both pretty, but one was hard and one was soft.
October 28, 2011
It's Friday afternoon. You flee the office early and head for a private cove. You take off your work dress, stockings and shoes. You walk naked down the beach and declare yourself free from everything except this moment; the water on your toes, the sun on your body; the promise of the weekend.
Richard Branson update: he hasn't written back. I'm shocked. Shocked.
October 30, 2011
Sophie just loves to lick her sister's face. She cleans her teeth and eyes and ears and will groom Maddie for long periods of time. Can you imagine doing that with your wife or girlfriend? Wait honey, I'm not done licking, I missed a spot. My tongue hurts just thinking about it.
October 31, 2011
Do candy company stocks go up during the month of October? The humongous spike in candy purchases prior to Halloween, does that correlate to their stock value? Should one buy Hershey's in August and unload in October?
